When I first dined at Meyhouse in Sunnyvale in 2019 not long after it opened, it was the best Turkish restaurant I’d been to in the West. So when I heard they were opening their second, more elegant Palo Alto location, I was “in,” despite the 45-ish minute drive there and back from San Francisco. As often happens, the opening was delayed, but Meyhouse finally debuted August 9, 2023, in a massive space with open air windows overlooking walkable downtown Palo Alto. Read more →
Multiple road trips through the South for 17 years, studying BBQ styles across states and regions, does, indeed, make me a barbecue “snob.” I have long known it’s nearly impossible to find the “best of the best” outside of the South. So thank God for Matt Horn, who makes the best barbecue I’ve had in the entire West at Oakland’s Horn Barbecue.
I wrote about his fried chicken spot, Kowbird, after it opened early 2022. Horn and team just opened Matty’s Old Fashioned on July 20, 2023, in Old Oakland as his tribute to the classic American diner, but reinvented and refined. Think burgers and McDonald’s-esque fish sandwiches in a brick-walled, blue-and-gold, diamond wall-papered space… Read more →
My Sicilian side can tend to dominate. That intense passion for the things I love, bordering on an obsessive impulse to research, study and dig deep, includes food. This was only fueled by homecooked pastas and sauces from my Italian mama and grandfather growing up on both coasts. Add in my crucial teen years in New Jersey after we moved across the nation from SoCal and my hankering for red sauce, American-Sicilian food was solidifed in Jersey and NYC’s deep Sicilian culture.
Here, I dig into two spots, one new, one old. The new pizza destination in Berkeley turns out pies from Sicilian to NY-inspired, and the latter is an over 80-year-old San Francisco red sauce American-Italian institution always worth keeping on your dining rotation. Read more →
Opened October 2021 by Finn Stern and Stella Dennig, as Oakland’s Daytrip approaches one and a half years of age, it has become clear it’s one of the city’s best restaurants now. It was named one of Bon Appetit’s top 10 new restaurants in America in 2022 and is one of the tougher reservations in OAK. Read more →
We step inside Coho, a sustainable seafood eatery inspired by the California coast: Read more →
From recent staycations in the Silicon Valley town of Sunnyvale to the coast in Half Moon Bay, for 21 years I’ve researched and written of hotels, food and drink across the Peninsula. The Bay Area’s “south Bay” is yet another rich and diverse county in our wonderland of NorCal food.
My 10 Time Out dining recommends in Palo Alto still stand — as does a totally different getaway off the 101 freeway in Palo Alto, Four Seasons Silicon Valley. But here are three key newcomers in dining and a boutique hotel worth a local getaway. Read more →
I’ve been dining at Joe’s sister, Original Joe’s Westlake, under prior owners for the last two decades. Bruno Scatena opened Joe’s of Westlake in 1956, which was eventually run by his daughter, Melinda Scatena, who worked there since she was 14 years old, selling it as she ran into health problems. My husband, Dan “The Renaissance Man,” and I adored it in those years and it was perpetually packed as if it were the hottest new restaurant. Read more →
One of the most enchanting lodging options literally a stone’s throw from San Francisco is Cavallo Point, tucked into Fort Baker cove at the base of the hills right off Golden Gate Bridge in Sausalito, gazing out at SF, the Bay and the Bridge. Besides its breathtaking views, it could almost be a part of the city, it’s so close. Yet it’s worlds away. Read more →
Thin places — where heaven and earth come closer or the veil between the here and the otherworld is especially thin — is beloved lore for thousands of years. On California’s breathtaking Mendocino Coast, easily some of the most beautiful and mystical coastline in the world, the couple thousand acres of private coast and redwood forest that is home to The Inn at Newport Ranch since owner Will Jackson bought the land in the 1980s is just such a thin place. Read more →
When Michelin Guide and Rémy Martin Cognac host a weekend with Healdsburg (the popular town in northern Sonoma County) greats, you go. Especially when its with three Michelin, The World’s 50 Best Restaurants’ SingleThread and luxe hotel Montage Healdsburg… and in your “backyard” just over an hour from home… Following in these steps, a pampering weekend or overnight could involve either or both of these restaurants and a stay at the Montage with highlights and key points on each. Read more →