Chez Panisse - Berkeley, California

It seems, for the food enthusiast, that everywhere you turn in San Francisco Alice Waters gets a mention. Her name is almost eerily present and if you listen closely, you can hear it whispered through the cool Californian breeze everywhere from book stores, delis and farmers market. Ms Waters has most likely got signed books for sale on the counter too. A kicthen antique shop had a sign on the door reading "One of Alice Waters favourite shops". It seems the Waters seal of approval, whether official or not, is enough to draw in the crowds. I had planned to go and have lunch at Chez Panisse during my trip, but in my freewheelin' approach to holidays and travel I had neglected to make a booking. But we boarded a BART train from Montgomery and zipped along to Downtown Berkeley on the off chance of a walk in. We were surprisingly early and there was already a small queue almost an hour before they opened. We decided that rather than wait we would go and walk about some of the gargantuan University campus in Berkeley, it really is impressive.

We had no reservation but the old lady maitre'd greeted us with open arms and showed us to a table upstairs. I worried for a moment whether she would be okay to make it across the room without a zimmer-frame or walking stick but luckily she made it there without having to press her panic button and we were soon greeted by a very kind waitress who supplied the staples of water, bread and butter. It's quite dark inside Chez Panisse and considering the beautiful weather and vegetation around at first story height, all the windows have the shutters closed just that little bit too much. The age demographic seems to be the later side of 60 although the only other young person in the restaurant was a young girl of about twenty who wore socks and sandals. I said nothing but Mrs Lost in the Larder knew exactly what I had just noticed and pointed out that it was lunchtime on a Thursday which explained most of the pensioners but not socks and sandals. There's no excuse. They were pink socks too.

I took the roasted grass-fed beef bone marrow, toast with a salad of capers, parsley and celery. Fergus Henderson had just hosted a canape evening at Chez Panisse the night before and maybe this pre-empted a Chez Panisse version onto the menu, although the salad had too subtle an acidity to bite through the rich beef marrow. The marrow from my first bone was very nice but the middle was not quite as giving enough as I would have liked and the second bone of marrow was undercooked which I found to be a great shame as the taste of the more firm and undercooked, pale marrow was incredibly subtle compared with the much softer, brown-grey, roasted marrow which released a much richer, savoury taste. For my main course I had the house-made spaghetti with pesto and Riverdog sun dried tomatoes. It was superbly put together with the pesto and sun-dried tomatoes accentuated with salty peccorino shavings.

For dessert I had creamy light balls of honey ice cream with a slightly bitter tangerine sherbert and a syrupy confit of baby tangerines which was gorgeous.

I had a great house wine, the Chez Panisse Zinfandel red. It really was fantastic and before now I had not tried many Californian Zinfandel. This is a grape I plan to spend much more time on in future. I was very impressed.

When leaving Chez Panisse I was still puzzled as to why the place is so revered. Is it simply because no one else is doing what Alice Waters is? Alice Waters is said to have created and developed Californian cuisine, but what defines it to be Californian? It all seems very mediterranean to me. Don't get me wrong though, I had a great meal, in a wonderful restaurant, in a beautiful part of the world. But I would find it difficult to define the style of cooking as, "Californian Cuisine". Definitely worth the trip out from San Francisco and a welcome breath of fresh air from some of the restaurants in the city. Chez Panisse doesn't try to be anything too special, well at least I don't think it does. It's simple, seasonal, locally sourced food, cooked carefully in what looked to be a very calm, open plan kitchen. Alice Waters and Chez Panisse aren't just selling meals, they are selling a lifestyle, a whole new attitude to food for some and maybe this is why she is so cherished out here.

Red's Java House - San Francisco

We covered a lot of ground on our first full day in the city. After getting caught out in the rain the evening before and eating in a place that can only be described as a soup kitchen, we had some catching up to do. Tuesdays is one of the days the farmers market is present outside the ferry building, to be honest I felt let down by the size of it. Supposedly one of the foodie capitals of the country and this was all that could be mustered up. What didn't come anything short of fantastic was the ferry building shops. The breads from Acme Bakery look amazing and after settling on a small sourdough round I wandered just a few feet up the way and came to the Cowgirl Creamery and bought some of the stinkiest cheese I could find. Boccalone is also inside the ferry building which is the side-business of Incanto duo Chris Cosentino and Mark Pastore. Boccalone and their tasty salted pig parts are incredibly popular, so popular in fact that the queue was bent out the entrance and trailed off down the hall. After browsing the mushroom stores and the wine shops we decided to walk along to Fisherman's Wharf and see what that was all about, who knows, maybe some shellfish....

Fisherman's Wharf is a car crash. Something Disneyland has chewed up and spat out. If you like the theme park environment, Hard Rock Cafe and Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurants then you might like this place. If so then please stay there. We took a silent walk along Fisherman's Wharf where the pair of us were in shock, knew each other hated it, but carried on regardless. We were hungry and no amount of sea lions were going to take our minds off it. I'd seen some Anthony Bourdain clips on youtube a while back and remembered that on pier 30 was a little dive bar that serves cold beers, chili cheese fries and burgers. I stated I would rather eat in the soup kitchen from last night than at Bubba Gumps on Fisherman's Wharf and with my wife in tow, made our way back along the Embarcadero to the Bay Bridge where Red's Java House lies. Any extra revenue generated from the spotlight Bourdain's No Reservations show shone on Red's has almost certainly not been spent on smartening the place up. Which is good because without the character of the place, you would quickly be turned off. A chilli cheese burger and some chilli cheese fries for me, I was hungry. It was a scorching day so we ventured out back onto the terrace area where I quickly felt at ease and ordered a beer from the makeshift drinks bar out back. Red's seems to take all kinds here. There were two miserable old guys on the table next to us who reminded me distinctly of Waldorf and Stadtler from the Muppets. Some people just clocked off work, some people probably never been to work, a mexican family with their young boy. One demographic that was nowhere to be seen to my great pleasure, was the suits, no tall skinny latte drinkers here. Our burgers came and I suddenly realised how much I'd ordered. There may be burger connoisseurs who have not rated this place particularly well, but for someone from the UK, where good burgers are few and far between, the burger lasted all of two minutes. Red's doesn't try to be anything, it's simple, booze and some food on the side. I relaxed, properly this time, like I haven't done in ages. The sure sign of a place worth going. As I lay back in the plastic chair, felt the breeze on my neck and sipped my beer I felt a nudge in my side. It was the wife, "That little bird is eating up the sick from under that table," she whispered. "Well maybe he's hungry too."

Othniel Oyster Farm

Oysters have long been considered a rich mans food, a luxury. But some time ago oysters were a cheap way to bulk up casseroles and stews when meat was not so abundant or affordable. There are in fact many traditional recipes for Lancashire hotpot that call for oysters to be included. It seems the cheaper cuts, offal and seafood that were once seen as paupers food have come full circle and are now the mainstays on high-end restaurant menus around the world. With higher demand and an increasing popularity, I was surprised to find out that there is an exceptional oyster farm on our doorstep here in Poole. The Othniel Oyster farm has been established since 1985 and now produces around 400 tons of organic rock oysters a year. I’ve long had a penchant for oysters and to hear that there was a farm just a few minutes drive from my house, I had to go and try some. Gary is a happy guy who’s passionate about his farm and is more than prepared to take the time explaining the methods and engineering that he has developed to make the Othniel Oyster farm what it is today. I met Gary and his team on Poole Quay and boarded the barge along with two pallets of oyster seeds. I was handed my lifejacket and leant against the cab whilst we pootled across the shipping channel and over to the farm. After a short journey we moored up at the mouth of the old Sandbanks chain ferry that Gary has bought, converted and anchored just off of Brownsea Island that’s now converted into a floating warehouse, processing and seeding unit. Eight years ago, the time came for the Sandbanks chain ferry to be replaced. The Othniel Oyster farm was operating from several rafts that featured internal cages to seed the oysters. Obviously this entailed a lot of logistical problems between rafts and also man-power. During the crossover period Gary managed to buy the old chain ferry and had it converted into what is essentially a warehouse unit that floats. The ferry, now painted blue, has many seed cages fixed to the outside, increasing the speed in which they can bring oysters up to a size that the crabs and fish can’t break into. Gary has also acquired a forklift truck that obviously saves a lot of time and man-power when getting the sacks and pallets of oysters ready for shipment. This seems to be the nerve centre of the operation and with the added mystery that not many people know this place exists, it left me feeling a little like James Bond discovering a secret hideaway, sadly without a Bond Babe in sight. We have such rich waters here in Dorset and mixed with the position of the farm Othniel’s oysters grow much faster and consistently than in other regions. Due to the nutrients and food in the water, from a thumbnail sized seed to a respectable sized oyster takes just eighteen months. Gary produces around five million oysters a year and has recently been awarded organic status from the Soil Association due to the delicate and ethical way in which they farm and harvest.

The method of harvesting oysters varies from site to site and subsequently Gary has engineered a unique process that he has also replicated for other farmers on similar sites in Canada. The grounds dry out very rarely on the Othniel Farm and so a conventional tractor based harvesting process can’t be used. Gary has, over time, developed a unique conveyor harvester that blows the shellfish out of the substrate using water jets. They are then gently transported into the boat via a stainless steel mesh belt where the correct sized oysters are picked whilst the smaller mollusks not yet fully grown continue along the belt and fall back into the water. Standing in Gary’s converted chain ferry, anchored just off Brownsea island, I endeavoured to find out where most of these oysters end up. A large proportion of the oysters wind up in Hong Kong and China and amongst vast customers across the UK. I am told Mark Hix uses these oysters in his restaurants and was recently out on the barge to check out the operation. Hix has a restaurant in Lyme Regis and obviously has many suppliers available. His choosing to use these oysters, really does speak volumes of their quality. Just before we were about to head back to Poole Quay, Gary called me over the conveyorbelt, shucked a palm-sized oyster open, cut the anchoring muscle and flipped it over in its own juice for me to taste. I had, after a long day, finally managed to taste what I had come out here for and it was easy to see why Mr Hix, who has cooked at the Oscars ceremony in Hollywood, buys Oysters from our very own Poole Harbour.
Some of you will want to take advantage of yet another great producer here in Dorset. If you are interested in getting hold of some of these locally farmed mollusks, get in touch with Pete Miles.

Pete Miles, who distributes these oysters is also a keen and multi tasking foodie to boot. Pete not only owns and operates Storm restaurant in Poole but also fishes prawns, crabs and lobsters amongst other fish and seafood which he supplies to his restaurant. He is a keen horticulturist and his own crops of veg can be found on his menu along with his county fair winning honey produced from the bees he keeps. Some people just don’t let time get in their way. Pete is a thoroughly nice bloke and should you have any enquiries for Oysters, contact him at Dorset Oysters.
01202 666057 or visit www.dorsetoysters.com.