Egalitarian Dinning: My Dinner at Commonwealth

For my upcoming birthday, my parents offered to take me out to dinner when my family came to San Francisco. Now I had a big decision to make. This provided me with a chance to enjoy a nice meal on someone else's dime but I had to keep the costs in the realm of reason-i.e. no Michael Mina, no Coi. I wanted a place that utilized molecular gastronomy techniques rarely employed by local Seattle establishments or some crazy Japanese restaurant that dished up edgy foodie favorites like chicken tartare(i.e. Ippaku). I read that Commonwealth on Mission provided a cutting edge tasting menu for a reasonable price ($65 for five courses). Given that my parents were a little wary of my ethnic restaurant choices since the whole gelatinous blood cube incident, I decided that Commonwealth was the choice that would make both of us happy.

We had an early reservation of 5:30 and found parking right around the corner-a miracle in the Mission. However, Commonwealth does have a parking lot that you can pay $5 dollars to park in (not very egalitarian). The interior had that generic minimalist look that most restaurants of its ilk sport these days. You know the look-hard wood tables, open kitchen, etc. We were seated in a nice corner table and presented with bowl of house made chips and a sea salt/vinegar foam alolli dipping sauce. The chips were delicious and the foam had that proper vinegar/garlic tang without the richness of a traditional alolli. The foam theme would continue throughout the course of the evening. After pursuing both the tasting menu and the ala carte menu we decided to go for gusto- we chose the tasting menu($65-with $10 dollars given to charity-the egalitarian component) and the accompanying wine pairing($30). My parents decided to make a substitution of the fried game hen instead of the sweetbreads(even after I explained to them they were not brains but a rather a gland).

The first stop on the tasting menu was an amuse bouche of albacore sashimi accompanied by single slice of cucumber and a cucumber flavored gelatin strip (think breath strip). The wine pairing was a Spanish cava that made for a bubbly beginning of our meal. The cucumber and albacore worked together to cleanse the palate of the salty chips that we devoured earlier. No hint of that fishy taste that albacore so often has. My dad enjoyed it as well and then enjoyed my mother's who is no fan of raw fish.

Local Albacore Sashimi with Cucumber Gelatin

The next dish was the Foie Gras Mousse Cannoli accompanied by a side salad of wild greens and figs. I had high hopes for this dish and it was really the determiner of selecting the tasting menu instead of choosing dishes off the ala carte menu. While the structure was executed well, the brioche cannoli shell and its foie gras mousse filling did not have a lot of flavor. I was looking for the fatty richness of the foie gras to come through but instead the flavors were very muted. My favorite component was the accompanying fig salad that brought a welcome earthiness to the dish and help compensate for the lack of ummph in the "cannoli" itself. The wine pairing was a Chenin Blanc(Charles Bove '10 Vouvray, France) that was light and crisp and paired well with the dish.

Foie Gras Mousse 

Following the somewhat disappointing cannoli came the big surprise hit of the evening-the Pumpkin and Asian Pear Salad. The salad consisted of spherical pieces of both Pear and Pumpkin resting on a bed of chicory and idiazabal cheese. The pumpkin was warm and savory while the pear was cool and crisp. Combined with a decadent molten idiazabal cheese (which apparently is turned into a type of fondue...see here) and some bittersweet chocolate all of the flavors and textures of the dish came wonderfully.  The wine pairing was a white Rhone blend from the Sierra Foothills that balanced sweet and savor elements of the dish. (La Clarine Farm 10' Sierra Foothills )    

Pumpkin

The next dish was another intriguing combination of flavors and textures but did not come together as well as the pumpkin salad. It was an oyster stew of sorts that was a combination of potatoes, lettuce, freeze dried bacon, poached oysters swimming in a pea green turnip-borage soup. Certainly the most complex dish of the evening with crystals that exploded with bacon goodness and an accompanying lemon foam. But it didn't really work for me. The room temperature oysters and the hot potatoes just made for an odd combination. I appreciated the ambition of this dish, I just wished I enjoyed it more. The wine pairing was a Picpoul that like all of the pairings worked wonderfully with the dish. (Picpoul De Pinet Felines Jourdan '10 Langedoc France)

Oyster

After diving deep into molecular gastronomy ocean, the next course was a welcome more traditional offering. It was sweetbreads paired with a corn pudding and padron peppers which have been ubiquitous on menus this season. My parents substituted a game hen instead of the sweetbreads which had a similar rustic flavor profile and was a good substitution. The fried torchons of game hen that my parents had were flavorful morsels of juicy dark meat. The sweetbreads were nuggets of goodness, but the extremely small portion made it feel more like a first or second course than a main. Also, I keep thinking about how much better the sweetbreads were that I had at Bayona in New Orleans all those years ago. The wine pairing was the best of the night(and the first red). We had a lovely Monastrell that worked well with both dishes without being too jammy as this varietal can be. (Primitivo Quiles Raspay '04 Alicante Spain)

After a sorbet palate cleanser, we got to the real main event which was the peanut butter semifreddo with frozen popcorn. The frozen popcorn was nothing to write home about but the semifreddo was amazing. It was like a dove bar on steroids. Covered in a chocolate ganache that shattered to reveal a decadent peanut butter/ice cream mix that had the perfect semi-firm texture. There was no debate at the table about this one, we quickly devoured our plates despite all of the other dishes the preceded it. The wine pairing was a port that was not overly sweet and worked with the dish, but I wish they had thought of a more creative pairing for such a fun dessert. One of their specialty cocktails perhaps.

Semifreddo

Overall, the meal satisfied the craving I had for something more adventurous. The tasting menu was definitely hit or miss however. There are so many good restaurants in the Bay Area that Commonwealth will not be at the top of my list to revisit anytime soon.  But if you are in San Francisco, and don't live near a world class food city, then I recommend that you consider Commonwealth for a foray into molecular gastronomy.

Vancouver Day 3 or the Night of a 1,000 Izakaya

For our last full day in Vancouver, I decided to go all Asian. Dim Sum for lunch and not one, not two but three izakaya (Japanese Pub) for dinner. This was the part of the trip that I had been planning for months. I had gotten a recommendation from a co-worker for the Dim Sum restaurant and researched Vancouver's Izakaya by reading dozens of posts, blogs, and articles. We would eat extremely well on Day 3 but many of the highlights were not of the culinary variety. 

We started the day shopping for tourist swag such as a Canadian polo for the father in law. If we saw someone buying the American equivalent we would laugh at them, but if it has a maple leaf it is suddenly acceptable. As part of our journey, we came across the 2010 Olympic Torch which is far less impressive that you might imagine; a jagged pseudo crystalline structure with spires that resembled something you might find in Superman’s fortress of solitude. One thing I noticed while walking around the heart of downtown Vancouver was the plethora of food trucks offer a variety enticing eats.

Looks like something from Final Fantasy...

The carts would have to wait for another time, as I had my sights set on the legendary Dim Sum of Richmond, a city directly below Vancouver (and home to Vancouver's airport). Richmond is home base for the BC's sizable Cantonese population; refugees from Hong Kong in the 80's and 90's that weren't down with the People's Republic of China. As result of this mass infux, the number of Dim Sum restaurants in this area had exploded creating a real Chinatown. I had gotten a tip from a co-worker that Red Star on Granville close to the Richmond/Vancouver border was one of the best. It took a good 30 minutes to get from our apartment all the way to the other end of the city where Red Star was located. At first glance Red Star does not look like much, it was part of a late 1970's/early 1980's era mixed use office/retail building that over the decades had become "asianfied" with a variety of various far-east orientated establishments. After navigating through the clusterfuck that was their underground parking lot (a word of advice, never try parking in a lot devoted to a Dim Sum restaurant if at all possible) we headed in. It was almost 1:30pm on a Friday, but the place was still packed. I started wondering if I should have made a reservation, but luckily we were seated right away at the last table in the house. Unlike the Dim Sum Houses of San Francisco, Red Star utilzed a card based ordering systems instead of the familiar roaming carts, but with over a hundred options available I was still very impressed even if it lacked the visual stimulation of a pushy server trying to force their wares upon you ( I don't want chicken feet dammit..stop asking me).


We settled on six eclectic dishes (i.e. no shumai, no steamed pork buns). The first to arrive was the least interesting. The E-Fu Noodle Hot Pot with Seafood ($7.95) contained what appeared to be fresh house made noodles and a light assortment of shrimp and shellfish, but lacked any real flavor whatsoever. The kitchen really showed it stripes in the next dish that arrived-String Beans with Minced Pork and Dry Olive Sauce ($7.95) . If you have eaten at any anglofied chinese place in the last twenty five years you seen some bastardized version of a Szchewan Green Bean dish on the menu. Now imagine that dish taken to whole another level. This version had lightly wok fried green beans that maintained their structural integrity but were not underdone. Instead of being drowned in a starchy MSG laden sauce, these bean were infused with the flavors of the dried olives and adorned with camaralized nuggets of pork goodness. The steamed crystal prawn dumplings($5.25) were a big hit as well. A airy prawn filling within a light pillowy wrapper made for a clean tasting dumpling unlike the dense mealy shrimpish ones that your run of the mill Dim Sum house serves. These were so light that I could have eaten another dozen. Clean tastes and a lack of grease were trademarks of the remaining dishes that came out of the kitchen. A slightly spicy steamed sparerib dish($4.75) and an oddly gelatinous but tasty Beef Meatball dish($4.75) continued our glutinous lunch. After stuffing our faces for fifteen minutes, our last dish finally arrived-a fluffy rice roll with a generous portion of BBQ pork and greens($5.50). I managed to find that last ounce of room in my stomach to finish off the roll and waddled out of Red Star a happy but stuffed customer.



E-Fu Noodles...not that great



Green Beans with Dry Olive sauce and Minced Pork....nice.





 After Red Star, we wanted to take a nap but knew that a meal this big needed to be worked off before dinner and besides it was too beautiful of a day to be wasting indoors. I remembered from a trip to Vancouver in 2004 that the University of British Columbia had hiking trails and a beautiful campus near the beach. However, I didn't do any research on which beach was best or even really how to access them. So without any real sense of direction or purpose, we headed out north from Red Star along Harbor Drive to UBC. After passing some palatial estates, the terrain turned into forest and my wife caught a glimpse of a sign saying Wreck Beach Trail 7 buried amongst the foliage. We decided to head down the little one lane road into a deep forest. The road was fairly isolated with cars sporadically parked along the road. We came across a poorly identified trail head that said Trail 7 Wreck Beach and pointed down a forbidding set of stairs that stretched out into the infinite. Then we saw another intriguing sign stating "clothing optional". I knew that Vancouver was a pretty liberal place so we thought that this might not be anything unusual. Though we were not prepared to get naked...no sunblock for the genitals...we decided to head down and see what awaited us. As we descended down the stairs there was beautiful little manmade stream on the left side that created a magical forest environment. There were also solitary men that we encountered every three or four minutes heading up and down the stairs; sometimes naked, sometimes not. They were all giving us a “deathly you don’t belong here” stare. After about the fourth one that we encountered, I looked over at Lisa and said "I pretty sure we are heading down to a gay sex beach". Just then another solitary man (very naked) asked us if we were looking for the main beach. We said yes and he told us it was about 1/2 mile north of here. So with that we headed back up the stairs and got back into the car and looked for Trailhead 6.
 

A sign of things to come...



Only some of the wood we saw on the beach....





















The main beach was a circus. It was also clothing optional but with a mix of everybody (not just angry looking gay men wanting anonymous sex); a lot of naked old hippies, naked families, a couple of naked trustifarians and whole lot of fully clothed nerdy UBC students. In short there was sausage and muffin glore..and pervy college students. Deciding against a game of nude ultimate Frisbee with some granola types, we headed out towards the tide pools to take some pictures of the scenery (but not of the people...there were strict policies against that). There was also a group of heavily armed police officers patrolling the beach adorned with bullet proof vests. It seemed curious that such a show of force was necessary but I guess you need to be prepared when dealing with a belligerent naked hippie.

After the beach, we collapsed into a deep coma back at our apartment. However, we ended up taking too long of a nap and were in danger of endangering my plans that evening of visting three Izakaya. A little back story here: Izakaya in Japan are essentially bars that serve food. In North America they are more of small plates Japanese eateries that serve alchol. The Izakaya trend (which is big in cities like San Francisco, LA and New York) started in Vancouver when the Guu mini chain opened its first outpost in 1993. The Izakaya concept took off in Vancouver with dozens of new places opening up primarily around Robson street. One of these places, Hapa Izakaya, was my first experience with the concept when I came to Vancouver for my bachelor party in 2004. I remember stumbling in there after an exhausting day of air travel (we arrived in Vancouver about five hours later than we thought due to a flight cancellation) and being transported to a realm where the sake flowed freely and intriguing small dishes that I had never tasted before were plentiful and cheap. After that meal I was hooked on the concept. I would search out other Izakaya as they opened up in the states including places like Nombe and Ippaku in San Francisco and Musha in Torrance. I loved the mix of western and asian flavors and the inventive dishes (including Chicken Tartare, Japanese Cheese Risotto, lightly seared Beef Heart) that I had tasted at these establishments. However, Lisa was not a big fan. She had the misfortune of going to a very low rent, mediocre Izakaya in Portland (run by some well-meaning gringos) and did not like the greasiness of Musha in LA. I was sure that if she tasted the far superior dishes of the Vancouver Izakaya that she would be a convert. So the plan was to hit up Guu with Garlic at 6pm and enjoy the cheap beer and fill up on some garliciky treats then move on to Hapa Izakaya where I had a reservation at 8 am and then finish up the evening at Zakkushi (a skewer restaurant) with some yakitori and more libations. However, by time we woke up from our nap it was close to 6:30pm and we still needed to shower and get ready to go out. So I scrapped plans to go to Guu with Garlic, opened up a bottle of wine to get necessary buzz before heading out, and went to Hapa Izakaya about thirty minutes early.

Once we arrived it was clear that a reservation was not necessary. There were only about three or four tables filled and the place looked pretty dead; a far cry from the bustling establishment that I gone to years earlier. The pricing was similar to 2004 but of course with the current dismal exchange rate they essentially increased 20-25%. We started with the 500ml House Sake (not horrible at $18) and a large Sapparo (very expensive at $9.75) to keep the party rolling. To eat we ordered Spot Prawn Sashmi ($8.50), Kakuni ($8.99), a mixed martini glass of tuna and halibut ($10), and BC Albacore Sashimi($10.50). The Kakuni was a cubed roasted pork belly that came with chinese style buns (the type that typically accompany roasted duck). The pork belly sparkled with flavor but was a little dry which is a sin with an ingredient as fatty and luscious as this. The spot prawns fared better with a generous portion of five prawns still with the heads on. The wife was put off by this dish but I sucked down the little buggers. They had a very clean taste and were extremely fresh. Not as good as the live spot prawns I have had in the past, but for the price, quantity, and quality it was good pick. The martini glass mix of fish had an beguiling sweet sauce and once again the fish quality was excellent. The Albacore Bin-Toro was the agreed upon favorite with the proper melt in your mouth texture and none of the fishiness that you sometimes find with this type of tuna. With a good buzz going we decided to head out and try our luck at another establishment.




Spot Prawn Sashimi-the best part is the head!



Once we left at around 9pm, the atmosphere on Robson had become kinetic. People filled street and our next stop Guu with Garlic had a huge crowd waiting outside. Sensing that this was not going to work, we headed to Zarzaku on Denman to see what the situation was there. The frazzled hostess told me that it would be over an hour without a reservation. Clearly I made a tactical mistake by centering my evening around Hapa Izakaya instead of one of the other establishments. Not wanting to wait a hour for skewers, we headed a block down the street to Kingyo another well reviewed Izakaya. I had not initially considered Kingyo because of the perceived similarities with Hapa Izakaya, but the wait was only thirty minutes and we were far too intoxicated to head anywhere else. Kingyo turned out to be an excellent choice. The diversified menu had several intriguing options including a variety of tongue dishes. The wife decided to go with the Kobe Beef Special($22) that featured superbly marbled, thin slices of rib eye that you cooked on a smoldering rock; a variation of the standard tableside hibachi dish that you see at many izakaya. The beef was accompanied by a tangy wasabi infused mustard sauce and a cloyingly sweet steak sauce. For her second choice she wanted to choose the white king salmon carpaccio ($10) but they were unfortunately out. Instead she decided on the pressed toro sushi plate ($13). The plate contained five neatly layered blocks of rice and toro with a tangy slightly sweet sauce stringing the pieces together. This was my least favorite dish of the evening. The fish quality was questionable and the sweetness of sauce distracted the palate.

Let's get this party started!

For my dishes, I chose the Black Cod Kama Kaarage ($8.80) and the grilled Beef Tongue Steak ($12). The Black Cod came with three freshly fried collars containing a rich buttery flesh surrounded by a well-seasoned crust; imagine the best fried catfish you ever had and then imagine something tastier than that and you have this dish. This was perfect izakaya food, rich and filling and most importantly paired perfectly with the light Japanese lager I was drinking (Sapparo, Kirin, Asahi who knows …I was too drunk to remember). The Beef Tongue was a more challenging dish. Initially the fibrous texture of the thickly sliced steak was difficult to manage, but that simply proved to be a minor obstacle to enjoying the rich beefy flavor that was hiding in every bite. The greatest moment of evening came not from the food, but from Lisa who leaned over to me and drunkenly proclaimed,“ If it weren’t for you, I would never eat at restaurant like this, thank you.” Rush of joy overtook me upon hearing those words; has a spouse ever spoken a kinder phrase to their mate…I think not.           


On that note, we stumbled back to our domicile for the evening. Along the way we encountered a skunk scurrying across the sleepy but very urban residential street we were traveling upon. Without hesitation an extremely intoxicated Lisa chased after the skunk calling out, “Come here my stinky buddy”. Worried about the obvious consequences I convinced Lisa to leave our oderous friend alone. That seemed to be the perfect note to end our unusual day in Vancouver. It was one we will not soon forget...well except for the last couple of hours which were a drunken blur! 

With that our Vancouver culinary adventures came to end. I would go to local farmers market the next morning and the following evening we would have an excellent meal in Whistler but that story will have to wait for another time. Overall our trip was quite the success and I am looking forward to more culinary adventures with our northern neighbor.