The origins of Californian Cuisine
Until the 1970's, going to a restaurant in the US meant most often being faced with a huge piece of meat drowned in sauce with overcooked vegetables. Then came Alice Waters. In 1971, she opened her restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, a chic suburb of San Francisco, inspired by a stay in Provence. Already in 1952, the culinary author Helen Evans Brown published a best-selling book, the West Coast Cookbook
, advocating the use of fresh, local and seasonal products. These demands may seem insignificant to us, but they were truly revolutionary in the American culinary landscape where consumers were accustomed to a typically Anglo-Saxon cuisine, not to mention the fast-food restaurants that were booming in the country at the time.Chez Panisse opened the door to other restaurateurs who dared to mix flavors in a completely new way, using local products, often organic - vegetables, fruits, cheeses, cold cuts, olive oil - while winking at the ingredients coming from the four corners of the world used by the numerous communities living in California: Chinese, Filipino, Mexican, Japanese, etc.
In Yountville, Napa Valley, Sally Schmitt began serving monthly single-menu dinners with an emphasis on local ingredients, continuing the concept when she and her husband Don opened The French Laundry in 1978. In Los Angeles, chef Wolfgang Puck - who trained in Paris and Monaco, among other places - opened his restaurant Spago in 1982, offering inventive California cuisine. In 1983, he also opened a fusion restaurant with an Asian flavour: Chinese On Main. Mark Peel, Ed LaDou and Daniel Patterson also played an important role in this "made in California" culinary revolution.
Inventive restaurateurs were not the only ones to benefit from this wind of change. Many farmers and artisans began to produce differently. Goat cheese, for example, was virtually unknown to Americans until the 1970s. For city dwellers, farmers markets have become an institution, where local farmers offer their products. The farmers market at the Ferry Building is very famous. You can taste some Californian cheeses like Monterey Jack, close to a mature cheddar and pepperjack, with pepper flakes. The Purple Haze is a fresh goat cheese flavored with fennel pollen and lavender flowers. Finally, the Humboldt Fog is a mature goat cheese with a Brie-like texture and a thin layer of ash running through it, a nod to our morbier.The US cuisine of California
If you can find in this state the basics of the American cuisine - steak and French fries, burger, hot dog, etc. -but there are more local specialties. The most common San Francisco dish is probably clam chowder, a creamy clam chowder served all along the Pacific Coast of Northern California. It is often eaten in a hollowed-out sourdough bread
bowl.San Francisco is also known for its crabs. Dungeness crab cakes
are small, breaded crab cakes flavored with chives and paprika and served with mayonnaise. More widely, fish and seafood, especially Pacific oysters, are very popular. To be enjoyed at Fisherman's Wharf, of course.Mexican influences are very visible. The burrito made its appearance in the Mission District in the 1960s, when Cal cuisine was in its infancy in Berkeley. In the tortilla
: Mexican-style rice, fried with onions and tomato, red beans, melting shredded meat (beef or pork). Other toppings may include cheddar or Monterey jack cheese, cilantro, avocado, sour cream or chili peppers. Tacos are crispy corn patties folded into a half-moon shape and filled with a variety of toppings, usually ground beef, cheese, tomato and lettuce. California-style pizza was invented by Ed LaDou - the first pizzaiolo at Wolfgang Puck's Spago restaurant in Los Angeles - who popularized thin-crust pizzas, daring to use ingredients that were highly unusual for the time: duck sausage, chicken with barbecue sauce, avocado, cilantro, etc.Gastronomic visit in Chinatown
As the main gateway to the West Coast for immigrants from Asia, nearly a third of San Francisco's population is of Asian descent, with about two-thirds coming from China. San Francisco's Chinatown is the oldest in the United States and one of the largest on the American continent. As early as the middle of the 19th century, Chinese migrants arrived in California, attracted by the gold rush, bringing with them their cuisine. With time, the dishes will be adopted to the local palates.
In this Chinese-American cuisine, we will note the chop suey, a mixture of meat or seafood with vegetables and omelette, generally prepared with the ingredients available locally. But we can also mention the beef & broccoli (strips of beef with broccoli and oyster sauce), the General Tso chicken (fried chicken in a sweet and sour sauce), the crab Rangoon (fried ravioli with crab and fresh cheese) or the Mongolian beef (strips of beef with onion and chili sauce) Note that some of these dishes are also present in China, such as chow mein (fried noodles), fried rice (Cantonese rice) or eggrolls
(egg rolls).Typically Cantonese - in the southeast of China - dim sum are specialties served in teahouses. These small bites, often dumplings, are usually steamed in bamboo baskets, or sometimes fried. There are also baked turnovers and puff pastries, or dishes served cold. All kinds are ordered and shared. You will find many wonderful dim sum
restaurants in Chinatown. While Chinese-American cuisine has long been popular, more and more Americans are looking for more authentic flavors and San Francisco is home to a multitude of restaurants offering regional Chinese cuisines from Beijing, Shanghai, Canton, Sichuan or Yunnan. But there are many other enclaves and communities of Asian origin such as Japantown, in the Western Addition district, as well as several Koreatowns. San Jose, in the suburbs of San Francisco, has the largest Vietnamese community in the world, outside of Vietnam, located in the Little Saigon district. There is also a very large Filipino community, which represents no less than 5% of the population. It is a melting pot that translates into an infinite variety of restaurants.Desserts and drinks
On the sweet side, there are a few desserts that originated in California, such as the maple bar (a long doughnut with a maple syrup glaze), the chiffon cake (an extremely light sponge cake), the chiffon pie (a pie with an airy fruit mousse, usually with lemon) or the famous fortune cookies
, thin wafers containing an omen that can be found in Chinese restaurants.But of course, there are countless pastry shops in San Francisco offering all the American sweets one could dream of: cupcakes, donuts, muffins, cheesecakes
as well as a multitude of cakes and pies of all kinds, especially since the city is not lacking in creativity, and you will discover associations of flavors that are sometimes explosive. Don't miss a detour to Chinatown and Japantown for exotic and unexpected pastries. San Francisco is also rich in quality chocolate makers: the venerable Ghirardelli (1852), but also XoX Truffles, Sharffen Berger, Cocoa Bella and Recchiuti.While American coffee (filter coffee or Americano
) is often compared to sock juice, filtered and heated all day long, San Francisco is an exception and the locals are proud of their coffee culture. You'll find good locally roasted coffee everywhere, especially in the Italian neighborhood of North Beach where this coffee religion began. By the way, you will see relatively few Starbucks in the area: locals tend to avoid them. The king of coffees here is the Irish Coffee, invented in San Francisco in 1952. A blend of hot coffee, whiskey and whipped cream, it was recreated at the Buena Vista Café, after its first creation in Ireland in the 1930s. Tea lovers will also find everything from Taiwanese bubble tea with gelatinous tapioca beads to a richly spiced Indian chai latte. Whether ordering plain water or soda, please note that your glass will always be filled with ice. Please specify if you do not want ice. Please note: no one under the age of 21 (the age of majority in the United States) is allowed to consume alcohol and you will always be asked for your ID.The vineyard, US version
It was in 1976, following the Paris judgement, which brought together eleven specialists for a blind tasting at the Intercontinental Hotel in Paris, that Californian wine acquired its letters of nobility. For both red and white wines, Californian wines came out ahead of French wines. A real revolution in the very closed circle of wine specialists. Since then, Californian grape varieties have been looked at with new eyes on the Old Continent.
A large part of Californian wines are produced in Napa Valley and Sonoma Valley, north of San Francisco. The mountains to the east that block cold air masses coming from the Sierra Nevada, and the Pacific Ocean to the west, create a multitude of microclimates. Many wineries can be visited and offer tours with wine tasting. As for grape varieties, the most common are: in red wine, Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir; in white wine, Chardonnay and Sauvignon. Not to mention sparkling wines .
In addition to wines, there is a wide variety of cocktail bars and several famous cocktails originated in San Francisco, such as the Martini (gin and vermouth with olive or lemon peel), the Cable Car (spiced rum, orange curacao and lemon juice), the California Milk Punch (milk, cream, bourbon, maple syrup and vanilla), the Pisco Punch (pineapple juice, pisco, lemon juice, cane sugar, soda water), the Mai Tai (rum, curaçao, orgeat, and lime juice) and finally the Tequila Sunrise (orange juice, tequila, grenadine) Beer is obviously very popular and there are countless microbreweries in the San Francisco area. The first moderncraft beer brewery in the United States was the New Albion Brewing Company, founded in 1976 in the Sonoma region.
