Foie Gras, San Francisco eats, and me

I returned from San Francisco last week. I’ve been to the Bay Area almost four of the past eight weeks; I’m getting to know my new coworkers at Google. While Google is based in Mountain View, I prefer to stay in San Francisco. It’s reminiscent of home.

One of the places I ate in San Francisco the first time I visited this year was Incanto, Chris Cosentino‘s shrine to offal meats. My friends and I had a fine time at his Noe Valley restaurant. This past visit I stopped by Boccalone, Cosentino’s meat shop in the San Francisco Ferry Building. I purchased a brown sugar and fennel salame. While I had some of it in San Francisco, I brought the rest of it to my friend Phil and Karen’s house. (Happy Birthday Karen!) The salame is chewy and has a strong fennel flavor. The sugar helps balance the strong flavors of the cure and fennel.

Today, I was reading Chris Cosentino’s blog post about receiving a letter from anti-foie gras folks. He and his business partner, Mark Pastore, discussed the letter, and Mark wrote a thoughtful note on the foie gras debate on the Incanto web site. It’s well written, and I agree with the gist of the letter.

If you get out to San Francisco, I recommend checking out Incanto and Boccalone. The folks that work at both restaurants are passionate about the food they make and serve, and it shines in the flavor of the food and experience of dining and shopping.