Latest news with #MacKenzieChungFegan
San Francisco Chronicle
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Go to this new Bay Area restaurant for a devastating cake
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. The morning after eating at Amara, a Mediterranean restaurant from the owners of Rasa that opened earlier this year, I messaged my colleague and fellow person-with-a-sweet-tooth Elena Kadvany. 'There's a dessert you should know about,' I Slacked. The dessert in question is Amara's praline pistachio opera cake, a nutty, chocolatey, salty layered confection that checks all my boxes. I loved the textural contrasts of the tahini pistachio and chocolate caramel mousses with the crunchy feuilletine and candied nuts. I would drive down to Belmont and make a light, pistachio-heavy dinner of Amara's green hummus (so hued because of ramps and herbs, in addition to pistachios) and that opera cake. The liminal zone around Memorial Day is one of my favorite times of the year to eat. Summer fruits and veg are tiptoeing their way out of the wings while spring produce is on stage, belting out its swan song. Case in point: the halibut crudo recently on the menu at Nopa. Yes there are the season's first cherries, roughly smashed and perked up with finely minced shallots, but there are also peas. It's a colorful composition, very Abstract Expressionist, with the fish, cherries and pea pistou sprinkled with poppy seeds and drizzled with herb oil. Nopa. 560 Divisadero St., San Francisco. Delfina served me another blisteringly good spring-summer mashup in the form of a fried soft shell crab dish, smoky with chile oil. There was also a puddle of what the menu described as 'granturfo' aioli — a term that I am now finding to be unGooglable (perhaps a typo for 'granturco'), but which our lovely server described as the Italian version of huitlacoche. On the side? The first corn I've had this season tangled together with the cultiest of spring cult vegetables, ramps.
San Francisco Chronicle
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
This popular seafood counter just opened its second location. Here's the best thing on the menu
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. Where better to eat raw fish than at a fishmonger? Billingsgate in Noe Valley is a seafood market that sells everything from whole branzino to trays of uni, but they also have a counter and a few tables where you can tuck into a poke bowl or toss back a few oysters. My strongest recommendation is the hamachi crudo ($18), served with thinly shaved slices of hearts of palm and segments of grapefruit. It was all dressed aggressively with finely chopped shallots, olive oil and flaky sea salt (which some of the other dishes were lacking). East Bay residents take note: Billingsgate recently expanded to Oakland, taking over the Hapuku Fish Shop stall at Rockridge Market Hall. Belfare serves a superior fried chicken sandwich. The Petaluma business got its start at farmers markets and moved into a brick-and-mortar location in a strip mall in 2022. The classic ($18), with sesame mayo and plenty of Cajun-spiced slaw, is always available, but seasonal specials are worth a peek as well. A recent offering featured ingredients you might find on a torta — piquant tomatillo salsa, cilantro, avocado — loaded onto a Parker House bun with grilled spring onions and fried chicken. If I have one quibble it's that the wet ingredients led to a bit of a soggy bottom, but the flavors didn't miss. Pair it with a side of furikake-spiced fingerling potatoes ($11), served with more of that delectable sesame mayo. Belfare. 1410 S McDowell Blvd. # D, Petaluma. While in Petaluma, I took a stroll through downtown and passed a sandwich board at the entrance to an alley advertising a business called Once Upon a Slush. After walking past a row of industrial garbage bins, my expectations were low, but I perked up at the sight of two women eating layered frozen desserts out of tiny plastic cups. Once Upon a Slush sells both Italian ices and soft serve, and the trick, one of the women told me, is to combine them. The full menu was overwhelming with various syrups, floats, shakes, frappes and such, so I just copied her order — creamsicle, with a belt of vanilla soft serve bisecting two bands of orange Italian ice ($5). As the owner of the shop handed over my kiddie cup, he said confidently, 'See you tomorrow.' If I lived in Petaluma, he probably would.
San Francisco Chronicle
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
The Presidio's new restaurant serves pizza and pasta. But this is the surprising standout
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. Perhaps this is a holdover from living in New York for so long, but I'm always a little surprised when the best thing on the menu is a salad — especially at a restaurant that serves easy-to-love pizzas and pastas. But indeed, as good as the corn pizza was at the new Piccino Presidio, it was the shaved fennel and endive salad that commanded my full attention. I smelled the saffron vinaigrette before I tasted it. Gobs of soft feta, pickled sultanas, crunchy radishes and a smoky olive chermoula added interest to every bite. In her article about Bernal Heights wine bar Komaaj, which specializes in Northern Iranian cuisine, my colleague Esther Mobley wrote about a dish of green olives dressed with pomegranate molasses, barberries and herbs that she popped like candy. We almost didn't order them, fools we are, but our server insisted, saying they were the best thing on the menu. I'm not sure she was correct — the sweet and sour chicken stew was wonderful as well — but they were a puckery addition to the mazze spread. Komaaj Mazze Wine Bar. 20 29th St., San Francisco. Here's a real corker of a deal: On weekends, Los Moles Hecho En Casa offers a top notch Mexican buffet for $25 at its San Rafael, Emeryville and El Cerrito locations. Because I always think it wise to approach a buffet with a game plan, I would recommend focusing on the seven housemade moles. The chocolatey mole poblano and mole Mama Luisa, red ocher in color and made with guajillo chiles, were my favorites of the bunch. There's also meltingly tender cabeza de res; menudo and pozole rojo; a salad bar with fruit and veg; and cafe de olla and cinnamon tea. Warm tortillas, freshly pressed at a kiosk right as you walk in the door, are delivered to every table. Micheladas ($10) are not included, but advisable. Los Moles Hecho En Casa. 912 Lincoln Ave., San Rafael.
San Francisco Chronicle
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
This Top 100 restaurant is huge in Japan
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. I've been hearing from friends and readers alike that they're checking off restaurants on the Top 100, and, girl, same. (Either my colleague Cesar Hernandez or I ate at each of the restaurants on the list, but we both didn't go to all of them.) I recently paid a visit to No. 35 Kajiken, one of Cesar's picks. The San Mateo restaurant is an outpost of a popular Japanese chain that specializes in aburasoba, brothless noodles with mix and match toppings like ground meat, raw egg yolk and veggies. I opted for the nikumori aburasoba ($17.95), which features pork two ways — thinly sliced and finely minced — with scallions and an egg yolk. The noodles are endlessly customizable with a long list of add-ons and included condiments, but I followed our server's guidance and stuck to a side order of yogurt sauce ($1.25), a healthy glug of vinegar (essential) and a few twists of a grinder of dried garlic. Fantastic stuff worth waiting in line for, and I can't wait to return and try other combinations. Burrata is often a phoned-in menu item, an easy-to-love dairy bomb that sounds fancy and doesn't require cooking, save for, potentially, a condiment. Fellow Top 100 restaurant Rich Table 's current burrata dish ($23), a riff on saag paneer, is aggressively not that and was, in fact, the highlight of a memorable recent meal. Dark leafy greens, cooked down with fresh fenugreek and other Indian spices, were a revelatory accompaniment to the creamy cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. The dish was served with warm roti, so satisfying to pull apart and swish through the spread. Words I reach for when describing dips might include 'creamy,' 'silky' or even 'gooey,' but Dolores Deluxe 's Okinawa sweet potato dip ($8.49 for a half-pint container) is the first I've tried that is undeniably bouncy. Boysenberry purple in color and terrifically garlicky, it's still dippable — you'll have no trouble dragging a pita chip through it — but in very un-diplike fashion, it pulls away from the sides of the container. Is it flubber? The texture reminds me a little of that jelly blush that all the makeup influencers are swatching on TikTok. Bring it to your next picnic, the color alone makes it a guaranteed showstopper.
San Francisco Chronicle
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
S.F. Chronicle joins the lineup for San Francisco Story Fest
The San Francisco Chronicle is joining San Francisco Story Fest, an evening of live storytelling at the Herbst Theatre on July 19. Produced by Back Pocket Media, Story Fest brings the city's most captivating tales to stage for one night only, featuring a mix of local artists and storytellers from Bay Area media outlets, including Mother Jones, KQED, KALW, Berkeleyside, SF Standard, Mission Local and Bay City News. Throughout the evening, journalists will pull back the curtain on their reporting, sharing some of their most riveting stories and the surprising journeys behind them. From the Chronicle newsroom, restaurant critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan will take the mic with a tale of romance — and roast lamb — in a mall basement food court. Get your tickets now for a night of thrilling stories and performances in San Francisco. Early bird tickets from $35 are on sale today. Back Pocket Media has produced previous editions of Story Fest in Philadelphia and Detroit, as well as other live experiences across the country. SF Story Fest is sponsored by the Knight Foundation with support from MOAD.
