Food & Drink

Appetite: 3 recent food books pique our palates

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: 3 recent food books pique our palates

These three books (one factual journey, one memoir, one cookbook) have two things in common: they’re all new this year and centered around food.

TWAIN’S FEAST by Andrew Beahrs — Andrew Beahrs, an East Bay local, displays his affection for the great Mark Twain in this thoroughly researched book. Twain’s Feast explores the history of foods Twain waxed eloquent about that are either gone entirely or slowly making their way back into the American landscape.  Experiencing food and coffee in his European travels “as tasteless as paper”, Twain found American cooking of his time “generous”, “genuine”, “real”. Of course, the prairie hens he grew up with, fresh possum and raccoon, New Orleans’ sheep-head and croakers, and the “heaven on the half shell” of San Francisco’s own oysters and mussels, are largely extinct or rare nowadays.

The book is, yes, a poignant ode to the pre-mass-produced, homogenized, dangerously grown American “food” we now know. It’s also a hopeful challenge to the reader, worded gently in the epilogue: “… choices about what we eat help to determine which American landscapes survive and thrive.”

There are many worthy stories here, both for the Twain aficionado and food historian. What I came away with, besides a reminder to support the craftswomen and men making food and growing animals with care (which we’re heavily blessed with in the Bay Area), was Twain’s insataible passion for robust flavor, a hunger to drink life to the dregs. I relate to the way he eats… and heartily writes about it.

As Beahrs says, “… Twain’s love for a dish was inseparable from his love of life.” Amen.

HUNGRY TOWN by Tom Fitzmorris — Make no bones about it, I have a mad love affair with New Orleans, a city you hear me go on about often enough. Naturally, I ate up (no pun intended) Tom Fitzmorris‘ new Hungry Town, a leading Nola restaurant reviewer both in print and on the radio for decades.

He knows the city’s food scene intimately: its history, key players, essential recipes (included in the book), and the post-Katrina struggle that has brought the culinary magic of the ultimate Southern city back to even greater heights (and more restaurants) than before the storm. His post-Katrina assessments are honest insights into just how torn apart families and businesses were, including his own. But he unabashedly claims: “Food Saves New Orleans”.

I value his commitment to Creole and Cajun as the “default” styles of cooking in New Orleans, essential to the city’s future. He states: “The genius of New Orleans cooking is not that we cook better than anyone else. It’s that nobody in the world cooks our local specialties – except when they consciously imitate us (usually badly, I’ve found). The day that our food fails to be flagrantly distinctive… is the day we become Anywhere, USA. That’s also the day I’m leaving town.”

THE SUNSET COOKBOOK — Cooks take note: 10/19 is the release date of the massive, 1000+ recipe tome that is the latest edition of the Sunset Cookbook. It’s a fine one. Not only are the clean, bright photos dangerous to peruse on an empty stomach, but the book manages to be both approachable and widely comprehensive, with sections on every aspect of a meal you can think of from bread to cocktails to preserves and pickles.

Sunset magazine‘s food editor, Margo True, is also the book’s editor and she maintains a cohesive standard of ‘farmers-market-fresh’ ingredients with regional Western foods. Yes, Sunset magazine is based in the Bay Area, so California ethos displays prominently with international influences married to a rich range of produce. But the styles of cooking cover the world, showcasing food of the West as what it truly is: global.

Many recipes tempt me here, including this snack and shake:

Avocado Fries
SERVES 6 | TIME 30 minutes

Canola oil for frying
1⁄4 cup flour
1⁄4 tsp. kosher salt, plus more to taste
2 eggs, beaten to blend
11⁄4 cups panko (Japanese-style bread crumbs)
2 firm-ripe medium Hass avocados, pitted, peeled, sliced into 1⁄2-in. wedges

1. Preheat oven to 200°. In a medium saucepan, heat 11⁄2 in. oil until it registers 375° on a deep-fry thermometer.

2. Meanwhile, mix flour with salt in a shallow plate. Put eggs and panko in separate shallow plates. Dip avocado wedges in flour, shaking off excess. Dip in egg, then panko to coat. Set on two plates in a single layer.

3. Fry a quarter of the avocado wedges at a time until deep golden, 30 to 60 seconds. Transfer wedges to a plate lined with paper towels. Keep warm in oven while cooking remainder. Sprinkle with salt to taste.

California Date Shake
One of the great foods of the Sunshine State, the date shake is exactly what you want to be slurping while visiting baking-hot date country near Palm Springs. Our favorite shake is the one at Shields Date Gardens, in Indio. Shields uses its own date “crystals”—dehydrated Deglet Noor and Blonde dates (the latter is one of its signature varieties). You can order these online or substitute fresh, as we’ve done here. This shake is sensational with a shot of rum stirred in.

Makes 1 shake (11⁄3 cups) | TIME 10 minutes

4 pitted Medjool dates (about 3 oz.), coarsely chopped
1⁄4 cup very cold milk
11⁄4 cups high-quality vanilla ice cream

In a blender, blend dates and milk until smooth and super-frothy. Add ice cream and pulse a few times, until just blended.

— Subscribe to Virgina’s twice monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot

Capp’s Corner

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Capp’s Corner

paulr@sfbg.com

My first experience of Capp’s Corner was long ago, in college, a melancholy dinner on a damp winter night with my first love. By “long ago,” I mean so long ago that I decline to say how long. By “first love” I mean unrequited love; is there any other kind of first love? I suppose the possibility exists. But for the moony-eyed young, the most real sort of love is the hopeless, thwarted kind, the impossible dream. In that sense, I had won the love lottery at age 20. Lucky me.

It does seem odd, lo these decades later, to associate Capp’s Corner with any form of melancholy. Now, as then, the restaurant is not only a North Beach institution but the very picture of cheerfulness. Its checkertop tablecloths are just like the kind you see in Moonstruck, a not-bad movie about lovelornness, with wonderful glimpses of New York’s Little Italy. There is also a certain saloon feel at Capp’s, lent by the large bar near the entrance; unlike many so-called bars in many of our newer, fancier, and more effete places that seem to have been installed largely for show, this one is the real deal, a working bar where people actually sit and drink.

Elsewhere in the large dining room, people are eating as well as drinking, sometimes in groups of two, often in larger arrays. The restaurant is just down the block from Club Fugazi, longtime home of Beach Blanket Babylon. That’s a show people often attend in sizable groups, and often after having eaten dinner. Capp’s Corner is just the (meal) ticket for these folks; it’s convenient, spacious, practiced in dealing with bigger parties, and it serves many dishes family-style, no matter what kind of family you’re a part of.

The main twist in the family-style service is that the minestrone is presented in a big white earthenware tureen, so you get to serve yourself. This does raise the slop factor, particularly if I happen to be sitting at your table, but it also contributes to festivity. The soup itself was rich in cabbage and cannellini beans, a little lighter on tomato than is usual, and had a savory-sweetness I associate with slow-cooked onion. Our tureen produced eight or nine servings — not a bad yield for a table of six.

Throw in a continually replenished basket of bread and butter, and you have the makings of a small feast. Beyond that was a salad of chopped, chilled lettuces scattered with chickpeas and kidney beans and dressed with what the menu calls a “creamy vinaigrette” — I might call it Thousand Island, Russian, or something similar on the ground that its pinkish-red color implied the presence of tomato in some form.

The family-style dinners are offered at two prices: $18 (for pastas) and $20.50 (for pretty much everything else, including veal and petrale sole). You can get a pair of fleshier dinners (steak and osso buco) for $25.50, and if you don’t want family-style, $15.50 buys you pasta, soup, and salad.

If you like your pasta served in gargantuan portions, you will be happy here — and you’ll be even happier if you like tomato sauces. These, whether marinara or bolognese, are hard to avoid, although a white-wine sauce does pop up here and there. The spaghetti with meatballs was probably typical, though: a huge clump of pasta (cooked a bit past al dente but not mushy) finished with a heavy ladling of bolognese sauce and two orbs of chopped meat the size of a baby’s fist. The meat seemed a bit dry to me, but given all that sauce, it didn’t much matter.

The veal tortellini were better: less daunting in scale, nicely bite-sized, and given a sun-dried tomato cream sauce that was finer than the bolognese. Also satisfying: slices of breaded eggplant baked with mozzarella and marinara and béchamel (or, in Italian, besciamella) sauces. The bitterness of the eggplant had been expertly leached out, and the dish as a whole had a faux-meatiness that might have convinced an omnivore — or at least an omnivore distracted, perhaps, by a value-priced glass, or three, of Chianti ($3.50). I wouldn’t call Chianti my first love, wine-wise, but it tends to be solid. Anyway, it’s the only sort of wine you could drink with a clear conscience in a place like this, with a lovers’ moon peeking through the windows and BBB — the greatest hat show on earth — just a few steps away.

CAPP’S CORNER

Dinner: Mon.-Fri., 4:30–10:30 p.m.;

Sat.–Sun., 4-11 p.m.

Lunch: daily, 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

1600 Powell, SF

(415) 989-2589

www.cappscorner.com

Full bar

AE/CB/DC/MC/V

Noisy but bearable

Wheelchair accessible

 

Ducking a lull

David Talbot
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Ducking a lull

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS He wouldn’t be ready for “a good 30 minutes,” my brother said.

This left me with time to kill. To be precise, it left me with 30 minutes. And not just any minutes — good ones.

But how does one differentiate? How can you be sure that the minutes you are fixing to kill are good, quality, law-abiding minutes? And then, once convinced, how do you do the dirty deed cleanly? How do you kill those minutes? Not to mention: in Glen Park.

On a heat wavy day.

A Sunday. Everyone else is at the beach, or out of town, on one last camping trip. I could, I suppose, have walked for 14.5 minutes into Glen Park Canyon, stood behind a rock and yipped like a coyote, then turned around. I love Glen Park Canyon and have never spent nonquality time there; but my right knee was the size of a pomelo and the color of a Concord grape. It had been this way for a week, and honestly, I didn’t know why.

The day before I had attended me a wedding, one of the funnest ones ever, and since it was way too hot for tights, I found myself for the first and hopefully last time ever putting makeup on my legs.

It’s not that they are exactly grotesque, or even necessarily hideous. In fact, I might have the prettiest legs in the Bay Area, just for all the wrong reasons. Instead of sexy, they are breathtaking. Like the Painted Hills region of John Day Fossil Beds National Monument at sunset, I achieve colors nobody ever knew were possible.

But excepting my National Monumentous knee, all the other disfigurements of both of my legs can be named, catalogued by type, and attributed. The scabbed over scratches and little red dots are Stoplight’s. (Kittens climb you if you stop moving. Who knew?) That yellow-centered black-and-blue supernova on my right shin is from a pliers mishap, taking apart my old bed at my ex shack. All the other-colored bruises are soccer specific.

I’m not sure what I’m driving at. I just know that I’m driving, because for the moment my knee won’t let me walk or ride a bike. Problem: I don’t have a car. Well, I did, but it was on loan from my brother, and he was back from Ohio, and in half an hour I was going to see him, and then we would be together for a couple days, and then his van would be his again. But I couldn’t, in good conscience, kill that time by just driving around. Could I?

No, and this is where Hong Ling Restaurant comes in, or, technically I guess, I come in to Hong Ling Restaurant. In spite of the heat wave, I ordered my favorite thing in the world, duck soup, because, like I said, I wanted these minutes to be the best possible minutes, so that afterward my brother would for sure be ready.

While I was killing my duck soup, which was very good, I thought about how I would thenceforth be a pedestrian. Not just in my writing, thenceforth, but in the world. So tomorrow a sports medicine cat is checking out my grape-colored pomelo, because I want to be good. I want to walk well, and get back on my bike, and the soccer field, and probably hopefully pain killers.

This duck soup, it had wontons in it, a lot of wontons. And roast duck, a lot of bones. And everything was juicy besides for being soup.

And cheap. Only $6 for duck soup! That’s good, and you can get it with noodles too, but the wontons have pork and shrimp in them, so that’s duck plus pork plus shrimp. In a desperate attempt to balance out all that meat, they also placed four sprigs of bok choy in the deep-dark broth, so in the end I felt not only happy, but healthy.

So now I have officially been to all the restaurants in Glen Park, except maybe some of them. This one is my favorite, because not just every Chinese restaurant makes a roast duck soup. In fact, very few. And it was cool and very basic in there.

But I think most people get it to go, crazy them. There’s a steam table near the door, with all the ready-mades. Me, I’d rather sit.

And wait. *

HONG LING

Sun.-Thu. 11:30 a.m.–9 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat. 11:30 a.m.–9:30 p.m.

2794 Diamond, S.F

(415) 333-1331

MC,V

Beer and wine

Appetite: Dinner and cocktails with a view

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: Dinner and cocktails with a view

Wednesday  through Saturday nights there’s a ready-made date if you want romance without having to think too hard. At $80 a person, it’s a package deal between Luce Restaurant (which I’ve written about more than once) in the Intercontinental Hotel and Top of the Mark. Choose the order – three course dinner or cocktails first – with a cab ride included to the second location.

I’ve always loved the old world class (not to mention in-the-thick-of-it San Francisco views) of Top of the Mark and live jazz with dancing, but cover charges and mediocre cocktails priced in the mid-teens make it unrealistic too often. With this package, the cost of a drink, cover charge and the cab ride alone would make up half of the $80 and that’s not counting three courses and sparkling wine at Luce.

On one of our mild September nights, I took in an offer to try the package  with The Renaissance Man – we opted for dinner first. It started with a glass of champagne (we added in a Rustic Grappa Flight – $14, see Imbiber for more on grappa at Luce/Bar 888) and an amuse bouche of Chicken Confit with diced Granny Smith apples and vanilla cream. The chicken was tender with a crispy confit layer. Contrasted by sweet, creamy accents, I almost wished it was my main course.

Chef Dominique Crenn, who’s cooking earned Luce a Michelin star and is getting ready to launch her Atelier Crenn restaurant this winter, could have crafted a throwaway prix fixe menu, yet it does not feel so except for a basic salad with nothing but vinaigrette as a first course option. Instead, I chose Chilled Corn Soup with mussels and a speck chip on top. Redolent of Summer with fresh corn sweetness, it is refreshing and generously portioned.

Though there was a Vegetarian Risotto, The Renaissance Man and I stuck with fish and meat. I had “Poisson du Jour” (catch of the day): Seared Branzino with Black Mission figs, corn, trumpet mushrooms and Bloomdale spinach. He had Niman Ranch Flat Iron Steak cooked medium-rare, with romano beans, baby carrots, potatoes, drizzled with beef consumme. Again, good-sized portions, from three juicy cuts of steak to the crispy, buttery Branzino.

While there were two dessert options in the prix fixe (Chocolate Custard with cocoa crumbs & Pear Williams or Earl Grey Tea Panna Cotta with lemon zest and shortbread), we opted for two desserts on the regular menu. The first, called “Peaches”, resembled a wild, mossy garden with pistachio sponge cake growing over pistachio sorbet, crispy sesame and white peach mousse. Subtle and Spring-like, it looks like a fairyland dessert, even if flavors aren’t overwhelming. More exciting flavor-wise is “Chocolate”, which, despite the straightforward name has a lot going on: chocolate ganache, dehydrated chocolate and cacao nib sorbet are covered in a crumbled, Oreo-reminiscent chocolate ‘soil’, with dots of passion fruit puree, basil oil and micro mint contrasting with dark, earthy goodness. One of the more creative desserts I’ve had in awhile.

We then took our ride up the hill to Top of the Mark, mentioned we had the dinner with a view package (to be exempt from the usual cover charge), then enjoyed the cheesy fun of cocktails like a Grasshopper and other sweeter-than-I-normally-prefer choices (one cocktail each is included), while we spent the rest of the night swing dancing to the live band surrounded by a sea of San Francisco lights.

–Subscribe to Virgina’s twice monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot

Appetite: The green fairy transforms

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: The green fairy transforms

Absinthe is on the move from its initial novelty phase once finally legalized in the US in 2007 into an era where appreciators of fine drink are gaining greater education and refinement on the subject. No, it is not a hallucinogen (more on that in a minute), and no, it’s not the artificially sweetened and colored liqueurs flooding the market (but labeled as absinthe). When made as it has been historically, it’s a natural, herbal spirit with a rich culture surrounding it. 

We owe increasing knowledge to artisan producers of absinthe near and far. Some are local guys, like Lance Winters of St. George Spirits, the first producer in the US when the ban was lifted, or more recently, Davorin Kuchan of Old World Spirits, producing green (verte) and bleue (white) absinthes. Then there’s absinthe historians and experts like Peter Schaf and John Troia of Tempus Fugit Spirits who import some of the best absinthes from France and Switzerland, such as Duplais’ brilliant verte and blanche (white) versions. Schaf also created Vieux Pontarlier, a classic-style absinthe made in Pontarlier, France, from local wormwood, long considered the finest grown in the world (where most wormwood was sourced over 100 years ago). Schaf, Winters and Ted Breaux of Lucid, formed a recent panel during SF Cocktail Week, a two hour session (and tasting) on the green fairy (read about it here).

Another source for absinthe education is books, the latest being A Taste for Absinthe, by R. Winston Guthrie with James F. Thompson. Though predominantly a cocktail recipe source, this elegant new book, with photography by Liza Gershman, offers an encompassing summary of the history and culture surrounding absinthe, from its poster art, to the spoons, glasses, fountains and accouterments used to serve it. It’s an artful drink requiring leisure and attention, not a hallucinogen, a myth still falsely promoted around the world (thujone is the fragrant chemical found in wormwood and other plants, such as sage, believed to be a neurotoxoin in extremely high doses – governments have strict regulations on the levels of thujone allowed in the making of absinthe so it is not remotely dangerous yet qualifies as actual absinthe). Kudos for film anecdotes throughout the book on movies where absinthe is imbibed, classic films I grew up watching that are rare to run across now like Lust for Life and Madame X. 

On the recipe side, the book is broken down into five sections: classics, fruit and citrus, whiskey and gin, liqueurs and bitters, and modern classics. The recipes are compiled from some of our country’s best bartenders, including many SF locals. While straightforward classics like Death in the Afternoon (absinthe and champagne) and a bright Brunelle (lemon, absinthe, citrus) are all here, there are also modern takes such as Neyah White’s Green Goddess: absinthe, Square One cucumber vodka, simple syrup, lime fresh basil and thyme. There’s even dessert-like recipes… try an Absinthe & Old Lace: gin, absinthe, creme de menthe, cream, egg white and chocolate mole bitters. 

A Taste for Absinthe is clearly well-researched, with many of the sources above tapped to bring together a comprehensive book worthy of a place on the shelves of absinthe aficionados as well as novices. This Monday at Book Passage (6pm) is a book release event with the author, photographer, and an all-star line-up of bartenders at neighboring Slanted Door serving four cocktails from the book: 

The event is free… well, purchased drinks and the book are on your own dime, but that’s a small price to pay for a little education.
 

Monday, 10/4 – 6pm

 Book Passage

1 Ferry Building # 42


www.atasteforabsinthe.com

 

Appetite: Highlights of SF Cocktail Week, part 2

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: Highlights of SF Cocktail Week, part 2

That fizzy, magical week during which cocktails take over our fair city has just washed over us. Here are more highlights — check out part 1 here.

9/26 – Cocktail Cookout on the Island  

 Though it’s a toss-up between the Cocktail Carnival and the St. George/Hangar One cookout for best event of the week, sheer fun and beauty was unrivaled on the stunning Sunday boat cruise to and from Alameda (entire boat for Cocktail Week attendees only). None other than Scott Beattie served cocktails for the scenic boat ride. It was a hot, over 80 degree day so Beattie’s creations topped with Thai coconut foam and apple chip or dotted with edible flowers cooled us off in the most gourmet of ways. Massive navy ships in Alameda’s port made for a dramatic unloading point.

At the ever festive St. George/Hangar One distillery, there was BBQ (pulled pork from Fatted Calf), East Bay bartenders shaking up ice-cold cocktails, umbrellas and wading pools in the massive lot with views of the city across the Bay. Claire of Claire’s Squares served seductively lush dark chocolate squares which she hand-filled with St. George brandy in a caramel sauce and topped with sea salt. Damn. Tours of the distillery, a DJ spinning reggae and hip hop and bright sun made for a cookout to trump all cookouts.

But nothing could top that ferry ride home… pristine horizons, a rosy orange sunset illuminating our fair San Francisco with a gentle glow, warm air and rounds of Firelit Coffee liqueur. Amidst much laughter with friends, I leaned over the side of the boat letting the spray of the waves caress my face as city lights begin to ignite before me. I knew, once again, the grateful wonder and privilege of living in a place so magically stunning. 

9/25 – The Return of Absinthe at Comstock 

 Absinthe distillers Peter Schaf of Vieux Pontarlier, Lance Winters of St. George, and Ted Breaux of Lucid, formed the panel for two hours of all things absinthe. Their expertise and knowledge is dizzying. It was a crucial intro for those who dabble in the green fairy, clarifying the difference between real absinthe distilled from herbs and the unnaturally colored and flavored “absinthes” that flood the market.  Absinthe’s history, art and paraphernalia, as well as “terroir” and sourcing of herbs, were all discussed… with occasionally rowdy laughter from comments such as the one about syphilis (don’t ask).Comstock Saloon was the perfect setting, serving us three impeccably-prepared (and in gorgeous classic glassware) absinthe cocktails, including a Sazerac and Brunelle, as well as savory snacks from their kitchen.

9/26 – I-talian I-ranian Spaghetti Feed

Negronis, Sangiovese, antipasti, spaghetti and meatballs (traditional Italian from Long Bar chef Erik Hopfinger, as well as Hoss Zaré of Zaré at Fly Trap‘s – famed Iranian meatballs), ending with tiramisu and grappa. This was Sunday night (plus red-checkered tablecloths) at Reza Esmaili’s Long Bar for the I-talian I-ranian American Spaghetti Feed. Some took the tip, wearing velour tracksuits or elastic-waisted trousers: trashy and tacky, ready to fill up after a long day in the sun at St. George. It was all delicious – a special kudos to Hoss’ decadent surprise meatball stuffing of foie gras, duck, fig and date.

 

When you’re having more than one

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
When you’re having more than one

tiredmond@sfbg.com

BEER I saw a great T-shirt in upstate New York this summer, and it’s become my official motto: “You can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning.”

Well, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration — I’m not as young as I used to be, and the days of morning (or even afternoon) drinking are becoming rarer. But I’m still the guy Schaefer Beer was thinking about when they wrote that slogan in the 1960s about the “one beer to have when you’re having more than one.” Frankly, I’d rather down three or for (or five) cheap light beers than sit around all evening nursing one fine IPA.

So I’ve taken quite an interest in session beers — craft brews with an ABV (alcohol by volume) level of less than 4.5 percent. You can drink a session beer at lunch and still go back to work. You can drink a couple-three after work and not be too blotto to make dinner and put the kids to bed. Or, as one of our tasters put it: “If I hit a happy hour, I’m usually done for the night. But after these beers, I was still ready for an evening of drinking.”

The term “session beer” is usually traced back to England in the World War II era, where the pubs were only open for a short “session” during the lunch hour so the workers could get back to the munitions plants. They’ve become pretty popular on the East Coast, where session beer festivals abound, and they’re making their way west.

It’s still not easy to find good session beer — we live in the land of high-craft, high-alcohol brews, and a lot of the smaller breweries (scared, perhaps, of the evil “light beer” rep) stay away from the weaker, or at least less alcoholic, stuff. But if you shop around a bit, you can find some excellent local choices.

Our willing lab rats sampled six local brews — well, one, Stone Levitation Ale, comes from San Diego, but you can buy it locally — with Bud Light thrown in as a ringer. The tasting was blind, the labels on the bottles well disguised; I was the only one who knew which beer was which.

What we found: There are some truly excellent session beers out there. But not every craft session beer is created equal; our panel liked some a lot better than others. “None of them will grab a beer snob,” one taster noted. “But there were some good ones.”

(A note: Some of these brews — particularly the ones from Haight Street’s Magnolia Pub and Brewery — are available only from the brewhouse. Others can be found in bottles anywhere that carries a wide assortment of craft beers.)

The two samples from Magnolia were the clear winners. Our tasters uniformly liked the Dark Star Mild, calling it “dark and rich tasting, with a light finish and soft aftertaste.” One noted: “I could see sitting on a roof on a hot day and drinking this with my lunch.” Even one of our skeptics, who wasn’t thrilled with any of the offerings, noted “I could drink this one.”

Magnolia’s Sarah’s Ruby, a dark, thick brew, was a close second. One panelist noted: “It has a lot of flavor going on, something I would be happy to order in a bar.” Another liked the “nice taste of toasted barley and hops” while another called it “very robust, not at all like a light beer.”

Anchor Brewing Company’s Small Beer was a close third. The beer, which comes in at just 3.3 ABV, has an interesting history. Anchor brews a barleywine ale, Old Foghorn, that’s almost 10 percent ABV. The brewers then take the once-used mix of malt mash and brew from it a second time, getting a much lighter result. But it doesn’t taste like a rerun at all; one of us said it was “a nice beer that I’d like to keep at home and drink a lot of.” Another called it “musty and earthy” and noted that it would “go well with a cheeseburger or pizza.” And even the critics said, in the words of one, “this is pretty damn okay.”

Ale Industries’ Bliss got points for being “very drinkable.” Our panelist noted a nice malty taste and called it “woodsy and smooth,” although some described it as a bit watery. Stone Brewery’s Stone Levitation Ale came off as “strong, with a bit of licorice flavor,” although one drinker said its strength was also a weakness: “A bit to hoppy to drink a lot of it.”

The Bud Light, I fear, didn’t fare so well. We threw this in for fun (I, for one, remain a Bud Light fan) and for comparison. Although not technically defined as a session beer, it does clock in at 4.5 ABV, 20 percent lower than a standard Bud. Our tasters were not impressed: “This tastes like the 3.2 beer I had to drink during basic training in Fort Carson,” our resident former infantryman wrote. Or, as another put it, “Has the metallic finish that makes for great keg parties and awful hangovers.” Still the Bud Light got points for sessionability; “For sure the best choice for beer pong. You could probably consume mass quantities and still be OK in the morning.”

Ale Industries Orange Shush came in last, probably because its flavor is unique and quite different from the other samples. The critics called its flavor too fruity. The people who liked it, though, said that it was a “good light beer that I could drink all night.”

Which is, after all, the point.

Who wants cheap beer?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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5
Who wants cheap beer?

culture@sfbg.com

Whether you’re unemployed, underemployed, or squirreling away your, ahem, nuts in terror of the post–American Empire Mad Max economapocalypse to come, these are hard times for beer lovers who like their pints out in public. You need cheap suds. Here’s a guide to staying within your meager budget while enjoying an oat soda or 10 to help you swallow the bitter pill that is the Bay Area economy. And cheer up, you ol’ bugger: it’s beer o’ clock!

 

THE HAPPIEST HOURS

Most bars have a happy hour, but when you’re looking out for numero uno, you notice that some are happier than others. Even among budget-friendly Mission bars (like, I don’t know, say, Mission Bar — 2695 Mission, SF. 415-647-2300), the happy hour at Elbo Room (647 Valencia, SF. 415-552-7788, www.elbo.com) is generous, as far as duration goes. From 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., you’ll have plenty of opportunity to hit on a hipster hottie while sipping a Lost Coast Tangerine Wheat near the Ms. Pac-Man table top.

My blogger friend Jeff Diehl (spotsunknown.com) and I recently dove into North Beach, where we stumbled, literally, upon a real, cheap gem: International Sports Club (1000 Columbus, SF. 415-775-6036). Don’t let the name scare you. This place is as divey as a clean, well-lit place gets, with an interesting mix of tourists and scruffy locals. Bartender-cousins Mi and Emily serve up the ultimate poor man’s pour: tap drafts for $2.50, from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays — decent drafts like Stella and Widmer.

But possibly the happiest hour(s) for the frugal sud-guzzler can be found at Bean Bag Café (601 Divisadero, SF. 414-563-3634), near the Panhandle. There are no beanbags, but there’d be room for none, as the clarion call of $1.92 pints of hefeweizen brings the thirsty hordes. If you’re a bit work-shy at the moment, get there early and beat some of these beasts to the tap.

 

PBR NATION

Obviously, nothing beats a deal with no strings attached. If you’re a San Francisco beer lover and you don’t know about Toronado (547 Haight, SF. 415-863-2276, www.toronado.com), you’re just doing it wrong. For a place so renowned, the big T’s tap selection is diverse enough to accommodate the not-so-rich while avoiding the option of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

I say that with the full knowledge that PBR has become something of a cultural touchstone in the city. Why PBR and not Hamm’s or Oly? Who knows? I blame Blue Velvet. In any event, there’s no shortage of hipster dives that will crack a can for you. (I see no real point of PBR on tap.) For my money, the best is Bender’s (806 S. Van Ness, SF. 415-824-1800, www.bendersbar.com). Not only will you find the obligatory $2 can of Frank Booth’s favorite bev, but you’ll also find my personal favorite canned option, local brewery 21st Amendment’s Hell or High Watermelon Wheat, for a mere $2.50. Can’t beat that with a stick, not to mention Bender’s other assets, such as a tasty grill and a smoky patio.

 

CHEAP? HOW ABOUT FREE?

I talk to beer freaks who have never taken a tour of the amazing Anchor Brewery (1705 Mariposa, SF. 415-863-8350, www.anchorbrewing.com), in Potrero Hill, and all of a sudden it’s like they’re speaking another language. I just don’t understand. I’ve been taking this tour since my first visit to the city back in 1992, and I still go at least once or twice a year. When I got laid off, my second act, after filing for unemployment benefits, was to book a tour at Anchor.

The good folks there recommend that you call two to three weeks in advance. But this is a small price to pay, and the only price. The tour is free, and if you love beer, it’s like a guided tour of how God runs heaven (if heaven smells like Grape-Nuts). The coup de grâce is the unlimited tasting that ends your journey of discovery and sends you off in the middle of the day with a belly full of top-notch brew — and hopefully a fresh perspective on the simple pleasures of living in a beautiful city for drinking beer.

OTHER CHEAP BEER FAVES

The Bitter End 441 Clement, SF. (415) 221-9538.

Broken Record 1166 Geneva, SF. (415) 963-1713, www.brokenrecordsf.com.

Delirium 3139 16th St., SF. (415) 552-5525.

500 Club 500 Guerrero, SF. (415) 861-2500.

Greens Sports Bar 2239 Polk, SF. (415) 775-4287.

Horseshoe Tavern 2024 Chestnut, SF. (415) 346-1430, www.horseshoetavernsf.com.

The Page 298 Divisadero, SF. (415) 255-6101, www.thepagebar.com.

Thee Parkside 1600 17th St., SF. (415) 252-1330, www.theeparkside.com.

El Rio 3158 Mission, SF. (415) 282-3325, www.elriosf.com.

 

Appetite: Highlights of SF Cocktail Week, part 1

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: Highlights of SF Cocktail Week, part 1

The magical settings, moments and drinks were many in the 4th Annual SF Cocktail Week, which set the bar high for all future Cocktail Weeks… consider attending next year, as it’s far from being just for drink aficionados. It’s for those who love a memorable party done in true San Francisco style.

I have watched Cocktail Week grow from intimate nights out at bars in prior years to this year’s galas and ferry rides. Camaraderie was strong and I couldn’t help but think that though there were even grander galas at major cocktail weeks like Tales of the Cocktail or Manhattan Cocktail Classic, the quality of the settings and drinks I had every night at SF Cocktail Week were far superior to most everything I tasted at either of those two events. SF, once again, does drink proud. (Check out part 2 here.)

9/21 – Inauguration of Boothby Center

SF now has a cocktail center to call its own: the “Cocktail Bill” Boothby Center for the Beverage Arts, which debuted opening night of Cocktail Week, named after SF bartending legend Cocktail Bill Boothby. A multi-use space in the Mission, it will be community center, beverage lab, and event space, preserving the art and history of the cocktail. The Barbary Coast Conservancy of the American Cocktail(BCCAC), headed up by H. Joseph Ehrmann (Elixir), Jeff Hollinger (Comstock Saloon), Duggan McDonnell (Cantina), calls it home base. Opening night was a raucous toast to the still raw space with, what else? Classic cocktails, including the week’s official drink, a Papa Ghirardelli.

9/23 – Ragtag Rabble Gaming Soiree  

The back room of one of my favorite bars, Burritt Room, was transformed into a turn-of-the-century, Barbary Coast-era saloon/parlor with craps, blackjack, roulette and poker (sans real money), and a beautiful menu of classic cocktails prepared with skillful care, from The Last Word to a Boulevardier with scotch. A jazz quartet (with talented female vocalist) set the mood, transporting me to another time, as did the decked-out crowd who filled but did not overcrowd the room with bowler hats, suspenders, boas, saloon or retro attire. It was a swank affair that carried on late into the night with an after-party at Comstock Saloon.

9/25 – Cocktail Carnival Gala

The event of the week, Cocktail Carnival Gala in the stunning, historic Old Mint, was a brilliant night. I only wish even more people filled  (not overcrowded) the spacious mansion we were given free reign in. This was a one-of-a-kind night I’d plan towards next year. The Barbary Coast-Era carnival theme included roving minstrels, talented musicians, contortionists, man-on-stilts, jugglers and acrobats, roving among us through each high-ceilinged room as we sipped punches from antique punch bowls.

Leave it to Martin Cate from Smuggler’s Cove to wow us with a 40-gallon rum punch bowl with flaming volcano shooting out of a sea of spiced punch. Daniel Hyatt and the Alembic crew scooped some mighty tasty ‘swill’ out of a swampy bucket. One cachaca-based punch sported an ethereal liquid nitrogen top. Bartenders from Elixir, Cantina and 15 Romolo ensured there was not one bad drink in the house.

Chef Chris L’Hommedieu of Restaurant Michael Mina and William Werner of Tell Tale Preserve Co. sent out small but impeccable bites like lobster corn dogs, chips topped with caviar and creme fraiche, and lush dark chocolate caramel cake squares.

The courtyard of the Old Mint was a surreal setting transporting me directly to an ancient Spanish or Italian square. Chipped building facades contrasted against a deep, midnight blue sky. As minstrels serenaded us on this warm, sultry night while the full moon cast a glow over the courtyard, I felt alive with the night… one of those perfect moments that lives illuminated in memory.

The evening ended (at 2am) with a bang: Brass Mafia played and we began to dance. Circling in and among us, their blaring brass brought to life songs from musicians as random as Michael Jackson, Salt-n-Pepa, Men at Work, even Montell Jordan’s “This Is How We Do It”, all in New Orleans’ brass band style (they threw in a few classic Nola Dixieland tunes, too). It was a joyous, raucous dance.

Thanks to the Bon Vivants for co-hosting a tremendous event none who attended will soon forget (which I hope you will all attend next year).

Appetite: Forks up for two big events

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: Forks up for two big events

10/3 CUESA 8th Annual Sunday Supper Fundraiser — CUESA (The Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture), which runs the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, is throwing its 8th Annual Sunday Supper on October 3. It’s a CUESA fundraiser, whole animal feast, chef gala and drink event all rolled into one. Not to mention a night where local farmers and purveyors mingle to enjoy a meal made from local ingredients and sustainably raised meats.

The chef lineup is pretty killer: there’s Chris Cosentino of Incanto, Craig Stoll of Delfina, Annie Somerville of Greens, Thomas McNaughton of Flour+Water, Mourad Lahlou of Aziza, and so on. Over 60 chefs represent with tableside carvings at each communal table, offering a range of meats from steer to lamb. It’s sure to be one raucous feast.
 
For those who can’t swing the $200 whole-package night, there’s the $75 reception, which will still fund CUESA’s worthy endeavors in local sustainable food education. The reception includes over 30 different hors d’oeuvres and five artisan cocktails made with local spirits, like the great Charbay and St. George Sprits. There’s also regional wines like Benziger and Hahn. In other words, a little something for everyone.
 
10/3, 5:30pm reception ($75), 7pm dinner ($200, includes reception)
One Ferry Building
Get a load of the chef line-up and buy tickets here: cuesasundaysupper.eventbrite.com

9/25 PRIMAL NAPA – “Celebrating Fire Cooking, Meat and the Art of Butchering” — Yes, butchery is an art and PRIMAL Napa throws its second annual shindig to highlight and celebrate that art. Many of the country’s best butchers and chefs will be butchering and grilling using hardwood fire cooking methods, local foods from responsible farms, and whole animal utilization. Held at Chase Cellars, wines and spirits will flow among breakdown demos of every kind of animal from lamb to cow. Locals like Ryan Farr of 4505 Meats and Peter McNee from Poggio will be there, but so will the likes of Joshua Applestone from Fleisher’s in New York, John Sundstrom from Seattle’s Lark, and Dave Varley from Bourbon Steak DC (he was 2010’s Grand Cochon winner).
 
Some of your ticket costs benefit the City of Napa Fire Explorers program, while Friday night there’s a special Chef & Butcher Dinner at Farmstead, one of my favorite restaurant additions to Napa County this year. There’s only a handful of seats at $150 each so hurry and reserve by emailing brady@tastenetwork.org.

It’s all-you-can-eat (and drink) and it all sounds mouth-watering, though if it were me, I’d make a run straight for Magnolia‘s Beer & Sausage Bar. They’ll be featuring a special Magnolia Meaty Brew beer and The Alembic‘s Daniel Hyatt is mixing spirits. Don’t forget all afternoon wine tastings (everything from CADE Winery to Rubicon Estate), and the Bacon Hall of Fame (2-5pm) featuring killer hams like Tennessee’s Benton’s and local Hobb’s Applewood Smoked.

9/25, 2-7pm
$75 (VIP – $125)
Chase Cellars’ Hayne Vineyard, 2252 Sulphur Springs Avenue, St. Helena
404-849-3569
www.artofthebutcher.com
twitter.com/ProteinU

–Subscribe to Virgina’s twice monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot: www.theperfectspotsf.com

Papito

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Papito

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE Step into Papito, a new cantina that opened this summer on Potrero Hill, and you probably won’t notice many signs of a French connection. The paint scheme, of lime and rust shades, is cantina-ish. The plate of frosted, backlit glass that divides the tiny dining room from the entrance to the rest room, isn’t — but it’s more urban-rich than French. The menu is immaculately, if grandly, Mexican. What we are left with, then, is the bar, of lusciously burnished wood topped with a plateau of copper — rather bistro-like, I thought, though a zinc top would be more authentic.

The French angle is relevant because Papito is the sibling of nearby Chez Papa and Chez Maman, along with, until a recent change of hands, Pizza Nostra (which began life as Couleur Café) in the nearby flatlands. The impresario-in-chief of these concerns is Jocelyn Bulow, who put himself on the map in 1996 with the wonderful Plouf, a French-style seafood house, and has since made himself a force to be reckoned with on Potrero Hill and in the gallery district. Notable at the moment about the Bulow career arc is its curve away from the French kitchen, toward Italy (not that great a reach) and now toward Mexico, a somewhat bolder maneuver.

Papito wasn’t completely unforeshadowed. Some of its roots are traceable to Couleur Café, which served a duck confit quesadilla that recurs here in more convincingly New World guise, with the former’s Gruyère and caramelized onions subbed out in favor of habanero peppers, mint, cilantro, house-made pickles, chilpotle, and tamarind sauce. The other quesadillas (all $10) are equally impressive — and Mexican, not French or quasi-French — including an edition with homemade chorizo (I looked in vain for any leakage of that telltale bright orange grease, like Halloween face paint), potatoes, jack cheese, salsa verde, and pico de gallo. This is a serious, heavyweight, mealworthy quesadilla, not a finger snack for the middle of a busy Saturday afternoon.

Pico de gallo is possibly my least favorite of the Mexican condiments, since it so easily can be too oniony. But Papito gives the old warhorse new life by making it with pineapple instead of tomato and serving it with a pair of tacos ($8) filled with slow-cooked Berkshire pork carnitas and guajillo-tomatillo salsa roja and piped with plenty of crema.

The menu features a sizable range of shareable plates, including a lovely salad ($8) of heirloom tomatoes and nopal cactus, dusted with cotija cheese and swabbed with a sauce the menu card calls “cilantro pistou” (but seemed more like an avocado purée to us). Also of note was the variety of tomato shapes, sizes, and colors: orange, green, red, yellow, pear, cherry, large round. One feels slightly let down when “heirloom” — the word promises so much — tomatoes turn out to be just red, no matter how juicy they are.

Frijoles negros ($4) were underwhelming, despite the bolstering presence of chives, queso fresco, crème fraîche, and matchstick tortilla chips over the top. Fortunately, we had a trio of salsas (mango, tomatillo, and chilpotle) at hand to enliven things. Papito, incidentally, does not serve shovelsful of complimentary chips, and, much as I love chips and salsa, I think this is a good thing. It helps you retain an edge of hunger until the real food starts arriving. But it does mean the trifecta of salsas are orphans.

If the black beans were a kind of lull or pause, then the grilled cobs of white corn ($5 for two) were a revelation. The cobs were showered with grated cotija cheese and presented with lime quarters and chili salt, each potent but slightly superfluous, since grilled corn seldom needs much help and the cheese provided most of that here. A nice touch: the metal handle, cool and solid, protruding from each cob. These handles made the corn much easier and less messy to eat.

For dessert you can have flan or, also in the Mexican vein, churros ($5), about the size of baby zucchini and stacked in a rough square, like a drafty log cabin. You dip them in a thin chocolate sauce. But the most surprising possibility is a chocolate mousse ($5) with a core of raspberry coulis made slightly molten by pasilla pepper — New World ingredients, Old World style, subtly transcendent result.

PAPITO

Mon.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–10 p.m.;

Sat.–Sun. brunch 10:30 a.m.–4 p.m., dinner to 10 p.m.

317 Connecticut, SF

(15) 695-0147

www.papitosf.com

Beer and wine

AE/MC/V

Somewhat noisy

Wheelchair accessible

 

Carne, carnival

David Talbot
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Carne, carnival

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS I fell in with some bad people. One was a clown. You don’t expect to even like clowns, let alone fall in with them, but this one was brilliant, in a Charlie Chaplinish way. Or early Woody Allen, meaning: all you have to do is look at him and you pee your pants.

And that’s when he’s out of character. In character, on stage, forget it! You’re going down. This actually funny clown works with a couple of other actually funny clowns, one of whom I talked to for a long time about food because she lives — like me — in San Francisco.

We were sitting around a campfire in front of the stage, after the show. Behind us, a lot of musicians were playing a lot of songs, but not me. I didn’t feel like jamming. I felt like making new friends. Fun, fucked up, and circus-y friends.

They call it a chautauqua, but in addition to the music, storytelling, and political humor, there were these clowns, a contortionist, a slack-rope walker, and a one-ball contact juggler — which, if you’ve never seen contact juggling, you should probably go see you some.

It’s beautiful.

My own role among this talented riff-raff was very, very background. I played bass in a three-piece band for a 25-minute micromusical about sea monkeys. Still, everyone hugged me backstage, or at least patted me on the back, and admired my hot water bottle.

The third night was more than sold out. More than a couple hundred people huddled together in the west-county, wine-country redwoods, oohing and ahhing and laughing our asses off, and afterward the resident pyro lit another careful bonfire. The musicians and nonmusicians among us jammed. I stayed until at least 1 a.m., talking mostly to the girlfriend of one of the sea monkeys. Or I guess technically she was the tank aerator. I hadn’t actually had the pleasure of seeing much of the play from the orchestra pit. Which wasn’t a pit so much as a platform or tree house.

Meat, was what me and the tank aerator’s girlfriend talked about. Her girlfriend, the tank aerator, was a vegan. A lot of the people were vegetarians. The two meals a day they made us in the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center kitchen were always delicious, but in a meatless, meatfree, where’s-the-meat kind of way. So we missed it, me and the tank aerator’s girlfriend, and we discussed this missing, our preference for meat over dessert in general, and where one might could find bacon cheeseburgers, for example, at 1 a.m., in Occidental.

"Rohnert Park," she said. She was thinking of an In-N-Out Burger, but that was 30 minutes away.

Which is, admittedly, closer than Brazil.

My own personal new favorite restaurant is in El Cerrito. Has anyone ever been to Rafael’s Shutter Café? You have to go way up San Pablo, past the Hotsy Totsy, past Albany Bowl, and then, I don’t know: keep going. It’s on your right.

They have live jazz on weekends, but when I was there, on something like a Wednesday, there was opera playing on the stereo. Which went perfectly with my sausage omelet, potatoes, toast, coffee, coffee, and more coffee.

I was sitting at the counter, waiting for the traffic outside to die down so I could cross the Richmond Bridge and go up and fall in with bad people, such as clowns and meat-eating girlfriends of tank aerators.

After I drank too much coffee there was nothing left to do but chat up the guy who runs the joint. "Where do you put your musicians?" I asked him.

He said I reminded him of his sister-in-law. He said, "Are you French or Spanish?"

"Italian," I said.

He said he was married to a French woman.

"Me, I’m waiting," I said. His phone rang. I said: "Traffic."

RAFAEL’S SHUTTER CAFE

Mon.–Thu. 9 a.m.–4 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat. 9 a.m.–9 p.m.; Sun. 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

10064 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito

(510) 525-4227

MC,V

Beer and wine

Appetite: The great vodka debate

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: The great vodka debate

Vodka — it’s a spirit that in sophisticated drink communities like San Francisco can sometimes elicit more scorn than love, even if most of the country drinks it well above other spirits. I’m not alone in saying it tends to be the last spirit I’d order at a bar. The SF chapter of the USBG (US Bartenders’ Guild) recently re-created their Great Vodka Debate for USBG members and industry folk, which was a popular seminar at 2010 Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans.

An all-star bartender, brand ambassador, and drink writer panel discussed vodka’s merits (rich history, a “blank slate” from which to create cocktails) and negatives (aggressive marketing, “blank slate”/lack of flavor, sometimes unchallenging ingredient to make cocktails with). The debate never got nasty but it was, by all accounts, lively. Brand ambassadors for more conscious brands, like H. Joseph Ehrmann with Square One Organic Vodka or Borys Saciuk with 42 Below, talked convincingly of quality vodka beyond heavily-marketed, celebrity-sponsored brands that overpower the market. (Case in point, a recent Sobieski Vodka event at the Fairmont Hotel where none other than Bruce Willis came out for about two seconds to give his stamp of approval – granted, it is better than most mainstream brands). Then I visit bars like the icy, cold Vodbox of Nic’s in Beverly Hills, tasting through a range of vodkas from around the globe, and it’s clear vodka has its place.

While I may never be a vodka fanatic, I appreciate those are who are doing vodka “right”… and readily admit there are times when a vodka martini satisfies (I like mine dry, thank you). Besides craft vodka kings (who also happen to be local), like Hangar One and Charbay, here are three more that stand out from the fray:

STILLWATER SPIRITS – In a side-by-side tasting, this is the most complex, full-bodied of the three, an under-the-radar, single malt vodka made locally in Petaluma. Consequentially, Stillwater is also the pricier and hardest to find of the three. It’s a stand-alone vodka you can sip neat, made from 100% barley malt and copper-distilled. K&L has it for special order at $49.99.

FAIR – Ethically produced, fair-trade-certified ingredients, the first fair trade vodka… what other reasons do you need? Oh, it tastes good, too. This vodka is made from Bolivian quinoa and French distillers, notes of white pepper and berries give way to a creamy finish. Retails around $35. Available at Cask.

42 BELOW – The most accessible, easiest to find of the three is New Zealand’s 42 Below, claiming the pristine qualities of Kiwi water in its pure taste. Made from winter wheat, it does go down smooth and easy with hints of anise and a lightly sweet finish… it is also the right price. Retails around $19.95. Available everywhere from The Jug Shop to Bev Mo.

Appetite: 3 twists on the Caprese salad

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: 3 twists on the Caprese salad

The purity and simplicity of a caprese salad, or insalata caprese as it is known in Campania, Italy, where it originated, is hard to outdo. Silky buffalo mozzarella, red tomatoes and fresh basil are drizzled with olive oil and salt. When I eat a quality caprese, I am immediately transported to Italia, eating lunch alongside glimmering water, maybe the canals of Venice or the expanse of Lake Como, the juice of the tomatoes dripping down my chin and a glass of Sangiovese in hand. That this experience could be improved upon is doubtful, but what of variations in a caprese’s perfection? A few local San Francisco restaurants have taken its key elements of tomatoes and mozzarella and created something unexpected… 

ROCKETFISH’S FARMERS TOMATO SALAD — Rocketfish, Potrero Hill’s newest sushi lounge, also deals in Japanese small plates. In this izakaya spirit, the kitchen serves what seems to be a simple farmers tomato salad ($7). Caprese elements create the base: heirloom tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella. But it takes on a whole new dimension sprinkled with honey balsamic and ume salt, then given a bit of crisp with caramelized fennel crumbled over the top. It works so well, it almost outshines the sushi. 

JARDINIERE’S HEIRLOOM TOMATO SALAD — Pop into Jardiniere‘s bar or sit down for a meal and start with its heirloom tomato salad ($16). You’ve seen all this before: plump, gorgeous heirloom tomatoes over arugula with croutons for crunch. But wait: interspersed in the arugula are Padron peppers and Castelvetrano olives. Sweet tomatoes, salty olives, and piquant peppers hint of a marriage between Italy and Spain, one officiated by California. The combo feels so natural, you’ll wonder why you don’t see it more often. 

BAR CRUDO’S LOBSTER SALAD — A recent visit to the ever brilliant crudo haven of Bar Crudo yielded salad loaded with chunks of lobster and creamy burrata (the pinnacle of mozzarella… with cream) topped with mache leaves. While some nights they make it with gold and chiogga beets ($17), my last visit entailed a load of plump tomatoes with the lobster and burrata ($18), again elevating the basics of a caprese to luxury salad level. 

Spire

David Talbot
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Spire

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE You can’t be stunned when a restaurant near the baseball park — and Spire is just steps away — has a big flat-panel TV showing Giants’ games. Spire has such a TV, so let’s grant a modicum of kudos for its public-spiritedness. Or at least its awareness of what its clientele is likely to find interesting. But the glowing oracle of sportsdom, while conspicuously slung from a wall just inside the entrance, isn’t the restaurant’s most distinctive design feature. That would be what I can only call the charcuterie bar — a gleaming slab of peach-colored granite that’s a little like the cured-meat equivalent of a sushi bar, except you can’t sit at it and order things. You can only watch, wondering if you’ve stumbled onto a secret Food Network set, and where are the klieg lights and cameras?

Despite the lack of seating, the presence of the bar does announce that food is serious business at Spire. This is no sports bar — although a word of warning — the place is noisy, a vibratorium. The building is a converted MJB coffee warehouse, and the exposed brick walls are braced by a line of triumphal arches. But whatever relief from impinging decibels the high ceiling might have provided is offset by the rock-hard flooring.

Naturally, chef Laird Boles’ kitchen turns out a charcuterie platter, and there’s also a selection of raw seafood, with crudo, ceviche, and oysters. (Boles once cooked at Waterbar.) But the menu, mostly, is farmers-markety. So a salad ($9) of stone fruit and Laura Chenel goat cheese wasn’t assembled atop any old lettuces but atop County Line 5 leaves; these were immaculate, and the stone fruit (cherry halves and wonderfully ripe nectarine) wasn’t too shabby either. And nothing says summer quite like stone fruit unless it’s corn, as in a sweet corn soup ($6) with the kernels puréed and food-milled to a bisque-like smoothness. “Sweet” wasn’t an idle modifier here, and I ended up having to ask for salt, more as matter of personal taste than in response to a miscue. Sweetness can be flat; salt deepens it and adds an extra dimension. Other extra dimensions included a dollop of sour cream in the soup itself and, alongside, a pair of puffy-crisp corn fritters riding the rails of piquillo-pepper coulis.

Chicken, we were advised some years ago by Anthony Bourdain, is the dish for people who can’t decide what they really want. This might sometimes be true, but it doesn’t do justice to the bird, which, if handled right, can be splendid. Spire’s half-chicken ($20), a Rocky the Range leg and breast, had the marvelous crisp skin and slightly pressed look I associate with the Italian technique known as al mattone, or under a brick. The chicken was presented with two pucks of savory bread pudding, a stack of sautéed mixed beans — haricots verts and wax (n.b. the menu said “haricots verts,” small proof of the larger principle that menu cards tend to be advisory rather than strictly honored) — a heap of sautéed baby shiitakes, and a fabulous reduced jus.

If you do know what you really want, you might very well want halibut ($24), and this is good, because halibut is just about the perfect fish in these parts. It’s taken from sustainable fisheries, it takes well to a variety of cooking techniques, and it tastes good. Here a thick filet was pan-roasted, then plated with lemon grits, tarragon leaves, and tomato quarters — a colorful, tasty ensemble redolent of the season.

It is rare now to have a disappointing dessert, but it’s probably just as rare to come across a dessert so rich you wonder if you can finish it. Spire’s chocolate almond layer cake ($8) looked unassuming enough: a modest, dark-brown disk with a comet’s tail of pitted cherry halves and streaks of caramel sauce, little embellishments that added visual texture while also implying that reinforcement was at hand should the star player be found wanting. But the cake itself was so engulfingly rich and moist, dessertdom’s answer to foie gras, as to obliterate any such need. I have never had a richer, moister cake. It was so satisfying as to be nearly fatal. But I did live to tell, and now I have told.

SPIRE

Lunch: Tues.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m.

Dinner: Tues.–Thurs., 5:30–10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 5:30–11 p.m.

Brunch: Sun., 11 a.m.–3 p.m.

685 Third St., SF

(415) 947-0000

www.spiresf.com

Full bar

AE/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Witchy ways

David Talbot
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0
Witchy ways

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS How to tear down a chicken coop: Step one, build a chicken coop. I used scrap wood, found objects, and recycled nails and screws to make this one. At the time, I was going through a divorce, so my spirits were all light and buildery, and I whistled while I worked and didn’t get too upset if I got a splinter.

Suffering for one’s art, not to mention eggs, seemed noble and not at all frightening. I was in love with the woods and fresh air, high on my new sense of self, which I have come to see, in retrospect, as merely a phase: for five years and change, I found myself involved in a kind of a secular witchcraft.

No incantations or Shakespearean hullabaloo; without any belief whatsoever, barely even with intent, I lured little children into a large pot and cooked and ate them. Often in omelets! I didn’t know what I was doing. In fact, it took one of these omelets to point it out to me. The youngest, and one of the first, she stood before my brand-new-yet-already-ramshackle chicken coop, took one look at my outdoor bathtub, half a look at my black and pink punk rock rubber ducky, then stared at the 25-gallon pot on a propane burner that almost blocked the door to my crooked little shack.

"You’re kind of a witch, aren’t you?" she said, her great big eyes getting ever even bigger.

"Um, no, well, I think more of a chicken farmer, if you ask me," I said.

"But this is all so … so … witchy," she said.

So, OK, so I went with it. It’s my nature to just go with things. But I didn’t have any idea what witches do, except for live in funky shacks in the woods (like me) with their big noses (like mine) and crazy black cats (like Weirdo, R.I.P.) and either oversized ovens or giant pots for cooking kids in.

Before anyone burns me at the stake or, worse, tries to ruin my career as a nanny, let me explain metaphor to you. No — cut metaphor, let’s skip straight to dada. The children who I made into omelets were for the most part 40- and 50-something-year-old men with hairy bellies and hardly any heart, who had somehow or other neglected to grow up. They were off-the-beaten-path truck drivers, errant farm hands, recovering ax murderers, and homeless mushroomers. Whereas the little girls, the little girls were two: a psychotic psychologist and the above-mentioned big-eyed young ‘un, 29, a highly educated and queerish knows-a-witchy-woman-when-she-sees-one college perfessor.

In my experience the brainier they are, the harder they hurt. Step two, set down that rusty, dull hatchet and fix your drill. It’s true you are liable to think of ugly, downlifting things while deconstructing your chicken coop. All the spider webs, moldy hay, and fossilized chicken shit … how can you not be reminded of heartless, hopeless, imaginationless fucks?

Thing is, this is not the time for anger. That time has passed, and hopefully you have kicked and screamed and howled and yowled and beaten your poor pillow (or in my case, reading public) into submission. Deconstructing a chicken coop, on the other hand, requires precision. Ergo: Step three, stack all the neatly de-screwed boards and things in a Future Dump Run pile.

Step four, roll all the chicken wire in tight-as-possible rolls and stack it separately. Neatly. Remember: what you are doing is more sacred than building; you are tearing down. You are creating blank space — empty, meaningless, and therefore full of potential. You will want to leave this site as clean as possible for the next person, who is somewhere in the world creating just such a space for you. In the name of which …

Step five: rake, scrape, shovel, and dump what was the floor into what will be the next tenant’s garden. Now, city girl, get your city ass back to town, slow and stylingly, and find yourself a new favorite restaurant. No meat for you: half a falafel sandwich drenched in tahini and a cup o’ cream o’ broccoli, babe. You deserve this.

TWILIGHT CAFE

Mon.–Fri. 8 a.m.–7 p.m.

2600 McAllister, SF

(415) 386-6115

MC, V

Beer and wine

Appetite: SF Cocktail Week is coming September 21-27

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: SF Cocktail Week is coming September 21-27

Last year’s San Francisco Cocktail Week was a full-but-chill week of parties and cocktails at some of our best bars. This year, the fourth annual SF Cocktail Week steps it up with a whole slew of events I’m excited (and proud) to see us throwing in the name of the cocktail, especially as our city has been one of the two leading the cocktail renaissance long before the rest of the country caught on.

This year we celebrate in a big way with the unveiling of a new Center for the Beverage Arts, the Boothby Center (named after Cocktail Boothby) on Cocktail Week’s opening night. Cocktail Carnival Gala is the big shindig held at the magnificent Old Mint and co-presented by The Bon Vivants. There are daytime seminars, late night after-parties and a cook-out (including ferry ride) at Hangar One/St. George Distillery. Some events are free, while tickets range anywhere from $10-$95.

Decide which ways you will imbibe, knowing your tickets support our city’s rich drinking and cultural heritage via the event’s presenters, Barbary Coast Conservancy of the American Cocktail (BCCAC), founded by H. Joseph Ehrmann (Elixir), Jeff Hollinger (Comstock Saloon), and Duggan McDonnell (Cantina).

Check the schedule for events you most want to hit. I’ll see you at the Ragtag Rabble Gaming Soirée on Thursday, or maybe the Cocktail Carnival Gala Saturday night? Oh, “whimsical” attire is recommended, so do what San Franciscans do well and dress to “impress.”

This year’s official event cocktail is “Papa Ghirardelli”, a moniker honoring Ghirardelli’s founder, Domingo Ghirardelli. Italian-born, but living in Peru where he first became successful with his confections prior to moving to San Francisco, the drink gives a nod to his dual roots with Campari (Italy) and Pisco (Peru), using Encanto Pisco. You can try the recipe at home before raising a glass next week:

Papa Ghirardelli
1.5 oz Encanto Pisco
.5 oz Campari
.5 oz Martini & Rossi Rosato Vermouth
.25 oz Benedictine
.5 oz Lemon Juice
Seltzer Water, to fill
Orange Slice, for garnish
 
Combine Encanto Pisco, Campari, Rosato, Benedictine and lemon juice in an ice-filled shaker and shake for 10 to 15 seconds, or until chilled. Strain over fresh ice into a Collins glass, and top with seltzer. Garnish with a slice of orange.

Purchase tickets for Cocktail Week here.

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Appetite: Drinking in the Wente Vineyards Concert Series

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: Drinking in the Wente Vineyards Concert Series

There may be other Bay Area concert winery venues (Mountain Winery, for example), but none like family-run Wente Vineyards in Livermore. Run by the same family for five generations and set on a 3000-acre expanse of golden rolling hills and vineyards, Wente is managed by delightfully down-to-earth members of the family who keep the business alive, yes, with wine-making, but also with a scenic golf course, a restaurant, and the aforementioned concert venue.

It’s magic sitting out under the warm Livermore night sky, cradled by palms, vineyards and foliage, in a venue big enough to feel like an event, small enough to offer visibility. On August 19, I trekked out for a Chris Isaak show. I was a fan in high school, pleased to say he’s utterly charming in person, maintaining old-fashioned showmanship and witty banter in a sparkly, classic country/Elvis-style wardrobe. The setting could not have enhanced the enchantment of his music more. The range (and randomness) of Wente shows is wide — with appearances from my longtime hero, Harry Connick, Jr., or the likes of Liza Minnelli, Earth, Wind & Fire, The Fray, even ZZ Top (!)

The rest of this year’s line-up includes Willie Nelson with Ryan Bingham on Monday, September 13, the one-and-only Harry Connick (sadly, his show is sold out) on September 21st, and a just-added Don Henley show on September 20th. Tickets are pricey, running just shy of $90 to nearly $150 for seats, or anywhere from $150 to just below $300 with dinner, whether it be outdoor picnics or a multi-course meal, wine included, in their restaurant. Of course, you can eat at the restaurant on non-concert days without concert prices.

But the combo of the two certainly makes for a memorable special occasion or date, and what surprises most is the quality of the food in a full, three-course dinner. My dinner was paired nicely with bottles of 2006 Murrieta’s Well, a melon, vanilla-tinged white Meritage ($11 glass; $40 bottle), and a 2006 Annika Syrah, rich with plum and wild blackberry ($24 glass; $96 bottle).

Executive chef Eric Berg uses produce and herbs from their own organic garden (there’s even a master gardener, Diane Dovholuk, on staff) and unusual offerings, like bison tenderloin tartare with yellow beets, green onion, creme fraiche, sorrel puree and beet greens. It was a treat to eat bison raw, tender and fresh with garden accents. Simple and pure shines in the case of Frog Hollow Peaches with red onion, toasted hazelnuts, mizuna greens and pancetta vinaigrette. A perfect Summer dish.

Liberty Farms duck breast “scaloppini” with leg confit, horseradish gnocchi, charred lemon zest and smoked eggplant puree was appropriately prepared medium-rare with the confit leg adding succulence. Wagyu flatiron steak & Maine lobster is a pleasing “surf and turf” combo, prepared with stewed heirloom chiles, fingerling potato fondant, in a lobster-veal sauce.

Though I especially liked the sound of frozen horchata with hibiscus soup, local strawberries and mint, it was more like a bright palate cleanser than spiced with horchata flavor, while a local nectarine tartlette with sweet corn ice cream and salted caramel lingered longer and pleasurably.

Needless to say, it’s a hefty splurge, but the whole package, both dinner and concert, is a uniquely California experience: vineyards, palm trees, garden-fresh cuisine, even an Old West feeling of remoteness out among dry, rolling hills, create a bewitching evening.

New twists on the Negroni challenge the original

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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New twists on the Negroni challenge the original

Those who know me well are aware of my love of the Negroni. The perfect aperitif and a favorite since my first visit to Italy 11 years ago, I crave Campari’s bitter crispness balanced with gin. I concur with Victoria Moore who says in her book, How to Drink: “The negroni is a beautiful thing, garnet in color, sweet-astringent to taste, and decisively highbrow. Drinking it feels like taking a sip of Florence, Renaissance frescoes, students swooping about on scooters…” My typically adventurous palate sees no reason to vary from a traditional, already perfect Negroni recipe (http://www.imbibemagazine.com/Negroni), but the skilled bartenders in our fair city and the makers of a brilliant new product, Gran Classico Bitter have been opening my eyes in recent months to other Negroni vistas.

TEMPUS FUGIT NEGRONI at Spoonbar — Scott Beattie offers three versions of Negronis at the wonderful new Spoonbar in Healdsburg. The Tempus Fugit Negroni ($8.50) particularly wows. Made with Ransom’s (http://www.ransomspirits.com) impeccable Old Tom Gin, Dolin Rouge Vermouth, orange zest and Tempus Fugit’s Gran Classico Bitter, it’s a musky, full revelation.

PISCO NEGRONI at Cantina — Duggan McDonnell at Cantina showed me another way as realized as a classic Negroni: a Pisco Negroni. Out of all four here, this one tastes most like the original, bright with pisco instead of gin, Gran Classico instead of Campari. It’s lush, almost caramel-y with his lovely Encanto Pisco, while the favored bitter/tart Campari offers is illuminated in the Gran Classico.

Brian MacGregor’s NEGRONI d’OR — Brian MacGregor is shaking cocktails for his last week at Jardiniere, a loss for that bastion of 1930’s, supperclub-style elegance, but a gain for the upcoming Locanda, opening in the Mission from the Delfina crew, where MacGregor will be Bar Manager. He went all the way to Cognac, France, for the G’Vine Gin World Finals with this pristine beauty that comes unadorned in a wine glass. It’s golden-hued and smooth with G’vine Nouasion gin, Dolin White vermouth and, yes, Gran Classico. It may no longer be on order at Jardiniere once MacGregor departs after 9/9, but if you ask nicely, he might be able to make it for you in his new digs.

LO SCANDINAVO at 15 Romolo
The gifted crew at 15 Romolo continually does it right, pushing boundaries while maintaining taste and classic standards. The Negroni gets a Scandinavian makeover with the Lo Scandinavo ($11), aka Aquavit Negroni: North Shore Aquavit, Gran Classico Bitter and Carpano Antica. Here, an astringent smoothness is accented by a slice of lemon peel. The aquavit forms a clean foundation for the bitter qualities to shine.

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Let’s date!

David Talbot
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Let’s date!

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS While the Maze’s mom was fighting for her life, he sat and stood by her side, in San Diego, and talked to her, even though she couldn’t hear him, or respond.

Her coma was induced, more-or-less medically, according to the Maze, who went to med school. After seven days, they more-or-less medically weaned her back into life as we know it. Where you breathe, you know, air, and eat, you know, food, and go to the bathroom. When he left San Diego, she could do some of the above, plus take six steps.

Coincidentally, as misfortune would have it, for the two weeks the Maze was with his mom, the woman the Maze dates was also bedridden back home here, on account of broken legs and surgery and shit.

I gave her a lot of movies, and some lasagna, but that was about it. And I thought about her a lot, and the Maze’s mom, who was only in her 60s. And the Maze: how the women in his life were all down, but not for the count.

Nor did it escape my attention that I am, in many respects, a woman in the Maze’s life, so I was careful to look both ways before crossing streets, drive defensively, and wash my hands many times during a day. I might have even eaten more healthily, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Whatever the reason, I was very, very hungry when the Maze called me from the airport on Monday. Did I want to get something to eat?

"I do!" I said. I told him I’d been thinking all day about barbecue. This meant nothing to him, not because he’s cruel but because he knows me well. I might as well have said, "All day long my heart has been pumping blood through my veins and arteries."

Or: "Yep, I checked, and I still have hands!"

Since the Maze is one of many friends I suspect of being a closet vegetarian, we settled for pizza. At … Delfina Pizzeria. Finally!

Because I live on one side of it, and park on another, I have been walking past this place for years, often with my one-string water-jug-on-a-toilet-plunger bass, the smell of diapers all over me, or some other symbol of my not being able to eat there. And I have slowed down and stared. Not at the beautiful people who litter the sidewalk in front of Delfina, lunchtime and evenings. I have stared at their pizzas.

I think it’s cruel and unusual for establishments to serve food that looks and smells that damn good on narrow sidewalks with a lot of foot traffic in not entirely affluent neighborhoods.

I’ve seen me some pies with some pretty amazing things on them, like fried eggs, and I have fantasized about sitting down with some party of two or three and pretending like I know one of them. Or just grabbing a slice and flying. I’m pretty fast for an aging ex chicken farmer.

It’s not like Delfina’s out-of-reachably expensive, either. I think of it as a date place. I just don’t, as a rule, have dates. So when the Maze nixed my barbecue idea and suggested Delfina, if there wasn’t a line, I jumped on it.

Here was a special occasion. His mom was alive! He was coming home! I still had hands! And — and this is a big and — it was early enough that we wouldn’t have to wait in line. So there we had it, and you have it, everything stacked up so that at 6 p.m. on a Monday. I ate my first Delfina pizza.

It was good. As good as it always looked. And in spite of the fact that we didn’t get one of the meat ones, the Maze being a closet vegetarian. I think the pizza, with broccoli raab, olives, mozzarella, and hot peppers, was $14.50. Share-able, sure, but barely so. Put it this way: either one of us could have eaten the whole thing alone.

Plus salad plus drinks = yeah, not cheap eats. But damn good ‘uns. I can’t wait to have dates.

DELFINA PIZZERIA

Mon. 5–10 p.m.; Tue.–Thu. 11:30 a.m.–10 p.m.;

Fri. 11:30 a.m.–11 p.m.; Sat. noon–11 p.m.;

Sun. noon-10 p.m.

3611 18th St., S.F.

(415) 437-6800

AE,D,MC,V

Beer and wine

Izakaya Sozei

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Izakaya Sozei

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE A specter is haunting America — the specter of deflation, according to the worthies at the Fed, who, having played no small role in conjuring said specter, are now kind enough to warn us of it. Let the excellent adventure begin, but first, a stop at Sozai (full name: Izakaya Sozai), a twice-reinvented Japanese restaurant in the mid-Sunset, where the crush of youth is so massive that even the most slithery of specters would have a tough time worming their way in.

One tends to associate youth-crushed restaurants with Valencia Street, those droves of 30-year-olds in jeans and black shoes with disposable incomes adequate to support restaurant-going as a form of entertainment. Irving Street would hardly seem to be a serious competitor to the Mission extravaganza, and Sozai looks demure from the sidewalk: Japanese-style screens over the large windows and modest signage. But once inside, it’s all energy. The space seats only a few dozen, and as we all remember from high-school physics, compression produces heating.

The clientele is substantially Asian, which makes for a complex comment on the food. Despite the name, Sozai is far from a traditional Japanese restaurant. Its nearest relation is Namu, which stitches together Korean, Japanese, and Californian influences into a new piece of small-plate cloth. At both places, overflow spills onto the sidewalk, where wait-listers can be observed in deep communion with their smart phones, fingers jabbing away.

Sozai’s menu does offer a base of recognizably Japanese dishes, including otsumami, sashimi, nimono, and yakitori. The kitsune udon ($7) — fat wheat noodles in broth — is wonderful, despite a difficult-to-eat block of tofu floating on top. But the more exciting action is posted on the chalkboard; there the dishes can slide away from categories, and in some cases from Asian influences altogether.

An octopus ceviche ($8) served in a martini glass, for instance, with a gap-toothed fence of tortilla chips ranged around the lip, was like something you’d find in tony Peruvian or pan-Latino restaurants. The marinade was splendidly tangy; the octopus itself tough. But where would you look to find chunks of boneless, slightly fatty duck meat ($6) grilled on skewers after a bath in blueberry port? The port was vanishingly unpresent, while the meat itself was gamy and chewy, neither pleasant nor unpleasant. Equally oddball were skewers of brussels sprouts ($5) wrapped in bacon and grilled. I am a big believer in both grilling and combining bacon and cruciferous, but here the method — which left the vegetable in a semi-raw state while failing to crisp the bacon — did not impress.

Pulled-pork croquettes ($5) resembled a pair of whole-wheat English muffins but lacked any crust or crispness and, worse, were seriously underseasoned. If it hadn’t been for the side dish of ginger-charged hoisin sauce, we might not have finished them. The bed of daikon threads did offer a subtle heavenly quality and some texture, but no flavor.

The kitchen’s best dishes seem to be the simplest and the most Japanese, and maybe this shouldn’t surprise us. Mackerel, or aji, tataki sashimi ($10) was about as straightforward as it gets, a low heap of fish strips with skin still attached. It looked like a gathering of eels.

A salad of yuzu-dressed mozuku seaweed ($4) couldn’t have been improved upon while acquiring a sheen of elegance from the martini glass it was served in. And a plate of blanched baby yellow carrots ($4) needed only a shallow dish of lumpy miso paste on the side to offer a complete, and remarkably vivid, experience.

Taking chances does raise the risk of failure, and Sozai’s kitchen takes more chances than most, perhaps with the understanding that even serious culinary failures are almost sure to fall well short of inedible disaster. But one of the desserts, fig tempura ($5) arguably crossed the line. It consisted of halved figs, dipped in a light tempura batter and fried just enough to be crisp (why couldn’t the croquettes have been this crunchy?) and arranged around a helmet of vanilla ice cream.

The figs were neither sweet nor mealy inside, so call that a draw. The ice cream was fine. But why oh why drizzle everything with a too-tart balsamic reduction? It looked nice, like chocolate syrup, but knocked the dessert off balance. If not for the ice cream, the figs and balsamic could have been served as an hors d’oeuvre. As a dessert, it left us deflated.

IZAKAYA SOZAI

Dinner: Wed.-Mon., 5:30–11 p.m.

1500 Irving, SF

(415) 742-5122

www.izakayasozai.com

Beer and wine

MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

 

Appetite: Plum sneak preview dinner amps up anticipation

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: Plum sneak preview dinner amps up anticipation

Daniel Patterson is one of our city’s true visionary chefs, willing to push the envelope, gifted with technique, but, yes, able to make it taste damn good. I’m a big fan of Coi, delight in Il Cane Rosso and try not to resent Oakland for getting both Bracina and Plum, his upcoming ventures. 

Thankfully, Plum sneak preview dinners were held here in SF at Il Cane Rosso, every Monday during August. A simple, four-course menu was presented at $45 per person, representing what might be on offer once Plum rolls out. It’s a smart idea: try things out, get diner’s feedback, hone the menu… all before the restaurant opens. 

Of course, I am eagerly anticipating the bar menu from none other than Scott Beattie with bar manager Michael Lazar, co-author of Left Coast Libations. This is going to be a good one, folks. 

Patterson, Il Cane Rosso chef Lauren Kiino, and pastry chef Bill Corbett are behind the food. From the preview dinner perspective, I first noticed the menu’s straightforwardness: lamb stew, roasted beets, and the like. But the food belies a brazen spirit you won’t catch reading the menu, one married to understatement. Ask questions and you’ll find there’s much more to your dish than meets the eye. 

What is labeled “potato chips” are russet potato strips and skins prepared like chicharrones: crispy, dusted with cayenne and fennel pollen. These would make incredible bar snacks. Roasted beets display radiant hues of gold and red, accented with onions, sorrel and the crunch of pistachio. A pure, seemingly simple mushroom dashi/broth with yuba, tofu and greens, is contrasted by pickled radish. This dish is an excellent example of what I’ve seen from Patterson before: balanced flavors, impeccable technique but approachable, not playing any games. 

Lamb stew with sunchokes and wheatberries deserves applause. When I found out what was in the dish, it seemed a shame not to list it on the menu, but it’s smart on the Plum crew’s part to encourage the average diner to order something they are comfortable with (lamb, for example), while gently expanding their horizons. The stew is tender chunks of lamb neck, shoulder and head, while the accompanying grilled toast is covered in “brainnaise”, Patterson’s term for brain mayonnaise. Never fear, it tastes delicious with radicchio. You’d never know that mayo was creamy with lamb brain. 

Dessert is fresh huckleberries accented with airy goat cheese foam on a ‘liquid’ graham cracker, followed by a grapefruit and wild fennel pate de fruit: a bright, tart finish. 

The marriage is right: the food is straightforward and comforting, accessible to your general Bay Area diner, but simultaneously bold, unapologetic and lovingly prepared. This bodes well for Plum. 

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Appetite: Studying drink

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: Studying drink

Left Coast Libations by Ted Munat with Michael Lazar — Left Coast Libations, released today (catch the launch party on 9/18 at Heaven’s Dog), is, as far as I’m concerned, a must for the library of any West Coast cocktailian, not to mention drink aficionados everywhere. Ted Munat clearly displays a fan’s love of drink and the bartenders behind them in his cheeky, delightful bartender bios, Jenn Farrington’s pristine photos give the book a sleek, pure look, and Michael Lazar painstakingly made every recipe to ensure workability for those of us trying these recipes at home. Naturally, San Francisco makes a strong showing with LA, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver bartenders sharing many of their greats, all highlighting the innovation happening in cocktails on the West Coast. You’ll find recipes for local favorites like Daniel Hyatt’s Southern Exposure or Joel Baker’s Pear Sonata. I’ve been making many of these at home and the book is rich with possibility. In the midst of intriguingly unique recipes calling for homemade syrups or tinctures, I am also grateful for simple beauties like Murray Stenson‘s Stephan’s Sour with Beefeater gin, lemon juice, simple syrup and Bitter Truth celery bitters. 

Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails by Ted Haigh — After meeting him and attending his Hollywood Cocktails seminar at Tales of the Cocktail, I can say Ted Haigh is one crazy guy… and one of the best resources in the world for history behind drinks (just read his regular column in Imbibe magazine). With a well deserved win as Best New Cocktail/Bartending Book at Tales, Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails feels like the kind of tome that would be a definitive resource in any era. Focused on the classics, it’s rich with historical notes, vintage artwork, and approachable, standard-setting recipes every bartender (or at-home novice) should know. Kudos for the spiral bound presentation, making it easy to use while mixing drinks. 

Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent — Last Call is an almost textbook-detailed approach to the history, people and circumstances surrounding Prohibition and how it changed the face of America in issues as far-ranging as personal freedom to organized crime. Daniel Okrent is best known as the first public editor of the New York Times, but is also a Pulitzer nominee. His painstaking research reveals fascinating stories (Carry A. Nation, the temperance “saloon smasher” with a hatchet, for one), and debatable but thought-provoking conclusions. Just delve into the introduction with eye-opening stats on just how much America drank pre-Prohibition, and you’ll be hooked. 

 

Curry Boyzz

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Curry Boyzz

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE If no good deed goes unpunished, then it must follow, by some inexorable law, that no rule goes unbroken — not even my cherished guidance that oft-flipped restaurant spaces in this city tend to end up as Japanese places. Sometimes spaces go in another direction — like toward the Asian subcontinent. Early in the year, Curry Boyzz opened on a second-floor space, across 18th Street from DeLano’s Market, that for a number of years had been the home of Côte Sud, a credible French restaurant, and before that a Cuban spot.

The space is one of the more appealing in the area, in large part because of a glassed-in terrace that gives an expansive view over the street scene. Côte Sud made some tasty Parisian-style hay from this terrace while meaningfully contributing toward an elevation of culinary standards in the Castro.

But the times, they are a’ changin,’ and by the look of it, not for the better. People are more sensitive about bang-for-buck ratios than they were just three or four years ago, and hardly any culinary tradition gives you more bang for the buck than the south Asian (or, as the menu card puts it, “Indian-Pak”). In this important respect, Curry Boyzz (a sibling of Curry Stop in the Barbary Coast) doesn’t disappoint, although they might have spelled it “Bois” if they were interested in upping the twink, or at least the twink-involved, traffic.

You know you are in downmarket-land when you order at a counter and carry a number to your table. At Curry Boyzz you are further on your own scaring up utensils and napkins from bins near the entrance to the terrace. But — a thoughtful touch — there’s also a refrigerator filled with carafes of water, a flourish that puts this crucial matter right in your hands.

The menu includes many Indian staples, ably prepared, along with some unexpected items. Several involve karela, or bitter melon. It turned up cooked, with various meats, and also on its own ($5.99), rather pretty striped green strips in a stew with ginger, garlic, and onions. “Bitter” is a word that has no good connotation in America, where palatal pleasures tend to revolve around an infantile sweet tooth. But bitterness is one of the basic tastes, and is therefore essential. When moderated and modulated, as here, by strong counter-presences, it becomes something rich, deep, and satisfying.

Another dish I couldn’t recall having seen before was lamb cholay ($7.99), knuckles of meat cooked with chickpeas — but maybe that was just because my spice eye tends to be drawn toward lamb vindaloo. The cholay edition was well-behaved in the chili-heat department; its most obvious characteristic, in fact, was the presence of so many bones to be navigated around.

Tikka masala so often means chicken tikka masala, chunks of boneless meat simmered in a creamy curry sauce, but fish ($9.99) works just as well. We liked the big pieces, almost like whole filets instead of the more typical chicken chunks. And we loved the palak paneer ($5.99), the classic dish of spinach and chunks of white cheese, for its mysterious, transporting spice breath. Did I catch a whiff of some extra cardamom in there?

The ancillary items were also reliable. Pappadum (99 cents) were crisp and glistening with a sheen of oil. (Not all sheens of oil are undesirable.) Naan, on the other hand, weren’t glistening; they had the dry, slightly chapped faces of pita bread. Luckily, naan need not be moist and oily to succeed. Indeed, since naan chunks tend to get used to mop up sauce, a bit of dryness and absorbency is preferable, as with bath towels.

We were a little surprised to find the keema naan ($2.99), a flatbread disk stuffed with what the menu card called “ground meat” — shades of freshman-year mystery meat! but the faint gaminess suggested lamb — to be nearly as dry as its unstuffed sibling. No matter: it was good for sopping, and we had plenty to sop.

Considering that the terrace is glassed-in, we found the presence of bugs — tiny bugs, smaller than gnats — to be both ironic and irritating. But maybe even the bugs (or do I mean bugzz?) have found this cold and gloomy summer (the chilliest in nearly 40 years, say the TV weather boffins) to be tough going, and, like us, find themselves seeking shelter inside. 

CURRY BOYZZ

Sun.–Thurs., noon–11 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat., noon–2 a.m.

4238 18th St., SF

(415) 255-6565

curryboyzz.com

Beer and wine

MC/V

Modest noise

Not wheelchair accessible

 

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