Trev's Bistro

Restaurants: Spago, Beverly Hills

This being Los Angeles, the story must be enthralling in a grand, cinematic mystique sort of way, full of glamour, plot twists, and complete re-models externally and internally.

No, it’s not a Raymond Chandler era, Los Angeles story. For that, head up north to Hollywood Boulevard for a definitive martini at Musso and Frank’s, complete with a chilled martini-filled sidecar and an atmospheric, Philip Marlowe sidecar too. For the more modern L.A. Story, catch the Steve Martin film, or even 2009’s “I Love You, Man,” full of today’s classic L.A. scenery and clichés.

No, this Hollywood story really takes place in Beverly Hills, at the luxurious intersection of Canon and Wilshire, where presently Santa and his reindeer are flying over the passing-by traffic of Range Rovers with tinted windows, Mercedes sedans, and Lotus convertibles.

There may be no more recognizable name in Los Angeles’ dining history than Wolfgang Puck, and the same can be said for his flagship restaurant Spago being the most recognizable restaurant name. You could even present a very convincing case that the two might be the most recognizable in the country.Continue reading “Restaurants: Spago, Beverly Hills”

Wine of the Week: 2009 Viña Leyda, Las Brisas Vineyards, Pinot Noir, Leyda Valley, Chile

Thanksgiving might be over, but you might still need some more Pinot Noir for all of those turkey leftovers.

But, what really does the always flexible, light red grape not go with? A lot more than turkey that’s for sure.

Nowadays, Oregon’s Willamette Valley, the Sonoma Coast, and Santa Barbara County grab the headlines for Pinot Noir in the New World, with their cooler, moist climates yielding grapes that produce elegant, well-rounded, smooth, and fruity Pinot Noirs that can make anybody fall in love with wine. Yes, as is obligatory when referring to Pinot Noir, the varietal can make you infatuated by wine like the characters in Sideways.

What about if you flip Oregon to the Southern Hemisphere and grow Pinot Noir in Chile? I visited Chile two years ago for wine tasting in the Colchagua Valley, only to be welcomed by a procession of exceptional Carmenère, Cabernet Sauvignon, Bordeaux-style blends, and Chardonnay from grapes in the coastal Casablanca Valley. Not once did I sample Pinot Noir.Continue reading “Wine of the Week: 2009 Viña Leyda, Las Brisas Vineyards, Pinot Noir, Leyda Valley, Chile”

Happy Thanksgiving From Trev’s Bistro!

The big day is just hours away and for many of us the dinner prep work has already begun in full force…yet somehow we almost always manage to fall behind on Thursday morning and barely get everything ready in time for dinner.

Just remember, there is a reason you probably have never seen turkey tartare on a menu before. Then again, there is always a time maybe to try something new? Not necessarily in this case.

18835_1204819435061_6560785_n — The Relish Tray

By now you’ve spent weeks reading through every cooking and food related publication’s blockbuster “Super Bowl of Food” Thanksgiving issues, probably using a maximum of two of their recipes total. Thanksgiving is really about tradition. Once you have found a consistent turkey and pumpkin pie recipe, you stick to it.

Each year we stick to the same recipes that have now become our tradition, while I tinker with one or two aspects of the meal to add some fresh appeal. Sometimes it’s a rousing success, like an apple cider based gravy or a bourbon chocolate pecan pie, or the umami rich addition of shiitake mushrooms to the stuffing. Other times, well, the recipes won’t become part of the tradition, including a real pumpkin and apple cobbler that was more a bland side dish than a proper meal-ending dessert or a desert dry cornbread recipe that may have passed for acceptable in the 1800’s.Continue reading “Happy Thanksgiving From Trev’s Bistro!”

Cocktail of the Week: The “Running Leap” from The Spare Room, Hollywood

On this Thanksgiving Eve, Autumn is very much on the mind of everyone. Well, maybe not as much if you’re in Los Angeles where it still feels like late summer.

The days of pumpkin this, apple that are soon fading into snowy winter days, so let’s celebrate a strike of an Autumnal cocktail from The Spare Room, one of two exceptional cocktail bars inside the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel (the other being the Library Bar just off the lobby where the focus is on produce-centric, omakase ordered cocktails).

The Spare Room indeed has two lanes for your bowling and drinking needs. I didn’t drop the $100 for a lane to see if a cocktail might make my bowling shots go straighter, as they usually curve quickly to the gutter. It’s a hidden speakeasy, except not underground, and about fifty times the size of one.

The year-old Spare Room’s cocktail menu is divided into seasonal cocktails (think an Old-Fashioned with cranberry cordial) and revamped classics (the Penicillin becomes the “Amoxycillin” with Amaro added).

Using Bonded Bourbon as the base, the “Running Leap” is an absolute stand-out. Served in an antique tumbler with three chiseled rocks that never melt away to dilute the drink, the usually ho-hum pairing of apple cider and bourbon gets a new life here courtesy of a house-made rosemary liqueur. Maple syrup adds some body and sweetness, then a spritz of lemon helps calm the rosemary’s edge. It’s all shaken up and presented on a paper maple leaf, with a garnish of apple chips.Continue reading “Cocktail of the Week: The “Running Leap” from The Spare Room, Hollywood”

Bites of The First Half of November

It’s been a few weeks since we savored some of the most special dishes enjoyed each week. Here are some of the bites that stop you in your tracks and make you want to order another round, all based in the San Francisco Bay Area this time around.

Next week we’ll get ready for Thanksgiving, the “Super Bowl” for the food world. Also, we’ll have new reports from Los Angeles and begin the switch to the holiday season, where everything pumpkin becomes everything peppermint.

Beauty’s Bagels, Oakland: Sesame Wood-Fired Bagel with Lox, Salted Cucumber, Capers, Red Onion, Arugula, and Oven-Roasted Tomato Cream Cheese

This new, cute bagel purveyor and much more café in a still edgy part of Oakland boasts an impressive wood-fired oven for their Montréal style bagels, à la St. Viateur and Fairmount (Fairmount is my pick). The smoky nature of the bagel is enhanced when served with just sesame seeds, a perfect contrast the velvet soft ribbons of superb lox. Go for the oven roasted tomato cream cheese for the perfect breakfast and make sure to go for the whole vegetable topping package.Continue reading “Bites of The First Half of November”

Beer of the Week: Brooklyn Brewery-Schneider Brewery, Hopfen-Weisse

The craft beer world loves its collaborations much like winemakers enjoy creating blends and mixologists take great pleasure in making a new view on a classic cocktail.

Collaboration beers are often the trophy beers for brewery, packing more punch, more hops, more herbs, more…something. They often aren’t collaborating together to make the finest Czech-style lager. You hear all the time about gypsy brewers traveling the world, crafting the epic likes of tequila barrel aged stouts and persimmon infused bitter ales.

13_image_hopfen-weisse_large — Courtesy: http://brooklynbrewery.com/brooklyn-beers/big-bottles/brooklyner-schneider-hopfen-weisse

Enter Garrett Oliver, Brooklyn Brewery’s brewmaster and best known currently as the brewer of the White House’s Honey Ale, and his good friend from across the pond Hans-Peter Drexler, brewmaster at the 400 year old Schneider Brewery in Kelheim, Germany.

You have cultural exchanges all the time between the U.S. and Europe. But, to have an American brewer take over a legendary Germany brewery and vice versa? This can’t be.

And yet, it did happen, producing a majestic weissbock as the result. Both brewmasters brewed their version of a weissbock at the other’s brewery, using their own yeast to express their own brewery style, but local hops to demonstrate the terroir where the beer is being brewed. Both beers have the best of the Old World and the New World.Continue reading “Beer of the Week: Brooklyn Brewery-Schneider Brewery, Hopfen-Weisse”

Wine of the Week: Domaine Matthias Roblin, 2010 Sancerre Origin, Loire Valley

Ah Sancerre. Just the name evokes plush, restrained harmony in the bottle where dominant herb notes mingle effortlessly with some spice and some fruit. These are elegant wines without being forceful. This is your best friend who you can just be yourself with and almost always rely on for a good laugh and a smile. With a salmon dish or an appetizer of chevre on crostini, why look anywhere else than Sancerre as the perfect companion?

The 2010 vintage called “Origin” from the young, exciting Loire Valley winemaker Matthias Roblin and his brother Emile, the fourth generation of Roblins making wine in Sancerre, exemplifies the grassy-kiwi balance Sancerre can be so good at achieving. There isn’t a drop of oak in sight. There’s none of that stinging acidity that can plague some Sauvignon Blanc. There’s also none of that pale, weak structure that has been a hallmark recently of underachieving Sancerre. Continue reading “Wine of the Week: Domaine Matthias Roblin, 2010 Sancerre Origin, Loire Valley”

Thanksgiving Projects: Pumpkin Rosemary Bread

There is a reason we call these “projects.” They are experiments and not every time do you produce a resounding success like pumpkin caramel whoopie pies.

During my time living in and writing about the Los Angeles food scene, every Autumn I would be as excited for Thanksgiving as I would be for the annual trip I would take to the Monastery of the Angels in the Hollywood Hills for their beloved pumpkin bread.

The bread achieved that perfect balance of clove and cinnamon spices, where savory meets slightly sweet. It could be at home alone as dessert or alone in the bread basket during dinner.

Visions of this pumpkin bread in my head got me thinking about potential savory pumpkin bread candidates to join the usual olive bread on our Thanksgiving table this year. Unfortunately the project had its flaws, most likely keeping it away from the table next Thursday.Continue reading “Thanksgiving Projects: Pumpkin Rosemary Bread”

Restaurants: SPQR, San Francisco

You know a restaurant’s importance in the common vernacular of a city when the initials which make up the restaurant’s name are the medium for learning the abbreviation of one of history’s most important and powerful empires.

I remember visiting a friend from San Francisco studying in Rome a few years ago. With no knowledge of what “SPQR” stood for in Caesar’s day, he noticed the “SPQR” written at the base of the Julius Caesar statue overlooking the Forum’s ruins, and mentioned how those are the same letters as that restaurant in San Francisco owned by A16 (we had dined at A16 right before he departed for Rome).

Prior to my most recent visit to SPQR, the Pacific Heights, San Francisco, modern Italian restaurant, a fellow diner thought that the “Q” was a “U”, and the restaurant is named “Spur.” No, Spur is a gastropub in Seattle.

SPQR is not only one of the most rollicking dining adventures you will have today in the city of many more than seven hills, but indeed, as what inspired the name of the restaurant, it also stands for “The Senate and People of Rome.”

Before shades of Russell Crowe in Gladiator gear and Kirk Douglas as Spartacus frame your opinion of this restaurant, understand that really the SPQR here could mean Sterling Pastas Quietly Re-Discovered.

Continue reading “Restaurants: SPQR, San Francisco”

Monday’s Neighborhood: Help Restore Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York

This week’s neighborhood of the week exemplifies the meaning of a neighborhood– where strangers come together to help one another in tines of trouble. Brooklyn is full of many impressive restaurant and bar-rich neighborhoods, many of which have been greatly affected by Hurricane Sandy, along with so many other neighborhoods of New York City and the East Coast.

From the café and bar Fort Defiance to the production kitchen for the acclaimed Montréal style deli and bakery Mile High Kitchen, nearly every restaurant, bar, store, and café has been affected by storm damage. In many cases, the businesses have been shut down altogether. The area still, two weeks later, is without power.

Right along the East River by the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, just west of Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, and south of the tip of Lower Manhattan, Red Hook was in a particularly vulnerable spot for the surging surf from the storm.

Red Hook isn’t backing down in the face of the storm damage. Grubstreet estimates that most businesses need at least $50,000 in recovery costs and almost none of the businesses are covered by insurance. The small business owners have come together to meet this challenge by creating the fundraising group, Restore Red Hook. Continue reading “Monday’s Neighborhood: Help Restore Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York”