Author: admin (Page 33 of 51)

I’ve never been to Eccolo, the restaurant that replaced Ginger Island on 4th Street in Berkeley. Though it was started by former Chez Panisse sous chef Christopher Lee, but its reviews were always mixed, making some people happy and other furious. With very limited restaurant money, I never was too tempted to take the chance and try it.
I just found out that it recently closed through a very interesting article by Eccolo sous chef Samin Nosrat on the Food section of today’s San Francisco Chronicle (another business that is likely to fail in the near future). Nosrat explains how the business went under – basically, the economy put them in a position of either significantly downgrading their ingredients or significantly increasing their clientele. Despite a series of gimmicks (happy hour, more comfort food, etc.), they were not able to do the latter and they refused to do the former further, so their only choice was to close down. I’m sure that most restaurants nowadays are facing similar issues, and I wonder how many are choosing to downgrade their ingredients to stay alive.
The impact may be particularly bad for “nice” restaurants in the high end of the price scale (i.e. with entrees in the twenties). Even people who can still afford to go out to eat semi-regularly seem to be downgrading their restaurant choices. Indeed, many of the new restaurants that are arising (and yes, new restaurants are still opening in this economy) are pricing their dishes in the teens. The question is whether they can survive on that.
All this said, I’ve always thought that foreign/ethnic cuisines (Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Ethiopian) often offer tastier dishes than Californian restaurants at significantly lower prices (of course, we rather not think much as to the quality of the ingredients they use), so hopefully they’ll do better.
But all in all, I think/hope that the restaurants that will survive are those that offer good food and have consistent good reviews.

London Broil is the name given to top round in California. It’s a very lean, very tough cut of meat. I used to use it to make a tomato-sauce based stew, that cooks just for under an hour, and it was quite good for that. But I’ve always been weary about grilling it because of its toughness.
Still, the times are tough and, like everyone else, I want to save money. And London broil is ridiculously cheap right now – last week it was under $2 lb – so I wanted to cook it. I found this recipe at epicurious.com which got raves. Alas, thinking back, given all the ingredients for the marinade, the final dish is not necessarily cheap, but other than the beef, I had everything else saved for the lemons.
In any case, the meat was VERY yummy, I loved the tangy flavor given by the marinade. I’d use it with london broil again. The key is to marinade the meat OVERNIGHT, any less and it won’t get enough flavor.
Note that I’m writing the quantities needed to make HALF of the quantity that the original recipe makes – the original recipe says to keep half to serve as a sauce, but I found the sauce too tangy to go with either the beef or the couscous I served with it. I’d just skip it. The quantities below should be enough to marinate a 2lbs (or even bigger) chunk of meat. You can use flank, tri-tip or other similar cuts in addition to top round.
Ingredients

• 1 lemon
• 1/2 onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup distilled white vinegar
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 bay leaves, crumbled
• 1 1/2 tsp. coriander seeds
• 1/2 tsp. black pepper

Juice the lemon and then chop the rind. Put in a medium size bowl and add the rest of the ingredients. Mix well.

Put the meat your are using in a large, sealable plastic bag and pour in the marinade. Marinade overnight, turning from time to time.