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Best of the Bay 2012: BEST TOFU SORCERERS

Andrew Lam
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Best of the Bay 2012: BEST TOFU SORCERERS

BEST TOFU SORCERERS

It’s rare to taste a sliver of tofu fresh from the package that melts in your mouth. Blocks of the standard grocery-store variety are best used in sizzling cooked-up meals, sopping up sauce or marinade to provide any substantial taste. But not so the bricks from Hodo Soy Beanery, crafted in a cheery Oakland factory that offers weekly tours. No, this tofu is good enough to eat raw. Hodo, which opened its doors in 2004, even goes above and beyond its gleaming white cubes of organic, non-GMO protein. The company sells the whole soy cow: soymilk, snack-friendly yuba strips, five-spice tofu nuggets, and lemongrass curry nuggets. Varieties are sold throughout Bay Area specialty food shops and farmers markets, but we highly recommend coming out to Hodo’s factory, where you can couple your shopping with a tour of the factory floor.

2923 Adeline, Oakl. (510) 464-2977, www.hodosoy.com

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST OLD SCHOOL PANINI

Andrew Lam
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BEST OLD SCHOOL PANINI

There are places in North Beach that are parodies of themselves: fake replicas of what someone from North Dakota might think a San Francisco Italian restaurant would look like. Too often, the meals these pretenders serve are a tepid farce. Not so with the grilled mozzarella and tomato panini from Mario’s Bohemian Cigar Store Cafe. The sandwich’s authenticity mirrors that of the small, sometimes crowded restaurant and local hangout itself, which hasn’t changed much in the three decades we’ve been going there. The menu is limited, but the food is excellent, featuring fresh ingredients simply prepared. Take the panini in question: eaten alongside a glass of red or Campari on the rocks, it makes a perfect SF lunch. A nice reminder that everything old and cool hasn’t been priced out of town.

566 Columbus, SF. (415) 362-0536

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST CURD CRUSADER

Andrew Lam
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BEST CURD CRUSADER

Cheesemaking: the process sounds intimidating, but no matter how you slice it, it’s all about caring for curds. You, the non-dairy-farming urban-dweller, can learn the mores involved in this delicate relationship via the Milk Maid, a.k.a. Louella Hill. Hill will let you taste some of the mind-blowing blue cheese she concocts in her home kitchen. But she doesn’t really want to make cheese for you, though she could. Instead, she wants to empower you to make your own wedges and wheels. She imparts lessons in classrooms, at farmers markets, even at alt-hip bachelorette party tutorials. Having studied cheese-making from the Hudson Valley to Northern Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, the woman oozes sharp, smelly, and semi-soft expertise — you could do a lot worse than let her teach you to baby a blue.

www.sfmilkmaid.com

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST IT’S WHAT’S INSIDE THAT COUNTS

Andrew Lam
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BEST IT’S WHAT’S INSIDE THAT COUNTS

Christine Doerr, the chocoholic force behind Neo Cocoa, makes truffles sans the outer hard chocolate shell. Why bother with an extra layer when you can go straight to the gooey ganache inside, capable of melting perfectly in your mouth? After all, isn’t their filling the reason why we eat truffles in the first place? That was Doerr’s thought, anyway, when she enrolled in La Cocina’s food vendor incubator program. Now she has her own personal chocolate kitchen and her amazing, ridiculously decadent chocolates can be found all over the Bay Area. Warning to all Neo newbies: these truffles are dangerously addictive!

www.neococoa.com

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST GEMÜTLICHKEIT

Andrew Lam
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BEST GEMÜTLICHKEIT

Mention Speisekammer Restaurant to islanders who know, and you’ll get an instant flash of that gemütlichkeit, or cheery coziness, the spot is renown for. They’ll bend your earbone raving about the dishes served up under the ownership of former Cafe du Nord honcho Cindy Johnson-Kohl: the succulent sauerbraten served with a side of red cabbage and spätzle, the cabbage rolls, the potato pancakes with house-made apple compote — or for the unrepentant carnivores in the fam, the Gegrillte Fleischplatte, a family-style grilled meat platter spilling over with sausages. It’s the lip-smacking stuff of liebling’s dreams — and it’s all begging to be washed down with a selection from the expansive drink list, and accompanied by live music from locals like the Frisky Frolics jazz cats, and Cali country outfit Kit and the Branded Men.

2424 Lincoln, Alameda. (510) 522-1300, www.speisekammer.com

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST ALL-AMERICAN CONFECTIONARY OVERLOAD

Andrew Lam
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BEST ALL-AMERICAN CONFECTIONARY OVERLOAD

What’s more American than apple pie? We’re of the informal opinion that it’s milkshakes, and no, we’re not being paid by the American Dairy Association to say that. Imagine our glee, then, when the quietly unassuming Chile Pies opened up and — in addition to tasty treats such as empanada-like tamale hand pies and green chile pot pies with cheddar cheese crusts — an extravagant decadence known as Chile Pies’ pie milkshake also made it onto the menu. That’s right. It’s pie. And milkshake. Any pie you want and any flavor of Three Twin’s truly superior ice cream, served in a generous glass mug and topped with a billowing drift of whipped cream. Share it with a loved one to prevent instant coronary arrest, or live dangerously and gobble down a whole one yourself. You’ll never look at pie à la mode with quite the same dotage, guaranteed.

601 Baker, SF. (415) 614-9411; 314 Church, SF. (415) 431-9411, www.chilepies.com

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST SEASONAL SUDS

Andrew Lam
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BEST SEASONAL SUDS

Don’t scoff at fruit beer — at least not until you’ve tried a bottle from Almanac Beer Co. Jesse Friedman and Damian Fagan make but one kind of small-batch beer a season, testing and re-tasting until they’ve hit upon the perfect produce with which to pair their bottlings. But we’re not talking coupling suggestions here. Almanac chooses an agricultural partner for each of its releases, adding to that beer’s standard mash bright harvest flavors from places like Kingsburg’s Hamada Farms, source of enviable citrus fruits, and Heirloom Organic Gardens, whose springtime fennel graces this year’s earthy Bière de Mars. Each release is limited, stamped with an eye-catching label, and let to ferment a third time in the bottle itself, lending each sip a sprightly, effervescent fizz.

www.almanacbeer.com

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST SPICY CRACKER

Andrew Lam
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BEST SPICY CRACKER

Noe Valley’s new destination sushi bar Saru does an excellent job of revamping its closet-sized space, making it feel roomier, sleeker, and, thanks to large front windows and an elegant brown color scheme, altogether different from the previous two sushi spots occupying the same space. Any sushi bar serving “the lobster of prawns” — pristine, raw spot amaebi — is already savvy. In addition to the usual salmon and tuna offerings, adventurous eaters can try plenty of playful, unique bites prepared with care, including the wonderful “spicy cracker” — a crispy sheet of seaweed fried in tempura and topped with spicy tuna and avocado. Sushi nachos? Yes, please! Also neat: tasting spoons filled with vivid, raw fish, drizzled in elegant dressings like truffle oil. Snappy rolls satisfy while cheery service welcomes you back.

3856 24th St., SF. (415) 400-4510, www.akaisarusf.com

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST SPLASH OF GREEN

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Best of the Bay 2012: BEST SPLASH OF GREEN

Need a bit of gentle encouragement before you open your home to an exquisite orchid? Will it take a little nudge before carnivorous pitcher plants share space with your beloved ironic porcelain figurines? Maybe a delicate hand is called for when it comes to developing a chic terrarium habit. Michelle Reed, the owner of indoor plant paradise Roots, has no problem with all that — her gorgeous little boutique is there to help green up your apartment and let the sunshine in. Besides delectable, mood-brightening plants for your inner sanctum, the store also stocks a healthy selection of local art to elevate your interior design aesthetic, as well as a neat array of planters and supplies (we’re in love with the heart-shaped wall planters that look like little light sconces). Let your tight, high-rent space breathe a little easier with help from Roots’ little friends.

425 S. Van Ness, SF. (415) 817-1592

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST VALUE-ADDED WAFFLE

Andrew Lam
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BEST VALUE-ADDED WAFFLE

Despite regulations handed down by the city’s Medical Cannabis Task Force, which have eschewed food that can’t be stored at room temperature and have made mandatory stringent labeling guidelines to prevent kiddos from getting caught up in too-cute pot food, Bay Area medicated food producers continue to innovate. See: various trail mixes, hard ginger and cinnamon-flavored candies, and high-class chocolate. But our favorite non-traditional cannabis food item isn’t all that non-traditional … in Amsterdam. Canna Organics’ Stroop Waffle packs a punch at four doses per pair of flat waffle cones, stuck together by a chewy, sticky layer of caramel. It’s like carnival food, but meant to take you on a journey to alleviate your aches and pains, neuroses, and various other maladies.

Available at various Bay Area dispensaries

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST BREW-NOS AIRES

Andrew Lam
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0

BEST BREW-NOS AIRES

If you’re looking for the perfect brew to pop into your Dolores Park-prepped picnic basket, look no further than the new-ish Ceveceria de Mateveza, where Mateveza’s signature ales, lagers, and IPAs brewed with that stimulating Argentinean beverage yerba mate await in a park-side brewpub location. There are ready-to-go bottles for the sunshine-inclined, but also perfect blends of stimulating mate and smooth-tasting hops on tap if you prefer to snag a pint — plus one of the joint’s sweet or savory emapanadas — and hang indoors. Just don’t let the décor fool you; the picturesque shelves of Buenos Aires paraphernalia belie the fact that real porteños would never befoul their beloved tea with beer. Thanks goodness we’re in San Francisco, where alternative couplings are a point of pride.

3801 18th St., SF. (415) 273-9295, www.ceveceriasf.com

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST STYLE FOR APOCALYPSE SURVIVAL

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Best of the Bay 2012: BEST STYLE FOR APOCALYPSE SURVIVAL

Triple Aught Designs fills a post-North Face niche almost too perfectly: the outdoor apparel company is locally based (it’s headquartered in the Dogpatch) and personable (the recently opened outlet in Hayes Valley offers a friendly, intimate shopping experience). It is also light-years ahead in terms of tech and design: hyper-strong micro-thin jackets and hoodies in futuristic battleground colors so styley we’d seriously consider sporting them on the dance floor, plus elbow armor and space pens that zip right past wilderness campouts and into Prometheus territory. We’re particularly enamored of the Triple Aught backpacks — these strappy beauts could have been nabbed from a boutique on Tatooine, a perfect look for riding out the coming apocalypse.

660 22nd St.; 551 Hayes, SF (415) 318-8252, www.tripleaughtdesign.com

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST ILLUMINATI

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Best of the Bay 2012: BEST ILLUMINATI

Situation: You’ve just moved into a new place, only to look up and discover that the previous owner somehow Frankensteined three different desk lamps from the more aesthetically challenged end of the 1990s into a living room light fixture. It must die. Worse: Your aunt just gifted you the most generic Walmart wall sconces ever for your housewarming present, and she is coming to stay next month. Perhaps worst of all: You’ve just discovered a gorgeous 1930s pendant lamp in the basement, but it’s banged up terribly and who the heck knows if it works? Solution to everything: the wizards at Dogfork Lamp Arts, headed by owner Michael Donnelly. Services include restoring and rewiring antique lamps and light fixtures, and even reinventing ugly ones — making glowing swans of your awkward mass-market ducklings. (We discovered Dogfork’s magic at the new Local’s Corner restaurant in the Mission, where a pair of Pottery Barn lamps were transformed into wonderfully intriguing, post-steampunk sconces.) Rip out that gross track lighting and put up something unique.

199 Potrero, SF. (415) 431-6727, www.dogfork.com

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST RIBS IN THE ROUGH

Andrew Lam
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0

BEST RIBS IN THE ROUGH

One need only scope the location of Double D BBQ next to the decidedly unlovely International Avenue to grok that the storefront incarnation of this former food truck is as unpretentious as it is under-hyped. Credit this food-first attitude to owner Duane Orr’s blunt (but friendly) personality. Screw décor — his art is barbeque. Our favorite is his brisket sandwich: greasy, fatty, saucy chunks of meat falling out of a soft roll. Double D’s Texas-style red sauce, sold by the bottle, is sweet and tangy with a mild spice. Other menu highlights? Ribs and chicken grilled with a perfect hint of char, and creamy, peppery macaroni and cheese. Fair warning: we’ve begun to have severe Double D brisket cravings. A similar yen might lead you to cavalier disregard for aesthetic niceties.

1240 First Ave., Oakl. (510) 228-7000, www.doubledbbq.net

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST POLKA PURVEYOR

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Best of the Bay 2012: BEST POLKA PURVEYOR

Though Skylar Fell fell in love with the squeezebox via a happy exposure to the punks of the East Bay’s Accordion Plague back in the 1990s, she knows to pay homage to the masters. Fell apprenticed with master repairman Vincent J. Cirelli at his workshop in Brisbane (in business since 1946!) and at Berkeley’s now-defunct Boaz Accordions before opening Accordion Apocalypse in SoMa. The shop, which both sells and repairs, also stocks new and antique instruments in well-known brands (to accordionists, that is) Scandalli, Horner, Roland, and Gabanelli. Fell will fix you up if you bust a button on your beloved accordion, and she has made her store into a hub for lovers of the bellows — check out the website for accordion events coming up in or out of the city.

255 10th St., SF. (415) 596-5952, www.accordianapocalypse.com

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST BABKA, BUBBELEH

Andrew Lam
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Best of the Bay 2012: BEST BABKA, BUBBELEH

BEST BABKA, BUBBELEH

Have you ever fantasized about eating a chocolate bar for breakfast and totally getting away with it? (Be honest now.) No need to slip a Snickers in your Corn Flakes — or even worry about dessert for a couple weeks — when you’ve got a huge, heavy, delicious babka from Wise Sons in your breadbox. Evan Bloom and Leo Beckerman’s canny tribute to traditional Jewish food made the transition from popular pop-up brunch and Ferry Plaza Farmers Market stand to perhaps too-popular brick-and-mortar deli this year. The charming old-school atmosphere and menu filled with dishes like the mouth-watering chopped liver, the addictive pastrami cheese fries, and the vibrant pickle plate are certainly worth the often considerable wait. But it’s the formidable chocolate babka, made of scrumptious dark chocolate ribboned through dense, cinnamon-flavored, brioche-like dough, that really has us missing Grandma (although perhaps she wouldn’t approve of such indulgence).

3150 24th St., SF. (415) 787-3354, www.wisesonsdeli.com

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST HOGWARTS GREENHOUSE FOR MUGGLES

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Best of the Bay 2012: BEST HOGWARTS GREENHOUSE FOR MUGGLES

They may not scream when you uproot them or ensnare you with insidious vineage, but the exceptional succulents, epiphytes, and bromeliads at Crimson Horticultural Rarities will certainly tickle your fancy — in a perfectly harmless way. Find everything necessary to cook up an enchanted garden or adorn your dorm room (four-poster bed not included) in singular style. Proprietresses Leigh Oakies and Allison Futeral indulge your desires with oddities ranging from the elegant to the spectacular to the slightly creepy, and will even apply their botanical wherewithal to help you create a whimsical wedding. Or, if your potions kit needs restocking, Crimson can supply sufficient dried butterflies and taxidermied bird wings to oblige you. (Collected, cruelty-free, from California Academy of Sciences.)

470 49th St., Oakl. (510) 992-3519, www.crimsonhort.com

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST LAING IN THE ‘LOIN

Andrew Lam
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0

BEST LAING IN THE ‘LOIN

Foodies know: if you want sit-down Filipino cuisine, head to Daly City for the densest concentration of deliciousness. Yet there’s an outlier — a humble little Tenderloin hole-in-the-wall steadily serving the real deal. Family-run Kusina Ni Tess dishes out kare-kare, a peanut sauce-based Filipino stew; picadillo, a savory mélange of ground pork, carrot, potato, and green peas; and fish in tangy, sweet-sour broth. For breakfast, savor garlic fried rice with egg and your choice of meat: try Filipino corned beef or daing na bangus (butterflied, skin-on milkfish). The staff will offer tastes to help you choose from the hearty, ultra-cheap menu — all dishes under $9 — but don’t miss the laing: taro leaves cooked in coconut milk and shrimp paste, tinged with subtle chile heat. Finish it all off with egg pie or young coconut pie.

237 Ellis, SF. (415) 351-1169

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST LOCAL UNION, PINT DIVISION

Andrew Lam
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BEST LOCAL UNION, PINT DIVISION

Visitors to the SF Beer Week opening gala might have been surprised to find that a sizable portion of the Concourse Exhibition Center was dedicated to beer brewed right here in the Bay Area. Our beloved Anchor Steam and 21st Amendment breweries are no longer the only sudsers in town — no, not by a long shot. This expansion in local brew is part of a national trend, but local leaps may be due, in part, to the efforts of the SF Brewers Guild — an association, born in 2004, of 10 of the city’s best-loved new breweries, including Magnolia Pub and Brewery and Thirsty Bear Brewing Company. In addition to Beer Week, the group organizes a “meet the brewers” event every month, an easy entry point for those who want to take their local beer boosting past six-pack status.

www.sfbrewersguild.org

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST REALITY TV-STYLE SCORES

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Best of the Bay 2012: BEST REALITY TV-STYLE SCORES

Gold Rush Alaska? Deadliest Roads? Swamp Life? Though you love ’em, it’s hard to apply what you’ve learned during those late-night trashy-television-and-junk-food binges. But fans of Storage Wars and American Pickers, rejoice! At the Santa Cruz Flea Market, you’ll meet folks who locker for a living and travel hours to sell their scores — everything from fur coats to antique fuel tanks. Pick through yourself to see what invaluable treasures turn up: belt-driven two-seater motorcycle? Check. Handmade blown glass, Civil War memorabilia, bootlegger’s copper still? Check, check, check. Come for the farm-fresh produce, aisles of leather boots, plastic whosee-whatsits and electronics of dubious provenance, or, if Man Versus Food is more your style, challenge a massive stuffed baked potato or shrimp ceviche tostada.

Fridays, 7am; Saturdays, 6am; Sundays, 5:30am; $1-$2.50. 2260 Soquel, Santa Cruz. (831) 462-4442, www.scgoodwill.org

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST COOKBOOK CHEFTIVIST

Andrew Lam
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BEST COOKBOOK CHEFTIVIST

In this era of Paula Deen-Anthony Bourdain warfare and endless glossy spreads of chefs-cum-rockstars-without-the-rock, you are to be excused for not caring about yet-another celebrity chef writeup. But stay your cleaver. Oakland’s own Bryant Terry considers himself an activist who uses comestibles as a medium for social change, not TV dinner promotion. Terry’s beautiful, seasonally sensitive vegan cookbooks — his latest is The Inspired Vegan (Da Capo Lifelong Books, $19, 240pp) — contextualize recipes so that the connection between eating healthy and having healthy communities is clear. He also tours the country educating audiences about vegan lifestyle and cooking, with a focus on minority communities, and makes no bones about the fact that he thinks families could stand to spend more time in the kitchen together.

www.bryant-terry.com

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST ONE-UP ON INSTAGRAM

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Best of the Bay 2012: BEST ONE-UP ON INSTAGRAM

The square aspect ratio and grainy filters of everyone’s favorite $1 billion photography app turn perfectly good shots crappy-cool with the swipe of a finger, allowing smart phone users everywhere to take photos way back. But to take photos way, way back, you have to be in the Mission for a tintype portrait at Photobooth. These old-timey sheet-steel images were once popular at carnivals and fairs; even after wet plate photography became obsolete, tintypes were deemed charmingly nostalgic — a sort of prescient irony that pre-dated hipsterism yet neatly anticipated it. Perhaps that same appreciative irony applied to the tintype’s tendency — due to long exposure time — to make subjects look vaguely, yet somehow quaintly, sociopathic. Or, as the Photobooth website delicately puts it, “Traditionally, tintypes recorded the intensity of the individual personality.”

1193 Valencia, SF. (415) 824-1248, www.photoboothsf.com

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST KNOBS OF GLAMOUR

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Best of the Bay 2012: BEST KNOBS OF GLAMOUR

In addition to being part of a string of friendly neighborhood hardware stores, Belmont Hardware‘s Potrero Hill showroom brims unexpectedly with rooms of fancy doorknobs, created by the companies who design modern-day fittings for the likes of the White House and the Smithsonian. A gold-plated door handle with an engraving of the Sun King? A faucet set featuring two crystal birds with out-stretched wings, vigilantly regulating your hot and cold streams of water? It’s all at Belmont Hardware. With a broad range of prices (you can still go to them for $10 quick-fix drawer knobs and locks, don’t worry) and an even broader scope of products, Belmont represents a world where hardware can inspire — check out the local chain’s four other locations for more ways to bring the glory home.

Various Bay Area locations. www.belmonthardware.com

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST ART SQUAWK

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Best of the Bay 2012: BEST ART SQUAWK

Sure, on any given Sunday the Rare Bird is flush with vintage duds for guys and gals, antique cameras, birdhouses, jewelry, and trinkets. But for all you birds looking to truly find your flock, fly in to this fresh store on third Thursdays during the Piedmont Avenue Art Walk. Rare Bird proprietress Erica Skone-Reese hatched the event a year ago, and has chaired the art walk committee ever since, giving all those art-walk lovers who Murmur, Stroll, and Hop (all names of Bay Area art walks, for the uninitiated) a place to home in between first Fridays. Can’t make it when the Ave.’s abuzz? No worries. Rare Bird curates an always-changing list of featured artisans — like Featherluxe, who’ll fulfill your vegan feather-extension needs should you have them — and recently began offering classes in all art forms trendy and hipster, from terrarium making to silhouette portraiture.

3883 Piedmont, Oakl. (510) 653-2473, www.therarebird.com

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