It’s been 6 months+ since we moved back to Northern California.
I think we’ve synched up nicely with the rhythm of life in Sacramento and the Bay Area. Last month, we checked out the farm team for the Oakland A’s, the Sacramento River Cats.
We scored some sweet seats next to the field and I spent a good part of the night ducking flying foul balls. We’re bringing a catcher’s mitt next time! Of course, we enjoyed the perfect ball park meal: a cold beer and a hearty hot dog. In this case, it was a kielbasa sausage.
Speaking of food, our trip back to Cali also helped us return to amazing meals in San Francisco. Susan and Tom had nothing but good things to say about Incanto’s Head to Tail Dinner. So, we tried it out a few weeks ago. It was a gentle, decadent introduction to offal dining and I loved every bite.
offal: 1: the waste or by-product of a process: as a: trimmings of a hide b: the by-products of milling used especially for stock feeds c: the viscera and trimmings of a butchered animal removed in dressing (from Merriam-Webster)
Anthony Bourdain often said cooks learned how to make the nasty bits taste good out of necessity. Eventually, those tasty dishes get elevated to gourmet dining because it demonstrates the cook’s skill in working with all the edible scraps, trims, bones, guts and more.
For chefs like Cosentino, cooking with offal has been transformed into an art form. It’s a nod to the tradition of past chefs who made do with little and a look forward to healthy, sustainable eating.
Almost 7 years ago, I would have never thought I’d be part of the offal dining movement. In our early dating years, Mark and I did Valentine’s Dinner at Incanto. It was an intimate, romantic dining scene. This was before Chef Cosentino exploded on the TV food scene with Iron Chef America. Back then, the food tasted delicious, refined, hearty and I wanted seconds. In 2008, I can’t wait for our next dinner at Incanto.
After the shortest Easter Sunday Mass at St. Paul’s (45 minutes), we also celebrated with an Easter Supper Dinner at Incanto.