BEST RESTAURANT IN AMERICA: CHEZ PANISSE?

Well, in 2001 Gourmet magazine named Chez Panisse as the best restaurant in America.  Then in 2007, it dropped to #2, to Alinea of Chicago.  Today, The Daily Meal's top 101 has Chez Panisse as #5, with Alinea now #6.  #1 = Le Bernardin (New York), #2 = Eleven Madison Park (New York), #3 = The French Laundry (Yountville) and #4 Per Se (New York).  However, as there were 630,964 restaurants in the USA a few months ago, #5 is not bad at all.  Internationally, Pellagrino lists Eleven Madison Park at #4, Alinea #9 and French Laundry #44, with Noma of Copenhagen at #1 (left, with Chef Rene and his crew).

I left my hotel room at noon for a 1:30 reservation.  I have a number of recommendations for BART.  For one, color the trains to match the line.  I had to catch a Yellow, and transfer to a Gold or Red.   They're all BLUE. Inside there is no sign of which one you're in nor where you are or where you're going.  When the train is moving, you can't hear the announcements, for there is a strident screechy sound.  The windows are shaded so you can only barely see, and usually can't, the name of the station when you get there.

It was anguishing, for there were constant delays, but I finally got to the Downtown Berkeley BART Station at 1:40.  There are other options.  Roundtrip:  BART ($18), Uber ($70) and taxi ($140).  While BART took me one hour and 40 minutes, Uber and taxi modes are in the range of half an hour, depending on the traffic, and in San Francisco, this could be formidable.  There is no tipping for BART, while there is no need to tip on Uber.  Can you see the writing on the wall for traditional taxis?

The walk uphill for 9.5 blocks took another 15 minutes.  And I got the wrong information so had to backtrack twice. I shouldn't have worried, as Chez Panisse Cafe serves until 3:30PM on Fridays.  To my surprise, waiting for me was Jim Seger, my freshman roommate, who lives here.  He said he first came to this restaurant when it opened 41 years ago because a close friend of his lived next door.  The restaurant was once a home.  He could only stay for a drink, and drove on to Oregon.  I neglected to take a photo, but here is Jim with Kathy Ray during our Stanford days.  Kathy now lives in Napa Valley.

I started with a Kir Royale, and did not take any notes because I was planning to steal a menu with all the details.  I did, but must have dropped it on my way back to the airport.  Anyway, I also had a fine rose with the salad/soup and a Pinot Noir with the clams.  The dessert was an ice cream, dark chocolate and caramel concoction:

The whole meal cost around $150 and was a worthy experience.  Can't say I loved the cuisine, but the adventure was rewarding.  I then took my walk on the Cal-Berkeley Campus.  A lot of purple flowers and a squirrel:

I just had to walk up to the Campanile, which is taller than a football field.  But it was all uphill:

You can hardly see them, but two students are up near the top in the tree to the left.

I might add that, according to Forbes, Stanford is the #2 university in the nation, next to Williams, while Cal-Berkeley is #37.  However, U.S. News and World Report indicates that Princeton is #1 and Stanford is #4, while Berkeley is #20.  Interesting that this same USNaWR, in world rankings, has Harvard as #1, with Cal-Berkeley at #3 and Stanford at #4.  Oxford and Cambridge are at #5 and #6.

On the way to the Berkeley BART Station, I noticed a liquor shop that made subway sandwiches, so I ordered an Italian, and added a Petaluma beer and chips, ate them in my room last night:

Today, on to Napa and Vacaville for one week of golf and other vices.  However, there is an unfortunate postscript.  Walking down the outside stairs of Chez Panisse, the wooden railing left two slivers in my middle left finger, at the exact spot where I grip a golf club.  I was able to remove a splinter, but the area around the other, I noticed this morning, looks inflamed and is sore to the touch.

If you couldn't see those two people in the tree, you won't be able to distinguish this black fragment.  How will I golf for five days in a row?  I hesitate using a needle, for the pain.  I read where you can go to a doctor for $500, or spend a few bucks on epsom salts, chemically known as Magnesium Sulfate.  I'm might try that.

-

SAN FRANCISCO, HERE I COME

I will soon board United to San Francisco, my second favorite city.  I have a full day tomorrow in the City, and normally would have had lunch at Tadich Grill.  However, I've long wanted to dine at  Chez Panisse, which is an easy BART ride into the Downtown Berkeley Station. I called, and they said they could squeeze me into their cafe at 1:30.

Hard to believe that restaurant has been around for 41 years.   Founder Alice Waters (below) is credited, with Wolfgang Puck, to have invented California Cuisine.  In 2001 Gourmet magazine named Chez Panisse the Best Restaurant in America. Actually, I'm to dine in their cafe, which serves their lunch.  It now looks different because there was a serious fire two years ago.

I first visited San Francisco in 1958, 57 years ago.  My brother drove me  34 miles south to the Stanford Campus in Palo Alto, and the first sign I saw indicated that this was Leland Stanford Junior University.  My first thought was that I must have applied to a junior college.  Mind you, I was coming from McKinley High School in Honolulu, which might not have ever sent a newly graduated senior to this institution, and I guess I was not a great example, for I don't know of anyone who followed me there.  Note the German motto:  Die Luft Der Freiheit Weht.  Why German and what does it mean?  The story is obscure, but that term means "The Winds of Freedom are Blowing."

Honolulu is bigger than San Francisco:  68 square miles to 47 square miles.  Actually, the City and County of Honolulu is the whole island of Oahu with an area of 2,127 square miles.  The Frisco population is slightly more than 850,00, while Oahu has slightly less than a million people.  However, more than 8.5 million live in the combined statistical Bay Area.

The Mercer Quality of Life 2015 Survey has San Francisco as the highest rated American city, at #27, with Honolulu the second, at #36.  Chicago is #43 while Seattle and New York City are #44.  #1 is Vienna

Honolulu was settled by Polynesians in the 11th century.  The first foreigner sailed into Honolulu Harbor in 1794.  King Kamehameha III made Honolulu the permanent capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1845.

San Francisco, named after St. Francis of Assisi, was founded in 1776.  The Gold Rush of 1849 brought growth, but three fourths of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire.  Here, again is Jeanette MacDonald.  Towards the end of My Ultimate Global Adventure two years ago, I stayed in the home of David Kyle at Sea Ranch north of San Francisco, where the San Andreas Fault crosses into the Pacific Ocean, as shown in the photo to the left, which is his backyard.

I bring this topic up because at the end of May a film called San Andreas will premiere.  Rotten Tomatoes shows a 97% audience wanting to see this film rating.

Speaking of movies, Iris, a documentary, just opened nationwide, except Hawaii.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it two 100% ratings.  I don't remember any movie getting this combined perfection.  Who is Iris?  Let me just say this is all about the nine decades of Iris Apfel.

Tomorrow, return for my lunch at Chez Panisse, then, on to Napa for Kenji's Golf Safari.

-
Tropical Cyclone Quang is at 120 MPH, but should weaken and strike mostly desolate northwest Australia.

The search continues for Malaysian Air 370 in this general area of the Indian Ocean:

-

THE STATE OF ENERGY STORAGE

Today, I will review the current state of energy storage.  Tomorrow, or soon thereafter, I'll focus on the role of Elon Musk and Tesla, his battery car company, plus potential competitors.

First, then, why store energy?  Our sun only shines a few hours per day.  Winds come and go.  Utility grid stability can be threatened by too many intermittent power sources.  More and more, as locales increase solar photovoltaic installations and wind power, natural gas is being utilized to smooth out the power curve.  But natural gas is mostly methane, which not only is just another fossil fuel, but is 25 to 72 times worse, molecule per molecule, than carbon dioxide in causing global warming.

What about, then, using biomass?  From my 28 December 2012 posting:

Starting with some positives:

  -  there are nearly one million pounds of biomass growing for each human being

  -  25,000 EJ = energy stored in terrestrial biomass (plus there is aquatic biomass)

  -  3,000 EJ/year = rate of additional energy storage/year by land biomass

  -  400 EJ/year = TOTAL consumption of ALL forms of energy

Of course, worldwide, biomass is already being used to generate electricity, and, in fact, maybe 100 times more than solar and wind combined.  The following spaghetti graph is intimidating (and if you can't read it, click on it), but it shows how minuscule solar/wind is today, and the fact that a lot more energy goes to NON-electrical production needs.  

Thus, in this discussion, keep in mind that biomass can play a role, but, someday, conversion into liquid fuel could well become a higher priority than energy storage.

So what are some other energy storage options?

• Pumped hydro has long been used, but it is difficult to find natural conditions where costs can be minimized.
• Molten salt is being advanced by solar thermal farms to store heat.
• Ice storage is more and more gaining in interest.  Ice Energy has 1,800 refrigerator-sized systems providing 25.6 MW for Southern California Edison.
• Flywheels.
• Compressed air, which comes in various forms such as advanced adiabatic and isothermal.
• Capacitors and supercapacitors.
• Gravitational potential energy.
• Hydrogen.

I hesitate showing this (you can click on any of them to learn details), but to totally summarize, from Wikipedia:

• Mechanical
  • Compressed air energy storage (CAES)
  • Fireless locomotive
  • Flywheel energy storage
  • Gravitational potential energy (device)
  • Hydraulic accumulator
  • Liquid nitrogen
  • Pumped-storage hydroelectricity

• Electrical
  • Capacitor
  • Superconducting magnetic energy storage(SMES)

• Biological
  • Glycogen
  • Starch

• Electrochemical
  • Flow battery
  • Rechargeable battery
  • Supercapacitor
  • UltraBattery

Three years ago I reported on Danielle Fong, then at the age 23, who still leads a compressed air company.  Her company remains in development, headquartered in Berkeley.  Hmm...I should have visited her when I went to Chez Panisse last week.  

Anyway, energy storage remains formative, but needs to grow, and quickly, for, as tiny as solar and wind sources are today, utilities are already balking about expanding renewable energy into their grid.  

From Elon Musk himself:

Existing batteries “suck,” Musk said Thursday at the rollout of his equipment for homes, businesses and utilities. “They’re expensive, they’re unreliable.”

With that rather depressing statement, let me nevertheless spend a whole posting on how important batteries can be towards catalyzing the expansion of renewable energy...tomorrow, or soon, for I'm still on Kenji's Golf Safari and return to Honolulu tomorrow, where 15 Craigside will have a dinner outing to Sarento's.

-

Noul has now quickly become a Category 2 Typhoon at 105 MPH, with gusts to 125 MPH, and will further strengthen.  

The projected track of Noul's eye makes landfall in Northern Philippines well north of Manila, kind of makes a U-turn, then moves towards the East side of Taiwan:

-

MY EXPERIENCE WITH UBER

In May of last year I was staying at a hotel close to the San Francisco Airport.  I had planned on lunch at Chez Panisse in Berkeley.  However, by the time I was able to start my journey to the restaurant, I knew that I would be late if I caught BART.  So the other two options were a taxi or UBER.  I estimated the round trip cost to be:

• BART  $18
• UBER  $70
• Taxi    $140

I caught BART anyway, for I did not have access to Uber on my iPhone and the taxi fare was too high just for lunch.  I was only half an hour late.

More recently, on my GAWA Chicago stop, the hotel I stayed at gave away a card to sign up for Uber and get $20 off the first ride.  Very simple:

• Go to uber.com/app to download that application.
• Enter the promo code, which was ELHARRISON.
• Request your ride.

Sorry, but life is not all that necessarily easy.  My downloading capabilities are abominable, so I delayed doing anything until at the end of last year , when I spent the night at the Waikiki Sheraton to bring my stays up to 25 so that I could maintain my Platinum status.  Again, they were giving away these sign-up cards.  I noticed all of them had the same promo code, which was different from ELHARRISON, which came from Element in Harrison.

A daughter of a friend at 15 Craigside, Jen, helped me sign-up for Uber.  However, not to scare you, but it took me several days to get it correct.   With her help, everything went mostly fine at the beginning.  So the next day, for practice, I tried to hail an Uber.  Whoops, connection failed, indicated my iPhone.  The message said, contact uber.com.

So I did, and, after a few added tribulations I learned I had to send a photo of myself, which Jen thought was odd.  So my first fear was that I had somehow been scammed, because you needed to transmit all kinds of info, like your VISA card and cell phone numbers.  They then needed a photo of my VISA card, with only the last four numbers showing.  As they already had the full number, plus three digit code, I guess this was to verify that this was really me.

I waited to the next day and tried to get an Uber vehicle again.  Whoops, I now needed a verification code.  By this time I was up to my fourth person in Uber, so I e-mailed him, and he quickly responded, indicating that the code was texted to my phone.  I wrote back, I don't do texting, please e-mail the code.  Then, the next day, magically, all was fine.  He didn't bother to e-mail the code but himself just inserted it into the system.  

So a few things about Uber:

• Which cities use Uber?  67 countries and virtually every major city in the USA.
• Costs vary by city, but:
• Average for short ride (5 miles/10 minutes)  $10.45
•                     medium  (10 miles/20 minutes) $18.40
•                     long        (20 miles/40 minute)  $34.50
• Honolulu    short ride $13.15
•                    medium   $23.15
•                    long         $43.15
• But those are averages, for the actual cost depends on traffic, demand, etc.

Thus, I was finally ready for my first use.   The Bus would have cost me $1.  But I wanted a taxi fare to compare, so I caught one  from 15 Craigside to the Outrigger Canoe Club (7 miles / 20 minutes--which should have been the medium fare) to celebrate Bruce's retirement.  He, to the right, has been a long-time colleague of mine at the University of Hawaii and was Associate Dean of Engineering.    Taxi cost:  $38 with tip, but the traffic was bad and it took almost 40 minutes.

To get back to 15 Craigside, I clicked on the Uber icon (U) on my iPhone.  For reasons that still befuddle me, when decision-time came, I chose Uber Select.  Not smart.  A large BMW showed up within minutes.  There are several cost levels:

• UberX:  cheapest
• UberXL:  larger vehicle, like a van
• UberPool: not available in Hawaii
• Uber Select:  expensive car
• UberBlack:  executive, most expensive
• Uber Taxi:  don't use this as it merely hails a cab for you and you pay the taxi fare plus tip plus $1 to Uber, or something like that, as explained to me by my first Uber driver, Peter

My Uber bill turned out to be $36.06 without tip, and it is murky if you should give an extra tip or not.   The company says the tip is in the fare, but drivers carefully beg to disagree.  I should indicate that my bill was only $16.06, for their computer automatically subtracted $20, this being my first ride.  No money is exchanged, as my VISA card got automatically billed, without my signature, and confirmed by e-mail.  Anyway, Peter said that UberX would have been as much as $15 cheaper.  The problem in Honolulu, apparently, is that the Uber X drivers are not happy with the company, many have quit, and there might not be too many of these cars floating around today.  For all I know, maybe the Uber Select was the only one available.  This will all sort out soon, I would think.

Peter had a 4.8 rating, and I gave him a 5.  He said he would rate me a 5.

Uber users and drivers are asked to rate each other out of five stars after the journey is completed.  When you’re booking a ride with Uber, you can then accept or decline a driver based on their displayed rating, and likewise, drivers can also decline to take you.

• Treat the driver with care
• Respect the car
• Don’t leave an Uber driver waiting
• Confirm your name with driver
• You can sit in the front seat, but most most passengers go to the back.

If you get rated too low, Uber drivers will stop picking you up!!!

There is clearly a lot of animosity going around...taxi drivers deprecating Uber, like, for example, my taxi guy saying Uber accidents do not cover serious accidents, which was refuted by my Uber driver...and taxi companies getting their lobbyists to control Uber.  For example, you can't get Uber at the Honolulu Airport.  You can, of course, catch Uber to get to any airport.

Some final info on Uber:

• Uber is the most valuable startup in the world.  Uber just raised a new round of financing which values it at $51 billion. That makes Uber worth more than FedEx (FDX) and General Motors (GM) -- as well as Wall Street darling Netflix (NFLX), the top stock in the S&P 500 this year.Aug 3, 2015
• No announcement yet, but if you want to participate in Uber's initial stock offering, click here.

Anyway, here is the best part.  Tommy sent me the following e-mail message:

CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR FIRST UBER RIDE!

Hey Patrick,

Tommy here, your Honolulu Community Manager. If you ever have any questions or troubles as you Uber around Honolulu, feel free to reach me through our support request form.

We'd love for you to help us spread the word about Uber! Below is your custom Uber invite code. Each friend that signs up with your code will receive $15 off their first Uber ride. For each person you refer that takes a ride, we'll add $15 in Uber credit to your account. It's the ultimate Uber win-win, and there's no limit to how much credit you can earn.

	GIVE UBER, GET UBER

SHARE

TWEET

EMAIL

YOUR PROMO CODE

patrickt3171ue

Ride on,

Tommy

Uber Honolulu Community Manager

So, if you're internet deficient like me, what does the above mean?  Go to your computer, type in uber.com/app to your address bar at the very top and click on RETURN.  Eventually you will need the promo code, which should be patrickt3171ue.  Good luck.


Thus, if I give up my car, Uber has become an option, especially if I can gain access to their X car.  This is a learning process, like everything else in life.  Stay tuned for my further adventures with Uber, or, maybe, too, Lyft.  Pretty sneaky, but Lyft popped in an offer for me to get their app when I was reading an Uber posting, and provided their promo code to get started, with a free offer.

-