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November 16th, 2011
Excerpts and Illustrations from Patricia Curtan's MENUS FOR CHEZ PANISSE

"This weekend marked the fortieth anniversary of Alice Waters’s Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California. I was swept into the adventure of the restaurant almost at its inception; though I had no restaurant experience, I was recruited to fill in for someone who didn’t show up for work. Alice is a dedicated Francophile, and early on she wrote out each nightly menu, in French, in her elegant calligraphy. Eventually, her devotion to France was replaced with the appreciation of California’s food and culture, and the names of growers, producers, and ingredients took prominence on the menus. Over the years, many Bay Area designers, poets, writers, calligraphers, and printers have placed their stamp on the Chez Panisse menus. I’m lucky to have been one of them." 

"The Grand Aïoli has become a tradition at Chez Panisse. It is a Provençal free-for-all feast of bowls of garlic mayonnaise with platters of summer vegetables, grilled bread, fish, and shellfish, and plenty of chilled rosé."

"I wanted this menu to look like a decorative plate. Ingredients of the spicy shrimp soup form the elements of the image"

Patricia Curtan is an artist, designer, and printmaker. Her book, Menus for Chez Panisse, collects four decades of menus printed for the restaurant.
August 27th, 2011
Celebrating 40 years of Chez Panisse


On August 27, 2011,  we poured our 2007 Montage and co-hosted a wild boar roast with Angelo Garro at his San Francisco forge. The dinner at The Forge was one of fourteen being held that night throughout the Bay Area to celebrate the fortieth birthday of Chez Panisse and benefit it's foundation, The Edible Schoolyard Project. (http://www.edibleschoolyard.org). All photos copyright Mark Gordon Photography.

May 8th, 2011
Outstanding In The Field

McEvoy Ranch Petaluma, CA Sunday, May 8, 2011


Host Farmers: Nan & Nion McEvoy, McEvoy RanchGuest

Chefs: Beth Wells & Nathan Alderman, Chez Panisse Cafe

 Guest Wines: Scaggs Vineyard and Pey-Marin

 http://outstandinginthefield.com/



February 19th, 2011
Jon Herington's shine (shine shine)

Boz's friend and sometime bandmember, Jon Herington has just released a fine new solo record.

Listen at www.cdbaby.com/cd/jonherington2

December 1st, 2010
Colman Andrew's Ferran

By Michaelangelo Matos October 28, 2010

FERRANBy most accounts, no chef has been as important to modern-day cuisine as Ferran Adrià, the wizard behind Catalonia’s El Bulli, generally considered the world’s greatest restaurant: open half the year, limited tables, booked months in advance. His complex, vivid, idea-driven, controversial cuisine has changed the way diners, critics, and chefs conceive of food’s possibilities. He gets under the skin of hard-line food conservatives by insisting that food’s limits should be pushed, always.

In his book Ferran: The Inside Story Of El Bulli And The Man Who Reinvented Food, veteran food journalist Colman Andrews is generally excellent at letting Adrià’s work do the talking, even more than the chef himself. Adrià’s career and El Bulli’s history shed light on post-hippie idealism in illuminating ways, during the years the legendary German free spirit Marketta Schilling ran things. Adrià took a temp job cooking at the remote restaurant more or less as an opportunity to party, and instantly proved himself a natural. Andrews shrewdly portrays Adrià among his Catalonian peers during 30 fast-moving years of Catalan cuisine—significantly, after Franco’s death put Spain on the road to democracy, and opened up its cultural life. (Andrews’ 1988 bookCatalan Cuisine was a prime mover in the style gaining international favor.) Andrews also devotes a chapter to Ferran’s various feuds, and follows him through his off-site kitchen, where he works on new ideas for eye-catching, taste-bud-popping recipes.

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