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Just because it’s getting colder does not mean you should retreat into your living room with hot chocolate and the first season of Homeland. On the contrary, we think it’s time to buck up, layer on the scarves, and head out into the night. Here are Vogue itineraries for wintry evenings out in three American cities.

Photo: Sara Davis

> Read the full article here

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Rich in nutrients and low in calories, countless studies point to winter greens as some of the healthiest foods. To indulge in this season’s bounty, we asked Kim Alter, executive chef of Daniel Patterson’s new Haven restaurant in Jack London Square, for some quick and easy recipes. Alter brings serious veggie cred from cooking at Ubuntu in Napa and Manresa in Los Gatos, both of which source produce from nearby farms and gardens. Her advice? Focus on straightforward preparations that highlight the vegetable’s natural flavor while adding a few simple elements (citrus, garlic, chili flakes) to keep things interesting.

Ingredients

• Bok Choy – Health factor: Rich in vitamin C, antioxidants, and several essential minerals.
• Kale – Health factor: Rich in vitamins A, C, and K, as well as calcium and potassium.
• Broccoli – Health factor: Rich in vitamin C, vitamin A, potassium, and folate.

Sauteéd Bok Choy

Kim says: “I love bok choy! I think it is easily accessible and tasty, but you never hear about people cooking with it. You can eat it as a snack or a side dish, and it’s so easy: It takes five minutes to cook.”

Ingredients:
4  baby bok choy • 2 tablespoons olive oil • 1 clove of garlic, crushed • juice of 1 lemon • 1 teaspoon salt • 1 pinch chili flake • zest of 1/2 lemon

Directions:
Cut the bok choy in half, leaving the vegetable intact, and dry it off. Heat a sauté pan, add oil, and place bok choy in pan facedown. Add garlic, and turn down heat to medium (if the pan is smoking too much, add water, and let burn off). For firm vegetables, cook for 2–3 minutes. Add lemon juice, salt, and chili flakes. Remove from heat, and add lemon zest. Use as a side dish, snack, or the whole meal.

Braised Kale Soup

Kim says: “Kale is a really hearty vegetable, so I like to braise it to the point where it’s broken down but not totally hammered: You want it to have some toothsomeness, or heartiness, so you still get the flavor and nutrients.”

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil • 1/2 medium yellow onion • 1 carrot • 2 garlic cloves • 2 bunches lacinato kale • salt • 2 quarts chicken or vegetable stock • 2 pounds cleaned dirty girl cannelini beans (sub dried beans, if needed) • 1 teaspoon pimenton • 1 orange (zest the whole, juice half) • finishing olive oil • baguette

Directions:
Heat olive oil in a medium size pot. Add small diced onions and carrot, then peeled garlic, and cook until onions are translucent. Add kale (remove most of the stem, and rough chop), and braise down till soft. Salt throughout the cooking process. Add stock and beans, and simmer until beans are cooked through. Add pimenton, orange zest, and juice. Transfer to serving bowl, and add finishing oil and baguette.

Broiled Broccoli

Kim says: “Daniel Patterson and I were talking about this, and he said that this was his favorite go-to dish. When you broil it, I think you get such great texture, and you get that charred flavor that takes it to a different level than just steamed broccoli.”

Ingredients:
1 head broccoli • 1 tablespoon olive oil • salt to taste • chili flakes to taste •
juice of one lemon

Directions:
Remove the stems and rough chop the head of the broccoli. Place on a sheet tray with aluminum foil. Drizzle oil and salt, and place in oven on broil to almost char the tops. Cook to desired doneness: for a slight crunch, about 5 minutes. Sprinkle with chili flakes and lemon juice.

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A haven for brunch: Meanwhile at Jack London Square, Daniel Patterson’s Haven has just added Sunday brunch service from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. with a seasonal family-style menu ($25) that changes each week. Chef Kim Alter’s brunch debut last week included a compressed fruit and lettuce salad; grits, eggs and sausage; and French toast with caramelized bananas and whiskey caramel. If that description isn’t quite decadent enough to do it justice, take a gander at the brunch cocktail menu, which includes a Bunny Mary with vodka, green chartreuse, carrots and habanero peppers; a slightly more standard bloody mary (but in true Haven style, those flavors hail from smoked heirloom tomatoes and charred shisito peppers); and a blackberry caipirinha ($10 each).

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In 7×7‘s July/August issue, Tanya Holland of Brown Sugar Kitchen gave you a tour of an ideal day in Oakland. Now, we present the definitive dining guide to Oakland.

The problem is, there are loads of amazing spots to nosh and drink in the 510. So many, in fact, that we split our top picks into four parts categorized by neighborhood. In our first installment, we begin with Downtown, Uptown, and Jack London Square.

JACK LONDON SQUARE

The process of gentrifying Jack London is officially complete. There’s a Blue Bottle Coffee café here now for crying out loud. Fortunately, the great farmers’ market and the fancy condos have also brought with them some fantastic restaurants.

Favorite Newbie: Haven, 44 Webster St., 510.663.4440. The latest Oakland venture of SF chef Daniel Patterson, Haven succeeds where Patterson’s other Oaktown eatery (Plum) has fallen short: The menu is creative, but makes sense, and the service is attentive without being fussy. The menu changes often, but there’s almost always bone marrow on it and you should try it.

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Jack London Square, an historic piece of scenic real estate along the Oakland estuary, has had its ups and downs over the years. Those of us who lived in Berkeley during the 70’s and 80’s remember JLS as a down market Fisherman’s Wharf. But over the last decade, the nearby warehouses that used to service the Port of Oakland before it moved, were converted into residential lofts, creating a neighborhood. Concurrently, the Ellis Company, the newest developer to take on the Square, hatched an ambitious plan along the lines of the San Francisco’s Ferry Building. The project stalled during the recession in 2008, but a year ago, Rick Hackett (MarketBar) moved his pan-American Bocanova into a huge, lofty space with outdoor seating in sight of the marina, and a few months ago, Daniel Patterson (Coi, Plum) opened the long awaited Haven.

Nothing revitalizes a neighborhood like good restaurants and a critical mass of two, plus a Sunday farmers’ market, plus ferry service, plus an East Bay clique of artisan food producers lured by affordable leases, all make Jack London Square a culinary destination. But, it took Haven, one of the most exciting restaurants in the bay area, to put the Square over the top.

Patterson’s young, creative chef, Kim Alter, cooks big, luscious, family style plates of vegetable-centric food. She uses meat and seafood, but also copious amounts of vegetables, herbs and fruits, which make her dishes vibrant. By ordering the $55 chef’s daily market menu, served family style for everyone at the table, diners get full immersion–a spontaneous meal of market driven creations, on and off the printed menu.

The meal started with vegetables: soft, smoky shisito peppers blanketed with papery bonito shavings; griddled summer squashes of all sorts, aromatic with curry spices that had seeped into soft sauteed onion; and fried brussels sprouts, in lime and fish sauce. The kitchen knows how to achieve uncanny balance between salt and acid, making vegetables, and everything else, taste so bright.

Golden marrow bones are heaped with raw celery leaves, spring onion, red peppers and gigantic crisp/soft croutons in vinaigrette, a fantastic contrast of fat and clean. Crispy soft shell crabs meld with long cooked potatoes and piquant tartar, everything in the same flavor range.

Clams released their liquor into a smooth, brothy romesco sauce, that Spanish conversation between sherry vinegar, red peppers and ground almonds. Gnocchi, big and soft with sexy browned edges, became multi-dimensional with a dressing of corn, bacon, shavings of raw maitake mushroom and a bit of cream.

Those already yearning for the unctuousness of foie gras could turn to tongue, this night charred yet butter soft, with radicchio, bing cherries, trumpet mushroom and quinoa. The wizard Alter made it all work. All these plates were just some of the highlights of that night’s spontaneous market meal.

A first dessert of peach-cherry ice cream with cookie crumbs refreshed, though the two fruits kind of cancelled each other out. A log of silken milk chocolate mousse was strewn with a garden of cherries, smoked meringues and lacings of chocolate syrup, dramatic and pretty. Bing cherries, with their short season, won Miss Popularity at this meal.

The physical space matches the cooking: contemporary, edgy, sophisticated, casual and immediately appealing. Tall windows with gauzy drapes look out to the harbor. An unfinished high ceiling gives way to dropped lighting fixtures, wooden tables and ladder back chairs that show their grain, and polished concrete floors. The kitchen, of course, is visible.

The bar, which concocts ingenious cocktails, takes up the short side of an “L”-shaped floor plan, and has it its own seating area.

The whole project feels more San Francisco than Oakland. In fact, Haven reminded me of the exciting new crop of restaurants in Paris, which have been inspired by our farm driven, fruit and vegetable inspired cooking here.

Once again, Patterson, with Alter and her team, has launched a restaurant that pushes the edges but is primally satisfying at the same time.

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Fitting that they call it Jack London Square, and not just because the man himself once drank here. Much like London’s stories, which frequently pit man against the merciless whims of nature, Oakland’s waterfront district presents entrepreneurs with the pitfalls and potential of a modern-day frontier.

Yes, there are new condos, and local landmarks like Scott’s and Yoshi’s. But drop by after dark, and the Square reveals its failings as a nighttime destination. Cut off by a freeway and poorly served by BART, the streets here slumber. The call of the wild is a freight train’s whistle, splitting the stillness of a setting that has bucked the best intentions of urban planners and tests a restaurateur’s survival skills.

Grizzled veteran that he is, Daniel Patterson appears as well equipped as any to encamp in this location. He’s familiar with the landscape, having staked a nearby claim with his Uptown restaurant, Plum, and his culinary street cred (he also runs the four-starred Coi in San Francisco) has created built-in buzz around his new waterfront venture. The restaurant is called Haven, and it’s just that: a refuge in a quiet port of call.

Step inside, and you come upon the hallmarks of casual chicdom: a bar, for instance, that’s a wellspring of fine cocktails; uncovered wood tables; taupe tiled walls; and earth-toned booths. The architecture is industrial, with exposed pipes and cement floors, but the space itself feels personable, and an open kitchen, with setback counter seating, gives a heartbeat to a building that was born without much soul.

To brand your place a haven suggests that your food is hearty, and under Patterson’s appointee Kim Alter (who has cooked at Manresa, Ubuntu, and, fleetingly, Plate Shop in Sausalito), the kitchen lives up to that billing.

“Craveable and technique-driven” is the restaurant’s label for the menu, a mouthful that translates roughly to “high-minded comfort food.” However you define it, the aesthetic is apparent in such dishes as shepherd’s pie, a riff on tradition that begins with a layer of ground pork and house-cured pork belly, buried not in mashed potatoes but in a cloud of potato foam; and a little gem salad that doubles as a play on a happy hour staple. The lettuce, splashed with blue cheese dressing and specked with a dice of pickled celery, onions, and red Fresno peppers, is ringed by bright red dots of housemade hot sauce and garnished with crisp chicken skin. All the spicy-tangy-salty notes are there; they’ve just been rearranged: It’s Alter’s take on Buffalo wings.

Culinary irony has a history at least as long as Thomas Keller’s remake of coffee and doughnuts, and too much of it can be tiresome, but for the most part, Alter’s cooking isn’t tongue-in-cheek. Haven comes across instead as a thinking chef’s California bistro, where approachable food gets tilted slightly on its side. Manila clams, generously packed into a cast-iron cauldron, bask beside charred turnips, a sensible, if somewhat offbeat, pairing, further set apart by vadouvan-seasoned garlic broth. Butternut squash soup is a familiar winter warmer, but here it takes a novel turn toward the tropics: It’s poured tableside over lime-coconut essence, with cubes of ginger beer–soaked apples and blistered dates.

Alter has a lot of good ideas, and at times it seems she’s trying to execute them all at once. Artful presentations stray now and then toward the anarchic. Take seared day-boat scallops, delicately cooked but arranged chaotically with roasted beets, black trumpet mushrooms, braised endive, and assorted dabs and dollops of blood orange gel and beet purée. There’s no knocking the nice marriage of fl avors. And no escaping the fact that the plate looks like a crime scene. Good thing risk taking is not a punishable offense.

For all the elements at work in her cooking, Alter aims to be accessible, not esoteric. To punctuate that point, her menu includes a chef’s tasting option for tables of two or more in which all of the courses are served family-style. This relaxed format is a good way to experience the kitchen’s rich leanings, which, on a recent evening, included roasted bone marrow, split and glazed with Meyer lemon; duck breast, resting on a bed of farro, in a foie gras–Banyuls reduction; and smoked fettuccine, mixed with crème fraîche and pancetta, tossed with smoked cipollini onion purée, sprinkled with sturgeon, mullet roe, and bottarga; then topped with a farm egg. The briny fish eggs, a perfect foil for the pasta’s intense flavors, please the eyes as much as the palate: a colorful constellation, orbiting the egg yolk’s yellow sun.

In its early months, Haven appears to be a popular haven, though how patrons arrive remains unclear to me. A StarTrek transporter is my best guess, since on my visits, as I strolled along the waterfront toward the restaurant, I hardly saw a soul, and the only sounds I heard were my own footsteps, which quickened on approach as I pondered the prospects of Matt Tinder’s desserts.

If there’s a better pastry chef than Tinder in the Bay Area, he or she has escaped my radar. His concoctions, wildly creative but perfectly composed, set sweet and savory in balanced opposition, as with bourbon mousse on a sweet crust, with bourbon ice cream, rye toast, and dulce de leche; and a cheekily named stunner called baked California: a dome of shiso-fl avored meringue, filled with mandarin sherbet and flanked by streaks of avocado purée and mandarin gel.

It sounds like an odd idea on paper, but it’s no more of a stretch than opening a restaurant on Jack London Square.

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How quickly we forget the chemistry of cooking. We’re so busy stuffing our gourds on the go to remember that what sits on the plate before us is often an experiment in art and science.

Bakers appreciate such things. Beat your batter too long, and you’ll wind up with one dense Bundt.

Those of us who don’t bake look to restaurants such as Haven, a gold mine of technique-driven California cuisine. Open two months in Oakland’s Jack London Square, Haven is the third project from restaurateur Daniel Patterson, whose Uptown spot, Plum, is a source of pride for Oakland foodies.

At Haven’s helm is executive chef Kim Alter, a culinary scientist of sorts who has a bold way with meat and spice and a true love for vegetables. Haven’s tasty dishes, polished service and ambience are enough to ensure a return visit. But those who get a kick out of unique ingredients and trendsetting techniques will particularly delight in this little culinary sanctuary.

Take the sweet-and-smoky Shepard’s Pie ($25). It begins as pork butt that is brined for a full day before it’s ground and cooked down with a traditional mirepoix. Alter adds nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice and bay leaf for a warming, aromatic effect. She tops the dish with fried garlic pieces, rutabaga and a layer of whipped potatoes before sticking it in the wood-fired oven. It’s more comforting than Grandma herself.

I couldn’t figure out what made this dish so dreamy, almost like chai pork.

We ate at Haven on a Sunday night, seated at the bar overlooking the open kitchen and wood oven. By Wednesday, I was curious enough to get Alter on the phone.

“We use pig’s blood to thicken it,” she told me. “I think it adds a lot of flavor.”

It certainly does. The technique is common in Northeast Chinese cuisine, and it gives food a rich dimension that is hard to resist. She gets equally creative with organ meats on the Bavette ($28), a flank steak decorated with pieces of glazed quince, sunchoke and two paper-thin strips of meat my husband described as “the best roast beef.”

Again, I scratched my head. Redial. “It’s braised beef heart,” Alter explained. She uses brine from Katz’s Delicatessen in New York to give the beef heart a kick, then fires and slices it.

“It’s a play on pastrami,” she said. “When I put ‘heart’ on the menu, no one would order it. The second I took it off, everyone did.”

Clever. But Alter is hardly a meat-and-potatoes girl. Her time in the kitchen at Ubuntu, a Napa institution for vegetarian fare, and more recently, at Plate Shop in Sausalito, where she tended her own 14-bed garden, cemented a love affair with vegetables. Most of the kitchen staff, including sous chef Nate Olden, pastry chef Matt Tinder and ice cream guru Carl Swanson, hail from Ubuntu.

You can feel it throughout the menu, from side dishes, like the crispy Brussels sprouts ($7) with mint, lime and garlic, so bright and delicious you’d have to sword-fight your kids for them; the delicate shaved watermelon radishes that give a fresh crunch to the rich, oily Bone Marrow starter ($15); or Swanson’s sensationally refreshing and approachable intermezzo sorbets of carrot and raw fennel.

The menu changes regularly at Haven, and given the unseasonably warm weather, some of these dishes may disappear before your visit. I know Alter is interested in bringing whole animal and vegetable preparations to the table in addition to more one-pot cookery, which satisfies her love of comfort food and keeps the kitchen happy and running smoothly.

That’s not to say service is an issue. Save for having to request bread twice before it arrived — the free, homemade rolls are in demand — and a shortage of scallops that required us to change one of our entree orders, we were happy. Our server, a member of the management, if I had to guess, knew the restaurant’s wine list intimately, down to the personal stories of some tiny, Old World producers. I loved that.

If you’re headed to Haven for a romantic occasion, you may want to request a table for the privacy and waterfront view or the dining room’s brick walls and elegant drapery. Otherwise, parties of two are offered spots at the bar. That’s not a bad thing. You get to see Alter and company in action and receive a complimentary amuse bouche and palate-cleansing intermezzo.

Our intermezzo, a scoop of raw fennel sorbet, was so delicious I wanted it to replace the blander rice ice cream made with sake that accompanied our dessert, a moist, generous slice of chocolate cake ($10) layered with luscious coffee cream. I pondered the art and science of every last decadent bite.

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By Jay Barmann from sfist.com | December 30, 2011

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