Food & Drink

War and pensi

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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War and pensi

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Dear Earl Butter,

I’m not mad at you for writing to me about German food. Nothing, not even the shit that I am in, can change the way I feel about sausage. In fact, I ate at Schmidt’s before I left, for practice, and ordered the same thing you did, and felt similarly, which is to say: happy.

Those were the days!

These are something else. I changed my return ticket to leave from Rome so as not to have to set foot on German soil, or even fly through German air space, ever again. Of course, it’s not their air or soil, per se, that I object to. I have no problem with German things, or even the things that German people do.

It’s the people themselves I hate — although, technically, I suppose, I don’t hate all of them. Or even most of them. I hate less than 10 German people. I hate two. Well, really, one.

But Earl, I have enough hatred for that one German person to probably qualify as a racist, or at any rate go to war. In Paris — did I tell you? — I stayed a half a block away from the Palais de l’Élysée. Baked Nicolas Sarkozy some cookies, just to let him know I was in the ‘hood, in case if he ever needed to borrow anything.

“I love your butter,” I said. I said if the Germans ever invaded his country again, not to bother with the White House — contact me directly. I would defend his cows with the passion and recklessness of a heart-broked chicken farmer from hell, which equals about 40,000 troops.

In Rome my cousin Stefano said, over homemade carbonara, “Non pensi, mia cugina. Non pensi. Ti voglio bene. No go into depression. You get strong, like me. Very important, no depression. No pensi.”

I’ll tell you a secret, Earl: Pensi means “think,” but I accidentally typed “penis” that last time, which made me laugh. Out loud. On the airplane. I’m on an airplane, trying not to penis. Cousin Stefano spent two months in a mental hospital after his wife cheated on him.

His mom, my Zia Carmella, is in the hospital dying. I stood by her bedside and watched her move her lips. Sometimes she was trying to eat, and sometimes she was trying to talk. My Italian’s not great. Her voice is almost gone. Her body too.

Italy’s a little warmer than France, and a lot warmer, in both senses of the word, than Germany. The people here actually want to talk to you, even if your Italian’s not so good. They are open-hearted, expressive, humorfully passionate people, and eaters, and they don’t care if you use your hands. An elegant, classy waitress in a nice restaurant laughed at me for eating the way they taught me to in Germany.

I hate to hate, Earl, but I have to at least try. I loved so much, it would be the end of me not to something. I would blow away. A German psychologist whose ex-ex never in eight years said “I love you” mistakes my passion for mental instability. I’ll take it.

“Ti voglio bene.”

My mentally unstable cousin, who met me twice, can say it. With tears in her eyes, my aunt, who can’t of course remember me, moves her lips.

Dearest Daniest,

That is great. I went to Pakwan in the Mission on 16th Street, between Valencia and Guerrero with Joel and Chris, who is your brother, and Mike, who is your cousin-in-law. Joel was getting used to being 42 that very day. And Mike, well, you know Mike, he lives in a house in Glen Park.

We enjoyed the saag gosht ($7.99), which is the delicious, spicy lamb with the spinach, the saag daal ($5.50), which is the lentils and spinach, the saag paneer ($6.99), which is the cheese balls and the spinach, the chicken tikka masala ($6.99), which is Joel’s favorite, and the fish curry ($6.99) which is the special, and very, very spicy. And by that I mean great. Plus the naan, Daani, the naan. We also enjoyed each other, very much.

yers,

Earl Butter

PAKWAN

Mon.-Sun., 11:30 a.m.–11 p.m.

3180 16th St, SF

(415) 255-2440

Cash only

BYOB

 

Baker and Banker

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Baker and Banker

“Banker” might not be the most auspicious word to attach to yourself in these parlous times — people used to rob banks; now it seems to be the other way around — but what if it’s your surname? In a series of small ironies and convolutions, you’re a chef not a banker — a chef named Banker, Jeffrey Banker — and you’re married to a baker named Baker (Lori Baker), and you open a restaurant. The restaurant is called Baker & Banker, which sounds formidably institutional. Your patronage might expect a building with fluted marble columns and an ATM-like machine that dispenses pastry to holders of valid cards.

But no. Baker & Banker (which opened in early December) actually occupies the space, once an apothecary shop, that used to house the Meetinghouse (where Banker worked as a cook), and later Quince, before its move to the Financial District. The building, at the corner of Bush and Octavia streets, is authentically Victorian, right down (or up) to its flat roof; it looks like the sort of structure that would carry a small brass plaque saying Mark Twain once slept there. But of the old apothecary shop there is no longer, alas, any sign. The wallsful of small drawers that gave the Meetinghouse such a distinctive cast have been removed. The dining room is sleeker than it used to be, and also slightly roomier, although it’s still on the snug side. Wall banquettes upholstered in dark brown leather, plenty of dark wood, and a caramel paint scheme lend the room an urban warmth, maybe a little like that of an exclusive steakhouse on the Upper East Side.

One new design wrinkle involves placing chalkboards on the windowless walls. The chalkboards announce various specials, from cheese plates to beers and wines by the glass. The wine list, and indeed the menu as a whole, has a more Teutonic flavor than one is accustomed to finding on what is basically a California-cuisine menu. How about, for instance, a glass of German red wine, a spätburgunder from Georg Breuer ($13) — a pinot noir, in other words, as pale and delicately balanced as a young ballerina on her tiptoes, with a pronounced presence of cherry?

Actual cherry turned up, as a reduced juice, to sauce a plate of bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin ($24.50). The meat, which appeared as a pair of upright cylinders with beveled tops, was roasted medium-rare to a lovely rose color and accompanied by shreds of savoy cabbage dotted with spätzle, to continue our Teutonic theme. But I am getting ahead of myself.

As we might expect at a place where one of the principals is a baker named Baker, the baked goods are superlative, beginning with the basket of still-warm items — slices from a honey-wheat loaf, a pair of honey-rosemary buns — that reach your table not long after you do. Desserts are comparably fine … but again, I leap ahead.

The core of Banker’s menu is seasonal and eclectic — more like that of the Meetinghouse than Quince. You might start with a rather Italianish white-bean soup ($8.75) deepened by bits of pancetta, shreds of kale, and a creamy green-garlic sofrito. From there you could move on to a filet of seared black bass ($25.50), a pad of flaky white flesh plated atop a Thai-style shellfish risotto ringed with crispy shallots. Banker’s is a world without borders.

Or — since one of the less-advertised pleasures of winter is salad — a beautifully composed winter salad ($13) of Monterey calamari à la plancha, arugula, frisee, fried chickpeas, and sections of mild, juicy Oro Blanco grapefruit. Citrus, for all its sunniness, is largely a winter crop.

Dessert can get short shrift these days, since few of us need the extra expense or calories, and a certain repetitiveness haunts local dessert menus — crèmes brûlées flavored with lavender or Meyer lemon, flourless chocolate cake, profiteroles — but not Baker & Banker’s. The possibilities offered by Lori Baker are original and exquisite, from a holiday-worthy, coffee-black sticky toffee pudding ($8) — thickened with kumquat and prune, topped by a cap of candied-kumquat-peel ice cream, and napped by a blood-orange sauce — to a trio of brown-butter doughnuts ($8) filled with huckleberries (a petite cousin of the blueberry) and presented with a dish of lemon curd. Let the bankers have their bonuses! This stuff is better.

BAKER AND BANKER

Dinner: Tues.-Sun., 5:30–10 p.m.

1701 Octavia, SF

(415) 351-2500

www.bakerandbanker.com

Beer and wine

AE/MC/V

Somewhat noisy

Wheelchair accessible

 

Souls and stars

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Souls and stars

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Dear Earl Butter,

I have accidentally fallen into the hands of hippies. They come from Pleiades, which is not a planet but a star cluster. How cool is that?

I used to love to be able to say, "I come from San Francisco." Suddenly it seems boring. Still, I bet we have better Mexican food than they do on Pleiades. Or in the Pleiades. (Not sure how to say this. I’ll have to ask.)

Other important points to remember are the number seven, some thing (or place or person or pizza joint) called "the Source," and that the universe is pure love. Like every other believer in reincarnation I have met, these ones claim to be "old souls."

I asked what I always ask: if time doesn’t really exist, as they also claim, how can one soul be any older than another?

They look at me like I’m a very young soul — which I would rather be, between me and you, because your face isn’t wrinkly yet and you sleep better. But technically I haven’t figured out yet about soul, meaning I don’t believe I exactly have one.

As for the universe being pure love … all I can say is I miss the smell of chicken shit and the feel of cold, dead, free-range chicken hearts in my small white hands. Not to mention the livers, and the taste of liver. And the fresh scallops we cut still pulsing from their shells and fried in butter with garlic. I miss these things, and love.

It was hard to be in Paris, too, without a heart. My brother-in-law’s brother and his girlfriend were immediate sympaticos, but they had to go to work, and so I wandered the streets and museums in almost utter amazement and disbelief — mostly that I was alone, but also the architecture and art.

I should have never left Paris, like I should have never left the chicken farm before that. But here I am in the South of France, which reminds me of Northern California, except substitute olive trees for vineyards. Jean Gene the Frenchman, who met me here, is traveling with a German disaster of his own. She’s more depressed than I am, in spite of being an old soul from the Pleiades, and her German accent is not good for me.

Back at the car after a day of hiking and sitting on cliffs high over the Mediterranean Sea, she offered me her hand and said, "Let’s make a pact. We each give it six more months, and then kill ourselves."

I just looked at her like she was from some other planet, or star cluster. "I only have one life," I said, finally. "For me, suicide is not an option."

She seemed surprised. Nevertheless, she’s a very good driver. Today we went to visit an obscure half-ruined chapel in the mountains called Notre Dame de Oeufs, or Our Lady of Eggs. No lie. People light candles and leave eggs there. The hippies said some prayers. I looked at the eggs.

Dearest Dani,

That is great. I should stop saying so much great stuff about Joel, but here is one thing. He will eat lunch with you if you are in a pinch. We went to Schmidt’s. It is right near Joel’s office. It is a little pricey for me for lunch, but I enjoyed myself nevertheless. We had lunch for $10 each.

We each got the grilled sausage. Joel got the kielbasa, which I am familiar with from my childhood and from Timmy Binko. And I got the smoked wild boar.

Modest size plates with a good-sized sausage, delicious potato salad, and sauerkraut, sweet and hot mustards, absolutely great! We both picked the wrong day to go, because neither of us could have a beer, but they’ve got a beer list longer than the menu. We were both dying to have one. Plenty of other stuff on the menu, and chalkboards of specials. This place is dark and elegant, but simple. And what I enjoyed most was that it was quiet. If there was music playing, I didn’t hear any, and I found this very refreshing.

SCHMIDT’S

Daily: 11 a.m.–3 p.m., 5:30 p.m.–11 p.m.

2400 Folsom, SF

(415) 401-0200

Beer and wine

Cash only

It just so happens

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It just so happens

CHEAP EATS Dear Earl Butter,

Like a cat always lands on its feet, your chicken farmer lands on a chicken farm. Weirdo the Cat would be proud of me, according to the Mountain.

Hard to believe, but life sometimes does that to you. Just when you need them, voilà: chickens. I had no idea! I just had to get somewhere friendly, and by sheer chance on the same day the anvil fell on my head I got a mass e-mail from Fabienne Gagagaga, telling my whole family, among other things, to keep in touch.

I last saw Fabienne 10 years ago, at my dad’s wedding. She was working at that time in marketing. A couple days after my anviling, when I still hadn’t regained my shape and it looked like I wasn’t going to, I decided it would be best for me to have my nervous breakdowns in another language — one I didn’t know at all, give or take voilà. And so I did, I kept in touch.

Fabienne’s reply was almost immediate, full of warmth, and just dripping with butter, but didn’t mention chickens. I arrived in the dark, by train, and very much in need of food, sleep, and kindness.

There was a lamb stew waiting for me. The lamb was from her farm. That night while I slept for the first time all year, two baby lambs were born. I watched the sunrise over some sailboat masts, then went with her to help Fabienne buy about 100 new chicks.

Over the next few days I helped fork, shovel, and broom out two chicken coops, I helped feed the chickens, closed the chicken doors at night, helped haul and stack sacks of feed, handled livers, and cleaned, cut, and cooked up 80 chicken hearts into a cherry beer stew with carrots and onions.

There aren’t a lot of lady farmers in France, and riding around on tractors and pickup trucks with this ‘un made me about as proud as I’ve ever been. Here was somebody doing for real what I make a living, in a way, pretending to do.

The Chicken Farmer, farming chickens. Not just four or five but hundreds. Imagine! It was as if John Wayne or Clint Eastwood ever actually found themselves roping steer, or something.

We even went to the dump once. Everyone loved us there!

I ate fresh scallops, many many oysters, and butter butter butter — the best butter ever, with some pretty good bread under it sometimes.

In Farmer Fabienne’s sisterly keeping, I not only found food, sleep, and kindness, but meaningful work. And Earl, in case you ever need to know this, there is no better balm for a broken heart than scraping chicken shit and cooking chicken hearts. The cherry beer was an accident, but a good one.

Dear Nice Lady,

That is great. The best thing about Java Supreme is that if you know when to go, you can get to talk to Joel almost every day of the week. He’s not always there, and those days are always hard. But most days he is. Me too. For the last 18 years, I have spent my mornings, almost all of them, at Java Supreme. It is also one of the few holdouts to the old Mission values that are no longer on Mission Street. Old Mission values are this: you can afford to eat.

I get a double espresso every morning, and it is $1.75. And when I make coffee at home, guess where I bought it?

Today I went back for lunch, too. I had the Italian roasted eggplant sandwich with pesto, roasted red peppers, mozzarella, and tomatoes, $3.95, with salad, $5.50, because the salads are great. I love this particular sandwich.

Someone suggested I get it with turkey instead of eggplant, and for years I did that. Ed makes it for you without blinking an eye. It is Ed’s place. He tries to keep things simple. I heard him say that on the phone, once.

Recently, in a cream cheese banishment program (not something I can recommend) me and Joel have been enjoying the Java No. 2, which is a bagel with avocado, tomato, sprouts and red onion. But neither of us gets the red onion. We didn’t plan it. It just so happens.

JAVA SUPREME

Daily: 6:30 a.m.–7:00 p.m.

703 Guerrero, SF

(415) 206-1832

No alcohol

Cash only

Cafe Prague

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Cafe Prague

DINE When in Prague, one would naturally try to eat as Praguers do, and in my experience, this means lots of pizza. The city, as a physical artifact, is a gothic dream, a fantasy of spires, castellations, and cobblestones worthy of Walt Disney. And being sealed up in the aspic of communism for 40 years actually enhanced these charms. When Milos Forman was looking for a place to film Amadeus, his 1984 movie about Mozart in Vienna, he settled on Prague as the setting because it had changed so little since the 18th century.

Except for the people, that is, who emerged from behind the ruins of the Iron Curtain in 1989 with a hunger for all things western, from Bulgari to holidays in Thailand to pizza. I ate as much pizza in Prague as I did in Rome a few years later, and that is saying something. And the wonderful Czech beer, Budvar, was so cheap in the late 1990s it might as well have been pouring from the taps. What was trickier to find was a spot that served traditional Bohemian cooking in a bohemian atmosphere — a place, in other words, like our very own Café Prague.

We never found a place like Café Prague in Prague, but here you don’t have to do much searching, and you can even take BART, since the restaurant expanded last year from its home in the Financial District (once on Pacific Avenue, now on Merchant Sreet) to new digs in the Mission District — on Mission Street itself, in fact, just two blocks from the 16th Street BART Station. The set-up offers, in addition to convenience, a more authentically bohemian setting, or at least one farther removed from soaring glass towers full of bankers counting their taxpayer-funded bonuses. Inside it’s homey; the only bohemian touch that seems to be lacking is a pall of blue smoke from cigarettes being nervously puffed by sallow, Kafkaesque young men.

Today’s Kafka aspirants, from the look of it, are strapping lads (and lasses) who make quick work of huge mugs of Czechvar (Budvar’s North American label) before tucking into immense and satisfying platters of central European food. I have never seen so much food on plates. Even the appetizers are colossal. A bratwurst platter ($7), for instance, consisted of a stack of wonderful sweet and smears of mustard and ketchup to swipe them through, along with a tangle of sauerkraut, a heap of pepperoncini, coins of dill pickle, and a wealth of other pickled vegetables. There was easily enough here for a table of four, especially since we’d earlier loaded up with abandon on the seductive, warm bread in its bottomless basket.

A bowl of split-pea soup ($5) was likewise almost a meal in itself, especially with the addition of bacon and dumplings. When bacon is mentioned as an accoutrement on a menu, you might expect a few bits or crumblings, for a hint of flavor and crunch and some decorative effect. Here the bacon appeared in the guise of nicely crisped slats — enough of them to amount to some real heft. And the bacon was the meaty English kind, not the fatty American stuff. Just to make sure no one would go away hungry, the kitchen tossed in some dumplings as well.

A word on the dumplings, which are ubiquitous. They are dotted with caraway seeds and resemble large slices of the crustless white bread the English use to make their tea-time cucumber sandwiches and are not (as I was expecting) spheres of boiled potato dough. The dumplings were impressively stacked beside several flaps of sauerbraten ($15), a vinegar-marinated pot roast that seemed slightly tough but was smoothed and softened by a broad lake of velvety brown gravy, and beside the roast duck ($15), rich as a winter night. Another small pile of sauerkraut helped balance some of the duck’s fattiness.

After such an avalanche of food (plenty of protein and fat and, thanks to the dumplings, nearly limitless starch), the very thought of dessert might leave you queasy. I can’t say that Café Prague’s version of apple strudel ($5) is a pastry version of Alka-Seltzer, but it is good, with more apples than pastry for a somewhat lower center of gravity. It almost looks like (dare I say?) a slice of deep-dish pizza, except for a chocolate-speckled egg of whipped cream on each side, for a little flourish of bohemian decadence.

CAFÉ PRAGUE

Dinner: nightly, 5–10 p.m.

2140 Mission, SF

(415) 986-0269

Beer and wine

Cash only

Somewhat noisy

Wheelchair accessible

White out

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White out

CHEAP EATS Dear Earl Butter,

Not you, but people say, “You will be stronger.” I wonder how, when I am in a million pieces. Of course I know I will come together, but what if the forearm is on top of the elbow and the upper arm below? What if my fingers are in the wrong order? How can this make me stronger?

I thought I would ask you, because don’t you have some experience with cubism?

Right now I’m on a train crossing the border between Germany and France, sitting backward. I’d puke, but I’m too tired, and completely empty. I haven’t slept in days. I haven’t eaten. Last night I looked at a bowl of onion soup, which was a start.

If I still weigh anything by the time I get to La Rochelle, then survival is almost guaranteed, since the French are certain to feed me.

It was beautiful. When word got out that a sister was down in Europe, this net of unexpected kindness opened up under me. Christ, I love my extended family. I mean, don’t get me wrong: I hate life, but you gotta love the people in it, don’t you? Some of them. Thanks to my brother Jean-Gene the Frenchman and Andi Lu Who, my French sister, my road-to-recovery stretches from roughly Bordeaux to Rome. I knew I had cugini over here, and old best friends of brothers, their exes and exes’ sisters, in-laws of in-laws and such … What I didn’t know is that they would circle up with their arms stretched out and interlocked to catch a farmerly kook they’d met only once, or twice. And years ago.

I need this. I need friendly, familiar faces and hours and hours of ping-pong. Can you believe that I have been through what I’ve been through without the consolation of so much as one bowl of duck soup?

Ah, but the grass is greener in France. The countryside is beautiful. Germany was beautiful too, from the train, but it was a black-and-white kind of beauty. All branches and snow. I wish I could white out what happened to me there.

Well, I take comfort in the fact that I lasted a couple weeks longer in Germany than my mom did in St. Paul, where she moved recently to more easily stalk her own great love, Garrison Keillor.

But she got off easy. I’m pretty sure Garrison Keillor never kissed my mom’s ring finger after making love to her, for example. I don’t think he called her his wife about a million times, or soul mate, or the love of his life. In fact, I’m not sure he knew she existed.

Wait, that’s right — he signed a book for her.

If only I’d gotten an autograph and left it at that. It’s dizzying, like death or sitting backward on the train. If I can stay vertical, Earl, I will eventually fly from Italy to Ohio to the Caribbean, to help wash windows and paint a hurricane-damaged house my other brother built there. Then I should be warm enough to come crawling back and curl up in your closet. Start cleaning.

Dear Dani,

That is great. There is nothing I look forward to more than a lunch date with Joel. At Valencia Pizza and Pasta, here are some of the things I have eaten with him: lemon chicken sandwich ($6.25), chicken-bacon-red pesto sandwich ($6.95). I’ve seen Joel eat breakfast there with corned beef hash and also a roasted chicken plate that was so big it almost stopped him cold. Today he got the pollani picata, which, I think means chicken breast with lemon and capers. What a beautifully full plate!

I got the meatloaf sandwich. A meatloaf sandwich of ridiculous pomposity ($6.25). Honestly, for a moment, I thought they had put the slices in sideways just to thwart me. There was no way to include the lettuce, tomatoes and pickles. You just have to treat them as sides. It was so juicy. I tricked Joel into looking out the window before I attempted a bite. I did not want him to see my jaw unhinge. Listen, this really is my new favorite restaurant. We walked out, as we always do, full, and happy, and friends. — E.B.

VALENCIA PIZZA AND PASTA

Mon.–Fri. 11 a.m.–3 p.m., 5–9:30 p.m.;

Sat. 9 a.m.–3 p.m., 5–9:30 p.m.; Sun. 9 a.m.–3 p.m.

801 Valencia, SF

(415) 642-1882

Beer & Wine

AE/MC/V

L.E. Leone’s latest book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Appetite: Hoist your stein for Beer Week

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Appetite: Hoist your stein for Beer Week

2/5-2/14 – SF Beer Week is going to be a big one this year

We’ve been buzzing awhile now about next week’s SF Beer Week. This one, only the second, is slated to be huge with over 200 events going on in a 10-day span. There’s a lot of beer sampling to be had, my friends! Celebrating craft beers at large, and the rich diversity of our local craft beers, the event is sponsored by local breweries in the SF Brewers Guild. There’s an event to suit every beer lover, from meet-the-brewer nights, to tours, tastings and dinners, to special casks and releases. Navigating the sudsy waters is a bit daunting, but here are a few to consider:

**The big shindig, 2/5, is an Opening Gala at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, featuring 30 of Nor Cal’s best (including some rare) brews, a tapping of the Brewers Guild collaborative brew (a barrel-aged Imperial Common), live music, commemorative stemware for each attendee, and food for purchase from the likes of 4505 Meats, Tacolicious, and Tataki Sushi. Get tix now as they’re $45 but will be $55 after 1/31.

**Every day of Beer Week, kick-ass Humphry Slocombe, in collaboration with Beer & Nosh, is offering a variety of beer ice creams. If their boozy Laphroig, Secret Breakfast, Guinness Gingerbread-type flavors are any indication of what’s coming, it’ll be good.

** On 2/8, Bar Tartine, Chef Chris Kronner, and Chez Panisse chefs, Rusty Packer, Rayneil DeGuzman and Nico Monday, host a four-course dinner with beer pairings from Magnolia and Dogfish Head Breweries. Seatings are at 6 and 9pm; tickets at tartinebeerweek.eventbrite.com.

**I’m a fan of Allagash beers (particularly bourbon barrel-aged Curieux) from Portland, Maine. Just one of many brewers you could meet over the course of this week is Allagash brewmaster, Rob Tod. He’ll be at Monk’s Kettle on 2/7, Superbowl Sunday, from 6-9pm, and on 2/9 (6-8pm), he’s speaking over Allagash beers, charcuterie and cheese at Oakland’s The Trappist.

**On 2/14, it’s a proper Valentine’s Day at Beer Week’s closing party (4-8pm) at Trumer Brauerei in Berkeley. There’s BBQ, beers from 20 local breweries (like Anchor, Speakeasy, Sierra Nevada, Moylan’s), music, silent auction and free shuttles from downtown Berkeley BART. Tickets are $40 pre-party (including unlimited 4 oz. pours, dinner, free shuttle) at www.celebrator.com. Or maybe you’d prefer to break down a whole pig for Valentine’s? Then La Trappe’s Porcine Valentine (3-11:30pm; $95), where Belgian beers and butchery meet, will be just your speed.

www.sfbeerweek.org

The Richmond

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The Richmond

On the list of life’s most perplexing questions, Where can I find a quiet restaurant? is rising fast. Increasingly I find myself presented with — even beseeched by — this inquiry, and increasingly I fumble. It’s not that there aren’t any, but their numbers seem to be dwindling, like those of book-readers or subscribers to newspapers. So when I find one, I am elated — quietly, of course.

The Richmond isn’t exactly new — it opened about five years ago, in an inner Richmond District space long occupied by Jakarta — but it opened with such media fireworks that I put off going there. Then tempus fugit, as tempus has a way of doing, and suddenly it is years later. Noise has increased throughout the restaurant kingdom. And, glory be, the Richmond turns out to be one of those wonderful neighborhood restaurants where it is actually possible to have a conversation with the other people at your table without having to shout and wave your arms or (in the extremely rare opposite case) fear that you are disrupting a funereal hush.

The restaurant’s singular layout certainly conduces to this balance. As in Jakarta days, the lateral storefront space divides into a warren of nooks, many of which are now cloaked by wine-colored curtains. It’s like being inside a voting-booth factory, with interesting peeps and murmurs leaking from tables behind half-drawn curtains. The tone is relaxed but not sloppy; the walls are painted a neutral beige, and few of the tables are far from a window. Not surprisingly, the clientele is a little older than that of, say, Namu down the street. I had the sense of being in the faculty club of some small but august urban institution.

Chef John Owyang’s food, it must be said, is better by a country mile than that of any faculty club I’ve ever been to. Owyang’s pedigree includes a stint at Elisabeth Daniel, the Daniel Patterson venture in the Financial District that was, in its short life, one of the toniest and most innovative (and expensive) restaurants in the city. Owyang appears to have taken a sense of culinary style away from that experience while paring away the Upper East Side preciousness. You can get a five-course tasting menu (matched with wine, if you like) at the Richmond, but you can also get a cheeseburger.

For me, the difference between good and great so often turns on grace notes and little touches, like fine, almost invisible brush strokes on a painting. Even the best neighborhood restaurants don’t typically offer amuses-bouches, but the Richmond does. It might be something as simple as mulled apple cider topped with a bit of whipped cream and served in demitasses — a clever hint that the little, clove-steeped sip isn’t just a play on a traditional winter favorite but also on the Italian drink macchiato, a shot of espresso finished with a dollop of foamed milk.

Owyang’s kitchen is clever but doesn’t wallow in cleverness. The basic style is elegant Californian, with a rich variety of flavors, colors, and textures and tasteful presentations that don’t become precious. In an age of feature creep, in food as in software, restaurants aren’t immune, and the temptation to embellish and embroider dishes is great. But Owyang understands the value of restraint, or counter-creep; his wonderfully earthy pumpkin-celery root soup ($7) was subtly enhanced by the crunch of candied pumpkin seeds and a few pipings of crème fraïche over the surface, and that was all. And enough.

A scallion flatbread “sloppy joe” ($7.95) turned out to be basically a small pizza, made sloppy by crumblings of Italian sausage and augmented by a bit of whipped goat cheese and some watercress. A plate of seared Pacific cod ($18.95) mounted the flesh — as dense, moist, and white as wet snow — on a bed of sautéed squid, slivers of red cabbage, and steamed broccoli florets. Not too much, not too little. Markedly richer was the so-called chicken and ravioli ($17.95), flaps of chicken scaloppine waltzing with chicken-mousseline-filled ravioli in a broad bowl of glossy black truffle sauce, with some leaves of baby spinach added for color and penance.

If you’d like a pause before your dessert arrives, you’ll appreciate the chocolate-peanut butter torte ($7.50), which takes a soufflé-like 15 minutes to prepare and turns out to be our old friend, the molten chocolate cake, except the lava is peanut butter. A conversation piece.

THE RICHMOND

Dinner: Mon.–Sat., 5:30–10 p.m.

615 Balboa, SF

(415) 379-8988

www.therichmondsf.com

Beer and wine

AE/DC/DS/MC/V

Comfortable noise level

Wheelchair accessible

Swimming

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Swimming

CHEAP EATS The ice that I am on is thin. It’s so thin it might not even be ice. I could be Jesus, skating on pure belief, or a dream. Certainly, things are surreal here.

On my gloves and knees, I press my lips to the thin line between world and world and kiss fish. I can only imagine what they, and the Germans, are thinking. Even the ducks have stopped speaking to me. I suppose I could take that as a compliment. They no longer see me as news?

Yesterday went I out the snow into, because it seemed beautiful, and the Thing To Do while one’s love of one’s life is with their ex, talking it over. Right? You walk in the snow, in the failing light, and feel real sorry for yourself. Who wouldn’t? And you cry and curse in as many languages as possible, under your breath. Or just a little bit over it.

In a dark, cold, hard, way, and especially in the snow, this town is almost beautiful.

*

It’s been decided, as if I didn’t already know. I never had a chance. Ah, thus the headaches of summer, and the anxiety of fall, whereas now I feel smashed flat but finally sane. I’m so proud of my body! It’s like it knew what my big dumb brain and nutty, naïve heart could not: That I would never have a chance.

I am an unfolded newspaper. I am a sticker off of a piece of fruit, the pool of blood, a rug, the grooves that our love-making made in the bedroom hardwood. I can form thoughts and poetry, sure, but can’t pull my pancaked self up, without help, from this griddle or pond.

On the plus side, my brother mailed me a spatula! He did. It’s true.

*

Help me here: the person who breaks up with the person just one month after bringing the person to the cold dark hard place where she doesn’t know a soul, or speak the language … that person, the breaker-upper, goes, right? Has to go.

Nein!

“What, are you kicking me out?” the psychologist said, in shock and disbelief.

Um … “Can’t you go stay with your ex?” I said. She didn’t want to. “Well then,” I said. “Can I?”

To her credit, and mine, she laughed. But she said that I couldn’t.

*

One of Romea’s lesbian friends, who has been with men too, says that being in a relationship with a man is like swimming in a swimming pool, whereas being with a woman is like swimming in the sea.

I usually prefer to save my reductionism for sauces and such, but this has been slow-simmering for some time, so let’s call it sauce.

I’m thinking: kids, water wings, beach balls, and, if you’re lucky, a slide vs. sharks, sleeper waves, undertow, endlessness … I can see arguments for both sides.

Being with a trans woman, though, ain’t like swimming anywhere; it’s like walking on water. You. Just. Have. To. Believe. And Romea, ultimately, sadly, tragically, for me, didn’t.

But wait, but isn’t it supposed to be hard to be sad while playing a ukulele? Or is that just an expression I just made up that isn’t even true? It reminds me of the last place we ate there, a very mirrory Vietnamese joint in downtown Oakland with a collection of miniature stringed instruments all along one wall. The food was not at all memorable, but the mirrors … I remember thinking I would probably never again be able to see my love from so many different angles while sitting so still and eating noodles.

Why didn’t I see this one? The goer-backer-to-the-exer side, oy.

I did manage to get my money back for the German course I won’t need to finish, and am off to the train station. I will write you next week from France, where I have sisters. And that is exactly what I need right now. A spatula, and sisters.

PHUONG NAM

Mon.–Sat.: 11 a.m.–9 p.m.

1615 Clay, Oakl.

(510) 663-9811

Beer & Wine

AE/MC/V

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Schmidt’s

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Schmidt’s

Schmidt’s, which opened last summer in the heart of the Mission District’s latest trendy-food zone, would appear to be an offspring of Hayes Valley stalwart Suppenküche, but its parentage is actually traceable to Walzwerk. Suppenküche has a blond-wood look that seems to be part ski chalet and part beer hall, while Walzwerk conjures the spirit of contemporary Prenzlauerberg, the Berlin (once East Berlin) neighborhood where urban chic has bloomed amid war-ruined buildings. Walzwerk didn’t face quite so steep a climb, of course, but it did manage to be a success in a troubled space on a fairly sketchy run of South Van Ness Avenue.

With expansive wood floors worthy of a gymnasium and plenty of wood furniture (too dark to be blond), Schmidt’s resembles Suppenküche more than Walzwerk, but it’s roomier and more open than either. Its ceiling floats high above cream-colored walls that could not be barer. As if to compensate for this desolation, the design seems to invite noise. Once the place starts to fill up — and fill up it does, mostly with younger people who might find the moderate prices attractive — conversation becomes difficult.

Other notable peculiarities: Schmidt’s doesn’t accept reservations, takes only cash (there is a cash machine stashed in a far corner, near the toilet), and, under its deli cap, sells German groceries from a wall of shelves just inside the door. In this sense the place reminds me a bit of Speckmann’s in Noe Valley, which gave way some years ago to Incanto.

Schmidt’s mixed bag of eccentricities wouldn’t mean much either way if the food wasn’t good, but it is good. The heart of the menu is the grilled sausage platter ($10), which gives you a choice from among a dozen or so interesting varieties of sausage (including several types of bratwurst), along with a heroic pile of potato salad and a heap of the house-made sauerkraut. We found the kraut to be a bit salty, despite a festive leavening of fried capers.

The other main dishes tend toward meatiness, although the emphasis is on lighter meats (if there is such a thing), such as pork and veal. A Holstein-style schnitzel ($12) features a breaded veal cutlet pan-fried to a bronze crispness; it’s seated on a bed of braised cauliflower florets and leeks and topped with an anchovy and a fried egg. The organizing principle of this dish escaped me, but there was no denying its complex substance.

A German meal could hardly be complete without spätzle, the little noodle pellets that are the German answer to orzo or pearl couscous. If you’re a vegetarian, you can get the spätzle as a full main course, but even as a side ($4), it’s pretty substantial. It’s even more substantial with cheese ($1 extra), which results in something like macaroni and cheese.

The most interesting cooking can be found among the appetizers and salads. Here you’ll find such treats as pea cakes ($7.50 for a trio) topped with house-cured gravlax and crème fraïche. The cakes themselves strongly resemble latkes, except that they’re bright green and retain their distinctive pea flavor. Radishes, a winter staple, become the basis of a salad ($7.50) energized with sections of blood orange and given a thick, creamy dressing based on quark (k’vahrk), a fresh, white cheese that resembles a cross between mascarpone and ricotta. Most salads are ensembles, but this one turned out to be completely dependent on the blood oranges. A forkful without some orange was pretty undistinguished, but with the citrus, it was like flipping on a light in a dark room.

Desserts, in the tradition of Mitteleuropa, are impressive. Linzertorte ($6) turned out to be basically a slice of strawberry pie, intense with berry flavor in a swaddling of flaky, buttery pastry. And speaking of pastry: the apple strudel ($6) was a rectangular fortress of crispy phyllo sheltering apple slices under a sky filled with thunderheads of whipped cream. The strudel had a wonderfully light, airy look, but when you are working your way through an arrangement of butter and cream the size of a brick, you are scarfing up some calories, even if it doesn’t quite feel that way.

Service is friendly and knowledgeable if occasionally balky. My impression was that the floor staff is stretched a bit thin — maybe, like the value pricing, a sign of the times.

SCHMIDT’S

Lunch: daily, 11 a.m.–3 p.m.

Dinner: nightly, 5:30–11 p.m.

2400 Folsom, SF

(415)401-0200

Beer and wine

Cash only

Deafening

Wheelchair accessible

Appetite: Check it out, Hot Cakes

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Appetite: Check it out, Hot Cakes

BAKERIES AROUND THE BAY AREA

Here’s a few bakeries worth hitting when outside of the city in Marin or South Bay for breakfast, a snack, dessert…

THE NEW: SusieCakes in Marin, Grand Opening 1/23

I took a pleasant jaunt up to Marin for the first NorCal soft opening of SusieCakes and chat with owner, Susan Sarich. She’s experienced much success in LA with her bakery, now with four locations, but always wanted a Bay Area shop. (She used to live here but faced some difficulties opening a shop here before.) I’m glad she’s back, albeit north of the city in a Greenbrae shopping center. She hopes for more in the Bay Area at some point, but is focused here, with a Grand Opening this Saturday, 1/23. Her emphasis is on classic, heartwarming sweets, re-creating family and childhood favorites. Layered cakes are a mainstay, with all kinds of custom options, red velvet being the bestseller. With a rich cream cheese frosting, it’s my favorite of the cakes I tried ($33-$46 or $5.50 for a slice).

There are also cupcakes, cookies, less common Whoopie Pies (aka “gobs”, a Pennsylvania tradition), and a killer, creamy butterscotch pudding, made with slow churned, European-style butter (as are all the baked goods)… and this comes from someone who is not a fan of pudding. The space is crisp, clean, with retro flair, down to adorable bandannas worn by each staff member. On another playful, Willie Wonka-esque note, Saturday’s opening includes 10 Golden Tickets hidden inside 10 “frosting-filled” cupcakes. Each equals a different gift, from a cake decorating class, to free cakes or cupcakes. For sugar-holics, securing a Golden Ticket also means you’re one of only 10 to be in the grand prize drawing for a year’s supply of cakes in the Cake-of-the-Month Club.

10am-7pm

310 Bon Air Center, Greenbrae

415-461-2253

www.susiecakesla.com

SOUTH BAY

**Palo Alto’s Mayfield Bakery is pricey, with artisan bread and chichi pastries but oh, so delicious: try loaves, muffins, tarts.

**Rolling Pin Donuts is old school to the max…and pretty much a San Bruno institution.

**If you happen down to Los Gatos, Fleur de Cocoa is a classic French patisserie with genuine croissants and beloved Chocolate Royal (hazelnut) cake.

MARIN

**Yes, it’s a local chain but there’s only three Teacake Bake Shops: two in the East Bay (Emeryville, Lafayette), one in a Corte Madera outdoor shopping mall. The shops offer the usual array of cupcakes and brownies, but what I can’t get enough of is the addictive cookies, like Spiced Iced Molasses, Peanutty Chocolate or Lemon Pout.

Guns ‘n’ rosés

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Guns ‘n’ rosés

If you like Beretta – and Beretta is very likable – you’ll likely like its younger sibling, Starbelly. I wonder who is thinking up the names in the Beretta folks’ briskly expanding universe of restaurants. “Beretta” makes me think of guns, while “Starbelly” sounds like a spoof of Spaceballs, Mel Brooks’ epic spoof of the Star Wars franchise.

The restaurant opened in the fall in a space (at 16th and Market streets) that once was Josie’s Juice Joint. Subsequent occupants include ZAO Noodle Bar and Asqew Grill, a pair of local chains that pitched affordable, high-quality, quick-turnaround food to younger people. Starbelly certainly attracts younger people and their traveling circus of noise but, as befits its status as a version of the California café, it has all kinds of people, including older ones and heterosexuals. The crowd is, to my eye, less hipstery and tech-moneyed than Beretta’s, although the glow of human energy is similar. Starbelly is too stimulating to be relaxing, but once you’re seated, your blood pressure does return to something like normal. Because the restaurant doesn’t take reservations for small parties, there can be a scrum near the host’s podium at the front. If you want a less hubbuby table, angle for one in the rear, past the bar, where the dining area opens out some.

In matters of food, Starbelly and Beretta are like fraternal twins: similar in certain respects but sharply different in others. The most conspicuous similarity is the prominence of pizza on both menus, along with the little wire stands to serve them on. But pizza is less dominant at Starbelly, where chef Adam Timney’s cooking rolls away in a number of sophisticated directions. Starbelly is probably the highest gastronomic peak in the Castro District at the moment, much as 2223 was 15 years ago. Of course, we should remember that the Castro has long been the Death Valley of restauranting and temper our enthusiasm accordingly. Still, Starbelly is good.

The dinner menu tilts toward smaller, shareable plates and divides among the categories “snacks” ($5 each), “small,” “salads,” and “vegetables.” Then come the pizzas and bigger plates. “Snacks” often means a dish of warm, spicy nuts, but here you can indulge in such witty treats as mini corn dogs, each riding its little toothpick and ready for dipping in spicy mustard (coarse, country-style) or house-made ketchup (fruity in a way the commercial product can never be and worth the price of the dish just for the experience).

The kitchen handles seafood skillfully. Grilled baby octopus ($9), recommended by our server, turned out to be nicely tender with a faint hint of smoke; the octopus was arranged on an arugula salad. Pan-roasted diver scallops ($14) also had been expertly cooked, but I thought the accompanying gingered yam purée, scattered with pepitas, was a little too sweet. Scallops, like pork, are naturally sweet and seem to invite sweet harmonies, but I (and here I state a personal preference) would rather have counterpoint, something sour, spicy, or salty.

Pizzas do not disappoint. The crusts are on the thin side, with a bit of puff on top and a hint of blister underneath but — hooray — no charring. Toppings range from the classic (tomato sauce, mozzarella, and basil on a margherita) to New World (Mexican chorizo with eggs and cilantro) but on the whole are fairly simple. A good example is a pie topped with Starbelly bacon ($13) along with market peppers and tomatoes. All that red lends a certain Murder in the Cathedral look, but the tangy, aromatic combination of toppings catches the sense of summer shading into autumn.

Speaking of fall: brussels sprouts have been on just about every menu I’ve seen since Labor Day, and they’re on Starbelly’s, too ($6). Here they’re halved and pan-roasted with chunks of bacon until nicely caramelized at the edges. Bacon seems to be the consensus remedy for the palatability issue that haunts brussels sprouts, and a good roasting, whether in an oven or pan, has set right many a troublesome vegetable. A shot of lemon juice wouldn’t have hurt here, for a final bit of zing.

The big plates are reasonably priced, mostly in the low to mid-teens; only lamb chops breaking the $20 barrier. The kitchen does offer what might be sly homage to Zuni Café: a half-chicken ($15), roasted on a rotisserie until sensuously tender and juicy, then plated with a spinach panzanella — basically swirls of braised greens in a warm, savory bread pudding under a roasted-onion vinaigrette. It’s not formally offered for two like the Zuni version, but it’s ample enough to be quite shareable, especially if you’ve previously stocked up on some of the smaller plates.

Which undoubtedly you will have done, since at Starbelly, the path to a full belly is a winding one, with many delightful turn-outs and outlooks along the way. *

STARBELLY

Mon.-Thurs., 11:30 a.m.–11 p.m.; Fri., 11:30 a.m.–midnight.

Brunch: Sat.–Sun., 10:30 a.m.–4 p.m.

Dinner: Sat., 4 p.m.–midnight; Sun., 4–11 p.m.

3583 16th St., SF

(415) 252-7500

www.starbellysf.com

Beer and wine

AE/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Brunch fitness

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Brunch fitness

Good morning, sunshine! Or shall we say good afternoon? You are perhaps in need of a solid dose of protein, vitamin C, and a little hair of the dog in observance of this fine new trip around the sun? No worries — we are blessed to live in a city that takes its lingering late morning gluttony very seriously. Here are eight sites to struggle out to for New Year’s Day brunch.

FRONT PORCH

Get your beauty sleep before you’re ready to face the waiting lists and mimosa-or-bloody mary decision. You’ll fit right in with the crew at this South Mission favorite. Front Porch’s “fried and pickled” crab boil doesn’t start serving till noon. Couple your shellfish with a heaping side of black-eyed peas — traditional food for good luck in the new year — and nod your head to beats graciously supplied by KUSF’s DJ Adam.

65A 29th St., SF. (415) 695-7800. www.thefrontporch.com

FARMERBROWN

Where other chefs see the holidays as a chance to shill higher-priced, posh versions of their menu, farmerbrown is taking a different route. The industrial chic Tenderloin hot spot will be offering a discounted price tag on its popular brunch buffet this New Year’s Day. Sure, chef Jay Foster has a few tricks up his sleeve — almond and orange brioche french toast and fried catfish will find their way into grateful 2010 bellies — but $25 will still get you fed on Southern comfort food, drunk on a bottomless mimosa, and happy from sweet tunes by jazz group Blue Roots.

25 Mason, SF. (415) 409-FARM. www.farmerbrownsf.com

PRESIDIO SOCIAL CLUB

Originally built in 1903 as enlisted men’s barracks, the Social Club has a bygone-era atmosphere — a feeling echoed by their throwback 1960s brunch, heavy on the beignets and stick-to-your-ribs biscuits and gravy plates. On Jan. 1, it is also busting out $12 bottomless bloodys or Harvey Wallbangers — for the uninitiated, Mad Men-worthy cocktails made of vodka, Galliano, and orange juice.

563 Ruger, SF. (415) 885-1888. www.presidiosocialclub.com

MAMA’S

Fight the post-Christmas tourists to this old school North Beach spot, open for 40 years right across the street from Washington Square. Mama is taking advantage of this season’s iconic SF fruit of the sea by serving up a Dungeness crab benedict with fresh baby spinach ($11.50), or a crab omelet with avocado and brie ($18).

1701 Stockton, SF. (415) 362-6421. www.mamas-sf.com

BOARDROOM

What if you’re having trouble finding that after-after party and your stomach is starting to rumble? Enter this aesthetically pleasing sports bar, which starts its full brunch at 6 a.m., plying the “still awake and hungover” crowd with a $5 chicken and waffles special — a tradition that started last year. Also present: four televisions blasting college athletic competitions all day long to make intelligible conversation a non-issue.

1609 Powell, SF. (415) 982-8898. www.woodyzips.com

TRIPTYCH

This SoMa hangout is adding a few special New Year’s items to its already formidable brunch arsenal. They range from traditional (crabcake benedict with a side of sweet chile, english muffin, poached egg, and roasted potatoes for $12) to veggie-friendly fare (a Malibu organic garden burger made with wild rice, bell peppers, and oats for $8). Couple one of these plates with a side of Triptych’s crowd-pleasing sweet potato fries and an orange, mango, or raspberry mimosa ($8 a glass, $20 a pitcher) while you recap what dropped after the ball last night.

1155 Folsom, SF. (415) 703-0557. www.triptychsf.com

DOTTIE’S TRUE BLUE CAFE

Blessed/cursed with a worshipful crowd of customers (lines regularly extend out the door), Dottie’s is the spot for affordable breakfast classics to ring in 2010. This year it’ll be guaranteeing you prosperity with its traditional black-eyed pea cake, topped with sour cream and homemade pico de gallo and accompanied by eggs, a piece of grilled chile-cheddar cornbread, and home fries ($8.95). Now that’ll set you on your feet after a season of champagne and eggnog.

522 Jones, SF. (415) 885-2767

ZAZIE

Did you pass out before you had time to blow through all that cash in your wallet? If you’re part of the financially stable set, you can head to Cole Valley’s finest for its $39 prix fixe, which includes an appetizer, entrée, a half bottle of Charles de Fere champagne, a pitcher of your favorite juice, and espresso. Among your options are homemade cream cheese coffee cake, gingerbread pancakes with lemon curd and roasted Bosc pears, eggs monaco, and roasted white trout. That diet resolution can probably start tomorrow, right?

941 Cole, SF. (415) 564-5332. www.zaziesf.com

A walk with L.A.

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A walk with L.A.

CHEAP EATS For a while there I was running the airport shuttle and it was like the old days when I drove a van. One day I picked up my North Carolina sister L.A. and her husband, and the next, for example, I was dropping off Crawdad’s whole family. This was at an ungodly hour, like 6 a.m.

Knowing that L.A., an early bird to begin with, would be lagging some serious jet, I called her cell phone. They were sleeping at my nephew’s flat, their son’s flat, South of Market. It was 6:15, Saturday.

“Come on by,” L.A. said, not the faintest trace of sleep in her voice. So I did. I came by and picked her up, and we left the boys a-snoring and drove around and about and up and down and across, just generally drawing a big X over 2009 in San Francisco, and wondering about breakfast.

The thing about this particular sister is that she doesn’t seem to necessarily need to be always exactly eating. In other ways, though, we are a lot alike. For example, we have the same mom and dad. For another, our hair and noses are somewhat sorta similar.

L.A. is my favorite kind of vegetarian: the kind who eats bacon. But you have to talk her into it. All in all, she would rather go for a walk. I personally need some coffee at least, if not a full-on breakfast, before I can move about in any kind of consistently vertical fashion. My sister not only doesn’t need coffee, she doesn’t drink it. In short, I didn’t know what to do with her.

So I pointed us toward Glen Park, where we would walk, but drove real slow, hoping hard that a restaurant would open before we got there. Or a coffee house.

I wasn’t thinking about donuts …

And then there they were. There it was, on 24th Street between Hampshire and York, and miraculously the clock struck 7 a.m.. I had forgotten all about Dynamo. Alice Shaw the Person told me about it months or maybe years ago. And here it was, the home of bacon maple apple donuts, flipping on the lights, so to speak, exactly as we were driving almost aimlessly by.

I pulled over abruptly into one of 7,000 available parking spots, and then backed up into another one.

“Bacon donuts,” I explained.

“What?” said my vegetarianish caffeine-free sister. Did I mention she doesn’t eat sugar?

“Coffee,” I said. “Do you want to wait in the car?”

She didn’t. We went up to the sidewalk window and I ordered a coffee and a donut. A bacon donut, of course. Know how much it costs?

Three dollars. That’s just for the donut. With coffee, it was something like $5, which is more than most full-on meals cost where my sister lives.

She ordered a cup of hot water.

There’s one row of tables inside the place, and the tables have flowers on them. It’s a donut shop. There are flowers on the tables. My sister, who is older than me by three years, sat with her back to the wall, watching the bakers work the dough across the counter. They were young and cheerful and listening to good music.

I could almost actually see every single thing in my big sister’s brain shifting, resettling, jiggling into whole new places. It seemed like a good time to ask: “Do you want a bite?”

She didn’t say no, or yes. She sat there, her mouth a little bit open. Sugar gives her yeast infections. She had already told me this.

I sunk my teeth into my $3 bacon-grease-sautéed apple donut, glazed with maple and stuck with crumbled bacon. It’s not a big breakfast. It was already half-gone, but I love my sister, so I held the remaining half-donut to her, and she took it. And she took a bite.

And you could see that she was in immediate heaven, her eyebrows joining her hairline, and her hand reaching for her purse.

“Let’s get another one,” she said.

And we did. And Glen Park was beautiful. *

DYNAMO DONUTS

Tue. –Sat., 7 a.m.–5 p.m.; Sun., 9 a.m.–4 p.m.

2760 24th St., SF

(415) 920-1978

No alcohol

Cash only

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Le Colonial

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Le Colonial

DINE Could there be a more enchanted address for a restaurant in San Francisco than 20 Cosmo Place? No. “Cosmo” gives us an urban, even cosmopolitan, glamour, while “place” suggests, at least, a degree of refuge from the maelstrom of city traffic. Cosmo Place does not disappoint; it has something of the air of Shepherd Market, the warren of quaint lanes stashed well off the main thoroughfares in London’s posh Mayfair district, and also of the small plazas ringed with outdoor cafes you might find near the waterfront in Barcelona.

For more than 40 years, until the early 1990s, 20 Cosmo Place was the home of Trader Vic’s, which was probably the most famous restaurant in the city and one of the best-known in the country. Although there were — and remain — other Trader Vic’s restaurants around the country and the globe, none could match Cosmo Place for sheer atmospherics. But the founder and namesake, Vic Bergeron, had died in 1984, and with his passing came a reordering of the empire that included closing the Cosmo Place restaurant. Trader Vic’s reopened some years later in the city, in the old Stars location on Golden Gate Avenue, but that experiment was short-lived.

On Cosmo Place, meanwhile, a new presence arrived in 1998. This was Le Colonial, a high-end Vietnamese spot with (like Trader Vic’s) outposts in several other major U.S. cities, including New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. There was, for me, a certain sorrow in the passing of Trader Vic’s, which was certainly a San Francisco institution of the first order. But the transition was smooth enough, the newcomer thrived, and now, more than a decade on, Le Colonial seems as permanent as Trader Vic’s once did. Yet one cannot forget the predecessor.

When I crossed the threshold at 20 Cosmo Place recently, it was for the first time in nearly 30 years. One evening early in that long-ago June, a group of us came to the city and to Trader Vic’s as graduating college seniors, got massively blitzed on tropical drinks that came in gigantic tureens, and left … well, I don’t remember leaving. I know only that I must have. Three decades on, the basic layout came as a delightful surprise to me despite (by all accounts) being pretty much the same as before.

The entryway is still a long breezeway set with tables, wicker chairs, and potted plants covered by a roof of ironwork and glass such as you might find in a belle époque rail station. It is reached from the street, or lane, by an impressive set of stairs. At the far end of the breezeway sits a set of heavy wood doors that open to the host’s podium. Beyond, and upstairs, lay three dining areas, one of which was, once upon a time, the coveted Captain’s Cabin.

The mood these days seems a little more relaxed, although the crowd is still stylish and the Captain’s Cabin still exists. The interior design speaks in tones of elegance and, oddly, heat: starched linen table cloths and ceiling fans, plush carpeting and wicker chairs even in the main dining room. These cues might lead you to imagine that you’re sweltering at the edge of a steamy jungle instead of wondering why you forgot to wear a scarf.

As the restaurant’s name reminds us, Vietnam was a French colony for about a century, and executive chef Joseph Villanueva’s fine menu captures glints of the resulting cross-cultural pollination. Among the most compelling examples of his ambidexterity are the pan-fried brussels sprouts ($10), or rau xao­ — all the dishes bear Vietnamese names — in which the halved sprouts are cooked with portobello mushrooms and plenty of ginger before being liberally slathered with sweet chili sauce. Using such intensely flavorful ingredients to subdue a notoriously uncooperative vegetable is the culinary equivalent of an enhanced interrogation technique, but when a confirmed brussels sprouts-hater takes a tentative taste or two (after much cajoling), then serves himself a big heap, we know all the bother was worth it.

Luckily, most of the menu doesn’t need this kind of strong-arming. Wok-tossed Blue Lake beans ($8) are wonderfully crisp-tender and simply dressed with a garlic-soy sauce. Niman Ranch pork ribs ($14) are rubbed with five-spice powder, given a honey-ginger glaze, and roasted to an aching tenderness. The same glaze ends up on fried quail ($14), which is only marginally less tender. Among the lemongrass-inflected dishes, it would be hard to beat chicken two ways ($25), roasted and sautéed, and served with a warm salad of shiitakes, baby spinach, and micro-cilantro.

There are disappointments. The fresh rolls wrapped in rice paper are a little tough and, tastewise, on the delicate side. On the indelicate side, we have black tiger prawns ($29) in a coconut curry broth that sounds promising but is made with powdered curry, rather than the Thai-style paste, with a certain metallic harshness as a consequence.

But knocking a few points off a dish here and there does nothing to diminish the overall experience in a place as atmospheric as Le Colonial. As with a view restaurant, the temptation must be strong to lean on the enchanted setting and its storied past while letting the food and service discreetly slip. It’s a credit to Le Colonial that if the restaurant served its menu in a setting a tenth as compelling, we would still judge it worthy.

LE COLONIAL

Dinner: Sun.–Wed., 5:30–10 p.m.;

Thurs.–Sat., 5:30–11 p.m.

20 Cosmo Place, SF

(415) 931-3600

www.lecolonialsf.com

Full bar

AE/DC/MC/V

Well-managed noise

Wheelchair accessible

Comfort and joy

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Comfort and joy

CHEAP EATS The guy who runs the ukulele shop suggests I pray before going to Ikea. It works every time for him. He got those big shelves that way, the ones with all the chord-books on them. And the nice wood table. He says he prayed for those things. Then he went to Ikea. And not only did he find them, he found them in the discount aisle!

Merry Christmas.

The god I don’t believe in, turns out, is a loving god. A caring god. A thrifty god, a sexy and strong god, who impresses virgins and moves not only mountains but furniture. Slightly dinged furniture, to boot! With a retail record like that, surely there can be no other god.

Check him out.

I don’t know that I’ll ever muster up the courage to go to Ikea, let alone the piety to pray beforehand, but I sure do like the guy at the ukulele shop. He accidentally insulted my uke, but also bought me an espresso on purpose. I go talk to him as often as possible.

Then there are Romea’s parents, who played ping pong with us, showed us Super 8 footage of my lover as a cute little tomboy, plied us with osso buco for lunch and sausages for dinner, changed my mind about mustard, and sent us on our merry way with a tin of homemade Christmas cookies flaky and delicate enough to make a believer out of Richard Dawkins Himself.

I tell you, if His mom had made those little heart-shaped ones with pointy green pistachio bits stuck into the white icing like tiny Christmas trees poking through the snow, well, He would not today be nearly as famous as He is. They pack a punchy, tangy sort of sweetness that makes me see stars, snowflakes, and angels, these ones, but — alas — there are only two left.

Hold on. Make that one.

Oh, did I mention the head massage? With all due respect to all my ex-ma-and-pa-in-laws, whom I still love like my own parents, I have never felt more immediately welcomed, warmed, and accepted — as was — than I felt with Romea’s folks. And think about it: my previous in-laws only ever had to deal with my weirdness. These ones faced my weirdness and my queerness, and responded with kisses, massages, and sausages, declaring me immediately simpatich.

Happy Hanukkah. And I mean that. I’m not generally Jewish — just at Christmastime. But this year, you know, I kind of mean my Merry Christmases too. And not only because Romea is the biggest Scrooge I’ve ever stomped with.

It’s those cookies. Those insane, divine, little crunches of pure comfort and joy, comfort and joy. And of course the ukulele shop. And Romea’s new coat and shoes, and my new used bike, which with its tight light generator and loose bell makes me sound like a cross between an ambulance and the ice cream truck. Which pretty much sums up what I am, probably.

But did I tell you about my new favorite Thai restaurant? It’s Ruen Pair, on San Pablo in Albany — a friendly little restaurant with friendly little waitressperson people and really really mean-ass cooks. I mean that in the most positive way.

Among lovers of the hot and the spicy, Ruen Pair is no secret. Sweet Baby Jesus is it spicy! Even if you get it medium, it’s almost too hot to handle. It’s just on the edge, which is where I like to eat, if not live.

I ate there once, and had it once to go, so I can vouch for a lot of dishes: the duck salad, green curry, pad prik king … And not only do they have my favorite of favorites, duck noodle soup, which is awesome, they have tom yum noodle soup, which is awesome, and a brilliant idea, because tom yum is so good but never really enough of what it is, as an appetizer.

Whereas with noodles, pork, ground pork, and pork balls …

You get the picture, yes? Everything I had here was great, and spicier than you think it’s going to be. You can leave your hot sauce at home. Where it belongs. For the holidays. Happy.

RUEN PAIR

Daily, 11 a.m.–10 p.m.

1045 San Pablo Ave., Albany

(510) 528-2375

Beer & wine

AE/D/MC/V

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Passage

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Passage

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Weirdo the Cat, in an act of life-defying cantankerousness, has died. She got wind of my own impending crossing and timed her tumor accordingly, missing by only one day. No, not missing. While it would have been more operatic of her to die in my arms while I was tearfully kissing her goodbye, she let me get to the airport, on the plane, over the continent, over the ocean, up to the terminal, past customs, into the arms of my lover, onto the train, into the taxi, up two flights of stairs with three heavy suitcases, in and out of the bathtub, under the covers and over the rainbow. Then, while the kids were just settling to sleep in the next room, California … then did Weirdo the Cat breathe her last little stinky breath.

That way it would be clear to anyone with a brain bigger than a walnut that I had killed her. Poetically speaking. Ah, but Weirdo the Cat was ever the furry little poet. Only a little bit bitterer. She blamed me (me!) for not drawing her immortal, like other famous felines, with whom she was obsessed — especially Sylvester. I argued that I was a journalist, not a cartoonist, and she produced an eight-pound sledgehammer from behind her back and chased me around the room with it.

It’s true that she mellowed some in her elderly years, just like Grandma Rubino. In the end, she even actually seemed to kind of almost like children, and while they were away would curl up on the floor in their room and purr. I speak here of Weirdo the Cat, not Grandma Rubino.

Anyway, although any lap but mine or Crawdad’s was always strictly out of the question, by the time she had head-butted her last table leg she had socially matured to the point of sometimes actually sniffing strangers before biting them. I speak here of Grandma Rubino, not Weirdo the Cat.

Those three of my readers who have had the pleasure of knowing both these colorful cranks in their more corporal days will understand the confusion. One cursed in Italian, the other in hairballs and half-digested cat food. Other than that they were pretty much the same animal, may they rest in peace.

And in fact may we all get a little bit of sleep tonight. Jet lag — why didn’t I think of it earlier? I write three-act plays and astounding symphonies in my sleep, and then when I’m awake I walk around bumping into things, drooling, and forgetting my hat and purse everywhere. People tell me in Bavarian German that I’ll get over it after a week or so, and I don’t have the heart, or the vocabulary, to explain that, no, this is the way I’ve been since 1992.

There are other advantages to being where I am. For example, I find myself very literally surrounded by sausage, churches, and Christmas. I’ll let you guess which of those represents my idea of heaven.

Hint: some people like mustard on it. I prefer sauerkraut, to my Romea’s dismay, as I also tend to wear her coats and leave my napkins in her coat pockets.

The Stone Age Catholic churches, while pretty to look at, are pure hell on Sunday mornings when they call their faithful to breakfast with gigantic Iron Age dinner bells. It’s enough of a racket to weird out the dead, and to levitate the merely sleeping — in my case before I had quite finished my opus in F-Minor. Romea had to scrape me off the ceiling with a vacuum cleaner attachment.

Christmas itself, I predict, will be more likely to reclaim me here than Catholicism. For starters, it lets you sleep. Then too they celebrate it outdoors, in crowded open-air Christmas markets, featuring not only rampant commercialism but sausage stands! With bockwursts and bratwursts and meter-long sausages.

Whereas church offers warmth. But hey, I can get that at home. Do you know how long a meter is?

While you’re looking it up, lemme tell you where even you can find great bock- and bratwursts and even kielbasa and Italian hot sausages for real cheap: Longs Drugs. Yep, I became addicted when I lived in Rockridge. Trust me …

TOP DOG INSIDE LONG’S DRUGS

(and four other East Bay locations)

Mon.-Sat., 10 a.m.–9 p.m.; Sun., 11 a.m.–8 p.m.

5100 Broadway, Oakl.

(510) 601-1187

No alcohol

Cash only

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Bacco

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Bacco

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE Two autumns ago, I popped in on Bacco, in Noe Valley, and found a house in good order. The restaurant, opened by Vincenzo Cucco and Paolo Dominici in 1993, turned 14 that fall, and little had changed through the years except that the color scheme of the two dining rooms had gone from pumpkin to butter and sage, and a "Zagat-rated" sticker had appeared in the window at the door. I left with a sense of calm reassurance, like a parent who’s just peeked through a bedroom door to see a child safely tucked in.

But safety is one of the world’s illusions. Last spring, Dominici disappeared while spearfishing in Hawaii. In 2006, he and Cucco had opened another restaurant, Divino, on the Peninsula, with Cucco running the newer place and Dominici remaining at Bacco. The unexpected death left the older restaurant without a captain. Uncaptained restaurants have a way of foundering — they can too easily lose their way, fade, fold, or end up in other hands.

Luckily for Bacco, those other hands are Cucco’s, and so the restaurant remains within the family, as it were. He has once again taken up the toque in the kitchen, while longtime manager Luca Zanet continues to run the front of the house; ownership proper has passed into the hands of Dominici’s widow, Shari. This is about as favorable an outcome as we could hope for from an unforeseen disaster, and, after a period of turbulence and uncertainty, the ship appears to have righted itself and regained its course.

Bacco, for me, has long been one of the best-looking Italian restaurants in the city. The original paint scheme, of pumpkin or cinnamon, was most appealing when viewed from outside; in the evenings its light would fill the street like the glow of a merry fire, but inside, the reddishness could become distracting. The present scheme, of gentle sage and butter tones, bounded by ribbons of white moulding, is easier to take and does not so forcefully compete with other elements of the design, among them the high ceilings, terra-cotta-tiled floors, and the soaring, old-world arch that is, in effect, the gate of the main dining room. That room also offers a long line of windows that gaze onto Diamond Street. The second, smaller dining room (to the left of the podium as you enter) is less open but cozier.
Under Cucco’s steadying guidance, the food remains excellent. Bacco has long found a way between rigid insistence on Italian tradition and a tumble into sloppiness from the many temptations of California’s abundance and freedom. The cooking is more Ital than Cal, but it is supple and has been smoothly adjusted to reflect local conditions. Pasta, desserts, and baked goods are made in-house, and the kitchen quietly swears its fealty to supporting local growers and using organic products whenever available.

Polenta with gorgonzola and wild mushrooms, for instance, has been on the menu for years, but now the polenta is made with buckwheat, an underappreciated grain. A similar underappreciated grain, spelt (a type of wheatberry, similar but not identical to the Italian grain farro), turned up in a nicely molded salad along with corn kernels, scallions, and diced peppers under a jaunty cap of burrata ($12). Burrata is a mild, creamy cow’s milk cheese, a close relative of mozzarella, and we found it a bit reticent for such a starring role, especially since the underlying salad, while tasty, seemed to be "missing something," according to the oracle across the table. No human oracle (or even Oracle) is infallible, but this one is more reliable than most.

Baby octopus ($10), braised in red wine with herbs and finished with a shower of celery-root shreds, was missing nothing, even though the dish was classically Italian in its simplicity. We mopped up the extra sauce with chunks of focaccia. (The basket of bread arrives early and is replenished frequently, by the way, as is the accompanying tray of olive oil infused with parsley and anchovies.)

The pasta dishes strike many of the most traditional notes — a softball-sized tangle of vermicelli ($16), say, dotted with a handful of petite Tuscan meatballs in a rich, garlicky tomato sauce. Yes, it’s spaghetti and meatballs, with a few sophisticated twists.

For local color, how about petrale sole ($26), rubbed with herbs, sautéed, and seated on a mirepoix-like mat of roasted root vegetables? Petrale sole is (despite the Italian name) a local glory, and since it’s often breaded, an unbreaded version was a nice treat.

We were slightly disappointed with the brussels sprouts ($9), or cavoletti ("little cabbages"), which, despite being cooked with cubes of pancetta and plenty of olive oil, retained some of their quiet belligerence. Perhaps this was because they’d only been cut in halves, rather than chopped up or shredded. They weren’t quite tender enough to be described as tender.

As if in compensation, the chocolate shortbread cookies, or baci Isabella ($8) were divine: a pair of halved globes pasted together with chocolate ganache and served with a glass of milk. The oracle described them, with satisfaction, as being like "cookies that think they’re truffles," and a satisfied oracle is a happy oracle.

BACCO

Dinner: Mon.–Thurs., 5:30–9:30 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat., 5:30–10 p.m.; Sun., 5–9 p.m.

737 Diamond, SF

(415) 282-4969

www.baccosf.com

Beer and wine

MC/V

Moderately noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Appetite: Smuggler’s Cove Shanghais the Tiki vibe

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Appetite: Smuggler’s Cove Shanghais the Tiki vibe

Virginia Miller is from www.theperfectspotsf.com. View her last installment of Appetite here.

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Mixing it up behind the bar at Smuggler’s Cove

Smuggler’s Cove… so much more than Tiki
I’m crazy about all things Tiki and its accompanying kitsch… which is why I’ve long been a fan of Alameda’s Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge. Martin Cate helped make that bar great with his cocktails, going beyond the usual too-sweet, one-note swill often paired with such a setting. Though he departed Forbidden Island awhile back, we’ve been holding our breath for his first bar right here in Hayes Valley in the former, tri-level Jade Bar space.

I had the privilege of attending a media preview last Thursday of Smugglers’ Cove, which officially opens tomorrow (Tue/8). As I entered the tinted storefront, it was as I hoped: a full-on themed bar, transporting me to another world… but with a heavy degree of taste, even refinement. There is (thankfully!) the occasional puffer fish lamp, or bamboo and thatched awnings in the inviting upstairs perch overlooking the main floor bar, keeping the Tiki torch burning. There’s also a strong maritime, pirate-like presence with a ship wheel, barrels, skulls and weaponry. Dark wood walls give the small space warmth, while under a vaulted ceiling lies knick knacks and treasures rife with stories: Tiki legends have their own little shrines tucked into the walls, with a couple lamps from the original Trader Vic’s emitting a soft glow. In the basement, dubbed the Boathouse, there’s another bar, across from a cascading waterfall. Much care has gone into the decor, with touches like unique punch bowls, making this a playful, campy space; part Tiki bar dream, part sophisticated, nautical rum bar.

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Custom-made Tiki punch bowls (for volcanoes, of course!)

With more than 200 premium rums and a gorgeous 80+ cocktail menu that actually made me a little giddy to read through, drink is the real star here and Cate does not disappoint with his expertly-chosen selection. I’m eager to try many of these cocktails, my preview night favorites being a WWII classic, "Three Dots and a Dash", a spiced refresher of aged Martinique rhum, private reserve rum, lime, orange, honey, falernum, allspice, bitters; and… "The Chadburn", a complex mix of private reserve rum, tawny port, pear liqueur and a dash of chocolate mole bitters.

The menu is intriguingly grouped in sections like "Classic Libations of Prohibition Era Havana", "Exotic Rum Cocktails from Legendary Tiki Bars", even "Exotic Cocktails without (Gasp!) Rum". There’s going to be a "Rumbustion Society", a rum school, if you will, where working your way through a 20-chapter study on the many styles and complexities of rum (punch card included), initiates you as a "disciple" with access to rare tastings from their vault. You can attempt to try all 80 cocktails on the menu to become a "Voyager" (tempting!), with its own privileges. Bountiful possibilities for interaction and tasting adventures.

Thankfully, music is also an ideal fit (something I always pay attention to). It’s certainly the kind of soundtrack where I might hear Exotica favorites like Yma Sumac or Martin Denny. As I took a restroom break, "Bali Ha’i" serenaded me and I knew I’d gladly escape to the Cove over and over again.

SMUGGLER’S COVE
650 Gough Street
415-869-1900
www.smugglerscovesf.com

The unbearable lightness of being

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The unbearable lightness of being

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS It’s weird for me, of all people, to be having an existential crisis. Yet …

You know, there have been times in the past few weeks when I almost completely didn’t know if I existed or not. It ain’t fun. Not no picnic, no … nonexistence. I’m here to tell you.

And it’s weird because in the past I have taken particular pride in my capacity for existing. That’s why my calypso name was always Lord Exister or Sister Exister or just Exister. And my songs celebrated mostly existential themes, such as butter.

Now I can only write about tofu and spelt flour, and when that happens it’s time to hang up your steel drum. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m taking mine to Germany because it’s quite possible the Germans won’t understand a word of it, no matter which language I choose to use to express my out-of-key self in.

I’m just saying. Or, as the late great Townes Van Zandt put it, "Maybe she just has to sing for the sake of the song."

One of my favorite people to talk to is Mod the Pod, or Mod Pod, as we call her for short. We were driving in her pickup truck on the most beautiful country road in Sonoma County, on one of the most beautiful December evenings in California history. The sun was setting. The moon was rising. And I was sweating the big stuff. You know: death.

Mod Pod is by trade a therapist. "Mmm-hmm," she said. "Mmm-hmm."

I should also mention that we were eating donuts, so it was not completely off-the-wall of me to change the subject from my depressing preoccupation with the abyss to donuts. It might have been a little abrupt, though, come to think of it. Like this:

"I don’t think it’s my self self that I am overly attached to so much as my point of view, or myself as a point-of-view character. That’s what I can’t quite fathom letting go of. My point of view."

"Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm."

"You know what I mean?"

"Mmm-hmm." She was driving, looking straight ahead out the windshield. The road was hilly and winding, and Mod Pod is a pretty good driver.

"Pod," I said, "have you ever had a donut that wasn’t good?"

She glanced at me and then looked straight ahead again. The empty bag was on the seat between us. "Let me think about that," she said. "That’s a really good question."

And she thought about it, and — having nothing but time — so did I.

We decided, in the end, that neither of us, and not even the Attack (who joined our conversation in Oakland and would later pay for dinner) had ever had an exactly bad donut. The closest we could come to "bad" was stale. I think it was the Pod — although it could have been anyone — had once bitten into a too-many-days-old donut. Not good. I think it was jelly, with powdered sugar.

The important thing is that life goes on, with or without you or your point of view. And then there it is, like a bright light and classical music: the hugest plate of food ever, with melted cheese in two different colors oozing into brown beans and white rice, chile rellenos and a fried fish taco, table full of delicious salsas, only some of which came out of Mod Pod’s purse … beer, sangria … and … you have zero appetite.

What the fuck?

Maybe it was the donuts. I tasted everything, and everything was great, but I couldn’t quite exactly dig into it, much less put it away. Well, and Mexican food was my idea. Juan’s was theirs. Excellent family-style atmosphere; in fact, they were putting up the Christmas tree while we were eating. I get the sense that this is a go-to East Bay place, although … nobody was there. And I’d never been.

Oooh, I hate saying sentences like that, even when it’s by accident.

JUAN’S PLACE

Mon.–Fri., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.;

Sat.–Sun., 2–10 p.m.

941 Carleton, Berk.

(510) 845-6904

Beer & wine

AE,D,MC,V

Coda

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Coda

paulr@sfbg.com

Coda is just the sort of stylish urban vault where you’d expect to find votive candles flickering on every table, but you don’t. It’s the visual equivalent of a promising dish that’s lacking a final dash of some seasoning. The space has the look of a sound stage — exposed-brick walls, concrete floors, a large dining area uncluttered by pillars — and while there is something exciting about the vastness, vast spaces also fill up easily with darkness. And while darkness can be exciting and even beautiful, it’s more beautiful when punctuated and shaped by light.

The Coda space was home most recently to Levende Lounge — which looked pretty much the same — and before that, Butterfly, whose layout was different and whose tables were each finished with a candle, so that, on entering, you gazed upon a flickering sea of candlelight. Candlelight is wonderfully softening, like a dab of foamed milk atop a demitasse of strong, dark espresso. Shafts of red halogen light, such as shine on one of Coda’s brick walls, are arresting but don’t cast the same limbic spell.

Onward. The space is comfortable enough without candles. The tables, in particular, are nicely spaced, with plenty of breathing room between them. This gives an appealing sense of insulation from other tables and the conversations going on at them (nota bene, eavesdroppers). The overall noise level is also surprisingly moderate, at least when live music isn’t being played. But Coda, in addition to being a good restaurant, is also a live-music venue, with performances every night of the week, beginning at 9 p.m. weekday evenings, 10 p.m. Saturdays, and 8 p.m. Sundays. If it’s just food you seek, plan accordingly.

Simple seekers after food won’t be disappointed. Coda’s menu has been put together by Chris Pastena, who is one of the local masters of Cal-Ital cooking and had a hand in the revival of Bruno’s a few years back. Pastena’s Coda menu divides its offerings according to their nature rather than along the formal lines of a dinner service, so instead of first, main, and side courses, you have soups and salads, starches and grains, vegetables, and flesh. This sort of arrangement is conducive to nibbling; it also helps gently remind us that we should mind our starch intake.

Having said that, I must say that one of the best items on the menu, pastena in brodo ($6.25), smuggles starch to the table under cover of soup. Pastena, in addition to being the chef’s surname, is a small, star-shaped pasta, and it is usually spelled "pastina" — but that would wreck the joke. The pasta is a bit player, anyway, since the real star is the golden brodo, chicken broth stoutly fortified with truffle oil and grated parmesan cheese. The broth could have stood alone, like a brilliant (or consummate) consommé.

As a loather of brussels sprouts in childhood, I am perhaps perversely drawn to them now. They are a real test of vegetable cookery: can the bitterness be drawn away and the texture softened without losing the essential character of the vegetable? Coda’s kitchen makes a lovely salad out of the little cabbages; they are coarsely shredded, dressed with a vinaigrette of sherry and toasted garlic, tossed with bacon and goat cheese, and topped with a poached egg. I didn’t like the egg, which introduced a gooiness I found unsettling, but the rest was fabulous. You could easily re-spin these flavors into a fine pizza.

Another potentially difficult member of the cruciferous family, cavolo nero, or black kale ($4) is simply braised here (in what? we couldn’t tell, but maybe just olive oil) to a tender crispness that reminded me of the flash-fried arugula leaves I had years ago at Abiquiu near Union Square. The bane of kale cookery is toughness, so if your kale turns out tender — as here — you have succeeded.The lone small dish we found underpowered was a bowl of Israeli couscous ($4.25) tossed with what appeared to be mainly a dice of carrots and zucchini. It lacked a unifying flavor or theme and would probably work best as a side dish — to one of the formidable plates of flesh, say.

Among the most interesting of these was the coffee-crusted pork loin ($16): four slices of medium-rare meat bathing in a shallow pool of (Jameson) whiskey-cream sauce. The coffee rub and cream sauce combined to produce a latte effect — beguiling in its own right and also a welcome change from the usual cliched accompaniments of apples, cherries, and so forth. Less impressive, though still quite good, was a grilled ribeye steak ($24.50), nestled on a mat of watercress. The meat had a good smoky flavor and was nicely rare, but it was a little fattier than ideal.

Of an ideal fattiness was the honey-lavender panna cotta, like a tasty, creamy cloud that had been captured in a martini glass. At $5.50, it has to be the best buy on the dessert menu. And a deal is always music to some ears.

CODA

Dinner: Tues.–Sun., 5:30–-10 p.m.

1710 Mission, SF

(415) 551-CODA (2632)

www.codalive.com

Full bar

AE/MC/V

Loud

Wheelchair accessible

Appetite: Holiday Farmers Market Cocktail Night

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Check out more of Virginia’s food news at www.theperfectspotsf.com

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12/2 – Holiday Farmers Market Cocktail Night
Quarterly comes the arrival of CUESA’s Farmers Market Cocktail night, reflecting the best of the season’s produce in cocktail recipes created by our city’s great mixologists. I’ve been to a few, including last winter’s, and despite being outdoors at the Ferry Building, it’s a bustling gathering where warmth comes in the form of two full-sized cocktails (this time around featuring Jim Beam bourbon) and an unlimited sampling of eight other holiday-inspired imbibements highlighting a whole range of spirits. Our local chapter of the United States Bartenders Guild co-hosts the event so bartenders are top notch, including Brian MacGregor of Jardiniere, Scott Baird and Aaron Gregory Smith of 15 Romolo, Lou Bustamante, Erick Castro of Rickhouse, Darren Crawford of Bourbon & Branch, Enrique Sanchez of La Mar, Sierra Zimei of Seasons Bar. There’s prizes and exquisite bites from local restaurants in a holiday tasting party that’s all about the spirit/s of the season.
12/2, 5:30-7:30pm, $30
1 Ferry Building
www.cuesa.org
Tickets: www.brownpapertickets.com

Of the earth

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Of the earth

Boink likes sushi. Specifically he goes for the California roll. Only without avocado. Or seaweed. Or, come to think of it, rice. Boink likes crab.
There’s a sushi joint between their house and the preschool he goes to, and we walk past it and Boink wants sushi. I remember the first time I was surprised, because though we cook everything in the world together, I have rarely seen him eat anything that wasn’t peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crust cut off.
“Sushi, Boink?” I said. “You like sushi?”
“Me too,” said his little sister, Popeye the Sailor Baby. “I like sushi.”
Their mom had packed us snacks. “Me three,” I said.
When I was in grade school there was a substitute teacher name of Carmen Pomponio who shaped my life more than any of my teacher teachers, give or take Sister Esther. Carmen Pomponio had black greasy hair, a beard, dark, deep eyes, and a funny way of talking. He spoke in a languid, sibilanced drawl that was not Southern so much as careless, and I suppose I’m in love with him still.
The teacher teachers used to give him elaborate instructions about which chapter in which book to read, etc. They gave him assignments to give to us. They were sick, but still they were thinking about our intellectual advancement.
Carmen Pomponio always looked like he was thinking about something else, and whether we were in the second grade or the sixth, we all knew what it was: Mark Twain. We could see the little paperback bulge in his tweed coat pocket, and knew he wanted to read to us as badly as we wanted to be read to.
From a distance of 2,000 miles and 40 years, it’s impossible to say who was playing whom. But he would go through the motions — the teacher said this, the teacher said that — reading off of a little piece of paper, a sweat starting on his forehead, his fat lips a-tremble, setting us up, against his better judgment, for our actual lesson. And once he had mapped out in substitute-teacher detail what we were all supposed to do, according to our home-sick teacher, he would look up from his notes, a kind of calm spreading over his face like pizza sauce, and say, “Or I could read you some Twain.”
The first time we might not have known what Twain was, especially the way he said it: “Twaayyyn.” But what kid wouldn’t opt for Twain over Teacher? And after he’d read some Twain once, no class in its right collective mind would let him finish outlining his assignments. Sometimes we didn’t let him start. As soon as you saw Carmen Pomponio in your classroom you would beg in chorus, and in his jangly accent, “Read some Twaayyyn! Read some Twaayyyn!”
As far as I can recall, he always did, doing the characters in different voices and everything. Jim. Huck. Tom. Even Miss Watson. And our little brains churned into butter. How anyone in that school could possibly not grow up to be a writer is beyond me.
Carmen Pomponio had his priorities straight. Some things are a little more important than learning, or even playing. The two I’m thinking of, Mark Twain and sushi, are way more important. Both of them, I would argue, are “of the earth.”
At Kobe-Ya, a dive sushi-to-go joint without a lot of raw fish on the menu, Boink and Popeye stand on the bench seats and dissect California rolls with fingers, chopsticks, forks, and … yeah, mainly fingers. Boink breaks the sushi open like shellfish, picks out the crab, and Popeye kind of cleans up after him, also like shellfish. I use the word “cleans” poetically. Most of the rice winds up on the floor, in the cracks on the bottom of their sneaks, and in my hair.
Me, I’m eating noodles, chicken udon, which is $5.50 for a pretty big bowl, and good. Plus it’s fun for the kids, or at least these ones, who get a kick out of playing with steam.
If you have not yet taken a toddler out for sushi, I recommend it. Just leave a big tip because rice is pretty sticky. You know.
KOBE-YA
Daily, 11 a.m.–8 p.m.
2300 Encinal, Alameda
(510) 337-1966
Beer & sake
MC/V

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