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San Francisco Chronicle​

This new Wine Country restaurant makes all its own pasta. This is the one to order

Each week, critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan shares some of her favorite recent bites, the dishes and snacks and baked goods that didn't find their way into a full review. Want the list a few days earlier? Sign up for her free newsletter, Bite Curious. Creste di gallo, a short-cut pasta, is so named because of its resemblance to a cockscomb, but the version at Stella reminds me more of octopus tentacles entwined under a shower of cheese and parsley. The new Kenwood restaurant from the team behind the Glen Ellen Star makes all its pastas in house, and the creste di gallo ($27) dish is a standout. It embraces the flavor profile of a chicken liver crostino, the sweetness of vidalia onions and aged balsamic vinegar playing off the earthiness of a brothy chicken liver ragu. I'm sure other cuts of pasta would have worked equally well, but I appreciate the playfulness of serving a rooster's comb alongside a chicken's liver. Like everyone else who goes into an office, I'm constantly on the hunt for good lunch options within walking distance of the Chronicle's building on Fifth and Mission. I thought I had exhausted them all, but I recently came across The Roll, a Japanese restaurant that specializes in Edomae-style sushi that opened last year. Its signature roll ($15) was well seasoned and generous with the fish, but what I'll return for is the stuffed spins on inari sushi, which typically feature rice tucked inside pockets of fried tofu. Each one resembles a sweet little boat. The Roll offers three for $17 or five for $26, including a side of seaweed salad, and each piece is big enough to split between two people, if somewhat difficult to cut in half. I was tickled to see, in addition to more usual topping suspects like dry-aged tuna ($6) and salmon with yuzu kosho ($6), less conventional options like corn cheese ($5) and yakiniku beef topped with a quail egg ($5). Gougères are simply too small. I could eat a dozen of those darling cheesy puffs, 70% air and barely larger than a ping pong ball. Tartine apparently agrees, because its gougère is no dainty passed hors d'oeuvre — it's massive, more like a concha or bialy in size. A burnished, Gruyere-topped crust gives way to a beautifully rich and eggy interior. Aside from the brobdingnagian proportions, what sets Tartine's gougère apart is the assertive presence of black pepper. Cacio e pepe fans, this one's for you.