Happy 10th Anniversary, San Francisco Cuisine! Every year, even I am truly amazed at our continued growth as the Premier Guide to Fine Restaurants and Wineries in the Bay Area. This year, we are bigger and better than ever—quite literally—with a new deluxe format. We like to think of it as a larger canvas, all the better to highlight and honor the immense talents of our participating chefs and winemakers. We’ve made use of our expanded page size in a number of ways.
We’ve revamped our Portraits of the Wineries section to make it inclusive and therefore easier for our readers to locate each winery, learn more about who they are and have all the essential information at their fingertips.
Once again, we’ve explored the parallel between the culinary arts and the fine arts. This year, I am proud to present a special section called, Art & Cuisine; Feeding the Artist’s Muse, in which we feature several California artists who use “food” as the subject of their diverse work. Some is traditional. Some is a bit more unexpected.
We continue to include our popular features such as Favorite Recipes of the Top Chefs (with a liberal sprinkling of The New Yorker cartoons) and the Culinary and Wine Glossaries. They remain standard favorites for gourmet chefs and “armchair cooks” alike.
Visitors to our website, www.SanFranciscoCuisine.com, can once again look forward to seeing featured menus and recipes from our participating restaurants in the upcoming year. Consider the current site with its tasty content an appetizer, because we have big plans in store.
At a deeper level, I have noticed over the last ten years, a marked shift in the consciousness of everyone in the food and wine industry that reflects the environmental concerns of the entire populace. Green is the theme today, and the words, “sustainable foods” and “organic” are heard more and more. In response, our celebrity chefs have taken up the banner by focusing upon simple fresh ingredients used in unexpected combinations and prepared in remarkable ways to be ultimately transformed into their amazing and sumptuous signature dishes. That’s true culinary alchemy.
Many of our wineries echo this through the use of natural predators in their vineyards and careful land stewardship. They were some of the premier environmentalists long before it became a cause célèbre.
The partnership between the wineries and the restaurants has been amplified by the growing number of cooking shows and media events. The tremendous increase in interest in the culinary world has made several chefs household names and has elevated the awarness of the average diner. The general public (not just the elite “foodie”) is more apt to make an educated choice regarding wine pairings to go with their meals. For the first time, we’ve featured top chefs who work on site at wineries. Haute cuisine and fine wines have more mass appeal than ever before.
So, as the culinary crescendo builds, San Francisco Cuisine continues to evolve. However, one thing remains constant. Although some of the faces, restaurants and items on the menus change, the artistry stays the same.
With that, I’d like to propose a toast to everyone who has contributed to the past decade of success of San Francisco Cuisine—chefs, winemakers and readers alike.
Patricia Trifari
Publisher