Food & Drink

Meow mix

David Talbot
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Meow mix

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS I was about halfway across the Golden Gate Bridge by the time I knew for sure: big mistake. Stoplight the cat was not happy. I was not happy. It was hot. No air conditioning. I required food. Occidental is an hour and 15 driving minutes beyond the bridge.

That’s a lot of minutes to have to listen to a cute little kitten that you love screaming and screeching in horror. Not to mention how many minutes it is to have to be that kitten. But I was running late for an important rehearsal for this thing I’m in, so there was no turning back.

"The show must go on," I said to Stoplight.

"You mother fucking fucker," he said, in so many meows. "If I ever get big enough I’m going to shred you into confetti, eat your internal organs, and leave your tangled intestines on the bed so I can spend the rest of my little life playing with them."

"Oh," I said. "Really? Say, have you ever heard of people who throw their pets out of car windows on the freeway? I’m not saying I’m one of those people, but what makes you so certain that every one of those people who are one of those people wouldn’t have said, 10 minutes before losing it, that they weren’t one of those people.

"I’m just saying," I said, "that the human psyche is a fragile and funny thing."

"Yeah, well, you think those little kitty scratches on your arms are bad, and the tiny puncture wounds all over your legs?" my little kitty said, partially overlapping me because he doesn’t yet have manners. "Wait until I pull your ears off your head, claw your eyeballs out, and swat them across the floor like ping pong balls until they roll under the refrigerator.

"I’m just saying," he said. "I wouldn’t go to sleep tonight, if I were you, I’m saying," he said. In so many meows.

"Fuck you," I said.

"Fuck you," he said.

We were off to a great start in our little long-term committed relationship. And it was all my fault. I decided to get off at the next exit with visible food, and just … eat. Something. Anything. Whatever. I just didn’t want to go all-the-way crazy, not in my brother’s stinking van. Not on an empty stomach. The first place I see, I said to myself.

The first place I saw was McDonalds. (What are the chances?) Luckily, I am not an honorable woman. I mean, technically, I keep my word where there are other people involved, but tend to break every single promise I make to myself. Including, to everyone’s cheap eaterly relief, this one.

I continued down that road, meow meow meow, until I came to the second restaurant I saw, which was Strawberry Gourmet Deli in the Strawberry shopping center.

As soon as the car stopped rolling, I poured out of it like a beer commercial, opened the sliding side door, grabbed the cat carrier, put it on the floor in the wayback, behind the third seat, and left that door open too.

He could see me through his little caged door as I ran-walked into the deli. "Get back here," he shrieked, "you stinking bitch!"

Or maybe he said, "Get cat beer! A pink sandwich!"

Whatever, it was loud, and it looped. You could still hear him at the counter.

"Can I help you?"

"The vet said it was okay," I said. "For a kitten. If you travel with them while they’re young, they get used to it. I want to die."

"Excuse me?"

I wish I could have got a salad or baked thing, such as lasagna, because it’s hard to drown your sorrows in a sandwich. But I needed something I could eat in the car. "Turkey sandwich," I said.

Opened it up on my lap in the drivers seat, cranked Green Day, and got back on the freeway. What a lame lunch. Not enough meat. Not enough anything, except bread. All of us, we drive like maniacs, and are lucky to be alive.

STRAWBERRY GOURMET DELI

Mon.–Fri.: 7 a.m.–5 p.m.;

Sun.: 7 a.m.–4 p.m.

1216 Strawberry Village Road, Mill Valley

(415) 381-2088

AE,D,MC,V

Beer and wine

Appetite: Wine Country’s new hot spots

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: Wine Country’s new hot spots

SPOONBAR, Healdsburg – I could write a piece on the cocktails alone at brand new Spoonbar in the h2hotel off of Healdsburg’s town square. You’ve already heard me mention Scott Beattie over the years, who is truly one of our country’s great bartenders. His cocktail menu at Spoonbar is a revelation.

Yes, you’ll get waylaid by the initial cocktail list, but don’t let that stop you from asking for the additional one. It’s a glory of new creations, featuring edible flowers and the herbal, produce-driven beauties Beattie has perfected since his Cyrus days. But there’s the added bonus of classics done with a Beattie sensibility. I get giddy at the site of three versions each of Old-Fashioneds, Negronis, Manhattans, and Sazeracs, the holy foursome of cocktails. I sampled five, each exquisite. It feels right seeing Beattie behind the bar again.

I chose the Tempus Fugit Negroni ($8.50). How could I not? Made with Ransom‘s impeccable Old Tom Gin, Dolin Rouge Vermouth, orange zest and Tempus Fugit’s brilliant Gran Classico Bitter, it’s a musky, full revelation. As I mentioned in my last Appetite, I’m beginning to see a whole new possibility when it comes to Negronis, thanks to Gran Classico and bartenders willing to experiment with it.

On the classics front, Beattie’s Dark ‘n Stormy trumps all others. There’s a lovely Appleton Reserve version for $7.50 (or pitcher for five at $37.50). I’ll put my money on the version with Ron Zacapa Solera 23 (a rum I’ve long been a fan of already) for $9/$45. With fresh lime juice and Angostura bitters, Beattie adds drops of essential oil of ginger for a more pure, round taste. Locally grown sunflower leaves are a vivid garnish.

Going the creative Beattie route is equally thrilling. John Chapman ($10.5) is a taste of fall. When you take St. George Whiskey and Pear Eau de Vie, then mix it with lemon, apple, ginger and a Thai coconut foam, you get magic. Ditto, on the other side of the spectrum, for the Summery taste of  Siddartha ($9.5). I normally wouldn’t choose a vodka drink, but this one utilizes Hangar One Buddha’s Hand Citron with Beefeater Gin, St. Germain Elderflower, lemon, Thai coconut milk and lemon verbena. It’s silky, seductively bright and garden fresh.

But the joys at Spoonbar are many as the food and wine list are likewise robust, the space open and airy (playful with hints of mid-century modern), the price point a nice mid-range. In early opening weeks, this has automatically become my # 1 Healdsburg spot for drink or food (since I can only afford Cyrus for a special occasion), and one of my tops in all of Wine Country.

Where to start? There’s wines on tap, a trend I am happy to see growing from an environmental and casual accessibility standpoint. Let wine director Ross Hallett, choose and you’ll likely get a nice range of local and international wines. With dinner, he paired a dry 2000 Villa Claudia Gattinara and a full  ‘05 Savuto Odoardi that yielded spice notes when paired with the Spoonbar Burger. For dessert, he poured thoughtful choices like Rare Wine Co.’s New York Malmsey Special Reserve Madeira, rich with earthy, coffee notes, and Ratafia de Bourgogne, a sweet but balanced liqueur.

The food? With Moroccan and Mediterranean influences, Chef Rudy Mihal’s menu shines as fine bar food with cocktails or as multi-course dinner. Appetizers offer all kinds of goodness, like addictive little Fried Smelt Fish ($8) dipped in a caper aioli. Or how about skewers of plump, grilled Calamari ($12) in a preserved lemon vinaigrette? You’ll find me equally hyped over imported Burrata ($13), creamy heaven in a pool of fine olive oil with meltingly soft brioche and a finely diced beet tartare.

On the entree front, the lamb/beef mix is right in the Spoonbar Burger ($15), albeit small, on a house-sesame bun with a mini-bucket of fries. Kudos for a restrained but permeating burger topping of sweet tomato confit, cucumber chutney and spiced yogurt.

Though I am easily bored with chicken, their signature Moorish-style Brick Chicken ($24) is rife with flavor from herbs and spices, tender over grilled lemon couscous. Definitely a highlight.

Restaurant Manager, Darren Abel, runs a relaxed, festive restaurant that truly is the whole package. I’ll be plotting my next chance to get to Spoonbar when up that way – at the very least for cocktails and apps. If only this place was in the city…

MORIMOTO NAPA, Napa – Despite the celebrity chef status of the one and only Masaharu Morimoto (yes, I love the original Iron Chef), and the high price tag, the brand new Morimoto Napa restaurant is an experience and a welcome addition to Wine Country.

The space is huge, with a sea of greys enlivened by bright, yellow chairs. There’s patio waterfront seating and an ultra-cool touch of grape vines dramatically running the wall over the bar and in the lobby, as if to say, “Morimoto is now in Wine Country.”

As for the food, it adds up fast, but thankfully there’s beyond-the-norm presentations lending excitement to the expensive meal. Like me, you may have eaten a thousand tartares, but you haven’t had one quite like this: Toro Tartare ($25) comes on a little wood tray you scrape with a mini paddle, then dip in nori paste, wasabi, sour cream, chives, or a house dashi soy, smoky with a hint of bonito. Finish with a bright palate cleanser of Japanese plum.

Green Fig Tempura ($16) is a playful change of pace on the tempura front, but the real clincher is a creamy peanut butter foie gras sauce underneath, dotted with pomegranate reduction. Again, as a big beef tartare fan, I’ve had many a version. This one stands out. Beef Tartare ($18) Morimoto-style comes with asparagus flan hiding an egg in the center. As you slice through it, it oozes over the beef, asparagus slivers, lotus chips and teriyaki sauce. Morimoto Bone Marrow ($16) is an intriguing version: one giant bone loaded with gloppy, warm marrow, perked up with caramelized onions, teriyaki and spices on top.

Entrees continued in this creative vein, though Whole Roasted Lobster “Espice” ($35) had its flaws. It’s a generous portion but the lobster meat is lost in too much garam masala spice, coriander, peppercorn, and cayenne, even though that was what sold me on the dish initially. It was over-spiced but the saving grace was a divine, whipped lemon creme fraiche, contrasting the blackened spice aspect with airy tart.

Duck Duck Goose ($36) was my preferred entree – essentially duck in four parts, from a bowl of duck confit fried rice with frozen foie gras shavings topped with duck egg, to duck soup, duck confit leg, and slices of duck meat with gooseberries. Tofu Cheesecake ($12) in coffee maple syrup with maple ice cream is a signature dish for Morimoto, but though I liked the light texture of the tofu cheesecake, it was overwhelmed by thick maple syrup. A Raspberry Wasabi Sorbet was a better finish for me, hitting strong on both key ingredients.

Morimoto sat at the table next to us with friends, surveying the expansion of his growing restaurant empire. The GM stopped by our table to see how things were going and mentioned that Morimoto loved it so much here he was staying for a couple months. Even when the novelty of his first West Coast venture wears off (he’s opening in LA next – http://eater.com/archives/2010/07/23/morimoto-hits-la.php), my initial visit, merely a week after opening, suggests that this restaurant will long remain one of downtown Napa’s destinations.

Prospect

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Prospect

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE At last, a restaurant name we can believe in. That would be Prospect, Nancy Oakes’ new venture on the ground floor of a glassy residential tower that would probably seem like home sweet home to the Jetsons.

If you like Oakes’ other restaurant, the massively famous Boulevard, you’re likely to find Prospect a multilayered shock. The older place, which opened in 1993 and was one of the first tendrils of post-earthquake renewal along the Embarcadero, trades on the antique charm of the Audiffred Building, a 121-year-old, Parisian-looking structure that rode out the 1906 earthquake, as well as on its Pat Kuleto interior design, a warmly whimsical reimagining of a brasserie.

Prospect, by contrast, offers no such design charms and appears to be unconnected to any past, only to a future — a prospect? — that might politely be described as deracinated. The space is deep, high, and filled with plenty of natural light, along with (reclaimed) wood-plank flooring, hempy-looking fabrics, columns of sound baffling that resemble panels of corrugated cardboard (but feel like Corian) and pillars of naked concrete for a touch of modern urban grit. The result is … really not all that different from nearby RN74. Moderation in all things, including — as Oscar Wilde might have said — restraint.

The food is also more than subtly different from Boulevard’s. Oakes is one of the masters of a highly polished American cuisine that’s a little too hearty to be called Californian. Serving sizes at Boulevard have long been ample, in the American grain. But we were told right off the bat one evening at Prospect that we should revise our expectations downward with respect to size. In this sense Prospect’s prices, on their face quite a bit lower than Boulevard’s, are at least slightly illusory, especially if you double down on starters, as our server suggested.

But there can be no arguing with the actual food coming out of executive chef Ravi Kapur’s kitchen. The flavors are bold, the juxtapositions artful, and the execution solid. I was particularly impressed by a double-decker filet of petrale sole ($24). Here the fish was given a gorgeous bronze crispness, then presented with … no, not lemon and capers but a ragout of summer beans, king trumpet mushrooms, and a wondrous tasso aioli that was something like bacon transmuted into cream.

The fish and seafood cookery in general is outstanding, from a petite black cod filet ($15) bathing in a mild red curry broth and accompanied by shiitakes, snap peas, and a shiso shrimp fritter, to an opalescent mat of yellowtail crudo ($14), scattered with coins of pickled cucumber and served with an undulating seaweed rice cracker the color of wasabi but without the nuclear nasal blast. All this is noteworthy mostly if it’s been your impression, as it’s been mine for years, that the heart of Oakes’ gastronomic wonder-working has tended to involve meat and potatoes.

Meat isn’t neglected, however. The pork cheeks ($22) were particularly fabulous, with some of the tender-stringy character of short ribs. The meat was capped with ribbons of fennel-root confit and set on a bed of ancient grains (farro and amaranth, it seemed), with Santa Rosa plums, cloves of roasted garlic, and chunks of watermelon radish for contrast — a refreshingly unsweet and (apart from the plums) unfruity ensemble.

The flesh-free dishes are just as vivid. First-of-the-season tomatoes ($13), although a monochromatic red, benefited from the tanginess of sheep’s-milk fromage blanc. And slices of porcini mushroom ($16) found themselves splashing playfully in a balsamic-pancetta sauce with semolina (rather polenta-ish) and a tempura-like farm egg. Tempura recurred on the soft-shell crab ($14), which seemed unfocused and bland despite the flooring of jalapeño-corn relish and green-tomato tartar sauce. But then, soft-shell crab is an East Coast delicacy that can lose something in translation.

Desserts, like just about everything else on the menu, are small and intense. Chocolate orbit ($9) included warm flourless chocolate cake with a pat of bittersweet chocolate ice cream, and if that had been it, it wouldn’t have been much. But the cake sat on a bed of mojito granita, whose colorless grains belied a strong lime charge. Chocolate and lime? Believe it. Believe, too, in the peach hand pie ($9), with diced peaches, a brown-butter pastry pocket and, best of all, muscovado brown sugar ice cream. It’s not as sweet as you’d think. 

PROSPECT

Dinner: Sun.–Thurs., 5:30–10:30 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat., 5:30–11 p.m.

300 Spear, SF

(415) 247-7770

www.prospectsf.com

Full bar

AE/DC/DS/MC/V

Well-damped noise

Wheelchair accessible

Furballs ahead

David Talbot
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Furballs ahead

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS It’s hard to believe that Walt Whitman never ate a kimchi burrito. Maybe this is for the best, from the point of view of American literature, but that’s no help to me at 4:30 a.m.

Don’t worry, I’m getting a kitten. Not that having a kitten in the house will help me sleep, but it should provide a more cuddly, playful, and cute excuse for not being able to.

This kitten, the kitten that will be my kitten starting tomorrow (hawks and coyotes permitting), was born feral on a farm outside of Petaluma. My blackberry friend NFC and me were there on Sunday, picking blackberries. NFC, she knows the farmers from the farmers market in Berkeley. They are cheese farmers, and they’d said, “Come pick blackberries!”

So we did.

It was beautiful there. I got about three-quarters of a gallon of berries, then made the mistake of showing them to the Chunks de la Cooter next morning. By dinnertime, I didn’t have any berries. Just a kitten.

How my kitten came to be named Stoplight … well, anyone with a name-needing cat and three-year-old friends would be a fool not to ask the latter for help with the former.

So I did, I asked C. Chunk, and with great seriousness, admirable enthusiasm, and some thought, she said, “Um. Um. Um. Um … Stoplight!”

Bing, a cat was named. A litter box was bought, and the Chunks each picked out a toy for Stoplight, who will join my little hovel of horrors tomorrow. Today, besides cat-proofing the place, I am craving kimchi burritos, naps, and, of course, hot and hopeful sex. Did I mention I have given all the way up on dating?

Yay! Maybe my favorite advantage, besides the Return of Self-esteem, is that I now have more time than ever to organize the wires behind my desk. The tangle back there had gotten downright jungular ever since I started recording music again.

So I needed new glasses, so I went downtown with a buy-one-pair-get-one-free coupon in one pocket and a treasure map for kimchi burritos in the other. The map was courtesy of my new favorite fanmail sender, who had written me a little pick-me-up back in January, then a Welcome Home in March in which he’d mentioned, as Reason No. 1,498,234 for being happy to be back in San Francisco, a little place in the Financial District that was (then) offering their allegedly super-spicy Kimchi Burrito of death (or suicide burrito, or some such scary name) for free, if you could eat it in the store.

It took me two tries to find the place because my fanmailer didn’t know the name or exactly even the street, and I was expecting something more interesting sounding than “John’s Snack & Deli.” It’s on Battery Street, not far off Market, way the hell down there.

The Financial District, as you may know, is not my stomping grounds, so you will forgive me please for not headsing you up to the existence of such a thing as a kimchi burrito any sooner than this.

What do you think? It’s fan-fucking-tastic. Imagine: Korean-style barbecued beef, or bulgogi, with spicy kimchi, rice, and bits of tomato, onion, cilantro, and lettuce, all rolled up burrito-style in a flour tortilla.

I don’t want to start any riots in my own neighborhood, but … never mind.

Suffice to say, it almost ain’t fair how juicy and delicious this kimchi burrito is. If I had been eating over a mug, I could have had a nice cup of kimchi burrito tea to wash down my new favorite burrito with. As it is, I ate on the sidewalk. The real reason they can get away with a promotion like the one mentioned above: it’s takeout only, tiny, and not unpopular (not surprisingly) already.

My intention was to take one bite, then bring the rest home. Yeah, right. I finished it in one standing, straddling my bike, which afterward needed repainting. And my clothes too, and my respect for American poetry … ruined!

Everything.

JOHN’S SNACK & DELI

Mon.–Fri. 6 a.m.–6 p.m.

40 Battery, SF

(415) 434-4634

Cash only

No alcohol

 

Appetite: The scene at SF CHEFS

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: The scene at SF CHEFS

SF CHEFS, the week-long celebration of all things food and drink in SF ushered in its second year last week and it was as full, fun, and delectable as the first. From industry seminars like the intriguing Tales from the Still, which kicked off the week last Tuesday, to the Grand Tasting tent in Union Square, there was never a dull moment… nor a hungry one.

Appetite: 2 delicious food events on the horizon

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: 2 delicious food events on the horizon

8/21 LA COCINA SF STREET FOOD FESTIVAL: Everyone who was there last year recalls the nightmare that was the SF Street Food Festival: three hour waits for a bite, only to find much of it gone by the time you reached the front of the line. I went at the 11am start time last year, yet still only got to try two vendors in two hours. At least I was able to hang out in the cocktail and beer garden awhile, as I heard that, too, was an impossible wait before long.

The organizers of the event are intent on making it different this year. Only time will tell, but the physical space is seven times larger, with four times as many vendors. I have long been a fan of La Cocina as a community treasure, and there are some new people behind the scenes this year who have a good track record with organizing large events. I’m hopeful… but you’ll still find me there at 11am, just in case.

Yes, beer, wine and spirits gardens have returned. You know I’m looking forward to cocktails by bartenders from Rye, The Alembic, and Beretta. There’s an eating contest hosted by none other than Pepto-Bismol (oh, the irony!) How about a scavenger hunt and silent auction? Or an after party at Cocomo with live salsa, dancing and street food? La Cocina will host the first annual San Francisco Street Food Conference on August 22-23 following the festival, with panelists discussing the political, economic, and social impact of street food vending.

At the festival, expect 40 food vendors and restaurants, plenty of drink and a celebration of all things street food in SF. Whether you’re eating street food treats from stellar restaurants like Aziza, Nombe or Flour+Water, from actual street carts and trucks like Curry Up Now or Kung Fu Tacos, or La Cocina greats such as Kika’s and El Huarache Loco, you should not leave hungry.

Saturday, August 21, 11am-7pm
In the Mission at Folsom from 24th-26th Sts., 25th from Shotwell-Treat Sts., Treat St. from 25th-26th Sts.; Garfield Park
Passports for eating range from $25-$150 can be purchased in advance, or bought a la carte the day of
www.sfstreetfoodfest.com

8/27-29 EAT REAL FESTIVAL IN JACK LONDON SQUARE: I also attended Oakland’s three-day Eat Real Festival last year and, being in a much bigger space with more vendors, it was considerably easier to navigate than the SF Street Food Festival. In fact, I tried well over a 15 vendors last year, finding many exciting eats and drinks from SF and East Bay purveyors. About five hours into Saturday, the heat and lines became unbearable, but I got in five great hours of eating first, with no body-to-body crowds.

Eat Real Fest focuses on sustainably produced products and regional food producers and farmers. With 80 street food trucks and carts comes a limitless amount of eating possibilities. There’s also an Urban Homesteading Zone highlighting DIY food acts like canning and preserving, cheesemaking, animal husbandry, and vertical gardening – with contests, in case you want to enter your own wares. Try fermentation tasting stations with kombucha, wine, handcrafted beer, iced teas and lemonades. There’s an outdoor short film fest, a literary portion of the festival with Bay Area writers talking food, and an entertainment stage with music, sure, but also pizza tossing, noodle pulling and a Flying Knives butchery contest.

Friday-Sunday, 8/27-29, 2pm-9pm (Fri), 10:30am-9pm (Sat), 10:30am-5pm (Sun)
Jack London Square, Oakland
Food and drink tickets will be sold on-site
www.eatrealfest.com

Hunan Chef

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Hunan Chef

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE Many of us would probably agree that a certain sort of Chinese restaurant tends to be rather plain on the inside, with lots of linoleum, severe fluorescent lighting, and chairs that look like they were bought for 25 cents each from San Quentin Prison’s annual garage sale. Hunan Chef, on Cortland Avenue in Bernal Heights, gives us a variation on this familiar theme — it is ugly on the outside. It is, in truth, in a building so ugly, so faceless and phlegm-colored, that we are left to wonder how such a structure could have been conceived, let alone built.

The good news is that Hunan Chef is reasonably appealing inside. Once there, you don’t have to look at the outside anymore, so that’s a plus right off the bat. A friendly aquarium with languid gourami burbles near the front door, and an array of tchotchkes are arrayed around the dining room, including, toward the rear, a poster for Budweiser cerveza tacked onto the wall, for a hint of college-dorm nostalgia in multi-culti guise.

The better news is that Hunan Chef serves pretty wonderful food at modest prices. Most remarkable, the table service is friendly and efficient despite the bustling takeout service. This you hardly ever see, in my experience. Takeout takes priority in the same way a telephone call trumps a customer actually standing at the counter in a hardware store. If I see takeout bags being taken out in large numbers, I usually resign myself to slow, erratic service. But not at Hunan Chef.

The long menu includes many standards, and for the most part they don’t disappoint. Only the scallion cakes ($3.95) left us feeling a little deflated; the cakes — actually a single cake cut into triangles like a pizza — suffered from dryness, which can be a symptom of having been made beforehand and then left sitting around too long.

Potstickers ($4.95 for six) more than compensated. They were as big as a baby’s fist and juicy. Roasted duck wonton soup ($6.50) was also richly satisfying, a broad bowl of golden, oily broth backfilled with chunks of roasted duck and a wealth of wrinkly, pork-filled wontons. The soup alone would have made a meal for a single (takeout?) diner.

Generally I steer clear of curry dishes in Chinese restaurants. There is a yellow harshness I associate with curry powder spooned from a can. Hunan Chef’s Singapore rice noodle ($6.50) did have the golden hue that suggests the presence of turmeric, but the curry flavor was smooth and mellow, not at all metallic. Also, there were plenty of other colorful attractions on the plate, including shrimp, shreds of barbecue pork, broccoli florets, carrot slivers, lengths of scallion, bamboo shoots, chunks of green bell pepper, and threadings of egg, which looked like ganglia as seen under a microscope.

Cabbage beef ($7.50) didn’t look like much at all: pale gray-green cabbage leaves wok-fried with chunks of beef. But if ginger zing had a color, it would have been among the most colorful items on the menu. Carrot slivers helped, a little. Cabbage is a wonderful, supple vegetable that does suffer some from drabness and a reputation as poor-people food. As a boy, I hated it; now I seek it out.

The restaurant offers a range of what might be called signature dishes — dishes with “Hunan” in the name — among them Hunan chicken ($7.50). Here we found, along with chunks of boneless flesh, swaths of bok choy, button mushrooms, broccoli florets, carrot slivers, and whole dried red chilis. These last implied a sauce with some heat — Hunan being, along with Szechuan, among the spicier of China’s regional cooking styles — and there was indeed a hint of heat in the marvelous, garlicky red sauce. This was the kind of sauce that left you wishing Chinese restaurants brought you a basket of bread so you’d have a means of sopping it up. An alternative to bread is to have the leftovers boxed up. Once you’re in the privacy of your own home, you can do as you see fit.

Service was excellent. The serving of dishes was well-paced, empty plates were removed promptly, and water glasses never ran dry. I was reminded, as I so often am at Chinese restaurants, of the prep time involved in virtually every dish, the dicing, chopping, and shredding — an expense of human effort and energy that reduces cooking times and therefore the need for scarce fuel. As the child of an energy-hogging culture that burns fossil fuels to blow leaves from the sidewalk so the wind can blow them back again, I can’t help but be impressed by this.

HUNAN CHEF

Mon.–Sat., 11 a.m.–9:30 p.m.;

Sun., 4–9 p.m.

525 Cortland, SF

(415) 648-3636

Beer and wine

MC/V

Not noisy

Wheelchair accessible

 

Lingering vermicelli

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Lingering vermicelli

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS I keep finding myself in Emeryville, which is a problem. Once I was running early so I stopped at the Comeback Café and ordered a Vietnamese sandwich, pork, no mayonnaise.

The young guy at the counter wrote it all down, passed it along to the kitchen, and I picked up a Giants’ schedule from a stack by the cash register. It made me feel at home.

This is the thing about me: whenever I am running early, I wind up late. Even later than when I am running late. At least I know myself. So I called Crawdad de la Cooter, and let her know. It was a prediction, disguised as a question: “Do you want me to bring anything for the kids?”

“What do they have?”

I read the menu.

“Shrimp rolls,” she said. So good, so now I had a proper excuse for being late. And it would be in the kids’ best interest, because shrimp rolls, as a rule, rock. Everybody knows, give or take two- and three-year-olds.

It was already taking them forever to make my sandwich, and now it was going to take foreverer.

I read the whole 2010 S.F. Giants season, April to October, in one sitting, only I was standing up. And finally, my order was ready.

Not wanting to run the risk of having to share my pork sandwich with the children, I decided to eat it in the car. And that was how, just one bite in, I learned why they call the place the Comeback Café. I did an immediate U-turn and went back.

“Mayonnaise,” I said.

“So sorry, I forgot to tell them,” he said.

So they made me a new one and I was even later. The sandwich was great this time, plenty of grilled pork and fresh cilantro, shredded carrots … On the minus side, the jalapenos had very little heat, and: $5. Did I miss something? Is that the going rate for Vietnamese sandwiches these days? Even in the Tenderloin?

Well, leave it to Emeryville.

The fresh shrimp rolls ($5.50 for three) were lame. I don’t think I ever tasted a non-vegetarian Vietnamese cold roll with less flavor. Too much lettuce and not enough (if any) other green things. Cilantro? Basil? Mint?

Well, the kids enjoyed their stickiness: the rice paper wrapper and especially the rice vermicelli noodles, which they were delighted to find inside, and spread all over.

I was about to spend five days and four nights with them. In fact, I did. It’s Day 5, mom’s on the airplane home, as we speak, and I am still picking vermicelli noodles out of her two little uns’ hair and wardrobes.

Besides taking them on their first-ever BART train ride, which was the highlight of at least two of our lives, my favorite time was on Sunday when their father took us all out to dinner at Khana Peena, this great Indian restaurant at the Berkeley Hills end of Solano. I’d seen it a million times but had never eaten there because Zachary’s is just a couple doors down.

Anyway, they have this great happy hour special between I think 4 to 7 p.m. every day, where you get 50 percent off on all your food. Which I’m guessing is overpriced so maybe it comes out to “about right.”

Well, the chicken tikka masala was so good we had to order it again. And probably would have ordered it again again, if the kids weren’t starting to get fussy. Soooooo good, but I gotta say: tiiiiiny portion. Half price, order twice … Again: I don’t know, you do the math.

All’s I’m saying is I don’t remember ever loving chicken tikka masala so much. Nor do I remember ever feeling so thoroughly momlike as I did eating out with two small kids and their dad. I can’t speak for the girls, but I think I might have goofed around a little less than usual.

KHANA PEENA INDIAN CUISINE

Lunch: 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m.;

Dinner: 5 p.m.–9:30 p.m.

1889 Solano, Berk.

(510) 528-2519

AE/D/MC/V

Beer and wine

Shot therapy

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Shot therapy

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Deevee and me were eating polenta with all the colorful vegetables in the world sauced up on top, and meatballs, complaining about shit. Mostly, I confess, it was me doing the complaining, but Deevee and the meatballs were getting in on it too. We all have problems.

Where some of us are better off than others is in the solutions department. For example, meatballs and me just exist, as in: do what we do. We beat our heads and hearts against brick walls and dumbass dudes and dykes then complain about the lumps … and simmer in a sauce and taste real good, respectively.

“You know what I’m going to do?” Deevee said, after dinner, after dishes, after tea. She was making chocolate chip cookies with butterscotch chips. “I’m going to buy a BB gun.”

“That sounds reasonable,” I said.

“I’m going to bring it to your barbecue on Saturday,” she said, “and we’re going to shoot cans.”

“That sounds great,” I said. It sounded, in fact, better than great. It sounded like just the thing. However, had I anticipated (and I should have, really) that shooting cans with BB guns would make Deevee want to have back her pink straw hillbilly cowboy hat that she’d technically given me, my enthusiasm for the idea would have been less unbridled. Or more bridled — however you say that.

Another thought would have been to hide the pink hat before she showed up with her hot shit new BB gun and truly brilliant ideas. But I was at a rehearsal for a 20-minute rock opera about sea monkeys that I had accidentally gotten involved with, and the rehearsal ran late, and Deevee arrived at my shack before I did with a fold-up camping chair, some beers, and, yes, the gun.

The hat, her hat my hat her hat, was sitting outside on an oil drum, where I’d left it, and — even I had to admit — it accessorized the beer, BB gun, and fold-up chair to a T.

T for treachery! I’m kidding. We’re in our 40s. We have a long history, as friends, as sister-in-laws (or sisters-in-love, as we used to say, because she and my brother were never quite married) and then as friends again. Only better. Sisterly friends, like this: If something looks better on one than the other, they can have it. And this pink straw hillbilly cowboy hat most definitely looks better on her, even without the beer can and BB gun. I freely admit this.

I was too busy making food, because people were coming over, including children and dogs, but Deevee and the Jungle set up cans under the apple trees by the street, and were shooting from the log at the edge of the driveway. Some of my guests were afraid at first to turn in. They thought they had the wrong place.

Until they smelled the baby back ribs with blueberry barbecue sauce and hickory smoke. I’m not bragging. I’m just saying. In fact, the chickens came out better than the ribs this time, I thought. As far as I know, everyone got nervous but no one got sick, which is just the way I want it, when the meat’s on me. I want it to be not only on my dime, but on my conscience.

Deevee slept over, I had nightmares, and the next morning I got to shoot cans too, which was almost as therapeutic as therapy, only 10 times more so. Then, while she and the Jungle went skinny dipping in the hippie compound pond down the road, I made breakfast: bacon, eggs, and leftovers.

In fact, I’ve been eating leftovers ever since, so you’re lucky I have anything at all to say about restaurants. Which I do, which is this:

Earl Butter’s new favorite restaurant is Kome, the enormous sushi buffet in Daly City. I went there with him, but it wasn’t for me. Cheaper than SF sushi buffets, yes ($12-ish lunch, $20-ish dinner), but not a lot of things were great there, and some were downright yucky. Plus: it’s popular! Lines! Why???

Ol’ Earl thought Kome was going to change my life, and he meant well, but was wrong. Cans did.

KOME
Mon.-Fri. 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m.;
Sat.–Sun. 10:30 a.m.-9:30 p.m.
1901 Junipero Serra Blvd., No. A
(650) 992-8600
AE/D/MC/V

Appetite: 3 gourmet cheap eats on Sonoma

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Appetite: 3 gourmet cheap eats on Sonoma

Not far off Sonoma’s idyllic town square lie these three unique gems – you can eat high quality Eastern European, BBQ or Mexican food at a reasonable price.

EL MOLINO CENTRAL: In a sea of taquerias lining Sonoma’s Highway 12, there’s a new addition I’ve been excited to tell you about that opened early this Summer: El Molino Central. I pulled over after doing a double take — it looks like a charming taqueria, but reading hand-painted “tortillas… tamales… blue bottle coffee” on the side of the building made me say, “Wait… what?”

With no dining space inside, there’s a leisurely patio out back. Inside, it’s an open kitchen where you survey Mexican street food prepared with a high level of care and quality ingredients. The staff hand-grinds corn masa and press tortillas in wood presses. There are even fresh tortillas and pre-prepared dishes to heat up at home. The menu offers merely a handful of items: chilaquiles, tostadas, enchiladas and delightful tamales (I like the white corn and cheese version).

What surprises is the Blue Bottle Coffee menu straight down to New Orleans’ Iced Coffee (perfect on a hot Wine Country summer day). You can get your individual drip or a cappuccino, happily savored with a tamale made from local ingredients.

The place looks plucked out of LA with palm trees and all, but exemplifying Slow Food sensibilities. The shock is the quality level (which costs a little more than an average taqueria, though still under $10)… and the Blue Bottle. You, too, can have your Blue Bottle and homemade tamales in a Mexican food joint. Sonoma is lucky to get this lovably quirky new addition.

Pork Schnitzel sandwich and white corn soup at Lokal

LOKAL: Just off the Sonoma square, Lokal has been getting some love lately from SF folk like Michael Bauer. I’m in when you say Eastern European and Hungarian food — difficult to find done well anywhere, much less in Wine Country.

Lokal won me over with shelves full of records and LPs in the dining room, then with sunny, back patio picnic tables. There’s a fine selection of beers making the patio beer garden-reminiscent. Service has it’s kinks, including a pricing discrepancy on their menu it took awhile to work out on my bill, but the food is a pleasure and is now a favored stop in downtown Sonoma.

Lokal makes a mean German Potato Salad ($5), sweetened by grilled red onions, punchy with mustard, maintaining a fresh profile despite starchiness. A Summer special of White Corn Puree Soup ($3.50 a cup) is sweet and bright. Count me in on the Eva Gabor’s Pork Schnitzel Sandwich/”Rueben” ($12). You almost forget there’s no pastrami in there with a breaded pork cutlet layered with mustard and sauerkraut. There’s a satisfying savoriness here reminiscent of a great Rueben. Lightly crunchy brown bread and house pickles seal the deal.

Jalapeno poppers stuffed with carnitas and cheese at Mondo

MONDO: Mondo, a short drive from downtown Sonoma, has the largest beer selection in the area: 23 on tap and more by the bottle, with a little beer garden courtyard through the restaurant. A couple years ago, this was a sausage and burger joint.

The burgers remain but there’s also the kind of bar food that puts a grin on my face: plump Jalapeno Poppers ($7.50) oozing with cheese and shreds of carnitas (pork). There’s fatty Braised Beef Brisket Sandwich ($9.50) piled with crumbly blue cheese and shaved red onion. For a little healthy balance, try specials like Sweet White Corn Salad ($5) tossed in lime, cilantro, red peppers and red onion.

This is a welcome Wine Country respite where you can break from excess wine for beer and cheap, gourmet bar fare. 

Burmese Kitchen

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Burmese Kitchen

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE Burma isn’t quite as isolated as North Korea, but it did take a new name about 20 years ago and isn’t exactly on the beaten path these days. Since I am an admirer of David Lean’s 1957 movie The Bridge on the River Kwai, starring Alec Guinness, I still think of that faraway land as Burma, not Mynanmar.

Even under authoritarian military rule, Burma/Myanmar has no real hope of matching North Korea in dreadfulness since, if nothing else, it has better food. You can find nice examples of Burmese cooking at a pair of longtime restaurants just a few blocks from each other in the Inner Richmond — Burma Superstar and Mandalay — but last year saw the arrival of a new entrant, Burmese Kitchen, a reinvented deli along a run of Larkin Street from the Civic Center to Geary densely populated with Asian restaurants.

Burmese cooking is distinctive, at least to this occidental person, in its blending of the effects of the southeast Asian peninsula and Indian subcontinent. So you will find ong no kau swer ($5.50), a marvelous soup based on coconut milk with diced chicken and fat wheat noodles. It’s as if a bowl of udon and tom kha gai had an impetuous liaison and produced, as a love child, an east Asian version of chicken-noodle soup.

On the other hand, you have a dish like chicken chana dal ($6.50), a piece of boneless chicken set on a coarse berm of yellow split peas, with a gentle hint of what we might call curry flavor. The use of legumes here seemed to be a nod to the west, toward India, land of legumes. If I’ve ever come across a lentil or other legume in Thai or Vietnamese cooking, I don’t remember it.

Burmese Kitchen also offers a version of the baked-rice dish known in India as biryani. Here it’s called dan pauk ($8.95) and is heavily laced with flaps of beef — not, maybe, the protein you’d be most likely to find in an Indian biryani.

Several of the dishes feature ingredients I hadn’t come across before. A tea-leaf salad ($5.95) included cabbage, tomato, fried garlic, and a heavy shower of sesame seeds and peanuts — the salad’s chief effects were crunch and tartness. But while the tea leaves themselves laid there docilely while we ate them, we felt their avenging presence later, in the middle of the night. Tea leaves might not have the caffeine charge of coffee beans, but they have enough to make themselves known.

Then there’s the prawn and sour leaf salad ($6.50). The owner, Dennis Lin, personally recommended this, and one taste revealed why. The salad (which includes bamboo shoots and sliced onions, along with tamarind leaves for sour power) was powerfully tart in a way unlike that of either vinegar or lemons and limes, our most common sources of tongue-curling acidity. If the sourness reminded me of anything, it was of verjus, the unfermented wine-grape juice the French sometimes use in vinaigrettes.

Lin, incidentally, roams the dining room like an Italian patrone, checking, recommending, chatting, confirming. When the owner of a restaurant actually does this, you are made aware of how few actually do it. It’s the restaurant-owners equivalent of boots on the ground, and there’s no substitute for it if the owner wants to know how a place is running and how people feel about the food and, indeed, the whole experience. And most diners tend to feel better about a place if the owner is at hand.

We did find a few dishes that flew slightly wide of the mark. The pork with pickled mango ($6.50), touted by Lin, had a muddy look that affected the way we perceived its taste. A sprig of something green would have been a simple corrective. And the fish with tamarind sauce ($6.50) seemed underpowered, the sauce tasting more of soy sauce than anything else, with just a suggestion of fruitiness.

Yet one is hard-pressed to think of a dish anywhere that overachieves as spectacularly as Burmese Kitchen’s fried golden tofu ($4.95). It sounds like something someone would bring to a hippie Thanksgiving potluck. But tofu need not be gelatinous and white; here it was made with yellow split peas, and when cut into wafers and fried, the result was something like polenta sticks. The spicy dipping sauce was so good that I finished it off like a shot of espresso after the tofu was gone. Did the owner catch this small affront to good manners? If so, he was too polite to say anything.

BURMESE KITCHEN

Mon., 10:30 a.m.–3 p.m.;

Tues.–Sat., 10:30 a.m.–8:30 p.m.

452 Larkin, SF

(415) 474-65569

www.burmesekitchen.com

Beer and wine

MC/V

Average noise

Wheelchair accessible

 

Appetite: Tales from Tales

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Appetite: Tales from Tales

In 100 percent humidity at nearly 100 degrees (and no relief at night), spending a week drinking and eating doesn’t sound like the best idea, but for eight years running, it happens every July in New Orleans at Tales of the Cocktail. For cocktail lovers and industry, this is THE drink event of the year.

My first, or virgin, year at Tales, was as sleepless and packed as everyone said it would be, but moderation is the name of my game (at least outside of the sleep arena), and I managed to indulge and enjoy without so much as one hangover from anything other than sleep deprivation. Of course, it meant merely tasting most drinks, eating a lot (NO problem in New Orleans!) and promptly turning around upon surveying nightly after crowds at Old Absinthe House, heading to quieter bars or the Monteleone lobby for civilized conversation instead.

Opening party at Elms Mansion — a truly magical setting

I already feel completely alive in my skin when I’m in New Orleans. Any reason to be in that queen of cities is a good reason for me. Tales itself grew progressively better as the week went on, despite awful heat and waning sleep… mainly because I continued to meet great people which led to further excursions, tastings, dinners, parties, and as the cumulative effect added up to a host of memories and experiences.  Let me try to summarize a mere few highlights for you – read more about the 2010 Tales and New Orleans in my upcoming 8/15 issue of The Perfect Spot:

LIFE-ALTERING TASTING of 1865 & 1805 COGNAC!
7/25 The Mysteries & Secrets of Distilling in Cognac
Cognac masters, Olivier Paultes and Alain Royer, moderator Dale DeGroff, and spirited bartender extraordinaire, Salvatore Calabrese, were keepers of the surprise that awaited at the end of a fascinating, seemingly routine seminar on the methods of distilling cognac, along with a token five cognac side-by-side tasting.

The seminar suddenly escalated to once-in-a-lifetime experience when Calabrese informed our small group that he had brought not only a bottle of 1865 Rouyer Guillet & Co. cognac to share together, but also an 1805 Maison De L’Emprereur cognac he was going to make a Sazerac with! The room erupted in applause as we stood on chairs to take photos and watch him mix what he called a “$10,000 cocktail”. We passed the Sazerac around, each savoring a profound sip.

Dale DeGroff pours us an 1865 cognac

We all had a pour of the silky 1865. I exhaled and placed my head down on the table after first taste. It was remarkably full, refined with raisin and floral notes initially, a finely balanced burn, evolving into chocolate and nutty notes. I could barely begin to fathom the history wrapped up in each sip. As Calabrese exclaimed, “This was made when Abraham Lincoln was alive!”

Worth far more than the $40 price of admission, the lucky few who happened to be in this seminar got an education beyond what we could have ever expected. We lived a moment that, for drink lovers, will remain a marker of earth-shattering tastes for the rest of our lives.

GREEN GORILLAS DESCENDING on the PELICAN CLUB
7/22 at The Pelican Club Spirited Dinner, French Quarter
Thursday night there were Spirited Dinners across town. I chose the one at Pelican Club mainly because of the all-star line-up of bartenders from across the country pairing cocktails with a six-course dinner: Marcos Tello – The Varnish, LA; Jim Meehan – PDT, NY; Misty Kalkofen – Drink, Boston; Peter Vestinos – Wirtz Beverage Group, Chicago; and our own rockstar, Neyah White, formerly of Nopa.

The food was not as fine as I’d hoped, but the atmosphere was convivial, festive, a warmly welcoming party. The cocktails all featured the night’s spirit: Bols Genever. Neyah clearly had fun creating the dessert cocktail, Drum Shag: Bols, sarsaparilla, PX sherry, infused with smoke.

But the highlight of the night? A foursome of green gorillas descended on the bar during aperitif hour before we were seated at our tables. I’d seen them at the pool of the Monteleone before, or roaming the streets, surely hot and sweaty in their cheap, neon green garb. The site of these guys at the elegant Pelican bar while some of our country’s best bartenders poured them shots was a memorable image, one that somehow typifies the wacky exuberance that is Tales.

DEL MAGUEY – RON COOPER – MEZCAL
7/25 La Verdad (The Truth) about Mezcal Seminar
Everyone who knows anything about mezcal knows Ron Cooper of Del Maguey is the master, having done more to further the mezcal gospel than anyone, even being called the “mezcal missionary”. As my friend whispered to me during the seminar, describing the panel of mezcal distillers: “They’ve all drunk the kool-aid, haven’t they?” Despite the fact that I’ve already been a mezcal fan for years, so did I… so did we all… by the end of the session.

I’m must be honest and say, much as I appreciated every distiller there (Illegal Mezcal, Los Amantes, and Sombra), as has been my common experience in previously tasting these and other mezcals, none hold a candle to Ron’s entire product line. This was sorely highlighted in a side-by-side tasting of all the above next to five Del Maguey mezcals. But all these guys were heartfelt and inspiring, while Ron himself is a small, peace-filled  powerhouse of a man… the Yoda of the mezcal world.

Every single Del Maguey mezcal is a revelation, whether the creamy, smoky sweet of Crema de Mezcal, or the chocolate earthiness of other-worldly Chichicapa. More to come soon in my Guardian column and here about his mezcals. Thanks to Neyah White, try Del Maguey by the shot at Nopalito, in cocktails throughout SF, or order some bottles. Once you dig further into mezcal, particularly through the Del Maguey lens, you, too, will “drink the kool-aid”.

SOUTHERN ROMANCE of DIXIELAND JAZZ under SWEEPING OAKS
7/22 William Grant & Sons Opening Party at Elms Mansion in the Garden District
Yes, by 1am it felt like it was actually getting hotter as I wilted in the oppressive humidity, but what could have been more romantic than the stately, white Elms Mansion with stunning wood carved fireplaces and ceilings, scotch bar in the drawing room, white lights and absinthe in the garden, and live Dixieland band playing under a white-pillared rotunda? Not much. As massive oak trees loomed over us, even larger than the mansion, I felt fully alive and grateful… I was in the South.

A SUDDEN DOWNPOUR entering the BARTENDER’S BREAKFAST
7/24 Bartender’s Breakfast – Spirited Awards after party
A second line jazz funeral was held for Sex on the Beach, a cocktail that surely needed to be buried, on the walk from the Spirited Awards Ceremony to the Bartender’s Breakfast, where the likes of Audrey Saunders and Jim Meehan were making us drinks. Before entering the building, a sultry Summer storm rushed through, dampening our dresses, suits and hair. A warm rain, it wasn’t exactly a respite from the unrelenting heat, but it somehow refreshed, invigorated, injecting us with energy to celebrate late into the night.

Brisas de Acapulco

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Brisas de Acapulco

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE Across the street from Brisas de Acapulco, on a breezy stretch of Mission Street, is a concern named Roccapulco, a salsa-dancing venue that’s also a supper club. Roccapulco does serve food, in other words. So it was with a sense of mild bemusement that we found ourselves, on a recent (breezy) evening, watching a party of four young, or at least young-ish, men jaywalking their way from Roccapulco straight into Brisas. Ahead of us. The implication of this journey seemed to be that Roccapulco was fine for salsa dancing, but if you were hungry, you might find crossing the street to Brisas to be worth the trouble. One of the jaywalkers was an interestingly fantasticated drag queen wearing a dress, wig, and black, blocky spectacles. Is there a Jonathan Lethem look-alike contest at Wigstock now?

Inside we found — under an almost threateningly low ceiling — an elderly, perhaps Mexican couple having dinner while watching World Cup tumult on a flat-screen television mounted in a high corner and tuned to a Spanish-language station. The Roccapulquistas took a table almost directly under the screen. And … everyone lived happily ever after. If water is the universal solvent, then food — particularly good food — remains the great uniter. And while Brisas de Acapulco might be a neighborhood joint, its neighborhood is wildly interesting, an exuberant splashing of subcultures, languages, social practices, and ethnicities worthy of a Jackson Pollock painting.

And its excellent food (Mexican and Salvadorean) reminds us that there’s no cooking like home cooking, really. Yes, how marvelous that aspiring young chefs are sent off to expensive schools to study food — to dissect and analyze it, deconstruct and reconstruct it, then be duly approved by an educational bureaucracy. But there is much to be said for folk wisdom, for the passing along of old ways, old recipes, into new hands. The New World — new, at any rate, to some if not to others — was born in revolution, replacing an ancient human mosaic by another one, restless, innovative, and brash. These are the qualities that have come to define us. We believe in revolution and the scientific method, and we have little use for old knowledge.

But even the brashest and most revolution-minded among us would probably like the tostada de camarones ($4.95) at BdA — a flat, crisp tortilla heaped with shredded lettuce, cilantro, and countless bay shrimp seasoned with plenty of garlic and lime. It’s simple, elegant in its way, and unimprovable. Also shareable.

Given Acapulco’s balmy coastal setting, it isn’t surprising to find seafood besides bay shrimp figuring prominently on Las Brisas’ menu. There is an excellent, puckeringly tart ceviche ($11.95), as well as a wonderful dish of knuckle-sized prawns ($13.95) sautéed with garlic and chilies that melt into an addictive red sauce with just the right hint of heat. Caveat: although the prawns are headless, they remain in their shells. At first I failed to notice this and found myself with a mouthful of quite tasty shell. No doubt cooking the prawns in their shells adds to the flavor, but there is no graceful or spatter-free way for a patron to shell cooked shrimp swimming in sauce the color of blood. Recommendation: shell the prawns, please.

Despite the abundance of seafood at Brisas, meat is not neglected. If the gold standard for carnitas is set by Nopalito’s paper-wrapped version — at, say 24 carats — then Brisas’ version is 18-carat gold. The meat was crispy-moist, intensely flavorful, and shredded but not overshredded. It made a superior filling for a taco ($1.95), where it was by far the principal ingredient and did not find itself having to compete for shelf space with bales of lettuce or huge blobs of salsa and sour cream.

A little — all right, a lot — less tender was the guaracha ($10.95), a very thin beef steak laid atop a tortilla smeared with bean purée. Considering how much pounding the meat must have absorbed to become that thin, it nonetheless remained surprisingly tough. But then, “guaracha” means “old shoe.” Tough cuts of meat are often the tastiest anyway.

There is no shortage of ancillary starch. Dinner plates are laden with rice, beans, shredded lettuce, and tomatoes, while warm tortillas appear in those little tortilla warmers and the basket of chips, with salsa, is replenished and replenished. The house salsa is superior, with just enough chili heat to be noticed, adequate salting, and (an underappreciated quality) a viscosity that helps it adhere to the chips. The chips rocked too — incidentally. 

BRISAS DE ACAPULCO

Continuous service: Sun.–Thurs.;

10 a.m.–midnight; Fri.–Sat., 10 a.m.–3 a.m.

3137 Mission, SF

(415) 826-1496

Beer and wine

MC/V

Somewhat noisy, and an intermittent jukebox issue

Wheelchair accessible

 

Face-offs

David Talbot
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0
Face-offs

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS One day Clara de la Cooter would like to go to Ohio and play with my nieces and nephews. One day she would like to play soccer with me. And baseball. One day she wants to take the BART train. One day she would like to have pierced ears, and wear earrings, and ride a motorcycle. It’s cute to hear her begin all these distant little longings with, "One day" …

She’s three years old.

"One day," she asked me the other day while I was making cheese-eggs for her and her little sister, Kate. "One day," she said, "can I wear Kate’s head?"

My friends are all closet vegetarians, or in San Diego. Or Hawaii or Florida, for the week. Earl Butter has never quite recovered from the cleanse he went on. And here was a little girl who wanted to wear her sister’s head! Which can’t be a very healthy idea for either party, but you hate to discourage these things out of hand.

"Absolutely!" I said. "Of course you can one day wear Kate’s head, Sweetie!"

I’m just kidding. I said, "It would be really, really hard to take someone’s head off."

"Uh-huh," she said, looking up at me like she does when I’m explaining something important, all eyes and heart, and then for days and weeks and sometimes months afterward she repeats her little life lessons back at you, in the form of a question, by way of locking it in.

She’ll surprise you with them. A million new adventurous and wonderful things have happened in the meantime, and then all of a sudden, between poaching plums from a neighbor’s tree and sitting on a stone wall watching deer down below in the fog, she will turn to you and say, "It’s really, really hard to take someone’s head off?"

"That is correct," I say, and leave it at that. Later I’ll explain some of the legal, ethical, and medical implications — like maybe when she’s five. Telling a three- or four-year-old that her little sister might not like — let alone survive — a thing, only sweetens the trend toward experimentation.

Boink used to bonk his baby sister over the head with a hammer, until he turned five and — seemingly overnight — was able to grasp the concept of metaphor. We have more fun than ever now, and one day will own a restaurant together. And be in a band. We’ve already started a newspaper, which we sell to his mom for a nickel. I’m the food editor.

Speaking of which … something about hamburgers … oh yeah, Earl Butter still hasn’t recovered from his cleanse. It’s been months! For my birthday, he watched me eat buffalo wings. And that was in May! And he’s from Utica!

He has a blog about pineapples, which is, if anything as good as his last blog, which was about tuna fish. Seriously, they are both the funniest blogs ever written, but he will not eat a burger with me. Earl Butter! Meanwhile, we have made butternut squash curry with wild rice, like, five times! (It’s good, to put it mildly.)

I tried to trick him by inviting him to shop with me at Rainbow. Alice Shaw, the Person, told me about a new little burger place right behind the store, on 14th Street. I thought after we filled up my brother’s van with quinoa and red lentils and shit, he’d get a little hungry for lunch and then …

But no. He had work to do. He gave me his 20 percent off coupon and asked me to get him dried lima beans and whatever other kind of beans looked "fun."

I couldn’t get Alice Shaw the Person, either, on short notice, so I ate my burger alone. I got the one with grilled pineapples on it, thinking maybe I’d start my own blog, by way of healthy competition. But I’m scared. Earl Butter’s good.

But so is the Hawaiian cheeseburger at Café Zazo. Grilled onion, bacon, cheddar. Fresh cut fries. They serve breakfast all day and the pancakes look fluffy enough to put under your shirt, and be entirely comfortable.

Yep, it’s a friendly little family-run gem, and I thought you should know about it.

CAFÉ ZAZO

Mon.–Fri. 10:30 a.m.–7 p.m.;

Sat.–-Sun. 11 a.m.–4 p.m.

64 14th St., SF

(415) 626-5555

AE/D/MC/V

No alcohol

Appetite: 2 sodas for the epicure

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
Appetite: 2 sodas for the epicure

I’ll get this out of the way: I am not a soda drinker. I stopped drinking Coke in high school when I was getting a lot of headaches, in an attempt to eliminate excess sugar from my diet, and not only did it help, but I never cared to revisit the habit. Of course, there are always exceptions and certainly I have tasted a number of worthy sodas over the years. Here are two of the best producers out there.

TAYLOR’S TONICS
Almost savory, spicy, herbal, Taylor’s Tonics are newer, local sodas, and ones that truly stand out. I love the traveling sideshow, Vaudeville-like spirit to the website and packaging, which reflects the passion for performance art and flair of founder, Taylor Peck, who once even worked as ringmaster for small circuses in San Francisco and New York City. His tonics evoke an old fashioned, American medicine show vibe. Healing powers seem possible in the spicing. They also thankfully uphold a trend away from too-sweet or cloying.

Chai Cola has elements of a traditional chai but a soda effervescence and strong, pleasant bitterness. Mate Mojito is a brilliant refresher that takes the tart of lime and balances it with hints of vanilla, spearmint and Yerba Mate tea. Cola Azteca is a bold, spicy mix of coffee, cocoa and cinnamon bark. I recommend the entire line. Check out Imbibe magazine’s story of these unique sodas and their creator.

Taylor’s Tonics are available in the Rancho Parnassus cafe and at Whole Foods.

FENTIMANS
Another yesteryear presentation comes with Fentimans botanically brewed beverages, around since 1905. Fentimans covers a range of sodas from a Victorian Lemonade or Mandarin & Seville Orange Jigger (jigger being an old English word for “good measure”), the latter balancing various orange juices with fermented ginger and juniper. There’s a shandy, ginger beer, and popular Curiosity Cola, a more herbal, apothecary-style soda. I find Dandelion & Burdock flavor an intriguing, traditionally English soda, infused with dandelion leaves, burdock root, pear juice and a hint of ginger and anise.

Fentiman’s gains rogue status when you find out it were banned in the state of Maine to minors (read more on the company’s blog). Why? Because the sodas are just under 0.5% alcohol by volume, which even the FDA considers “non-alcoholic,” but apparently not Maine, which won’t allow minors to purchase a Curiosity Cola.

Email info@drinkfentimans.com for where to buy it in your area.

Check out Virginia’s culinary itinerary site, www.theperfectspotsf.com

Appetite: Smoothing out with Camus’ fabulous cognac

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: Smoothing out with Camus’ fabulous cognac

Cognac has a taste I’ve yearned to dive more fully into ever since I had my first cognac flight at Brandy Library in NY years ago. I have made attempts to learn more by attending cognac seminars at Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans or the Manhattan Cocktail Classic. But where is the cognac equivalent to the excellent Ministry of Rum, which, thanks to founder, Ed Hamilton, has done much to educate the country on the complexities and range in rum? There is a stigma to cognac in some circles that it’s too elitist, expensive or unapproachable. As with any spirit, this is not true if you know where to sip.

I am smitten with Camus cognac, the last of the independent, family-owned cognac houses (since 1863) in Cognac, France. Though it’s the fifth largest cognac producer in the world, and readily known in Asia and Eastern Europe, it’s only just beginning to permeate the US market, and is, for the moment, only available in CA through Wine Warehouse (ask for it at your local liquor shop). I had the privilege of enjoying lunch with Cyril Camus, the president and fifth-generation distiller, after I tasted through the line beforehand. By the time I got to my second taste-through with Cyril, it confirmed my initial impressions.

There is much to love in any one of their cognacs, all blended, 80 proof, some with innovative screw-caps which double as a one ounce measuring shot, aged in lightly-oaked cognac barrels so there is less oak influence and a smoother taste.

Camus VS: I serve this one as an introductory cognac for those unfamiliar, and also as proof that cognac can be both exquisite and affordable. At a mere $25 a bottle, this lively cognac balances citrus fruit with subtle vanilla and is light and smooth, while being rich and full. Excellent on the rocks or in a cocktail, you won’t likely find a better deal for cognac at this level.

Lunch with Cyril Camus. Photo by Virginia Miller

Camus VSOP: With a little more oak and vanilla in the profile, this crisp, lively VSOP retails around $45 a bottle and works neat, on the rocks or in cocktails. As their best-seller, I actually prefer the VS, though you won’t go wrong with the VSOP.

Camus XO Elegance: Now we move to greater age and a $120 price tag, but the signature Camus taste of fruit with subtle vanilla, mild oak, even hints of liquorice, remains. This is a fine sipping eaux-de-vie blend that holds up for whisk(e)y drinkers like myself. I could sip it after dinner on a regular basis.

Camus XO Borderies: In a stunning, perfume-like bottle (for the XO Elegance the bottle is clear, for XO Borderies, it’s frosted), this the only non-vintage, single estate cognac in existence, made from 100% borderies grapes in Camus’ vineyards. With a raisin-like sweetness, this silky cognac still remains light, complex with citrus and a robust floral quality balanced by hazelnut and dried fruits. An exquisite imbibement.

Appetite: NYC Food Cheat Sheet, part two

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: NYC Food Cheat Sheet, part two

During my latest visit to my beloved New York, I spent eight days gleefully eating my way around the city, as I have done in countless trips past. I am continually asked for NY recommends as many of us in the Bay Area are either East Coast transplants, do business in both cities, or are savvy frequent travelers. Check out my Perfect Spot newsletter-archives for much more NY food and drink, but now I bring you part two. (Check out part one here.) A mini-list of great eats in varying categories:

GREEK SEAFOOD in QUEENS
Taverna Kyclades – You won’t regret trekking to Astoria, Queens, for an unforgettable Greek seafood feast at Taverna Kyclades. The humble, convivial space feels like a casual seafood/fish house, which in fact, it is, serving family-style platters of Greek food. House bread arrives piping hot, addictive with olive oil or one of their house dips, like yogurt-garlic-cucumber ($5.50). Peasant salad ($7.50 small; $10.95 large) is plenty large, even as a small. Plump, red tomatoes, heaping amounts of onions and olives, and a big slab of  fresh feta cheese… a beautiful salad. Mythos beer washed down grilled sardines ($14.95) and lemon potatoes, tasting vividly lemony but with an almost unnatural yellow hue. Filet of sole stuffed with crab meat (19.75) was the one ok dish: old school, not the freshest crab, reminding me of the 1950’s style of seafood entrees you find at SF’s Tadich Grill. The piece de resistance is grilled octopus ($11.95), a succulent spread of plump invertebrates, envigorated by a squeeze of lemon. Opa!

Lookin’ good at Luke’s

CHEAP, AUTHENTIC LOBSTER ROLLS
Luke’s Lobster Shack – In the heart of the East Village you’ll find Luke’s Lobster Shack, a humble hole-in-the-wall with a couple stools, take-out Maine seafood and a second location on the Upper East Side. Operating on principles of sustainability and New England authenticity, the prices are “cheap” for NY and for lobster rolls: get a whole Lobster Roll for $14 or an ideal “snack size” for $8. Loaded with buttery lobster from Maine and a light coating of mayo, it may not be my beloved (and the ultimate seafood stop) Pearl’s in the Village, but it’s a tasty steal. For an extra $2, get the roll with Maine Root Soda, Miss Vickie’s chips and a pickle.

Aquavit’s aquavit.

SCANDINAVIAN FEAST
Aquavit Bistro – Aquavit, the restaurant through which chef Marcus Samuelsson left a mark on modern Scandinavian cooking, has become one of the great Scandinavian restaurants, a cuisine not easy to find in the US. I adore the region’s focus on fresh fish, salmon, caviar, herring and, of course, the namesake spirit, aquavit. Looking for deals, I dined in the spare, upscale IKEA bistro, versus the more stuffy, pricey dining room. Quality does not suffer in the bistro, while service is gracious and well-orchestrated. I ordered a $17 flight of three (or $7 each) of the house-infused aquavits, though narrowing down flavors was problematic, as all three were all lovely, from a crisp cucumber, hot mango-lime-chili, to my favorite: horseradish. Each dish delights and portions are generous. Gravlax is heaping slices of bright, cured salmon in hovmastar (a mustard/white vinegar based sauce) with dill and lemon. I equally fell for matjes herring: thin slices of herring with finely diced yellow beets, red onions and sour cream. Swedish meatballs were the best I’ve ever had, redolent with cinnamon and gentle spicing in the meat, piled next to whipped potato puree, pickled cucumbers, sweet lingonberries, and addictive cream sauce. This is a New York favorite and I’m more than a little sad not to have a place like it here in SF.

Cigar Bar and Grill

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Cigar Bar and Grill

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE As a child growing up in a smoke-filled room called America, I developed the skill of distinguishing among various sorts of fume — and there was a lot of distinguishing to be done, since all the adults around me were puffing away at some glowing protuberance or other. They were like human smokestacks. Cigarette smoke, to the child’s nose, was piercingly nasty, while pipe smoke sweetly asphyxiated, especially in the back seats of cars. Cigar smoke, however, had a no-nonsense robustness that made it bearable, at least if one rolled down the window from time to time and stuck one’s head out for gasps of fresh air.

Recently I have had occasion to rethink this hierarchy, and now I find cigar smoke fully as awful as the other kinds. It hovers, clings, and smothers, and this is bad enough if you’re just trying to breathe, let alone trying to eat, as you might be at the six-year-old Cigar Bar and Grill near Jackson Square. Tobacco smoke powerfully interferes with our sensations of taste and flavor. On the other hand, there is something to be said for the spectacle of strapping 25-year-old lads (many with their Yahoo ID cards dangling from their belts) manfully chomping on their rolled cylinders amid swirling wreaths of smoke. Did they remind me of baby robber barons, or of little boys clopping around in their fathers’ shoes, wing-tips five sizes too big? I thought of Bill Clinton, of course (who managed to do more for the notoriety of the cigar — without even lighting up! — than a thousand Dutch Masters commercials ever could), and then, inevitably, of Freud.

The saving grace of Cigar Bar is that the smoking goes on in a large open courtyard. Most of the smoke presumably rises and is carried off by the wind to join the rest of the city’s smog in the Central Valley, with only traces remaining to lend an unhealthy blue-gray haze to the window glass, like a cataract forming on an eye. Around the courtyard, in a kind of U-shaped arcade, are dimly lit, cozy dining areas with a definite Spanish flavor — low arches, adobe walls. (No smoking in these enclosed spaces.) Tobacco smoke might not pair well with any food, but Iberian design does put one in mind of Spanish-style food, and this Cigar Bar has, after a fashion.

It might be more accurate to describe the menu as offering foods of the Spanish-speaking world, given that the list of munchables includes tortilla chips ($7) with a first-rate, chunky guacamole and a pico de gallo with well-honed edges. I call that Mexican. Chorizo, on the other hand, is both Spanish and Mexican, but, as with its fellow shape-shifter, the tortilla, your expectation as to what’s coming will depend on which side of the Atlantic you’re on. Cigar’s bruschetta ($10) featured Spanish chorizo (a cured sausage with a dense, jerky-like meatiness), cut into fine dice and scattered amid basil leaves, chunks of Roma tomato, dabs of goat cheese, and some baby greens, with EVOO and fleur de sel as binders.

Other preparations seemed to lack any Spanish or Mexican influence at all — but that didn’t mean they weren’t splendid. The crispy polenta batons ($8.50), in particular, were sensational; they looked like small bricks dotted with bits of kalamata olive and cherry pepper and were topped with crumblings of bleu cheese and a few peperoncini. If you sometimes find polenta bland, here is your remedy.

The paradox of fish tacos is that they are at their most appealing and least healthy when the fish is batter-fried. If you grill your fish, as Cigar does ($9.50) — it’s tilapia, by the way, a reliable foot soldier in these kinds of operations — you do well to compensate in other areas for the lack of seducing crunch. Cigar’s answer was a generous shower of mango and jicama dice, along with dollops of chilpotle sour cream, whose smooth smokiness mingled with the fruit’s sweetness — while reminding us that we were in a smoky cigar bar.

You would expect tables-full of cigar-chomping — or, in a few cases, cigarillo-chomping — dudes to be interested in baby back ribs, at least when they’re not playing poker (do they ever play strip poker?), and the kitchen obliged. A half-slab ($11) was lightly slathered with a sauce the menu card unsurprisingly described as “smoky”; we found it just spicy enough to give a nice tingle on the tongue. The accompanying coleslaw was on the sweet side but still fresh and tangy. Would Freud have enjoyed this coleslaw, or would his attention have been riveted elsewhere?

CIGAR BAR AND GRILL

Dinner: Mon.–-Fri., 4 p.m.–2 a.m.; Sat., 6 p.m.–2 a.m.

850 Montgomery, SF

(415) 398-0850

www.cigarbarandgrill.com

Full bar

AE/DS/MC/V

Noise less of an issue than smoke

Wheelchair accessible

Truckin’

David Talbot
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Truckin’

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Jo Jo Hoot is a kind of a guru of the Bay Area taco truck scene. Fifteen years ago, the first time I wrote about him, he was taking me on a taco truck tour of East Oakland. Now he lives in San Francisco in the Mission District, and I run into his bright-eyed and brilliant wife, Ha Ha Hoot, at the grocery store.

Ha Ha and me were in a band together for 10 minutes, so we have a lot to talk about. We talk about taco trucks. Also, of course: love. I’m pretty sure she was one of my friends who shed literal tears with me over my Germany story after I came back, but it might have been some taqueria’s carne asada having gone downhill that upset her.

Either way, of this I am certain: we were standing up.

But the recurringest theme of our chance neighborly meetings, all non-sequitage aside, has been a taco truck called El Gallo Giro in their neck of the Mission that, apparently, I needed to know about. They have the best carnitas within the city limits, it happens, and how lucky are Mr. and Mrs. Hoot? It’s just a block from their house, at Treat and 23rd streets. And they both — being graphically designfully inclined — work at home!

There’s a playground on that corner, and on my way to see them, finally, one lunchtime last week, a soccer ball came sailing over the fence and bouncing across the street right in front of me. Immediately, six or 20 little boys with 60 or 200 little fingers were latched onto the chain linkage, pudging through it (in some cases) and looking at me imploringly.

It was interesting to find myself, for a change, on the street side of this most basic of human interactions. They didn’t even have to say, "Little help?" I was off my bike and onto the ball.

For kicks I threw it back to them, only I threw it like a girl. Meaning: it barely even made it to the opposite sidewalk, let alone the fence, but, while their various groans were still caught in their little boy throats, I hitched my skirt, stopped traffic, crossed the street, caught the fourth bounce on the top of my left foot, flicked it up to my left knee, transferred to the right, popped it high off my head and behind my back, and no-look right-heeled it back over my head, and the fence — except it hit one of those damn power lines and plopped back down to the sidewalk.

They were like, "Little help?"

I just stood there. "Didn’t you see what I just did?"

"Ball," they said.

I picked it up and underhanded it over the fence to them, then, while play resumed, went around that intersection collecting my scattered sandals, shattered showmanpersonship, jewelry, bike, etc.

Jo Jo Hoot was happy to see me. We used to play in some bands together, for 15 or 20 minutes, so we have a lot to talk about too. Mostly taco trucks. Ha Ha and me and him walked back down the block to this one, El Gallo Giro, or, the round bad wine, and ordered our tacos and burritos. Which we ate in the little park there.

Where the kids were playing soccer. We sat on a small wall, side-by-side-by- side, with Jo Jo in the middle, and watched them fall down at the slightest little jostle, writhing on the ground in overdramatized and underbelievable agony, emulating their recent World Cup heroes. I didn’t see one single attempted bicycle kick.

The Gallo Giro truck, I’m just guessing, is associated with El Gallo Giro Taqueria in San Jose and various even southerner California locations such as L.A.

Their tacos are $1.25 apiece, $1.50 if you want carnitas, and let me just explain: you do. They’re the best, except for one other place in maybe South City or Daly City or Pacifica, I forget, according to Jo Jo Hoot.

Who is, as I said, the expert on the subject. He also told me where the best carne asada was, and the best al pastor, but I forgot and forgot those two already too — which, don’t worry, only makes life more interesting for you and me, or at least me.

Something about an owl, or gold, or something, on 24th Street? Anyone? Little help! *

EL GALLO GIRO TACO TRUCK

Treat and 23rd St., SF

Cash only

No alcohol

Appetite: Paging through M.F.K. Fisher’s kitchen

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: Paging through M.F.K. Fisher’s kitchen

Like any self-respecting food lover (and writer), I’m well aware that, hands down, M.F.K. Fisher (Mary Frances) is our greatest food writer, and I’ve been pursuing the pleasurable endeavor of working my way through her entire catalog over the years.

As with my literature preferences, I find myself more often drawn to the classics, or, in this case, first flush of food writers who set the tone mid-20th century, like A.J. Liebling (read “Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris”) and Angelo Pellegrini (read “The Unprejudiced Palate”), though none have the impact on me that Fisher does.

She writes of food, travel, life but most importantly, she writes… drawing you in, enveloping you first and foremost with her person, heart, and poetic style.

There have been numerous books written about her over the years but one that landed on my desk was a 2008 UC Press edition of M.F.K. Fisher Among the Pots & Pans by Joan Reardon.


The book is a straightforward biography summarizing key points in Mary Frances’ (I love that Reardon calls her by the name she preferred to be called) life and complicated relationships, but through the intriguing slant of the many homes she lived in, particularly the kitchens she cooked in, from California to France.

Irish illustrator Avram Dumitrescu paints warm vignettes of her kitchens, imparting a friendly glow to the book, and complimenting photos of Mary Frances. Whether it be the cover illustration of her kitchen in Hemet, CA, or those in her St. Helena and Glen Ellen homes, one gets a glimpse into Mary Frances, the cook, though she was first and foremost a writer.

As her birthday recently came and went on July 3rd (she would have been 102), it’s as good a time as any to read and reflect on one of our most gifted writers, who just also happened to love food.

Appetite: With Campo de Encanto, SF gets its own pisco

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: With Campo de Encanto, SF gets its own pisco

You might have heard? There’s a new pisco on the streets “for bartenders, by bartenders”: Encanto Pisco, created by Duggan McDonnell of Cantina, sommelier and spirits guru Walter Moore, and Peruvian master distiller Carlos Romero. Although an authentically Peruvian pisco (distilled — and already making waves — in Peru), it’s a homegrown San Francisco product, a labor of love from locals who know their spirits.

I had the privilege of tasting this acholado (blended) pisco before its release and now with the finished product, am delighted at how balanced it is: floral, with hints of citrus and white pepper. It stands up on its own, going down smoothly much as a brandy or eau-de-vie would, but also an ideal base for cocktails, with a large number of bars around town already stocking it. Alembic was the first to do so, it’s also at pisco havens La Mar Cebichería and Pisco Lounge, while Carlos Yturria showcased it with fig, sage and lemon at the inaugural Pickled, in Absinthe’s back room.

Campo de Encanto means ‘Field of Enchantment’, a romantic spirit evident in gorgeous, vintage-style bottling to the artisanal production of this grape brandy in the Ica Valley of Peru, combining three different grape varietals: Quebranta (76%), Torontel (6%), and Italia (18%). Encanto is sustainably harvested and distilled without preservatives, sugar or even a drop of water.

San Francisco has a rich history and love affair with pisco, inventing some of pisco’s greatest drinks like the Pisco Punch, so it seems fitting that we now have a pisco to call our own. And one of the finer, more approachable piscos at that.

You can purchase Encanto at stores like Cask or The Jug Shop

www.encantopisco.com

Pera

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Pera

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE If books and movies can have subtitles, then why not restaurants? A subtitle is like a bit of extra seasoning, a way of emphasizing certain meanings, and this is particularly important at a time when restaurant names can seem increasingly whimsical or obscure.

Pera’s subtitle (printed at the top of the bill and on its website) is “a Mediterranean affair,” which makes it sound like a cheesy movie about poor, doomed Princess Grace of Monaco. “Turkish cuisine” would be a bit more exact, but “Mediterranean affair” certainly sounds a romantic note, and Pera does have its low-key atmospherics, especially on summer evenings when elongated twilight stretches over the north face of Potrero Hill and glints through Pera’s windows.

Pera opened last November, under the auspices of Irfan Yalcin and his wife, in a space held by the Chinese restaurant Eliza’s since the early 1990s. (Eliza’s still exists at its longtime California Street location.) Turkish cuisine seems to be enjoying something of a boomlet around here in recent years, and why this is so is nearly as great a mystery to me as why we have so few Greek restaurants.

As it happens, and despite the long-term tensions between Greece and Turkey, Greek and Turkish cuisines are plainly related. Pera, whose menu tilts toward foods from Turkey’s Aegean coast, even offers versions of pastitsio, the baked pasta dish that is Greece’s answer to lasagne, and moussaka, the pastitsio-like dish of layered eggplant. But chef Muhammet Culha also turns out items I haven’t seen before on Turkish (or Greek!) menus around town.

Conspicuous among these is the talas boregi ($16), whose closest relation in the American food lexicon is probably chicken pot pie. The dish arrived as a triangle of phyllo wading in a shallow pool of coconut curry sauce (I had never before come across coconut milk in Turkish cooking). Within the pastry envelope was a piece of smoked, boneless chicken breast, while elsewhere on the plate lay a garnish of green apple, sliced thin, and some currants. In a sense, this dish was the philosophical opposite of that other great Mediterranean cuisine, Italy’s. The Italian kitchen emphasizes simplicity, directness, and the primacy of a particular ingredient or seasoning. By contrast, Pera’s talas boregi orchestrated a diverse cast of characters into a bewitching harmony, a sum greater than its parts.

But Turkish cooking can be just as direct and simple as Italian. Sometimes, in fact, it can seem Italian, as with spanaki ($6.50), spinach sautéed with garlic and pine nuts just as it is in Sicily. (“Spanaki,” we should note, is the Greek word for spinach — the Turkish word is “ispanak” — and Sicily was settled by Greeks in pre-Roman times.) The condiment consisting of yogurt, cucumbers, dill, garlic, and olive oil, whether called tzatziki or cacik ($2.50) is also about as basic as it gets and shares a deep and obvious root with the Indian yogurt sauce raita.

You can get the tzatziki, along with a host of treats to dunk in it, as part of the meze platter ($14), which is a sampler and therefore irresistible. The ensemble includes dolmades (stuffed grape leaves), saksuka (roasted eggplant with bell pepper, potato, and caramelized onion in a garlic tomato sauce — a lot like caponata), and zucchini cakes, along with olives, feta cheese, and triangles of warm pita.

Since the Aegean is a sea, we might expect to find seafood on the menu, and we do, including wonderful fish patties, or balik kofte ($10), a pair of hamburger-flat disks presented with concasse tomatoes and mango dice. (Do the Turks grow mangoes?) Also quite nice was a filet of grilled salmon ($18), topped with a Meunière-like sauce of white wine, lemons, garlic, and capers and plated with vegetables and what the menu card called (in Greek) patates tiganites, or fried potatoes — sautéed cubes, really.

For dessert you can have baklava, if you like your phyllo drenched with honey, but the more compelling choice is yogurt with honey ($6), which must be counted as a dessert that is actually, definitely good for you. (Both yogurt and honey are fermented foods, rich in probiotics.) Yogurt from the eastern Mediterranean is especially creamy and rich, as here — almost like tangy-sour cake frosting. One small surprise: no cherries on the menu, for dessert or otherwise, though the cherry is profoundly — or we might even say majorly — associated with Asia Minor.

PERA

Dinner: nightly, 5–10 p.m.

Lunch: daily, 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

1457 18th St., SF

(415) 796-3812

www.perasf.com

Beer and wine

AE/DS/MC/V

Manageable noise

Wheelchair accessible

 

Jumping jack flash

David Talbot
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Jumping jack flash

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Rode my bike to my second favorite neighborhood, the Tenderloin. I was hoping to find the place where me and Sal the Porkchop ate crawfish and garlic noodles one night after watching dance, or something somewhat cultural, at any rate. I remember I was dressed a little dressier than usual and worried about squirting crawfish juice on my skirt.

After that my memory was erased — there’s a slight chance by space aliens. But it’s also possible that the crawfish were that spicy. That’s why I wanted to find the place. And will, another time.

This time I got distracted. Three lanes of oncoming traffic when you’re riding a bicycle the wrong way down a one-way street, such as Gough Street, will do that to you. I wish that didn’t seem like a metaphor for my life, but it does.

Because I do, ultimately, want to continue living it, I zipped over to the sidewalk and there was a bike rack. I started to lock up without even looking around first. I was on the other side of Market Street. Nothing else mattered.

Then, yes, I looked around.

With every intention of still going in search of crawfish afterward, I ducked into a place called Go Getters Deli, only the "o" was a green olive with a pimento in it. Plain block letters on the window advertised burgers and burritos, but that wasn’t why I chose the place.

I chose it because all six or seven of the people inside were sitting on the same side of their tables, facing the same direction, and looking upward. So I took that to mean there was a TV, with a soccer game on it.

And there was and there was, and so crawfish would have to wait.

But I couldn’t decide which idea I liked better: eating a burrito in a burger joint, or a burger in a taqueria. Since it was already almost half-time, I wouldn’t be able to do both. So, being predictable, I went with Plan C. Which, in this case, was a chicken sandwich with "flaming sauce," red onions, and tomatoes.

Flaming sauce = chipotle, and the sandwich was damn good. The bread tasted homemade, which seemed strange, unless they are in cahoots with Go Getters Pizza across the street and down a block. And, come to think of it, why wouldn’t they be? With a name like Go Getters Deli.

Well, the chipotle sauce wasn’t exactly "flaming." But that’s why I keep a bottle of hot sauce in my purse. With which … yum, yes, hot hot hot. And a lime Jarritos.

And an exciting half of World Cup soccer, and I forgot all about the crawfish place I had already forgotten about.

While the players were still hugging each other or else lying in the grass crying, taking off their shirts, and so on, I polished off my Jarritos, put on my sunglasses, smiled at my fellow sports fans, thanked the owners and kitchen and counter people (who had all come out to watch the end of the game), and walked into the doorjamb because I had my sunglasses on.

It was one of those days: on the edge between foggy and sunny. I buttoned up my jacket halfway, saddled my Schwinn, and huffed back to the Mission. Where some guy was doing jumping jacks on the sidewalk.

Normally I would have stopped and talked to such a someone, but he didn’t look quite crazy enough for me. He looked like a really fucking normal person, in fact, dressed in a regular way. Just happened to be doing jumping jacks on the sidewalk is all. Valencia Street. Facing a telephone pole.

And who am I to argue with that? I had a big scratch on my face. It looked like I’d been in a fight with a cat, or a catfight, but in fact (and as usual) the story was much less interesting. It starred a two-year-old, with a cracker. These things happen. Crackers are sharper than you think.

I mean, it was an accident.

I mean, physical fitness is important. *

GO GETTERS DELI

Mon.–Sat. 9 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sun. 9 a.m.–6 p.m.

100 Gough., S.F.

(415) 863-4149

D/MC/V

No alcohol

Appetite: Don’t forget to remember — Mission Beach Cafe

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: Don’t forget to remember — Mission Beach Cafe

In the wake of last year’s closings, at the beginning of the year I began reflecting on those neighborhood spots or classic restaurants we often forget are there but don’t want to lose. From time to time, I share reviews of places we’d do well to re-visit… or get to for the first time. They might be receiving a fresh infusion of flavor from recent chef or menu changes, or remain noteworthy, despite floods of new openings and (over)hyped hot spots.

Mission Beach Cafe, aka MBC, a welcoming corner restaurant many go to for brunch or incredible baked goods and Blue Bottle coffee in the morning, has maintained a rare level of quality through a handful of chef changes. I am amazed at how delicious dinners here remain: from chef Thomas Martinez (see my 2009 review at The Perfect Spot) to heartwarming Pot Pie Tuesdays. For about six months, they’ve had a new chef, Trevor Ogden, who most recently worked at Umami, at the now defunct Frisson and with Stephanie Izzard in Chicago. Though young, like former Chef Martinez, there’s inventive maturity in Ogden’s work.

A recent visit yielded literally one pleasurable dish after the other:

– MBC has thankfully kept their killer flatbread of the day ($14) on the menu. Ogden prepared ours with a goat gouda infused with hops (yes, you heard right), layered with crisp corn, caramelized ramps, chicken and two pepper purees (red pepper and padron).

– One of the stand-outs in a stand-out meal, is tea-smoked albacore tuna ($14) topped with quail eggs, caviar, chili creme fraiche and dotted with crispy lemon-saffron risotto. A visual work of art and a lightly seductive pleasure to the palate.

– Mixed baby lettuces ($10) are shaped into bowl cupping mounds of avocado, red spring onions, toybox tomatoes, herbed tofu and walnuts in a creamy cabernet vinaigrette.

Artful smokes and grilled Hodo tofu

– I’m so not a vegetarian, but one of two vegetarian entrees was a favorite of mine: smoked and grilled Hodo tofu ($17) is in good company with zucchini, toybox summer squash, eggplant, grilled corn and forbidden black rice. A little sweet comes in the form of strawberries and strawberry rhubarb glaze.

– Organic pork tenderloin ($23) is comforting with roasted German butterball potatoes, cipollini onions, baby carrots and sugar snap peas. But when it’s cooked in rosemary brown butter and drizzled with white peach pork jus, it’s downright luxurious.

– Pan-seared branzino ($25) arrives stacked over shaved fennel, summer squash and pea tendrils. The fish is delicate but the skin adds crisp and saltiness. Most addictive is the Vidalia onion/Yukon gold soubise and tomato-lemon verbena broth accenting the dish.

– Those truffle fries resting under shaved parmesan ($5) are as fabulous as they ever were.

– Alan Carter holds the crown of pastry chef extraordinaire and his pies ($6.50-7 a slice) are still mama’s home cooking and a long-awaited holiday rolled into one. It’s like coming home to his banana butterscotch cream or chocolate pecan pies, but I was especially entranced with my beloved rhubarb (thank you, summer!) in his strawberry rhubarb pie.

Alan Carter’s magnificent pies

I am happy to (continue) to say, do not forget to return to Mission Beach Cafe.

198 Guerrero Street (at 14th Street)
(415) 861-0198
www.missionbeachcafesf.com

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