San Francisco's Plant Cafe: A Triumph of Style Over Substance

Plant Cafe
Pier 3
San Francisco, CA 94111
415.984.1973
www.theplantcafe.com

This mostly organic restaurant in San Francisco boasts a peaceful location on the waterfront at pier 3, near the Ferry Building, and an executive chef with a resume that will make any Bay Area vegetarian drool -- Sascha Weiss was pastry chef at vegetarian restaurant Millennium and worked at the sorely missed raw foods restaurant Roxanne's in Marin County.

Despite that, Plant Cafe is a triumph of style over substance. It's not that the food is bad, but that nothing is exceptional, although with a little tweaking it could be. The setting, with the relaxing tables on the water's edge (the outside tables are heated), makes for a delightful place to spend a leisurely lunch break. And while the food is fine, with a good mix of items for vegans, vegetarians and carnivores alike, you are likely to come away satisfied but not overwhelmed by the taste combinations.

The menu is a mixture of several salads, small plates (most with mussels, scallops or crabs), a pasta, several pizzas, the vegetarian Plant Burger (above), and large plates, which are split about half-and-half between vegan items such as pumpkin seed and cornmeal-encrusted tempeh and animal-based dishes such as duck breast in plum puree.

The signature Plant Burger patty is a mixture of lentils, mushrooms, bulgur, beets and cashews. It comes topped with avocado, cheese, aioli and onions and, for inexplicable reasons, is served on wheat bread. The heavy, mushy mixture of ingredients overwhelms the bread making a soggy mess. While it’s good, a whole wheat bun would be a better choice here.

The walnut pizza (above) with goat cheese in a balsamic reduction was probably the best choice, although slightly bland.

The fresh herb pasta (above) with corn, cherry tomatoes, arugula, garlic and pecorino was also not a bad choice.

Entrees range from about $13 to $20.

Perhaps the best way to enjoy Plant Cage is sitting out on the back deck on the water enjoying the patatas bravas, bowl of mixed olives and a beer or glass of wine from their extensive list of beverages.

Blouet Offers Masterful Culinary Strokes at Cafe des Artistes in Puerto Vallarta

Cafe des Artistes
Guadalupe Sanchez 740, Centro
Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
www.cafedesartistes.com
+52 (322) 222.3228

Chef Thierry Blouet has worked in some of the most prestigious kitchens in the world, from Le Fouquet's de Paris and Le Moulin de Mougins near Cannes to the Ritz in Chicago. Along the way, he earned Maîtres Cuisiniers de France award, being one of only 340 French chefs to do so.

He now has his own restaurants in Mexico, the star of which is Cafe des Artistes in Puerto Vallarta, where he merges his French training and skills with Mexican ingredients. The result is that his restaurant is considered one of the top in Latin America.

While Blouet offers a three-course menu that may or may not offer vegetarian dishes for about 350 pesos a person, the kitchen is also eager to prepare dishes for vegetarian diners.

On a recent meal an appetizer included an artfully prepared trio of gazpachos - cucumber, tomato and beet (below).A poblano pepper stuffed with cheese was certainly not out-of-the-ordinary, but nonetheless very well prepared.The surprise vegetarian dish from the kitchen featured five thinly sliced pieces of eggplant wrapped around fresh goat cheese (above). While I generally dislike the texture of eggplant, this was excellent, leaving none of the spongy eggplant texture, but lots of wonderful flavor.

My guests and I passed on dessert, but the kitchen delivered some small pieces of multi-layered, fondant-filled chocolate cake.

Service is top-notch, and the restaurant offers probably the most extensive wine list in all of Puerto Vallarta, with an excellent selection of wines priced under 500 pesos. With cocktails, a bottle of wine, and two courses each, I'm not sure where you can get a better meal for about $35 US per person.

Michael Mina Delivers on Food, Misses a Bit on Service

Michael Mina
335 Powell St
San Francisco, CA
415.397.9222
www.michaelmina.net

There are restaurants that offer vegetarian menus just to round out their offerings - Alex at Wynn, for example. And then there are those that understand that vegetarian cooking can be innovative, delicious and fulfilling. Michael Mina falls into the latter group.

The San Francisco restaurant offers a full vegetarian menu filled with creative and tasty offerings.

A recent dinner included the heirloom beet chop salad (above) with spiced filberts, fromage blanc fritters and Belgian endive. The combination of the sweet beets and bitter greens made for a nice balance, especially with the warm nuggets of cheese.

The chickpea soup (below) was set off with sweet bites of onion.The soft-boiled hen egg with green asparagus, chanterelle mushrooms and bernaise sauce made for a wonderful entree. The warm egg was cooked for 40 minutes so that it came out nice and warm with a perfectly viscous yolk. If only more places that made eggs Benedict took the time to make their eggs like this. The egg was atop asparagus that had been thinly sliced lengthwise, so they were almost like noodles.

The German chocolate torte with pressed coconut and candied pecans was rich and flavorful.

While the food at Michael Mina is quite good, the service is somewhat lacking. Dishes were not cleared immediately between courses, it often took a reminder to get water glasses refilled, and instead of replacing a lint-covered napkin the waiter shrugged it off. The linens were wrinkled and the arm of my chair was coming apart. The restaurant could use some attention. To their credit, the kitchen did send out an extra course - a squash salad - to fill time while waiting for the egg to cook.

Michael Mina is not the most cozy of restaurants as it's situated in a large room just off the lobby of the Westin St. Francis. The restaurant does have a nice deal right now - a three-course pre-theater menu offered before 6 p.m. for $55 a person.

Napa's Ubuntu Offers Vegetarian Eats and Yoga

Ubuntu
1140 Main Street
Napa, CA 94558
707.251.5656
www.ubuntunapa.com

Ubuntu, the two-year-old vegetarian restaurant in Napa, has become a media darling. The New York Times wrote about it as though they had no clue vegetarian restaurants served anything other than tofu and wheat gluten. It was odd given that New York has a rather nice share of quality vegetarian restaurants that focus on what comes out of the garden.

Perhaps it's that Ubuntu is not just a restaurant but also a yoga studio that helps with the fascination. While I like the restaurant and have eaten there about a half a dozen times, vegetarians used to eating quality meals might find it doesn't quite live up to the hype. In any event, Ubuntu is good.

One of the staples of the menu, and a great little pre-meal snack, are the marcona almonds in sea salt and lavender sugar. During a recent meal, those preceded a nasturtium, brioche and pear salad (above). Although it had a little too much bread, it was definitely a visual treat.
The strawberry pizza margherita (below) with hand-pulled mozzarella, three-day Napa strawberry soffrito, basils and saba was good, but nothing special. The strawberry soffrito was so light as to not add any flavor.
A much better choice was the creamy gnocchi with truffle oil (below).
For dessert, their vanilla bean cheesecake in a jar (below) is wonderful. During this meal it came with strawberries, at other times it's come with different fruits. It's nice and creamy and not at all dense and rich like most cheesecake.
Ubuntu serves quality ingredients, many from the restaurant's organic garden. It may not surprise vegetarians, but if the press is any indication, your carnivore friends may be amazed at what a vegetarian restaurant can be.

Guerrilla Dining: A Moveable Feast

graffEats
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.

Finding Vegetarian Gems in Meat and Seafood Country - Araxi, Whistler

Araxi
4222 Village Square
Whistler, BC Canada
604.932.4540
www.araxi.com

There's no question - Whistler is largely a meat-eating kind of place. Vegetarians know the types of restaurants here well. Menus have every variety of animal on the planet and then a token "vegetable platter" just in case a vegetarian should walk through the door and still have the courage to order.

At first glance, Araxi is no exception. The menu is heavy on veal, steak, and fish. And then there's the sole vegetarian entree of spinach gnocchi. But if you're looking for good food in Whistler, well, Araxi is pretty much the place to go. (Barefoot Bistro is the other top-rated restaurant in Whistler, but finding vegetarian items there is like finding a carnivore at a PETA gathering.)

I called in advance and asked if the chef could prepare a vegetarian tasting menu. I was told it would be no problem. When I arrived, the menu had just changed. I found enough interesting items on the small plates menu to keep me happy. So I made my own tasting menu. I started with an heirloom tomato and buffalo mozzarella salad (above) with arugula, basil sorbet, olive oil and tomato chips. I'm a bit fussy about my mozzarella and this was among the best I've had, competing well with mozzarella made same day.


The white cheese souffle (above) with red sorrel, fresh laurel and lemon thyme cream toasted almonds and grilled almond oil, though slightly less cheesy than I'd hoped, was good. Others will probably appreciate that it is not overly rich.

The ricotta stuffed Pemberton squash blossoms with local vegetable ratatouille and gazpacho vinaigrette, globe eggplant and roasted garlic puree were nicely done and had a balanced flavor.

I did try the spinach gnocchi. It was nothing special and somewhat bland, so making a meal of small plates was definitely the way to go.

Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper called Araxi's executive chef James Walt one of the top seven chefs shaping Canada's cuisine. One can hope he can shape it a bit more toward vegetables, especially given the produce that grows in nearby Pemberton.


Araxi is well known for its extensive wine cellar. And the cocktails aren't bad either. Cheers!

Oakland's Popular Pizzaiollo: Worth the Wait

Pizzaiollo
5008 Telegraph Ave.
Oakland, CA 94609
510.652.4888
www.pizzaiolooakland.com

I held off on going to Pizzaiollo for months. The reviews were outstanding, but the crowds of people who came to savor Charlie Hallowell's food were also spending lots of time out standing on the sidewalk waiting for tables.

A friend called at precisely 3 p.m. one day last week (they will take same-day reservations beginning at 3 p.m.), stayed on hold for 15 minutes, but scored a reservation for a time we knew we couldn't make. We took it anyway. And, after a few phone calls to update on our progress, the kind host promised we would have a table when we got there. And we did.

Hallowell is a disciple of Alice Water's, having worked at Chez Panisse before going out on his own. He lives above the restaurant and seems to sincerely see it as a mission to cook fresh foods for his community, his friends and his family-like staff.

Hallowell makes use of what's fresh and local, and the menu changes daily. You can generally count on several wood-fired pizzas, several antipasti, a few larger meat/animal dishes and a few pastas. Plenty of options are vegetarian or can easily be made vegetarian.

My wild nettles and pecorino pizza (above) had an excellent thin crust. The pecorino didn't quite hold up to the flavor of the nettles, but it was good nonetheless.

My antipasti of fried squash blossoms stuffed with cherry tomatoes, basil and cukes were fantastic. I really could have made a meal out of those ...maybe two orders, especially as friends also couldn't resist them.

The restaurant is casual. The kitchen (below) is open. Waiters wear what they want. Despite its success, there's no pretense.


Do check out the drink list - some interesting house specials. Dinner for four - with a drink each, a bottle of moderately priced wine, appetizers, pizzas and a couple of desserts to share came to something over $200.