One of the best things about visiting friends and family is… well, eating of course. Our recent holiday trip to Washington D. C. and Northern Virginia was no exception. Aside from a delightful lunch at the very chic Spanish style tapas place, Estadio, we were happily taken to an amazing seafood shop, literally floating off a pier in Washington: Main Avenue Fish Market.

Sea...

Main Avenue Fish Market, Washington, D. C.

Hegui had agreed to prepare paella with lobster for our Christmas Eve meal at his niece’s place. Wes and Juliana knew exactly where to go for the freshest fish. Plus Wes wanted live oysters as part of the holiday feast. So on our first day in the Nation’s Capital, jet-lag and all, we drove across the Potomac by the Pentagon (Wes and Juliana live in Virginia) to Main Avenue, under the Freeway.

Taylor Seafood and the Freeway overpass

the crew in front of Pruitt's Seafood. See the Freeway overpass?

crowds of seafood shoppers throng the pier

Wikipedia says that this popular local seafood market, all on barges, is the oldest of its kind in the entire U.S. It used to be housed in an actual building, but that was razed in the 1960’s as part of urban renewal. The vendors protested and through some legal wrangling, were able to move the market to the barges. There are numerous “shops” floating around the pier. I was particularly drawn to Captain White’s Seafood City probably because I thought their signage was the most visually stimulating.

Captain White’s Seafood City

busy at work cleaning crab

frisky blue crabs

conchs and oysters

numerous kinds of fish

Everyone seemed to have tons of blue crab on sale. I love that and daresay prefer it over Dungeness, the common variety available in San Francisco, though perhaps in the spirit of the season, I should write, “They’re just different.” There were lots of fish of various shapes and sizes, shrimp, unusual shellfish like live conch, and of course oysters by the bushel. Wes bought four dozen. Hegui got a four or five pound lobster plus clams and other things for the paella. We took a bunch of pics and trotted home for a nap then some holiday revelry.

Wes and Juliana

a happy holiday shopper heading for home

Now we're ready to go home

our holiday lobster paella

The lobster paella was a huge success! And I was amazed about the oyster shuck experience. Really they’re not hard to open—at least in theory. All you must do is hold the oyster firmly in one hand (with a thick glove of course, these babies are slippery) and using the pointy shucking tool, wedge it into the area where the shells hinge, then slowly and very firmly twist until the joint pops. That’s it. I think it takes practice, as I tired out after only a few. But Wes is a champ! He shucked two or three dozen right there and we had the rest the following afternoon at my parents for Christmas dinner. He even taught my sixteen year old nephew, Matt, the art.

Wes demonstrating his oyster shucking magic

this is the easy way to shuck an oyster

here I am trying to shuck some oyster

welcome to Mi Pueblo Food Center

And I am sure glad that we did!

This place is enormous. It really is a “food center” and not just a store. Aside from the aisles and aisles of groceries, they’ve a huge working kitchen which serves a thriving open restaurant; a bakery that makes a wide range of cakes, cookies, tropical fruit-filled confections as well as tortillas that you can sample warm from the grill. I’ve seen staff behind small portable counters shucking oysters and trimming thorns off nopales (edible cactus). Once we went and they had tequila vendors hawking their wares.

bustling Mi Pueblo restaurant

rows and rows of Mi Pueblo dry goods

Mi Pueblo seafood section

I really like the bright colors and the cheery mood I always feel while perusing the produce and guava-filled sweets. Most times I’ll get some pastry or other to munch on between samples while I fill my shopping cart. On our last visit, part of the parking lot had been blocked off for a children’s birthday party. Inside festive brassy Mexican music filled the air with its happy sound.

beautiful serrano chiles

brown sugar cones

mountains of red cactus fruit are not something that I see everywhere

white and yellow onions

papaya

Many of the items for sale, as you might expect, focus on Mexican and Central American cuisine, which I adore. Mi Pueblo has an especially exciting selection of mild white cheeses, which taste great with jam on crusty bread at breakfast. I’m partial to the Los Altos Queso Fresco. You can easily get all the staples here: rice, beans, various fresh and dried chiles, tomatillos, tomatoes, tortillas and crispy corn chips, homemade salsas, cheeses, you name it.

child's party in front of Mi Pueblo

fresh garbanzo beans

Mi Pueblo roma tomatoes

pineapple

chilled yogurt drinks

poblanos and avocados at Mi Pueblo

Turns out that this is just one of 19 stores in the Bay Area. Their newest just opened in Newark, CA and they’re developing one now in Gilroy. So if you haven’t seen Mi Pueblo already, you will, somewhere soon. When you do, go there, and go often.

some Mi Pueblo house-made baked goods

tostadas

candles

varous cheeses: see the Los Altos Queso Fresco in the middle?

various beans

I love K & L Wine Merchants so well that it is difficult for me to adequately describe it, let alone be rational or objective. Really, they’re the wine merchants with whom I compare all the others, often to the competitors’ disadvantage.

welcome to K & L Wine Merchants, San Francisco

Located in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco, they’ve also got shops in Redwood City and in Hollywood. In my opinion, they are the finest purveyor of wine in the City for a number of reasons. First, they’ve got a huge selection. I’ve read that K & L is the largest importer of Bordeaux on the West Coast, for example. But they also shine in other French regions, like our favorite, the Rhône, in Italy, California and other parts of the New World. Sure, sure, they don’t have everything (I’ve often wished for a bigger variety of Terodelgo or more dry Portuguese, for instance) but they sure have a lot.

The wines run the gamut between bargain basement to ultra-exclusive, with everything in between. I have fun reading the latest issue of Wine Spectator then searching the K & L web site for wines that sound appealing, and often, the store has them.

glittering K & L interior from the Fourth Street entrance

could this be wine-retail paradise?

K & L offers all the “regular stuff” that you expect from a wine shop: good customer service, pre-arrival sales, discounts, wine tasting and special events. Many of these feature Bordeaux and Champagne this time of the year but recently we enjoyed a really fun Rhône tasting a few Saturdays ago.

I prefer the San Francisco location over the Redwood City one. It is closer to me (I can walk there at lunch from work). Also, physically, it looks more attractive, with tall ceilings in an airy well-lit space. The RC spot seems closed in by comparison. I haven’t yet gone to the Hollywood shop, so I reserve judgment on that.

the bottle line-up from our recent Rhône wine tasting experince at K & L

My “third” most favorite thing has to be that warm comfortable feeling I get when I enter the shop, gaze at the racks and racks of gleaming bottles lined up everywhere, and daydream about their places of origin, how the wines might taste and occasionally, fondly remember enjoying that bottle or two at some wonderful meal with friends and loved ones. Strike that “third.” Maybe that’s my favorite part of K & L after all?

You don’t have to visit the place to shop there, though that is best. K & L will ship to many states (but not Virginia, which is a real nuisance come holiday time as my father, a wine lover, lives in that Commonwealth). Whatever else you do, and I don’t ever use this word lightly, you’d be crazy not to check it out.

welcome to DaVero

On our trip to Sonoma last week we stumbled into DaVero on our way back from a visit to Hop Kiln winery. One of the things that caught my attention was the beautiful set of trees in front of the building still showing their Fall foliage with hues of yellows, reds and rusty orange colors. I had to stop, if not to taste their olive oil, at least to take a shot of those trees!

DaVero has been doing organic and biodynamic farming since 1982. They produce not only olives, but also grapes, stone fruits, apples, pears and pomegranates. They also raise pigs and chickens. Everything is supposed to mirror a Tuscan lifestyle. The original grapevines and olive trees were brought here from that part of Italy. The olive oil comes from four kinds of olives that are blended in a specific ratio: Leccino, Frantoio, Maurino and Pendolino.

When we visited, they offered an olive oil tasting of three distinct blends.

The first one, labeled just “DaVero,” the clerk characterized as an olive oil for finishing dishes. You splash a bit on at the end just before serving. I assume that it was a blend of the oils from the four olive varieties, but she never said for certain. She did say that the olives for this oil were harvested back in November 2010. It had a beautiful greenish yellow color. It had a nice silky, grassy, green and slightly piquant flavor. I really enjoyed it. The bottle held about 400ml of olive oil and cost me the hefty amount of 32 bucks. But I was convinced by the organic, biodynamic and the whole Italian approach behind it, lol! The web site claims that it is the “premiere house oil” at Mario Batalli’s Babbo restaurant in New York.

gorgeous fall foliage at DaVero

The second oil was like the first but flavored with Meyer Lemon. Actually, they make a big point on the web site of saying that it is not “flavored” as they crush the olives together with the Meyer lemons. Well, however you want to put it, this is an olive oil that tastes like Meyer lemon. I like olive oil and I like Meyer lemon, but I detest mixed olive oils. Enough said.

DaVero olive oil

The third was called “Thirty Weight Utility olive oil and Line Lube.” The name’s supposed to be a joke about restaurant cooking. It is a bit cheaper by volume than the DaVero and comes in a bigger bottle. This one is a mix of last year’s harvest that is blended with 30% of the latest harvest. It reminded me of some Greek olive oil I used to buy from the stores near our old pad in Astoria, New York. I wasn’t a huge fan but Steven liked it.

They told us at the shop that Mario Batalli loves their utility oil so much that they use it in all of his restaurants. Good for DaVero! Though I’m really not that impressed, as I’m no fan of Iron Chef Mario.

I used to like his show. You know the one where he traveled around Italy with that clueless side-kick? The two would go food shopping everywhere, get behind the scenes at local restaurants and always finish the show with some cooking, Italian wine consumption and chitchat about the good life on the Boot. We were enthralled, so much so that one time I made a reservation at Batalli’s restaurant, Babbo.

The reservation was made a month ahead for a special occasion. Our dinner was scheduled for 9:30pm on a weeknight, which was the best that they could offer for two on “such short notice.” We weren’t worried as the helpful website said that you could sit at the elegant bar for a drink while waiting.

We were hungry and a little excited by the Babbo experience, so we arrived a bit too early. The place was packed! Even the bar was full with people eating regular dinners. As a result, the rather brusque maitre d’ told us to go to the bar across the street for a drink while we waited. That’s annoying.

Well, we did and came back on time for the 9:30 reservation. But they wouldn’t seat us. They were too full. It was strange. We waited for about twenty more minutes. I couldn’t help but notice other parties of two waltzing through the doors, apparently unburdened by a reservation, and getting seated immediately. That was really annoying. Perhaps these lucky couples had connections? It was amazing. I inquired about it but was sort of rudely brushed off. We waited a bit longer before we gave up.

Babbo never honored our reservation and we never went back. That night, we ended up walking out about a quarter after ten, hungry and extremely angry. We went to a quaint Italian restaurant down the street for a perfectly satisfying and undoubtedly more affordable meal without a wait or any unpleasantness. This happened about ten years ago but still seems fresh in my mind like it was yesterday.

I almost didn’t buy the DaVero olive oil when they started talking about Babbo and Mario Batalli. Strange.

beautiful Peace Pagoda at the Japan Center

It is a wonderful experience to visit the beautiful Japan Center in San Francisco. There you can have a tasty meal at any of the numerous delightful Japanese restaurants, browse the shops for beautiful furniture imports, teapots, Japanese paintings, bonsai plants or even expensive plastic sushi models. If you’re feeling more reflective, you can sit in Peace Plaza and gaze tranquilly at the dramatic Peace Pagoda. You can even catch the latest movie at the Kabuki Theatre. But if you’re with us, then we’re probably headed for Nijiya Market.

Nijiya is a Japanese supermarket chain that started out in San Diego. You can find them in Northern and Southern California as well as two locations in Hawaii. They have everything that you could want for making excellent Japanese or Japanese-inspired creations in your own home. We love this place.

Usually we get staples like rice, dried wakame and nori paper, various kinds of shoyu (soy sauce), miso paste, ultra fresh sushi-grade fish, sake, tofu, etc. I really like Japanese crackers. Have you seen them? They’re the ones that look like colorful little puffs that have a sweet, savory and seafood taste. Sometimes the better ones come with tiny dried fish mixed in. Another fun thing to snack on while passing the afternoon at the Japan Center is mochi, these mildly sweet rice cakes which are often filled with things like sweet red beans. I am especially drawn to the mochi that are covered in sesame seeds. They’ve a wonderful texture and taste.

Nijiya Market in San Francisco

colorful holiday treats

a wide selection of miso paste

some premade lunches ready to eat

sushi grade fish

ultra fresh veggies at Nijiya Market

Nijiya Market is always crowded. Plan to go when you don’t feel that rushed. They offer so much that you’ll want to take your time and really explore.

I always want to write “San Jose” with the accent mark, like this: “San José.” I don’t think that people do that here in California. Hmm.

come by L and F Fish Market in San Jose for great salt cod

Well accent or not, we know the way to San Jose and the excellent though easily overlooked, L and F Fish Market. This hole-in-the-wall Portuguese fish market right off CA-101 across from a beautiful Portuguese Catholic church is worth a visit if you love salt cod.

Hegui read the Mark Kurlansky book, Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World. That author credits that humble fish with allowing Europeans to finally settle the New World, as it was one of the few foodstuffs that could survive the long passage across the Atlantic. Certainly the Portuguese and Spanish still eat this fish. In Brazil salt cod has a long cultural history connected to Europe. That’s why we eat it at my house. Hegui, a Brazilian, knows how to prepare it into wonderful and flavorful creations. I especially enjoy his bacalhoada and arroz de bacalhau com broccolis.

underwhelming store front of L and F Fish Market

Norwegian salt cod is the best at L and F

selection of salt cod

Since Christmas is right around the corner, we made the forty-five minute schlep to San Jose to get some cod at L and F.

The shop is run by a father-and-son team. It’s not much to look at outside or in, and since you have to make a complex turn off the exit from 101 South, it is east to miss. Inside they sell a number of dry goods like Portuguese olive oil, canned sardines, olives and, of course, wine, Port and Madeira. But here it is all about the fish.

fresh whole albacore for sale

some Portuguese wines for sale

some Portuguese dry goods at L and F

they use a jigsaw to cut the salt cod

We haven’t tried their fresh fish though we saw dramatic whole albacore tuna and several other whole fresh fish. But when we’re here, we’re looking for the salt cod. The Norwegian is thought to be best but the Canadian is fine, too. We got both. The younger, cuter owner cuts the fish to size for you with a massive jigsaw behind the counter. He doesn’t wear gloves, which scares me in two ways: obviously, he could hurt himself, but also the salted fish can burn and the smell easily permeates the skin. I hope that he’s got good health insurance, but more importantly, that he’s already coupled up.

Portuguese Catholic church across from L and F Fish

welcome to the St. Lawrence Market

Our friends in Toronto, knowing our interest in food, strongly encouraged us to check out the St. Lawrence Market while we were in town. Located on Front and Jarvis Streets, the Market is a large and elegant building that houses over 120 specialty food and food-related shops. Across Front in another building that’s part of the St. Lawrence Market complex, you can find a Saturday farmers market and, on Sundays, a large antiques fair.

We stayed only a couple blocks from the St. Lawrence on our Canadian excursion so we went almost every day. Open Tuesday through Saturday, they have marvelous bakeries, cheese shops, fruit and vegetable vendors, an exciting mustard shop (Did you know that Canada is the world’s largest mustard producer?), local wine merchants, housewares stores, and shops for meat, seafood and even Canadian maple syrup.

I became addicted to this one bakery that makes a “Swiss muesli and raisin” bagel. It wasn’t much like New York style bagels, but the crunchy nutty muesli coating the raisin filled bread went down so easily with my Starbucks coffee each morning. I was devastated that the place was closed on our last day in Toronto, a Sunday, as I couldn’t enjoy it one more time.

admiring bread at the St. Lawrence Market

are you even in Canada if you don't come across a display of maple syrup at a farmers market?

blueberries at St. Lawrence farmers market

colorful squash at St. Lawrence farmers market

We both thought that the farmers market was pretty interesting, too. The local produce seemed different from what you find in San Francisco at Alemany or the UN Plaza. We hardly saw any Asian vegetables, for example, and there were many fewer varieties of tomato. But there were wonderful berries, bell peppers, apples and even crab apples for sale. I didn’t realize that you could eat the crab apple. I always thought that they gave upset stomach, hence their irritable name. The radishes and heads of cauliflower were simply enormous at the St. Lawrence farmers market. Could that be from the extra long sunny days that Canada enjoys in the summertime?

If you’re visiting Toronto, then you simply must go to the St. Lawrence Market.

butter tarts at the St. Lawrence farmers market

crab apples at St. Lawrence farmers market

eggplant at St. Lawrence farmers market

fresh pasta for sale at St. Lawrence Market

inside the St. Lawrence Market

Ontario peaches

some string beans for sale at the St. Lawrence farmers market

welcome to Riverview Produce

Toronto is a marvelous city. Aside from being attractive and well kempt, it is very ethnically diverse. It turns out that there’s quite a large Brazilian and Portuguese community. While perusing one of the local Portuguese language papers, Sol Português, Hegui came across a few intriguing ads that referred to some markets for purchasing California grapes for home wine making. Amazing! We’d thought that with the dramatic rise of California wine that those days of shipping grapes back East was long over. Well, apparently not.

Naturally, this was not something that could be missed so we sought out one of these shops to do some “field research.” Eventually, we ended up at the Riverview Produce Inc. warehouse at 50 Alma Ave.

The place didn’t look like much: sort of like a run down dump infested with fruit flies, really. But there were some people there and once we got closer, we could see that it was packed floor to ceiling with crates of California wine grapes! We talked with a patron of the shop who happened to be there at the time with her husband. Apparently they grow Portuguese grape varieties in their back yard in Toronto but use the California grapes to give their homemade wine “more body.” The couple purchased several crates of red grapes and had Riverview Produce de-stem and crush them right there. They left with about three five gallon buckets of juice and had about the same amount of juice from their homegrown grapes. It seemed like a lot and we were curious about how many bottles of wine they ended up with when all was said and done. Hegui then had a funny discussion with her that I’ll paraphrase here:

de-stemming and crushing the grapes

Hegui: About how much wine do you make?

Woman: I serve it for guests. I only drink a little bit. He (pointing to her husband who was overseeing the grape crush) cannot drink any more.

Hegui: But how much wine do you make?

Woman: We serve it to guests.

She never did quite answer how much her family makes, though that’s a wine I’d really enjoy trying.

The company offers more than twenty varieties of both white and red wine grapes. They also sell corks, bottles, etc. for the home wine maker. Homemade wine might not be for everyone, but if you’re in Toronto and want to give it a try, check out Riverview Produce.

huge wine jugs waiting to be filled with homemade vinho

Riverview Produce 2010 wine grape list

Riverview Produce warehouse packed full of California grapes

Lodi Gold

Smiling Baby

two magnificent loaves of Tartine country bread

If the line that’s constantly snaking out the door and around the block from Tartine is any indication, this wonderful bakery and café needs no real introduction. Located in the Mission District on the corner of Guerrero and 18th Streets on the same block as Delfina and a half block from Farina, Tartine is worth seeking out. You need to know the location for as far as I can tell, the shop has no sign facing the street at all. Perhaps they don’t really need one?

I couldn't find a sign for Tartine though you can always tell by the long line that you're there

there's always a huge line at Tartine

As much as we’re delighted to have Tartine country bread out, nothing beats getting a loaf, or two, or even three, fresh from their ovens (everything is baked right on site) and devouring some in the car as you’re driving madly home to eat more accompanied by your favorite glass of red wine! The line to get into Tartine is the only thing that prevents us from going there every single day for a fresh loaf.

thick slices of Tartine country bread

We’ve worked out an informal system with John for managing the line and enjoying the bread with some semi-regularity. If one of us happens by the bakery during the day, he might order a loaf picked up either later that evening or the next day. Then, we’ll call each other to coordinate who might be able to fetch it. Picking up is easier than ordering as you can cut the line right to the front.

Tartine bakes bread on Wednesdays through Sundays. It’s out of the oven at 5PM and ready to be picked up after that. The bread keeps well, so if you manage to resist eating the whole loaf the first night, you can have it again later. (John’s been known to get up in the middle of the night and sneak a few pieces more. I don’t know how he can stay so thin!)

The bread itself has a thick, chewy dark crust that hides a softer, stretchy, mildly sour interior that is truly amazing. Words fail me now and I cannot adequately describe the wonder of this bread. More than once I’ve ruined my dinner for eating too much of it. I’d never complain about just snacking on it alone. But I do like it with butter or cheese as well. I had some with a sundried tomato tapenade and olive oil cured artichoke hearts at John’s recently that was stunning. It goes pretty much with anything.

As I already mentioned before getting completely distracted, Tartine offers other things, too. So you can get pastry, cake, coffee, sandwiches, etc. All of these are also very good. In fact, we had their Passion Fruit Lime Bavarian Rectangle for our wedding reception at The Slanted Door in 2008. The cake is light and very passion-fruity and coconut-y. Really good!

crowded Tartine interior

Dining at Tartine takes a bit of energy and strategy. First there’s managing the line. Then there’s finding a table. The place is tiny so inevitably there’s hardly any seating free. I always feel like I’m at some super-trendy bakery in New York while there. I can’t think of anyplace else in San Francisco that’s as mobbed (or as good) as this. In New York you’d come across this kind of thing a bit more often.

Writing this has already made me crave some of the country bread. Aside from the “plain country” (that name seems so demeaning as a description of this culinary masterpiece!) they also make it with walnuts, sesame seeds and with olives. I didn’t know about the olive loaf! I’m going to have one of those very, very soon.

the Tartine Passion Fruit Lime Bavarian Rectangle was excellent at our wedding

Acme rustic walnut loaf

What can I say about Acme Bread? We simply love it! That’s it. We love it.

They’ve got a location in the San Francisco Ferry Building. We’ve also been to the one in Berkeley by Kermit Lynch Wine Merchants. On weekends, Hegui and I usually have morning coffee with a sweet baguette from Acme. Sometimes H will get the sweet loaf for a breakie surprise mid-week as he works quite near the Ferry Building. I frequently buy the olive loaf to go with Italian food, particularly for Roman style tomato pasta or drizzled with fava topping. And though we’re unlike most San Franciscians in that we generally dislike sour dough bread, those from Acme are delicious.

These breads remind me most of some from my childhood in the Seventies when my family lived in Geneva, Switzerland. Often my mother would buy large round boules from little boulangeries in the city. They had this thick chewy flaky crust with a soft, doughy chewy interior that I came to think of as one of my best memories of childhood. Acme isn’t quite that but it comes close.

Acme Bread Company

Fortunately, if you live in the Bay Area, you don’t have to suffer. Acme operates four stores and distributes their breads to numerous retailers including Whole Foods, Costco, Good Life and even restaurants like Fringale, and of course, Chez Panisse.

This is way better than a boring mass-produced loaf of white bread!

Didn’t Wylie E. Coyote shop at Acme for stuff with which to capture the Road Runner? Can this be where they got the name?!?