Food News Feed - Looking at the NY Times "T": Living Fall 2005 Magazine.

Quoted: Eric Lau, chef of Santa Cruz's Oswald Bistro. "I like San Francisco and all, but I don't know. It's just so sure of what's good - so self-righteous, yet so conservative about food. It's the tyranny of California cuisine that gets to me." We all love Chez Panisse - maybe too much. Chez Panisse, the progenitor of what we have come to call "California cuisine," has become not just one voice but the only voice speaking out on the values and the mission of that cuisine, particularly in Northern California. (Daniel Patterson is the former chef of Frisson and Elizabeth Daniel in San Francisco.)

Over breakfast in San Sebastián, Spain, a friend I was visiting volunteered a list of the five things the Spanish could not live without: "coffee, cigarettes, jamón, freshly squeezed orange juice and filadelfia." Filadelfia? "Cream cheese, man," my friend said. "They eat it like crazy."

Heritage breed pigs, old European stock with names like Gloucestershire Old Spot and Tamworth, have a currency among chefs. "I compare it to having fresh-squeezed orange juice versus concentrated."

The more esoteric knives - say, a santoku or a yanagi sushi knife - signal the presence of someone who takes cooking as seriously as eating, someone who would never chain-saw-massacre an orange roughy with a cleaver.

The restaurant's popularity with the sophisticate set has allowed Mickelis to pursue his gourmet tendencies, to a degree. He uses extra virgin olive oil from Spain and vanilla from Madagascar. But the realities of running a cafeteria, where food is prepared to sell within five to seven minutes, often intrude. He has long wanted to do a Santa Fe chicken breast with pico de gallo but fears that the tomatoes just won't hold up. "My garnishes go to hell in a handbasket on a steamer table," he says, sighing.

"Her pink KitchenAid mixer and pink floral kitchen towels are way too matchy-matchy." (Note: Amanda Hesser is the editor of the NY Times "T" Living Fall 2005 Magazine.)