Out The Door, the Slanted Door takeout! and grapefruit cake from Miette.

The last and very delicious puzzle piece has been found and fitted into the one final remaining corner and crevice of The Ferry Building Marketplace. A tiny space behind The Slanted Door, Charles Phan's famous-wherever-it-lives nouveau Vietnamese restaurant, now houses Out The Door, his answer to all the miffed reservation-less humans gridlocking the west side of the ferry building. And what an answer! The shallow store is well utilized, cleanly designed, easy to understand and stomach frustrating as all the choices sound yum yum yummy.

The Slanted Door has made three large spaces it's home in the ten years it's been open. In recent months the new location has collected more unhappy feedback than one would think considering how hard  it is to acquire a reservation. Many diners who formed their opinions of how the restaurant 'should be' when they were eating at the Valencia street location feel betrayed by the current location and service. From the inside (floor staff) I have heard that the goal is to turn tables now, and that disappointed customers are ok because there are a hundred more new ones behind them. When I worked in the ferry building the question we answered the most was, "where is The Slanted Door?" People who had no idea what part of the world the food was from showed up on Chowhound looking for "suggestions of good Oriental food options..."

I have eaten at The Slanted Door innumerable times, although only once at the second location. I have yet to test the new space and I have not made it a priority. I like Charles so much that I don't want to be sad about it's latest incarnation.

And so it's another reason why I will become a regular at Out The Door I am sure. I can feel it. I want to try everything. I asked a lot of questions about the taro and milk boba tea. The last one I had was made with taro powder and it tasted so far from the original tuber I could not finish it. The gentleman at the register told me that this one was made with real taro, as was the papaya made with papaya puree. He asked me if I wanted to taste  it and proceeded to give me the most generous sample I have ever been given of a food group, that had I been a complete stranger to Charles's empire, I would have been an immediate convert. The flavour was milky and starchy, with a hint of  sweetness that taro hides in its deepest soul. It took two sips to understand.

We ordered the lemongrass pork with broken rice. This came with perfectly cooked  cauliflower and a sweet and vinegar-y sauce that made the whole thing come together. Sharing it with a friend was perfect but it felt like a nice sized lunch portion.

There are a few seats at a small sushi-like bar, and two tall blonde wood tables to stand at in the hallway. Exotic small flower arrangements sit quietly on the surface, pieces of wood whose shapes are natural and organic, a bold detail in the sleek modern design Out The Door bespeaks with it's typeface, menus and worker's uniforms. Unlike many of the other over the top gourmet spaces in The Ferry Building Marketplace, Out The Door is easy to understand and maneuver through.

The desserts, surprisingly, looked like boring American options, and so we went outside and ate Miette's grapefruit cake. Thick layers of cake, grapefruit cream, whipped cream sit on top of a crunchy daquoise that could have been more prominent. This cake was created a few months ago and I have been singing it's praises ever since. Grapefruit is a fruit that most pastry chefs are afraid of. At Citizen Cake I once did a plated dessert that paired grapefruit and chocolate. Elizabeth Falkner and my co-pastry chef, Sara Cameron looked at me like I was crazy but it did surprisingly well. Miette's version used to be better. They lost an excellent pastry chef recently and their stuff is a little out of balance at the moment. Like they're saying, "let's do this, that sounds good" but they're not tasting or really looking at the finished product. {Consistency is the bane of most bakery's existence.}

Cake making, like architecture, is about structure and ratios. Math, science, intuition, magic, flavour. Those who push envelopes in cake and pastry making are engineers who understand tongue stimulating logarithms. It's difficult to hit the nail on the head, especially when you get into desserts with more than a few flavours and textures. Somebody once asked me for the recipe for a tart I created at Citizen Cake which had over 10 components. I tried to say no diplomatically but he responded that I was mean and secretive like all the other chefs he met. {I had "met" him through Chowhound, we had a talkative nice email exchange, and soon after the correspondence about this tart, he became a weird stalker.}

Lately in my teaching through Sur La Table and private classes I have given and taught recipes I have been using and working on for years. I am actually one of those chefs who share recipes, make my "book" open in the kitchens I work, want more people to bake more often, and will post them here eventually.

When my friend Nick was tasting cakes in preparation for his wedding I gave him my number one recommendation but mentioned Miette as a possibility. He wrote me back and said, "hell must be freezing---Shuna recommends Miette!" For this very bakery fired me because I was overqualified a few years ago. Fired by a crazy loon, yelling at my voice mail. I think they were mad because I needed an actual salary as I, unlike all of them, was not living on my over-the-top unemployment check from the dot-com melt down. At the time I was the only one working there who had baked anything more than a few cakes out of my home kitchen. Miette is proof that you don't have to be a professional baker or have ever worked in a bakery, to open a bakery.

And the ferry building is full of businesses that are taking a chance. On a Saturday when the farmer's market is it's largest, upwards of 15,000 people are said to walk through the building, a structure full of lovingly restored to its original condition. Filled with natural light and a view of the bay, delicious food food is everywhere here.

Comments

[Sam]

Wey hey! Welcome to blogland Shuna!

[Fatemeh]

Oh my god, Shuna, I'm so thrilled you're blogging!

And for the record, I'm jealous as all heck that I didn't get to come to the knife class - I've been complaining for at least a year and a half that I can't find a good one, and then Guy goes posting about it!

Oh, and to keep this on-topic, the grapefruit cake at Miette is unbelievable!

- Fatemeh

[Amy]

You can access the full OED online for free if you have a SF Public Library card!