Restaurant Review: Town Hall, San Francisco, CA

A recently culinary tour of San Francisco with a couple girlfriends found us dining at Town Hall for a Wednesday night dinner. One of our party had been here before, not long after its 2003 opening, and had remembered it as being something special.

We began the evening with the standard basket of bread (nice and crusty) while we shared a bottle of 2007 Copain 'Tous Ensemble' Viognier.

Then our appetizer appeared: crispy squash blossoms, four cheese filling, basil pesto and tomato vinaigrette. It was perfectly crispy and the cheese nice and gooey. It was a beautiful medley of tastes and textures!

Soon after, we received our soup and salad. The soup of the day was a delectable vichyssoise (a cold, creamy, potato-leek soup) that was topped with a light sprinkling of chopped chives. The texture was silky smooth and the soup itself was exquisitely seasoned. The salad we chose to share was the Chopped Vegetable Salad with English peas, artichokes, Brentwood corn, parmesan and sherry vinaigrette. Again, this dish was perfectly seasoned and the vegetables provided just the right amount of crunch.

When it came time for the entrees, we ordered the halibut, short ribs and gnocchi. The Roasted Alaskan Halibut was served over a serving of corn pudding along with porcini mushrooms, fava beans and bay shrimp salsa verde. The flavors were wonderful and the sear on the halibut was a beautiful caramel color with the slightest hint of a crunch. The Creekstone Beef Short Ribs were served with an array of potato gnocchi, artichokes, carrots, spring garlic and red wine jus. It was very flavorful and tender - just as short ribs should be! Finally, the House-made Potato Gnocchi. It was mixed with Brentwood corn, morels, English peas and shaved Umbria truffles. The marbled appearance of the truffles was beautiful and the flavor of the dish was rich without being overpowering (in other words, no heavy sauce).

Now, although we all had enjoyed our dinner immensely up until this point, the creme de la creme really came at dessert time. Although several dishes caught our eye, one in particular seemed to call to us: the Sticky Toffee Cake. The cake was presented before us and our eyes about popped out of their sockets. It was a beautiful, spongy caramel colored cake swimming in a sea of thick, delicious caramel, topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a sprinkling of chopped nuts. It was completely decadent and it was the one thing we found ourselves talking about for the rest of the evening and the next day!

I would highly recommend this restaurant to others, my only gripes being that it was a pretty noisy room and although our server was quite knowledgeable, after taking our orders, we didn't see much of him...

You like me. You really like me!

So, I just had the surprise of my life when I checked my e-mail. I received an e-mail from Yelp.com ("Real reviews, real people") that I had received a compliment. I went to my page and someone had said "Congrats on ROTD for Ella Dining Room and Bar." I was confused. I know what ROTC is...what the hell is ROTD??? Before I knew it, there was another compliment referencing the same thing!

Turns out, the review I had written about Ella Dining Room and Bar a week and a half ago was voted by all Sacramento users as today's Review of the Day (ROTD...duh). So today, and today only, if you go to the following website: Yelp! Sacramento you will see yours truly! For someone that has always had a secret desire to be a writer, this is a total rush!!

I just had to share... :-D

Dinner at Ella (Ella, Ella, ey, ey, ey, dinner at Ella, Ella, Ella, ey, ey, ey...)

On the evening of Tuesday, June 3rd, my buddy Stephanie and I made our way over to Randall Selland's newest culinary venture: Ella Dining Room and Bar. After depositing my car with the able-bodied valets, Stephanie and I made our way into the dining room at Ella and were immediately impressed by the décor. Immediately in front of you is a cold bar, chock-full of ice which is chilling the days selection of Oysters, marinated olives, and ceviche. On the ceiling and some of the walls are rustic, multi-colored wooden shutters. Very warm.

We began our evening by ordering a Cucumber Martini and an Elderflower Gimlet - both were smooth and oh-so-enjoyable! This was paired with the olive oil, citrus, garlic and rosemary marinated olives. They were EXCELLENT!

Happily, the restaurant was booked (strange for a Tuesday) and when our server inquired as to whether we had any time constraints, we were happy to tell him "no. We'd love to just take our time!" After enjoying our olives, we ordered two small plates to share (actually, we shared everything the entire evening) as well as a yummy bottle of Chenin Blanc from Mulderbosch Winery in South Africa. The first small plate we received was the Pan-Seared Diver Scallops with Mushrooms and Coconut Broth. There were two scallops on the plate and they were HUGE. Cooked to perfection with a nice caramel-colored sear, the scallops were cut-with-a-fork and melt-in-your-mouth amazing... And the broth? We wanted to lick the bowl. The second small plate we tried was a fabulous serving of Gnocchi with Broccolini, Parma Prosciutto, Organic Cream and Shaved Parmesan. Oh. My. God. The gnocchi were perfectly light and fluffy little clouds of love and the sauce? Wow. I want to cry just thinking about it...

After these two small plates, we continued perusing our way through the menu and ordered a vegetable dish: Roasted Baby Beets with Pistachio, Watercress and Olio Nuevo Olive Oil. The beets were sweet and perfectly roasted. The pistachios and watercress, although not plentiful, provided a wonderful contrast in texture and this dish was also heavenly.

Two entrées were then shared by Stephanie and I: Raviolis of Mushrooms and Fresh Goat Cheese with Leeks and Black Truffle Butter and Pan Roasted Halibut with Giant Rock Shrimp, Dill and English Pea Tortellini. For the first entrée, four giant, triangular-shaped raviolis adorned the plate with a naughtily-delicious black truffle butter and topped with a few dollops of goat cheese. The pasta was cooked to a perfect (yep, there's that word again) al dente and the mushroom filling was definitely enhanced by the flavor of the truffle butter. The halibut, like the scallops enjoyed at the beginning of the evening, was seared to a beautiful caramel color and the fish itself, even without the buttery dill sauce on the plate, could have been described as buttery. The sear provided an excellent crunch, the rock shrimp were tender and delicious and the filling of the English pea tortellini was a vibrant green that made you think of peas fresh-picked from the garden. All-in-all, each plate that was placed in front of us was...heavenly.

Stephanie and I closed the evening by sharing a glass of Michele Chiarlo Nivole Moscato d'Asti from Piedmont, Italy as well as the Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Bombe. And yes, you saw this pun coming, the Bombe really was........wait for it.........the bomb. We were very impressed with this restaurant and look forward to more trips back (especially when Dani and Greg visit again! :-) ) . From the decor to the excellent service to the remarkable food, everything was wonderful and perfect. Even the ladies' room...

A surreal lunch

So, I recently got home from the most surreal of outings. The beauty of the Internet, to me, comes in the form of social networking sites like MySpace and facebook. I've been able to reconnect with some band geeks from back in the day and today, three of us met up for lunch.

Good ol' Forrest Cicogni started the planning, but the guy lives in Brooklyn! Not exactly easy to plan a lunch reunion. Anyway, things finally fell together and I ended up meeting Forrest, his mom, class of '95 Karen (Churchill) Garcia and our favorite band director, Mark Tulga. I had run into Mr. Tulga (I don't care how old I get, I just can't call him Mark!) last summer as he was playing in the pit band for Music Circus in downtown Sacramento. Just an aside.

So, I came fully prepared with embarrassing pictures for all and we had a great time catching up. It was amazing to me that Mr. Tulga still remembered names and people from the one year he taught at Bella Vista. All in all, it was a good get-together. The turn-out could've been a bit more stellar than a whole THREE people, but it was good...

No pressure...

Hmmm. I find it rather daunting to sit here with my computer in my lap and a blog text-box at my fingertips. I mean, I had always enjoyed writing as a teen and still think that it would be awesome to write a hit novel one day... But I never know what my novel should be about. One would think a blog would make writing easier. But, when you don't have much of a life, it's a little difficult!!

I'm sitting here listening to Dog snore and lamenting the food choices I made today. Why do I torture myself? Nachos and Corona for lunch? Followed by a nap?? What happens when I nap with a tummy full of bad stuff? HEARTBURN!!! And what do I have for dinner? Raviolis with alfredo and marinara sauce. Seriously, I feel like I could belch flames...