The Eat Generation
History in a Bowl
comments (5) June 16th, 2009 in Blogs
Dabney Gough, contributor
10 users recommend
Cioppino at Duarte's. Again, this is *half* an order!
Photo: D Gough
I spent this past weekend at a yoga retreat in Pescadero, California, about an hour south of San Francisco, and there I had two important epiphanies. First epiphany: I am in this yoga thing purely for the physical benefits, not the spiritual ones. Enough of the chanting and meditation already! Second, and completely unrelated: a $30 a bowl of soup really is worth it. At Duarte's Tavern, at least.
Duarte's shows up in all the San Francisco guidebooks, and they all say the same thing:
- It's old. Duarte's (pronounced DOO-erts, as best as I can tell) has been open since 1894, with just a brief hiatus over Prohibition. That's pretty old by San Francisco standards. The bar/restaurant is situated in a charming clapboard building that looks vaguely barn-y, in an Old West kind of way.
- Get the olallieberry pie. Olallieberries are similar (and related) to blackberries; they're just bigger and easier to pick. They're grown throughout the area surrounding Pescadero, where you see endless roadside stands selling them. Duarte's is known for their pies, and the olallieberry is the most praised.
- Get the cioppino. Cioppino, despite its very authentically-Italian-sounding name, was actually born in San Francisco in the late 1800s. Developed by Italian fishermen working in North Beach, it's one of those hodgepodgey soups that features several different kinds of fish and seafood in a tomatoey broth.
I have to admit that I almost didn't order the cioppino at Duarte's. I mean, $30? For soup? But it was the specialty, and I'd never had it before. Heck, even the name of the town suggested expertise: Pescadero means "fisherman" in Spanish. So my friend Mary and I took a chance, and decided to share an order.
Before the soup arrived, the accoutrements landed on the table: cloth bibs (much classier than the plastic variety), napkins, a crab cracker and pick, and an empty bowl for shells. Then the bowl of cioppino came. It was huge! (And they had divided it into two bowls already - the full order would have required a bucket to contain it all). The local Dungeness crab was meaty and buttery and plentiful (half a crab for each of us - praise be!); the tomato broth was deep and complex. This was serious seafood, and there was a lot of it to boot.
It's quite a hit to the wallet, but I'm completely sold, and I'm already planning a return trip. (I have good reason, too; I was so stuffed after the cioppino that I didn't try the pie.)
That's my spendy-but-worth-it story. What's your favorite restaurant extravagance?
posted in: Blogs, Dabney Gough, pie, seafood, Duarte's, cioppino, olallieberry, Pescadero
About the Eat Generation
Follow the foodie adventures of former Fine Cooking recipe tester Dabney Gough as she takes a bite out of life in San Francisco. By day she's the marketing director for a specialty grocery store. By night, she's usually out exploring the city's amazing cocktail scene.
Comments (5)
Cheers
Malcolm Posted: 5:59 pm on June 19th
I think I have you beat on the most expensive soup department: the Truffle Soup at Paul Bocuse's L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges, outside Lyon, which cost 80 Euros. Given the exchange rate at the time (last spring), that worked out to about $120 for a pretty small bowl that could not be shared.
I wrote about it here:
http://tiny.cc/wxCfY
Posted: 11:24 am on June 19th
You must be logged in to post comments. Click here to login.