My new coffee destination/cafe of the month is on Market Street near the Montgomery BART station, easily accessible to Union Square and Financial District/SoMa crowds alike. Mazarine serves coffee from a couple purveyors to please the coffee geek and quality bites for lunch and breakfast. Here is an article I wrote about the cafe at Zagat on January 21, 2015:… Read more →
This issue:
– Top Tastes – My Top 7 Dishes & New Openings for January: My 2 most notable new restaurant openings of January; out of dozens of dishes, the 7 best dishes of the month.
– Wandering Traveler – The Best of OC: My girlhood stomping grounds of Orange County have generally been a suburban, culinary wasteland but there are more signs of life with each passing year: a few in food, cocktails & coffee.
– Imbiber – Top Spirits, Wine & Beer in January: 3 wine standouts, a spirits standout and a mead (honey wine).
New Chefs, New Menus My Zagat take on new menus from brand new chefs at Gather in Berkeley and Marla Bakery in SF. New Openings of the Month Starting the new year off with a bang, there is a lot of promise at Californios (initial Zagat First Look here), a creative, high end-but-reasonably-priced tasting menu with Mexican influences in an… Read more →
Restaurants TACO MARIA, Costa Mesa Taco Maria is the kind of humble-yet-modern, “food first” kind of restaurant that made me fall in love with San Francisco when I moved there nearly 14 years ago — and I couldn’t find much of real quality in my old Orange County stomping grounds over the years. But times are finally changing in at… Read more →
Most days, I’m tasting a wide range of spirits, wines and beers, whether at restaurants and bars, distilleries, wineries or breweries or as samples crossing my desk. For January, here are 3 wine standouts, a spirits highlight and a notable mead. WINES of the MONTH – 2013 Azienda Agricola COS Frappato from Sicily: On Shelly Lindgren‘s impeccable Italian wine list… Read more →
My Winter 2014-2015 feature for Distiller Magazine on Louisville, KY, with a 11-page print spread, my photos and three articles: All three articles here. More of my Kentucky food and drink recommends here. ______________________________________ Past issues (top 10 bars, local distiller and bar manager interviews in each city): Save Read more →
This issue:
From my many articles a week as Zagat Editor, I summarize and link to some coverage highlights here – you can follow along on Twitter @ZagatSF, where I post daily, or on my own @ThePerfectSpot via Twitter or Facebook. New SF Openings Californios & Chef Val Cantu’s Creative, Mexican-Influenced Tasting Menus Hot Dish: Chris Cosentino’s “Ham” Burger at the new… Read more →
Over the holidays, I returned twice to LA (years of recommends here), a region where I lived 12 years of my life and still have family. My recent cocktail/drink standouts are here and my latest food and dining reviews to follow. On the disappointing front, though staying around the corner from The Pie Hole, I found the pastries and coffee… Read more →
Recently, I received no less than three new Añejo or Extra Añejos imports from Mexico. “Añejo” means aged in Spanish and this tequila category is essentially the clear spirit one starts with as a blanco tequila, but aged a minimum of one year (and less than three years) in oak barrels. Extra Añejo is a newer category that means the tequila… Read more →