Joseph Byrd

Last week was soup week at our house. This year’s soups are Summer Vegetable (peppers, beans, tomatoes, corn), Winter Vegetable (butternut, potato, celeriac, parsnip) and a small quantity of Roasted Pepper (a thick puree of sweet Italians and smoked bells). Now, having used up my stocks, I have to make more. The late fall and […]

I’m obsessive about culinary authenticity. Even in daily meals at home, I confess to being distressed if smothered pork chops and guacamole share the same table. Or pasta primavera and bratwurst, ouch! The discontinuity is almost painful. My mate indulges this nerdy compulsion. We tend to have ethnic continuity — Spanish, Jewish, Southern American, Italian, […]

It’s still prime tomato season at the Farmers’ Market. Every year, it seems the tomatoes have more variety and get meatier and more flavorful. This time of year, we try to have BLTs every Saturday morning. And this column is about a BLT, sort of. While I consider myself the second-best sandwich maker on the […]

The beef brisket sandwich was as good as everyone promised. The glowing sauce — a bizarre, grainy concoction of paprika and vinegar — took some getting used to, but the whole combination of meat and sauce and pickle slices and icy beer pretty much couldn’t be beat. (Arthur Bryant’s, Kansas City, Miss.) At Cooper’s, you […]

An early vernacular Spanish source for gazpacho — probably 14th century — says, "Gazpacho is a dish of rustic shepherds, or those who have nothing else to eat, because it is made up of garlic, vinegar, bread and water." Well, gazpacho has come a long way from that. In fact, it’s come a long way […]

I arrived in New York in the late summer of 1960. John Cage, theavant gardecomposer with whom I’d come to study, was already a legendary presence, attracting not just musicians but a dedicated following of painters, poets and what would come to be called “performance artists” (although none of us called ourselves that). Cage’s philosophical […]

I never truly realized what a Caesar Salad was until 1969. We were celebrating a special occasion, and my girlfriend insisted that we go to the legendary Paul’s Duck Press, then the most elegant and exotic restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. Don’t bother to Google — you’ll find only two references to Paul’s Duck Press; […]

My first memory of food is the White Castle in Louisville, 20 miniature hamburgers for a dollar. I was 4, and the aroma — onions grilled in suet, then plopped with a tiny steamed beef patty inside a miniature square bun, in tiny white boxes, all bagged — was heavenly. At the age of 5, […]

We are down to our last pint of Häagen-Dazs “Sticky Toffee Pudding” ice cream. I knew this would happen eventually, but I guess I was hoping for a reprieve. How, I thought, how could they possibly discontinue such a terrific product? Well, yes, it was one of their “contest” flavors, the ones they run for […]

With the Farmers’ Market now in full glory, the North Coast community is blessed. How can we make the most of this bounty? When we opened our restaurant, Byrd House, over two decades ago, people warned us that there were "vegetarians" who would look askance at our omnivorous menu. I did not take them seriously. […]

I confess to being an elitist regarding food. I have been a professional cook and restaurant manager, and my wife and I enjoy cooking, eating and talking about food, so I have acquired definite prejudices and preferences. I also want my columns to entertain, rather than be purely practical. Thus, some of my more adventurous […]

Three years ago we dined at the legendary Roxanne’s, the nation’s most talked – about vegan shrine, in Larkspur. The creation of a dot-com millionaire and his new wife, a glamorous and innovative chef, it was the first elegant "raw foods" restaurant. Nothing at Roxanne’s was heated to more than 118 degrees F. This meant […]