Gabrielle Hamilton’s best selling Blood, Bones & Butter and a San Francisco wine bar that makes serious wine, well, fun are the subjects of a pair of recent USA Character Approved Blog posts.
I first heard about Gabrielle Hamilton when I read about a bacon marmalade sandwich she serves at her New York City restaurant, Prune. Armed with only the vaguest description of the sandwich in a back issue of New York magazine, I made my own version. And I decided if mine was that good, I definitely had to get to Prune to try the real deal. I haven’t, of course. And now, with the huge success of her new memoir, getting in Hamilton’s already wildly popular East Village bistro will be that much harder.
Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, debuted at number two on the New York Times best seller list for hardcover nonfiction. And no less than Anthony Bourdain dubbed it “simply the best memoir by a chef ever. Ever.” USA Network’s Character Approved Blog is celebrating Women’s History Month, and that gave me the perfect excuse to write about the fascinating Hamilton and her unlikely path to being a chef/owner, a title still far too dominated by men. For a little taste of her book and her chef-loved restaurant, check out my latest post on the USA Character Approved Blog.
Heart, hip hop and wine in mason jars. Before it became a religion, beer just used to be beer. You would order it by name: “Gimme a beer.” Wine was the beverage with the hoity toity reputation, slightly intimidating to order when you were out. Heart Wine Bar in San Francisco is out to change that, taking the “serious” out of enjoying seriously good wines.
Heart owner Jeff Segal, himself just 25 years old, is introducing carefully curated, mostly European wines to an enthusiastic, mostly young crowd in a decidedly non-wine bar setting. As part of his non-traditional approach, Segal serves his wines in mason jars. Some might call this move a gimmick, but he’s serious about not being overly serious and has even issued a “Mason Jar Manifesto.” To find out more about the next-generation wine bar, read my recent USA Character Approved Blog post.