Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Chef Charlie's new restaurant

Charlie, former head chef at Google, is opening a restaurant at Town and Country Village in Palo Alto. It's called Calafia.

I managed to elicit an invite to his Friends and Family pre-opening tasting event this past Sunday. This was very exciting for me.

My reservation was at 9pm, and by 5:30pm I was ravenous. I cooked some pasta with meat sauce to tide myself over.


My handiwork, in progress.


Tom gave me advice on cooking this meal.

I asked him, "Which do you think will taste better, this pasta or dinner at Charlie's restaurant?"

This was supposed to be a joke, because Charlie is a famous chef with a cookbook of his own recipes, whereas I can't even get my own mother to acknowledge that I can cook.

But Tom thought carefully, trying to come up with an answer that wouldn't hurt my feelings. Finally he said, "If this meal is better, that would mean we can open our own restaurant. So I think the other one will taste better."

Finally the ordained hour arrived, and I drove to Calafia.


The interior space just inside the door.


Bar area. The font on the wall boards (over-exposed in this photo) reminds me of Google cafe fonts, for some reason.


Lovely open space for the kitchen.


I had the fiery bbq pork rice bowl (with brown rice, yay!). It was great.


Happy.

It was better than my pasta, I can tell you.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

How'd you blog all that without hands? =)

Anonymous said...

Well, as you can see in the pic....Tom did the cooking so she made him do the blogging. Tom is Niniane's puppet!

Anonymous said...

I like the Happy picture, you look genuinely relaxed. Yay! :)

Anonymous said...

awesome! i'm jealous, i should have though to finagle an invitation myself. ah well. i'll have to go soon.

btw, see you at clara's book signing on sat!

Anonymous said...

eating a korean dish ?

wouldn't a korean dish taste better in a korean restaurant ?

only difference is brown rice.

Robin Xu said...

Does this restaurant only cook a certain type of food? (Korean, Italian, etc.) :D

N said...

The restaurants has salads, pizzas, fish, and other entrees. The menu is not very asian. I just happened to pick an asian dish.

N said...

Ryan, I'll see you on Saturday, and maybe sometime at Calafia. :)

Unknown said...

So how would you compare the food to uWink's?

I swear I saw you coming out of a Starbucks in Mountain View this around 5:30 PM...

Anonymous said...

I don't get why you don't have a boyfriend. Guys must notice you and flirt with you all the time. Sigh. Must be nice to have so many options, even if for the time being you're choosing to abstain from choosing.

Sigh. I'm so jealous.

Anonymous said...

You ate pasta at 5:30 and then again a full meal at 9pm!?! o__O How can you eat so much?