IN THE KITCHEN

Chefs break from hectic schedule with eggs and rice sparked with kimchi and more

Camino chefs’ breakfast for dinner.

We can’t stop eating the anchovies.

Russell Moore, chef-owner of Oakland’s Camino Restaurant, his wife and partner Allison Hopelain and I keep picking up the tiny fish — coated in an irresistible sticky-sweet glaze made from gochugang (Korean chile paste), sugar, soy and sesame oil — with our chopsticks and shoving them into our mouths.

They’re good on their own, even better when wrapped in squares of toasted nori with a pad of rice and a tangle of Moore’s homemade kimchi, which ferments in a couple days and is so much better than most store-bought varieties.

Although there are several components to this dish — and the kimchi means you’ll have to plan a bit in advance — this is a hearty one-bowl meal.

The light slants through the windows of the couple’s Richmond home, illuminating the dining room table.

“This is nice,” says Hopelain, exhaling. “I think you’re the first person we’ve had over for dinner since ….” she pauses, then shakes her head. “Since the restaurant opened? Seven years ago?”

Moore, who usually presides over a kitchen with a 10-foot-hearth, the literal heart and figurative soul of Camino, is just getting back into cooking at home. He tosses the dried anchovies into a cast-iron pan set on a vintage stove that tilts slightly to the right, laments that all of his good pans and tools are at the restaurant, then just makes do with a partially melted plastic spatula, using it to flip the frying anchovies, tossing them in sauce.

Moore grew up in Redondo Beach (Los Angeles County), son of a Korean mother and a Caucasian father.

“My mom made pretty terrible food,” he recalls. “Her Korean food wasn’t great, though she did make kimchi at home. Her ‘white people’ food was awful.”

He got straight A’s in school and was planning to attend college when his mother redirected him. “She said, ‘You’re a big snob. You just want to go to college because you think you’re better than everyone.’ So I enrolled at trade school instead.”

He lasted four months in the culinary program, then moved to Northern California.

“Improbably, I got a job at Chez Panisse, thanks to David Tanis. It was the first real Western restaurant I’d ever been in, not counting Denny’s.” But it all clicked for him — Moore cooked at Chez Panisse for 21 years before opening Camino in 2008.

With a sweep of his spatula, Moore transfers the lacquered anchovies to a plate, then sets about frying eggs, which in the Moore household are not just for breakfast. He dispenses steamed rice into bowls, tops each with an egg, and sets them on the table, joined by the anchovies, kimchi and sheets of toasted nori. (The accompanying recipes are for the anchovies, kimchi and nori.)

We eat and talk, Moore and Hopelain clearly enjoying the rarest of rare: a quiet moment, a home-cooked meal.