时尚女人。可爱孩子。美丽家居。男人爱车: Are you ready for indoor dining?

Today's newsletter is sponsored by TA VERNA.
Hellenic Greek cuisine at its finest.

This family-run Indian restaurant opened during the pandemic

Puranpoli was open for three months before ever serving a single customer in person.

The Santa Clara Indian restaurant, which specializes in Maharashtrian street food, opened for takeout the first day of shelter-in-place in March. It's a true family affair, run by a 28-year-old Mumbai native, his mother, sister, American brother-in-law and close friend. Word of mouth, spread through online Indian community groups, eventually put the brand new restaurant on the map (and on my radar, after some late-night Yelp digging).

When I visited Puranpoli recently, before owner Roshar Shivalkar had any idea who I was, he was telling me enthusiastically about the restaurant's pandemic debut and the significance of the ukadiche modak I had ordered — sweet rice flour dumplings that are so labor intensive they're usually only made once a year for a Hindu religious festival. But here, his mother shapes and steams them daily by hand. He told me that his family became his restaurant staff both out of love and necessity, for fear that bringing in an outside hire could expose them and their customers to the coronavirus.

I've never had Maharashtrian food before but I could tell a few bites in that Puranpoli's food is special. As I inhaled the namesake dish — a pillowy, charred flatbread filled with jaggery-sweetened chana dal and drizzled with ghee — I was reminded of a feeling I had sorely missed for three months: the joy of discovering a new restaurant. During the shutdown, this kind of culinary exploration (rightly) went out the door, but that didn't mean I didn't miss it.

One of the best parts of this job is finding and celebrating unsung eateries and the people behind them, like the charismatic, determined family of Puranpoli.

Stay safe and healthy,
Elena

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Restaurant intel: San Mateo County allows indoor dining; Maum reinvents

Are you ready to eat inside a restaurant again? Some San Mateo County restaurant owners rushed to open their dining rooms last week hours after learning it was permissible under a new county health order, while others are treading more cautiously.

The movement to close streets to traffic to give restaurants room to operate outdoors has spread quickly throughout the Peninsula. Local closures now include Cal Ave and University Avenue in Palo Alto (the latter starting this Friday), Castro Street in Mountain View, Main and State streets in Los Altos (on a trial basis last weekend), Main and Broadway streets in Redwood City (starting Friday), Laurel Street in San Carlos and several downtown San Mateo streets.

When Maum reopens, it will no longer serve intimate Korean tasting menus at a communal table inside the Michelin-starred Palo Alto restaurant. It will shift to a retail operation, selling homemade kimchi, imported food products, meal kits and local baked goods. "Although we are saddened by what feels like a premature ending to such a memorable place, we have grown excited about the changes to come," the chefs said.

Viognier, perhaps the Peninsula's only white-tablecloth restaurant inside of a grocery store, has permanently closed. The upscale San Mateo restaurant opened on the second floor of Draeger's Market 23 years ago.

Another coronavirus restaurant casualty: Nick's Next Door in Los Gatos. "After a lot of careful consideration, and partly because of the uncertainty of the restaurant world, I have sadly decided to walk away from the restaurant," owner Nick Difu announced on Facebook.

Cafe by day, wine bar by night: Tōno Coffee Project is now serving coffee and Love for Butter pastries out of Salvaje in Palo Alto. The daytime pop-up is another example of the COVID-19 collaboration and space sharing that Love for Butter baker John Shelsta talked with me about recently.

You can eat housemade tagliatelle and gnoccheti on the outdoor patio of the newly opened Pasta Armellino in Cupertino — as long as you provide your contact information for coronavirus contract tracing. This is the second location of Pasta Armellino, the casual spinoff of chef-owner Peter Armellino's Michelin-starred Plumed Horse.

California Avenue is now home to The Port of Peri Peri, which specializes in Portuguese grilled piri piri chicken (but also serves some Mediterranean and Indian dishes).

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What I'm eating

I was happy to see local bakers participate in the international Bakers Against Racism sale last weekend. John Shelsta of Love for Butter raised $3,000 (including a customer-matched donation) for the Ecumenical Hunger Program in East Palo Alto and Backhaus in San Mateo donated $1,540 to the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund. At once a hyperlocal and global effort, they were among thousands of professional and home bakers who raised money for charities that combat racial inequality.

The baked goods in and of themselves celebrated diversity. Shelsta, who's Korean, debuted a flaky croissant tart filled with a tangle of homemade kimchi and silky braised short rib. Each of Backhaus' bakers contributed an item that reflected their heritage, including the above scallion-topped Japanese milk bread, a soft concha filled with Mexican chocolate and a more savory than sweet black sesame Chinese egg tart. One baker, Mary Ann Chou, created a garlic twist studded with lap cheong in homage to her Taiwanese and American roots.

"We strongly believe that one of our strongest tools in the fight against racism is understanding each other better and finding the joy and value in our diversity," Backhaus co-founder and head baker Anne Moser told me. "As bakers, our goal is always to bring people together through food, which is why we felt so strongly about supporting this particular fundraiser."

Join me for a virtual discussion next Wednesday, July 1, from 6-7 p.m. Lisa Spencer of Savor Seasoning Blends, Max Fennell of Fenn Coffee and Claire Mack of Claire's Crunch Cake, who you might remember from my last newsletter, will talk about the Black Lives Matter movement and their experiences as Black food entrepreneurs on the Peninsula. RSVP here.

What I'm reading

A day in the life of a food bank. How does 12 million pounds of food get distributed during a pandemic? I spent last Tuesday following the path of Second Harvest food to illustrate the staggering demand for food assistance in Silicon Valley.

'The Power of the Bake Sale.' Taste has more on the rich history of bake sales as grassroots activism, including a Black cook in Alabama who sold pork chops and sweet potato pies to raise money during the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955.

Everything in Whetstone Magazine. I've been inhaling the most recent, gorgeous issue of Whetstone Magazine, the only Black-owned food publication in the United States. Co-founder Stephen Satterfield rightly describes this not as a point of pride but an "indictment on the state of media."

A restaurant server on dining out. If you're starting to dine out at restaurants again, please also keep in mind the wellbeing of the people who are serving you.

A different kind of restaurant list. Food & Wine Editor Khushbu Shah decided it was "imperative" to publish this year's Best New Restaurants list, despite and even because of how the pandemic has upended the industry. "We honor their hard work, their dedication to their communities, and the reality that they may not all survive," she wrote of the 10 awardees, from a now-closed restaurant in L.A. to a Texas taqueria that serves Persian molé tacos.

About the Peninsula Foodist

Elena Kadvany covers restaurants and education for Embarcadero Media. She's a Peninsula native, thinks In-N-Out is better than Shake Shack and is already planning her next meal.