This past weekend on Treasure Island was the annual Make A Wish fundraiser dinner. It’s a wonderful organization that helps kids who have cancer or other life threatening illnesses fulfill their dreams. Roland Passot, owner of La Folie Restaurant, is on the Make a Wish Advisory Council. When Roland calls to ask chefs to participate in this special night we all quickly say yes. We volunteer our time and food as we want to help Make A Wish raise as much money as possible. Plus any event with Roland is worth attending.

There are two parts of the evening you can participate in. The first option is a walk around tasting of wines and hors d’oeuvres. There were at least 15 chefs and 15 wineries handing out delicious nibbles and wines to sip.  Both Farallon and Waterbar were part of the walk around hors d’oeuvres. Fred, the sous chef at Farallon, opened 1000 Beausoleil oysters and served them with traditional mignonette. Parke Ulrich, the chef at Waterbar, served Smoked Sturgeon Tea Sandwiches on Brioche with Caviar and Watercress. Here’s a picture of Parke’s sandwiches:

For the dinner the dining room was divided into 2 sections of 200 people each. There were 4 chefs for each side. Here’s the menu from “my side” of the dining room.

1^st Course

Chef Roland Passot, La Folie Restaurant,

Dungeness Crab Salad-Cauliflower Panna Cotta, Curry Tuile, Curried Crab Vinaigrette

2^nd Course

Chef Staffan Terje, Perbacco

Roasted Loin of Monkfish-Corona Bean and Black Chanterelle Stew, Green Garlic Brodetto

3^rd Course

Chef Dominique Crenn, Luce Wine Restaurant

Beef Tenderloin “confit”, beef tongue, Bulgur” tabbouleh” , Buckwheat and pickled kumquat

4^th Course

Chef Emily Luchetti

Almond Financier-Apple Marmalade, Crème Fraiche Chantilly

Heres’ a picture of my dessert plating in process. On the right is Lauren, the pastry chef at Waterbar.

We were able to line all 200 plates out at once. (Actually 250 as you always have to prepare a few extra for the wait staff and culinary student volunteers.) Here’s the finished product ready to go.

These events are a lot of fun not just because we are helping a great cause but we get to hang out with other chefs, see their work and have a god time. It is a good way to reconnect and to meet chefs you only know thorough food.

Oliver, the Make A Wish Honoree, is a student at the CIA on the Hyde Park campus. He helped us plate all the courses. His “wish” was to meet Thomas Keller and hang out with him at The French Laundry for a day. Make a Wish (and Thomas of course) made his dream come true. He is a serious enthusiastic young man who will make a great chef. Check out the local Make a Wish Chapter. Hopefully I will see you at the event next year. Mark your calendars- it will be on February 5, 2011.

The Original Stars Recipe Box

When I arrived in San Francisco in the mid 1980’s with cooking school and a few years of restaurant experience behind me, I was electrified by the food revolution taking place in the Bay Area.

Stars Restaurant opened in 1984 and I was part of the original team. We knew we were doing something different but we did not fully appreciate how Stars and other restaurants at that time would change the way Americans looked at food and what they ate. We were like Apple computer in Steve Jobs’ garage. We permanently changed American food culture right here in Northern California.

Working at Stars from 1984-1995 was a culinary wild ride. Jeremiah Tower’s was the creator and driving force behind the restaurant. His creativity and palate were brilliant. I have never met anyone like him since. The combination of JT, Mark Franz, and my co-chefs who have gone on to locally establish themselves in their own right (Bruce Hill, Loretta Keller, Wendy Brucker, and Colleen McGlynn among others) made the restaurant a culinary think tank.

For dessert I was making Summer Pudding, Stareos, Gingerbread with Apples and Cider Sabayon. Today these desserts seem common place and are now classics. Back then they were cutting edge.

Stars had one of the first open kitchens in the city. Not only could the customer see into the kitchen but the cooks could see into the dining room reinforcing the roles on each side. For the first time kitchen activity became part of the dining experience. One of the best things about Stars was how it made everyone equal. There would be a group of guys in baseball caps and jeans at the bar after a ball game eating pizza and drinking beers. In a corner table would be a couple formally dressed sipping champagne and having a few oysters. People would come in for dinner, leave their cars with the valet, go to the symphony or opera and come back afterwards for dessert. No one felt out of place. The excitement over the food and the wine was the common denominator.

Bay Area customers are some of the best in the country. Without an enthusiastic audience it wouldn’t be as much fun to bake.  In San Francisco, food has been always seen as a pleasure not just as a source of fuel. In San Francisco during the Gold Rush, there was a house of prostitution on every corner. The way the businesses distinguished themselves was through the “free lunch” they would offer customers. Every house had girls, but the ones that distinguished themselves were the ones with the best food.

The suppliers back then were eccentric. I remember Rocky the berry man. He would show up on Monday after promising to be there on the previous Friday, so hung over you knew he had just crawled out from under some rock. We would be annoyed he was late but his blackberries and raspberries were so incredible we would take as many cases as he would let us have. It was a dysfunctional relationship but we didn’t care. We were as addicted as he was.

On one level California Cuisine with its eat local and let the food speak for itself mantras is simplistic and straightforward. Our food is not hiding behind sauces and garnishes. But when you look deeper you see the complexity of the relationships between the ingredients and the chef and the underlying spirit of California. It is this relationship that makes cooking in CA so dynamic and exciting.

Stars Restaurant wasn’t that long ago so there are many people in the city who were a part of that experience either as a customer or an employee. There are many young people and newcomers to the area who came to the city after it closed. I wish they all could have seen it. It was a magical place.

In retrospect I am fortunate I moved to San Francisco when I did. It was fundamental to who I would become as a chef. The simultaneous timing of my arrival in California and the growth of California cuisine couldn’t have been planned. It was plain luck. And I thank the stars for that.