Cheap Eats

A real SF tweet

-
0

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS I keep buying little plants and killing them. This makes me miss chickens, which are, in my experience, both easier to keep alive and more gratifying to kill. Now that they come from the grocery store, I cook more chickens than ever. Therefore, I would like to have fresh herbs in my kitchen. Therefore, I keep buying these little plants.

And killing them.

Luck would have it, I was in New Orleans when the 49ers beat the Saints. Did you see that? Both Coach and Wayway, with whom I was in constant textual contact that day, described hoots, honks, and general happiness in our neighborhood here. And that was before kick-off! I can imagine what it was like after.

Here there was dead-ass silence for a change. Except me and Hedgehog, who were writhing and screaming on our leather couch in front of our 50-inch flat screen plasmatic TV. Until we both wet our pants and had to jump in our Jacuzzi bathtub.

By our I mean someone else’s.

Except the pants.

Next day on KCBS John Madden called it the best game he ever saw — which is saying something, as he’s seen a lot of games. Me, I am not so prone to hyperbole. Either that or I am journalismically challenged by the old-fashionedest of lag times between my opinion of Things and publication. (Don’t worry; as we speak, Hedgehog is teaching me how to twit.)

Well, whatever happens(ed) with the rest of this football season, I want you to know where I’ll be watching the games next season, since in real life I don’t even own a TV, let alone a big flat plasmatic one .. .

At my new favorite restaurant: The Old Clam House!

Twenty-two years I’ve been living in and around this city, and for exactly that long have I been meaning to eat at The Old Clam House. It’s the oldest restaurant in San Francisco! In the same location! Since 1861!

To give you some idea of how long ago that is, think of it like this: 151 years.

Considering what all has gone down since then — the big earthquake, the other one, and Donte Whitner’s hit on Pierre Thomas — it’s amazing that even some of the Clam House is still standing. But the bar area is original, according to them. And from the photos you can tell that it is.

So that was where we sat. Checkerboard floor, wood trim, old-fangled ceiling tiles, and the Niners game on TV. Mind you, I had just played football, over at Crocker Amazon, so I probably didn’t smell very pretty. Or look nice.

In fact I was starving, cold, and frazzled. And my hamstring was gone, so I had to sit on ice. We ordered clams paella acini and Swiss chard with onions and bacon, and Hedgehog ordered something stiff to drink, because as hard as it is to play on my football team, I think it’s even harder to watch.

The paella was delicious, and in an unusual way: cioppino sauce, sausage, olives, cheddar cheese. And acini are little tiny pastas, between couscous and orzo. We’d have preferred rice, but it was good this way too. The clams were good, and plentiful, the sausage so-so, and the Swiss chard of course was great. (Bacon.)

As for the bread and butter, besides being pretty good breads and butters, I like it that they tell you on the menu not only where the bread comes from, but where the butter comes from: Acme and Strauss, respectively.

Butter does matter.

My favorite touch, however, was the little glass of warm clam broth with onions that they brought to our table first. That was a yummy, warming treat, and a very nice touch.

Plus I ordered a Coke and it came in a carafe.

But listen up, Mr. Madden: I totally agree. And for more up-to-date (and shorter) musings on sports, food, and Things, you can henceforth tweeter me at @lechickenfarmer. *

THE OLD CLAM HOUSE

Daily: 11 a.m.-10 p.m.

299 Bayshore Blvd., SF.

(415) 826-4880

AE/D/MC/V

Full bar

Fresh and fancy-free

-
0
Fresh and fancy-free

virginia@sfbg.com

APPETITE Despite all its high-end culinary buzz, San Francisco is loaded with amazing cheap eats (as my colleague L.E. Leone has been documenting for decades for the Guardian). Here are three new places I consider worth adding to your go-to list.

 

CHUBBY NOODLE

Chubby Noodle easily counts as a best cheap eats opening of 2011. In the back of comfortably retro Amante (www.amantesf.com) bar, order at a kitchen window, illuminated in neon by the word “Hungry?” Then slide into roomy booths to fill up on fresh, daily ceviche, Hawaiian tuna poke ($11), and heartwarming red miso ramen ($9 with pork and poached egg; $11 with shrimp). I expected good from owners of the excellent, neighboring Don Pisto’s — but it’s better than good.

Whatever you do, don’t miss organic, buttermilk-brined, Mary’s fried chicken ($9 for five-piece wings or strips, 2 piece drum and thigh meal $7). It’s traditional American fried chicken with a contemporary Asian attitude, dipped in habit-forming, creamy sambal dipping sauce. Tender chicken strips are an elevated, gourmet version of chicken tenders from childhood.

House kimchi is no slouch, working its gently heated wonders as a side ($4) or on a kimchi kobe beef hot dog ($6). Besides the fried chicken, my other favorite dish is spicy garlic noodles ($8). Chewy and homemade, they’re oozing with garlic, oyster sauce, and a little jalapeno kick. The Korean pork tacos ($9) aren’t carbon copies of the usual trendy dish. Instead of shredded pork, chunks of Niman Ranch rib chop give beefy heft, contrasted by Korean pickles, yogurt sauce, and arbol chile vinegar.

570 Green, SF. 415-361-8850, www.thechubbynoodle.com

 

ROOSTERTAIL

Roostertail is, yes, another rotisserie joint. A few visits after the recent opening, I’m impressed with the friendly staff who exude a warm welcome, even when merely grabbing take-out (Note the just-launched curbside pickup with prepaid phone orders). The space boasts silver counter tops and bright red stools, festive with beer and wine on draft.

When it comes to rotisserie, I’ll take dark meat, thanks ($5.75–<\d>$18.50, quarter to whole birds). The organic, juicy meat is delightful with the garlicky green house sauce. Husband-wife team, Gerard Darian and Tracy Green, get their mainstay right.

A pulled pork sandwich ($10.75) is a solid sandwich pick, on an Acme bun topped with fresh coleslaw unencumbered by mayo. Tiny chicken wings didn’t excite (I prefer Hot Sauce & Panko’s creative, meatier wings), nor did the cheesesteak sandwich. But there’s brisket, five different sandwiches, or hefty salad options, along with soulful sides ($4–<\d>$5.50) like brisket baked beans or brussels sprouts with bacon.

1963 Sutter, SF. (415) 776-6738, www.roostertailsf.com

 

GALETTE 88

There’s a Ti Couz-shaped hole where my Brittany crepe hunger resides.

Through the years, crepes didn’t get better than at the now-defunct Ti Couz in the Mission. At the end of an alley off Kearny, the new Galette 88 isn’t exactly a replacement. There’s not quite the same depth of buckwheat earthiness. The French galettes (a.k.a. buckwheat crepes; savory: $6–<\d>$10, sweet: $5–<\d>$6) are even thinner, still crisp, a little less flavorful, but nonetheless worthwhile. Gluten-free and healthy, they’re made with only three ingredients — water, sea salt, buckwheat flour made from buckwheat which is a plant, not a grain — loaded with fiber, vegetable protein, calcium, iron.

Order Four Barrel coffee, Mighty Leaf tea, or hard cider and choose a crepe. Bruce’s Choice ($10) is my first pick, layered with smoked salmon, caramelized onions, and capers, topped with avocado slices, greens, and a tart/sweet lemon chive creme fraiche. Light yet filling, the zesty lemon sauce makes it.

Bleu Velvet ($9) is a savory-sweet choice with blue cheese, browned apples, arugula, honey, and toasted almonds. Dessert crepes (lemon sugar, roasted apples with salted caramel, chocolate with candied orange peel, or Nutella), made with eggs, milk, wheat flour and sugar, lacked the subtle chewiness and flavor of Ti Couz’s wheat dessert crepes. But in their absence, Galette 88’s crepes contend for the best in town.

It’s already one of the more pleasant FiDi lunch options (with just-added dinner, Wed.-Fri.): casual, order-at-the-counter ease, the owner flitting about, ensuring water cups are filled and everyone is content. The space is minimalist with live birch trees towering in one corner and a decidedly Mission air that’s rare in FiDi.

88 Hardie Pl., (415) 989-2222, www.galettesf.com *

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

 

Brighter Days

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Kayday, she doesn’t so much like it in Seattle, and this comes as no surprise to me. Or her. Or you, probably, if you’ve ever been there. If not, just go to weather.com and sample a 10-day forecast, any 10 days, this time of year. That’ll give you some idea what she’s up against. It’s a beautiful city with good coffee and, traditionally, strong music, but that doesn’t make it any kind of long-term livable for a sunny-dispositioned nature such as Kayday’s.

This bodes well for the eventual re-existence of our band, which (to be fair) has been not only Seattled but New Orleansed into a pretty perpetual state of discontinuation.

We’ll have our day.

Meanwhile, Kayday keeps coming down for the weekend. One time it was Thanksgiving. Just a day or two beforehand we were talking or texting and I said, not meaning much by it, "What are you doing for the holiday?"

"Oh, I don’t know," she said. "You?"

"Smoking a big fat turkey," I said. "In Berkeley." Then, though it seemed like a long shot: "Wanna come down and eat with us?"

She did! Which impressed me, considering how hard it is to get city-side folks to cross the bridge for dinner.

Kayday came back again just a few weeks after, in the meat of December, by which time the planet was so dang tilted folks up there had mold in their ears. Many had forgotten what daylight even looks like.

It’s dark when she goes to work in the morning, Kayday said, and dark again by the time she comes home.

"That sounds downright Germanic," I said. "What are you doing by way of anti-depressant?"

"Plotting to move back to San Francisco," she said.

When she’s here, she goes for long runs in Golden Gate Park, which is known to fog over, too — but apparently it’s a different, more cheerful quality of fog.

I believe it. Anyway, we went to LCX for dinner: me, her, and Hedgehog. LCX stands for Le Cheval um … used to be. I guess.

Because that’s the situation here. What used to be Le Cheval in downtown Oakland is now Le Cheval a.k.a. LCX in downtown Oakland. Only a block away from where it was.

What happened: about a year ago, after fifteen years at Clay and (I think) 10th, Le Cheval got evicted. Boo. Hiss.

But, in the spirit of showmustgoonmanpersonship — hooray — they opened LCX, which is run by the old owner’s son. There are still Le Chevals in Berkeley and Walnut Creek, but the downtown Oakland one is now this: this … wine bar. With food.

I can’t tell if it’s the same, because I hadn’t been to the old Le Cheval in a long time, before they closed, but my sense is no.

Yes.

Maybe.

Well, the only thing I recognized on our table was fried calamari, which was every bit as tender and delicious as I remembered from the old place. It came with a little bowl of salty peppery lemony dipping juice, which it didn’t really even need. Just a little.

Perhaps not coincidentally, I also ordered bo luc lac, chunks of grilled tenderloin steak with green beans. And that came with the same salt-pepper-lemon dip. With or without which, the dish was fantastic: the meat was tender, rare, and garlicky, and the beans had real snap to them.

Alas, my buds were not so lucky in their ordering. Kayday was OK with her beef with vegetables, but Hedgehog did not like her lemon grass beef. And I agree it was lame — neither lemony nor grassy. I blame her misfortune on Lotus Garden, in the Mission, for making such an event out of their lemon grass chicken. Remember? It was so good that Hedgehog can’t stop ordering lemon grass this and that, even when she’s not at Lotus Garden.

I know how that is.

LCX

Mon.-Thu. 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri. and Sat. 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m.; Sun. 4p.m.-9 p.m.

1019 Clay, Oakl.

(510) 763-8495

AE,D,MC,V

Full bar

Holeyness

-
0

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Remember when we used to go out to Ocean Beach on New Years Eve nights and burn Christmas trees? I want to do that again. I think you can still have a bonfire, right — at the end of the park?

Maybe next year.

Over the last couple holiday seasons I have been gradually feeling my way back into the spirit of things — last year by visiting Joshua Tree and hacking a chicken’s head off, and this year via the good ol’ American tradition of watching football on TV and eating potato chips and geese.

That was Christmas Eve. I even got some presents for people!

At this rate, by 2013 I will be a good Christian. Until then though, and with due respect to Georgie Bundle’s avocado-smoked goose (out of this world), I think my favorite Christmas Day tradition is how the Jews do: Chinese food and a movie.

There were two shows we would have preferred, but for the occasion it seemed like a good idea to choose a chosen person’s: Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, which was by Christmas only still playing in Berkeley.

Now, I know it’s unpopular to like Woody Allen, but I can’t help it, I still do. He repeats himself, he’s predictable, he has a favorite type font, and all the other old problems … but: still fucking funny, and in this case even sweet, to boot.

But I’m not a movie reviewer.

Hi. My new favorite insecticide is Orange Guard®, because it works. And smells good. As part of my re-entrification into religiousness program, I have been practicing genocide. On ants, of which Oakland has several.

In fact, I’m pretty sure Woody Allen played an ant in an animated movie once, in case you’re looking for a tie-in.

Just so you know though, I’m not. I’m trying to find my way — via the scenic route, as usual — to Chinatown.

Oakland’s.

Christmas morning, late morning, before the movie. And as it happens there was a line of ants marching in under our cottage door while we were marching out, so I got the Orange Guard®, sprayed the franks and beans out of them, and then slipped on the mess my massacre made and almost broke my leg.

Restaurantwise, as usual Hedgehog had done her homework, and mine too. We went to Gum Kuo, because they open early and have Chinese donuts. It was the kind of place where we were the only whiteys in the place. The waitressperson seemed to want to ignore us, which gave us time to study the donuts before ordering them.

They are sliced crullerlike thangs that you’re supposed to dunk into rice porridge, or jook. But I’m honestly not very much interested in porridge, or jook. No. I’ll dip my own personal Chinese donuts in a steaming bowl of roast duck won ton noodle soup, thank you. And they were delicious, drowned suchwise, but unnecessary, because roast duck won ton noodle soup is a big enough breakfast for me any day of the week — Christmas included.

And that wasn’t even everything. We also had fried chicken wings, which were weak, and some barbecued pork and cilantro rice rolls, which were strong. Hedgehog wasn’t convinced, but I loved them. They’re chopped up pieces of pork with tons and tons of cilantro, wrapped in a gooey rice dough and drenched with something soy saucy.

Admittedly, the rice wrapper was overdone and gloopy, but the insides were so good I was almost thankful for the flaw. Otherwise, my head might have unscrewed and shot through the ceiling. Which would have been embarrassing.

The soup was not out of this world, but the duck part was excellent, and the won tons had discernible shrimps in them, and the noodles tasted homemade, and, hey, maybe it was a little out of this world.

In any case, we had a good time. By the time we left there was a line out the door of the place. And then it was like that after the movie, too. This leads me to believe that Hedgehog and me are ahead of our time.

Although: there are other possible interpretations.

GUM KUO

Sun.-Thu. 7:30 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri. & Sat. 7:30 a.m.-midnight

388 9th St., Ste. 182, Oakl.

(510) 268-1288

Cash only

No alcohol

Chip-chip-hooray

Andrew Lam
-
0

CHEAP EATS What’d I say 50 weeks ago? “More fun in one-one,” or something, and, well, I had it!

But I earned and deserved this, dear reader, after the shit show that was one-oh. This year, my Favorite Year Ever, started on a choo-choo across the country, and ended with a chocolate chip cookie. In between, I re-rocked Boston and took NOLA by storm (January), fell in love with the prickliest li’l softest-centered dyke that ever strapped on a strap-on (February), befriended yet another awesome little baby (March), was carried off a football field on some shoulders (April), turned forty-fucking-eight (May), restormed NOLA (June), co-chicken-farmed France (July), remembered how to write in Mexico (August), drove across the country (September) … and so on and also forth — until that cookie I was trying to tell you about.

What was so special about this chocolate chip cookie, late December, 2011 (my Favorite Year Ever), was that it didn’t have any chocolate chips in it.

I know, right?

What seemed like chocolate chips turned out to be raisins; except then what appeared to be raisins turned out to be dried cranberries. Only they weren’t; they were dried cherries. Give or take the ones that weren’t dried cherries either but chocolate covered pretzels — some of which, upon closer examination were butterscotch chips that were really white chocolate chips.

In other words, I don’t know what the hell was in them, just that they were the magickest chocolate chip cookies I ever ate, and there’s one left.

I’m in love with Hedgehog’s best friend Jellybean over these cookies. The sweetie pie, she let us stay at her apartment while she was out of town, and left a little box of homemade cookies on the kitchen table. When I grow up, I would like to be that thoughtful.

Not to mention substitutive (shall we say) with my cookie ingredients. But so long as we’re on the subject of chocolate chip cookies without chocolate chips in them, let me also direct your attention to a strange Mexican restaurant’s turned up last year or so like a hole in the head of my very own neighborhood (that I won’t be living in for another six months): the Mission.

I’m talking about Reaction, where once I ate with Hedgehog, Coach, and Papa before going out somewheres. The thing to remember about Reaction is: happy hour. Between 5 and 7 you can get five tacos for $5, or a free taco with your fancy-pants drink.

Hedgehog got that. Neverminding the drink, the papas taco came with it did not float her boat — although she admits to holding potato tacos to an unreasonably high standard set by Taqueria El Atacor #11 in Los Angeles.

Coach got something vegetarian, because that’s the way she is, and both me and our center, Papa, being the other way inclined, got five-for-fives.

Strangely — since they open at five and we’d showed up at six — they were out of some of the things on the menu.

There was one waiter, and he had two tables. The rest of the restaurant was empty. Just us, sitting in the front window, quietly discussing relationships and pass blocking, and, in the back of the room, in the opposite corner, as far away from our party as it was possible to be, a table full of loud dudes, hooting and drinking and laughing.

Two more divergent groups would be possible to imagine, and — as it happened — imagination was not our waiterguyperson’s weak suit. Anyway, he somehow kept confusing our order with theirs, bringing the wrong things to the wrong table, and whatnot.

For which I loved him, but … I mean, even I have to admit: come on. The food at my new favorite restaurant was just OK. Super cheap, though. Thanks to the happiness of the hour, all four of us ate for under thirty, so … hard to complain.

Happy New Year, m’dears.

You see? Our 49ers are going to the playoffs for the first time in 10 years! Woo-hoo for one-two. 

REACTION

Mon.-Sat.: 5 p.m.-midnight; closed Sunday

2183 Mission, SF

(415) 552-8200

AE/D/MC/V

Full Bar

 

Tough mustard

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
2

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Zeni said she’d been cooking for three days. But the shopping was the hardest part. She had to go all over town, she said, to get the right sausages and other meat … things.

Such as knuckles.

I have a new favorite butcher shop, but first I have to tell you about Zeni’s feijoada. Her man Nutmeg, who plays soccer with me and Alice Shaw the Person (and some other people) has been talking up Zeni’s feijoada for many, many seasons. Most often after the game, when all of us are hungry. But since our team conducts its games in Portuguese, a language I don’t understand, it’s all pretty much feijoada to me.

There’s always all this hollering on the field: feijoada, feijoada.

"I’m trying," I say, whenever it seems like they might be talking to me.

Generally speaking, we win.

But now Nutmeg and Zeni are moving back to Brazil, and as soon as we learned this our post-game chatter shifted from feijoada to feijoada-with-a-sense-of-urgency.

Then the next thing I knew I had died and gone to heaven. Which I readily identified by the smell of it, and then by this steaming plate of rice and black beans with sausage, pork, and everything but the chicken sink. The dish was sided by finely chopped collard greens, or couve, garnished with orange slices, and sprinkled with farofa — which is cassava flour toasted with butter and bacon.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I could have gone straight from that meal to the firing squad, uncomplainingly, but as it was I got to go to Berkeley, instead, and make some kitchen noodle soup with Crawdad’s kids.

Now, my friend Papa is learning to be a butcher, which is about as admirable and honest a line of work as is out there, to my way of thinking. So every time I saw her I would ask about her career and she would say, among other things, "Steak sandwich!" with the same kind of reverence with which Brazilians say feijoada.

I pictured raw, sawed beef on a roll, which made me happy. Then one day, eventually, we climbed that hill to Avedano’s, on Cortland St. in Bernal. Or Holly Park. In any case, Avedano’s is a butcherer of local grass-fed beef and other responsibly-raised animals, and they don’t only just saw and hack them for you to take home; they’ll also make you a nice (and entirely cooked) samwich. If you want.

Hedgehog had the Tuscan pork sandwich, with pickled onions and tomato. I got the steak with pecorino, arugula, and pickled tomatoes.

And these things did we eat on a bench. Outside. There, in the sunlight and warmth of mid-day, San Francisco, my love and I got in a huge fight over mustard. I won’t bore you with the details, cause I don’t remember them. But suffice to say that I loved my sandwich, and Hedgehog loved hers.

I’m not a very experienced sandwich eater, though. With my first bite, I lost a big juicy piece of steak to the sidewalk. It landed right between my feet, where other people’s dogs sit on their asses, between other people’s feet, and stare at other people’s sandwiches, panting and trying to make just the right face.

"Pick it up and eat it," Hedgehog said.

So I did.

I might have pushed the limit of the five-second rule, but it’s the spirit of the rule that matters.

And the steak was that good, I’m saying. Slightly rare, succulent … I couldn’t let some dumbass Bernal dog come and lap it up. It was mine!

And it was delicious, even with residual sidewalk all over it. Anyway, I didn’t get any dog ass cooties, or other exotic diseases. That I know of. Yet.

Although: a big dumb dog did come along, only moments later, and sniff and lick a little at the spot, before it’s owner tugged him away. "Ha," I said.

I am not, as you know, a dog lover.

AVEDANO’S

Mon.-Fri. 11 a.m.-8 p.m.; Sat. 9 a.m.-8 p.m; Sun. 11 a.m.-6 p.m.

235 Cortland, SF.

(415) 285-6328

AE/D/MC/V

No alcohol

Occupy Yolkland

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS While everyone else in Oakland was occupying Oakland, Hedgehog and me took a vote and decided unanimously to occupy Montclair Village. Oscar Ogawa Plaza didn’t scare us, head-wound-wise; it was just that, from the sound of it, we didn’t think there’d be room to play catch.

Whereas Montclair Playground has a whole empty ball field, and a pond with a fountain, and birdies. And the Montclair Egg Shop is only just a block away.

It feels and sounds like its own little town, but Montclair Village is still technically Oakland, after all. So, OK, we occupied it. If anyone interviewed us, we would say that our protest was peaceful — so peaceful it didn’t even include any signs or slogans. Just mitts. Our demands were simple: a catch, and some yummy egg dishes. (I had wanted to hit her grounders, too, but we couldn’t reach a consensus, so the bat stayed in the car.)

While we warmed up our arms, we talked about what we always talk about: Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, where Hedgehog was borned and breaded. Like New Orleans — where she was, of course, fried — Bloomsburg has a bad habit of getting underwater up to its kitchen cabinets, and this fall’s flood, as reported in this very column, was its very worst one ever.

Another worst-ever thing about Bloomsburg, turns out, is its daily paper, the Press-Enterprise, whose sophisticated online version consists of unsearchable, unshareable PDFs of the paper paper, and (get this) you have to pay to see them!

Actual quote, from that paper’s publisher to a Poynter reporter: “If it’s important to people, they can go out and pick up a newspaper.”

As a result of such forward thinking, for a time the most extensive “national” news coverage of Hedgehog’s home town’s historic calamity could be found (gasp) in Cheap Eats! Because we was there, and I was personally and catastrophically affected: The fair was cancelled, and with it my first taste of what Hedgehog calls “real” chicken and waffles.

She and a handful of news hungry ex-Blooms, realizing their beloved hometown’s story was in absurdly incapable hands (i.e. mine, and the Press-Enterprise’s) accidentally started their own on-line rag, the Bloomsburg Daily, which has ever since been scooping the living daylights out of Mr. If-It’s-Important-To-People-They-Can-Go-Out-And-Pick-Up-A-Newspaper — live-streaming public meetings, posting original and professional quality videos, reporting on both sides of the great flood wall debate, and just generally kicking ass.

Problem: It’s Bloomsburg. Fucking. PA. I get tired of hearing about it, frankly, and now maybe you can relate.

I mean, I would like for my girlfriend to occupy Oakland with me, so long as we’re here.

“Hey,” I say, whenever enough gets to be, in a word, enough. “Let’s live where we live.”

We live down the hill, closer to the Dimond District, in Glenview, but I have always been fascinated by Montclair Village the same way Brisbane grabs me in San Francisco. I guess I’m a fan of anomalousness over quintessentiality.

Speaking of which, my old friend and favorite country song singer Hambone, she’s who told me about the Egg Shop. She lives in West Oakland but cleans house up in Montclair. “The Egg Shop!” she said.

So I invited her to occupy the Montclair Egg Shop with us one morning. She showed up fashionably late, and even more fashionably sporting the most farmerly overalls I ever seen on a cleaning woman. Driving a red pickup truck, to boot. Which is to say, our Hambone is the real deal, exactly.

And she was exactly right about the Egg Shop: excellent, and odd! A model BART train scooting back and forth along a track behind the counter. A real motorcycle in a Plexiglas case upstairs amidst a collection of antique rolltop desks, homemade apricot jam centerpiecing each table, and ham and cheese potato pancakes with cilantro and tomatoes. They were more like fancy hash browns than what Hedgehog would call “real” potato pancakes. But what the hell? I love hashbrowns! And eggs . . . 

MONTCLAIR EGG SHOP

Lunch: Mon.-Sat. 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Dinner: Sun.-Thu. 4:30-9:30 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 4:30-10 p.m.

6126 Medau Place, Oakl.

(510) 339-9554

AE/MC/V

Beer & wine

 

Drive, she said

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Hedgehog was going to baseball games before she met me — mostly minor league ones, but anyway she was in it for the hot dogs. And beer. And people-watching. Now that she understands what’s actually going on down there on the field, well, it’s a whole new ball game.

Naturally, she wants to play. I’m all for that, so I got us a big bag of spits, and once she learned to spit them like a pro, I went to K-Mart: two gloves, one baseball, and a big old brand new wooden bat. Wood because Hedgehog is of course a sound person, and the crack of the bat is more important to her than longevity and distance, or even the ethics involved with the slaughter of innocent trees.

Through the course of only a few catch sessions, my boo evolved into a world class glove user and ball thrower. Now, having mastered the "wax on/wax off" and "paint the fence" of baseball, it was time for her to learn the Crane kick. So it was that we happened to be out and about in search of batting cages, me and her and Earl Butter.

He’s in the back seat, humming a happy little ditty and just generally playing with the power windows. I’m driving Hedgehog’s car, because I kind of know where Redwood City might be, and Hedgehog is firmly fastened into the passenger seat, trying to look casual while pressing the life out of the dashboard — her usual position when she’s not driving. Or at least when I am.

Our sense of equilibrium was toppled, however, when the conversation turned to oysters — an inevitable subject since, not only were they food, and not only were they one of our collective favorite foods, but Hedgehog had just had a batch of bad ‘uns in her hangtown fry. Not bad as in "get the bucket"; bad as in not fried, like I told Just For You to do a long time ago. Because every time I get breaded and fried oysters in my hangtown fry, it’s my new favorite dish ever, and every time I get just out-of-the-jar and into-the-eggs oysters, it’s crap.

So: Just For You. I’ve been trying to sell Hedgehog on San Francisco for almost a year, and now that I have her here, you feed her an overpriced and undergood hangtown fry. If she runs screaming back to New Orleans, it’s on you.

Anyway, the post-mortem being concluded on Hedgehog’s unfried fried oysters, someone who might have been me mentioned something about raw oysters. And then someone else who might have been me mentioned how when oysters are eaten raw, they might maybe be still alive.

"Define ‘alive,’" Hedgehog gasped, even wide-eyeder than she already was on account of my driving skills, which are considerable.

"Don’t worry, babe. They aren’t alive the way we are," I said, changing lanes for the third time in three seconds and zooming through what I like to call a "pink" light. (I may not enjoy living on the edge, but I sure do enjoy driving on it.)

"’Not alive the way we are’?" Earl Butter said. "Just remember that when the aliens spear you with a cocktail fork and swallow you whole with a spritz of lemon."

He had a point there.

But speaking of eating things raw: sushi! Sushi is a good thing, I’m sure we all agree, but it turns out there are levels of good. I don’t mean fine, good, and great; I mean there is sushi that just tastes how it tastes, and then there is Morally Superior sushi. Welcome to Tataki South.

We weren’t there, when we were there, just because it was rumored to be yummy (which it was).

We wanted to try us some "ethically caught fish" to see if it was like aluminum bats.

Well, the fish that is ethical to kill and eat is pretty tasty, but the short story that accompanies every slice justifying its death made dinner seem more like an outing to a museum than a meal. It also turns out that, just as in the Real World, clearing your palate’s conscious has a higher price tag.

Tataki is a tiny place that doesn’t believe in reservations for parties of less-than-six, so the wait was kinda long. But once we were inside, shoving ethically murdered fish down our gullets, it was so damn cozy and friendly, nothing else mattered. *

TATAKI SOUTH

Sun.-Thu. 5-9:30 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 5-10 p.m.

1740 Church St., S.F.

(415) 282-1889

AE/D/MC/V

Beer & sake

Parking it

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

CHEAP EATS So they have that classic car show every year in Alameda. It’s a pretty big deal, and Park Street is closed to traffic. The classic cars park in the parking spots, and the people walk down the middle of the road and look at them, and into them, and under the hood.

My own personal interest in classic cars would best be described as D) Nonexistent. But Boink and his dad like to go. They have a whole tradition around it, which ends in pizza. They look at the cars, they eat the pizza. It’s a boy thing. I wouldn’t know.

Except that this particular Saturday I didn’t have any football or soccer or even necessarily baseball to play. And there was an apartment to look at on Park Street, in Alameda. (This was a couple weeks ago, back when Hedgehog and me were still relatively homeless.) So, OK, so, we went.

Hedgehog looked at the apartment without me. We had by this time begun to start to feel almost a little bit paranoid about the fact that no one seemed to want to sublet to us. Not in Berkeley, not in Oakland, not in San Francisco. The day before, we had looked at a shithole in the Tenderloin and, out of desperation, loved it!

But the guy decided to rent to someone else, for no real reason.

“Why?” I asked him on the phone. We had seen the place first. Our credit is perfect. We are clean, upstanding, even accomplished citizens.

“I don’t know,” he said, after a long pause. “No real reason.”

“Oh,” I said. “OK.” Because what else can you say?

This much we knew: it couldn’t possibly be because we are a gay couple, this being San Francisco. So, we decided, it must be me. To wit, that I am too witty. That I am intimidatingly charming, classy-looking, and well-spoked. Technically, I decided this. But Hedgehog agreed to go see the next place by herself. And that was in Alameda. On Park Street. During the car show.

While she was scoping the place out I wandered aimlessly, people watched, car watched, and just generally sat down on a manhole cover. I was hoping to see Boink and his dad, and/or Popeye the Sailor Girl and her mom. I hadn’t seen any of them all since early summer, so was quite unreasonably excited about the possibility of seeing them.

But mostly I saw legs.

Which made me hungry. Then Hedgehog came back and said the apartment was ours for the taking.

Well, hers. But: no tub, no natural light, no me (technically), and it smelled like dude.

“Let’s eat,” I said, standing up.

And then, as if by some sort of cartoon magic, there was Popeye the Sailor Girl, holding her mom’s hand, the both of them looking about as cute as some buttons. What’s more, they were hungry too!

Then Boink and Dad came by, and they were looking cute too, but not hungry, not like us’ns. They just wanted cars and pizza.

Popeye the Sailor Girl and her mom being both gluten free, their favorite restaurant is Burma Superstar. Hedgehog loves Burmese food.

Ergo: our decision was easy. It’s the same place as the one in the city, on Clement Street, only no lines! Not even at exactly lunch time on a beautiful special-event weekend.

I had me some mint chickeny thingy without mint and Hedgehog had duck garlic noodles without hardly any garlic. But to illustrate what a super restaurant Burma Superstar is, both dishes were still good.

And we had the chicken coconut noodle soup, which was especially tasty, of course. It’s kind of like the Thai classic Tom Ka Gai, only eggs instead of mushrooms, which is trading up in my book. Oh, and noodles — which I always thought Tom Ka Gai should have, anyway.

It was so nice to catch up with Popeye the Sailor Girl, and to play Steal Mommy’s Purse with her while her mom was in the restroom.

A delightful time.

A new favorite old favorite restaurant.

And I don’t know about the classic car show but, hey, I like Alameda.

BURMA SUPERSTAR

Lunch: Tue.-Sat. 11 a.m.-3 p.m., Sun. 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m.; Dinner: Tue.-Thu., Sun. 5-9:30 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 5-10 p.m.

1345 Park, Alameda

(510) 522-6200

AE/D/MC/V

Beer & Wine

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam
-
0

WEDNESDAY 12

“Hoarding in the Digital Age” lecture Scanners bookstore, 312 Valencia, SF. www.scannersproject.com. 6:30 p.m., free. Renaissance woman Rebecca Falkoff is a Ph.D. candidate in Italian studies at UC Berkeley, but today she’s talking about her other passion: hoarding. Falkoff examines hoarding as a symptom of anxiety in our transient digital age in today’s lecture at flash new pop-up print bookshop Scanners.

THURSDAY 13

“Jack Davis’ Penis Show” Good Vibrations, 1620 Polk, SF. (415) 345-0400, www.goodvibes.com. 6-8 p.m., free. Crochet artist Jack Davis finds inspiration below the belt. The man has been creating foreskinned wonders (they come with drawstrings and double as nifty sacks!) for decades, and his phallic work is a sight to be seen. Look it up and down at this free reception at your friendly neighborhood sex shop Good Vibrations.

“A Simple Revolution” Group Reading with Judy Grahn Francis of Assissi, 145 Guerrero, SF. www.auntlute.com. 5:30 p.m., free. Foundational activist, author, and scholar Judy Grahn revisits the 1960s roots of San Francisco’s lesbian community along with four other reading panelists. A Q and A with the revolutionary ladies will follow.

FRIDAY 14

Green Empowerment Party and Discussion Luminalt Warehouse, 1320 Potrero, SF. (415) 641-4000. www.greenempowerment.org. 6:30-9 p.m., free with RSVP to greenempowerment@luminalt.com. Bike, bus, walk, or Prius down to the Mission for a casual discussion of renewable energy’s potential across the world. Meet fellow solar enthusiasts, check out Luminalt’s organic garden, and hear about some recent work in the Philippines before walking out a little greener.

“2 Blocks of Art” art walk Sixth St. between Market and Howard, SF. www.urbansolutionssf.org. 4-8 p.m., free. Hobnob with upwards of 50 local artists and musicians in some nontraditional spots – a laundromat, optometry office, and of course, the sidewalk. Maybe not the best time to tackle that load of laundry, but definitely a good one to wander out in search of cheap eats and eye-pleasing sights.

SATURDAY 15

Potrero Hill Festival 20th St. between Wisconsin and Missouri, SF. www.potrerofestival.com. 1 a.m.-4:30 p.m., free. Ah, to be young and have unquestioned admittance to bouncy castles. No matter. One of our favorite neighborhood festivals – now in its 21st year – holds plenty for those lucky tykes as well as anyone deemed too old for petting zoos. Bring your little one, find a goat, and wander through the food, music, and art.

Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival Main, Half Moon Bay. www.miramarevents.com. Also Sun/16. 9 a.m.-5 p.m., free. Grab some gourds in Half Moon Bay, our lovely little neighbor and (who knew?) pumpkin capital of the world. Gargantuan orange beasts are the theme of this festival; you can expect weigh-offs, tasty pies, carving, ale, and lots of “smashing” jokes, not to mention live music, contests, a parade, tons of arts and crafts, and a haunted house.

Hackmeet 2011 Noisebridge Hackerspace, 2169 Mission, third floor, SF. www.hackmeet.org. Also Sun/16. 11 a.m., free. The West Coast hackmeet, a conference and workshop session exploring the overlaps between technology and social change, goes underway this weekend. Topics include digital security and rights, privacy, Wikileaks, and way more. Food is provided to fuel all those radical typing fingers.

Jimmy’s Old Car Picnic Speedway Meadows, Golden Gate Park, SF. www.jimmyspicnic.com. 7 a.m.-4 p.m., free. Dust off that barbeque grill. Everyone is welcome to roast and roam among Mustangs and motorized barstools alike at the not-for-profit picnic event now in its 22nd year. Jimmy scours the meadow with an eagle eye for the car he deems worthy of the “Jimmy’s Choice” award.

Children’s Creativity Museum Opening Weekend 221 Fourth, SF. www.creativity.org. Also Sun/16. 10 a.m.-4 p.m., free. Zeum, reopening as the Children’s Creativity Museum, houses wonders that rival anything out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Exhibits are highly interactive and extremely creative: animation, music, design, and movie studios in which your child can play around to their little heart’s content. Plus, free carousel rides throughout the weekend.

“An Afternoon of Soccer Culture” reading with Simon Kuper Edinburgh Castle Pub, 950 Geary, SF. www.castlenews.com. 3-5 p.m., free. Reading from his new book “The Soccer Men,” Simon Kuper discusses the secret lives of all-star soccer players. Classic matches will play in the background. This all takes place in a castle-themed pub. If you don’t feel British, order a Newcastle.

Vagabond Indie Craft Fair Urban Bazaar, 1371 Ninth, SF. www.urbanbazaarsf.com. Also Sun/16. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., free. The boutique, already known for supporting local arts and craftspeople, hosts 30-plus folks selling their work. Perfect for snagging tons of gifts to sort through later come the holidays.

SUNDAY 16

Textile Bazaar: Treasures from Around the World St. Anne’s of the Sunset Church, 1300 Funston St., SF. (415) 750-3627. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Run your hands over this. Woven goodies from across the globe, brought to you by nearly thirty members of the Textile Arts Council.

23rd Annual Fiesta on the Hill Cortland Ave., SF. www.bhnc.org. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Can’t make it to Saturday’s Potrero Hill Festival? Can, but just want to support another beloved SF neighborhood? Really like petting zoos and great music? Take in the sights and eats in Bernal Heights with over 20,000 others.

 

On the Cheap listings by Lucy Schiller. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

Coyote moon

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

CHEAP EATS Ten minutes, she said. I promise you, the line does not take long. She was like a greeter, which seemed unusual for a grocery store, but I am willing to believe almost anything at this point.

It’s strange: to pride oneself on one’s gullibility. Nevertheless, I grabbed the bread that I wanted, and walked whistling with it to the back of the store, through the storage area past the back of the store, beyond the bathrooms, back outside into the loading zone on the opposite side of the building from the parking lot, through some bushes, under an overpass, entirely outside of the city and into the desert, where I took my spot at the end of the line and said to the person in front of me, “Hi.”

“Hi,” he said. It was a cold crisp night with stars and moons all over the place. And behind me the line kept getting longer, all the while time passing.

The line did not move at all. Apparently, people were buying houses and cars. They had to talk to their lawyers and spouses, and wait for bank loans to be approved. Inspections.

Before long I had finished all the bread and was standing in line with an empty paper bag. The city was nowhere in sight, not to mention the cashiers. Nor could I tell if the line of people who had lined up behind me stretched longer than the line still in front of me. I was, as usual, in the middle.

It’s my nature to use my time wisely, even when it’s only 10 minutes. (She’d promised.) I tried to talk to the man in line ahead of me. First I made eye contact, then I asked questions. I wanted to familiarize myself with concepts like escrow and closing, in case someone else in the line should prove worth flirting with.

Because you never know. Many of my girlfriends met their future husbands while waiting in lines. It’s true that for the most part their future husbands didn’t notice them; they just went about their business, as it is in man’s nature to do. But there are exceptions to every rule, I’m told, so who’s to say I wasn’t going to be one of them?

Instead of educating me, the man in front of me in line flirted with me. I never did learn about escrow; I learned about him. He was married but separated from his wife but still in love with her but she didn’t love him and was living with her tennis teacher.

“The man is a tennis teacher?” I said. I don’t know why I wanted to be perfectly clear about the person his wife was living with, and what he did for a living. In retrospect it seems far from the point.

Still, I said what I said and the man said, “Yes. Do you play?”

“No,” I said. This was a lie.

“Well,” he said, then, “what is your story?”

And just like that I had him where I wanted. A captive audience, middle of nowhere, on a night much like this, waiting, waiting, and already mystified by my mystique. Which is, I’m told, considerable.

“Once upon a time,” I said.

“Don’t give me that shit,” said my future husband.

“Once upon a time,” I said again, because that’s the kind of storyteller I am, and, as if on cue, the rest of the line of people dissolved into the night, and all around us coyotes yipped and yapped.

“The corn on the cob was not fresh. Or it was overcooked,” I said, poking our little campfire with a stick, and my guest nodded, understanding me perfectly. “The brisket and the ribs were just fine, but, you know, it’s nice to have barbecue across the street from where you drink.”

“Where?” he said.

“Anywhere. Your neighborhood dive,” I said. “El Rio, in my case. One meets the love of one’s life in such a place, and the love of my life,” I said, “is barbecue.”

“But the corn …”

“It had dimples in it, yes,” I said. “It stuck to your teeth. Like something you feed to animals.”

He shook his head, in the smoke, in the night. And I shook mine.

We were supposed to have been so much more.

BABY BLUES BBQ

Sun.-Thu.: 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat.: 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m.

3149 Mission St., S.F.

(415) 796-2837

Beer & wine

AE/MC/V

Ms. Mirliton

Andrew Lam
-
2
Ms. Mirliton

CHEAP EATS First time I went to Criolla was with Coach and company and I was just tickled to death to be eating chicken and waffles within walking distance from my home. Chicken and waffles! I forgave them the dry chicken, even though it was all dark meat and dark meat is of course harder to overcook, because the waffle was good. And they offered real, true Vermont maple syrup for one worth-it dollar more.

And it was chicken and waffles. And walking distance. And so forth: sweet potato tater tots, limeade, sunshine, just a beautiful sidewalky San Francisco day at Market and Noe.

I thought: OK, new favorite restaurant. It ain’t Farmer Brown’s Little Skillet, or even Auntie April’s, but it ain’t Baghdad Café anymore, either. It’s chicken and waffles! In the Castro, and that was overall a happy thought.

Next time I went was with Hedgehog on an also-beautiful day, but we sat inside. In the window, and looked out upon the sidewalk there. It’s a colorful corner. Men stroll by naked. Nobody blinks.

All right.

But if you are going to make fried chicken anywhere in the world, including the Castro, including walking distance to my house, you are going to need to make it to order. Fried chicken don’t sit well. It never has, and it never will. So unless you’re a place that sells it as fast as you can crank it out, you’re going to serve some hit-or-miss soggy-breading-ed and dry-meat fried chicken. Most of the time.

I don’t know if Criolla Kitchen fries or tries to fry their chickens to order. If they do, they better get better at it.

The good news is, since it isn’t just a chicken and waffle place, or even a fried chicken place, you’ve got plenty of other options. And a lot of them sound kinda good. Almost all of them, besides the chicken and waffles, sound Louisianic: chicken gizzards with pepper jelly, mirliton salad, red beans and rice, shrimp po’oy …

I got the Louisiana farm-raised catfish mojito isleño on the sheer strength of the number of words in its name. If there were green olives in the tomato-ey, onion-y smother as advertised, I didn’t see or taste them. But it was pretty good anyway.

Hedgehog’s chicken was soggy-topped and dry inside. I’d warned her, but she had to see for herself, poor li’l prickly. Anyway, the red beans and rice that came with it were good.

Warning: the black beans are vegetarian, and therefore not very good. Unless maybe if you’re a vegetarian, but even then I think they might could use a little something.

The best thing I’ve had, in my two visits to Criolla, was the mirliton salad. Hedgehog, being an issue-taker by nature, took issue with our waiterperson’s mispronunciation of mirliton. She’s also a former and future resident of New Orleans, so has heard the word more than most of us’ns.

The way she says it sounds like mella tone, as in melatonin — which has helped me sleep once or twice, so I like it. But the salad is something else entirely: almost see-through, thinly sliced strips of mirliton — or chayote, a kind of gourd with crunch, which tastes pretty much exactly like whatever you put on it, in this case a lemon-cumin vinaigrette.

And avocado, which needs no introduction.

Yum! So that was the best thing I have had at my new favorite restaurant. A little tiny starter salad. Still, I will go back, I’m sure, because even though I’m mad at them for their fried chicken, and disappointed in the catfish, there are still the shrimp po’oys and charbroiled oysters to be tried.

If those oysters come even close to the chargrilled ones I ate one day at Acme Oyster House in Metairie after buying some shirts at the mall last spring, then I will be the happiest little glaze-eyed chicken farmer in the whole wide city, and will promise to never ever leave the Bay Area ever again.

Which. Wait. I have promised before, and broken. And broken. And will break again, I promise. 

le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CRIOLLA KITCHEN

Daily: 7 a.m.-2 a.m.

2295 Market, SF

(415) 552-5811

www.criollakitchen.com

AE/D/MC/V

Beer and wine

 

Ativanitude

Andrew Lam
-
0
Ativanitude

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Some people wanted closure, so we went around the circle and each said what we got out of our 10 days of writerly camaraderie, intense productivity, and snorkeling. OK, chicken farmer, here’s where you thank the people who brought you here and lick the asses of all the new, important writerly friends you’ve made, I thought. Which should have been easy, because I did love my new friends and got a shitload of good work done in Mexico; but exhaustion and head problems got the better of me, and by the time my turn came the circle was already aslosh with gratitude, spinning its wheels in good vibes and wonderfulness. I was suffocating. I was drowning. I was dizzy. And it was my turn to say what I got out of it.

“An ear infection!” I said.

If I’d have stopped there it would have been funny, but I’d been out of my stomach for four days and couldn’t stop bitching and whining: My head felt like it was going to explode every time I nodded, the smell of toast made me want to puke, and if I bent down to scratch a mosquito bite I would pass out, I was so dizzy. How the hell was I supposed to get in the van that was taking us all to the airport next morning, let alone fly in an airplane at 39,000 feet with entirely clogged ears? Did anyone have any decongestants?

Heads shook in sympathy. People promised to check their pill collections before going to bed.

“The food was really really good,” I added.

Then it wasn’t my turn to speak anymore, and the circle continued to gush toward closure. Hard to say how many enemies I’d made, but — since everything else in the world is hard to say too –hey, who’s counting?

At the airport, I wasn’t the only one having a nervous breakdown. Irene was scheduled to land in New York at the same time some of us were. The East Coast was closed. Flights to other places were full.

And, worse, the Starbucks where we awaited our fates was playing squirrely jazz.
I set up a little Ativan dispensary at our table. See, here’s where being a complete spaz comes in handy: I’d been tracking the hurricane for half a week, and had already changed my return trip from JFK to Pittsburgh. So alls I had to worry about was my head exploding before reaching cruising altitude.

It didn’t!

Hedgehog was waiting for me at the bottom of the escalator by baggage claim, big smile. She’d left her
stupid movie one day early, drove to Pittsburgh, and got us a nice hotel room near the airport and even nearer to one of the satellite Primanti Bros. To which she immediately whisked me for a pastrami and French fry sandwich and a romaine salad, also with French fries. As if I weren’t loopy enough already.

“Not as good as Giordano’s,” I declared, “but better than the original Primanti.”

The fizzy water did not have French fries in it.

Hedgehog set a half-full bottle of West Indies Creole habanero sauce on the table between us. “I didn’t know what you’re supposed to take with you in an evacuation,” she said, “but I grabbed this.”

“I like your style,” I said, putting it mildly while pouring my favorite hot sauce all over everything.

“You did the right thing.”

She liked my ativanitude, she said.

And we went to our hotel room, made category 4 love,
and in the morning drove back to New York where we had dinner plans and US Open tickets. After this we head back west, finally, stopping only for nephewish weddings, state fairs and I guess gas and shit.

We might go to a Steelers game.

Meanwhile, in time for football season, Giordano’s has opened a restaurant in the Mission, without me.

It’s where Ti Couz used to be, on 16th Street at Valencia, and rumor has it they have pieroghis.

So my question to you, Mr. Earl Butter, is why the hell are you still eating at Valencia Pizza & Pasta?

Sneaky peeps

Andrew Lam
-
0
Sneaky peeps

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

Do you remember the chicken farmer? Not me. The real one, Fabienne Gagagaga, upon whose farm on the west coast of France I landed serendipitously a year-and-a-half ago when I was ejected from Germany?

Remember? I didn’t even know she was a chicken farmer until she picked me up at the train station in a pickup truck, with shit on her shoes and hay in her hair, and fed me homekilt lamb and the world’s best butter until I had regained enough strength to help her clean some coops and cook a cherry-beer- chicken-heart stew with so many hearts in it that I half-expected to still see it this time — a year-and-a-half-later — on the stove where it stayed, for days, while we dipped in every dinnertime.

Remember how I accidentally left the farm and fell into the hands of hippies from Pleiades, who anointed me with essential oils and tried to make suicide pacts with me? Well, ever since then I have been trying, in one way or another, to get back to the farm. I’ve been home, I’ve been happy, I’ve been scared, I’ve even been in love again, but still I have wanted to come back to this place, in a less depressed state of mind this time, and help Fabienne take care of her chickens. Voila.

After dark tonight, in about 10 minutes, we are going to “take care” of about a hundred of them. She has 102. Two are for eggs.

At 10 o’clock, she and I, her boyfriend Fred, and her dad — hold on. It’s 10 o’clock . . .

It’s noon, the next day. That’s three in the morning to you, and even though I’ve been here for a couple weeks already, being a chicken farmer — getting my chicken farmer back on, so to speak — it’s still confusing inside my body.

Her chickens are free-range, happy farm chickens, and she raises them (except the two) for meat. I stood outside in the rain last night, opening and closing plastic cages and counting to seven, over and over again, in French, while the others raided the coop and stuffed the cages. The happy part of 7 x 14 little free range lives was over.

Those plastic cages went onto a little trailer, and we went to bed so we could get up at four in the morning to take them to a sort of a finishing school. When they come back they will be finished. And that’s when the happiness begins for Fabienne’s customers.

Many of whom don’t want the hearts and livers. So this is also where the happiness begins for me. But I’m ahead of myself by even more than nine hours now.

Where was I, from a Cheap Eats standpoint? Oh yeah. Staying at the Edwardian Hotel for one night, and walking past Rebel Bar on our way to sushi. There was a sandwich board on the sidewalk that said “Sneaky’s BBQ” with an arrow pointing across the street to Martuni’s.

What the? — we both wondered, but did not stop to investigate because, although Hedgehog loves barbecue every bit as much as I do, we had our stomachs set on sushi.

After which we walked on the Martuni’s side of Market Street, but I didn’t even need to open the door to know they were not barbecuing — not even sneakily — in there. So we crossed the road.

Why?

Because I’m supposed to know about these things. We decided to have barbecue for dessert. There’s a thin line between rebellion and dyslexia, turns out. Of course that’s where Sneaky’s is.

We ordered a couple of PBRs and a mess o’ chicken wings, smoked, with the spicy habanero-jalapeno sauce. The bandanna’d dude at the table next to us turned out to be the cook. How sneaky of him. He jumped up when he heard spicy, all excited, and took over for our waitressperson, talking us into some kind of crazy spicy on-the-side sauce too, then disappearing into the kitchen.

The wings were good. Plenty spicy even without all the craziness. I can’t wait to come home now, to pork bellies, brisket, and pulled pork. Meanwhile, I’ll see you in my dreams, Sneaky.

 

SNEAKY’S BBQ

Inside Rebel Bar

Mon. 5-9 p.m.; Tue.-Fri. 5-10 p.m.; Sat. noon-10 p.m.; Sun. noon-9 p.m.

1760 Market, SF

(415) 431-4200

Full bar

AE/D/MC/V

 

Busted!

Andrew Lam
-
0
Busted!

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS I have already written a restaurant review, a poem, and a cheerful pop song about my anal abscess. I don’t know how else to celebrate the cursed motherfucker. I could curse … But I guess I’ve done that too.

I’ve already had it lanced twice. Those were the good times. Except that on the first occasion I missed a day of work, and on the second I missed a baby shower. I felt so badfully about the missed baby shower that I invited the moms-to-be, Pod and the Attack, to breakfast the following Saturday. Technically I guess maybe I invited myself to breakfast. At their house.

Bless them, they made my favorite: waffles! With fresh strawberries! They made bacon! They made eggs! They made roasted tomatoes! It was the perfect meal! It was a masterpiece! It was culinary genius! It was the time of our lives!

Problem: I forgot to go. I don’t know, I was looking forward to it all week and then I woke up on Saturday morning, went, “Dum-de-doe,” and decided — oh, I don’t know — maybe do a little recording, or something.

I record in my kitchen because it’s the quietest room in my apartment, if I turn off the refrigerator. My cell phone was in the closet. At the designated hour, Pod went to West Oakland BART and waited for me.

When she called to say what-the-where-the-fuck-are-you? I was in the kitchen. I had my headphones on, refrigerator off, and was laying some blistering electric ukulele tracks onto Garage Band, singing: “It’s a new day/ It’s a driving rain/ I’m gonna have anal surgery/ It’s gonna be OK/ Gonna feel no pain / Or if I do it will be good for me.” La la la la la la.

And so forth.

Then.

I saw my cell phone while I was getting ready for work. It was lit up like a Christmas tree: texts, voicemails, e-mails. What-the-where-the-fuck-was-I? Oh my sweet baby Jesus, you can imagine my horror, and self-hatred — nay, loathing — as it all sunk in. How did I do that? How could I? Was my head so far up my ass that … ?

Well, technically it was, damn me. Clobber me in the kidneys with a golf club. I felt as low as a horse’s hoof cheese. And that was before the Attack sent me a picture of their spread, Pod in all her pregnancy sitting down to eat those wonderful things I said, plus cantaloupe.

Minus me.

I’ve done some dumb-ass things in my day, but don’t know if I’ve ever hated myself more. I couldn’t imagine how I was ever going to forgive myself. I still kinda can’t. I mean, the bacon alone looked so good in that picture.

They were of course very gracious and forgiving, and I was of course determined to make it up somehow. I invited them over to Berkeley that evening for some of the chicken pot pie that me and the kids were making. They declined.

I invited them to breakfast the following morning. Out somewhere, on me, and they accepted. We went to the Sunny Side Café in Albany, which was alleged to be kind of fancy-pants, and great.

Never in my life, before this, have I wanted a meal to cost more than it did. But, alas, it didn’t. It was like normal weekend brunch prices, roughly $10 apiece. Less tragically, but more to the point, I didn’t think the food was that good. Let alone great. I may have malordered. Maybe I was still traumatized by my brain fart from the morning before, but my spinach-and-sausage scramble was bland city, even with salt-pepper-Tapatío. The roasted tomatoes … meh.

Pod’s pigs in blankets … that was better. And the Attack, she got it right. She hit the jackpot with the Alameda, a stack-up of good stuff — ham, cheese, french toast, eggs — and some other things I personally don’t go for, which is to say mushrooms and Hollandaise. Oh, and a balsamic reduction.

It’s her new favorite restaurant.

SUNNY SIDE CAFÉ

Mon.–Fri. 8 a.m.–3 p.m.;

Sat.–Sun. 8:30 a.m.–3 p.m.

1499 Solano, Albany

(510) 527-5383

Full bar

AE/D/MC/V

 

Cheese bits

Andrew Lam
-
1
Cheese bits

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS K. Chunk’s favorite restaurant is Caffe Venezia so that’s where we went for her third birthday. She was having a fruitful, productive, and all-around happy day until — just before dinner — she fell off the slide and cut her mouth. Now some things were going to be hard to eat, like crusty bread. Poor little carb loader.

I tried to distract her from her discomfort in the usual way: by talking about mine.

I’m kidding! We talked about love, of course. I had just come back from Nola for the umpteenth time, and was, well, in it. But I’m not going back for the rest of the year, because Hedgehog won’t be there. And Li’l Edible’s fambly already up and moved to Los Angeles, damn em, so I wouldn’t have any kind of babies to squeeze at all. Ergo: what’s the point?

Hedgehog is driving up to Pennsylvania as we speak, stopping to watch Minor League Baseball games along the way. She has work in New York, and then back to Nola, and then back to New York, and then we’re going to go camping a little out here before I leave the country for a couple months, to write.

She keeps score. She sent me a snapshot of the scorecard from last night’s single-A game in Hagerstown, Md., and in a blank square where she’d missed an at-bat she’d written: “BBQ pork.”

So you see?

“I see,” K. Chunk said. “Did she meet your mommy?”

K. Chunk’s ma and pa looked at me like, Yeah, what about that? Are you going to introduce her to your mom?

“Sure, if she wants to meet her,” I said. “I want everyone in the world to meet my mom. Then they’ll finally cut me some slack for being like I am.”

But it’s my dad who’s really going to hit it off with this pokey, spiny, pointy critter of mine when they cross paths at my nephew’s wedding in the fall. I wish I could say he’ll like her ’cause she obviously makes me happy and proud and inspires me to make songs and other things, and treats me with more care and respect than any of my other recent loves. But really it will be because she keeps score at baseball games.

Our food came.

Wagon wheels with butter sauce and lots of cheese for the birthday girl. Her older sister, whose birthday it wasn’t, had ordered wagon wheels too, but seemed to prefer eating all the little seafoods out of my linguine de mare. Her favorite — get this — was calamari. She might just have been trying to impress me, though, like when she sat with me on the couch in the dark, when she was three, and ate raw onions.

I was impressed with Venezia’s fare. I didn’t expect to like it that much, because it seemed at first glance like a place place, where the point was going to be the village square setting, complete with a fountain, muraled store fronts, fake pigeons, and line-hung laundry.

Cheese city, in other words. I loved it!

Mind you, it’s not cheap eats, but it’s good uns. The pasta was great, the tomato cream sauce was perfect, and the calamari, shrimp, clams, and mussels were not only fresh and delicious, but plentiful.

I got to taste some carbonara too. Next time I’m getting that. And I might not even wait for K. Chunk to turn four.

Venezia is a great place for a big group, and, of course, the childerns. They bring out little plates of carrot sticks, celery and olives for them right away, and they get jars of crayons to color on the paper tablecloths.

In this case, the kids were tired, bleeding from the mouth, and whatnot, so perhaps not surprisingly nobody finished their wagon wheels. Still, pennies were tossed into fountains, pigeons were spotted on rooftops, nourishment was achieved, and all-in-all somebody fantastically special to me turned three. So happy birthday to her.

And happy Father’s Day to her dad, and mine. And yours, I guess. Why not?

CAFFE VENEZIA

Mon.–Thu. 5:30–9 p.m.; Fri. 5:30–9:30 p.m.;

Sat. 5–9:30 p.m.; Sun. 5–9 p.m.

1799 University, Berk.

(510) 849-4681

Full bar

AE/D/MC/V

 

Appetite: Island bites, part five

Andrew Lam
-
0

Kauai: dreamy island respite, painfully beautiful, truly relaxing (other than east side traffic!) Last time, I covered restaurants and cheap eats, and killer cocktails on the island. This time, the final post in the series, I’ll focus on the best places to stay, and more on libations from coffee to rum.

 

HOTELS

Grand Hyatt Kauai, Poipu Beach:

Do yourself a favor and stay at Grand Hyatt Kauai. A resort in the full sense of the word, it is its own world unto itself. From lava rock waterways and multiple levels of pools (including a salt water-sand pool), to its world class spa, Anara, and open air couples cabanas, you leave here feeling as if you’ve truly had a vacation.

Dinner at Tidepools, features pina coladas sipped poolside, taking in the sunset from the deck of your room with a bottle of wine, conversing with the parrots in the massive open air atrium, live bands, and a scotch in Stevenson’s Library. It’s all unforgettable. Yes, it will cost you, but service is impeccable and the experience ranks up there with (or above) the best I’ve had, anywhere – and that includes the Ritz Carlton and the Four Seasons. The unreal setting, balmy by day, lit by tiki torches at night, is unbeatable.

 

Outrigger Waipoli Beach Resort, Kapaa:

My initial take on Outrigger Waipouli wasn’t strong. On a busy, strip mall-lined stretch of East Kauai in the town of Kapaa, its appears fairly generic from the outside, while kids swarm the lovely pool area (modeled loosely after Grand Hyatt’s incredible pools and waterways). At the time, the one spa for adults was overtaken by eight children.

But from a non-descript hallway, the door to our room opened onto what felt like our own private beach house. Two bedrooms, three bathrooms, a spacious living room and kitchen; each room had sliding doors opening onto the lawn than ran right down to the beach. Breezes flowed through the space, which felt private and removed from any of the hotel’s structure. Dishware, wine glasses, coffeemaker, everything we needed was in the kitchen, making it feel like a home away from home. It was the one part of the trip where we could cook and watch movies (Blue Hawaii, thank you very much) on flat screens in each room.

Though the location is not near as idyllic or removed as Grand Hyatt on Poipu Beach (it’s certainly more affordable), inside our room we felt secluded, rested and as if we could settle in for weeks.

 

DRINKS

Kauai Coffee Plantation, Eleele: 

The coast from the caffeinated climes of Kauai Coffee

Originally McBryde Sugar Plantation back in the 1880s, Kauai Coffee is Kauai’s one and only coffee plantation, encompassing over 3,000 acres set right on the ocean. A more striking setting I could hardly envision. A half day personal tour with its amazing sales manager, Marty Amaro, was a highlight in Kauai. We off-roaded in his truck over red dirt roads, through coffee fields, and next to ocean rocks where we watched sea turtles lolling.

 

Coffee plant at Kauai Coffee

They do everything locally themselves. I toured the factory, climbed atop a coffee harvesting tractor, witnessed bean roasting and bagging on a vertical form-fill-and-seal machine, and of course, sipped Kauai coffee. Amaro makes a mean iced mocha, let me tell you. I was envisioning a sweet, chocolate-y drink but it’s a bracing, coffee lover’s delight, refreshing and cool on a hot island day.

Kauai Coffee grows farm varietals of Arabic coffee: yellow catuai, red catuai (both with high levels of acidity for medium-bodied coffee), typica (medium acidity for medium-bodied coffee), Kauai Blue Mountain (medium acidity and full-bodied), and Mundo Novo (low acidity but full-bodied).

Coffee beans roasting

They run the largest drip-irrigated coffee estate in the world, sourcing waters from a nearby dam in the foothills, roasting over 600,000 pounds of coffee a year: an amazing feat when you see the size of the room it all happens in. Similar to wine, harvesting happens annually, around September through November, when staff double in size to get it all processed.

You can join the coffee club for a reasonable $15.25 to receive one 10 oz. bag, or $29 for two. Besides some of the elegant estate coffees, I find the newer Big Braddah a real representation of Kauai spirit: casual, familial, playful. I’m definitely not a flavored coffee type, but I am pleasantly embarrassed to admit I was taken with the Hawaiian coconut caramel crunch coffee. Each batch is painstakingly hand-flavored and the result is not so much sweet as integrated and nutty.

Kauai Coffee should be a stop on any visit to Kauai.

 

Koloa Rum, Lihue: 

I found Koloa Rum to be a bit of a mixed bag. The setting is memorably Hawaiian: a traditional sugar plantation-style tasting room on the grounds of the delightful Kilohana Plantation (a former sugar plantation preserved since its 1930s heyday). The distillery’s elegant packaging makes for a strong first impression.

Staff are gracious and aim to please. But complex Hawaii liquor laws are such that tastes remain exceptionally tiny, cannot be shared, and though they have created a mai tai mix, it’s illegal for them to mix alcohol – you won’t find cocktails of any kind here.

Using a 1,210 gallon copper pot still originally used for Kentucky bourbons post World War II, white, gold, and dark rums work best as entry points to the pleasures of rum. I know some who find them flat or not as nuanced as other rums, yet each one has won bronze or silver medals at esteemed rum tasting competitions like the Miami Rum Renaissance Festival.

I expected to find the gold ($30.95) and dark ($32.95) rums too sweet, given their somewhat unnatural coloring, which comes from crystallized sugar and molasses. But they were more balanced than I expected. But I’d be most inclined to drink the white ($29.95): clean and light, appropriate for cocktails. Another recent launch is the spiced rum.

If you’re in the area, it is a worthy stop: a local venture using the last of the little sugarcane left from the island, and pure mountain rainwater of nearby Mt. Wai’ale’ale.

 

Java Kai, Kapaa: 

The best coffee I had in Kauai, the bracing coffee at Java Kai is a local favorite for a strong cappuccino or espresso. It doesn’t have the friendliest staff (which is unusual in Hawaii), but that’s no matter when coffee is being prepared right. It was my regular morning stop on this side of the island (P.s. – it’s ideal iced, next door at Mermaids Cafe.

 

Kalaheo Cafe, Kalaheo: 

On the south shore of Kauai, this casual cafe would be at home in any hip, small town. Kalaheo Cafe has a healthy, locals vibe and is packed for breakfast. Eat-in or take-out, stand-outs include straight-from-the-oven baked goods (apple coffee cake is one). Using local coffees like Kauai Coffee, they serve robust espressos and cappuccinos. There may be no third wave, artful foam atop that capp, but rest assured it will wake you up. For one picky about coffee and how it is prepared, I didn’t feel like I had to suffer for good coffee on the sleepy island of Kauai.


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

 

Appetite: Napa’s affordable eats and surprising treats

Andrew Lam
-
10
Appetite: Napa’s affordable eats and surprising treats

After countless weekends in Napa over the years, I’m flush with recommendations for worthy restaurants and hotels. It’s not always the most affordable area, but my recent visits north have revealed a number of delightfully reasonable options within the bounds of Napa and Yountville, both new and established. 

They’ve also uncovered a few unexpected dishes – and in the case of one restaurant with a new chef, a whole range of them.

Napa Valley Marriott: Sleep… and a superior burger 

Breakfast, lunch, or dinner — don’t check your watch, just order the Knife and Fork burger at the Marriott

For those familiar with the hotel before its two years of multi-million dollar renovations, Napa Valley Marriott is a whole new ballgame. It now sports a warm, modern look with a soothing spa, an ultra-cool poolside patio with couches and firepits, and a new restaurant-bar. Though you may not be able to tell from the street outside, it’s really a dramatic revamp.

In the high season summer months, make a weekend of it with rooms in the low $200-300 range (or mid $200 range on weeknights). Rooms have also been completely redecorated with gentle colors and artwork, plasma screens, and comfy beds. The ones facing the courtyard are particularly tranquil. The only thing lacking? Free wi-fi. It’ll run you $4.95 a day.

Chef Brian Whitmer’s garden restaurant is a revelation. I’ve seen Napa restaurants with their own gardens, but nothing as lush as his. Spring peas are crispy and sweet right off the vine, and leafy greens make for abundant salads. Whether you stay in the hotel or not, it’s worth a detour to check out.

Cozy up in a chic booth, or a grab a stool at the curved bar and order the spicy Knife and Fork burger ($12) for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It doesn’t matter when, just order it. This burger is made of Caggiano chorizo, which is savory and spicy, yet also delicate, melt-in-your-mouth, on a Model Bakery brioche. Layered with aged cheddar, watercress, the restaurant’s secret sauce, and a fried egg, it’s one of the better things I’ve eaten in Napa in awhile — an utterly unique burger. You won’t regret making a stop for this one.

3425 Solano, Napa. (707) 253-7433, www.napavalleymariott.com

 

Ubuntu: Vegetarian perfection

Chef Jeremy Fox brought nationwide fame to this eatery, often named among the best vegetarian restaurants in the country by publications like the New York Times. I’ve always enjoyed my previous visits.

But I’ll tell you now, with young chef Aaron London at the helm, it’s better than ever. The food has moved from winning vegetarian cuisine to work-of-art vegetarian cuisine. It’s gone from high quality to superb. As a non-vegetarian, I would say it has become possibly the best vegetarian restaurant I’ve been to anywhere and one of the best dining experiences in Napa.

What’s interesting about chef London is that he’s been at Ubuntu since the beginning, working as Fox’s sous chef. I hear he influenced a number of dishes in those lauded early days, though we did not hear much about him. Nominated for Rising Star Chef at this year’s James Beard Awards, we should be hearing a lot more about him.

He’s revamped the menu in such a way that each $10-19 dish is far more than the sum of its parts. You read of roasted and raw asparagus ($16) with burratta cheese coated in potato chip crumbs, but you really have no idea what you’re in for. A garden-fresh dish comes out, smeared with earthy potato skin puree, lavished with pine nut and currant soffrito, dotted with frisee, greens, and edible flowers. It’s an art piece that not only stuns visually but tantalizes the tongue with its range of flavors.

The two key words I’d use to describe London’s cooking outside of artistic? Texture and contrast. Every single dish of the six I recently had the pleasure of dining on were a study in layers and texture. Sweet complimented savory. Earthy and bright co-mingled. Crunchy partnered with creamy. Surprises came in every dish. Not a one was lackluster.

I could wax eloquent about the merits of each — some served on stone labs that kept them warm – but the menu changes frequently and this article would grow tedious. So I will simply say: go, and be prepared to be blown away.

1140 Main, Napa. (707) 251-5656, www.ubuntunapa.com

 

Bistro Sabor: Funky, fun Latin

Bistro Sabor‘s menu initially appears Mexican, but it’s really a mix of Latino cuisines in the new downtown Napa. The space is hip with brightly-painted, graffiti-bedecked walls, and the staff couldn’t be more helpful, particularly considering its order-at-the-counter casualness. 

On a Saturday night, tables were cleared for 10 p.m. salsa dancing, a hit with the local Latino community. Beer and wine keep it festive (wish they had a hard liquor license to serve tequila). The food? Fresh, satisfying, and all under $15. A two taco special of grilled sea bass ($11) is impeccably flaky, topped with scallion-cilantro slaw and a pineapple habanero salsa. Even accompanying rice and black beans are a notch above the rest. A rock crab quesadilla ($10) is less creative but still warm and cheesy, while pupusas, pozole, blood orange avocado salad, and lomo saltado exhibit a range from El Salvador to Peru. It’s playful Latin street food with quality ingredients. A win for Napa and cheap eats.

1126 First St., Napa. (707) 252-0555, www.bistrosabor.com


Dim Sum Charlie’s: Dim sum with a side of magic

I’ll tell you right now: you can get better, cheaper dim sum at dozens of places in SF. In fact, for the nearly $7 Dim Sum Charlie’s charges for a mere four dumplings, I can get at least twelve, and buns, at my favorite city spots. Why go? First off, there’s not much dim sum in Napa and Charlie’s is decent, though far from memorable. Warning: some have commented on menu listings that could be perceived as racist (“ten dolla make you holla”?).

But the setting is still a reason to go. Dim sum and noodles are served out of a classic Airstream trailer. Sure I’ve seen it before, but lover of all things retro that I am, I still find it charming. And what’s different about this trailer setting is its canopy of lights and dirt lot strewn with picnic tables and a campfire. Rollicking tunes make it feel like a backyard party — a bit like camping in retro-kitsch style. With dim sum.

It doesn’t really matter what you order. Bring friends. Pull up to a picnic table or fireside with hot sauce and chopsticks, and sing along to the Beastie Boys as you slurp noodles and fill up on pork buns.

728 First St., Napa. (707) 815-2355, www.dimsumcharlies.com (look for the Airstream trailer)

 

Yountville Coffee Caboose: Coffee lovers

You’ll not go wrong with coffee and pastries at the original Bouchon Bakery across the street. But when that line is unbearable (or even if it isn’t), I’m delighted to hit up a locals coffee go-to: Yountville Coffee Caboose. Yes, it’s actually in a train caboose off Washington Street. It often features Bay Area coffees like Ritual, brewed strong, robust and with proper crema.

6523 Washington, Yountville

 

Grace’s Table: Local’s breakfast 

Grace’s Table has its minor missteps: its raved about skillet cornbread with lavender butter ($6) was dry and rather flavorless. And $10-18 entrees for breakfast pushes a little high for a casual neighborhood restaurant. But as an open air, corner space with sweet waitstaff and soothing decor, it’s a welcome brunch stop.

Quiche of the day ($12 with salad or soup – can also be had a la carte) was the stand-out, fluffy and light. The crust almost reminded me of Tartine in its buttery flakiness. Mini bagels with house-cured salmon and cream cheese ($10) are playful approach to morning food, though the bagels are not exceptional (but isn’t that ever the case outside of New York?) Grace’s is a pleasant place to start your day with coffee and a newspaper. 

1400 Second St., Napa. (707) 226-6200, www.gracestable.net

 

C Casa Taqueria: Breakfast to go 

C Casa, a worthy newer addition to Oxbow Public Market, works for a cheap breakfast. With grass-fed beef, free range chicken, sustainable fish, and local produce, it’s a forward-thinking taqueria, yet it maintains authenticity of flavor. A breakfast taco brimming with over-medium egg and chorizo ($4.50), is meaty and satisfying first thing in the morning. Also stuffed in there? Black beans, avocado, pico de gallo, garlic aioli, and cilantro.

Located within Oxbow Public Market, 610 First St., Napa. (707) 226-7700, www.myccasa.com

 

Ad Hoc: Ok, one splurge

Ad Hoc’s Liberty Farm duck breast: more than a mouthful

At $52 per person without anything to drink (its another $39 for wine pairings), Ad Hoc is quite expensive, even if it is the one and only Thomas Keller’s “casual” venture. Watch where you sit: I’d be annoyed eating inside where too many kids (at this price?) and a noisy din make make for a less than appealing ambiance. The few tables outside on the tiny patio, however, are idyllic. 

As is the food in the four-course dinner. One appetizer, a main, a cheese course, and dessert, all served family-style and impeccably prepared with ingredients from their cheery garden behind the restaurant. No substitutes — you eat whatever is on the daily menu. 

And that’s alright when you get a salad as a beautiful as a recent mix of lettuces, pickled haricots verts (green beans), toasted pine nuts, red radishes, and shaved asparagus. Dotted with green garlic buttermilk dressing and king trumpet mushrooms, it was far more gratifying than those ingredients may sound on paper. Ditto the added course of ivory salmon ($15 supplement) baked in phyllo pastry, drizzled with porcini cream, and accented with fresh, white corn. Liberty Farm duck breast was actually a little too much for two people, but deftly prepared and served with a bowl of chickpea stew gentle with curry. We finished with strawberry shortcake on biscuits, slathered in lemon curd.

At roughly $34 per person, the Sunday brunch is the way to do Ad Hoc from a slightly more affordable, angle.

6476 Washington, Yountville. (707) 944-2487, www.adhocrestaurant.com

 

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

 

Knee-jerked reaction

Andrew Lam
-
1
Knee-jerked reaction

CHEAP EATS I left my uke in New York City — technically in Boston, in the back of a station wagon headed for New York City. I left my baby, my toothbrush, my second-favorite pillow, and my other baby in New Orleans. My rabbit-fur jacket that I only ever wear to Rainbow Grocery … I left that in New Orleans too. I left my stomach in Dallas. I left my left knee in San Francisco, on the 50-yard line of a football field at Crocker Amazon. I don’t know where I left my pink cowboy hat. I can’t find it, and it’s pink cowboy hat season.

I got the ain’t-got-no-cowboy-hat-or-left-knee-neither blues.

One thing: I do have a new baby. He’s four months old and lives upstairs in my apartment building, so the commute’s real easy compared to Louisiana or even Berkeley. And he likes to suck on my left bicep sometimes while I’m rocking him to sleep, which gives me cute little hickies there.

In Dolores Park, a live dog’s got a stuffed bunny by the throat. He’s thrashing it this way and that, hammering it into the ground, growling, and beating the living fuzz out of it.

In various states of revelry and/or reverie, my friends and I are occupied in just generally occupying a couple of blankets, watching this big dog do its thing.

“My money is on the rabbit,” I say, because it is. I love an underdog.

In fact, we all are one — back in last place, our one-game winning streak having come to an inglorious end earlier that morning. Dig, who had an important sack on a third-and-short, our play-of-the-game, goes, “Look! It’s playing possum.”

Sure enough, the rabbit is lying very still in the grass, the dog standing over it, watching warily. I’m not a dog person, but I almost feel bad for this un. Its prey, this shattered, chewed-up Easter bunny, is limper than limp, is missing an ear, and arguably never had much fight in it; Nevertheless, I more than half expect it to at least jump up and run away, if not kick the dumb dog’s ass first.

Next week is the Kentucky Derby, and now that I officially “play the ponies,” I will have to find me a long shot to get behind. And get shat upon.

I got the ain’t-got-no-cowboy-hat-or-even-no-left-knee-neither blues.

My own Hedgehog says I ain’t no spring chicken farmer. I’m afraid someone’s going to buy me golf clubs for my birthday. Please don’t buy me golf clubs please. I got some team sports left in me, and contact ones at that. I know I do. Get me a knee brace, an ice pack, and a Costco-size bottle of ibuprofen, I got the ain’t-got-no-left-knee blues is all.

When that happens — that is, this happens — there is only one thing for me, and that is some quality Chunks de la Cooter time. It puts everything else in perspective. So I went and made a chicken pot with them, and bathed them and sang them to sleep and woke up with them in the middle of the night, and in the morning I took them to their Chunk Fu class, and then to Arizmendi and then what they call “the new park” because it’s probably the oldest park in all of Berkeley and therefore not on their beaten path. And I took pictures of them on the big-girl swings.

It was hard to say goodbye, so I didn’t. I went to dinner with the whole de la Cooter fambly down to Solano, to the new-to-me Korean bowls-of-things place, called Bowl’d.

The idea here — at least the main one — is bibimbap in stone bowls with your choice of meat or tofu. They also give you a choice of white rice or mixed grain. Either way it’s going to get all crusty and delicious at the bottom of your hot hot hot stone bowl.

At the top: cabbage, carrots, sprouts, greens, bulgogi if you’re me, and one nice sunny-side-up fried egg.

 

 

I wish there was a little more meat in it. But the meat there was good, and so was everything else. They don’t give you so many little bowls of things for the table, but they’ll refill what you love. In my case: kimchi. Super spicy. New favorite restaurant. 

BOWL’D

Sun.–Thurs.: 11 a.m.–10 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat.: 11 a.m.–11 p.m.

1479 Solano, Albany

(510) 526-6223

Beer and wine

AE/D/MC/V

 

Kill your TV

Andrew Lam
-
0
Kill your TV

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

Dear Cheap Eats Lady,

Where did you go? New Orleans? That is great.

It is the news. It is the unkind heart of government, our American government, that makes me want to stop what I’m doing, which is watching television, and go to sleep. This is easy, because I am lying on the couch anyway. All it requires is a rollover and the determination to jettison my responsibilities for the day. Students be damned, the government got me so down, I could not grade your papers.

The thing that’s great about me is that, I do roll over and go to bed for the day. It is a habit I’ve had all my life. I didn’t get to use it so much when I worked full time in an office. But those days were, in the scope of all the jobs I’ve had, short-lived.

There was a time, during the Bush eras, when I thought I would simply drop out of society. And I did. It was too much to take. I felt like democracy was over, and nobody cared. So I quit. I quit the whole thing. I am a man of accomplishment and purposefulness. Especially when it comes to not doing anything. The complete quitting. Oh, how I excel.

This has been kind of going on for a few weeks. My job doesn’t seem to notice. But I know I can’t go on like this and maintain any sort of a paycheck. Eventually the work will pile up so much that I will not be able to get it done anymore. I feel like the mailfolks who stash all the mail they don’t feel like delivering in their houses.

I have a tiny bedroom filled knee-deep with research papers about gun control, abortion, global warming, and how cell phones are very convenient. You would think that someone would be interested.

Yers,

Earl

Dear Earl Butter,

Goddamn it, man, deliver that mail! Seriously, you don’t have to worry about the government. David Byrne and I have that taken care of. What you do need to do is put every one of those student papers in its own private individual envelope, address them to as many different mail carriers as you can think of, and: stamp, boom, gone!

The USPS is in fact an evil institution, point taken. But I don’t know why you are letting the TV news roll you over. This is Cheap Eats! Switch to sports. I mean, not that it’s any less depressing than what may or may not be happening in the world of … the world, for all I know. On my way to the basketball game last night, for example, I learned that there might not be a pro football season next season. But wait, shouldn’t you be downstairs playing with my cat?

Yes, New Orleans. Where else is there? The first thing I ate this time was crawfish pieroghi. And it’s so hot here now that Hedgehog and I almost have no choice but to lick Hansen’s satsuma-flavored snow-blizzes off of each other.

Technically, hers may have been coconut-flavored, unless that’s my sunscreen I smell, typing this.

Other than that, it’s pretty kinda weird, living with someone you don’t live with in a town where you don’t live. I mean, in the morning she goes off to make TV (of a very different nature than the kind rolls you over), and I go off to change diapers, and then after work we go eat crawfish pieroghis just like any other northeast Ohio/central Pennsylvania bred couple in New Orleans.

Except some nights last week there was the French Canadian Quarter Festival, where we were not only rocked by brass bands and zydeco, but by Crabby Jack’s boudin sausages, which changed my life, and then Love at First Bite’s cochon du lait po’boys, which changed my life.

And then, as if my life weren’t different enough already, on the weekend we went to the mall. We went to Metarie. That’s like going to San Mateo. Except after we stopped for refreshment at Acme Oyster House, which changed my life.

Earl, I’ll be back next week. Our beloved Bay Area is not exactly unknown for its oysters, either. If you can find me a place that has char-grilled ones as good as this, or even half as good, if not better, then I will take you there.

And grade your papers.

And kill your television.

No you worry,

Your L.E.

 

Stuck on my craw

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Stuck on my craw

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Finally! Business as usual, here at Cheap Eats. But before I start talking about sports, there’s a little more I want to say about the poop in Coach’s garage.

It came with a few sheets of toilet paper on top. And when her landlord found it he said, “Hey, was there a dog running around in the garage?” I stayed in the house while Coach went out to see for herself. She was pretty sure that dogs didn’t use toilet paper, she said.

Then they both cleaned it up, and Coach started down that long, rocky road to forgetfulness. You know, at first I was on her side, but now it’s one week later and she keeps bringing it up. So I guess that means I’ll keep writing about it.

Blame Papa for not letting us talk about football last night, over sushi.

We lost 32-6. Speaking of shit. Maybe that had something to do with why Papa, our Center, didn’t want to talk about it. Actually, 32-6 was less than we expected to lose by. This would have been the first time in sports history that a 32-6 loss went down as a “moral victory” — except for one minor problem: they only had six players, and we had 14.

Athleticism is a wonderful thing to watch, even when you are covered in mud with cleat marks in your cheek. I’m not saying that’s what happened. We play on turf, so I was covered in little black turf balls with cleat marks in my cheek.

You know how they say that winning isn’t everything? Well, neither is losing. Traditionally.

We might change that, but in the meantime the troops remain optimistic and cheerful. My favorite moment was watching our quarterback chasing down yet another interceptor, late in the game, while laughing her head off.

She’s a rugby player. We may be the most bad-assedly bad team in the league, if not sports. We have a couple field hockey players, two to three soccer players, a basketball star, and maybe a little softball experience. But only two of us have ever played American football outside of bed and/or high school gym class.

We will have our day. It just might not be in my own personal lifetime.

After the trouncing, I made the mistake of going to Rockin’ Crawfish on Lake Merritt with the de la Cooter fambly. As if I didn’t already know what it means. To miss New Orleans.

While I was there — down South, that is — I kept sending pictures to Crawdad de la Cooter’s mister, Mr. Crawdad de la Cooter, of all the wonderful things I was eating, which included of course fried oyster po’ boys with bacon and cheese, and even more of course, crawfish etouffe, crawfish pie, and crawfish.

First he kind of begged me for mercy. Then he gave up on mercy and wrote me about a place they found in Oakland with “passable boiled crawfish.” When he brought it up again, upon my reentry, I thought he was trying to be helpful. I should have known he was plotting his revenge.

Passable? Maybe, if you haven’t been anywhere near Louisiana for at least four years. Mere days after feasting on Kjean’s with Cherry, B.B., and Hedgehog … forget about it.

I love Cajun. I love Asian. I love fusion. Authenticity means nothing to me. Berkeley has better Chicago pizza than Chicago, and the best pizza I ever ate was in Germany. I’d pit Just For You’s po’ boys against any I had in New Orleans.

Rockin’ Crawfish … just … doesn’t. Like Red, here in the city, it’s like they’re trying too hard. They crash the garlic over your head and blast you with hot sauce. And I love both those things but don’t associate either one with great crawfish.

The ones I was making love to last couple months, they don’t give you five choices. They come one way, with a subtle, more blended and complex zing to them.

It ain’t fair, I know. I should have waited four years. Anyway, I’m here. Sigh. My new favorite restaurant?

ROCKIN’ CRAWFISH

Mon.–Fri. 2–11 p.m.; Sat.–Sun. 1–11 p.m.

211 Foothill, Oakl.

(510) 251-1657

MC/V

Beer and wine

Synapse lapse

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Synapse lapse

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Dear Earl Butter,

That’s great about the synapse package. Synapse packages are very important, as the Pod surely knows. I can only imagine what having had yours brought “to the fore” has done for your creative output and pulled pork with barbecue slaw. Because in terms of thinking and cooking and playing Scrabble and guitar, I mean, it all boils down to synapse packages. Wait. What’s a synapse package?

What I know is — and this is a beautiful thing about reality and air travel — your most recent pulled pork and barbecue slaw samwich kept me up until 2 a.m. in the morning. In a good way! I got a lot of important work done, like studying the 1985 Chicago Bears defense and inventing an eight-woman version of their famous 46.

Did you know that when the Attack was telling you about having “the most fun she ever had” playing football she was talking about playing with me and my friends? And this is saying something, since we are a respectable 0-1, and her old team is something like 58-3 in league history. We play against them Sunday and it is my goal, as defensive coordinator, to not lose by more than 80.

So the next day I tried feverishly to explain my late-night 46-inspired 242 defense to Coach, but unfortunately a human being had pooped in her garage, and she was despondent. Not even taking her out to Chilli Cha Cha 2 and sitting under the mural with boobs on it could revive her zest for life and interest in defensive schemes in general.

Will try again tonight.

Meanwhile, I just wanted to thank you for keeping Cheap Eats unreal while I was away, and for accidentally even throwing in a little sports talk. In light of recent developments, and speaking of keeping it unreal, I see us becoming this fine, radical, and all-around conscientious alternative weekly’s sports section.

Sssh. I’m trying to sleep.

Your Dani

Dear Mrs. Downstairs Neighbor,

That all sounds great and, of course, welcome back, but the point is that Kris and I went to the Great American BBQ in Alameda. I got the brisket with beans and greens ($12.75) and she got the St. Louis style pork ribs, coleslaw, and beans ($10). I’m in the middle of this cleanse and am not supposed to be eating stuff like this, but I thought you would be proud of me if I could say that I cleansed with beef.

We liked it there. It had a good, classic BBQ place feel. We talked about Matt Stahl, whom we have in common, and how Matt and I teach similar things but he probably teaches them better. He is like my hero in all sorts of ways, but mostly in the guitar and singing and being-Matt way. I think we probably talked about music. We also have that in common. Remember? She used to play in Fibulator, back in the day.

We evaluated the place like good critics. We thought the meats were very well done. We decided that the heat of the sauces could be upped a notch so order your hotness one past what you would. If you like medium, get hot.

Anyway, a little bit of the table hot sauce fixed it up for us. At first we were like, maybe this is not the best BBQ we’ve ever had. But then we both agreed, that, wait a minute, if we lived a little closer, we’d be eating here all the time.

The owner came out and gave us a nice chat and some peach cobbler, which we thought was very good. Then our time together was over. I was supposed to watch either the space station or an iridium flare on my roof with my across-the-hall neighbor, Hazel, and had to get home. I would eat here again. I enjoy BBQ. You taught me how.

Yers,

Earl

GREAT AMERICAN BBQ

Tues.–Thurs. 11:30 a.m.– 8 p.m.; Fri. 11:30 a.m.–-9 p.m.;

Sat. noon–8 p.m.; Sun. noon–8 p.m.

2009 High, Alameda

(510) 865-3133

MC/V

Beer and wine

Beadeviled

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
1
Beadeviled

CHEAP EATS Dear Earl Butter,

As it turns out, the whole purpose of Mardi Gras is to catch beads. There are also little plastic cups and stuff, but what I want is a football. I want to make a leaping spinning catch, like a halftime Frisbee dog, bring it on home, lay it at Coach’s feet, and pant.

Do you think she will pat me on the head?

Do you think she will let me play in the season opener (this weekend!) even though I’ve missed every single practice since training camp?

I don’t know.

She texted me yesterday to ask how my lesbianism was coming along. I said, We’re at a parade, recording the crowd and the sounds of feet, and taking pictures of the childerns. I said I was trying real hard to catch a football for her, but so far … beads.

She expressed her disbelief (which I share) that I was ever even thinking of France over Mardi Gras. Then she texted again and said, for clarification, "Boobies!!!!!"

I paraphrase. There might have only been four exclamation marks. The point is, Earl, that when people think of Mardi Gras, they think of tits. Well, I am here to tell you — you, Earl, of all people, because I know you are more interested in subtlety and nuance than most of my two lesbian friends — that this is about so much more than that.

For example: ass.

I’m kidding. I’ve been to four parades already and I’ve seen about as much skin as I would have seen if I went to church. Admittedly, I haven’t been hanging out in the French Canadian Quarter, let alone on Bourbon Street, which is what everyone associates with Mardi Gras, not to mention New Orleans. But that’s like thinking of San Francisco as Fisherman’s Wharf.

Which would be what? Ridiculous. Yes. So my own personal, privately-held, and highly journalistic insider’s impression of Mardi Gras so far is that it’s a family affair, featuring marching bands of pimply teenagers and cute-ass kids punctuated by horses, trucks, and tractor-pulled floats from which ridiculously attired adults shower the citizenry and streets of New Orleans with insanely cheap and even more insanely coveted toys and trinkets. You can imagine my joy!

Boobs be damned, Earl, I am catching Coach a football or my name ain’t whatever my name is.

Dear Li’l Sister,

That is great. Me and Diane went to Katana-Ya in downtown San Francisco after seeing the greatest western movie of all time. Diane called my tongue unsavory, which you would think would put me in a funk, but, I don’t know, I just blew it off somehow.

Which is kind of what happens in this western we seen. This guy kind of gets his tongue blew off. It’s an odd way to start an afternoon when you are going to write about food. But it is not too odd.

We both got ramen. Big bowls of delicious noodle soup with prizes, like pot stickers. Hers was vegetable with soba noodles ($11) and mine was the katanaya, which had fried chicken and pork and pot stickers (get to the pot stickers early or they get a little chewy) and corn and fried potatoes and seaweed and scallion and barbecued pork and boiled egg. That is a lot of prizes ($12.90).

We talked of how we were both going to find us mates. Her plan was, I forget. And my plan was to get a garage space in my building and then get a car and a motorcycle. I believe it is the parking inconvenience that has hindered me all these years.

We also had edamame.

And Diane had a lollipop, seeing that there was a bowl of them on the counter and they were free. That is supposed to be a good sign.

Yers,

Earl

Katana-Ya

Daily: 11:30 a.m.–1 a.m.

430 Geary, SF

(415)771-1280

MC/V

Beer and wine

Eat your slumgolian

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Eat your slumgolian

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Tell you, I loved making chili with Coach’s mom. Her refrigerator was broke, so everything we needed was downstairs in Grandma’s fridge. Except in most cases it wasn’t there either.

Coach is of course a vegetarian. Grandma didn’t want beans, or spicy. Neither refrigerator had any peppers of any kind. Nor could I find chili powder.

Now, as you may know, I pride myself on my sense of show-must-go-onmanpersonship. I didn’t panic, sulk, or give up. No. At every twist, turn, and sheer drop-off, I shrugged, I laughed, I chopped onward. And stirred and opened cans and stirred and tasted until at a certain point I found myself standing over this colorful pot of simmering something-or-other and decided to make an announcement.

“It’s not chili,” I announced.

Coach and Coach’s mom, who had been situating Grandma at the dining room table, soothing her with promises of chili and chili and chili, came running into the kitchen, stood beside me, and looked into the pot. Grandma doesn’t get around so easily, or I’m sure she’d have looked too.

“That’s all right,” they said.

And I knew that it was, but had no idea what to call it, until they told me about slumgolian. Slumgolian, in the Coach family, was a surreal meal probably somewhat akin to what I call refrigerator soup. Other people have other names for it.

The point is that I learned a new word for a new thing I’d never seen before, and in truth it didn’t taste all that half bad, over tortillas.

Thanks to Kayday and her little red car, I got to git me to Joshua Tree, my favorite place on the planet, for Christmas. We sat on some rocks in the middle of the desert and ate Turkey Jerky, Wheat Thins, walnuts, and raisins, by way of marking the spot, and it was my favorite Christmas in many years.

But not my favorite meal. Neither was slumgolian.

No, for that we have to wind back the clock to Papa’s birthday, which falls a couple days shy of Christ’s. We gathered that evening at the Taco Shop @ Underdogs, in the Sunset. It was Papa, Pappy, Cola, Mikey Bike, Fiver, Flavor, a bunch of people I didn’t know, and Kentucky Fried Woman, whom I did know but had lost track of.

Coach was in San Diego already by then, lining scrimmage fields and setting up blocking dummies and car tires for our training camp/New Year’s Eve brouhaha, reportage/repercussions of which will dominate the next couple weeks if not months of Cheap Eats. Just to warn you.

As her coaching staff, I’d be next to arrive in the land of sun, slumgolian, and tacos. In fact, Kayday dumped me there after Joshua Tree, on her way back up to San Fran.

And I would like to point out up front and out of order, that nothing I have eaten in SoCal, so far, has even come close to the Taco Shop for all-around Mexcellence.

I can’t remember if I ever wrote about Nick’s Crispy Tacos or not, but in any case, the deal is: same thing. “Nick’s way,” as they say, is two corn tortillas — one crispy, one soft — with cheese, beans, salsa, guac, and whatever else you like.

I like carnitas. I like fish. The fish is fried and therefore juicy, tender, and oh-so satisfying. Really, honestly, you only need one.

Plus maybe another, plus chips.

In any case, whether it’s Nick Crispy or the Taco Shop, the pico de gallo is great, the guac is great, the meat is juicy, and the combination of soft and crispy tacos … well, go figure: it works.

Underdogs, I guess, is the name of the bar the Taco Shop is in. Sports on TV. In the back corner they have one of those basketball things where you see how many hoops you can make in a certain number of seconds. And while I was catching up with KFW on one side of me, and talking writing and music shop with Mikey Bike on the other, I also watched, out of the corner of my eye, several of my friends “step up to the line,” so to speak.

All I will say is that I am glad our football team is not going to be a basketball team. Although … well, never mind. We will see.

THE TACO SHOP @ UNDERDOGS

Sun.–Wed. 11 a.m.–10 p.m.;

Thurs.–Sat. 11 a.m.– midnight

1824 Irving, SF

(415) 566-8700

MC/V

Full bar

 

1234...13Page 3 of 13

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org