Truffle inflation reaches crisis levels in Alameda

OK, seriously, NO ONE tell Daniel Patterson about this because he's going to start smashing aromatherapy bottles and taking hostages at Centerfolds or whatever.

It's not even been two weeks since the food writer/chef railed in the New York Times about the evil evil evils of so-called Truffle Oil which, hey, not only is completely unrelated to truffles but which also fell to Earth, presumably from outer space.

Today, from the City of Alameda, where the food has been getting more interesting as the island's military history recedes further into the past, we are presented via the Express with a new gastropub called Hobnob.

Where you can get, no really seriously, Truffle Fries, for FIVE DOLLARS.

Truffle. French fries. In a bar. For five. Dollars.

What could possibly be fishy about that?!

The Express' John Birdsall, a heavily armed food media don, is an impatient man with no time for surface narratives, and he obviously has no problem with this. To wit:

Look no further than the truffle fries — a dish that successfully balances fancy with the familiar profile of good old bar food — as proof of Amy Voisenat's ability to read Alameda. Forget some decadent fantasy of pommes frites sprinkled with shavings of black truffle. Voisenat's vision is a pile of skinny fries with a firm grasp of the ordinary, even lacking, as far as I could tell, the tossing with Parmesan and herbs the menu described. [WTF? They couldn't even deliver on herbs and powdered cheese?? For TRUFFLE FRIES? --ed.] They did, however, come with a ramekin of truffle aioli — really good truffle aioli: pale and soft and with bright acidity, a playful bite of garlic, and the delicious, dog-bed funk of truffle oil.

It was a dish that didn't seem like much on first dunk, but revealed a subtle and unpretentious sense of refinement the more you ate. And if all that truffle stuff seemed weird, I imagine you could ask for ketchup and just go on yakking. [We need to have a long conversation some time about word choice, John. Soon. -ed]

Truffle Oil has been a seductress to some of the nation's top chefs, like the chef de cuisine at Per Se.

And know she's going to instigate a bar fight between Daniel Patterson and John Birdsall, in Alameda, with broken bottles and EVERYTHING, and it's going to be awesome.

Daniel Patterson hates and detests visiting you; hired waiter with paranoid schizophrenia; has investors who are a little slow (if you catch my drift)

Daniel Patterson, a prolific magazine writer who apparently has his own restaurant, wrote today on Chez Pim about the burning shame of coming out of the kitchen to visit customer tables, where he feels like some kind of awkward mental case, which is not at all how any of us expect chefs to be, since they are known for their social graces.

Patterson much prefers the warm comfort of his kitchen, where a psychotic waiter almost killed everyone.

At least there he doesn't have to spend for-EVER at an investor's table and explain very slowly for the millionth time why the food keeps changing, as he did in his dining room on opening night.

The kitchen also keeps him away from what he calls his "bitchy neighbor," an architect who drives a baby blue BMW. (So best!)

Pim scored quite a coup by luring Patterson to her site. He normally writes for the New York Times' various magazines and glossy publications like San Francisco. When he wasn't writing articles or dodging Alice Waters' narco death squads he ran the restaurant Elisabeth Daniel (RIP) and the kitchen at Frisson.

Patterson says his opening day was "boring," but it's not so bad when you selectively quote his story out of context!!:

6:30 AM
Wake up. My blood has been siphoned off and replaced with barely molten lead.

7:15AM
The mechanical tech failed to start the [f--ing air conditioning]. This inspired me to leave a brief but colorful [explitive-laden and physically-threatening-to-the-point-of-illegality ] message with the contractor, encouraging them to pay a visit in the morning to finish the job [or, alternatively, take part in an impromptu seminar on what a well-sharpened chef's knife can do to human fingers]. There are excuses, which I break off [like so many sauteed contractor digits].

8:30AM
Our [a--hole neighbor] is a[n] architect of indeterminate ability [-- though his office is next to a strip club in a seedy part of town, if that tells you anything --] who owns a building in the back of the alley that abuts the restaurant. It'€™s a nice alley ... [considering the] two residential hotel buildings ... [and] Centerfolds[, which is exactly as classy as it sounds].

What is Mr. Architect most concerned about? [The strippers? The drug-addict-filled hovels next door?] Our garbage cans, which cannot remain outside during the day. It is a major obstacle in his grand scheme to turn the alley into the charming, tree-lined ... lane of someone'€s youth. [OK, of my youth. But you get the point.]

Our first sin had been ... forcing him to sit on many occasions for minutes at a time in his baby blue BMW M3 [(license plate: 'JERKOFF')], cartoon smoke rising from his ears, while a worker moved his truck.

9:30 AM
Having learned the painful way that an overly ambitious opening menu is the root of most quality and timing disasters, this time I'€™m playing it safe. This, as [so-called] friends noted rather sharply the previous evening, leaves the "€œinnovation" level a little light, but [they are jerks, and will not got invited to future preview dinners. I think I'll take that guy from Covers just to spite them].

I have ... voodoo ... we will ritually sacrifice innocent[s], ... invoking the devil. Of modernity, [but whatever.]

12PM
I stood on the top step of a ten foot ladder, reaching forward three feet while twisting to the left to apply another layer of matte medium to a corner pane. The fact that I have no health insurance is weighing heavily on my mind at this moment.

6PM
I make a horrible line cook ... pulled in a dozen directions, peripatetically moving around the kitchen in an attempt to see and taste everything. I would hate working with me.

7PM
One of the servers, who had never been involved in a restaurant opening before, and is used to more corporate environs, [thanks to the Department of Corrections' "work-release" program,] is becoming increasingly enraged by the chaos. He insists on keeping a list that he titles – I kid not – “Mental Notes,” of all of the things that are going wrong around him, everything from clutter in the service station to the other servers who jostle him as he works. Midway through the night there are two pages of increasingly scrawling and disjointed handwriting posted in the service station, which by the last line looks to be the work of either an anguished six year old or a long-term resident in a psychiatric ward. He decides to leave mid-service. With our blessing.

[Because having all our patrons physically murdered on opening night is not exactly good press. And the Chronicle automatically shaves half a star off the "ambiance" rating for each mass-murder killing spree in the dining room, as Chez Panisse learned the hard way.]

8:00PM
There’s a lull in the action, and I head into the dining room to say hi to our first guests, who are just finishing up their meal. I normally hate, hate, hate visiting the dining room, unless it’s someone that I know well. I feel nervous and out of place, standing awkwardly in front of the table muttering inanities. But it’s opening night and I feel obligated, so I trudge out.

Our first guests are from Sonoma, where I opened my first restaurant, Babette’s. I thank them for coming in, say hi to a few of my fiancées co-workers and head back to the kitchen.

10:00PM
A little longer of a visit at the investor’s table. He is surprised that the food is better than the pre-opening meal yesterday [, sort of like a small child is surprised by his own image in a mirror, or by the setting of the sun]. I explain, again, [, since my explanation to Smarty McMoneypants didn't seem to stick the first 10 times,] that it will keep improving at a rapid pace for months, and then slow to small incremental improvements – it will take at least a year until it achieves a level of performance I find remotely satisfactory.

Patterson's full articles at Chez Pim:
Opening Day, by Daniel Patterson
Opening Day (Part II)

'Rising Star' chef awards are bizarre

I was paging through 7X7 magazine's "Hot 20" under 40 list, looking at the chefs.

You have Daniel Patterson, 38, he of the Alice Waters-ain't-all-that rant in the New York Times, elisabeth daniel, Farallon and Coi. Joel Huff, executive chef at newly-ascendant Silks. Jay Foster, chef/owner of Farmer Brown, which my friend Bibendum hasn't heard of ("neo soul food," according to Michael Bauer).

I can't quibble with any of these choices.

Except that they are bizarrely arbitrary. And ridiculously perishable. Like all lists of "rising stars."

Case study: Melissa Perello. Becomes executive chef at Charles Nob Hill at age 24. The next year, is named a "Rising Star" by the San Francisco Chronicle. Not on the Chronicle list in subsequent years, presumably because one only gets to be on it once.

Which is fine, because Perello gets nominated for a James Beard rising star chef award in 2003. Gets nominated again in 2005.

Her Fifth Floor wins a Michelin star at the start of October.

There's no doubt Perello was -- and is -- a rising star. She's just 29, with a Michelin star, and is maintaining three Chronicle stars awarded to Laurent Gras. And yet you would not see her on the 2006 7X7 list, 2006 Chronicle rising list or the 2006 James Beard rising star nominations.

Perello is just one example of someone who should still be a 'rising star' this year but is not. I could make a similar case for 31-year-old chef Stuart Brioza of Rubicon, who with partner Nicole Krasinski has earned a Michelin star and raves from both the New York Times and the Chronicle.

There are surely explanations for Perello and Brioza's absence from the lists, reasons having to do with editorial and awards policy. Usually, there's a cap on how often one can be nominated for a particular list.

But the constant need for fresh meat for 'rising star' chef charcuterie may be overwhelming readers. All the new names, from various sources, seem increasingly likely to include as many future mediocrities as future stars.

(Postscript: Just as I thought, Perello did not make the 7X7 list because she was already on it, in 2003.)