Kathleen Hill: Pancake breakfast, eat local and Dungeness crab

Food news from around the Valley.|

Sonoma Valley Fire & Rescue pancake breakfast is back on

Hopefully, we will have many chances to thank our local firefighters and other first responders but one is coming up for sure on Saturday, Nov. 17. Their annual fundraiser pancake breakfast was postponed until Nov. 17, because they were all out fighting fires.

The pancake breakfast will be at the Al Mazza Fire Station on Second Street West and usually Santa Rosa Rotary flips the flapjacks, someone makes scrambled eggs, and the coffee, juice and milk are all donated.

Kids can enjoy learning about fire safety, how to operate a fire hose, learn hands-only CPR, a firefighter obstacle course, face painting, jumpy houses, vision screening and fire engine rides. $5 adults, kids 12 and under free. Fire engine rides $1 per rider.

Remember: Springs Community Hall hosts its organic pancake breakfast this Sunday morning.

Sonoma businesses plea for help

After the 2017 fires, many Sonoma Valley residents know how it feels to not know when to leave, to have no communication, and not know which way to go to get out – it's a fire metaphor for the unfortunate spot some Sonoma Valley businesses are in.

It was hard enough during and after our 2017 firestorms when the Bay Area and national media and some bloggers portrayed Glen Ellen and Sonoma as gone, destroyed.

Some restaurateurs gave up and closed up shop. Others toughed it out, and were nearly back to normal two years later when PG&E cut off power to many Valley locations, including all of Glen Ellen, once again.

And that was the impression the national media have created again, not distinguishing between Sonoma County and the City of Sonoma.

Absent Sonoma Valley's onetime largest employers, Nicholas Turkey Farms and the Sonoma Developmental Center, tourism seems to be Sonoma's primary employer across the valley. Without tourism, such as in times of crisis, where are we?

This time Sonoma Valley didn't lose any buildings, businesses or lives like our neighbors to the north did around Guyserville and Windsor in the Kincade fire. We only lost refrigerated food, abilities to communicate or pump water.

Some people lost jobs, lost workers, lost income, and lost ability to replenish their refrigerators. Evacuated business owners and workers couldn't get here or were displaced to counties miles away. Some were even afraid to show up at shelters or accept food from donors.

Meanwhile last Sunday the Los Angeles Times sent out a news alert saying, 'California's wine country has become fire country, leaving devastation and fear.' Not helpful.

And the San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday Business section featured an empty Girl & the Fig at the high point of wind and power outages.

Now our restaurants, wineries, and other businesses need our help to recover and to be able to pay their staff. They are suffering and receiving cancellations of reservations at restaurants, wineries and hotels, and huge drops in business.

Karen and Chris Bertrand of Glen Ellen Inn Grill & Bar said it well for all of us on Facebook

'Truly the very best way to help our beloved Sonoma County recover is simple,' wrote the Bertrands in a joint post. 'Come, visit, eat, drink, stay. Please don't cancel upcoming reservations-just come! Bring friends. Enjoy the bounty of Wine Country.'

They described themselves as 'the real people' behind the restaurants and other local businesses.

'We want nothing more than to do our jobs and live our normal lives. We are the cooks, servers, dishwashers and farmers (many of us small business people do all of these things at the same time). Those have lost homes still need to provide for their families through work.'

Concluded the Bertrands: 'Sonoma County is a truly magical place that frankly needs your patronage to survive. Come visit – we welcome you with open arms.'

Dungeness crab season is here but…

It's here but you can't have any.

Bottom line, the Dungeness crab season has been postponed, as has become usual, until at least Nov. 23. That is unless you already have some.

Saturday evening it was announced that the season would not open on Nov. 15 because of some Domoic acid poisoning potential, and that people who have fresh Dungeness crab should remove all the inner nasty stuff to avoid the poison. (At a seaside pub in England a couple of years ago, I ordered the pasta with crab, which included all of the black innards, and was topped with a generous filet of skate.)

Then last Sunday it was announced on several local network affiliates that the season would be postponed until Nov. 23 because crab fishers' traps might endanger passing whales.

SOS for SOS

We do have seriously hungry people here in Sonoma and more and more of them are showing up for the generously donated and cooked food at the Haven, our Sonoma Overnight Support shelter. Most of these 70 to more than 100 people who desperately need a meal arrive in their cars since the Haven, which had to close down during PG&E's shutoff, only houses eight to 10 people.

In fact SOS Executive Director Kathy King has had to hire another cook to prepare food at the FirstCongregational Church on West Spain Street due to increased need.

SOS, parent organization to the meal-providing group Brown Baggers, served 72 meals a week ago at its regular Friday night free dinner at La Luz. The need has been growing steadily, especially among women over 50, and has increased rapidly during our two most recent outages. Truly hungry Sonomans will eat almost anything even early in the morning, including casseroles for breakfast if that's what SOS can offer. So take them casseroles.

If restaurants, chefs and caterers can manage it, have your kitchens produce a little extra and take it to SOS at 151 First St. W. Or call Dan Kahn at 774-1221 to find out when to deliver or someone will pick it up.

Epicurean Connection grand opening

Epicurean Connection owner Sheana Davis invites everyone to attend her warehouse space open house on Eighth Street East for the launch of what she calls 'The Culinary Education Center' on Saturday, Nov. 9. Guests can watch cheesemaking demonstrations and enjoy 'culinary bites, live music, games, raffles and more.'

Davis says they will be hosting cheesemaking and other classes, and private and corporate events at the Culinary Center warehouse.

Meanwhile Davis is still teaching cheesemaking at Cook's Mercantile retail store where Cook sells her cheesemaking equipment, his own olive oil, and even blue cheese stuffed olives from Maine in the front row of buildings in the same complex. Free. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. 19670 Eighth St. E., Sonoma.

More Shanghai history

The opening of the original Shanghai restaurant on West Napa Street, as I remember it, was glamorous and elegant, loaded with white table cloths and red napkins, lots of silver and gold and Chinese decorations, and an enormous buffet of Chinese food, with all of the family's Paris influence showing.

In 1982 the building was sold, and the Lings found the spot at the Fifth Street West Plaza shopping center. Jackie Ling recalled, 'When we opened the new location, the grand opening featured a traditional lighting of firecrackers - which necessitated the Sonoma Police Department and fire department to be on hand. Seemed like a very big deal to my 9-year-old self.'

Jackie recalls doing homework on the table in the Shanghai kitchen and drawing car after car with our son, Mack, after school many days. And then there was the trip to San Francisco to a fish store where Jimmy bought a precious fish for the restaurant aquarium, the boys took care of it on the way back to Sonoma, and it died the next day.

Jackie remembers going to mountain cabin vacations with us and asking me to make him tacos after I confessed to not cooking Chinese food very well. When Mack spent the night at the Lings' home, grandmother Kay cooked him turkey, mashed potatoes and peas. Everyone trying to please.

As the kids entered high school, Jully Ling and her two children, Jackie and Lisa, moved to New York. Jimmy continued as chef at the Shanghai with his Kwok cousins. Jimmy's second wife, Iris, ran the front of the house with Li Ha, all of whom had moved to Sonoma from New York.

Jackie figures that over the Shanghai's 41 year run, the restaurant served over 500,000 meals. 'Pretty cool!' he says.

Jackie, now an architect and designer for Toyota, also relayed that his family only agreed to complete the sale of the Shanghai the Friday before it closed. He says, 'My dad and Iris remain proud Sonomans, so hopefully you'll see them around town.' His sister, Lisa Ling, is a teaching executive in New York public schools working with children with special needs. The Ha family has relocated to New York, to be closer to their daughter and young grandchild. (The new Vietnamese restaurant moving into the Shanghai's former home, will be called Pho Ha. No relation.)

In closing, Jackie Ling told this writer, 'By anybody's account, the 41-year run was a great one for the Shanghai Restaurant. In all that time, Jimmy's kids and the Ha family kids grew up around the restaurant, went to college, got married, and are enjoying their own successful lives – all owing in part to a little restaurant in town that many Sonomans supported. For that, I think I speak for all of us to say – thank you Sonoma!'

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