Jeff Burkhart

Stately, plump, the giant steak came out from the back kitchen. The platter bore a bowl of chimichurri sauce and was crossed lengthwise by a large steak knife. “God, that looks good,” said a man sitting at the bar. The…

I had to turn around twice on the oddly interspaced one-way streets of San Francisco. That coupled with pedestrians who walk out in front of moving cars without looking, only to then slow down and saunter across the street, created two…

It seems like every other week another long-established restaurant or bar is closing. But finally, there’s good news. Larkspur’s venerable local dive bar, the Silver Peso, is back! And if the crowd on the Fourth of July weekend w…

I felt like a cowboy in an old Western. I believe the word is “parched.” After a seven-hour drive from the Bay Area, we rolled into North Hollywood in the early evening. Being both hungry and thirsty, we pulled up to a…

The dreamy, dulcet dinner jazz tinkled throughout the lounge. A slowly revolving overhead fan kept the humidity at bay as best it could. It was a losing battle in terms of both temperature and moisture. Beneath that fan, the couple did…

There was no fanfare when the four of them arrived, which felt strange because two of them were wearing crowns. Literally. Well, actually figuratively, because literally they were wearing tiaras, which aren’t exactly crowns, but still, …

“See you tomorrow,” said the celebrity chef who I worked for. At that point he had four restaurants, one cookbook and so many television appearances that I had lost count. His workdays usually consisted of walking in the f…

Ed DeMayo, a retired orthopedic surgeon in San Rafael, pulled in the top honor at this year’s World Cup of Beer, a home brewers competition put on by the Bay Area Mashers Homebrew Club — not to be confused with the professional bre…

“Hey, Charlie,” I said. “Hey, Jeff,” answered Charlie. It’s what started many of our nights together. Charlie was a regular. And he was more regular than some, but not as much as others. The truth in the bar business is t…

It had been a hectic day, running from one errand to the next. The last thing I needed was the stress of making myself some lunch. My first column ever was in a college newspaper and was about how to live on a college student’s b…