Guerrilla Dining
San Francisco Bay Area
graffEats@gmail.com
The hottest places to eat are no longer restaurants, but warehouses, fields, parking lots, even on a platform dangling from a crane. Guerrilla dining, as it's called, is to food what raves were to parties - an event held in a location revealed just prior to the event. Some are revealed through underground networks, while others are more out in the open, available for anyone to join.
graffEats has put on guerrilla dining events in castles and farmer's fields in the San Francisco Bay Area. Blair Warsham, former chef/owner of the Tinderbox in San Francisco, creates the meals. With 72-hours notice, he can accommodate vegetarians.
On a recent night in Healdsburg, graffEats celebrated the start of tomato season with a tomato dinner near the basil fields (below) of Dan "The Tomato Man" Magnuson, who grows about 40 varities of heirloom tomatoes that are sold to restaurants in the area and at the local farmer's market.
The five-course menu included a fun but messy tomato popcorn (below). I'm kind of eager to see if I can do this myself by covering popcorn in finely crumbled, dried tomatoes.
That was followed by chilled watermelon and heirloom tomato soup, and a peach and purple Cherokee tomato salad with opal basil walnut pesto and aged California white cheddar (below). This was a wonderful, low-fat twist on a caprese salad. Friends I mentioned it to commented that peaches and tomatoes seemed a strange combination, but it worked. In fact, it worked extremely well. The tomatoes were so wonderful they served as a nice reminder in this dish that they are indeed fruits.
The main course was grits with fried green tomatoes (non-vegetarians had theirs with bacon and white shrimp). I was prepared to not care for this, but the grits were smooth and flavorful and the tomatoes maintained their sweetness for a well-balanced combination.
The final course was Humboldt Fog goat cheese with strawberries.Diners ate family-style at one long table. Talking and getting to know the diverse group was a big part of the fun. Dan talked tomatoes (store them stem down) and shared some of his favorites. Each diner also left with a plastic bag of different varieties of tomatoes. The owner of the Cheese Shop of Healdsburg was on hand to talk cheese, and a local diner brought his homemade port to share.
Dinner was $45 a person and included music, and a donation to St. Anthony's Dining Hall. Wine pairings were $25 a person. The one negative was that the pours were small and no one was on hand to discuss the wines chosen for the dinner. The dinner was a bargain though, especially when compared to OutstandingintheField.com, which charges about $200 a person for their farm-to-table dinners.
Write to Blair at graffeats@gmail.com to get on his mailing list for upcoming dinners.
