San Jose’s first and only restaurant to gain a Michelin star is making a surprising comeback after closing last year. Adega, the Portuguese tasting menu restaurant, will reopen Nov. 15, 2024 at its original home at 1614 Alum Rock Ave., SJose The restaurant closed Dec. 2023, and owners Carlos and Fernanda Carreira planned to replace it with a second location of their more casual Portuguese-style tapas bar Petiscos in downtown SJose. They put up new signage and rearranged the dining room. But they were soon flooded with demand for Adega’s return.
Any chef who acknowledges “A lot of what I learned in France was techniques, attention to detail, the respect for ingredients and sourcing the best stuff you can” [owner/chef Lance Ebert] is my kind of chef. In a nutshell, that’s what great cooking is all about.
San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critics went back to school to review the two kinds of school lunches served in San Francisco Unified School District cafeterias: Prepackaged meals from Revolution Foods and Refresh meals assembled on-site. Proposition A on the November ballot would fund more assembly kitchens in schools and a central kitchen, where school meals would be made from scratch.
What’s at stake? If the food is gross, students don’t eat it. With two-thirds of SFUSD students depending on daily breakfasts and lunches for their nutritional needs, the quality, tastiness and, dare we say, presentation of the food matters. It’s no easy task: All school meals must abide by SFUSD nutrition standards, which meet or exceed federal and state guidelines, and the district has about $1.25 to spend for the food and milk per meal after labor and other costs, compared with about $2.50 per meal paid to Revolution Foods, which includes delivery. Since 2021, meals have been free to all 48,000 students regardless of family income.
So we, the Chronicle’s restaurant critics, grabbed our Jansport backpacks, put on our cleanest pairs of sneakers and went back to school, where we sampled the two options and weighed in with our own extremely professional opinions.
Lunch at Gum Kuo at 388 9th Street in Oakland Chinatown featuring sliced cuttlefish and fried pumpkin -
The cuttlefish was firm but not chewy without much of the usual amount of orange coloring. The pumpkin strips were dipped in batter and fried before becoming too crispy.
West Oakland’s hidden gourmet gem – Only through word of mouth have people discovered the tiny fine dining restaurant hiding in this unsuspecting place. Chefs Sarah Cooper and Alan Hsu opened Sun Moon Studio this summer at 1940 Union St., with just four tables and one employee. The chefs’ pedigrees include Michelin-starred restaurants Benu in SF and Per Se in NYC; they also opened the well-regarded Pomet/Oakland. Sun Moon Studio has managed to fly under the radar, a rarity in the food-obsessed Bay Area. Like Michael Warring/Vallejo, there is no sign; only discreet white lettering painted on the narrow front door. To reserve a seat at one of their 12-course tasting menus, you must email the owners, who keep track of bookings in a spreadsheet.