Auburn Pie Stop: Ikeda's

There aren't too many reasons to head to the city of Auburn at the base of the Sierra foothills, but if you are heading to Tahoe or Reno from the Bay Area, you pass through Auburn on Interstate 80. And just off the Foresthill Road exit is Ikeda's, an old grocery store and food stand where you can get burgers and fries, high end beer and wine and all manner of homemade sweets (brittle, pretzels and nuts covered in all sorts of goo, caramels, etc.). But what you really need to get are the fruit pies. Ikeda's makes fruit pies and cobblers that are hard to beat. They have them all year, but in the summer, they are made with the seasonal fruit that grows in the Sacramento Valley. There is peach, strawberry rhubarb and all sorts of berry. My last trip I picked up a razzleberry (raspberry and blueberry) crumble. The fruit was fresh and the crust and crumbly bits on top are sweet and flaky. Now that's good pie.

Ikedas
13500 Lincoln Way
Auburn, CA 95604
(530) 885-4243

San Francisco Coffee: The Long Blue Line

So I spent a week in Sonoma but was fairly lazy about going anywhere else (hey, I was on vacation). We did one day in San Francisco visiting friends, but I had as my one food goal a visit to the legendary Blue Bottle Coffee. I've been hearing about Blue Bottle for years, but had never been. In fact, I hadn't been to the Ferry Building since its early inception as a gourmet food court, which predated Blue Bottle's stand there.

The only day we went to San Francisco was a Saturday, so I knew we would be facing a zoo, but I decided I wasn't leaving without a cup of that famous brew. There were three separate Blue Bottle lines at the Ferry Building, two inside and one outside at the farmers market, all about the same in length. The lines didn't look terrible, not much longer than a Sunday line at the Silverlake Intelligentsia, but they were painfully slow. It took nearly an hour to make it through.

And suddenly I was that guy, the dumbass who spent an hour on a Saturday waiting for a damn cup of coffee amongst food tourists and suburbanites in between their purchases of salumi cones and $60 bottles of olive oil.

I had intended to only order coffee, but once I got to the counter I also grabbed a waffle, since everyone else seemed to, and after an hour, I was pretty hungry. It was one of those hand held European waffles, hot of the grill and slightly sweet, nothing I'd rush to order on my own, but a fine accompaniment to the coffee.

And the coffee was a great, the service was friendly, the latte art was beautiful. Was it worth an hour wait? Was it better than the best coffee in LA? These are questions that are just too painful to ponder after an hour in line.

My advice? Try the coffee, but go on a weekday.

NorCal Cheese Plate

Northern California has become a major center of artisan cheese, so I always try to sample some when I'm in town. These cheeses come from all over the North Bay, but we got them all at the great local cheese section of Sonoma Market, the fabulous grocery store on Napa Street which carries all kinds of locally sourced food and drink.

This plate features, clockwise from the triangle at the top:

Cypress Grove Bermuda Triangle (Humboldt County). From the makers of Humboldt Fog, these little triangles have long been one of my favorites. Coated with ash, they are spicier tasting than the Fog but have the same creaminess as they age. I actually prefer the triangles to Fog.

Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk (Marin County). Long one of my local favorites, Red Hawk is a washed rind cheese. Buying them can be risky. When sold too young, they are chalky and raw tasting, but when just right, they are creamy and stinky like a French Epoisses. For best results, visit their dairy in Point Reyes or one of their shops, but in a pinch, I take a chance at Sonoma Market, which treats its cheese pretty well for a general market.

Nicasio Valley Foggy Morning (Marin County). This is a fresh cow cheese that's light and fluffy. It could easily substitute for ricotta in a lasagna or pizza or go in a salad with figs.

Nicasio Vallye Formagella (Marin County). A bloomy rind cow cheese. this one is quite mild but has a nice flavor, reminding me a bit of the Mt. Tam from Cowgirl Creamery.

Not Pictured: Bellwether Farms San Andreas (Sonoma County). This is a hard, raw milk sheep cheese with a lovely, subtle flavor giving just a hint of sheep.

Sonoma Market
500 West Napa Street, Suite 550
Sonoma, CA 95476
707-996-3411

Home Sweet Home: Sonoma Bound

I grew up in the lovely town of Sonoma, north of San Francisco. Now it's a mecca of wine, cheese and other great culinary experiences and a San Francisco bedroom community, but back then it was a small, rural town with a single traffic light, no McDonalds and a single, one-screen movie theater and three or four feed stores. My family moved to Sonoma in 1975 just before the Judgment of Paris and the subsequent explosion of California wine. The wineries were there and were good, but even into the '80s, Sonoma wineries tended to be owned by small, family farmers instead of the well heeled wine legends of nearby Napa and the later crop of tech and show biz tycoons with their vanity vineyards and cult cabernets.

In the ten years after I left, Sonoma changed completely, losing some of its small town character but gaining some great food in the process. Now, of course, Sonoma is just as chic, hyped and expensive as its neighbor counties, Napa and Marin. It's wine is as well regarded as Napa's. The great, recently deceased Ig Vella, who made artisan cheese for decades out of his stone shop, helped birth a movement of artisan cheese makers in which the North Bay Area became one of the major loci. (I was gratified to see that the little bridge over the Sonoma Creek on Napa Street had been renamed the Ig Vella Bridge).

Early twenty-first century Sonoma is a funny composite. Still hanging on are some of the old school, down to earth places that were favorites when I grew up in the '70s and '80s (Mary's Pizza Shack is there, but not dear Moosetta's which taught country kids how to eat Russian peasant food). These hangers on are now outnumbered by the the upscale restaurants and gourmet shops that make Sonoma a culinary destination. But down the road in the Boyes Hot Springs neighborhood there are taquerias, ice cream parlors and other shops opened by the members of the growing immigrant Mexican population, most of whom hail from Michoacan and Jalisco.

It's been a while since I spent more than a weekend in the place that was my home from age 5 to 18, but on a recent vacation, I was able to spend a week there visiting old favorites, newer favorites and a few brand new spots as well as some of what San Francisco and the East Bay have to offer. I'll be sharing some of these reports over the next few weeks. As Dorothy says, there's no place like home.