Table & Travel

When we were in the Bay Area this week­end, Vicki and I made plans to have Sun­day brunch with my son Matt, the recent Cal grad, who lives in Berke­ley, just off Tele­graph Ave. I thought we’d park by his house and walk up to a place on Tele­graph, Cafe Milanese, that I’d seen online. But Matt said it was just a stu­dent place and sug­gested we go to Le Note, a lit­tle French bistro on Shat­tuck Avenue.

It was an excel­lent choice, and we were soon sit­ting on a sun­lit patio behind the main restau­rant, perus­ing a menu filled with so many inter­est­ing choices it was hard to choose. Matt chose Les Oeufs, fried eggs with pota­toes and two spicy mer­guez sausage, which has roots in north Africa. Vicki’s Oeuf a la Coque, con­sisted of two per­fectly cooked soft boiled eggs and out­stand­ing chunks of sautéed new pota­toes. It came with thinly sliced whole-wheat toast for dip­ping into the bright orange yolks of the eggs.

I had the Omelette de Pommes de Terre, a won­der­ful omelet lay­ered with sliced new pota­toes, carmelized onions, toma­toes, and emmen­thal  cheese, and accom­pa­nied by sweet grilled Proven­cales tomatoes—excellent!

The menu also fea­tured pan­cakes, which we couldn’t pass up, so we shared a oat­meal pan­cake cov­ered with a rib­bon of rasp­berry coulis. The fla­vor was divine, the tex­ture light and airy.

Matt was right on the money with this rec­om­men­da­tion, I think it’s one of the best places in the East Bay to have break­fast. I can’t wait to return for din­ner after brows­ing a menu that fea­tures fish, pasta, grilled meat, along with some veg­e­tar­ian dishes.

La Note Restau­rant Proven­cal.
2377 Shat­tuck Avenue, Berke­ley, CA
510.843.1535  info@lanoterestaurant.com

Vicki and I had some friends for din­ner last evening and I decided to to make boeuf bour­guignon. It’s some­thing that I haven’t cooked for a long time, but years ago I used to pre­pared it fre­quently. It’s part of the basic repetoire I learned from Julia Child’s Mas­ter­ing the Art of French Cook­ing Vol 1. This book, along with her long run­ning show, The French Chef (1962–73), founded my inter­est in fine cooking.

I love this dish, slow sim­mered pieces of beef swim­ming in a rich wine sauce with mush­rooms, and pearl onions. It’s clas­sic French com­fort food, per­fect for the cold win­ter nights we’ve been hav­ing in Reno lately.

My dish is a vari­a­tion on the Julia Child recipe. I researched a num­ber of dif­fer­ent recipes and came up with this one, which has some added ingre­di­ents. Basi­cally, pieces of beef are browned, then slowly sim­mered for hours with bacon and veg­eta­bles in red wine. I also added beef broth, which is tra­di­tional, but some recipes don’t include it. I was very pleased with the results. I’m not sure it’s bet­ter than Julia’s recipe, just a variation.

We served the stew with garlic-celery root mashed pota­toes, a clas­sic Cae­sar salad, and for dessert, a lemon-yogurt cake with blue­berry sauce and vanilla ice cream. The wine to accom­pany the din­ner was Vino Noceto San­giovese (2002) from Amador County’s Shenan­doah Val­ley and a Cloud­line Pinot Noir (2005) from Oregon.

Vicki is a fab­u­lous dessert maker, but I promised to make the entire din­ner, so I tried this Ina Garten recipe for Lemon Yogurt Cake with blue­berry sauce. Every­thing went pretty smooth except when I poured the bat­ter into the pan and popped it into the oven, I real­ized that I’d for­got­ten to add the eggs–quickly it came out, back into the mix­ing bowl, eggs added, beaten, and back into the oven. Okay, time was get­ting short and I was going too fast. Our guests loved it!