New Facebook App for Foodies

Some very exciting news from the world of online restaurant reviews.  Come check this out...and I look forward to seeing you over there.

Come sign up for LikeStream because you want great restaurant recommendations from the friends and experts you trust and want to hear from. Who better than a passionate local with a point of view, to help you discover more hidden gems? 

 

Please welcome the first of our knowledgeable and adventurous local foodie experts to help you in your quest for new dining experiences.

Michelle Syracuse is the author of a tasteful blog called Gather365. With the motto of "Go forth, Gather, Eat good food", she engagingly narrates her dining experiences in and around Oakland and San Francisco. Best way to describe Michelle's choices and reviews - down-to-earth, warm and thoughtful.
 

Mark Janda is the author of a thought-provoking blog called It Takes A Kitchen. Mark is a history teacher with a penchant for exploring new food and dining, so you can imagine the learning and adventure that comes from following his reviews around his hometown of Santa Cruz, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Europe.

Sign-in, go to our "foodies & friends" page and follow them from our "famous foodies" tab to see their reviews in your search results.

p.s. A local expert foodie yourself? or know of one? Just let us know, we would love to promote you or your friend on our famous foodies page!

You heard right. 3 restaurant reviews + 1 creative short bio + 1 profile photo (see example below), and you are in! The most creative bio entry along with the most number of reviews submitted by April 21st will be awarded $250 towards a dinner at one of our many recommended restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area! 

Here's what to do...

Sign up or go to the app from your desktop.

For the bio and photo, just go to the "Settings" page and click on "More about you!" to to add a photo and a short bio (six words or less!)

For the reviews, set the "Where" field to the appropriate city e.g. San Francisco and then search for your restaurant by name.

We will review all the entries that meet our criteria by April 21st and come back with a winner. So how about it? It's all pretty straight-forward, but here's the fine print if you need details.

That's it for now! Thank you for supporting LikeStream and keeping those reviews coming.


Don and Shirish (Co-founders)

The Man Who Changed The Way We Eat

Sometimes in this day of reality television and the internet we can get the impression that everything has changed in the last decade and all before the year 2000 was slow and bland.  For foodies we have seen an explosion of websites, blogs, books and television shows about our favorite pastime.  But did the food world really begin to change with the likes of The Food Network and Emeril Lagasse?  Not even close.  Processed food after World War II, public television and inexpensive world travel for people and food alike really started to change the food world more than a generation ago.  Most of us can remember Julia Child on PBS.  To me she was the symbol of cooking as a hobby.  Travel in Europe in the early 80s introduced me to food as a mode of cultural expression.  The Food Network just fed the interest.  Now I can’t turn on the television without a few foodie shows to choose from.  The Food section of the local bookstore is overflowing.  Where did it all begin?  

I recently read Thomas McNamee’s biography of Craig Claiborne, The Man Who Changed The Way We Eat: Craig Claiborne and the American Food Renaissance.    Claiborne was the food editor at The New York Times beginning in 1957 and was arguably the most influential voice in the food world, certainly in the restaurant world of New York City.  I confess to having little knowledge of him prior to reading this book, but now I wonder how I missed him.  Claiborne was a larger than life personality credited with a significant role in popularizing everyone from Julia Child, Paul Bocuse and Paul Prudhomme to Marcella Hazan and foods such as arugula and balsamic vinegar.  He was a massive figure in the food world at a time when there wasn’t the cacophony of 400 TV stations and the internet.  To be food editor at The Times was to be kingmaker. 

McNamee does a masterful job of bringing him to life.  The Man Who Changed The Way We Eat is thoroughly researched and cited, and tells Claiborne’s story from birth to death.  He was clearly a very complex, conflicted and passionate individual.  Claiborne grew up in Mississippi and seems to have envisioned himself near-royalty.  Throughout his life he lived beyond his sometimes-considerable means, drank far too much, and indulged most every vice.  He held restaurants to unbelievable, Old World standards and would live long enough to see such standards fall way out of vogue.  In the process he appears to struggle with self-doubt and a lack of direction in a changing marketplace.  In the end he seems quite sad.

I found the book wonderfully readable.  Though dense with detail, it reads smoothly.  There were many sections I didn’t want to end or in which I just wanted to keep reading.  I think that is a great compliment for such a detailed bio.  McNanee seems to have left no stone unturned, no detail unreported.  In fact, it has moments where it seems rather scholarly…in a good way.  By the end I truly felt like I knew Claiborne.

If you are interested in how the food world as we know it came to be, give this book a read.

Sandwiches

CNN has a mouth-watering article I have to share here.  Tell me you don't get hungry looking at these beautiful pictures... America's 11 New Sandwich Heroes. 

Salade Nicoise

When I think about eating outside in the sunshine, I always think of salade Nicoise.  On a warm, sunny day just thinking about the smell of the Mediterranean Sea mixed with a whiff of anchovies and olives, and I am transported to the south of France.  Is there any better place on earth to have lunch under the sun?  Imagine the colors – azur seas, golden sun and egg yolks, dark olives, bright greens, white fava beans, red tomatoes.  Sitting under a blue awning on a brick, southern place near the beach, the sounds of French and Italian, the smell of pastis for an aperitif.  A summer lunch could hardly be better.

For her birthday, my wife wanted a trip to France.  Short of winning the lottery, that wasn’t quite going to happen, so I had to bring some of France to her.  I figured nothing could be more classically French than salade Nicoise and steak et frites.  A quick online search to find the classic salade Nicoise brought me quickly to David Lebovitz’ webpage.  A few posts back I wrote about books about food that I love.  It’s a bit ironic that it was Lebovitz’ site that popped up on this search because his book, The Sweet Life in Paris is one of my more recent foodie reads.  If you’re into either bread or Paris, I strongly recommend it. 

His webpage featured a great essay and recipe for salade Nicoise that I opted to follow quite closely.  I opted to do this with anchovies, as opposed to tuna.  Do not let that scare you away.  I sneak anchovies into many recipes and nobody ever believes me…if I tell them.  They’re liked by more people than can believe it.  I also had to cheat a bit and bought my fava beans prepped and marinated at the olive bar in Whole Foods.  And they were amazing.  A word about the eggs…I boiled mine for 9 minutes then doused them in cold water.  This left them somewhat soft and not too easy to hold and peel; be careful.  But the result?  Beautifully bright yolks, just beyond being liquid, still moist.

Some musette in the background, a Cotes de Rhone red, and the sizzle of steak in an iron skillet…and France came to us.            

Tramonti in Seabright

This past weekend we finally got a chance to try one of Santa Cruz’s newest Italian spots, Tramonti in the Seabright neighborhood.  I love the Seabright neighborhood, and if I were a millionaire I would be looking for ways to develop this into a “go-to” spot.  Nestled between the San Lorenzo river, the Harbor and Soquel Avenue, it already has a great diversity of dining options, mixed housing, theater, a few shops and nearby grocers.  It just needs something – an outdoor event of some sort, a festival in the streets, some more shops, a pedestrianized alley-way, something to make it a destination.

Fortunately, the dining in Seabright is excellent, already with two of my favorite spots, Seabright Brewing and La Posta.  Now Tramonti joins the party.  It’s a small, simply-decorated, modern space with Ikea-like tables and chairs except for two giant olive-wood tables in the center that are stunning.  The dining area can see into the brightly-lit, white kitchen creating one vast, open, bright space.  The spaces between tables are huge, perfect for the proprietors’ children to ride tricycles through, adding to the family-friendly charm. 

The menu is authentically Italian.  Wood-fired pizzas include 4 Stagioni and Capricciosa.  Pastas include taglioni and the possibility of a simple tomato sauce dressed with Grana Padano.  This place is clearly committed to authenticity. 

Service was almost non-existent until they noticed us, but was then excellent.  Our waiter was Italian in every way – accent, flair, warmth, humorous – and efficient.  Once ordered, our Minabrea birra and Sangiovese wine quickly arrived.  Then came our Santa Croce (Italian for Santa Cruz…clever) salad.  That was truly great.  Kale, mixed greens, arugula, Grana Padano and Feta, and nuts dressed with a citronette (maybe a touch too much) was delicious and large enough to share.  Then came the pizza.  My standard test for any supposed-Neapolitan pizza place is their Capricciosa – mushrooms, prosciutto cotto (cooked) and an egg in the middle.  This was the Tramonti interpretation, but I have also seen this with olives and artichokes, too.  The pizza arrived straight from the oven…charred and bubbled crust lent it visual authenticity while the smell was exquisite.  The flavors were delicious.  The tomato sauce was light and fresh, no tomato paste in sight.  The textures were spot on.  It may not have been the best I have had outside of Italy, but it did the trick.  My lone disappointment was in the prosciutto.  I am reasonably sure that the ham was just that…ham…and not a high quality prosciutto.  And I really love a thin-sliced prosciutto on my pizza – crudo or cotto. 

The bottom line for me…Tramonti is trying to create an authentic Italian experience and not cater too much to an American taste.  I appreciate that.  And they’re doing a pretty good job.  I will return, I will eat more pizza, I will try some pasta, and I will bring the kids.  It was delicious and family-friendly for a very reasonable price.