Specialty Food Magazine is the leading publication for retailers, manufacturers and foodservice professionals in the specialty food trade. It provides news, trends and business-building insights that help readers keep their businesses competitive.
Issue link: https://specialtyfoodmagazine.epubxp.com/i/55305
The Pastry Cupboard: Handmade Strudel, Croissants, Turnovers and Specialty Pies Former Slanted Door executive pastry chef Chona Piumarta opened The Pastry Cupboard retail space in the Hayes Valley/ Civic Center neighborhood in September. Piumarta was inspired to expand her whole- sale baking business to get closer to her cus- tomers and watch them enjoy her desserts— as she loved doing in top-notch restaurants. The corner space, with windows on all sides, is centrally located in outer Hayes Valley and serves the local community. At breakfast, pastries such as a many-layered fruit-and-almond strudel, croissants and fruit turnovers are available; lunch features focaccia sandwiches (the grilled cheese is a must), salads and Piumarta's extensive array of baked goods. Her signature sweet is a blueberry custard pie, which she's cultivated over the years on every restaurant menu she's overseen. You'll also find gorgeous fruit pies, latticed and laden with local fruit and handmade butter pastry, as well as chocolate mousse cake and many varieties of fruit pies and cookies. Sightglass Coffee Roasters: A House of Worship for Coffee Including Cuppings and Seasonal Bean Harvesting There's a new coffee darling in town. Sightglass was founded in 2009 by brothers Justin and Jared Morrison as a simple kiosk on the site where their current roastery and retail space lives. The 4,000-square-foot facil- ity, opened in July, is dedicated to the wor- ship of coffee, with an altar (of sorts) where guests order coffee drinks and beans, and commune with a cup and fellow parishioners. Beans are roasted following the har- vest calendar: Latin American beans in late summer and African and Indonesian in winter. The brothers source green coffee from boutique importers, and direct from a few small farms; the beans express the inherent terroir of their home turf—from elevation to soil varietals. With 10 to 15 Happy Girl Kitchen at the Ferry Building Marketplace types of beans served on-site, roasting dif- fers for each, and the Sightglass team strives to bring out the individual natural subtle- ties, characteristics, notes and flavors. Coffee drinks include pour-over and a full espresso menu from a selection of single-origin coffees beans. Hungry visitors can pair drinks with Firebrand brioches (from Oakland) and Piccino baked goods from the neighboring Dogpatch district. Situated upstairs is the Coffee Lab, offering cuppings and education for whole- sale accounts and staff; it's slated to expand to the public in early 2012. Sightglass is also sold at the Breslin in the Ace Hotel in New York City, at Burista in Portland, Ore., and at a few local retailers in San Francisco. Smitten Ice Cream at Proxy Project: Treats in 60 Seconds with a Hand-Welded Machine Named Kelvin Hayes Valley's Proxy Project has drawn national attention since its launch early last year. The Proxy Project (proxysf.net) is a unique space combining shops, eateries and art installations in repurposed steel shipping containers for an innovative retail experience. In the midst of this food and event space is the newfangled Smitten Ice Cream shop. Founder Robyn Sue Goldman spent two years inventing and developing a hand- welded ice-cream machine named "Kelvin" (for the unit of measurement for tempera- ture). The Kelvin, powered by liquid nitro- gen, makes individual servings of smooth ice cream in 60 seconds flat. Smitten's cus- tom machine alone is worth the trip—and the taste. Using milk from local Beretta Family Organic Dairy, Smitten rotates its weekly specials to highlight seasonal ingredients, with flavors such as Gravenstein Apples with Honey, Pistachio Apricot and top sellers Vanilla and Tcho Chocolate. A house-made candied jalapeño is among the creative toppings, and customers can take their fresh-made ice cream in a cup, in a handmade pizzelle cone or pressed into ice- cream sandwich form. Also worth visiting at Proxy is local roaster Ritual Coffee, which makes cof- fee to order, and on Mondays look for Avedano's Butcher Shop and Market, which parks its Meat Wagon, a mobile butcher truck custom-made from a former ambulance. |SFM| Laiko Bahrs is a culinary consultant and co- owner of Epicuring, an online calendar of food experiences and events in California. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012 107 COURTESY O F HAPPY GIRL KITCHEN CO.