Two Weeks in California

The best things whipped up by family, friends, and go-to restaurants

I have a lot to cover. I left over two months ago (lol) to spend a couple of weeks back home, and I could write a post on every meal I had the pleasure of eating while I was there. I would say I succeeded in packing as much good food into two weeks that I could. I started planning what restaurant I was going to hit on the way from SFO to my house as soon as I had the landing time for my flight. My pick? San Tung, baby. Waiting in line is always a lengthy but worthwhile endeavor, but you can always order takeout. Of course their signature dish, the dry fried chicken wings, are amazing, but their potstickers are what get me. If you bite into one too early, boiling hot oil will spill on to you (trust me, I’m no stranger to burns of this sort), but your patience will be rewarded because the taste of this potsticker is unlike any other I’ve had. It’s perfectly seasoned and so greasy and delicious. They are also fried, which is fun, but they aren’t too crispy. They’re so good, I feel no need to even use soy sauce. They are a hand food to me. Please brace for the shittiest food picture I’ve ever taken, but it really says a lot about the quickness in which I dove into the takeout box.

Beyond just the airport drive, I aimed to turn every long car ride into a chance to eat something I’ve missed, or have wanted to try. In comes Thomas Keller of French Laundry fame. My favorite cookbook at home (the only type of picture book that truly interested me growing up) to flip through is the Ad Hoc cookbook, from another Keller restaurant. Ad Hoc is a much more casual restaurant than the French Laundry, and offers one family style meal on the menu a night. I’ve always wanted to go there, but they are only open for dinner, and it is hard to rally a crowd to drive to Yountville I must admit. But! One of the most popular nights at Ad Hoc was their fried chicken night, because fried chicken is good enough when it’s not made by a multi-michelin-star chef. So popular that they decided to open up a to-go window in the backyard of the restaurant that only served the fried chicken with sides: Addendum.

Listen, this chicken was excellent. It didn’t change my world, but they weren't charging tasting menu prices, so I didn’t expect it to. It was top notch fried chicken. I will admit I did not have any of the macaroni salad because I do not personally believe in pasta salad. Pasta should be hot. The cornbread was pretty damn good though. My favorite part was the cosmic brownie. It was so good. It was almost like eating a chocolate truffle in the shape of a ceramic tile. Thomas Keller cosmic brownie is now checked off my bucket list.

There are so many restaurants I try to fit in when I visit home, but none of them can touch my mom’s food, and I’m not saying that in the way that literally everybody does. My mom is seriously going crazy in the kitchen on a daily basis. She has a business based on her chefdom (from which she just retired- RIP EK kitchen) and still has time to keep the house stocked with baked goods. One of the staples is her sourdough bread. We started baking sourdough during COVID lockdown (just like everybody else and their mom) but we have both continued to do so. She definitely has mastered the craft. I will say I am capable of baking a good loaf, but I am anything but consistent. Below is a picture of two loaves that she didn't even try on. They were so delicious. Also pictured is her banana bread. When I was a freshman in college, she express mailed me a loaf to my dorm.

Marin is certainly a food-forward county, and there are always a million options to get different specialty ingredients from small businesses, but my absolute favorite is Fishmonger Don. Fishmonger Don is a fishmonger it turns out, and he emails out a list of what local fisherman have caught that week so people can place their orders. The website says they deliver, but my mom opts for the huge cooler he leaves outside his house that has labeled orders for people. Hers was marked private chef, which delighted us both.

It was my sister’s birthday in June, so I was around for a pretty great celebratory meal. She really knows how to pick a menu. We both take after our mom and cook for ourselves all the time. For whatever reason, she has become enamored with Eggs Benedict and makes it for herself an insane amount. I don’t blame her at all, I love butter based sauces just as much as the next girl. I am still a little averse to non-scrambled eggs (remnants of a picky-eater past), but I have eaten and enjoyed her signature dish. Last week she showed me her cooking album on google photos and I am not exaggerating when I say that about 75% of the pictures were different times she made eggs Benedict. Legend.

For her perfect birthday meal, she picked a starter of burrata and peaches with pistachios and my mom’s bread, following with a main of mushroom risotto made with homemade chicken stock. My moms like their risotto a little al dente, which I personally don’t think is a term that applies to rice, but it’s so delicious that I don’t care either way. We finished the meal with a strawberry Bavarian cream cake made by my step-mom, which was also very delicious. They’ve been on a real baking kick, those two.

To go with the cake, I grabbed some berry (don’t remember which one) ice cream from my all time favorite place: The Fairfax scoop. Attached is a picture my high school mountain bike coach took of me and my sister in front of the baby picture wall there. He took cones out of his own daughters’ hands to help us recreate the original picture, which is awesome photoshoot production on his part. No, we had not ordered yet when the picture was taken.

Hanging out at home is always a great time because I’ll come back from seeing a friend or whatever random activity I have going on and my mom will have prepared the most luxurious meal ever like it’s the easiest thing in the world. At this point, the ahi tuna poke bowl is an easy meal for her. What could be more simple? Cutting, mixing, frying (because who would eat poke without a fried wonton)- she could do it in her sleep. It also helps that she now owns the world’s most high tech and talkative rice cooker. Forgive me for the bathroom analogy, but the cooker really looks like a Toto toilet cover, the one that has a warmed seat and recognizes that you’ve entered the bathroom? Anyways, here’s a picture (of the poke, that is):

I couldn't let my mom have all the fun in the kitchen, so I decided to attempt the steamed shrimp dumplings out of the Le Bernadin cookbook (very very very fancy seafood tasting menu restaurant). I have gotten into the habit of checking out cookbooks on the library E-reader app on my hand-me-down iPad and just screenshotting the recipes I want to try. This dumpling recipe was so simple and I was fairly surprised about it. I guess it does all come down to the quality of your ingredients, especially when you’re working with seafood. I got the shrimp from the local ~organic~ grocery store, good earth, so you know it was quality. Their vegetables are top notch as well. Just look at that display!

The dumpling filling was just chopped up raw shrimp with cilantro, scallions, salt and pepper. That’s it. Little soy sauce/sesame oil dipping sauce on the side? C’mon now! I got some help from my mom wrapping all the dumplings and engineering parchment paper snowflakes for the steaming process. I also made J Kenji Lopez-Alt’s San Francisco style Vietnamese garlic noodles to go with them, which very surprisingly uses spaghetti and parmesan in combination with fish sauce, oyster sauce, and shit ton of garlic. Don’t knock it til you try it! Just make sure to really go heavy on the garlic.

I do have the pleasure of cooking in one of my favorite kitchens ever when I’m at home, but I had to make some pit stops at the favorite restaurants. I was heading to the mall anyways, so I had to stop at blue barn for the burrata sandwich (sans tomato because raw tomato should only exist in caprese and bruschetta), which you may remember as the inspiration for the pesto grilled cheese in my last post. Of course I had to get my favorite clam chowder at Hog Island Oyster Co. in Larkspur (which I didn’t take a picture of but I am sure I’ll go more in depth on it in the future), which I followed up with a doughnut (donut?) from Johnny Doughnuts. I worked a stint at the shop a few years ago when I went to live at home for a little bit, which is exactly what Chappell Roan did during the pandemic btw. It’s unfortunate that I am not also now a pop star.

I also made sure to stop by Gordo’s, the Betz family’s SF burrito go-to (La Taqueria if we had the energy to find parking in the mission, wait in line, etc…). If you are a NYC based Dos Toros fan, you may have noticed that they have photos of both the aforementioned burrito spots, as they are quite literally the blueprint for Dos Toros. I will say, Dos Toros does a great job. For one, they actually know how to wrap burritos there. Too many times at Chipotle have I had an employee fold my “burrito” up like they’re wrapping a present with too little wrapping paper. I don’t even get greedy with my fillings at Chipotle! Then it falls apart when I’m eating it, I look like an idiot, and my resentment (as well as the public’s) grows greater and greater for Chipotle. I want to love Chipotle so bad but they just keep dropping the ball. Dos Toros also steams their cheese onto the tortilla, which is in line with Gordo’s process. The one complaint I have is that the Spanish rice at the Union Square location is ALWAYS undercooked. And that sucks, because the burrito is really so delicious and perfect otherwise. I guess the Williamsburg location will now be my burrito haunt.

Anyways, Gordo’s is always amazing. Super burrito with cheese, carnitas, rice, black or refried beans, sour cream, maybe hot sauce, and guac if I feel spendy and decadent. It's so good. Not the most glamourous food pic I’ve ever taken, but I have included a picture of me flying my burrito in the air outside of the Legion of Honor the because I gave it a tin foil cape as I ate it. One more thing before I wrap up (ha!) the burrito segment: I don’t think pico de Gallo should ever be inside a burrito. Why would I ever want something cold in my burrito? The glory of sour cream and guac is that they can warm up and meld with the rest of the filling, but if I am ever accidentally stuck with raw tomatoes in there, I’m upset about it.

Now for my final section: what me and my friends made in Tahoe! My moms have finally decided to sell their timeshare (far less sketchy than it sounds) in Tahoe and invited me and my sister along with some of our friends to enjoy the last time we’d be staying there. This may or may not surprise you, but many of my best friends from high school enjoy cooking just as much as I do (shocker!). Also a huge shocker: I love in-n-out burger! So of course I strategically planned my four hour drive up so that I would pass an in-n-out at the two hour mark for lunch. My ideal order is animal style fries, a double double with just cheese, spread and grilled onions, and a soda. Hot take here, I don’t love an in-n-out milkshake as my drink. It is nearly impossible to suck that milkshake through a straw, it’s just too thick. If I wanted to work that hard to sip a drink, I would just put a cocktail straw in a regular milkshake.

I accidentally bought way too much alcohol for the trip at BevMo. I don’t know why I thought everybody coming was going to crush 10 drinks a day. We came close some days, but I, for one, got worn out pretty quick. I also famously cannot handle my liquor, so there’s that. One good decision I made at BevMo, however, was buying Aperol Spritz fixings. It’s the perfect afternoon/evening drink. I don’t think I have to do much convincing here.

I will keep my reporting on the tahoe food short because this is already a behemoth post, but we accomplished some pretty impressive and delicious things, so off we go! I guess I’ll start with the rotiserie chickens. Let me set the scene. We get to the house, see that there’s a huge grill. Score. We open up the grill, and there’s a rotisserie attachment in there, that rotates and everything. Chef Cole located the spikes that keep the chickens on the bar and our minds were made up. We had to make rotisserie chickens! When was the next time we would have access to this setup? I’m gonna have to give the chicken credit to Cole because not only did he man the grill and manage the birds, but he created a spice blend out of the spice rack at the house, aptly named the “everything but the spice rack” seasoning. He could not recall what he put in it when asked, but it was a super classic rotisserie chicken vibe. My contribution? The side potatoes, an homage to the rotisserie food truck that frequents the Marin farmer’s markets, Roli Roti. According to my memory they serve only chicken and the potatoes they would keep under the rotating chickens that would soak all the fat dripping down. Phenomenal. I tinkered around with the setup and found a sheet tray that would fit under the birds and filled it up with par boiled potatoes. They turned out so fucking delicious that we ended up dividing them precisely between the 7 people that were eating dinner. I definitely snuck a couple extra before dinner officially started, sorry to any attendees that are now reading this. Chef Ella was also working hard making pound cake, which we enjoyed with strawberries and vanilla ice cream. It also made for a great snack, so we were working on that huge bundt cake for a couple days.

Tahoe was also celebration time for my sister’s birthday, and once again, my mom went big. I think she grilled up like 4 or 5 New York Strips (perfectly, I might add) and served them with béarnaise sauce made by the birthday girl herself. She accidentally made it wrong because she is so intensely programmed to make hollandaise for eggs benny, but it turned out just as good. What’s better than steak and sauce? Compared to the steak, the pile of baked potatoes behind the glorious cutting board looks hilarious. They look fresh outta the sack. It was left up to the eater to cut and dress the potato. I usually go for an obcene amount of butter and salt. If I’m in the mood to go traditional with it, I will pile on sour cream, scallions and bacon when available. It’s safe to say that I slept well before my drive home.

Stay tuned for my next(ish) post, Two Weeks in Switzerland! Hopefully it won’t take me two more months to churn that one out, but it possibly will. I have my last first day of school on Tuesday. Wish me luck!