For a Taste of the San Francisco Bay Area Come to Wailea, Maui

This reporter was hosted by Hotel Wailea for the purposes of this review.

I spent 22 of the most formative years of my life in San Francisco. It's where I went to high school, graduated from culinary school, became a chef and started food writing. The cuisine of the Bay Area will always be my foundation no matter where I go in life. Although there are chefs and cooks on Oʻahu — where I live now — who cooked in the Bay Area, nowhere do I taste the flavors of home more than when I'm in Wailea, Maui. In this 15-acre resort-filled neighborhood, you can have San Francisco chef Chris Cosentino's food at Koast, former Napa chef Christopher Kulis' food at Spoon & Key Market, and at Hotel Wailea, you can find guest chefs from the Bay Area regularly featured in its Chef & Winemaker Series dinners.

On Sept. 19, Hotel Wailea featured James Beard Award-winning chef Nancy Oaks of San Francisco's Boulevard for a five-course tasting menu in collaboration with chef de cuisine Emmanuel Eng of The Restaurant at Hotel Wailea, and on Oct. 1 and 2, it featured Yoshimori "Yoshi" Tome, owner of Sushi Ran in Sausalito. These are Bay Area institutions. Boulevard celebrated 33 years this month, and Sushi Ran opened in 1986.

I had the opportunity to come to the Nancy Oaks dinner, and it brought back vivid memories of sitting in the Parisian-style dining room feasting on seared foie gras, local artisan cheeses and ice-cold martinis. Eng worked with Oaks at Boulevard (and also at three-Michelin-starred Quince in San Francisco), which led to a seamless collaboration of California cuisine made with Maui ingredients — similar to what you will find at Koast and Spoon & Key.

As we arrived in the garden, we were greeted with champagne and tables set with Hawaiian white orchids. Servers passed hors d'oeuvres, which included shots of lobster bisque, foie gras tartlets and kampachi tartar with caviar served in a light cracker formed to look like an oyster shell.

After meeting the chefs, our first course arrived on plates adorned with leaves and flowers from the garden, so green and perfect they almost looked plastic. On these plates were more small bites — an uni panna cotta, poached Molokaʻi shrimp and raw tuna skewered on the bone like a Spanish pintxo.

Oaks described the next dish, a celery root soufflé, as her "little black dress." "I can pair it with anything," she said. This one was smothered in king crab and a preserved lemon butter sauce with tiny green specks of chive. The next course featured Maui Nui venison — grilled rib chops, served with a porcini boudin blanc-stuffed cabbage, bordelaise and a red cabbage-apple purée that gave you the sweet tang of an applesauce-meets-sauerkraut.

When the entrée course arrived, Oaks revealed that it had been her first time tasting and working with lūʻau, or taro leaves. We assured her she did them justice. The rich leaves, braised down to practically a purée, accompanied a tender piece of Kagoshima A5 striploin in what would usually be served with sautéed spinach or braised chard in San Francisco. A potato pavé constructed of a thousand thin layers of potato laid golden and crisp beside the steak in a pool of roasted beef jus.

But my favorite dish of the night was dessert, which was more like a cheese course. Whipped Brillat-Savarin, toasted poppy-seed challah pain perdu and golden raisins plumped in a Kula strawberry mostarda was complete perfection. The meal ended with mignardise of dark-chocolate-espresso truffles, white-chocolate-praline truffles and guava pâtes de fruits.

Wines throughout the meal were expertly selected from The Restaurant at Hotel Wailea's award-winning wine list — another good reason to dine here. Hotel Wailea's next dinner in the garden will be Nov. 21, featuring Opus One Winery, one of Napa Valley's most prestigious wine producers. Eng will prepare a multi-course meal to pair with a progression of Opus One vintages, including rare side-by-side vintage pairings designed to showcase the evolution of the estate's wines over time. No doubt he will be drawing from his Bay Area pedigree to design the menu.

Hotel Wailea's Chef & Winemaker Series features celebrated chefs, restaurants and winemakers in an exclusive dining experience hosted in the Chef's Garden — an alfresco dining room that looks into the kitchen, surrounded by lush tropical landscaping. Prices from $295 per person. For more information and reservations visit: https://sevn.ly/xsWyjgzN/

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