Dad's Crab Dinner Report

Hi Caroline:

Mom, Elaina and I had a very enjoyable repast at Pleasant Hill's Left Bank restaurant this evening. I was very appreciative to have read the musings of Paul and Heather prior to going. I read Heather's account of the Muscadet and the oysters. When I sat down and picked up the menu the first thing I noticed was that they very appropriately had Muscadet as one of their offerings by glass, carafe or full bottle, which of course put me in the right frame of mind immediately! The second thing my eye caught was oysters on the half-shell. So before even looking at the rest of the menu I ordered the oysters and a carafe of Muscadet to be brought immediately. One of the benefits of going with Mom and Elaina is that neither one drinks wine nor likes oysters on the half shell ..... thus they were mine alone! So Heather's writing got me off to a good start.

I must give Paul a big A+ for his endeavor in holding nothing back in quest of what hopefully would have been (should have been) the best crab offering possible in the supposed dungenesss crab capital of San Francisco, but after reading his dilemma I had to give Left Bank a pretty good report.

When I made the reservation eight days ago I first called the restaurant and told the host that answered, "Before I book my reservation with Open Table please confirm that you are taking part in the SF Dungeness Crab Celebration". He gave me a resounding affirmative. I further asked, "And you will have the cookbook also"? I again got an affirmative. So not only was the staff aware, but in fact they were enthusiastic. So off I went tonight, utilized the services of the valet parking (why engage in the stress of looking for a parking place?), and entered the restaurant. The first thing I noticed in the lobby was a floor stand announcing the crab event, and the sign was totally encircled with cutouts of crabs while the opposite side of the lobby had some other display calling attention to the special. So they did a decent job of playing it up.

The two special dishes that they offered were both in the appetizer category, and neither was a staple of their regular menu. One item was crab cakes and the other item was a crab salad. Both were superb. The first dish consisted of two fairly large crab cakes that were very pronounced in their flavor. They were not the seemingly 100% solid crab meat that we had previously experienced at Ruth Chris, but the amount of dungeness crab in the recipe was substantial and the flavor really came through. It was accompanied by a tartar sauce that was obviously prepared fresh in the kitchen; it was very good and complimented the crab cake very well. Also on the dish was a freshly made cole slaw that was also quite good. Mom is not a cole slaw fan, but she cleaned her plate of this one!

I must say though that the crabcakes that Paul made at the previous crabfest (the one that I actually could partake of!) are still Number One!

The crab salad consisted of a very mild (but flavorful!) red pepper flan in the center of the plate dressed on each side with slightly crunchy french green beans that were split lengthwise in half. On each side of the base of the flan was a very thin line of a green creamy substance which Mom thinks was an extremely mild wasabi which gave the flan just a very slight tang. Then one-half of the dish just to one side of the flan and slightly overlapping it was a generous pile of fresh crab which in turn was covered by frisee. The Musdcadet paired beautifully with both dishes.
The other food items that we ordered were also excellent and the service at our table was flawless, so we had a great night. For her entree Elaina ventured to have a marinated venison that was in a red wine reduction sauce and accompanied by walnuts and miniature chestnuts. She was very pleased with it. Prior to the arrival of the bill the Maitre D came to the table and personally presented me with my cookbook, so I didn't even have to ask for it.
Retrospectively, however, I would say that if I hadn't already been aware of Paul's critique I would have come away disappointed that more crab selections were not offered. Such a potentially great food event with such a great food item as its "star" should have featured at least one main entree offering and additionally an offering of pure crab such as some chilled, cracked crab or possibly a fresh crab meat cocktail.

Obviously each restaurant selects their own offerings. In response to my inquiry the two offerings that we had would be the same two each night for the duration of the promotion. Thus you could not go back another night and experience a different daily special dish.
Like Paul, I think that the cookbook they provided looks very good and has a lot of promising future recipes. I like all the color pictures that they have in the book, although I do not like their choice of print color. I find a lot of it to be difficult to read, but that is probably due to my eyes not being real sharp and requiring a lot of bold contrast. I was hoping that the food served at the restaurant would be chosen from among the items within the cookbook, but that does not seem to be the case. The two we had tonight I did not notice in the book, and also did not notice the dish that Paul described as being in the book either.

One thing is abundantly clear.......

The greatest restaurants and chefs in the San Francisco bay area.....

DO NOT TOP THE GREAT MARTINEZ CRABFEST AND CERTAINLY DO NOT EXCEED THE ENTHUSIASM AND EXPERTISE OF THE MARTINEZ CRABFEST CHEFS !

Looking forward to next year !!!

The Dad

Heather's Reply to Paul's Letter

Paul and fellow Crabfestians:

The English professor in me has won the contest against the Crabfestian in me to see who gets to speak first in my comments about your extraordinary and hilarious contribution to Crabfest lore. So here goes: I was so taken by the writing I had to take a t.v. time out, regroup, and then reread for the Crabfest content. What a read! I just loved it. It also makes me realize that we must have received a very quality education at our respective Catholic schools (Mr. Tancredy -- that was a shout out to all parents who agreed to pay Carondo/De La Salle tuition). You and Caroline both write so beautifully.

Sadly, my contribution to continuing Crabfest into the new year is neither as glamorous nor as gallant nor as well written. That's okay. I am content to be the newest and most unexperienced addition to the team. Regardless, I was thinking of all of you when friends and I celebrated my 36th birthday at a wine bar Tuesday night (when, incidentally, I had a freudian slip and called it my "thirty sick" birthday, and I was not even tipsy; but that, as Caroline would say, is a story for another day). As we gathered around a delightfully casual table and ordered the "happy hour oysters" in abundance, Aram asked the waiter what wine would pair best. The answer (and don't ruin it for me kids, I know you wine-people already know): Muscadet! It was perfect. At which point I had two thoughts/reactions, both of them including the Crabfest team:

1. Have I learned nothing from our experience? Clearly not enough to transform my ordering experience in the here-and-now. Let me clarify. When I arrived at the wine bar after a day that was frankly just too damn demanding for a girl who likes her birthday, I ordered with relief my standby, which is some type of sassy and satisfying red. Dave actually ordered it for me when I was in the loo, so I am not even sure what I got. It was good, though; competent, not extraordinary. And then Aram arrived . . . had the forethought to ask the waiter what went well with the oysters . . . and received the perfect wine for the dish at hand, which was the aforementioned Muscadet
.
Now, Aram has an unfair advantage over me since he is gay (and everyone knows the gays order better) and more patient. But still, I think his advantageous ordering and my misstep came down to this: I was so relieved to have a glass of wine, I did not adopt any of the lessons that my long affiliation with the Tancredy family or my equally long friendship with Paul taught me.

I mean, come on. Mr. Tancredy is the one who taught me how to drink wine, at least how to drink wine that does not come out of a box (which was a favorite of mine during my Spain days); additionally, Crabfest is dedicated to the whole concept not only of crab, but also of what wine goes best with certain crab preparations (I should have abstracted that lesson to all seafood, at least). And another thing: nothing gives me the giddy delight as eating, cooking, or ordering with Paul and Caroline (and now, my new BFF's, Mike and Kate). It is like being the geeky student I was born to be all over again -- I get to sit back and absorb all of the knowledge that they both have of food and wine pairing (apparently, being an Aquarius also gives me my propensity to like it when others tell me what to think).

Quite frankly, the professor in me is annoyed at the student in me. Luckily, because it was my birthday, Aram let me have as many drinks of his wine as I wanted. It just occurred to me that I actually could have ordered my own Muscadet, but clearly I was not working with a full deck, people.

2. My second thought: I will take any occasion to reminisce publically and at length about Crabfest. This is not something I normally like to do, by which I mean telling long and intricate stories about some extraodinary experience that I had but none of my listeners were a part of. That just does not seem like much fun for all parties involved. But Crabfest, as we all know, is in its own category of a-story-that-must-be-told. Of course, my wine ordering debacle gave me the perfect opening to tell my Crabfest experience all over again. It was to my benefit that everyone had to listen to me because it was my birthday.

May Crabfest forever live on.

H

PW's Crab Event

Well, all week I envisioned that this morning I would be able to write you a glowing review of the opening night of San Francisco Dungeness Crab Week, highlighting all the different ways in which crab was offered and the delicious creations I was able to sample and that we might some day replicate at a Crabfest. Alas, it appears San Francisco has a substantially different idea of how to run a “Crab Week” than we would. Continue reading at your own crab-loving risk…

So just to set the stage, when I first read about SFDCW, I was of course ecstatic. Finally, the restaurants in the city were going to formally celebrate something that we had been celebrating for quite some time. What a great idea. The print, in bold, on Opentable.com, where I first read about the event, was “Enjoy Dungeness Crab in signature dishes or special tasting menus at restaurants across the Bay Area.” Signature dishes! Special Tasting Menus!! In bold!!! Hooray!!!!! And, what’s more, if you paid with your Visa Signature Card, you got a “commemorative cookbook featuring Dungeness Crab signature recipes from San Francisco ’s leading chefs, while supplies last.” A whole cookbook devoted exclusively to Dungeness Crab??? Wow, God really does listen.

Now some may argue that my expectations and enthusiasm were a little too high but this is crab we’re talking about. I didn’t expect them to understand. But you understood. I understood. It was going to be awesome. I looked at the restaurants listed, searched for the one I thought had the best food along with a history of embracing local ingredients, and chose Jardinere. Not exactly your bargain choice but hey, when it comes to crab, I’m not going small. I’m going big. Thursday night, February 19, opening night of SFDCW. Table for 2. Book it. I am ready. I might even wear my crabfest t-shirt underneath.

The first hint of trouble came when I got the call from Jardinere confirming my reservation. I told them yes, I would be there, and then asked them to confirm that they would have the Crab Week cookbooks available, since it was to be the first night of the event and I was concerned they might not have arrived yet. “Cookbooks? Crab Week? What are you talking about?” said the reservationist. Hmmmm. There must be something wrong here. I asked, “You aren’t participating in San Francisco Dungeness Crab Week?” “No, we aren’t,” she said. Hmmmm again. I kept the reservation, hoping she was just unaware, but was disappointed that the restaurant clearly hadn’t made the effort to educate those on the front lines. Somehow I think I also imagined some decoration and fan fare adorning the restaurant. Dishes with crabs on them. Red streamers from the ceilings. But clearly they weren’t around if this person was so oblivious.

Undaunted, I started calling the other restaurants listed. La Folie. 1300 on Fillmore. Grand Café. Bix. Betelnut. Sadly, Jardinere was not alone in its clueless response. Even those aware of the event didn’t appear to be doing anything special for it. Waterbar, for instance, said that, yes, they would have cracked Dungeness Crab available. “Don’t you always have cracked Dungeness Crab on the menu?” I asked. “Yes.” “So, it’s no different than usual, there isn’t a special on the menu featuring crab?” “No.” Where were the signature dishes?!? Where were the special tasting menus?!? Where was the bold font?!?

I finally stumbled upon one place that was not only aware of SFDCW, but enthusiastic about it: Fifth Floor. Also not exactly your bargain choice but at this point, I was just thrilled to get a positive response. She told me they would have “several dishes” featuring crab. She didn’t know exactly what the tasting menu would entail, and didn’t think it would be all crab, but guessed it would have one or two crab-themed dishes in it. Ok, no special tasting menu, but “several” signature dishes. Now we’re talking. Fifth Floor it is. I canceled Jardinere. I’m going big. Thursday night, February 19, opening night of SFDCW. Table for 2. Book it. I am ready!

In everybody’s life a little rain must fall, my dad always said. And ladies, rain fell on table 14 at the Fifth Floor restaurant last night. Abbey and I sat down, opened our menus, and found one dish that had crab. One dish. The tasting menu had zero. I had been duped. Crab lovers everywhere had been duped. Dungeness Crab Week? They didn’t even have Dungeness Crab Night! I wanted to get up and leave in protest.

But where else would I go? I hadn’t found anywhere else with signature dishes or special tasting menus. And the one dish did look pretty good. I decided one answer would determine if I were to stay or go. When our server returned to take our drink order, I asked, “Do you have the commemorative crab cookbook? Will I get one if I pay with my Visa Signature card?” “Yes. It has 44 recipes in it, each from a different restaurant in San Francisco and each featuring Dungeness Crab” Ok. I’ll stay. Forty-four crab recipes is worth it.

So we stayed. We both started with the lone crab dish, the Cappucino de Crabe. It was excellent. The bottom of the dish was filled with fresh crab meat, though remained unseen and covered in a truffle foam. Then, poured into the foam at the table, was a crab bisque, which we each paired with a glass of sherry (per the sommelier’s recommendation). The dish overall was a tad too salty but that’s really splitting hairs. Overall, it was outstanding, and the combination of the crab meat, bisque and foam in one spoonful was a textural nirvana in your mouth. The sherry also made for a very nice pairing and helped cut some of the richness of the bisque.

While that dish alone didn’t entirely quell my disappointment in the meal, I will say that the recipe book alone appears to make the entire ordeal and disappointment worth it. It isn’t some well presented leather-bound hardcover tome, but the recipes contained within are plentiful and varied, and there are several I anticipate entering future Crabfests. They all look amazing and don’t just list crab as an ingredient, they feature it. And not just any crab, but Dungeness Crab. I plan to take it to Kinko’s this weekend and make copies to send, if they’ll let me. If not I’ll try and scan it next week and email you the .pdf so you can peruse them yourselves.

Anyway, while SFDCW was less than my original expectations it was at least a step in the right direction and hopefully the cook book will serve us well for many Crabfests to come. Despite all the fan fare, I realized that even in a city such as San Francisco , Crabfest Martinez is unparalleled in its enthusiasm and commitment to the Dungeness Crab, and it made me appreciate my fellow Crabfestians even more.

In Crabhood,

Paul