One of my close friends that used to live in San Francisco insisted that I had to eat at the Hog Island Oyster company when I visited over the holidays. While weren’t able to go to the Ferry Building location because it was a madhouse, we managed to accidentally find another one in the city of Napa.

This was definitely one of the better meals I had during my California trip.

Restaurant week at Yerba Buena Perry. While good, I wouldn’t say it was amazing. The fish tacos were tasty, but Mexican Radio’s is better. And I always think coconut-flavored desserts just end up tasting like sun tan lotion.

Probably one of the best meals I had in California, Tacos Garcia is a taco truck in the town of Yountville in the Napa Valley. In fact, they were so good that we had to go back the next day to have it again before we left Napa. It’s located just a few doors down from the legendary French Laundry.

Some of the tacos we tried included asada (beef), carnitas (fried pork), roast pork, beef cheek, and pollo (chicken). They also have a longaniza taco that I was dying to try, but unfortunately they were out of longaniza when I went. All their normal tacos are just $1.50 each, so of course I had 4.

An early dinner last night at Recette in the West Village. The restaurant was recently featured in New York Magazine’s What To Eat issue, so given my current bias for French cooking I decided to try it out. The menu consists of small plates, but not really the sharing kind like tapas (but of course, everyone tried each other’s food).

Overall, I enjoyed the meal despite a few missteps - the tete de cochon was underwhelming and the pork belly, while good, was dry at the bottom. The lamb loin was really good though and may even pass my “Was it memorable?” test a few weeks from now.

Last summer, I enrolled in a class at the Institute of Culinary Education. I had wanted to take a cooking class for some time now since I’ve never really been taught the “right” way to cook. I just kind of made it up as I went when I was learning. The class I signed up for was Fine Cooking 1 - basically the fundamentals of French cooking (sauteing, roasting, braising, etc).

I like to cook often so a lot of what we discussed was familiar to me. Despite this, I definitely learned a lot and would consider signing up for the next class in the series.

Here are some of the things we made in class.

Dynamo Coffee and Donut in San Francisco

Continuing my account of amazing Nantucket food stuff, The Juice Bar is a local ice cream/smoothie shop in the middle of town. Not only do they have dozens of flavors to choose from, but they also bake their own waffle cones and cups on premises. In fact, as you approach Juice Bar’s cross street, the distinct smell of baked goodness hits you and gets your appetite ready for the upcoming deliciousness.

Their ice cream was none like I’ve had before - so thick that you could basically chew on it. I would even venture to say that the consistency was almost like Play Doh. However, this was not necessarily a bad thing. Normally, ice cream melts and loses its firmness minutes after you get it, but the Juice Bar ice cream stayed firm and chewy a good 10-15 after I started eating. I personally like my ice cream rock hard for the specific reason that I like biting into it, so I thoroughly enjoyed the texture.

The flavor I had was Native Blackberry - which I was told was made from handpicked Nantucket blackberries that the Juice Bar staff had picked themselves (awesome!). It definitely had a rich berry flavor with a great balance of sweetness and tartness. Definitely a must have if visiting the island.

I recently was in Nantucket with my friends that just got married. For the last 2 years, they had been telling me about this amazing burger they had there and how I needed to try it. It definitely was one of the things I was most looking forward to when planning the trip.

The place itself is pretty unassuming - just a normal food shack at the entrance of a public beach (Surfside Beach). Orders are taken through one window and you pick them up at a second window a couple of steps to the right. Aside from burgers, they serve hotdogs, frozen slushies and a variety of other packaged snacks and beverages. We hit the lunch rush when we decided to grab food, but like all other good stuff, you have to be willing to wait.

After one bite, I had to admit the burger was pretty awesome. The patty was perfectly cooked and just the right thickness. I’m not a big fan of giant patties that can’t really fit in your mouth. I find the when burgers are too thick the outer edges become dry. Although what really made this burger exceptional was the freshness of the lettuce and tomato.

While I can’t say with certainty that this was the best burger I ever had, it’s definitely up there. It’s hard to remove the fact that you are able to enjoy your burger while lying on the beach from the overall eating experience. All I can say is I want another one.

Here was our dinner last night care of my chef friend Alec. He made this amazing BBQ pork butt served as sliders with homemade coleslaw and a red wine jus. The thing with BBQ is that it takes forever, but when done well (in this particular case) you get super tender flavorful meat.

My contribution was dessert, and I made my mom’s Lemon Meringue Pie. This was my first time trying to make the shortbread cookie crust instead of cheating by using a graham cracker one. Tart, sweet and light - a good end to a great meal.