Not only are Spain’s people beautiful and well-dressed, but they also appear to lead a very low-stress existence. Miraculously, they eat all day long and stay relatively thin. What’s more, hams hang everywhere. Our mornings, in a very Spanish fashion, began each day with a visit to the neighborhood café where we drank café con leche and a pastry or bocadillo. We savored the morning, alongside most Barcelonians, who don’t take coffee to go but instead stay to enjoy their food and drink, catching up with friends or chatting with the café’s owner, who can almost always be found right across the counter, making your food.

In the afternoon, we visited the Boqueria Market, where it seems all of Barcelona does their shopping. Typically, markets give a good indication of what the locals are cooking, in time with the seasons, and Boqueria was no exception. We found chickens and game birds with heads still in tact, rooster combs, dried salt cod, snails, wild mushrooms, olives, fresh fish and several butchers with everything from whole baby pigs to offal. Some of the best sausages and hams in the world are to be found in those stalls.

Taking in the amazing ingredients, we worked up quite a hunger. Though there are two café’s located inside the market, we had been advised to try Pinotxo and so bellied up to its bar. Pinotxo’s menu is market driven and all the food is prepared right there, in front of you. We began with two glasses of Cava and their famous warm chickpeas with golden raisins, pine nuts and chorizo. This first plate was followed by gambas, which were still moving until they hit the plancha (sauté pan) and adorned simply with olive oil and salt, warm beans with squid and mushroom croquettes.

After an afternoon nap, we felt totally refreshed and ready for the evening. Naps really change everything. Since dinner wasn’t til 9, we needed a post-nap snack and found it at Bar Fidel’s where we drank local Mortiz’s beer and ate bocadillos. Then it was off to Tapas 24, by Chef Carles Abellan, who worked under the godfather of Spanish food, Ferran Andria, for six years. At this casual and extremely busy tapas restaurant, the kitchen was open and the service was friendly, which we soon realized was par for the course in Spain.

Though the food we ate in Spain was simply prepared, the level of service we experienced made each meal feel special. Ingredients fresh from the market, cooked in the plancha or the fryer and delivered to you in the blink of an eye with just a drizzle of olive oil. No fancy reduction sauce, no fancy description on a menu. Just fresh ingredients prepared expertly.

My time in Spain has made me re-think San Francisco style cooking and my own ideas about what comprises a good meal. Is 12 hours of preparation more appreciable than 12 minutes? San Francisco knows well by now the anthem for slow, local, market-driven fare, but heralds restaurants like Commis and Manresa, whose complex techniques are impressive, but perhaps at the expense of ingredients’ natural integrity. I think of the preparation time implied by each dish on such a menu, where the food is manipulated so completely from its original components that it can hardly be considered fresh.

I’m going to experiment with these principles for freshness, simplicity and slower pace into my life and my cooking. Although Left Coast was founded on these principles, I was ripe for a refresher course. My vision for the future feels clearer now.

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

It’s project week at Gateway School, a very important event in the school’s academic curriculum. The students are cooking this week’s project in a week-long marathon of Iron Chef competitions and they invited me to participate.

I started the day with a quick plug for healthy eating and the benefits of whole foods over processed ones, to remind the kids how important it is to form healthy food habits now, while they’re young. Next, I reviewed the importance of cleanliness and sanitation in the kitchen.  We washed our hands together and made sure to cover or tie back any long hair. This second part was requested especially by the judges, who had found a long hair in one of the competition dishes two days earlier.

Before the competition began, I gave a short demo on how to make and roll out fresh pasta and discussed the differences between fresh and dried. While we worked on this, we talked about how widespread pasta is in culinary traditions. The Thai and Vietnamese have rice stick noodles, the Chinese have egg noodles, the Japanese have ramen and soba noodles and the Italians of course have, well, lots. In the Italian genre, we went over sauces and pairing briefly before the competition began.

All of this, of course, prepared the students at Gateway to tackle their secret ingredient with some culinary . As if this weren’t enough of a challange, the competition took place in the school’s bio-lab, where we were cooking on propane stoves, chopping with steak knives and using pretty low-grade cookware. In spite of this, there was palpable team spirit filling up that room between teams Spicy Hot Mamas and Jumbo Gumbo.

Each team had a chef, several prep cooks and several dishwashers. Flour was everywhere before too long. While one group asked about making ravioli’s, another worked on just getting the pasta to go through the machine. There was a basic cream sauce, tomato sauce, a butter sauce and the biggest surprise–broccoli romanesco. Especially surprising was that no one on that team had eaten or cooked it before! I made a suggestion to cook it in brown butter, which I stand by, but the browning butter let off enough smoke to set off the fire alarm and the entire school had to evacuate! It felt very nostalgic, filing out in a single file like that.

Once we were back in the kitchen, the teams fired the stoves back up and finished doing the dishes. The shrimp fettuccini was finished off with a salad of apples, caramelized pecans and served with fresh squeezed tangerine juice. The ravioli plate came out with lightly seasoned garlic bread. But the clear winner, in terms of originality and taste, was the Brown Sugar Mamas’ Broccoli Romanesco with shrimp, leeks and basil. One of my fellow judges was even interested in the recipe.

Using the Iron Chef competition turned out to be a great teaching tool. If the students hold interest, it would be great to see the kids’ creations assembled in a cookbook. These experiences at Gateway have gotten me really fired up about giving back to the community. If you’re interesting in donating something to Gateway here in San Francisco, you can follow this link. Or get involved wherever’s local to you. You won’t regret it.

Saturday, January 30th
seatings at 6:30 & 8:30pm

Sunday, January 31st

RSVP with the day, seating time, number in your party, and a phone number:
number: LWickettatCoffeeBar@gmail.com

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

Before I embarked on the Top Chef Las Vegas adventure, I gave a lot of thought to what my life would be like afterward, what I wanted to use my time in the spotlight to showcase and what I had to say to the American public while I had the chance. I wanted to make my 15-minutes-of-fame more like 20 minutes, by using it to affect positive change and therefore have a lasting impact both for me, and for other people.

As I’ve written here before, I believe in people eating a variety of tasty, healthy and nutritious food at a table united with their friends and family and the rituals of lovingly prepared food. I attribute our national nutrition epidemic whose symptoms are obesity and diabetes, to the popularity of processed foods and the decline of family mealtimes. I am as guilty as the next person, sitting down in front of the TV at the end of a long day–too tired to cook, but feeding myself regardless. I don’t know or care what I am eating, I am unaware of portion control, and I’m not really concerned with nutrition, quality or flavor. But when we sit down at a real table with other people, the meal is not only a good chance to engage with other people, but also a good chance to pay attention to what we’re eating. Is the food delicious? Am I full?

While most people rely upon supermarkets for their food, everything I need comes from one of our purveyors. Meat, vegetables, dairy and dry goods come in fresh through my front door daily. So going to a grocery store, as a chef and owner, is a rare experience and I am always fascinated. Aisle upon aisle of packaged, canned, frozen foods, and if the contents of their carts is any indication, people want all of these easy, cheap, processed foods. Meanwhile, fresh, whole foods are out of sight at the perimeter, hiding under the banner of “natural foods,” and hard to find even when you’re looking.

According to a recent study, the average American spends a total of 27 minutes preparing food a day, including clean-up. Moreover, they spend more time watching TV shows about cooking then they spend actually cooking. Apparently, we’ve become quite taken with the idea of cooking, but can’t find the time when it comes time to get up and actually do it.

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

As I was incubating all of these ideas, I was asked to participate in a collaboration between UCSF and the KIPP/Gateway school. The KIPP/Gateway school had recently started an edible garden, modeled after the Alice Water’s edible schoolyard to teach kids about the origins of their food. UCSF became involved through an initiative to encourage families to dine together. Through extensive research they found that children whose families dine together 4 or more time per week perform better in school and less likely to engage in risky behaviors, including drug use, underage drinking and sexual activity. In tandem with these ongoing efforts, they asked me to teach the kids how to cook. Vegetables, specifically.

I visited the school and had a tour of their garden before making my way to the cafeteria, where the event was to take place. The cafeteria and attached kitchen were sad spaces. Much to my surprise, and disbelief, I learned that school lunch is not cooked in the kitchen, but instead packaged and delivered daily from an outside source. The kitchen, obviously not used for cooking, gave way to a cafeteria which looked to be underused for eating too. A conversation with the students confirmed these suspicions, that the students didn’t eat in the cafeteria because they didn’t like the school lunch provided and what’s more, that if they did eat a lunch packed from home, they preferred to sit in the classroom and eat at their desks. Plenty of the students skipped lunch altogether.

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

Last Thursday with the help and aid of several of my chefs at LCC, we taught kids from 5th grade to 12th grade and their parents how to cook vegetables and incorporated 4 basic cooking techniques. We roasted carrots, braised turnips greens, sautéed zucchini and steamed green beans. And then the students LINED UP to eat their vegetables. It was quite a sight. The parents and their kids sat together as a family and as a community at the table and really enjoyed that meal. Anyone involved that evening will attest that it was a monumental experience. The parents learned how easy it was to prepare tasty, nutritious, simple foods. One mom remarked that she was amazed how easy it was to cook vegetables so nicely and that she would use those recipes from now on. And the kids seemed to echo in a chorus, this is real food I would actually eat.

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

Though we certainly can’t change the way we feed our kids in school overnight, we can try. Showing how simple it is to cook real food, getting kids to think cooking is fun and helping busy parents to find time for their kids at the dinner table is certainly a start. Little changes make a huge difference in how we cook, and these little changes trickle out through a community every time a new person comes to the table. I felt so lucky to be part of that night, and if my Top Chef “fame” brings more of these opportunities my way, it’ll be totally worth it.

Hear the interview in "Where foodies go"

If you missed my telecast last night you can listen to it at Where Foodies Go.

Topics we discussed included:

What was the process for becoming a contestant on Top Chef?
How do you think your culinary skills compared to the other contestants?
What was your experience of working with Michael Voltaggio?
What’s the scoop on the judges?
How did you feel when the judges were critical of your dishes?
What skills are needed to win Top Chef?
Do you think the show fairly represented who you are?
Knowing what you know now, would you still choose to participate on Top Chef?
What was the letdown like after the show was complete?
Has your experience on Top Chef changed how you relate to your clients?
What’s your reaction to being eliminated on a night where you weren’t cooking?
Have you gotten any interesting offers to open a restaurant after the show?
How would you describe your cooking style?
Can you recommend some interesting appetizers for a cocktail party?
What are some of your secrets for preparing a dinner party for 8?
What is your signature dish?
Who is your favorite chef, and why?
What’s the next big trend in food?
What has been the impact of the disappearance of the “family meal”?
What food initiatives for children are you working on?
How do want people to remember you?

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

By now, you’ve no doubt heard that last week was my final hoorah as a contestant on Top Chef. C’est la vie.

For the most part, I feel good about my run–I made it to the final eight and I cooked some good food. Restaurant wars, the most anticipated episode of the season, was also a unique departure as a milestone in its own right, and a tough challenge. I’m glad that I made it this far and got to participate in this tradition with such a strong team. Coming off of the win on the quick fire the blue team was confident, focused and excited to be working together.

Perhaps this over-confidence was to blame for the missteps that followed. Right off the bat, we decided to skip a dessert, and in hindsight this was a mistake. A dessert course would have likely been an easier thing for Kevin to finish and/or plate, on top of the main course he was already handling…it turns into a game of What If fairly quickly. But I volunteered to tackle Front of House, and the team rallied behind that delegation, which left Mike Isabella to the first two courses, Jennifer Carroll on the second course and Kevin to prepare my lamb main course, in addition to his own pork dish. We had no trouble procuring all the items on our shopping list under budget and besides the minor drama with Robin over our “stealing” their idea to serve Pellegrino, we were in good shape at the end of the first day. Or at least we thought we were.

I finished the prep for my dish early on the day of the challenge, and turned to my colleagues to see if they needed help. Jennifer had said she had a lot left to do, but it wasn’t til I went to help that I understood how far behind she really was. Her mussels and clams still needed cleaning, the fish cut, the consommé finished. The status of the kitchen made it even more difficult for me to get out of the kitchen and into the dining room, which was my assigned post. By the time I was changed, the servers were already waiting for me and I had scarcely time to catch their names, introduce the chefs and go through the menu before I had to just put them to work. When Tom stopped by to check in, I assured him I trusted Kevin to execute my lamb and that I would be checking plates as they left the kitchen.

But once guests were arriving, time seemed to be moving at a clip and the diners arrived just as we were finishing a tasting with the servers. Although the kitchen wasn’t ready, I had to start seating tables. I visited the first round of diners and got some helpful feedback on the plates: namely, the pork loin was over cured and too salty and the fish course had just taken too long to arrive. I relayed the information to my colleagues in the kitchen, which should be useful for an experienced chef but that night seemed to only rattle their nerves. When the judges arrived hot on the tails of our first seating, we still hadn’t ironed the kinks out. I welcomed them to the Mission and then had to run off to deal with other issues; it was at that point, a matter of triage.

Which is why I didn’t linger over any one table, including the judges. A huge mistake, of course. In retrospect, one of many. From the start, we should have elected a leader. No matter how much respect you have for one another, someone should have been in charge. Also, two courses per chef was totally unrealistic. I let Kevin have final say on my lamb, another error in judgment. And personally, I lost sight of the fact that a dining experience is made up of two significant elements: food and service. I didn’t have enough experience in the latter to overcome the shortfalls of the former, and in the end, both suffered. By the end, I didn’t want to chat with the judges over their meal, I wanted the night to be over. We all left feeling defeated and it was a pretty bad night all around.

I’m not sure I was the weakest part of that team, or that I deserved to go home. But it was sort of a matter of time for me. Top chef gave me the opportunity to work shoulder to shoulder with really talented chefs, cooking for some of the best chefs in the world. I forged friendships and had unbelievable experiences in the kitchen, which taught me a lot about myself, my style and my thoughts on food in general. I was exposed to different techniques and approaches to cooking that were entirely new to me.

So what’s next for this Top Chef ex pat? I intend to continue pouring my heart and soul into my business, Left Coast Catering and to continue working to position it as one of the Bay Area’s top catering companies. More specifically, I’m planning some private dinners at Coffee Bar here in San Francisco on November 7th and November 10th, which will feature a three course menu. I’m also looking forward to working with the kids at the KIPP school in the kitchen and the classroom, exploring where our food comes from and the best ways to cook it.

So Top Chef may be over for me, but I feel like I’m just getting started.

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

Hi there. Just wanted to stop in for a second to let you know I’m on the road this week. I realize it is quite the week. So check back Tuesday for the recap of this week’s events on the show and a full update.

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

Can anyone say disaster? I think Dana Cowin can, only she pronounces it “cat food.”

Yes, this week’s challenge didn’t go quite as I had planned: a rustic French pork rillette to pair with the French pinot noir I had chosen. For those of you who aren’t familiar with rillette, it’s a rustic French dish similar to a spread-able pâté. It’s traditionally stored in a crock covered in fat and served as a spread with toast points. My first mistake was probably attempting a dish that I’d never done with pork before. I had made several rillettes, always with rabbit, in which case the rabbit is salted overnight, braised in stock or water until tender, shredded and mixed with duck or goose fat. Turns out, there’s a slight difference in technique between rabbit and pork rillette, which is that pork is braised in fat, while rabbit is braised in liquid.

My arguably larger mistake here was attempting this lengthy technique in our limited amount of time. I skipped the salting and curing stages in the interest of brevity, and without this preparation, the meat needed more time to braise, not less. Sometimes you can, in fact, make several mistakes in the course of a disaster. I had never timed a braised dish before, as it’s not a cooking method dictated by time. Mostly braising is used for cooking tougher cuts of meat where heat, time and moisture aid in breaking down the tough connective tisuue and collagens. When it’s done, it’s done, but not a minute sooner.

I’d like to think that when made properly, a pork rillette would have been an excellent pairing for that French Pinot Noir, though of course it’s hard to say. It wasn’t my first choice of the wines we tasted, nor my second, nor my third. I’m not much of a red wine drinker, truth be told, as it more often than not gives me a headache. When I do partake, I enjoy pinot noir and I almost exclusively drink varieties from the Russian River Valley. Ask any Pinot lover and they’ll tell you that the best California Pinot grapes come from the unique blend of Goldridge and Franciscan soil, from the early morning fog, from the warm days, cool nights and afternoon sea breezes you’ll find only in the Russian River Valley, in western Sonoma County. Living in San Francisco, I would never buy a French Pinot Noir. It would be a waste of food miles for it to travel around the globe, when I could get a superior wine two hour’s drive from my house.

My friend Kevin worked for a number of years at Navarro Vineyards and I usually rely on him to help me put food and wine together. Kevin’s terrific at pairing. On the day of this challenge, I certainly wished that I’d paid more attention to Kevin’s choices over the years and asked more questions when I had the chance. With my very little experience drinking French Pinot Noir, I took my first cue in planning the dish from the region itself. I took for granted that a French wine likely pairs with French food and right off the bat, committed myself to making a rillette. There was no going back. I really didn’t have the time to second guess this initial decision again until it was done.

But I knew something had gone wrong when I began mixing the shredded pork with the duck fat. Instead of the pâté-like consistency I knew it should have, the meat was stringy–probably a result of shredding it before the braise had really finished. Despite my best attempts to add more fat, in the form of butter when there was no more duck, I couldn’t smooth it out enough before the time ran out. Now I realize, of course, there was no fixing the texture at that point anyway.

Every chef has had a day in the kitchen when things don’t come out as they’d planned. I still remember, and so does my family, the time I made blueberry muffins when I was seven and I added 1T of baking powder instead of 1t. I’m sure I’ll never live it down. But in the interest of learning from my mistakes on this show, I spent some time researching pork rillette upon my return home and gave it another go. This time, I followed the salting and curing process to the letter and then confit the pork in pork fat. This time, with experience on my side, the dish was a success.

I love that in cooking, there are always lessons to be learned. Don’t rush a salt curing or a braising, cook the pork in fat and perhaps most importantly, don’t experiment with something new while competing on Top Chef. It’s not the proper arena.

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

When Padma first announced that we were having a dinner party that night in our very own house, I was so excited. I love dinner parties. I love attending dinner parties and I love throwing dinner parties.

I realized quickly upon arrival back at the house that we were not guests at the dinner party, of course, but I was just as happy to be cooking. Especially for an all-start line up of chefs, including the likes of Tom Douglas, Nancy Silverton, Tyler Florence, Govind Armstrong and Takashi Yagihashi? I was stoked about this challenge from the start.

I felt lucky to draw Tyler Florence’s knife and to be paired with Brian. When we opened the refrigerator to find a tub full of California staples, I was entirely at ease; I felt right at home cooking in our cozy kitchen with familiar ingredients to boot.

Dinner parties marry cooking and eating so beautifully, diners and chefs are often intermingling to create a real communality in the food, which is served with equal parts ceremony and humility. A great dinner party is marked by an interesting blend of people, after all, as much as the quality of the food on the table. It often inspires good conversation, new ideas and collaboration, for this reason, as naturally as it does full bellies and satisfying groans.

This June, a small farm in Casper, CA slaughtered 50 or so of their lambs. I drove up there to pick one up and brought it back to hang for a few days in my walk in refrigerator and then broke the whole thing down with my good friend and long time Left Coast Catering chef, Paul Tang. It felt truly momentous, butchering that lamb. So I decided to host a party to celebrate, with several lamb-centric courses and a smattering of my own all-star line up: Dan Ripley of Dan Ripley Catering; Jonathan Beile and Jennifer Spiegel of Fork and Spoon Productions; Yasha and Carrie Aginski, film producers; Edie Lerman & Kevin McCullough, top California cannabis defense attorneys; Paul Tang; my right hand lady and friend, Miss Marianne Jackson; and finally but not least, the love of my life, manager, PR agent and photographer of Face Collective, Henry Dombey. We ate lamb tartar, herb rolled leg of lamb, chard ravioli with lamb sugo and roasted rack of lamb with plenty of wine. And we ate until we were so full and so happy, the laughter in the room reached a volume that made speaking difficult. That night was for me, what life is all about–community, friends and great food.

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

I launched my private dining venue, 2150, in February with this kind of dining in mind: an intimate setting where guests and cooks could interact and share a common experience. A restaurant doesn’t always allow for the sharing of moments, and in fact seems hardened fast against them–consuming the life of its chef with hard work and discouraging her socialization with friends and family, let alone diners. But in a dining room, there’s more gray area between cooking and eating and I wanted to foster that kind of hospitality. The dinner party I threw to celebrate the opening of 2150 was where Marcia Gagliardi first encouraged me to go to the casting call for Top Chef in the first place. You could by now guess that I have a real affinity for dinner parties. The course of one’s life can change over a well stocked dining table.

The night we cooked for the Macy’s Council, I believe I caught a glimpse of the more human side of our judges. They were relaxed, enjoying one another’s company, engaging in forthright conversation and appreciating the food, even some of the less successful dishes. Of course they were also taking notes for their inevitable critique, but none of the dishes on that table were so bad as to taint the mood of that crowd. You could tell because they were actually enjoying themselves.

We had our own dinner party that night after we finished cooking made of wine, cheese, salumi and conviviality. Amidst the stress of this show, it’s nice to be able to put egos aside and come together once again, as we should, in the food.