October 2011
39 posts
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Amy Brown, the Brunch Goddess →
Amy Brown, our fearless brunch leader, creator of all things delicious, this honor should be yours.
David Golovin, keep rockin’ the sausages!
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Musings on Recent Wine By the Glass Additions Nopa...
Cleaning out my inbox and found some of the recent write-ups from Chris Deegan, Nopa Wine Director. I am enamored with these two glass pours so decided they should get some air time. These notes were adopted from Deegan.
2009 Domaine Combier Crozes-Hermitage
Domaine Combier is one of my favorite Rhone producers. This is a statement of consequence since Syrah is one of my favorite grapes....
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“so what are we to make of all our hesitations, our self imposed mental and...”
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“Knowledge is the annihilation of the separation between me and the other”
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Drinking Earth: The Magic of Pu-erh, Part 2
Yesterday, I waxed on about the earthy delights of pu-erh tea. You can read about it here. In this post, I take the easy route, making analogies between wine and pu-erh, and also offer tasting notes.
As we tasted, at some point the dialog predictably shifted to wine—not surprising as pu-erh is undoubtedly the wine of the tea world. It improves with age and most of those we tasted were...
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Steve Jobs
The sad thing about geniuses is they always leave us too soon. They give us everything, and we are left to wonder what more could’ve been. Here, a post from August 26 after his resignation. RIP, Steve. Your inspiration lives on.
I was a late comer to the Steve Jobs phenomenon. In the Bay, Apple users are equal parts Apple evangelicals and Jobs disciples. I got it, but not like they did....
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Pu-erh Magic: A Tasting of Silk Road Pu-erh Part 1 →
Yesterday was pretty awesome. I popped in to Nopa to upload video from the Flipcam to our hard drive. I was making space for our tasting with Tom Bulleit on Thursday. I was surprised to see Xandre there too since it was his day off. I soon discovered he had an appointment with our tea purveyor to taste tea along with Brooke and Chris. The discussion of adding (or rather, reviving) pu-erh tea on...
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“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for...”
– TS Eliot
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Part 2: 2009: The Year of Beaujolais That Took Me...
Welcome to Part 2 of the 2009 Beaujolais retrospective. Below is a profile of three of the wines from this vintage that have granted me a new respect for the year, and offered yet another reminder on the importance of bottle maturation. If you need a primer, check out Part 1 here. Enjoy!
2009 Thévenet Grain & Granite Régnié
People who are super into wine read both sides of the label....
2009: The Year of Beaujolais That Took Me a Year...
2009 Beaujolais. People couldn’t get enough of it. Jancis Robinson, whose wine opinion I value more than any other on the planet, called 2009 “The Year of Beaujolais”. Countless other writers and critics were early adopters compounding the fervor of the vintage.
If the title of this post makes no sense to you, I will quickly provide a diatribe on perceived wine snobbery and...
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Good Faith Farm: Raw Olives
The importance of olives and the olive tree date back thousands of years. From countless biblical references to ancient Greece, the olive tree has stood as a symbol of joy, abundance and victory; the leafy branches being used as crowns for the victors of games and war. The Roman poet Horace references the importance of olives in his diet at around 30 BC and the Koran regards it as an...
September 2011
9 posts
5 tags
Last Night, Michael Pollan Had Dinner at Nopa
For self proclaimed activists or at least participants in the local food movement, this was very cool. Xandre was giddy. I was too, actually. It was a weird feeling to be in awe of someone in the same way you’d be in awe of a favorite athlete or musician, only to realize the subject is a soft spoken (though outspoken) academic in their mid fifties. But that’s Michael Pollan. No one...
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Honored to be Number One burger in San Francisco →
But, please note that we do not use Marin Sun Farms chuck any longer.
Instead, we proudly use Prather Ranch, located in Northern California near Mt. Shasta.
Thanks again to everyone in SF for this honor.
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Blue Bottle Coffee in Fortune Magazine →
Great article about Blue Bottle Coffee and its founder/CEO/our friend James Freeman.
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Bay Area Palate: Chow Report: NOPA (Western... →
bayareapalate:
N.O.P.A. : AN ACRONYM, AND ALSO A LITTLE SLICE OF HEAVEN
Last weekend, I had the fine pleasure of attending the Western Addition restaurant, Nopa, for a bountiful brunch.
Nopa is located at Divasadero and Hayes. It’s this mysterious looking building — in fact, it barely has…
Can't Wait For Our New Neighbors! →
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Perhaps a reminder
I came across this quote for the second time in my life and now, having ventured more deeply into the world of food and wine, it resonates quite differently than it did when I was in high school. Even as I began to develop an interest in food and wine, I hardly ever associated them with anything political. I know this association develops according to where you are raised, where you get your food,...
