Bay Cuisine

I've spent the last couple of days in the San Francisco Bay area where a lot of my dad's family lives, so I thought I would share with you some of our personal family favorites for Tuesday at the Table.

I should tell you right off that my Grandpa back in the day was a big executive for Vons (a grocery chain that has recently been bought out by Safeway), and so food is a big deal in my family.  The Stuetz family is very much a foodie family.  My Grandpa has extremely high standards when it comes to restaurants and such, so just know when I tell you that the place has my Grandpa's stamp of approval that it means something.  :)

There are two things that are kind of the must haves when taking things home for the family:  Boudin's Sourdough Bread and See's Chocolates.  It doesn't really matter where you are in the Bay these shops are not very far away.  Boudin's has even expanded to be a cafe and you can get really amazing soups in their sourdough bread bowls.  Yum!  See's Candy also makes all sorts of things, but I personally love their different flavors of truffles.

Most people think of things like Ghiradelli Chocolate when thinking of San Fransisco, but there are quite a few wonderful things on the Oakland side of the Bay that I want to share with you.

While we're talking about sweet things I might as well mention Fenton's Ice cream.  Fenton's Creamery has the most delicious handmade ice cream.  Their sundaes are fabulous.

My sister and I shared this Cookie Connections Sundae (a chocolate chip cookie on the bottom with half cookie dough ice cream and half oreo ice cream with all of the sundae toppings).  It was amazing!  Just a funny family side note:  When it was time for "the talk,"  my Uncle used to tell his kids he was taking them out for ice cream at Fenton's.  They thought their dad was being awesome and what they didn't realize was that they would be stuck in the car and restaurant with no escape as he had the birds and the bees chitty chat with them.   It took a while for my cousins to catch on to  what my uncle was doing.

Here are a couple of family favorites in terms of restaurants on the Oakland side of life:

Esin Restaurant & Bar in Danville is my Grandpa's all-time favorite restaurant, and after eating there with him I can totally tell you why.  Even the soup was to die for.  It was European-style.  I hadn't had anything like that since I lived in Spain.  The favorite thing on my plate though ended up being their mash potatoes that were actually made with sweet potatoes.  My sister and I both agreed we could have eaten an entire bowl of them by themselves.  My mom's butternut squash risotto was also the creamiest I've ever tasted.  Everyone in my family ordered a different dessert and we taste-tested all of them and all I can say is that everything was incredible.  Nothing was sub par.

My Grandpa's favorite Chinese restaurant is Chef Chao's in Moraga.   This place is definitely no Panda Express - it's the fine dining stuff.  Even their Won Ton soup is killer.   I haven't eaten that much in a really long time.  Everything was so good!  And to top it off- I'm not much of a fortune cookie fan, but this one I'm definitely putting on my fridge in hopes that it comes true. :)