San Francisco Food Blog

Welcome Books

Alice is all over it, big time.

​Zagat Guides and Slow Food have organized 33 nationwide dinners -- collectively called A Slow Taste of Tuscany -- happening Wednesday to celebrate the publication of Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town (Welcome Books, $50) by Douglas Gayeton. The Petaluma author plans to be present at the book signing and Slow dinner at Chez Panisse Café (1517 Shattuck at Walnut), the only one in the Bay Area. Look for a menu inspired by the book.

Participation by the restaurant Alice built makes sense, since Waters helped start Slow Food USA. She also wrote the intro for the photo-rich book, which is a celebration of Tuscan food traditions, Slow Food-style. In blurbage, Waters has given the book high praise: "Many have tried to explain Slow Food in written words, but few have managed to communicate the essence of this movement as successfully."

If you're a fan, there's no other place you'll want to be Wednesday. Seek reservations here.

Zingerman's

Console yourself with bacon. Lots and lots of bacon.

​Bad news, bacon fans, or at least a mixed bag. Due to a medical emergency, writer-gourmand-shop owner Ari Weinzweig cannot travel. Meaning he won't be at The Pasta Shop in Oakland (5655 College at Shafter) tonight to sign copies of his new bacon tome, Zingerman's Guide to Better Bacon: Stories of Pork Bellies, Hush Puppies, Rock 'n' Roll and Bacon Fat Mayonnaise (Zingerman's Press, $29.99). The Pasta Shop is still putting on a free bacon tasting from 4 to 6 p.m., however, and can arrange to have the author inscribe books. Or just wait till Jan. 16, when Weinzweig is due to appear at Omnivore Books (3885A Cesar Chavez at Church).

Zingerman's

Spreading the swine gospel

​UPDATE Nov. 12: Citing a medical emergency, Ari Weinzweig has canceled tonight's appearance, but The Pasta Shop says the bacon tasting is still on. Read the latest here.

Is bacon the olive oil of North America? Care to taste some, and maybe pick up a new book while you're at it? Author Ari Weinzweig says bacon is the olive oil of North America. Weinzweig knows his swine and other delicacies; he's the cofounder of the famed gourmet food emporium Zingerman's Delicatessen in Ann Arbor, Mich. Learn why he says, "bacon is so integral to the culinary history of this country. The roots are so deep in our cooking, I think of it as the olive oil of North America." Weinzweig will be chatting, tasting bacon with the audience, and signing his new book, Zingerman's Guide to Better Bacon: Stories of Pork Bellies, Hush Puppies, Rock 'n' Roll and Bacon Fat Mayonnaise (Zingerman's Press, $29.99) at The Pasta Shop (5655 College at Shafter, Oakland -- literally just steps from the Rockridge BART station) this Thursday, Nov. 12. The event runs from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. and is free. But bring your wallet: You might be tempted to buy the book and some gourmet food to go with it.

Hertzberg and François: A case of too much coffee?

​If the idea of baking bread seems like too much work and time, there are some experts are here to set you straight. The theory? That you can master fiber-packed bread-making at home in the time it takes to floss. Artisan breads, too. Zoe François and Dr. Jeff Hertzberg, authors of Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, will discuss their decidedly radical baking notion at Omnivore Books (3885a Cesar Chavez Street at Church) tomorrow from 3 to 4 p.m. A full hour. What we want to know is this: If you can make Aunt Melissa's Granola Bread in five minutes, shouldn't you be able to talk about it in the same time span?

​Heat lovers, wrap your lips around this if you dare. Though the name sounds like a Brian Boitano figure skating event, Monday's Spice & Ice Cocktail party at Cantina (580 Sutter at Mason) is really all about drinks that pack heat. Author Kara Newman will be on hand to pimp her latest book, Spice & Ice: 60 Tongue-Tickling Cocktails (Chronicle Books, $16.95). You'll have a chance to sample cocktails made with jalapeños, hot sauce, and related fiery stuff. Take a turn at creating your own spicy drink, and dig into light refreshments, 5:30-7:30 p.m. On Wednesday, Nov. 11, Newman will again be signing books and presiding over cocktails at Omnivore Books (3885a Cesar Chavez at Church) 6-7 p.m.

David Chang (right) with Chris Cosentino before last night's discussion at Cafe Du Nord.

​If there's a takeaway lesson from fig-gate, it might be this: Don't drink on stage.

At a 7x7-sponsored panel discussion at Café Du Nord last night, N.Y. chef David Chang took heat for having being what one panelist teasingly called "drunk with Tony" when he dropped his now-famous diss on the city's food chops last month with Anthony Bourdain. Ar at least, that's how it went down here.

Even before he came to town yesterday for five days of appearances to flog his book, Momofuku, Chang addressed the crap storm his comments stirred. Last week, he told us San Franciscans needed to chill out and smoked more weed, even as he hawked the wider point that S.F. chefs aren't alone in a lack of imagination that yields endless iterations on the beet and goat cheese salad.

Maybe that's why Chang seemed content to let his stagemates hog the discussion last night. Incanto's Chris Cosentino and Christopher Kostow of the Restaurant at Meadowood in St. Helena turned the discussion into a revisit of the N.Y. v. S.F. meme, and a probe of the forces that keep American chefs from being avant-garde. Meanwhile, Momofuku co-author Peter Meehan audibly pondered why in the hell he was even on stage. The moderators were 7x7 editors Sara Deseran and Jessica Battilana.

Proto food blogger and reported David Chang foe Pim Techamuanvivit will read and sign copies of her book The Foodie Handbook: The (Almost) Definitive Guide to Gastronomy (Chronicle Books, $24.95) starting at 7:30 p.m. tonight at the Marina location of Books Inc. (2251 Chestnut Street at Pierce). Pim promises on her blog, Chez Pim, "a reading and more recipes from my new book .... You might even win a few jars of my jam!" We double hot-dog dare you to ask Pim about her own personal David Chang shit storm, and whether or not she made it all up. For a decidedly more mellow experience, check out Pim's video trailer that includes footage of her buying fruit in Saratoga.

It's a big week for bookish San Francisco foodies interested in sustainable farming, vegetarianism, and foraging.

• Tomorrow, Wendell Berry -- writer, farmer, and godfather of the organic farming movement -- appears at Herbst Theatre (401 Van Ness at McAllister) in conversation with Michael Pollan for a City Arts and Lectures event. The utterings of both are often quoted (Berry: "Eating is an agricultural act"; Pollan: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Perhaps tomorrow's talk will yield more gems. (The event is sold out, but in the past, we've had success buying extra tickets from attendees outside Herbst.) In any event, it should be altogether more civilized than Wednesday's equally booked appearance by David Chang (with Chris Cosentino, among others) at Cafe du Nord.

torre.elena/Flickr

Foer: Overthinking the porkchop?

​• On Thursday, Nov. 5, super-committed foodies might want to attend two high-profile events. Langdon Cook, author of Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager, appears for a free discussion at Omnivore Books (3885 Cesar Chavez at Church) at 6 p.m.

• Then, at 8 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center (3200 California at Presidio), there's an appearance by Jonathan Safran Foer. The birth of the author's first child first child precipitated the comic novel Everything is Illuminated. A serious examination of the ethics of eating flesh resulted in his new nonfiction book, Eating Animals (the one-word response to the implied question of the title is No, by the way. Tickets are $10-$18 -- or wait till Friday, Nov. 6, and you can hear Foer for free at 7 p.m. in the Multicultural Community Center at U.C. Berkeley's Student Union (Telegraph at Bancroft, Berkeley).

M. Brody

The books nobody wanted -- even as freebies. Sorry, Guy -- and Gourmet.

​We made out like a bandit at 18 Reasons' cookbook exchange last night. We're slightly embarrassed about it.

We already have a sister and two friends we regularly give castoff food books to, and we're pretty attached to the ones that remain. So we scrounged around and came up with a couple of paperbacks: Havana Salsa and The Bad for You Cookbook, plus a hardcover copy of Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood. Celia Sack, owner of Omnivore Books -- who co-presented last night's event -- greeted us at the door and placed our books on the proper tables, without scoffing. Rachel Cole of 18 Reasons served up wine and told us about two book clubs starting in January, one devoted to food writing and another to cookbooks.

M. Brody

Seriously? That's it?

​There were several hundred books to choose from, food-themed games, even a couple of recipe boxes. We ended up with a beautiful copy of L'Atelier of Joël Robuchon; Mark Kurlansky's brand-new The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food -- Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation's Food Was Seasonal (whew!); Eat My Words: Reading Women's Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote; and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America's Underground Food Movements. Thanks to a surfeit of books, we were all allowed to take one more than we brought, a haul considerably better (and cheaper) than the one we got at the massive Friends of the Library sale last month at Fort Mason.

T. Palmer

Literature and lumpia, together at last.

​Need fuel for Litquake's Lit Crawl in the Mission on Saturday night? Some 17 (and counting) street-food vendors, including Lumpia Cart, Sweet Constructions, Amuse Bouche, and Sexy Soup Lady will be selling their treats nearby.

The individual vendors (who are all listed on the SF Street Food aggregator) will tweet their locations closer to the time; most plan to be in a spot that's central to the festivities. Follow Lit Crawl on Twitter for on-the-scene updates from Litquake's street tweet team.

But will it keep you up at night?

​How's this for a tasty literary endeavor? For the first time ever, Blue Bottle is selling single-origin Sumatran coffee, in conjunction with the S.F.'s One City One Book program. One dollar of every pound of Sumatra Gayo Supreme sold will go to the program that unites city readers over -- the title says it -- one book.

Alive in Necropolis by Doug Dorst is this year's selection for One City One Book, and program organizers asked Blue Bottle to come up with a special coffee that mirrors the book's nuances. Alive is set in San Francisco and the cemeteries of Colma, and has a rich cast, including ghosts who take in a whodunit.

"To be fair," Blue Bottle's Web site explains, "the Gayo Supreme is big-bodied and blunt-nosed. But just as Chandler [we're thinking they meant to say Dorst] really wrote about why people would kill, more than the fact that they did, this particular Sumatran coffee is really more about nuance. Raisins, port, and the sweet earthiness of the candy cap mushroom all ooze out of this coffee. For the full experience, we urge you to try it with the blueberry cornmeal donut that Dynamo Donuts is baking for the Friends of the Library."

Sumatra Gayo Supreme ($19.75 per pound) is available weekends at Blue Bottle kiosks, or get your fix online 24/7.

Rakka/Flickr

You're not alone.

​When Chelsea Handler told a panel of comedians on Chelsea Lately that ABC News was reporting that Julia Child's memoir My Life in France and some of her other books are "flying off the shelves because of the new movie Julie & Julia," the invective flew thick and fast. "It's a movie about a lady who cooks things from a cookbook and then blogs about it," said Guy Branum, identified in supered type as "comedian/staff homosexual". "What's next, a movie about a guy who live-tweets a half-hour of television?"

Branum was also incensed about a certain anti-climactic fowl. "The whole thing is a build-up to this duck that she bones and then fills with paté and then covers with pastry dough and then they never cut into it and no one eats it," he said. "It is like porn with no money shot."

"No dude wants to go see this movie," comedienne Arden Myrin said. "I had, like, an easier time getting a date to see The Lake House."

Despite the Julie & Julia backlash as glimpsed on Handler's show and online, the movie has apparently inspired many to trot over to their local bookstores and dive into Julia's 1961 magnum opus, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (which became Vol. 1 when Vol. 2 came out in 1971). The New York Times reports that, almost 48 years after its initial publication, Mastering is finally topping the best-seller list. "The book, given a huge lift from the recently released movie Julie & Julia, sold 22,000 copies in the most recent week tracked...more copies than were sold in any full year since the book's appearance." It's poised to make its debut as number one on The New York Times Book Review best-seller lists of August 30 in the advice and how-to category. And it's currently number two in Books at Amazon.

Lisa Jervis was the founder and original publisher of indie publication Bitch magazine (subtitled Feminist Response to Pop Culture), which began in 1996 in San Francisco and is now a quarterly based in Portland. Jervis currently works at the Center for Media Justice in Oakland, an excellent vantage point from which to think about eating. Her new book Cook Food: A Manualfesto for Easy, Healthy, Local Eating demystifies the cooking process for the scared and suggests sustainable recipes for any skill level. Jervis will celebrate the release of the book at the Green Arcade (1680 Market at Gough) on Friday, July 24, and at Modern Times (888 Valencia at 20th St.) on August 12. Both events are free and begin at 7 p.m.

Jardiniere

Traci des Jardins - chef/co-owner of Jardiniere

This is so hot (unless you are a member of PETA)! If the chef-ladies-who-hunt decide to make a coffee table book about their current hunting adventure in outer Mongolia, SFoodie is all over it.

In late June, I got wind of a camping-slash-hunting expedition including chef Traci des Jardins (Jardiniere and Acme Chophouse), Loretta Keller (Coco500), Mary Sue Milliken (Ciudad in Los Angeles), Anita Lo (Annisa in NYC), and April Bloomfield (NY spots The Spotted Pig and The John Dory). While I admire chefs who can cook of either gender, it is exciting to hear about females who also do hunting and/or the butchering that inevitably follows.

In June, Chef des Jardins kindly responded to an email request for an interview, but offered a missive that only left me wanting more: "We are documenting the trip with extensive photography-so we will have many possibilities when we come back. We have had extensive conversations with many of the publishers and some writers...." SFoodie will not have an excloo on this hunting trip, but eagerly awaits more info and images. Hey, Ladies: Coffee. Table. Book. Please.

Have fork, will travel: Our idea of a sweet gig

In what must have been one of the pleasantest book projects of all time, Simon Majumdar traveled the world eating and writing about it. The result: Eat My Globe: One Year to Go Everywhere and Eat Everything, published in the U.S. by Simon & Schuster's Free Press. We can imagine the pitch meeting: "It's going to be just like Eat, Pray, Love! minus the praying, and the love. It is a license to print money!"

Interested parties can question Majumdar on his ridiculous good fortune at Book Passage in the Ferry Building tonight at 6 p.m. They can also peer into the morass that is the journalistic research process in this comment thread Majumdar posted on Chow while casting around for destinations. Two of our favorite suggestions after the jump.

San Francisco writer and occasional NPR contributor Andy Raskin has written a memoir called The Ramen King and I: How the Inventor of Instant Noodles Fixed My Love Life. Raskin realized that his cryptic book title didn't exactly describe its contents, so he took to the streets of San Fran to ask citizens how they think ramen helped him fall in love. The resulting video is way cute, as people pontificate on everything from how ramen signifies a simpler value system to altogether more primal observations.

"You had the ramen," says one man. "She had the hot water!"

Raskin will share the answer to his burning question at the book's official launch party tomorrow night, 7:30 p.m., at Booksmith (1644 Haight at Clayton). Hayes Valley's True Sake will pour sake tastings at the free 90-minute event.

Today through Friday is TasteTV's "Sexy Dishes Week" in the Bay Area, a celebration of the release of the book Sexy Dishes that contains profiles of hot local chefs and their recipes. Several establishments are offering specials based on or inspired by their chef's recipe(s) in the book. Announced specials include:

 • 83 Proof (83 First St. at Mission): Half-price on their cocktail contribution, Burnt Fig Sazerac (rye whiskey, burnt figs, agave nectar, orange bitters, absinthe) and Cactus Flower (Cazadores Reposado, elderflower liqueur, lavender-infused simple syrup, creme de Cassis, lime).

• Beach Chalet/Park Chalet (1000 Great Hwy at Ocean Beach): Half-price beignets with espresso anglaise in the Beach Chalet and half-price stout cupcakes with cream cheese frosting in the Park Chalet.

• California Cafe (50 University at Mullen, Los Gatos): A three-course "Bay Area Sexy Dishes Dinner" for $21.

• Market Street Grill (1231 Market at 8th): Half off entree of seared Branzini fish with heirloom bean ragout, rapini, and Chardonnay lemon butter nage.

• Piacere (727 Laurel at Cherry, San Carlos): Half-off Spring Fizz cocktail (Veloce, gin, elderflower liqueur,  cucumber, mint, lemon, egg white) and launch party tonight (Monday, May 4)

• Sam's Chowder House (4210 Cabrillo Hwy N at Capistrano, Half Moon Bay): Half-off of ahi tuna poke or rock shrimp-bay scallop ceviche for patrons who bring in the book (also for sale there at Sam's Gift Shop).

• Schoggi Chocolate (87 Yerba Buena at Jessie): Half-off a chocolate sampler package of Swiss drinking chocolate, pastries, bon bons and a macaroon for patrons who bring in the book.

•Shanghai 1930 (133 Steuart at Mission): Prix-fixe meal for $29.95 that consists of Nanking spring rolls, Neptune hot & sour soup, choice of main (Szechuan chili prawns wiht sauteed leeks, chicken "lily" with black bean sauce, crispy chewy Szechuan beef, fish pillows with black and silver tree ears), and creme brulee. 

TasteTV's blog Tasteable will post any late-breaking additions to the lineup; we've heard from a reliable source that there might be at least a few more interesting places that will be participating in the sexiness.

TasteTV's new book Sexy Dishes highlights Bay Area chefs and the hot recipes they create. The local food channel (viewable both online and on-demand on Comcast), which recently presented its third annual San Francisco International Chocolate Salon, will celebrate its release throughout the Bay Area with Sexy Dishes Week, when several of the featured restaurants will offer food and drink specials based on recipes in the book. Participating establishments include Beach Chalet/Park Chalet (1000 Great Highway), Levende East (827 Washington in Oakland), 83 Proof (83 1st St.), and Market Street Grill (1231 Market). Sexy Dishes Week takes place from May 4-8; more information and locations will become available on the TasteTV site closer to the date.

Celebrate mailing in your tax forms on Wednesday, April 15th by moseying over to Williams-Sonoma on Union Square (340 Post, 362-9450) at 5 p.m., where Top Chef's head judge, hunky-while-bald Tom Colicchio, owner of the many Craft restaurants and catnip to women and men alike, will be signing his new book 'wichcraft: Craft a Sandwich into a Meal -- And A Meal into a Sandwich. (Aka 'wichcraft for short.)

Rex Stout was a mathematical prodigy, a political activist, and avid cook and gardener, but his great claim to fame are the 33 novels and 41 short stories he wrote about gargantuan, prickly, and erudite private eye Nero Wolfe. Crime-solving is of secondary interest when it comes to the Wolfe books. You read them for the man's rumbling insights ("There is only one object on earth that frightens me: a physicist working on a new trick"), assistant shamus Archie Goodwin's breezy narrative skills ("No man was ever taken to hell by a woman unless he already had a ticket in his pocket or at least had been fooling around with the timetables"), and, oh yes, the food.

Wolfe's weight fluctuates between a sixth and a seventh of a ton, and although that's partly because his most strenuous daily exercise is walking across the hall from the office to the dining room, it's primarily due to the three massive meals he consumes each day. The third member of the household is Fritz Brenner, an affable and philosophical Swiss chef whose way with a ladle is legendary. He is responsible for the care and feeding of Wolfe's belly, and a few times per adventure all of the action and intrigue stop so Nero and Archie can sit down to a lovingly described meal.

"Wine should smell and taste like the variety of grapes and the place it was produced from, and that is all!" says Gilles Barge, one of a dozen neo-traditionalist winemakers profiled in Robert Camuto's Corkscrewed: Adventures in the New French Wine Country. Much like Kermit Lynch's Adventures on the Wine Route, Camuto focuses mainly on the third essential ingredient: the often eccentric people who grow the grapes and make the wine.

Barge's place and grapes--Côte-Rôtie, made from Syrah with a splash of Viognier--are  mainstream compared with some of those the author visits and tastes. As the book goes on, the grapes get more esoteric: Cabernet Sauvignon in St.-Émilion, Carignan in Corbières, Chenin Blanc in Savennières, Sciaccarello in Corsica, Ondenc in Gaillac, Chatus in the Ardèche--that last virtually unknown outside of its own neighborhood. The otherwise diverse group of people behind these wines is united by a common rejection of modern technology and international style in favor of traditional practices and local flavors.

Chef Mani Niall, who's done everything culinary from being Michael Jackson's private chef (really) to operating his own eponymous bakery on Fairfax in Los Angeles, will be discussing his new cookbook, Sweet! From Agave Nectar to Turbinado, Home Baking With Every Kind of Natural Sweetener, on February 13th at 7 p.m. at Red Hill Books at 401 Cortland Avenue (648-5331).

Yes, just in time for Valentine's Day! Come and get in the mood. You can bake up some sweet treats, or just get a copy of the book inscribed for your beloved.

Casson Tenor, author of Sustainable Sushi: A Guide to Saving the Oceans One Bite at a Time, will be discussing the politics of sushi and, incidentally, signing his book at Red Hill Books (401 Cortland Avenue, 648-5331) on Monday, February 16 at 6:30 p.m. Tenor, a marine ecology activist, will share travel tales ranging from visiting the famed fish warehouses of Tokyo's Tsukiji district to fishing with holy men on the island of Yap. Learn about mercury and PCB levels, overfishing, and species extinction. You'll never look at a California roll in quite the same way again. But if we want to continue downing uni and toro, we have to learn how to sustain them. Knowledge is power!

If you have a Visa Signature rewards card, Visa, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, and almost 50 Bay Area restaurants have cooked up a little present for you: a nice little pamphlet of crab recipes, titled SF Chefs. Food. Wine.: Dungeness Crab. Inside you'll find recipes from A (Angel Hair Crab Lasagna, from Andrea Froncillo, executive chef/owner of Franciscan Crab Restaurant) to Z (well, W: Wok Roasted Ginger-Scallion Dungeness Crab, from George Chen, chef/owner of Shanghai 1930). The restaurants go from A (Acme Chophouse, with a recipe for crab salad with sunchoke chips and green herb dressing, from Traci des Jardins, managing chef, and Thom Fox, executive chef) to Z, too (well, W: Waterbar, with executive chef Parke Ulrich's decadent Dungeness crab gratin on roasted bone marrow glacage we enjoyed our ownself, the one time we ate there.).

Thackeray (of whom I've read, well, not much, but I have seen movies based on Becky Sharp and The Luck of Barry Lyndon, and I have a subscription to Vanity Fair!) once said "Next to eating good dinners, a healthy man with a benevolent turn of mind, must like, I think, to read about them."

Nate Appleman and Shelley Lindgren of A16 (2355 Chestnut), will join their A16: Food + Wine co-author, Kate Leahy at Omnivore Books (3885A Cesar Chavez) on Saturday, Jan. 17, from 3 to 4 p.m. Admission is free. But, more importantly, so are the nibbles that they'll offer, all taken from recipes in this book focused on the Campania region of Italy. Colto, mangia!

(Image via Rancho Gordo)

Steve Sando is a frequent presence at the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market with his Napa-based company Rancho Gordo, which offers several varieties of beans in vibrant colors that make a potentially dull food staple seem alive with possibility and flavor. Vanessa Barrington, Sando's co-author in Heirloom Beans, will talk about their book and cook up some of its recipes at a special free event from 3 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, January 10 at Omnivore Books (3885A Cesar Chavez). -- Tamara Palmer

At Omnivore Books on Food, our favorite new SF bookstore,a glamorous display of cocktail books both new (The Craft of the Cocktail, by Dale DeGroff, Classic Cocktails: A Modern Shake, by Mark Kingwell) and old (the 1948 Drink by Andre Simon, The Commonsense Book of Drinking, from 1960, by Leon D. Adams) reminded us that if you pair such a volume with a nice bottle of alcohol, hey presto! You've got an excellent themed gift. (A volume that neatly combines both old and new is the reprint edition of the excellent Savoy Cocktail Book.)

If you want to go the extra mile, muddlers, bar measures, and cocktail stirrers are available all over town, from such relatively posh locales as Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and Crate and Barrel right down to your local hardware store. And if you really want to go the extra mile, Omnivore has in stock a rare first edition copy of the 1869 cocktail book Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks, which includes recipes for "Yankee Punch," "Elephant's Milk," and "Elixir de Violettes, and priced at only $500! --Meredith Brody

San Francisco's underground food scene is alive and flavorful, and still thankfully peppered with secret affairs that even I'd never ruin by exposing. These tasty (and sometimes illicit) indulgences are rarely cheap, but Jenn Garbee's book Secret Suppers is a good holiday gift idea that is an affordable and satisfying substitute for those whose experimental food budgets are quickly slimming down.

Garbee's narrative takes her across the country (including a stop at S.F.'s Cook With James) to experience meals in all sorts of different settings. But the collected recipes from the various chefs all share a common spirit of playfulness, from date-stuffed hangar steak to oatmeal-infused vodka, and could provide a nice spark for executing new ideas in one's own kitchen.

-- Tamara Palmer

Things Cooks Love: Implements, Ingredients, Recipes is a valuable reference guide of foundational cooking knowledge, from what to keep stocked in the pantry to the best tools to make your ideas come alive in the kitchen. Chef and author Marie Simmons will host a special hour of discussion of her book (written in partnership with Sur La Table) tonight at 5 p.m. at Omnivore Books on Food (3885A Cesar Chavez).
-- Tamara Palmer