Boulevard: The Cookbook

Publishers Information

About Boulevard: The Cookbook

Publisher Web Link: http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/tenspeed/

Every once in a while a restaurant changes a city’s dining scene forever. In San Francisco, that restaurant is Boulevard. In 1993 Nancy Oakes first breathed life into a glorious but forgotten beaux arts building —a survivor of the 1906 earthquake —with her gutsy and ebullient cooking. Just a decade later, the Audiffred Building overlooks a bustling Ferry Plaza, and it’s impossible to imagine a San Francisco without its Boulevard. Bathed in the glow of the restaurant’s hand-blown lights, with stunning views of the waterfront, dining at Boulevard always feels special. Oakes and long-time collaborator and chef de cuisine, Pamela Mazzola, have seduced locals and visitors alike with their artful yet accessible French-influenced regional American cooking. In BOULEVARD, Oakes and Mazzola present 75 recipes, each anchored by a favorite main and accessorized with an exuberant collection of irresistible sides, all eminently cookable at home. Consider, for example, Pan-Roasted Wild King Salmon in Cider Sauce with Potato-Bacon-Watercress Cake and Shaved Apple and Fennel Salad; Buttermilk-Brined Fried Little Chickens with Cream Biscuits; and Veal Chops with Porcini and Asiago Cheese Stuffing with Roasted Fingerling Potatoes, Tomatoes, Pancetta, and Arugula. With every recipe prefaced by the chefs’ wise and unapologetically opinionated cooking notes, BOULEVARD answers the long-running demand for a dialogue with the creative team behind the restaurant’s enduring popularity.

Author Information

About Nancy Oakes

Author Web Link: http://www.boulevardrestaurant.com/main.html

Chef Nancy Oakes believes that her diners need to be comforted by her food as well as the surroundings and service. She feels that the room and food presentation should flatter guests in a way that make each one feel personally cared for. Clearly, her customers have felt cared for and they have spoken: she is indeed San Francisco’s most beloved Chef.  Virtually every reader’s poll of San Francisco Bay Area publications names Nancy Oakes as the most popular chef, and Boulevard as the favorite restaurant in San Francisco.  Her peers have spoken also, and in 2001 Chef Nancy Oakes garnered a tremendous and much-deserved James Beard Foundation Award, for “Best Chef in California.”  Chef Nancy Oakes has reached and sustained a level of awareness and culinary excellence held by few chefs in America today.

Prior to opening Boulevard in 1993, Chef Oakes earned high praise at her restaurant, L’Avenue, a 50-seat San Francisco neighborhood bistro where she created and sustained a wonderful loyalty and intimacy with her diners. This relationship continues at the 145-seat Boulevard.  Before L’Avenue, Oakes and a friend created a popular waterfront restaurant called Barnacle.

During her years of study at the San Francisco Art Institute, Oakes was also known in San Francisco for her down-to-earth yet elegant service and hospitality while working at such places as Alexis on Nob Hill.  As a self-taught chef, Oakes enhanced her philosophy with the knowledge she gained from great teachers under whom she served informally. From Girard Boyer and Taillevent to Guy Savoy and Joel Robuchon, Oakes learned to cherish all aspects of food from searching for the freshest ingredients to perfect service.

At Boulevard, Nancy Oakes is able to fulfill her dream of giving diners a truly sensuous experience.  She and her crew continue to cook ‘a la minute’ for each diner, having created a menu such that in any evening, they are preparing a relatively small number of each item.

“When you order a chicken, we actually cook it to order for you over the open fire in our wood-burning oven. There are no shortcuts. Even our pastries and cookies are made in small batches so they have a home-baked quality.  We all feel a reverence for the food we use... we choose diver scallops rather than dredged, and fruits and vegetables straight from the farm or the farmer’s market. In our kitchen, we all share San Francisco’s love and commitment to good food,” says Oakes.

Cookbooks by Nancy Oakes

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Boulevard: The Cookbook

by Nancy Oakes