Wednesday, August 1, 2007

"Rosebud!"

No, the title is not referring to George Orson Welles' classic Citizen Kane, but the famous San Franciscan pâtisserie Citizen Cake. Jen paid a visit to the "Pastry Chef's Restaurant" of world renowned pastry chef Elizabeth Falkner not too long ago. Citizen Cake is located down the street from the Opera house and is destination in and of itself. It has a special place in Jen's heart as it may be a model for Jen to follow if she were to open a place of her own.

Within the glass walls of Citizen Cake, there are to halves of the operation where there is a full restaurant and then the bar area. You can pick up either the entree and dessert menu or items from the bakery at either location to Jen's surprise. But on this night, she was only interested in one thing, the desserts, of course. Falkner's dessert menu was as imaginative and innovative in the style Jen highly respects and emulates. Examples of her menu include, The Tomato Garden: fruit gazpacho soup, mango & cilantro ice cream, tomato sorbet, tomato skewers; Lovelova: strawberry rose salad, cardamom cream, saffron meringue, pistachio oil; and Total Chaos of Blackberries: blackberries, blackberry poached beets, chocolate-cassis curd, black licorice iced milk. These ground breaking desserts were $10.00 each and came in sizable quantities. Jen opted for the Total Chaos of Blackberries as the server sealed the deal when she described the dish as "an event on a plate." That it was. As highly critical as Jen can be with desserts, she came out only raving of the splendor that is Falkner's flare. Unfortunately, I was not with her on this sugar run, but my favorite pastry chef did bring me back the best chocolate chip cookie I have EVER had. Yummy!


Culinary Word of the Day: Cassis
A European black currant used mainly to make crème de cassis liqueur and black currant syrup. Source: Food Lover's Companion

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