Mid-Market Archives — Page 7 of 7 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Hotel Biron’s grape ace: Meet Chris Fuqua

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September 9, 2008

Intrepid reporter Justin Juul hits the streets each week for our Meet Your Neighbors series, interviewing the Bay Area folks you’d like to know most.

Most wine bars suck. They’re stuffy, over priced, and full of pretentious assholes and bad food. But not Mid-Market hideaway Hotel Biron, located at 45 Rose Street. This place is awesome. Biron’s beer menu features obscure wheat brews from Germany, Pilsners from The Czech Republic, and even cans of Tecate, which means I can take my girlfriend there for a fancy date and enjoy myself at the same time. But that’s not all. Hotel Biron’s cheese/meat selection is insane and its wine-list is off the charts. Zins, Cabs, Pinot? Sheeeit. If that’s all you know about wine you need to get out of California and into Chris Fuqua’s brain. The dude may look like a truck driver from Alabama, but he knows more about wine than a sommelier from Paris.

Fuqua has been running Hotel Biron for years now, but business life hasn’t changed him much. He’s still a cook at heart.

SFBG: So what’s your deal?
Chris Fuqua: My name’s Chris Fuqua. I’m the owner and operator of Hotel Biron.

SFBG: So how did that come about? Do you have family contacts in the SF restaurant industry or something?
Fuqua: No. I grew up in a small town in Iowa, actually. I decided not to go to college after high school, probably because my dad wanted me too. So, like a lot of people, I eventually ended up in the food service business, working as a dishwasher and then as a busser and a waiter and eventually as a cook. At some point, I decided I wanted to cook for a living. So I enrolled in a culinary school in Vermont where I learned about San Francisco’s reputation as a culinary capital. After graduation, I wanted to work at either Zuni or Oliveto. As it turned out, I got a job at Zuni, which is how I found this place. I used to hang out here every night after work because it’s in the alley behind Zuni, about twenty paces away.

SFBG: How did you go from a dude who used to hang out here to becoming the owner?
Fuqua: Well, I was friends with the people who used to run Biron and I actually worked here to help them out sometimes. When one of them decided to move on, I was approached as a potential partner. It was a total shock. I mean, I was a cook, and I had never really thought of myself as the owner of anything. But my girlfriend and current partner in the bar, Jess, convinced me it was possible. So I just went for it. I was a partner in Biron with one of the original owners for a while and then I actually bought her out when she decided to move on. This situation totally fell in my lap. I’m really lucky.

SFBG: What’s it like owning a wine bar in San Francisco? It seems like there’s a lot of competition.

The Bike Issue: Getting in gear

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May 13, 2008

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1. City Hall has a bike room. For a while I thought only a scant number of city employees rode to work because the racks out front are usually pretty barren. Then I came across a storage room in the basement, near the café, full of bikes. What an encouraging sight. It was opened a few years back by the Department of the Environment, which is tasked with many of the city’s greening chores, and is available for all City Hall employees to park their rides safely inside.

2. More than 50 percent of San Francisco’s greenhouse-gas emissions come from transportation. Despite this, 20 percent of San Francisco residents polled in November 2007 by David Binder Research said riding a bike did nothing to curb global warming. Au contraire. Bicycles emit zero greenhouse gases (although the rider emits some carbon monoxide from huffing and puffing). A car produces roughly 20 pounds of CO2 for every gallon of gas burned. Gas stations in San Francisco sell about 953,000 gallons of fuel a day. At $4 a gallon, it would take about five months’ of fill-ups to buy every San Franciscan a $750 bicycle — and that’s a nice bike.

3. Someday when you’re waiting for a BART train, take a good look at a system map. It has almost every East Bay bike trail detailed, and many of the trails connect BART stations with recreation areas. "There are a lot of great ways to get out to nature from BART," said BART board member Tom Radulovich.

4. BART is getting more bike-friendly. About 15 percent of the 580 trains now have removed seats to create special areas for bikes. (Look for the cars marked "Bicycle Priority Area.") Though some riders would like each train to have an entire car dedicated to bikes (Caltrain’s approach), a BART spokesperson told me that it would be difficult because cars are added and dropped throughout the day to handle fluctuating ridership. Soon more stations will be outfitted with bike lockers, for rent at a couple of pennies an hour with a BikeLink pass (for information, go to www.bikelink.org). Later this year, the Embarcadero Station will be getting an entire storage room (like City Hall’s, and again, partially funded by the Dept. of the Environment.)

5. One BART oddity: That groove running beside the stairs at the 16th and Mission station is to wheel your bike up and down rather than carrying it. Who knew? Not me. It’s a pilot project, so if you use it and like it, let BART know by calling (415) 989-2278 and the transit agency might install some more.

6. A San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (www.sfbike.org) membership provides mad discounts, and not just at bike shops. Get 10 percent off at Rainbow Grocery and 50 cents off beers at Hole in the Wall — and that’s just the beginning.

7. Make sure you write down your bike’s serial number so it’s easier for the cops to track your ride if it gets ripped off (see "Chasing My Stolen Bicycle," 2/13/07, for more on bike theft in San Francisco). How do you find these magic digits? Flip your bike over and copy the number stamped on the bottom bracket where the pedals go through the frame.

8. Distant lands like Larkspur, Mill Valley, and Muir Woods are all much closer when you mix the bike with the boat. Marin has an amazing network of bike paths, and the Marin Bicycle Coalition (www.marinbike.org) has a map that one-ups San Francisco’s. (It shows the direction of the hills, not just the grade.) And … the ferries have bars.

9. DIY is the way forward. The three-class series at Box Dog Bikes (www.boxdogbikes.com), which covers flats, replacing cables, and truing wheels, is cheap and goes into enough depth that I no longer feel like there are certain parts of my bike I’m not supposed to touch with an Allen wrench. Follow it up with a membership to the Bike Kitchen (www.bikekitchen.org), a DIY shop with tools, parts, and people on hand to help you tune your spokes. It also regularly hosts "WTF" nights for girls, queers, and transpeople.

10. Need to know how to find the bike lanes and avoid the hills? Get one of those great bike maps (available at City Hall and at bike shops) when you join the SF Bike Coalition through a free download at www.sfbike.org/download/map.pdf. You can also pick them up at the energizer stations all over town on Bike to Work Day. It will help you find the best routes and navigate groovy spots like the Wiggle, which is the best route from mid-Market Street to Golden Gate Park. If you look along the sides of the streets, you’ll even see the green bike route signs that say "Wiggle." If you get lost, just look for a bike lane, which are well-marked all over town. Or follow all the other bikers.

CAV Wine Bar & Kitchen

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April 2, 2008

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› paulr@sfbg.com

You could, if you were inclined, step into CAV Wine Bar & Kitchen and do nothing but drink wine. The establishment opened on mid-Market in 2005 as a wine bar, after all, and the wine list is so extensive that it’s actually presented as a bound volume. I’ve seen less impressive Bibles. But you could also, if you were inclined, step into CAV and eat food while not drinking wine, and you wouldn’t necessarily think you were missing out. Of course, the people at CAV don’t want you to sunder food and wine, since the whole point of the restaurant is to bring them together — with wine first among equals, for once. But it’s a tribute to chef Michael Lamina’s kitchen that the wine-friendly food can stand on its own. This is a nice corollary to one of my own cherished postulates: that many food-friendly wines are quite good on their own.

The name suggests a certain Iberian romance. It falls just one letter short of cava, the Spanish word for Spanish sparkling wines made in the méthode champenoise and also for "dig," with an implication of caves and candlelight. There is no dinner quite so atmospheric as one held in a candlelit underground chamber at a winery — and unfortunately CAV isn’t underground. It is narrow and deep, though, with a zigzag floorplan and a large multilight window at the very back of the rear dining room. The view through that window is of the famous alley where Zuni Café (which is next door) used to do its charcoal grilling nearly 30 years ago.

And the food does have its Spanish touches. The wine-friendly cuisines tend to come from the wine-producing parts of the globe, and this means, heavily, the Mediterranean basin and its California cousin. But we mustn’t forget Germany, which produces many lovely, if floral, white wines and some reds too — not to mention spaetzle, the butter-fried noodle squiggles that, in CAV’s rendition ($6) are so delicious that we actually asked for seconds, long after we’d run out of other dishes we might have spooned the spaetzle alongside. Spaetzle would go very nicely with some grilled bratwurst, but at CAV it also makes a fine starter or share plate or just a little something extra to fill in the corners.

As for Spanish accents: we noted them in baby octopi ($13) expertly braised (meaning neither mushy nor tough) in a smoked-paprika broth littered with shavings of fennel root and fried chickpeas. Smoked paprika is possibly the most distinctive of the Spanish flavorings, whether in the cured pork sausage called chorizo or in a seafood dish, as here.

There was also a Castilian note in a salad of arugula leaves ($9), tossed with sections of satsuma mandarin oranges, almonds, shavings of Zamorano cheese (a hard, Parmesan-like sheep’s-milk cheese produced on Spain’s central plateau), and saba, a balsamic vinegar–like dressing. (Bear in mind that Italy and Spain spent centuries ruling parts of each other.)

In keeping with CAV’s wine-bar roots, portions are not huge, and even the big plates, such as beef tenderloin ($25), are on the modest size. But for any number of reasons, this is fine; it helps restrain both expense and gluttony, it encourages exploration and sharing, and it tends to keep food and wine in balance. The tenderloin, a boneless but juicy piece of meat, had been pan-roasted to the rare side of medium rare, plated in a pool of jus-like marrow foam (foam! reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated) beside little heaps of blanched haricots verts and black trumpet mushrooms, then topped with a purée of caramelized onion. Earthy would be a succinct description of this dish; also autumnal — perfect in a city of eternal autumn.

Not all the culinary influences are Mediterranean-derived nor otherwise associated with the lands of wine. We came across a plate of sashimi ($9) made from tai snapper (a sea bream from New Zealand), arranged atop a set of kohlrabi-stuffed spring rolls that looked like Tiparillos, and, for some color, slivers of kumquat and squirts of arugula puree. Beer would have been fine here, but so was a small glass of Schmelz grüner veltliner. (As is the case at several other wine-intensive spots around town, wines by the glass are available as 2.5 ounce tastes or 5 ounce glasses. Two cheers for sobriety.)

Desserts were startlingly good and not pricey by recent standards. There was a sniff of disdain from across the table at the prospect of a butterscotch tartlet ($7.50), since there are those who don’t care for butterscotch. I’m not one of them; I’ve always responded to what seems to me to be a simple and irresistible blending of vanilla into caramel. The creamy butterscotch filling of the tartlet was that, yes, but it also had … liquor breath! Someone had discreetly spiked it with Scotch whisky, and eating it was like giving a peck on the cheek to a boozy but lovable old aunt on Christmas Eve.

The chocolate–peanut butter cookies ($5 for three) arrived on the wings of higher expectations, and they did not disappoint. They resembled Oreos, except with an intense peanut-butter mousse as a filling rather than the sugary white stuff in the commercial kind. And as if that weren’t enough, the kitchen threw in a bonus: a scattering of candied peanuts, like peanut brittle without the brittle. We dug that.

CAV WINE BAR & KITCHEN

Dinner: Mon.–Thurs., 5:30–11 p.m.

Fri.–Sat., 5:30 p.m.–midnight

1666 Market, SF

(415) 437-1770

www.cavwinebar.com

Wine and beer

MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

The road to Mecca

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June 27, 2006

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› paulr@sfbg.com
Judging a book by its cover might be a sin, but how about judging a restaurant by its name? In most cases this is probably at least premature, if not quite a sin, though the name Mecca presents a strong temptation. Here we have a restaurant that opened a decade ago on a stretch of mid-Market that wasn’t exactly Shangri-la; the neighbors included a Ford dealership, one of the tattier Safeways, and, a bit later, the sex club Eros. On the other hand, the location was about midway between Zuni and the Castro, and it is along that vector that Mecca — which became Mecca SF last fall under new ownership — has found its enduring identity.
When I first stepped into Mecca 10 years ago, I thought: Studio 54. There was the glam underground feel, the distinct homo vibe, the tall curtains of purple velvet hanging like regal robes and serving as partial screens while also soaking up, in grand fashion, some of the noise reverberating from the many hard surfaces, the concrete and stainless steel, that gave the space its urban edge. As it happened, I had visited Studio 54 in the early 1980s, when the place was senescent and overrun with bridge-and-tunnel folk but still recognizable as a onetime theater of some kind, with an extant stage and balcony — along with fabulous curtains. Mecca, it seemed to me then, wasn’t a direct clone of but was definitely inspired by Studio 54; the drugs, sex, and exclusivity might not be as overt and intense, but in compensation there was food — good food — and a conspicuous valet service, which not only took care of patrons’ fancy cars but also alerted passersby that happenings of note were occurring within.
On a recent visit, we arrived in a Prius — holy of holies for today’s rich liberals, with plenty of rear legroom — and parked directly across the street. Inside, the layout seemed unchanged from my last tour, 3 years ago, or for that matter from 10 years ago. The gigantic, horseshoe-shaped bar still dominates; there is still a cluster of tables under the front windows (which are screened with steel mesh — a Jetsons touch) and another cluster in a curtain-screened alcove behind the host’s station. The curtains did seem to me to be a different color now — camel or cappuccino rather than purple or claret — but that could be a trick or fault of memory.
The change of hands last fall has resulted in, among other things, a new chef, Sergio Santiago. He was born in Puerto Rico, and he describes his Mecca SF menu as incorporating “certain tones of New Latin cuisine.” Maybe, but what most struck me was the richness of Santiago’s cooking. In this sense he has more in common with his recent predecessors, Michael Fennelly and Stephen Barber, than with the restaurant’s opening chef, Lynn Sheehan, whose style of well-polished Cal-Med rusticity was very much in the tradition of Zuni and Chez Panisse.
True, you can still find that sort of dish on Santiago’s menu. The Mecca french fries ($6), served in a paper cone with a ramekin of homemade ketchup, leave nothing to be desired and are nicely sharable. Just as plainspoken is the whole artichoke ($9), baked with parsley and bread crumbs and served with a side of garlic butter for dipping — an important procedure, given the leatheriness of much of the flesh. (Artichokes steam much better than they roast, in my experience, unless they are baby artichokes.)
But it is impossible not to notice the infiltration of luxe onto the bill of fare. Caviar. Lobster. Foie gras. Very Campton Place and expense-accounty, and please have your statins ready. Oysters provide a balancing tonic and reaffirm the Zuni connection; they are available raw on the half shell or, as a quartet ($12), fried and doused with a mignonette. Crab cakes ($13) are good, if out of season — a beurre blanc emboldened by tasso (prosciutto’s poor cousin) is a nice flourish — and they are also noticeably spherical, as opposed to the more typical patty. Among the simplest of the smaller choices is a salad of mixed baby greens, though $12 seems a little steep for what you get.
As is so often the case now, the main dishes seem to sag a bit when compared with the smaller but more glittering starters. It is like going to a play that sets up spectacularly in the first act, then doesn’t quite make it up the mountain. At Mecca SF, this phenomenon has to do at least in part with the usualness of the offerings: There is chicken, beef, lamb, catfish, and duck breast. (No vegetarian choice.) I liked a pork tenderloin ($27), roasted to perfect succulence and presented with mashed sweet potatoes and a tangy chutney of Granny Smith apples; I liked too a roulade of salmon ($26), the disk of fish wearing a top hat of pickled cucumber and radish tissues. But these dishes seemed to be wanting some of the subtlety of the earlier courses.
Desserts (by pastry chef Mie Uchida) are mainly of the modern-art school: for example, a flange of chocolate bread pudding ($9) flanked by small globes of chocolate and peanut butter ice cream — the overall look that of a miniature public sculpture — and a trio of crèmes brûlées ($9), chocolate, coconut, and vanilla, lined up on a narrow platter that resembles a railroad cross tie. The F train, incidentally, stops just about at the front door. No valet needed. Wave as you pass. SFBG
MECCA SF
Dinner: Tues.–Thurs., 5:30–10 p.m.; Fri.–Sat., 5:30–11 p.m.; Sun., 5:30–9 p.m. Lunch: Sun., from 1 p.m.
2029 Market, SF
(415) 621-7000
www.sfmecca.com
Full bar
Loud
AE/DC/MC/V
Wheelchair accessible