Please join me for my  featured 3-course dinner at Coffee Bar Cafe in Potrero Hill on Saturday, March 19. Three courses is just $35, with wine pairings by Coffee Bar for an extra $20. There are two seatings to choose from – either at 6:30 or 8:30. To make a reservation email the number of people in your party, the time you would like to dine, and your phone number to: henry@leftcoastcatering.com

Below is the invitation with the details and the menu – I hope to see you there!

And here are some notes on the menu:

FIRST COURSE: Nothing screams, ‘Spring‘ to me like Green Garlic soup. I’m going to finish this dish with herb croutons and a drizzle of Mani Olive Oil, which I believe is one of the greatest oils on the planet. Mani Olive Oil is made from the Koreneikoi variety of olive that are grown from small producers on the Mani peninsula in Southern Greece. I was introduced to this oil on Top Chef by Eli when we were cooking for Joel Robuchon. He pulled it from a box of ‘secret ingredients‘ and we used it as a finishing element for our dish – poached lobster, cauliflower puree, and sauce American. Lets just say that Chef Robuchon went wild.

SECOND COURSE option 1: This will be my interpretation of the traditional Coq au Vin. We use Mary’s Free Range Chicken from Pittman Family Farms in the San Joaquin Valley. They are air chilled, which saves 30,000 gallons of chlorinated water every day, and produces a better tasting chicken. Without the added water they produce a crispier skin.

SECOND COURSE option 2: Soft Egg, pipperade, and polenta – I learned to make pipperade when I was the Sous-Chef at Moose’s  in 1992.  After busy nights of service, feeding 250-300 hungry folks, my favorite meal was a warm bowl of polenta topped with pipperade and parmesan cheese. A real comforting dish and  one I still crave. With  the welcomed  addition of the soft boiled egg, I am sure you will be licking the bowl to get every last morsel of flavor.

THIRD COURSE: Chocolate pretzel tart – I made recently  as part of a beer dinner I hosted in collaboration with Marin brewing company for beer week. It was a crowd favorite and deserves another showing.

xx,

LW

Dear Left Coast,

Rich’s 40th party is one of our highlights of the year thanks to your thoughtfulness, care, and awesome food.  We are truly grateful for the experience and it’s a party that isstill talked about among our friends.  Thanks again to you and your staff.

Tricia, Rich and Gracie

Below is the menu from their dinner:

LEFT COAST REMEMBERS…
Erin may well have been the most mellow and decisive bride we have ever
worked with. She knew what she wanted and that made working
with her a breeze. Her color scheme was blue, red, white, and grey
without being patriotic. The linens were Wedgewood blue with white
napkins topped with simple white vases and red dahlias. The look was
stunning. Her friends and family were a delight to serve, and they loved the
entire evening right down to the fried chicken bites!

Sandwiches from Left Coast Catering on Vimeo.

The history of a sandwich by LEFT COAST CATERING. We don’t normally try to make people hungry – our goal is to feed hungry people – but if this makes you want a sandwich then give us a call: 415-934-0600 or email us at marianne@leftcoastcatering.com. WE DELIVER!

Thanks to Nick Gage for his incredible music.

To see more images click here

Here’s their menu:

© 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.

© 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.