Should restaurants charge for tap water?

Today I walked away from buying a $8.75 sandwich. I was stunned because when I asked for a cup of water, I was told I'd have to buy a "compostable cup" for $1.

Granted, I was at the most pretentious food hall in northern California, the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market in San Francisco. Boccalone's $8.75 Muffuletta sandwich, even with a $1 water charge, is one of the cheaper meals available there.* I probably would have paid $9.75 for it without complaining.

* (In the only time I'll ever eat at Boulette's Larder, I ordered scrambled egg(s) with squash blossoms for $16. When it arrived and was small enough that I'm not sure whether or not "egg" was plural, I asked about toast and was told it would cost an additional $6.)

But still, $1 for tap water? Or, to use Boccalone's vocabulary, $1 for a paper cup? (There's also an option -- I'm not kidding -- to pay $20 for a Boccalone metal water bottle, with which you get unlimited free refills. Of tap water. Which means you probably don't get refills if you only buy the cup, but there's always the restroom sink.)

Is this a profit center that restaurants need to survive?

It seems to me that any restaurant that provides seating for immediate consumption (not to mention meals based around salty preserved meats) should provide water as a service to its clients.

As I walked away to dine more happily at King of Thai Noodle, where a bottomless glass of water is free -- but where I had to pay a "San Francisco health care charge" of 3% -- I couldn't stop thinking about the $1 cup of water.

Will this become something we can expect to see more from cash-strapped restaurateurs? Has Boccalone crossed a line that food stands in less smarmy environments would be economically punished for? (I walked away, but nobody behind me in line blinked.)

Is it a greedy greenwash grab, based on the idea that $1 for a "compostable cup" is better for the environment than $3 for a plastic bottle of Dasani?

I grant you that I'd rather drink San Francisco's high-quality tap water than pay for Dasani, which is also essentially tap water. And who knows, maybe Boccalone is filtering its water or adding vitamins or getting a priest to bless it.

But if somebody can forward this post to Boccalone's proprietors, including local star chef Chris Cosentino, I'd love for them to explain themselves. Are you guys on the forefront of a new way of thinking about beverages? Do you recommend that every restaurant charge $1 for each cup of water? Or have you confused San Francisco with "Dune"?

Visit "Farm City" in Oakland this weekend

One of my favorite books of the last couple years is "Farm City" by Novella Carpenter, about her daily efforts to raise her own vegetables and meat in one of the worst areas of Oakland.

If you have read the book, there's a happy ending you might not know about. Carpenter simply began raising vegetables, pigs and goats on an empty lot without the owner's permission (he eventually gave it), but she worried constantly that he would build on it, sell it, or simply lock her out.


Late last year, the owner sold her the lot; that's not in the book. I cheered aloud when I found out.

On Sunday, Feb. 27, Carpenter is holding a farm pop-up stand at her home to sell produce raised in one of the toughest spots in the Bay Area. The details, also on Novella Carpenter's blog, are these:

Feb. 27, 11 a.m. -- 2 p.m.
665 28th St., Oakland (actually in the adjacent lot, which is her Farm)
For sale at her farm: Chard, kale, rabbit pot pies, braising mix (whatever that is), nettle tea, chai made with Carpenter's honey
For sale several blocks away: Crack, heroin, short-term sexual encounters

A little more about the book: Carpenter, who studied journalism under Michael Pollan at UC Berkeley, writes in a frank style about her failures and mishaps and joys.

She had already been foraging in Chinatown dumpsters for expired produce to feed her pigs when she learned they needed protein, so she began bringing them bags of fish guts (ewww.) She used both her car and those of her friends to transport buckets of horse manure as fertilizer (ewww.)

She decided to try to survive for an entire month on only the products raised on her farm. An unexpected consequence of her unbalanced diet was that her partner complained about her bad breath, and she had to cook him a special meal hoping that he would, in her words, give her some meat.

She picks up a box full of honeybees from a nervous post office and rides home with them on her bicycle. She is accosted on the street by a teenager with a gun, and she shames him into backing down by asking what his mother would think.

That's why it's a great book: It's not like a Pollan book, and I like those, but it's not about theories of nutrition or man's relationship to nature or anything like that. It's about what it's like to try to recapture your chickens when they're running around your very urban street. I can't recommend it highly enough. And mmm, rabbit pot pie.

Is pairing wine with each course necessary?

Yesterday one of America's leading chef/sommelier combos made a shocking admission.

With 3 Michelin stars, The Restaurant at Meadowood is one of the most acclaimed dining spots in America. A major reason is its creative food-and-wine pairings.

Chef Christopher Kostow and sommelier Rom Toulon are great together. Kostow creates wild dishes like "Veal Breast and Hamachi with Caviar, Puntarella and Tendon Suc." Toulon sorts through small-production wines of Napa Valley and the rest of the world to try to match each course. A tasting menu costs $195; the wine pairing -- a different wine with each course -- costs $145.

Yet when Kostow and Toulon eat out at restaurants, they never order the wine pairing. Both of them said that: Not occasionally, but never -- not even when they go out for a long multi-course meal like the kind their own restaurant serves.

US sake vs. Japanese: the update

Praising a producer is easy. You write a glowing description, throw in some quotes and a photo. Done.

I have a trickier task today, and it involves sake.

It's fair to say I'm one of the few people who writes knowledgeably about sake in English. I'm not John Gauntner, dean of the topic, but I lived in Japan for 8 years, have done multiple sake tours/events/etc., taste and sample regularly.

Every now and then I write the "Sake 101" piece for some publication. Coming up soon, Wine & Spirits magazine. I always try to help people who don't know anything about sake.

One of my rules is, "Domestic sake is not as good as Japanese sake." Readers often ask, "Why don't you try American sake?" I assure them that I have, but I've never published anything about a domestic sake producer.

The nice folks from SakeOne in Oregon wanted me to taste their portfolio. I warned them of my frequently stated stance on American-made sakes.

They came to San Francisco, but I had a head cold and couldn't taste and wanted to give their portfolio a fair shot. So I met and interviewed them, and they shipped me the portfolio later.

Congratulations to today's Vintners Hall of Fame inductees

This afternoon I will have the honor of taking part in the 5th annual Vintners Hall of Fame induction ceremony, and just in case I stumble or blurt out something stupid, I want to take this opportunity to express my congratulations and admiration for the 5 great new members.

Joel Peterson

More than one writer has noted that Zinfandel, California's quasi-native grape, is the defining wine for this great induction class.

Two of the inductees made their reputations on Zin starting in the 1970s: Ravenswood winemaker Joel Peterson and Bob Trinchero, who invented White Zinfandel at Sutter Home.

The two men came at it from different ends of the market: Peterson wanted to prove that single-vineyard Zin is a great wine, and Trinchero was interested in giving the masses something tasty to drink on the porch.

Bob Trinchero

But I expect both will acknowledge the other's importance to their work. By buying grapes from old Zinfandel vineyards, Trinchero saved them from being replanted to Chardonnay, so that winemakers like Peterson could later make serious wines from them.

And if it wasn't for people like Peterson, Trinchero's work of explaining what that funny Z-wine is to the masses would have been more difficult.

Peterson I know reasonably well, having done a couple of feature stories on him. I haven't met Trinchero so I'm looking forward to asking him what he drinks at home.

Vernon Singleton

I'm also very much looking forward to meeting the third living inductee, UC Davis professor emeritus Vernon Singleton. He's an expert on phenolics and oxidation in wine, and perhaps if I can get him aside for a few minutes, I'll become one of the thousands of people to learn something from him.

As you may know, I'm the Chairman of the VHF Electoral College, but I don't have anything to do with planning the event, which means it ends up being almost as much of a surprise to me as to everyone else (I do get there early enough to peek at the program.)

Last year the induction ceremony had a nice balance of humor, nostalgia and wistful reminiscence.

Richard Graff

This year we'll be inducting two men who aren't with us anymore, Richard Graff and August Sebastiani.

Graff would be 74 if he hadn't died in a plane crash, and I wonder what he would think of the way the market for Pinot Noir has changed. Graff purchased Chalone Vineyard in 1965 and worked to convince people that California Pinot Noir could be both great and approachable. I hope they show "Sideways" in heaven, though I suspect Mr. Graff would frown on Miles stealing money from his mother (maybe they censor that part Up There).

August Sebastiani

August Sebastiani set a standard for overdelivering on quality on affordable wines; he was an everyday hero to many Americans who enjoyed his wine on their dinner table from the 1940s through the 1970s. His legacy lives on in his son's company, as Don Sebastiani and Sons continue to make quality wines without pretension and with a dry sense of humor (check out the "cork" on your Smoking Loon wine sometime.) I regret never meeting August, but I do look forward to toasting his memory with Don and his grandson August (good name!)

As always, there should be some great food served by the Culinary Institute of America, this year with a White House theme. And the wines seem to get better every year -- no wonder, as they have more inductees' wineries to draw from.

 

But the inductees are the reason we're all going to be there. 

 

Thanks to each of you for your great contributions to California wine. Speaking as a consumer, a drinker, a journalist, and for today, a fan, I'll just say it again: Thank you.

Attention wineries: show your wares at virtual Wine Fair

A booth at the virtual Wine Fair

"I floated past an exhibition of fine Burgundies, but I didn't have the organs to sample them. I was interested in a new video sorting table and spent a moment watching it work. But I had an appointment to show off my wines to a Czech grocery store chain, so I instantaneously returned to my booth.

We talked about my wines, in English: I told them about our vineyard, and our commitment to biodynamic farming. We talked about shipping needs and labeling requirements. We haggled over prices. And then we sealed our deal with a glass of … air."

This is how the second virtual Wine Fair works. Last year 47 exhibitors showed their wares to more than 4,300 visitors. This year it should be even bigger -- well, virtually, because it all happens in cyberspace.

This post is an advertorial.

On the surface, a booth at the fair isn't cheap, starting at $1,100. But compare that to actually attending a wine fair in London, for example: there's no airfare, no hotel room, no time away from the winery for key staff and no questionable expense reports for "adult entertainment."

In fact, there are few quicker, cheaper, easier ways for wineries to explore a larger international market for their products. Plus, it's ecologically pristine -- no carbon offsets needed because there's no travel, no shipping, no waste.

The virtual Wine Fair is a private venture launched last year by a sommelier, Jean-Michel Kuzaj, and a wine store owner, Denis Lengagigne. It uses multiple communication tools in its virtual environment, including webcams, audio conferences and live chat. Visitors can browse brochures and business contact information and make appointments for live teleconferencing.

The one thing you can't do virtually is taste. But Gary Vaynerchuk, not to mention flash sites like Wine Woot, have shown us that that's no impediment to wine sales. Tell your story well enough and you might find yourself with new customers in Hong Kong or Denmark or Lithuania.

Speaking of telling your story: The Palate Press Ad Network has an opportunity for US wineries to get a free booth at the fair by submitting a short essay (200-300 words) on the topic "(My Winery): Telling Our Story in the 21st Century."* For information, click here.

* Since what you're reading is an advertorial, I'd be missing a business opportunity if I didn't offer to write this essay for you for a fee. Bwahahaha, my advertorial empire expands.

The details:
WineFair.com second annual virtual Wine Fair
March 14-18, 2011
Sales Manager: Charlotte Fort, charlotte@winefair.com, +33-3-21-80-96-30
For more info, visit www.winefair.com.

Steakhouses, the Republican Congress, and retirement

I ran into a sommelier friend recently who is now working at an upscale steakhouse; I won't say where, or he'd lose his job. He told me how the wine scene is different there.

"People don't want a good wine that's good value," he said. "They always want more. They want wines to show off. It has to be a trophy wine: big name, big score or both. They want to feel like they're getting away with something."

I thought he might mean a bargain; a $100 wine for $50. But no, he said people come to steakhouses expecting to spend money. Often, they're on business, which means they're passing the cost on to you and me eventually. That explains why they're willing to spend $10 for a baked potato or $50 for dessert. So what's another $500 or so for wine, especially if you get three whole bottles?

He painted a picture of upscale steakhouses as kind of a mini-Vegas of profligacy.

"People order 6 bottles for four people all the time," he said. "They don't want to finish the bottle. That would mean they didn't get enough. It's the same thing with steak: they don't order a sensible piece of meat they could finish. They order an enormous steak and eat less than half of it. Excess is all part of the party."


So what is it they want to get away with?