What’s Hot: North Block, Paella at Proper, KAIYO’s Game Day Eats, Spring Tea + …

Not all together and not all at the same time. These are just a few of the food and food-adjacent events that have caught my attention as we move into spring.

Paella and Rosé at Charmaine’s at The Proper Hotel, photo courtesy of Alina Tyulyu

North Block’s New Menu (ASAP)

I spent the night in wine country recently at a magical place called North Block. Step into the courtyard and you are inside a dreamy Italianate villa, complete with burbling water fountain and heated pool. The cute key wall in the lobby-slash-breakfast nook with a fireplace may hearken back to an earlier era of inn-keeping but I think it’s also a wink at the hotel’s Michelin two-key status.

For dinner, I sampled dishes from Chef Juan Cabrera’s spring-y Valley to Coast tasting menu. It started with a smoky abalone confit (image above) nicely offset by fragrant dill pollen and the crunch of passion fruit seeds. I can’t say I’ve ever seen passion fruit seeds used in this way and it worked. Great dish. Pureed spring peas and snapper was a crash course in exacting execution and letting the ingredients’ flavors speak for themselves. A pickled strawberry really made the dish. So seasonal, so good. Gnochette with morels and onions cooked with fennel pollen and black garlic was as delicious and seasonal as Flannery Beef with white European asparagus. I almost never see European white asparagus on American menus outside of the New York area and was delighted to see it here. Chef treated it like the delicacy it is.

Make a Reservation

KAIYO Game Day Eats (starting April 4)

SF Restaurant Week (April 4-13)

Ok, it’s more like “Restaurant 10 Days,” but who’s counting? These brief windows are a chance to experience restaurants at an amazing price. For the spring version, 200 restaurants are serving up prix fixe lunch, brunch, and dinner menus for takeout, delivery, or dining on-premise. Brunch and lunch start at $10 and dinner (3+ items or courses) starts at $30.

Check out participating restaurants, menus and make reservations

Chao Krung Returns to Santa Rosa (April 5-27)

Reservations for lunch and dinner

Spring Tea at Caviar Co. (April 12 – May 31)

Reservations

Chef Stuart Brioza at Tony’s (April 17)

Tony’s Seafood, in the West Marin town of Marshall, is kicking off a new dinner series, Tony’s + Friends. Chef Stuart Brioza, the James Beard award-winning chef known for his work at San Francisco’s State Bird Provisions (one-Michelin), The Progress (one-Michelin) and The Anchovy Bar, is putting together the seafood-centric menu of his dreams with oysters a-plenty and a 4-course prix fixe menu with or without wine pairings from Heladsburg’s Lioco Winery. (Their Chardonnays are lean and fresh and always top of mind for pairing with seafood.)

This is a communal dining experience, with some courses served family-style and others individually plated, served in the main dining room.

Doors and oyster slurping at 5:30, dinner at 6.

$185 with wine pairings, $120 without.

Make a Reservation

Paella at The Proper (starting April 20)

Make a Reservation

Cherry Blossom Latte at Blue Bottle (ASAP)

Take a Peek at the Cherry Blossom Latte

Where to Read My Work

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to tell the story of the cuisine of coastal Mexico. Well, one region of coastal Mexico, Guerrero. For Authentic Food, I wrote about Guerrerense cuisine, a seafood-forward, regional approach to eating. My experiences in Zihuatanejo and Playa Blanca (and Mexico City) were so elemental, so refreshing. And chatting with chefs in Spanish was a hoot and a half. (I did alright but thank goodness for digital transcription tools.)

More coming soon!

Restaurants On My RADAR

After my trip to Guerrero, I learned of locals cooking the cuisine of the region. Off I went to Las Guerreras, Ofelia & Reyna Maldonado’s ode to their homeland, located in Oakland’s Swan’s Market. I tried the pulpo enamorado (octopus in love – rightward image above). The octopus is swaddled in bufalo sauce – not to be confused with the wing sauce from upstate New York. This sauce is warmer, rounder, creamier and full-mouth spicy but with a softer chile heat. Valentina sauce, in the squeeze bottle, is spicy, bright and much more acidic.

In San Francisco, Chapeau! in Inner Richmond recently completed its full remodel. It is the perfect neighborhood restaurant, embodying cool, French style with freshness on the plate – chef’s salade landaise was a clever reinterpretation of a classic with the most tender duck I’ve eaten in recent memory. Classic cocktails at the bar, too – I tried an excellent Paper Plane with a cute little paper plane attached to the rim (center image above) – plus a French Martini, Cosmopolitan, and Manhattan. It all felt date night-right and family-friendly as the best neighborhood restaurants do.

Do you ever walk into a restaurant and a memory of a previous visit there snaps into focus? That’s what happened when I stepped into the blue-washed 2025 iteration of  Park Tavern in San Francisco’s North Beach. I had read the San Francisco Chronicle’s barn-burner review before I stepped foot inside and really had no idea what to expect. Turns out, it’s pretty nice in there. Read my review.

In Corte Madera, I was thrilled to see Mijo Marin, open with Spanish-Californian cuisine from chef Jared Rogers (Picco, Guesthouse, Easy Rider).

Over in Mill Valley, Playa served me an exceptional chile relleno. I can’t usually order one (dairy is my bug-a-boo) but Chef Siegel makes a vegan version stuffed with plantain and tofu chorizo topped with a cashew crema (left image, above). It was exactly itself, sweet, savory and spicy flavors mingling in a delicious way. It’s one of my best bites of the year so far.

Anaheim on My Mind

I was surprised during my time in Anaheim to discover Poppy & Seed, Kwini and chef Michael Reed’s well-appointed restaurant in the Packing District. It’s a jewel box space with warm lighting and cozy couches and a PS Old Fashioned softened with orange and chocolate mole bitter. Though I leaned into each dish, Smoked Duck left an indelible impression. Smoked over applewood then cured, the texture is a revelation. Paired with a basil, mint and shiso salad brightened with pickled Anaheim chiles and frilly rice crips, the dish tasted of California and Vietnam and the American South, a bit of mouth happiness I won’t soon forget.

I was in town for Expo West, the enormous consumer packaged goods show at the Anaheim Convention Center, and the chance to see, in real-time, the future of food and drink. I compiled my thoughts on the food and drink trends at ExpoWest – there’s some yummy stuff coming your way.

Monthly Cookbook Column

I would expect a cookbook written by a Master of Science and a Registered Dietician to bring a nutrition-first approach to cooking and indeed, that is what Kylie Sakaida achieves with So Easy, So Good. A digital native, Sakaida balances simple advice about eating (turn off the TV and really focus on your food, or, have a plan for grocery shopping) with recipes that require more than dumping things out of a can.

Read the entire cookbook review on my website.

Find the book for purchase here.

New Michelin Additions

Did you read about the new additions to the Michelin Guide for the San Francisco Bay Area?

• Oakland’s Sun Moon Studio
• Petaluma’s Table Culture Provisions
• Sonoma’s Enclos
• San Francisco’s Verjus
• San Francisco’s Four Kings
• San Francisco’s The Wild
• San Francisco’s Prelude

Whether or not you are a Michelin-follower: have you been to any of these restaurants? What was your experience of them? Geographic and culinary diversity seems to be part of the consideration but I haven’t been to all of them yet. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Above, grilled asparagus–shaved white asparagus–sweet & salty pepitas–XO hollandaise sauce at Table Culture Provisions.

What I’m Reading

While I am not from the Midwest, two of my college roommates were from Minnesota. My ideas of what Minnesota is like were partially formed by in-depth conversations about the weather, the photo of their high school senior year class photos (almost all of the kids are blonde), and the importance of hot dish. We drank plenty of beer in college but we were in Saint Louis so you can guess which brands.

This book did nothing to dispel my naive sense of the place. I wanted J. Ryan Stradal’s The Lager Queen of Minnesota to dig in on the specifics of beer-making and the toughness of surviving as a queen in an industry where most breweries are either international conglomerates or led by men. Alas, if The Lager Queen of Minnesota was a beer, I’d call it a Bud or a Coors. Light and pleasant, but lacking emotionality and big flavor. There aren’t too many calories here and I began to see the plot points pages before I arrived at each one. It’s an enjoyable read, though, so I’ll call it perfect for reading on the beach, with or without a beer to sip while reading. Plus, you never really know which one of the brewers are the queen.

I also valued this look into Chipotle’s avocado sourcing from the Wall Street Journal. The number of avocados they source is astounding, accounting for 5% of all avocado imports into the United States each year. Turns out they were way ahead on the tariff game.

About That Image

The smoked abalone at Yountville’s North Block left an impression on me. Though you can’t see the passion fruit seeds in the picture or experience the meaty texture of the abalone, I hope you’ll take my word for it that this dish brings together seemingly disparate ingredients that come together magically on your palate. It is a rare dish that reached every corner of my palate. Bite after bite, too!

Thanks for reading and be in touch.

Christina