French Breakfast in the Bay: the girl and the fig, tartine bakery

I love breakfast.

If I’m not working on a Saturday or Sunday, I’m brunching. I’m a savory breakfast type of girl though – no thank you to pancakes and French toast, no matter how inventive. At the top of my list: quiche. In fact, I’ll take that a step further and officially declare it my death row meal: a perfect quiche lorraine.

A weekend in the Bay Area led me to discover two incredible versions, and more breakfast delights… 

the girl and the fig

country food with a French passion

110 West Spain Street

Sonoma, CA  95476

thegirlandthefig.com

This is one of my very favorite restaurants so it’s no surprise that I loved everything I was served. It really deserves a post all to itself about the many wonders they create but for now, consider this snapshot of a flawless breakfast your amuse-bouche…

Cheese Plate

Cow – St. Jorge (Santa Rosa)

Goat – Laura Chenel Chevre (Sonoma)

Sheep – Roquefort Gabriel Coulet (Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, France) *Favorite!*

Also in attendance: fig cake, fig jam, spiced nuts, local honey, apple

I paired this with their Fig Royale: French sparkling wine, house-made fig liqueur. It basically ruined mimosas for me, no matter how good the orange juice. I’m okay with that though.

Quiche Lorraine, summer salad and matchstick fries with tarragon aioli   

This to me feels like the closest I’ve come to tasting a quiche prepared the way it was intended. They don’t fuss with it. It’s just a perfect egg custard filling with a small amount of diced ham set inside a buttery, flaky crust with a golden brown, crisp top. Classic. 

I know I mentioned I’m not the sweets-for-breakfast type but for those of you who are, this looked pretty fantastic too! 

Stuffed brioche French Toast with sweetened Bellweather Farms fromage blanc, lemon & huckleberry compote

Tartine Bakery & Café

600 Guerrero Street

San Francisco, CA 94110

tartinebakery.com

I should start off by saying this is actually the third time I’ve been to Tartine, but it’s the first time I’ve actually gone inside. The first two times I’ve driven by to see hungry locals literally lined up down the block and just didn’t have time to wait. It’s perpetually packed. I couldn't even snap a picture without seeing people walk in or out. Luckily, I wandered in during a slight break in the crowd and found a little room at the counter to stand and enjoy the favorites that keep the crowds coming...

Quiche with crème fraiche, Niman smoked ham and heirloom tomatoes

This quiche is more like the kind you find most places, stuffed with seasonal produce. I chose the ham and heirloom tomato, though the squash version was tempting. It was fantastic. Perfect filling, perfect crust, and it’s pretty hard to find fault in adding heirloom tomatoes to any breakfast in my book. 

More impressive to me at the time though, probably because I love these and never find them in bakeries, were the Gougères! 

Gougère

These are made from choux pastry (pâte à choux), which is what they make profiteroles, éclairs and beignets from, but it’s mixed with gruyere cheese. It’s a rich, hollow, flaky cheese bun. Warmed up they’re pretty hard to beat by themselves or, my preference, with tomato soup!

Since this is the first place I’ve found them I wanted to give you a recipe link so you can make your own if they don't carry them at your favorite bakery:

Gougères by Epicurious

This isn't the recipe I've used before but it's the one I want to try next. I've made the traditional variety with just the gruyere, at Tartine they add black pepper, and in this recipe they add dry mustard and cayenne. Baker's choice! 

Squeal Like a Pig: The Swinery

 The Swinery 

3207 California Ave SW
(between Hanford St & Hinds St)
Seattle, WA 98116

Keeping this short and sweet. 

One of my favorite West Seattle spots. The Swinery is a porcine butcher shop that also serves hot sandwiches. 

Every kind of pork cut is here, friendly service and they have DRY soda, Seattle company. I love to order a Lavender soda with my sandwiches. 


















The Swinery BLT - Fried pork belly, lettuce, tomato with chicken pate mayo on a house baked bun. This is one of the best things you'll ever eat. I could bathe in the pate mayo. 

Leavenworth, WA: The Bavarian Town of Samples

I needed to get out of Seattle for a little N&R (noshing and relaxation) so I decided to hop on a bus and visit Leavenworth, WA. Leavenworth is modeled after Bavarian towns and is located in Eastern Washington. 

No joking, polka music plays EVERYWHERE!

Right when you step onto Front Street, you feel like you're in a Disney film. It's a stretch filled with restaurants, unique gifts shops and a cute Nutcracker museum. The best thing about Leavenworth is that most of the places give free samples to the tourists. Not the tiny free samples one would get at Costco, they offer as many samples as you'd like. 

The Gingerbread Factory

828 Commercial St
Leavenworth, WA 98826

I wandered off of Front street and onto a less crowded one. I came across a real life gingerbread house. I was worried a scary old lady would be bake me into a cookie if entered but to my surprise I was offered to try a hearty sample of their trademark gingerbread man and their maple walnut cookies. The cookies are better than homemade here they had a fluffiness I doubt I'd be able to recreate.   

The interior looks like a Barbie Dream House. 

The buttercream frosting topped sugar cookies were also amazing. 

The Cheesemonger's Shop

819 Front St
Leavenworth, WA 98826

Heads up: Look hot when you come in, there's a few cute teenage boys that work here. They're friendly and want you to try lots of free cheese. What could be better? 

This little shop has an extensive collection of cheese, sausages, beer and wine. So me it's basically heaven. You do have to request samples here but you can try any of the cheese you wish. 

I walked out with Koko's Coconut-infused Gouda, which pairs beautifully with a stout or porter beer. I bought Truffle Tremor, which is goat brie with black truffle, I've topped my heirloom tomato salads with it. It's not an overwhelming truffle flavor which is nice. I also bought a local honey lavender chevre for a dessert option. 

The Oil & Vinegar Cellar 

633 Front St
Ste F
Leavenworth, WA 98826

This was my favorite sample spot of all. There are several oil and vinegars for sampling with bread and they encourage you to try all of them. To make things worse, they offer $5 off each 3 bottles purchased. I could easily go broke here. 

I walked out with an English Toffee balsamic reduction, a Fig balsamic reduction, a Lemon Lavender white vinegar, Key Lime oil (the best!), Garlic Mushroom oil and a Rosemary oil. I haven't had anything like the Key Lime oil before, I'm still kind of not sure what to do with it so if the readers have any suggestions, please leave a comment and let me know :)  

The Flavor Express

220 9th St
Leavenworth, WA 98826

This is actually a fudge shop and that's not really my thing. While looking around I discovered she had a sea salt sample table so I decided to go crazy and get my sodium fix. 

At this sample table, tomatoes are on toothpicks and you dip it in the sea salts. Yes, I tried all of them and walked out with Black Truffle Sea Salt. 

Leavenworth Sausage Garten by cured

636 Front St
Leavenworth, WA 98826

There weren't free samples but this was my favorite meal. This is Currywurst sausage topped with fresh sauerkraut, curry ketchup and cajun creole mustard on the side. It was so flavorful it didn't really need condiments. The beer is Whistling Pig Hefeweizen. This is a patio restaurant, great for people watching and has a great view of the mountain range. 

Alveterzane!

Sac Food Trucks: Wicked ‘Wich & California Love

As mentioned before, I’m on a mission to try out every Sac Food Truck! I’m quite enjoying this decision so far and have two more to report on…

Wicked ‘Wich – Sandwiches & Burgers

@wichonwheels for locations

Their claim to food truck fame is their massive sandwiches that are stuffed with fries. It’s not exactly something I’d normally seek out but I’m very pleased that I went for it.

They also serve burgers. Most seemed like your standard fare but their Duck Burger was intriguing – ground duck patty, cheddar skirt, caper BBQ sauce and slaw. If it’s still on the menu, I’ll try this next.

My Order: 

Pulled Pork Banh Mi w/Pickled Papaya & Carrot, Fresh Cut Fries & Vietnamese Carmel Sauce

I was rather surprised I liked this as much as I did. I was on the fence about the fries and the bun is pretty large for my taste. (I’m a thin-crust-over-deep-dish kind of girl when it comes to carbohydrate ratios in meals.) I ended up tossing a pretty hefty amount of the bread but other than that, I loved it! The pork was perfect and the fries added to it without being overwhelming. (The stack is much smaller than the picture on the truck.) The papaya and carrot slaw was the best part though, with the fresh jalapenos on top. My mouth was on fire and my un-glossed lips were bright red from all the burning by the end… but still, it was worth it.

California Love Truck – Eclectic

@CaliLoveTruck for locations

This truck doesn’t really seem to have a theme. You’ll see our orders below are quite varied and the one thing we didn’t end up ordering was the Meatball Sandwich with Jack Cheese & Marinara. A very strange mix…

Friends’ Order:

Pork Belly Sandwich w/Fried Egg, Arugula & Garlic Mayo

Two friends ordered this dish. Pork belly’s usually my go-to (actually pork anything) but I decided to go against the grain. I didn’t try it but here’s their review: both thought it could use more arugula, that it would be amazing for breakfast, and that it was delicious.

Shared Order: 

Carnitas Fries – Seasoned Fries, Carnitas, Sour Cream, Guacamole, Chipotle Mayo Slaw

If you’re into this type of menu item you should really just order this, we were all in agreement that it was a very weird side dish with our other sandwiches. It was good, pork was tender, but this is really just one of those dishes that you order late at night after many hours spent drinking.

My Order:

Chicken & Waffles Slider w/Bacon, Hot Sauce Mayo & Maple Syrup

I kind of love the idea of this slider, seems very food truck-ish to me. Not exactly something that would land on a restaurant menu. I liked it, didn’t love it. I should qualify that by saying that I’ve never ordered regular chicken and waffles before so I really have very little idea what would make it good or bad compared to “the real thing.” The fried chicken was fantastic, bacon’s always good, spicy aioli with the sweet maple syrup – who could complain about that? The waffle was too dense for my taste and I thought it might be crispy, but no. The fried chicken was good enough to make up for it though.

Four down, fifteen or so trucks to go…

Here’s the link again for location updates if you want to set your own mission:

http://gofoodmob.com/

New Food Mag Favorite: donna hay magazine

A recent trip to Barnes & Noble, killing time waiting for a movie to start, led to the discovery of my favorite cookbook author’s magazine! It’s been around for ages but somehow it’s escaped me until now, so possibly you too. Here’s why it’s great…

Donna Hay’s cookbooks feature (relatively) simple, creative dishes with incredible pictures of every single one. My biggest pet peeve with cookbooks is the low picture-to-recipe ratios. How are you supposed to be inspired to cook a dish without a picture? Her bi-monthly magazine is a slightly smaller version packed with recipes and gorgeous food photography for a third of the cost!

In college I worked at a bookstore and spent hours thumbing through cookbooks when I was bored (sorry boss) and there were very few that broke the 25% mark on trial-worthy recipes, my second pet peeve. They’re usually either too unrealistic for the home cook, too specific (who’s really going to try 40 pasta recipes?), or too boring and uninspired. Cooking magazines tend to be even worse. That is not the case here. There's a great mix of different types of realistic recipes that are sophisticated but simple enough that they're not intimidating.   

The recipe-to-fluff ratio is also incredibly high. It’s a straightforward, seasonal recipe booklet with short articles about foodie-centric topics like wine and cooking gadgets. The pages aren’t taken up with topics that you might be interested in like beauty tips and crafty how-tos. It cuts to the chase. Personally, I see food mags like guys see Playboy - we don’t read them for the articles.

Like most things in life though, there is a slight catch. It’s an Australian magazine so you have to do conversions for the measurements, or get a kitchen scale. It’s quick and easy to do it online or even with iPhone apps though, and completely worth it!

Check it out online – they have an iPad app where you can watch videos for some recipes and you can get a digital subscription, though I prefer the print version.

http://www.donnahay.com.au/magazine

Tonight I made her Maple & Ginger Cheesecake (fantastic), the Crumbed Eggs with Garlic Kale Toasts & Caneles de Bordeaux are next!