Talking bouillon, black truffles and Bay Area cuisine with Executive Chef Xavier Salomon of the Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay Executive Chef Xavier Salomon pictured in the kitchen at Navio, in the Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay. (Photo by Charles Russo) It’s not every day that you get to meet an esteemed French Master Chef, but a day when you can meet half a dozen of them stands out like a civet of duck leg with ...
Read MorePEZ Palace: Inside Silicon Valley’s quirkiest museum In Burlingame, collector Gary Doss has compiled a sweet tribute to a candy classic By Kasia Grobelny From Daffy Duck to Darth Vader: Pez has reflected pop culture for more than 60 years. (Photo by Charles Russo) Candy has a way of bringing out everyone’s inner kid, and Pez — the ubiquitous candy known as much for its dispenser as its taste — has remained perennially popular over the years. Dating back more than ...
Read MoreChris Garrett’s San Carlos brewery follows a community-minded mantra — aficionados, families and neighbors have noticed. By Nicole Ruiz Hudson Devil’s Canyon founder Chris Garrett pulls a pint at his San Carlos taproom. (Photo by Charles Russo) Chris Garrett needed an antidote to life in the tech world. Back during the first dot-com boom, Garrett’s work monitoring chat rooms for places like RealNames and Disney left him — predictably, perhaps — a little soul weary. As a result, he began looking for ...
Read MoreThe secret life of a Silicon Valley airport In San Carlos, SQL is code for an aviation ‘cult’ that flies organ donations and rescued pets By Kali Shiloh Photos by Philip Wartena The San Carlos Airport, also known as SQL, is one of about 20 small airports in the Bay Area. (Photo by Philip Wartena) Bennett Taber steers his small aircraft toward the San Francisco Peninsula at 25,000 feet in the air, keenly aware that he is flying between tragedy ...
Read MoreSeasonal celebrations for the centennial of a Peninsula landmark By Laura Ness The meticulously manicured gardens of the Filoli Estate. (Image courtesy of Gretchine Nievarez/Filoli) This year marks the 100th anniversary for the Filoli Estate, the beloved local landmark in Woodside. While many of the official centennial celebrations have already been held and chronicled, the holiday season provides a unique opportunity to pay a visit and toast the existence and persistence of this historic ...
Read MoreA photographic tour through the early days of the tech industry By Anna van Raaphorst-Johnson and Dick Johnson Customer engineers working on a General Electric mainframe. (Image courtesy of the Computer History Museum archives) For all of the recent boom and widespread hype of modern day Silicon Valley, it remains compelling to consider that the region’s ties to technology and computer innovation date back well over 60 years. Deep in the archives of the CHM’s Fremont warehouse. ...
Read MoreLong before the internet, Redwood Roller Rink was exporting artistic roller skating to the rest of the world. How a Redwood City icon became the home of world champions. by Kali Shiloh (Photos by Philip Wartena and Kali Shiloh) Competitive skater Ashley Clifford has traveled abroad six times for world championships. Here in the U.S., the college student has won 29 national championships. In the heart of the high-tech capital of the world stands a vault ...
Read MoreVinyl Solution in San Mateo is one of the Peninsula’s last vintage music holdouts. And yes, they have cassettes. by Jennifer Christgau-Aquino Vinyl Solution stocks all manner of analog doohickeys, like this turntable. Photo by Jody Troxel. On a Tuesday morning, in the middle of a quiet street in San Mateo dotted with nail salons and Asian restaurants, Vinyl Solution Records is buzzing. Twentysomething employees rack records, customers stream in and out picking through ...
Read MoreFollow the neon lights to Fred’s Place (photo by @jthepirate) Pauli Partti doesn’t serve fancy, craft cocktails. The owner of Fred’s Place on Old Middlefield Way in Mountain View has intentionally kept his place old school: sports memorabilia covering the walls, pinball machine up front, billiards in the back, and a spirits list that’s not trying to impress anyone. Martinis and Manhattans are about as fancy as they’ll get. “We don’t ...
Read MoreRows and rows of weird stuff. Where to begin? When Chuck Schuetz started his own business reselling corporations’ unwanted electronics in 1986 he had no idea that his Sunnyvale shop, the WeirdStuff Warehouse, would become a destination not just for tinkerers, but for visitors searching for the “real” Silicon Valley. A former engineer at floppy disk drive maker Shugart Associates, Schuetz recognized a business opportunity unfolding in front of him in the ...
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