Reserve today by emailing lwickettatcoffeebar@gmail.com with the number of people in your party and the time you would like to join us.

This is what it looks like when we cater a wedding!

Left Coast Wandering Supper Club Flyer

Laurine Wickett is returning to Coffee Bar Cafe in Potrero Hill on Saturday, May 22nd for the 4th volume of her Left Coast Wandering Supper Club. She is cooking a prix fixe, 3 course meal for $35 and Coffee Bar has chosen a wine pairing option for $55. Seatings are at 6:30pm and 8:30pm. This is a great way to taste Laurine’s sexy fresh food in a beautiful chic atmosphere.

To make a reservation email your seating time preference and party number to lwickettatcoffeebar@gmail.com

This will sell-out so make your reservation today.

© 2010 Melissa Nicastro Photography

Last Saturday we celebrated our first wedding of the season and with it, I find myself thinking about this whole business of getting married.

As one of the most intimate events, a wedding gives us a rare opportunity to become involved with a couple in planning what is often the most important celebration of their lifetime. A couple’s wedding is a celebration of their love and their union with friends and family by their side. Weddings are major events in most people’s lifetimes and they have to be memorable. Over two million people in the United States get married each year, and while weddings comprise a unique part of our business, they are hardly unique occasions.

As a part of the industry dedicated to weddings, we are associated by default with all the magazines, websites, and conventions devoted to overwhelming the couple with every detail of planning their nuptials. We often meet couples who are frightened, confused and generally fatigued with the process, before they’ve even met us.

We have the advantage of planning weddings, as well as many other kinds of events, and this perspective (we like to think) makes Left Coast a sort of antidote to wedding planning madness. It makes us more flexible and more enthusiastic about each event on its own. Ultimately, it’s just a party. And with an experienced, creative caterer, it can be a painless process with incredible results. In the end, we want you AND your guests to be happy.

What makes a great wedding? It really comes down to three things: great food, close friends and a fun party. It doesn’t have to be pretentious or overthought, it doesn’t have to be fancy. A great wedding can happen in the middle of the woods, at a private home, on the beach or the top of a mountain. There can be table settings, or not. Fancy linen or not. A great wedding can be as easily a cocktail party as a banquet. Whatever the plan, the bride and groom should be able to relax and enjoy their day.

The wedding last weekend took place in a rental house in San Francisco. The bride & groom threw an informal barbecue the night before the wedding for friends and family. Left Coast provided a chef to help with grilling and sent over some dolled up mac and cheese to add to their spread.

The next day we came in and transformed the space for the ceremony and dinner. The couple held a simple, beautiful ceremony outdoors and the guests came inside for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. To start, we made grilled pork and pineapple skewers with a Vietnamese caramel sauce, seared scallops with meyer lemon relish, edamame puree on taro chips and Vietnamese spring rolls with chili sauce. At dinner, the guests sat down to a salad of mixed greens, shaved spring vegetables and warm goat cheese followed by seared Artic char with lemon aioli, pea shoots and lobster broth with leeks, fennel and english peas; porcini ravioli with white wine cream sauce, english peas and fried leeks; or grilled flat iron steak, red wine mushroom sauce, green garlic-spinach bread pudding and sautéed spring vegetables.

The evening followed with more drinking, dancing and tower of cupcakes. When we left, the party was still in full swing and we were invited to stay and join them. The following day I received a note from the bride, I wanted to express my heartfelt gratitude for your wonderful food and flawless execution.  Your staff was super friendly and the timing of everything was perfect.  As a result, we received numerous compliments about our fun party (with lots of kudos on the food!) and didn’t say goodbye to our last guest until 4am!

Their friends and family will remember that party for years to come. My advice to those starting this process–before you start, spend some time thinking about the best party you ever attended. Then, think about recreating that experience to make it your own. If you’re simple, make it simple. If you’re into the outdoors, have your wedding outside and bring natural elements to the table. If you’re creative, be creative. We helped plan a wedding for a very fun artsy couple and had our waiters dress like they were in the French Rivera. This summer, we’re planning something in the middle of the woods that so far includes a bluegrass band and bottles of whiskey on each table. The day’s space, look and feel should reflect you both, what you like and who you are as a couple.  Make it genuine and fun. And we’ll fret over the details for you.

Left Coast Wandering Supper Club Flyer

Laurine Wickett is returning to Coffee Bar Cafe in Potrero Hill on Saturday, April 17 for the 3rd volume of her Left Coast Wandering Supper Club. She is cooking a prix fixe, 3 course meal for $35 and Coffee Bar has chosen a wine pairing option for $55. Seatings are at 6:30pm and 8:30pm. This is a great way to taste Laurine’s sexy fresh food in a beautiful chic atmosphere.

To make a reservation email your seating time preference and party number to lwickettatcoffeebar@gmail.com

This will sell-out so make your reservation today.

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?