Pot

Identity politics

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com


CHEAP EATS Where were we?


Oh yeah, I was a menace to society — unintentionally, to my credit — and lots of innocent people were going to die or go blind on account of my lack of window-opening prowess. Or did I dream this? It sounds like a dream. Except I couldn’t have dreamed it because everyone’s shirts stayed on and there weren’t any Day-Glo chickens running around or big yellow onions with legs.


I’m so confused. Sometimes I have to go read last week’s column just to find out where I’m at in the world. So this was real. I know because I read it in the paper: the chicken farmer broke a window and spear-shaped shards of glass were raining down on the sidewalk all over Mod the Pod who, being superheroic, managed to escape without a scratch. I still don’t see how.


No one else got hurt either! Just me, and the damage was all to the head. I was traumatized. I haven’t been the same since. I’m twitchy, touchy, and even weirder than my weird cat Weirdo the Cat. I jump at the sound of a leaf landing on the roof. I have to drink out of sippy cups. Every little thing is the crack of glass to me: voices, footsteps. And all I can think about without screaming is Jane Austen novels and soup.


Speaking of which, I scored a scrap pile ham bone from Yard Sale’s holiday party last week at the Rite Spot (thank you, Denise!), and I gotta go stir the pot of split-pea heaven gurgling on top of the wood stove.

Man, it smells good in here for a change.


So anyway … the Pod superheroically came up with a bag and a broom, cleaned my mess, threw a blanket over my shell-shocked shoulders, and led me very slowly to my new favorite restaurant, Just Won Ton. I’ll never understand how we got there because it’s way the hell out in the Sunset on Vicente, and the glass storm happened in Laurel Heights. But isn’t that just like a superhero?


Maybe we drove.


Whatever the case, it happened. Soup happened, and I was on the road to recovery. We had a bowl of wonton noodle soup and another bowl with dumplings, and we passed them back and forth, and both ones were wonderful, but I forget which had fish balls and which had chickens.


I remember a big plate of roast duck on the table between us, and roast duck is another thing that just makes life entirely livable and loveable, no matter what: You’re sick. You suck. You just broke windows over your best friend’s head…. Roast duck!


"Pod," I said, in a small shaky way, between slurps and slobbers, "what do people mean when they talk about ‘identity politics’?"


Mod is a recent escapee from academia. I’m a chicken farmer.


"Who’s talking about identity politics?" she said.


"It was on that radio show you sent me the link to. KPFA? Something about something, Suzy Vacuum Cleaner?"


"We’ll talk about it later," she said. Good superhero. "Eat your soup. ‘Suzy Vacuum Cleaner’?"


"Something like that. And some other people," I said, sinking into my soup, which was delicious, in case I didn’t already say so. So we didn’t talk about identity politics. But later, days later, between wontons and ham bones, when I was feeling a lot better about almost having killed one of my favorite people ever, I called one of my other favorite people ever, my old pal Moonpie, and I said, "Identity politics. Start talking." And she did.

She’s a teacher. I’m a chicken farmer.


These are words, and I still don’t know what anything means. I mean, there are eggs, and there are all the words we use to describe an egg. Like egg. I’m trying, but even though I’m a writer in addition to a chicken farmer, words fall short for me. They don’t do justice to reality, which I find to be almost infinitely complex, tasty, and entirely unpoliticable.


Just Won Ton, for example, serves more than just wontons. A lot more. Duck. Chinese tamales.


It’s a simple, calmingly out-of-the-way place, and it’s a great name for a restaurant. But it both is and isn’t what it is.


Again it comes spiraling to this! And I almost get it, again, and am full of soupy amazement. The ham bone is connected to the ham bone. It wouldn’t fit in any of my pots, so I had to saw it in half with a hack saw. *


JUST WON TON


Tues.–Sun., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.


1241 Vicente, SF


(415) 681-2999


Takeout available


Beer


MC/V


Quiet


Wheelchair accessible

>

East meets West Hollywood

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› paulr@sfbg.com
As you step into Roy’s Restaurant, you will notice the names of many cities stenciled in gold on the glass door — places where other Roy’s Restaurants can be found. You might feel as if you are sidling into one of the branches of a Parisian house of couture or the district office of some international brokerage firm. My eyes darted briefly to the end of the two-columned list, half expecting to see the reassuring words “FDIC insured.” I didn’t see them. But then, insurance, whether from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or some other gracious entity, isn’t really necessary at Roy’s. The place has found its feet here, and they are feet that move with a definite San Francisco style.
When our Roy’s opened six years ago, I walked through the doors into a fabulous inaugural dinner party and was disappointed. It was a lovely restaurant, yes, with innovative and well-prepared food conceived by Roy Yamaguchi, the founding chef and eponym — but it wasn’t in Hawaii, and the island magic seemed lost on the streets of San Francisco. The handful of Roy’s Restaurants in Hawaii are among the original ones, and they reflect the islands’ paradisial temper; life moves a little more slowly there, and people are less tense with the metropolitan urgencies. The Roy’s on the Big Island even has, for alfresco types, a kind of docklike deck extending over the water, and if you take a table there, you can practically hear the just-caught fish flopping around on the weathered timbers. The cooking reflects the immediacy and locality of the ingredients — seafood just minutes from the sea, beef from cattle raised on the Big Island — as well as the distinctive blend of influences, from Japan, Polynesia, and Europe, that give the Hawaiian Islands much of their gastronomic and cultural flavor.
Transport all this to a gritty and often chilly stretch of Mission Street and you have the restaurant equivalent of a heart transplant. There is no dock whose pilings are lapped by soft, warm waves, no purple sunset or palm fronds waving in a gentle breeze; there is just damp concrete and Muni buses. Even the interior decor is mostly in the urban vein: a huge exhibition kitchen and a honeycomb of wine bottles similar to the one at Bacar. If, like me, you remember Roy’s as part of the Hawaiian enchantment, you might well find the difference shocking and even disappointing. But this is unfair to our Roy’s, which in truth has become an excellent restaurant very much in the metro-California manner. If the long list of cities on Roy’s front door reveals that Yamaguchi has built an empire, it also tells us that, like the Roman Empire and its ecclesiastical successor, he has done so by adapting a core formula to local conditions, tastes, and expectations.
Roy’s core mostly has to do with the food, and its center of gravity (the menu’s term of art is “classic”) lies within the confines of the prix fixe, a $35, three-course dinner. The street signage describes the restaurant’s cooking as “Hawaiian fusion,” and for me the fusion isn’t so much East-meets-West as East–meets–West Hollywood. Yamaguchi cooked in Los Angeles in the 1980s, and he has a Wolfgang Puckish flair for boldness — grilled shrimp (part of the prix fixe first course) served with wasabi cocktail sauce, for instance, or a large, spherical crab cake ($15) mounted like a trophy on a pedestal of tinglingly spicy kimchi — sweet, hot, sour, and rich, all in the same bite.
The fixed-price dinners all open with the same appetizer trio, of which the shrimp is a constituent. Its companions include a single, but heavily meaty, baby back rib — tender as the night, Szechuan spiced and wood grilled — and a chef’s-choice item that might be a nicely crisped pot sticker. On the question of main dishes, choices open out. Here we find four possibilities, reflecting a world of influences. Large prawns in a tangle of pad thai — threads of carrot and daikon radish tossed with rice noodles — seem quite comfortably Southeast Asian, while charbroiled short ribs (of beef) are as tender and engagingly stringy as Grandma’s pot roast on a chilly Iowa night.
I was pleased that the hibachi-grilled salmon was wild king salmon presented on a molded pad of jasmine rice, though it seemed a bit late in the season for the fish to be local. The dish I found most representative of Roy’s local sensibility was a mahimahi filet, crusted with macadamia nut crumbs (a very Hawaiian touch), then sautéed and served with lobster-butter sauce (a rather French touch, I thought) and thick slices of new potatoes. The overall effect was less one of fusion than of California cooking. One minor note of discontent: the potatoes were undercooked.
Our friends, who are Roy’s devotees, urged upon us the melting hot chocolate soufflé, an innocuously cakey-looking object that was indeed filled with melted chocolate. At the touch of a fork, it oozed out like lava onto the plate. Less dramatic, but also texturally memorable, was a macadamia nut almond tart — a disk of one’s own, tasting a lot like pecan pie and topped with crumbles of macadamia nuts and a shift knob of vanilla bean ice cream. The tart was almost too sweet for me.
The devotees made a point of saying they prefer Roy’s to Boulevard. I am not sure I agree with them, but I understood their point, and perhaps the real news is that Roy’s and Boulevard can be mentioned in the same sentence these days — can be compared. The two, while neighbors, are very different sorts of restaurants, but each is a San Francisco restaurant, sprinkled with a bit of the local pixie dust. For Roy’s, member of a chain whose roots are halfway across the Pacific, that’s certainly some dust it’s glad to have. SFBG
ROY’S RESTAURANT
Lunch: Mon.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m.
Dinner: Mon.–Thurs., 5:30–10:30 p.m.; Fri.–Sun., 5–11 p.m.
575 Mission, SF
(415) 777-0277
www.roysrestaurant.com
Full bar
AE/DC/DISC/MC/V
Moderately noisy
Wheelchair accessible

The salt point

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As a partisan of salt, I could hardly help but love a restaurant called Salt House, and I did — and do — but … how funny that there apparently are no saltshakers at the bar. I was casting about for one, wanting to salt something up a little while waiting for someone to arrive, but I had to settle instead for pouring myself more water from the glass jugs the staff set out for your very own. Water is nice, of course, but sometimes only salt will do.
Salt House is the latest project from the brothers Rosenthal, Mitchell and Steven, who for the last decade or so have run the kitchen show (and I mean this quite literally) at Wolfgang Puck’s Postrio, where the exhibition kitchen is of the capital-E sort. The first stage of the Rosenthals’ exit strategy involved opening their own restaurant, Town Hall, in an old SoMa building a few years ago. Salt House is their Chapter Two and coincides, more or less, with the end of their reign at Postrio.
Like Town Hall (which is just around the corner), Salt House has been installed on the ground floor of a venerable structure, a century-old building that used to be a printing plant. The restaurant’s street-front space is boxy, fairly narrow, and deep — like a garage bay for an 18-wheeler, if there are such bays. In keeping with SoMa’s postindustrial fashionability, there are exposed wood beams (including a kind of indoor arbor, sans greenery, near the host’s station) and exposed brick, along with a line of light fixtures that look like barrels beginning to explode above the dining room and neoquaint incandescent bulbs dangling over the zinc bar.
Mostly, though, I noticed the windows, huge multiglazed modern marvels that admit oceans of light while giving the entire redo a distinctly sleek, Mies van der Rohe cast. If you want to know if an old building has been rehabbed, look at the windows; if you see a certain waviness, like heat rising from pavement on a hot day, you are probably looking at original window glass and an unrehabbed building. If you see gleaming perfection, a sheen like the undisturbed surface of a pond, you are looking at renovation money, and perhaps at Salt House.
The food might be called California pub food, but it is pub food of a high order. As at Postrio, the Rosenthals have orchestrated a brass band of big flavors. Even the little bar snacks are vivid: the house-made “pot o’ pickles” ($5) — an array of vegetables including cauliflower, baby carrots, pearl onions, and wax beans — jumps with a vinegar charge in its fist-sized crock; and the mixed nuts ($5) — almonds, pistachios, a cast of thousands — are roasted with one of life’s great improbables, truffle honey, along with sea salt. (This was the dish I was trying to salt up at the bar, incidentally. The sea salt had settled at the bottom of the crock, a fact we discovered only when the crock was nearly empty.)
Nearly every dish has some flavor kazoo. In the poutine ($7 at dinner, $10 at lunch), basically a plate of potato chips dribbled with short-rib gravy, it’s the layer of gorgonzola, which not only gives a textural effect like that of nachos but adds a tremendous charge of pungency up the nose. In the shellfish stew ($19), mainly mussels and shrimp, it’s a broth infused with saffron aioli. In the pizzalike preserved tomato tart ($11), it’s the intensity of the preserved tomatoes — along with the squares of luxuriously buttery pastry crust they sit on. In the chili-roasted oysters ($13), it’s the fiery chili sauce, which, it must be said, makes the dish a little top-heavy.
The watchword for fish is crispy. This cannot be a bad thing. A mackerel filet ($9) wears a waistcoat of golden panko (Japanese-style bread crumbs), while pan-roasted skate wing ($24) gets a nice searing on both sides before being plated with roasted, quartered brussels sprouts, chunks of salsify, and dabs of a tarragon salsa. Skate wing, with its corrugated texture, is one of the most interesting fish to eat — getting the last of the flesh away from the bone is like cleaning stray hairs from a comb — and yet we should not be eating it. Too late I learned from Seafood Watch that skate are seriously endangered and should be avoided. Like sharks, they reproduce slowly, and they are taken through the highly destructive method of trawling. (Mackerel are in the “best” category, but that was just a lucky stab for us.)
I would be glad to learn that skate had been replaced on the menu by petrale sole or some other type of local, floundery fish that might not be as fascinatingly ribbed but isn’t teetering on the brink, either. The Rosenthals are eminences here; if they set a good and conspicuous example, others will follow. It would be a great help to ordinary diners if restaurants simply refused to buy and serve any seafood whose populations aren’t in sustainable shape (per Seafood Watch or some similar authority) and indicated as much on their menus — maybe with a smiling or dancing fish icon?
Sundries: desserts ($7) are mostly in the American grain, including a lewdly moist warm chocolate Bundt cake and some nostalgia-laced butter pecan ice cream, presented in two scoops. The house-blend wines, including a fruity-floral white, are available on tap (from steel barrels) and are presented in several sizes of nifty apothecary bottles, near relations of the water jugs and perhaps of the saltshakers, if they ever come to pass.<\!s>SFBG
SALT HOUSE
Mon.–<\d>Fri., 11:30–<\d>1 a.m.; Sat., 5 p.m.–<\d>1:30 a.m.; Sun., 5 p.m.–<\d>midnight
545 Mission, SF
(415) 543-8900
Full bar
AE/MC/V
Noisy
Wheelchair accessible

Pink-paint hate

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It was a little after 6 o’clock on the morning of Sept. 21 when Naomi Okada arrived to start her day at Lowell High School. The Japanese language teacher is often at work early, and after a short wait a custodian let her into the building. Okada made her way down the quiet, empty halls of the school and up a stairwell to the second floor, where she unlocked the door of the World Language Department office. She dropped her things by her desk, one among more than a dozen belonging to the language teachers who share space in the large office. As she entered the nearby kitchen to brew a pot of coffee, John Raya’s desk, in the corner by the door, caught her attention.
“I noticed there was paint all over his computer,” Okada told the Guardian. “My first impression was that it looked like a bucket of paint was poured over it.” Thick streams of pink liquid dripped from the monitor onto the keyboard and were splattered on the wall behind the desk and the chair in front of it.
She thought this might have been an accident, but since Raya was also an early riser and usually came in about a half hour after her, she decided to go look for him. She walked quickly down the hallway, past Spirit Week posters painted the same shade of pink, to Raya’s classroom. It was still locked. Moments later she ran into him in the hallway, and together they went back to the office.
Okada hadn’t yet passed close enough to the desk to see a note propped on the keyboard. It was Raya who would first read what it said:
“Big mouth fag!!!!! You start too much trouble in this department!!!! Mind your fucking business and go back to New York!!!!! Or Cuba or wherever the fuck you come from!!!!!”
“I was stunned,” Raya told us. “It didn’t hit me in the beginning. It was just bizarre. It didn’t make sense. And then the reality hit.”
Raya thinks the pink paint was chosen because he is gay and the words because he’s been speaking up about problems he sees in the language department in which he has taught French and Spanish for almost 20 years.
Soon the school’s interim principal, Amy Hansen, and assistant principal Peter Van Court would have the room closed off and guarded by security. John Scully, the police officer assigned to the school, would arrive to gather evidence that might identify who committed the hate crime.
And all of that would take just a few hours. The destroyed keyboard and desk chair would be removed and replaced. The paint would be wiped up, leaving spare vestiges of pink in the seams of the computer monitor and on the chalk tray behind it. By lunchtime it would seem as though this had never happened — and most of the school would still be unaware that it had.
Later, Inspector Milanda Moore of the San Francisco Police Department’s hate crimes unit would be assigned to the case, and Raya would ask her why a crime lab was not brought in. “She said that was Mr. Scully’s call,” Raya said.
“We didn’t really have a lot of evidence,” Scully told us. “I guess it’s a computer office classroom,” he said, misidentifying the room. “A lot of people touch computers. It would be hard to get a good fingerprint. I didn’t see the point.” He said rooms that see a lot of use and are heavily trafficked by kids are hard to fingerprint.
This, however, isn’t one of those rooms. It’s an office to which only faculty and administration have keys and access, and students are strictly forbidden from entering without supervision. And when Okada arrived for work early that morning, the door was locked, the lock was functioning fine, and there was no sign of a forced entry.
That’s led Raya and others at Lowell to a truly disturbing conclusion: the hate crime was committed, they suggest, not by a disgruntled student or misguided prankster but by a member of the faculty or an administrator.
If that’s true, then Lowell — the city’s premier public high school, a place that wins awards for its teaching and is lauded for its tolerant attitudes — has a staff member who has resorted to the sort of racist, homophobic act that’s rarely seen in San Francisco workplaces these days. And he or she still hasn’t been caught.
In fact, one of the oddest elements of this entire episode — and the fact that makes it more than a passing story of poor behavior — is the way the school administration has seemed to go out of its way to keep the whole thing under wraps. Students were never formally told what happened. Faculty were discouraged from discussing it. The student paper, the Lowell, was scolded for daring to print a story about it. Other than a student-organized response, there was no attempt to use the incident as a learning experience.
Some school officials are unhappy that the administration kept this so quiet. “I think that’s totally inappropriate,” Sarah Lipson, vice president of the Board of Education, told us. “We’ve tried so hard to be transparent. If you have no idea where this is coming from, you have to err on the side of transparency.”
And when we started to look into the crime, we discovered that it wasn’t an isolated event. The language department at Lowell is such a mess that a specialist in nonviolent communication has been hired to mediate. “It’s a very hot, polarized situation,” said Lynda Smith, a consultant with Bay Area Nonviolent Communication who works with couples and groups and teaches classes at San Quentin. “In my experience, the tension and the lack of trust in this department is one of the more extreme situations that I’ve encountered.”
The situation is raising some deep-seated questions about the way one of the nation’s top public high schools is managed.
Lowell is the kind of academic institution that inspires faith in the public school system. Last May, Newsweek ranked it 26 out of 1,200 top public schools in the country. Each year nearly 3,000 of San Francisco’s intellectually elite eighth graders vie for the 600 open slots, facing academic standards more rigid than those of any other high school in the city. The list of alumni is thick with Rhodes scholars and Nobel Prize winners, Beltway press secretaries and Ivy League college presidents.
The rigorous learning environment means “the students are so academically driven they rarely have time to look up from their books,” said Barbara Blinick, a social studies teacher and faculty sponsor of the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA). She thinks that’s what makes Lowell “one of the safest campuses in the city.”
“We fight over seats in the library,” student Beatriz Datangel said. “Last year someone got in trouble for throwing a cupcake.”
And Lowell has a reputation for being a safe and accepting place for queer students. “They’re not attacked, they’re not beaten up,” Blinick said.
“I have never been in or heard of a high school with as gay-positive an environment as Lowell has,” English teacher Jennifer Moffitt said. “That isn’t to say Lowell is perfect by any means, but it’s unusually open here. We have several openly gay faculty members as well as students.”
“Last year’s prom king and queen were both guys,” English teacher Bryan Ritter added. “And they both fought over the tiara.”
Which is why the hate crime committed against Raya was so shocking.
“I can’t believe that someone would target him,” Ritter said. “He’s such a nice guy. I don’t tolerate homophobia, and I can’t express how appalled I am that it’s happened in my own school.”
Ritter, like a majority of the faculty, first heard about the incident from Hansen the day after it happened.
Hansen told us she said “this was a horrible act, that it was an assault on all of us and we need to keep our ears open and be listening, because if students know and if students were involved, if you listen, kids talk.”
But if the incident was indeed an assault on “all of us,” the students were not included in that community. No public announcement was made to the student body. The monthly “Message from the Principal,” released just three days after the hate crime was discovered, painted a bright, sunny picture of a day in the busy life of Lowell, with Spirit Week in full swing and faculty steeped in annual curriculum development. There was no mention of the incident of hatred directed against a veteran faculty member.
“It seems to me it’s been downplayed from the very beginning,” said David Lipman, a Spanish teacher. “We were told at the beginning not to say anything to the students. So we didn’t say anything.”
“Somehow,” Lipman told us, “I’m just afraid that it’s not in the district’s interest to find out who did it. And it seems like no one will ever hear about it again.”
The school’s award-winning student paper, the Lowell, wasn’t comfortable with that approach. “The students hadn’t heard about it — that’s why we covered it in the paper,” said Ritter, who’s also faculty sponsor for the monthly publication.
Raya was very willing to talk about the crime with reporter Cynthia Chau, who didn’t have a difficult time getting details of what happened or leads as to why from him. Responses from the principal were not as forthcoming.
“She did talk to us, and she answered all of our questions,” said a reporter who assisted Chau with the front-page story. “Except for when it got to Raya’s allegations that were more controversial — when he said she hadn’t done enough to respond to the hate crime, about her showing favoritism, and that he had had a discussion with her about that. She said, ‘No comment, that’s between Mr. Raya and myself.’<\!q>”
After the story hit the hallways, Hansen scheduled a meeting with the journalism classes that publish the paper to discuss their moral obligations as reporters. Though Hansen had issues with a number of their articles, including the one on Raya, the overall impression the classes came away with was that she disapproved of them covering controversy.
“Her recommendation was that we shouldn’t report stories that may have a negative effect,” reporter Jason Siu said. “That doesn’t really work. As journalists, we should report the truth. If it’s happening on the Lowell campus, we should report it.”
John Raya has the quiet presence of the kid who sits in the back of the classroom minding his own business. The only edge in his otherwise soft voice is a Brooklyn accent, which dissolves when he speaks French or Spanish, the two languages he teaches at Lowell. It’s hard to believe he could incite enough animosity to drive someone to commit a hate crime against him.
But at Lowell he’s become the most vocal leader of an expanding group of teachers unhappy about the management of the language department.
Since June, Raya has been writing letters to various administrators and the Board of Education about what he perceives as inequities in the way classes are assigned to teachers and how students are selected for them. He’s been calling for more openness in decision-making processes, for a formal policy on who teaches which classes, and even for the department head, Dorothy Ong, to relinquish her position.
“Everyone in the department was getting copies of these letters,” Lipman said. “There were a lot of them. They were mainly in the weeks preceding the incident. They were about policy, fairness, equity — very professionally done. Your jaw dropped open because they pierced right to the heart. They were like when a senator is calling for the president to step down.”
High schools are often places where petty drama takes the stage as high art, where locker room cliques are nascent coffee klatches and conflict and competition are extracurricular activities. But behind the academic politics are sometimes real issues.
When Amy Hansen left Oakland’s Skyline High School to stand in as interim principal at Lowell for the 2006–<\d>07 school year, Raya was one of the first people to come by her office, a few days before school commenced in August. He wanted to talk about the World Language Department’s “long-standing history of conflict,” she said. “He raised concerns about how the department was run, he felt that he was not being treated fairly, and he raised a number of issues which I took seriously.”
At Lowell the 600 or so incoming students are asked to rank three options from the nine languages the school offers. Like many high schools in the country, Spanish is in high demand, second only to Chinese; more than half of Lowell’s students are Chinese American. Over the years, more sections of these popular classes have been added incrementally, but a concerted effort has also been made to skim off some kids into other, less popular languages, such as Korean, German, and Italian.
Herein lies the rift, which some view as philosophical — but which in practice leaves one person playing God. Every year about 100 unlucky students end up with the second or third language they picked. This balances the class sizes and lets the less-popular languages survive, but critics of the system think it undermines student choice — for the benefit of the adults who teach them. This year three Spanish classes and a French class were replaced with additional sections of German, Korean, and Advanced Placement Chinese in order to bolster the numbers.
According to Raya and his contingent, this was inexplicable, and so much tension existed in the department, they suspected the only reason it was done was to favor teachers who might otherwise be let go if the programs were cut.
“We voted as a department years ago — the languages that don’t support themselves, we’re going to let them die off,” Spanish teacher John Ryland said. Tagalog, Russian, and Greek had all seen the ax.
Part of the problem is that teaching at Lowell is a popular gig no one wants to lose. “There’s always the fear that a diminishing number of students taking certain classes leads to a change in who gets to teach classes and teach at Lowell,” social studies teacher Ken Tray told us.
It’s particularly rough in the language department, where changing preferences can mean the end of a job. “Other departments don’t have competition or concern that there will be enough kids signing up to teach their classes,” Tray said.
Ong, who decides which language classes to save (and who should teach them), denied there was any favoritism. “If you look at the whole picture, what is lost here? Nobody lost their job,” she said. “People can say I favor the lesser languages. I protect all languages as department head.”
Then there’s the AP issue.
Nearly 100 percent of Lowell students graduate, nearly all continue on to college, and the school’s basic requirements are geared toward getting them into at least the University of California system. Unlike many other schools, Lowell doesn’t limit the number of Advanced Placement, or college-level, classes a student can take, and many kids use them to heavily spice their transcripts and entice college admissions counselors.
For teachers, the advanced curriculum of AP classes is a chance to be challenged along with the kids. “Among teachers, there’s no shortage of desire to teach AP,” said Bryan Ritter, who teaches AP English.
And the school is happy to provide as many AP classes as it can. According to San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) policy, for every 20 AP exams that are taken by students, the district will fund one additional AP class. So 100 students testing means additional funding for one new teacher. “At Lowell we make a bundle off of that,” said Terry Abad, president of the Lowell Alumni Association.
The money is deposited in the school’s general fund, but rather than hire additional AP teachers, Lowell’s administrators ask staff members to teach multiple sections of AP classes. By doubling and tripling the number of AP classes one teacher instructs, the school frees up thousands of dollars to pay for other school services.
“From a financial perspective, if teachers weren’t teaching AP, we wouldn’t be able to fund school,” Abad said. “Without AP money Lowell would be a disaster.”
But another disaster is in the works, with overburdened teachers looking to dump classes and underburdened teachers wishing they could have them. “The idea of AP is to give a very intensive college experience and give teachers the time to properly attend to those classes. The whole system has been corrupted,” said David Yuan, an English teacher.
Nowhere in the school is that more obvious than the language department, where one teacher has four Chinese AP classes. “It’s a tremendous amount of work,” Xiaolin Chang said. “I’m hoping next year someone else will teach.”
Hansen said these concerns have not fallen on deaf ears. Two subcommittees have been established for reviewing the numbers to determine classes and another “to create policies and procedures that are written, so that it isn’t ‘I like you, I don’t like you, you’re cute, or whatever, the kids like you better.’ So that there’s some process,” Hansen said.
She refused to allow teachers to review old data to see if favoritism had played into past decisions and defended the language department chair. “I feel that in the limited time that I’ve been here, Ms. Ong deals with a staff of at least 18 or 19, all of whom feel passionate about their language, a complicated scheduling process, and I think she does a herculean task. She has the support of the majority of the faculty, who trust her and believe that she’s doing the best she can.”
Despite the concession to be included in future decision-making processes, Raya continues to wonder why there hasn’t been more of an effort to find out who trashed his computer and to rectify the rumors. “People still think a student did it. I’ve gotten lots of cards and e-mails from people, all supportive, but they keep thinking it’s a student,” Raya said.
But that seems almost impossible to believe, since no students had access to the area and there was no forced entry, “I would be very, very, very surprised if it wasn’t an adult,” Lipman said. “The note said you’re making too many problems for this department — students don’t know that.”
The district hired a private investigating firm, Brubeck and McGarrahan, to look into the situation, and Ellen McGarrahan released the findings of her investigation to SFUSD legal counsel Nov. 20. Her report states that 15 people — all faculty or staff — were interviewed. The investigators were unable to reach any conclusions.
But not everyone who uses the room was questioned. “I’m shocked that they haven’t questioned everyone in the department,” said Lipman, who was not contacted by any investigator. “I’m surprised they didn’t ask everyone what they knew. It seems like that would be the logical thing to do.”
Instead, on Oct. 23, during the middle of the school day, Raya was called downtown by Inspector Milanda Moore for almost three hours of what felt like a full interrogation. “My mistake was I didn’t get a lawyer. I didn’t think I needed one. She duped me. She said it was an interview,” Raya said. He told the inspector he didn’t have a key to the building or any knowledge of the security code to quell the alarm and was at a class at City College the night before and working out at the gym the morning the vandalism was discovered.
“She said, ‘Why don’t you take a polygraph?” I said, ‘I have no problem doing it, but I’ll do it on the condition that every administrator, every faculty member, and every student do it.’<\!q>”
Raya told her, “I’m the victim! Why are you asking me?”
At Raya’s interrogation, one of the letters he wrote to assistant principal Peter Van Court was touted as an example of how Raya was capable of orchestrating his own hate crime. “She [Moore] said to me the language in the hate crime note sounds like the language I used to Van Court in my letter. I said, ‘Excuse me, there’s nothing in that letter that says faggot.’<\!q>”
Inspector Moore refused to comment on this case, except to say it was still open.
Hansen is not a popular principal these days. Since September she’s been “dropping in” on classes for short observations, which she says are a way to get to know the school and encourage a pedagogical dialogue.
In theory, this sounds exactly like what an engaged administrator should be doing — but the practice has had a hard launch as teachers have perceived it as an opportunity for the administration to unfairly critique them at their jobs.
“The principal started off the school year wanting to have this intense conversation about our teaching. Dropping into classes was initially portrayed as a collegial part of an ongoing process of a development exercise,” said Ken Tray, a social studies teacher and United Educators of SF union representative. Instead, the principal’s practice of dropping into classes to casually observe teachers has created a backlash against her style and approach.
“A record number of grievances have already been filed this year,” Tray said. “Last year we had one grievance the entire year, and there were some very serious issues that came up.”
“They’re clearly a lot more than friendly, getting-to-know-you visits,” Yuan said. “There are a lot of people that are unhappy. It’s tense. This is essentially a new policy.”
An unprecedented meeting Nov. 2 drew more than half the faculty to a forum to air their concerns. Their biggest gripes: a lack of trust, a rush to judgment, issues with communication, a sense of top-down management, and a real worry that teachers were being unfairly evaluated, which is a violation of the contractual agreement between the teachers’ union and the district.
“Lowell does not have to be fixed,” Tray said. “It’s creating a faux crisis. What’s the issue here? We have outstanding students doing outstanding work. More punitive measures from the administration seem out of place.”
Some say Hansen may be a good principal who’s just at the wrong school. “I think she’s probably a pretty good turnaround principal,” Yuan said. “Her approach is good for schools with more difficult students.”
“I think everyone is pretty much united,” school board member Eric Mar said. “The principal is autocratic and doesn’t resolve conflict. The principal chosen is the wrong person for the school, and that’s one of the root causes for the conflict.”
November is Transgender Remembrance Month at Lowell. GSA posters commemorating transgender victims of hate crimes hang throughout the hallways, and on a busy afternoon the students rush by them, their arms loaded with books, their ears pressed to cell phones, appearing like the young professionals they hope to someday be.
When asked why the students weren’t informed or brought together as a group to discuss a hate crime on their campus, Hansen said, “We can’t, first of all, have a schoolwide assembly. We have 2,700 kids and we have an auditorium of 900 capacity.”
And she said, “We wouldn’t generally broadcast this kind of information. Whenever a computer’s stolen or something terrible happens, we don’t tend to broadcast it.”
However, the day before the hate crime was discovered, another teacher’s tires were slashed. Hansen went on the school’s broadcasting system, Radio Lowell, to denounce the slashing as an inappropriate way of dealing with anger and asked anyone in the community with information to come forward.
That wouldn’t necessarily be the way to handle a hate crime, but according to other professionals in the field, secrecy isn’t always the best route either.
Al Adams has handled a few hate crimes during his 19 years as a principal, even writing about a 1994 incident at his school, Lick-Wilmerding High, for the National Association of Independent Schools newsletter. He titled his article “When Homophobia Rears Its Head.”
“My rule of thumb with anything like this is to be open and honest and candid about it. That always goes a long way. Make sure the victim feels safe and also search out teachable moments,” Adams said.
“The most effective treatment of a hate crime is to shine the spotlight on it and make the perpetrators accountable,” said Sam Thoron, who recently retired after six years as national president of Parents for Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), an organization he’s been involved with since his daughter came out in 1990.
He said there’s a fine line between shining a light and making too big a deal, but “burying something like this tends to make it worse.
“I would expect the school to make a clear and public statement that this is not acceptable, but it’s awful easy to hide these things.”
Barbara Blinick, faculty sponsor of the GSA, was worried about the lack of candor. “That was a fault. I do think that could have been done better. [Hansen] made a choice not to make it public. But everyone knew about it, everyone was talking about it, and that’s why the GSA wanted to respond.” Blinick spoke with Hansen shortly after the incident and arranged for the GSA to do the outreach.
“The students have been really brave and thoughtful and working so hard,” Blinick said. “We all agree it took too long, and some of the tardiness was that we wanted it to be perfect.”
On Nov. 30, more than two months after Raya discovered his defaced desk, an outreach bulletin written by the GSA was distributed to the students, with a cover letter from Hansen denouncing homophobic discrimination but without specific mention of Raya or the hate crime that happened in the school.
Communities United Against Violence does outreach in the SFUSD through a speaker’s bureau, a program founded by Sup. Tom Ammiano. The group is often contacted by schools after a hate crime occurs, and since 1978 some 70 volunteers have been visiting schools such as Washington, Galileo, Ida B. Wells, and Mission to talk about what it takes to have an open and supportive community, “but we don’t get invited to Lowell,” program director Connie Champagne told us.
“They need to be coming here,” Blinick said. “That’s a really easy way to talk about these issues. They should be hitting every 10th-grade classroom, and I thought that they were.”
The private investigator’s report has been finalized, with no conclusion about who may have targeted Raya. The city’s investigation is ongoing and already reeks of a case gone stale for lack of evidence and witnesses.
Nothing further about it has been said to the faculty, and nearly everyone questioned by the Guardian said they hoped to hear something more soon. Conditions in the department haven’t necessarily improved, and veteran teachers are already looking forward to the end of the year.
“Who did it? That piece needs to get solved for them to move forward,” said the mediator, Lynda Smith, who, after two sessions, was not invited back by the administration.
“I’m so discouraged now,” Raya said. “I’m just at low ebb. I’m really disgusted. I don’t want to leave Lowell. I love Lowell. I’m addicted to Lowell. But the morale is so low I think it’s going to be my time to go. I never thought I would.
“The sad part is it’s not the kids. They’re the ones I will miss the most. It’s sad that this has to prompt me at 50 years old, spending more than half my life in this profession, to decide that this is the time to quit.”

Tax money for PG&E? Why?

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San Franciscans at every level — from individual homeowners to neighborhood groups to public safety advocates and city officials — have been complaining for years about how slowly Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has been moving its overhead power lines underground. The case for undergrounding is clear and indisputable: buried wires are not only far more aesthetically pleasing, they’re far safer, particularly during earthquakes, when wires hanging over streets can snap, start fires, cause electrocutions, and generally be a real menace.
But PG&E won’t pay for the full cost of undergrounding. So wealthy neighborhoods where property owners have agreed to cough up a few thousand dollars each get their wires buried, and the rest of the city waits. There’s a city fund to help underwrite the cost in other parts of town, but it’s never been a big fund, and now it’s out of money. The Utility Undergrounding Task Force is preparing to ask the supervisors to add a modest 5 percent tax on every electric bill in the city to pay for moving 490 miles of wires under the streets.
The tax isn’t going to bankrupt anyone — for most residential users, we’re talking about a couple of dollars a month. But the whole idea strikes us as backward thinking: Why should city residents and businesses pay a private utility to do something that it ought to be required to do on its own? Why is the city even talking about taxing residents to subsidize PG&E when the company is already operating an illegal monopoly in town — and when the very mention of the Raker Act, the federal law that requires the city to run a public power system, ought to be enough to get the utility to fall into line and pay its own undergrounding bills?
And why are we talking about putting a bandage on a system that doesn’t work when a concerted effort at bringing public power to San Francisco — now, not later — would make the entire discussion unnecessary? After all, any credible economic analysis will show that public power would bring so many hundreds of millions of dollars into the city that minor irritants like burying power lines wouldn’t cost the taxpayers an additional penny.
We fully recognize that the battle for public power has never been and never will be easy. PG&E just spent upward of $10 million to defeat a public power plan in Davis, and that service area is far smaller than San Francisco. The company informed Mayor Gavin Newsom this fall that it will fight bitterly any municipalization effort. And there’s no giant pot of pro–public power money out there to finance a campaign.
But with the mayor, the head of the Public Utilities Commission, the city attorney, and two-thirds of the supervisors saying they support public power, it seems crazy to simply accept that the city is stuck under PG&E’s thumb for the foreseeable future (and that basic public safety amenities like buried power lines have to be paid for out of tax dollars). If Newsom is serious about this, he needs to step up and offer a public power plan — and if he doesn’t, the supervisors need to. And let’s not talk about higher utility taxes until they do. SFBG

Now the police are all on foot patrols, pass the pot, huh?

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By Sarah Phelan

Moments after the Board of Supes overode the mayor’s veto of their foot patrol legislation, Sup. Tom Ammiano got an 8-3 vote to make marijuana offenses the lowest law enforcement priority. Phwew! Because there we were worrying about all those police walking beats and busting hippies for rolling up big fat ones in the park. Close one.

What’s with the pot bill?

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By Tim Redmond

Sup. Tom Ammiano has a real simple measure coming to the board that ought to pass unanimously. It’s worked fine in Berkeley for many, many years. It works fine in Seattle, Santa Cruz, and Santa Barbara. And yet, it faces what could be a tight board vote and a mayoral veto. Crazy.

What Ammiano wants to do is make enforcing the marijuana laws the city’s lowest police priority. We’re just talking about possession laws, not sales. The city’s narcotics cops say it won’t be a problem. It will just send a message to the chief and the street patrols that they should worry more about violent crime than about busting someone smoking a joint in the park.

So far, Ammiano can count Sups. Jake McGoldrick, Chris Daly, Ross Mirkarimi, Aaron Peskin, Gerardo Sandoval and himself in favor. That’s six. But Mayor Newsom will probably veto it, so he needs two more.

Bevan Dufty and Sophie Maxwell really ought to get behind this.

“When it comes to herb, you gotta set some standards in your life.”

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Tomorrow night at the Parkway Theater — local writer-director Kevin Hahn premieres his new film Stoner’s Run. Judging by the cover art (below), I assumed it was gonna be in the grand tradition of Up in Smoke or Half-Baked, which is to say, a pot comedy all the way. I’m not sure if it’s a spoiler to tell you that the giant joint never actually makes an appearance.

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What would Jesus do?

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“I bought it for myself but never used it,” he said. “I was tempted, but I never used it.” – Ex-National Association of Evangelicals prez (and George W. Bush bud) Ted Haggard to reporters regarding his alleged meth use, 11/03/06

That’s kind of like saying he smoked pot but didn’t inhale — except way more hilarious, ain’t it??

If you’re following the absolutely delightful Ted Haggard kerflaffle (sfgate.com has the latest AP story here), have a look at my interview with one of the directors of Jesus Camp, which features jabs at a pre-scandal Haggard (weirdly hammy on-camera, he’s the only featured subject to publicly denounce the film).

Dan Savage comes through in the clutch. The gay sex columnist endorses in his pre-election column in the Voice and other New Times papers, but the Voice and New Times papers do not endorse. Hurray for Dan Savage!!!

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Hurray for Dan Savage, the gay sex columnist for the l7 Village Voice/New Times papers in major markets with major battleground races for the election.

Savage performed heroically under fire and managed to get some key election endorsements into the second to last paragraph of his syndicated sex column in the crucial issue before one of the most important elections in modern history, a plebescite on Bush, the war, and the occupation. (New Times papers historically don’t do endorsments and don’t allow their writers to endorse.) He ran a letter in his column from a Wisconsin male who wrote, “Wisconsin needs your help!. On Tuesday, Nov. 7 we’re voting on an amendment banning gay marriage. As a married heterosexual male I’m supposed to feel threatened by gays getting married, but I’m smart enough to realize it doesn’t affect me at all. I also realize that I got to marry whomever I wanted, and everyone should have that right. Urge your readers in Wisconsin to vote NO on the marriage amendment. Thanks!”

Savage gave the writer the ultimate Savage compliment: “You put it better than I could, JIW. I would add: The amendment in Wisconsin bans gay marriage and civil unions. Vote no.”

Then Savage continued his endorsement: “And to my readers in Colorado, Idaho,
South Carolina, Tennessee, Virignia, Arizona, and South Dakota: Please vote against the gay marriage bans in your states, too. And in South Dakota, please vote to overturn your state’s idiotic abortion ban. And to my readers in Canada: Be glad you don’t have to put up with any of this shit.”

In the presidential race two years ago, Savage snuck his Kerry for President endorsement in the last line of his pre-election column. This time, he slipped his endorsements into the second to last paragraphs, with a neatly disguised ending to his column with a diverting letter from a woman who claimed she couldn’t have an orgasm until age l8. She then took some pot with a “cooperative boy friend and–bam! –six orgasms in five minutes.” And he signed off, “Thanks for sharing.” And sent his readers off to a Savage website to learn more about pot and sex. Well done, Dan. A masterful job.

Meanwhile, Savage’s endorsements were the only real endorsements to be run in the pre-election issue of the Voice, probably one of the first times in Voice history, if not the first, that this bastion of New York liberalism has been Voiceless and neutered and has not endorsed candidates or run serious political coverage in an election. (Why? I put the questions by email to Voice/New Times CEO and chief executive officer Jim Larkin, Executive Editor Michael Lacey, and David Blum, the new Voice editor in chief, but got no reply by blogtime.)

Instead, the Voice this week ran a gripping “report from the trenches of ‘Saturday Night Live’–dress rehearsals, wrap parties, last-minute sketch changes, a l a.m. phone call from Lorne Michaels (and yes, Andy Samberg!”) with a front page illustration of a smiling comedian doing the Bronx shrug. I kid you not. Check the link below and the Voice website and see what has happened to the mighty Voice in the short nine months since Larkin, Lacey,and the Arizona Gang got ahold of it. Meanwhile a quick check showed that none of the other l6 Voice/New Times papers ran any endorsements in their pre-election issues, with the possible exception of the OC Weekly in Orange County. An editor sent me an email saying they were doing endorsements but I could not find them at blogtime.

Well, Nathan Blumberg, my first journalism professor at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in l953, used to say that a paper that didn’t run endorsements didn’t have any balls. He used the word testicles, because this was Nebraska in l953, but the class all got the point. So: does this mean that Dan Savage has balls, and Jim Larkin and Mike Lacey don’t have balls? Let us let the readers decide.

P.S.1 It’s hard for the staff members of a Village Voice/New Times paper to say much inhouse or publicly about the management style and editorial policies of Larkin and Lacey. For example, note what happened to poor David Schneiderman, the former Village Voice top guy since l978, who they sacked unceremoniously last week. VOICE BOSS GAGGED,” chided the New York Post head. The Post noted Larkin’s subtle style when it quoted an insider as saying about Schneiderman: “The new guys held him in complete disregard. It got so bad that one source said that while Schneiderman was in New Orleans recently delivering a presentation on the company’s web progress, Larkin made a point of taking out a newspaper and reading it while Schneiderman spoke.” Schneiderman will go down in journalism history as the guy who sold the Voice to New Times, and pocketed $500,000 for his work on the deal, but even he probably didn’t deserve the Larkin/Lacey treatment.

P.S 2: Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, the SF Weekly/
Village Voice/New Times ran a front page page illustration of two gay comic figures I can’t quite characterize, but sported the head, “DRAWN TOGETHER, Graphic Homosexual comics and the young women who love them.”
Smith came the closest to a political endorsement when he meandered around with the two major candidates in District 6, Sup. Chris Daly and challenger Rob Black, and wrote a self-immolating piece titled, “Vulgar posing, How our columnist was seduced into watching the World’s Largest Female Bodybuilder beat up on Rob Black.” After missing, mangling, mushing, and making fun of the issues, Smith came up with two summary questions but no clear endorsement: “Isn’t Daly the vulgar jerk who threatened the democratic process? What about the gentility-in-public-life rap Black’s been giving SOMA condo dwellers? Black is gone. I don’t feel like chasing after him with my facile questions.” Well, Smith concludes, “Alone, in SF Weekly’s offices, beer on my breath, an awful sort-porn video on the VCR, I realize I’ve beens seduced by the poses of two political hacks.”

News flash to Smith: There are real major issues in this district. For example, Calvin Welsh lays out a big one in a Guardian op ed this week, “Don’t for a minute believe that he (Daly) is in the fight of his political life because he’s rude, because he doesn’t care about lw and order, or because he prefers dirty streets upon which to raise his son. These petty and silly charges mask a far more serious objection: the way his opponents see it, Daly has been too slow in adopting the massive wave of market rate housing slated for this district and is far too protective of lower income residents in District 6.” He concludes: “There’s a working majority of the Board of Supervisors willing to fight for current neighborhoods and residents and a future that includes them. The battle in District 6 shows that the fight is not without risk. Do the rest of us realize it? Smith, Larkin, Lacey, Voice/New Times folks, do you realize it?

P.S.3: At blogtime, Jonny Diamond, the editor in chief of L magazine in New York, replied to my query about Voice endorsements with this quote: “Yes, the Savage stuff is in, but it’s the only thing remotely related to the election in the entire issue. This is the cover story (and he gave me the link). Remarkable stuff from the country’s formerly foremost alt-weekly on the eve of the most important midterm elections in a long, long time. I’d say this is the final, no-doubt-about-it end of the Voice. As for our own coverage, we’re working on something for Friday.”

So, to get election endorsements and coverage in New York, forget the Voice and
go to the website of the L magazine, a zippy New York arts and entertainment biweekly under the direction of the Steadman brothers.

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we may have heard the final word on the eve of the election from the Larkin/Lacey/VillageVoice/NewTimes/SF Weekly crew in San Francisco and New York. Maybe Larkin will stop reading the paper long enough to send me comments or explain to the readers of his l7 papers why they don’;t endorse or do serious election coverage. I’ll let you know. If anybody spots a political endorsement in a Voice/New Times paper, flash me the word. B3, hoping good news is on the way on the way Nov. 7th

VOICE BOSS GAGGED: SCHNEIDERMAN IS OUSTED BY NEW OUT-OF-TOWN OWNERS:
By KEITH J. KELLY

October 27, 2006 — DAVID Schneiderman is out as president of Village Voice Media nine months after Phoenix-based New Times took over the alternative weekly newspaper chain.

Following the takeover of the Voice by New Times CEO James Larkin and Editorial Director Michael Lacey, Schneiderman stayed on as president of the combined company, which took on the Village Voice Media name. He split his time between the company’s headquarters and Seattle, where his wife Dana Faust, a New York Times ad executive handling the Pacific northwest, is based.

However, few expected him to stay for long as he was clearly a man without a power base. He was given the job of exploring Web opportunities for the company, an area in which he had scant expertise. Even after he immersed himself in the new role, it didn’t impress the new cowboys from Phoenix.

“The new guys held him in complete disregard,” said one insider. It got so bad that one source said that while Schneiderman was in New Orleans recently delivering a presentation on the company’s Web progress, Larkin made a point of taking out a newspaper and reading it while Schneiderman spoke.

Reached yesterday, Larkin said of Schneiderman, “He resigned.”

Asked if there would be a replacement, Larkin said, “We are going to restructure.” He declined further comment, saying, “We don’t comment on personnel matters,” he said.

When reached by Media Ink, Schneiderman, said, “I’ve been approached by people in the venture capital and private equity world. I just felt the time to move on was now.”

He insisted that his deal as Voice president was “open ended” and that he could have stayed longer.

But making frequent trips between New York, Phoenix and Seattle “was wearing on me.”

“Waking up in my own bed for awhile is important to me,” he said.

The Boston Phoenix was reporting yesterday that its editor Bill Jensen had resigned to accept a job running Web operations for Village Voice Media, its parent company.

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Inklings

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com
CHEAP EATS The idea of love at first sight is a ridiculous thing to me. Most people I love long before I ever see them. In fact, if I’m not already in love with you, try taking your knife out of my back and calling an ambulance.
You don’t believe me. I don’t expect you to! I don’t believe me either or you or anything. All I do is see and say. And by see I mean see and feel and hear and taste shit and yeah, by way of a Purpose in Life, try and tell you about it.
For me and Orange Pop #2’s second date we went to my new favorite restaurant, Penny’s Caribbean Café. But I already reviewed it, so here’s a poem:

You can love the world
so so much yet know that
no matter how ultimately it embraces
you, it won’t, can’t return

your box of chocolates

So you hope to find
instead a person
maybe loves the world
as much as you do

or more even, and
you can play together
in a darkened room
while outside, without knocking

the earth sends flowers

That’s my poem. Remember Orange Pop #2? She got some gigs personal chefing around San Rafael and might sometimes need an assistant. So she said she was going to get me a chef’s shirt with Daniella on it.
I pointed out that technically my name is Danielle.
“I like Daniella,” she said.
Me too. She’s the boss. Sometimes, on her days off, we eat at places, talk about food and boys and whether to put the chicken in the soup before or after the water gets hot. And she showed me how to make a tart.
One day Orangey called and asked how I make chicken with rice and tomatoes, because that was what The Man wanted for dinner. I was ashamed to say how simple it was, so I made up some extra steps, like breading and browning the chicken first, and sautéing stuff and reserving this and clarifying that, and the next day she said her client loved it. “Really?” I said. I didn’t tell her (until now I guess) that normally I just throw everything in a pot, put the lid on, and wait for dinner to happen. Out of curiosity, I cooked it up the cockamamie way I’d told her to do, and it came out inedible. But I’m pretty sure that was because the expiration-date chicken I’d bought was bad.
Anyway, this time she had a cute little café in Larkspur to take me to. The Tabla Café, which I loved. Restaurants are just like people to me, except the menu is easier to read. Salads. Soups. Drinks. The Tabla’s specialty is dosas, and they’re great. They’re crepes made from rice flour and dal and wrapped around whatever you want, like scrambled eggs, smoked salmon, chicken, turkey, mushrooms…. I had to have the last one on the list because it was lamb meatballs and I liked the sound of that. It was 10 bucks, but it was big enough to feed two people if you get a salad or something else, which we did — a green one with candied walnuts and vinaigrette ($7.50).
OK, so we split all that and it was delicious. The meatballs were great, punctuated with pickled onions and cabbage and drizzled with tahini. The dosas come with a choice of dip-intos, including avocado orange salsa, apple ginger salsa, raita, and peach chutney. The chutney was good, but the dosa didn’t even need it, really.
Nice place. Like everything else in the North Bay, it’s in a plaza, but — small, bright, airy, arty, and in short, my new favorite restaurant!!!
Are you on to me? With the help of my good friend hyperbole (and maybe a dash of brute force), I mean to completely obliterate any inkling of an idea of a chance in the world for an objective and accurate restaurant review — or love. SFBG
TABLA CAFE
Tues.–Fri., 10:30 a.m.–7 p.m.;
Sat., 10:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m.
1167 Magnolia, Larkspur
(415) 461-6787
Takeout available
Beer and wine
MC/V
Quiet
Wheelchair accessible

Got capsicum?

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› paulr@sfbg.com
With time, one finds oneself bidding fond farewells to one’s spicehound friends. Oh, nothing changes too dramatically, except that bit by bit (or bite by bite), onetime fire-eaters lose their taste for the thrill of capsicum. Certain alluring foods of yore — chili, pepperoni pizza, Mongolian beef — start to cause problems, especially if eaten too near bedtime. You still go out with them, your spicehound pack, but when they point at this or that on the menu, wondering which dishes are spicy, they are plotting routes of retreat now, not angles of approach. Everybody is silently hoping to sleep through the night, like babies with dry diapers, not awaken at 2 a.m. with a remorseful jolt and a growing blaze amidships. People sip their green tea, and they do so carefully.
For years I held out against this trend. X and Y might no longer fling themselves into the spiciest dishes they could find, like boys from a Mark Twain novel plunging with a whoop into a water hole of unknown depth, but I still had a taste for flame. Then, recently, I ate at So, a modish Chinese noodle house on that insanely busy stretch of Irving just west of 19th Avenue, and I heard the bell toll. There was no need to ask for whom it was tolling: it tolled for me. It tolled and tolled, in fact, and I ignored it. Later I was sorry, but at the time I was in a bliss of tingling lips and couldn’t be bothered to heed the alarm.
So is an atypical Chinese restaurant in a number of respects. For one thing, its menu consists largely of soup and noodle — and soupy noodle — dishes, as at a Vietnamese pho house. It also has a spare, modernist youthfulness devoid of tired linoleum floors and harsh overhead lighting; the walls are bright yellow and the ceiling a rich gray blue, while a noisy crowd young enough to match the youth of the staff sits at rosewood tables on rosewood chairs. Mainly, though, So is a temple of the incendiary. I cannot recall the last time I found so much chile firepower in one place. It is the gastronomic equivalent of a munitions cache.
So … you have been warned, or summoned. I must also add that portion sizes are simply immense. The noodle soups are served in bowls the size of cantaloupe halves and can easily satisfy two if not three, especially if you open with one of the splendid starters. If you notice that these take a little longer to reach the table than is usual in Chinese restaurants (many of which rush them out in just a few minutes), it’s because they’re made to order and with care. The pot stickers ($5.50) in particular are exceptional; they reach the table nested in a pinwheel pattern, are fragrant with fresh ginger when opened, and — what is most noticeable — are wrapped in homemade dough that has a definite fresh-bread springiness and smell to it. When you eat these pot stickers, you will likely realize that most of the other restaurant pot stickers you’ve ever eaten in your life were prepackaged and reheated items. Mass-market, mass-produced stuff. So’s are revelatory.
Nearly as good are fried shrimp dumplings ($6), also powerfully gingery, and dried sautéed string beans ($5) in a thick garlic sauce. The So chicken wings ($5.25) — really a hodgepodge of wings and drumsticks — are a clever and potent Chinese retort to the American cliché of buffalo wings; So dips its poultry parts into a batter that crisps up nicely, then drizzles them with a molasses-thick sauce of garlic, ginger, and slivered red chiles for some smolder. The sauce accompanying the curry coroque ($4) — three Japanese-style potato croquettes, about the size and shape of Brillo pads — looks similar but has a stronger acid presence: hoisin with some rice wine vinegar?
The starters are tasty but not, as a rule, hot, which makes the arrival of a dish like pork with hot peppers ($6.35) — a platter heaped with a stir-fry of shredded meat, chopped jalapeños, onions, and scallions, with a spicy garlic sauce — rather bracing. Only slightly less forceful is shredded pork with garlic ($6.35), which substitutes serene water chestnuts and willow tree fungus for the raucous hot peppers and adds a splash of vinegar for clearheadedness.
“My nose is running,” said the spicehound emeritus to my left. He found himself confronting the seafood soup noodle ($6.35), a sea of spicy broth clogged with shrimp, calamari, scallops, and napa cabbage — something like an East Asian answer to cioppino. His longing gaze drifted across the table to the seaweed noodle soup ($6.35), a kind of giant egg-drop soup fortified with seaweed and spinach, peas, mushrooms, and shrimp. The flavor of the broth was deep but beatifically mild, like the blue of a lovely sunset at the end of a windless and warm — but not hot — day.
The social experience of So is nearly as intense as the peppery food. We found the place packed early on a Sunday evening; tablefuls of young folk mounted a steady roar of conversation while others waited on the sidewalk, barking into cell phones of many colors until tables opened up. The service at dinnertime is friendly and efficient but forever teetering on the brink of being overwhelmed. During a noontime visit, on the other hand, I found a rather startling calm and was able to notice that a “help wanted” sign was posted on the front door — a clue that business is quite a bit better than so-so. SFBG
SO RESTAURANT
Tues.–Thurs., 5–9:30 p.m., Fri.–Sat., noon–10 p.m., Sun., noon–9:30 p.m.
2240 Irving, SF
(415) 731-3143
Beer and wine
MC/V
Very noisy if crowded
Wheelchair accessible

Charm latitudes

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› paulr@sfbg.com
Presidents are so seldom intentionally funny that when a genuine wit makes it to the Oval Office, we (the people!) tend to notice and remember. As a quipster, John F. Kennedy is without peer in modern times, and while his crack that Washington, DC, is “a city of Northern charm and Southern efficiency” might not be his best line, it’s still a pretty good one — not to mention useful for certain latter-day restaurant writers, who admire the deftly phrased paradox while being perennially fascinated by the truth embedded in it. Whether in the New World or the Old, we tend to think of the north as the home of efficiency and practicality, the south of beauty and sensuality, and can ever the twain meet without some sort of Death in Venice disaster?
Kennedy described himself as “the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris” — another excellent line — so we know he traveled to France. Did he notice, when there, that France might be the one place on earth where the twain could indeed be said happily to meet — that France is simultaneously a northern land of clean cities, fast trains, and a more or less honest bureaucracy and also a Mediterranean realm on easy terms with life’s sunlit pleasures? If so, he has left us no witticism to announce the fact. But I think he would have warmed to Cafe Claude, which isn’t in Paris but feels as if it is, on some lane in the Marais too narrow even for Europe’s ubiquitous Smart Cars.
Here the lane is Claude Lane, a brief segment of asphalt lined by tall glassy buildings that rise in the complex borderland of Union Square, Chinatown, and the Financial District. Nearby Belden Lane, paved with bricks and lined from one end to the other with cafés, trattorias, and fish houses, is better known as a Euro-style restaurant row, but the basic principle is the same, as is the strollable, alfresco feel. The city seems less encroaching in these places, and that is largely because cars are unable to speed through.
Cafe Claude opened more than 15 years ago, so teething and shake-down issues belong to the deep past. The more pertinent question for a place of this age is whether it manages to be both polished and self-renewing or whether senescence has set in. In Café Claude’s case, the answer is pretty clear: it’s in its prime, lively and well run, with food of the urban-earthy sort — rustic dishes prepared with soupçons of metropolitan flash — so characteristic of a certain stratum of Paris restaurants.
For many people, the ultimate treat in French bistros is a plate of steak frites. For me, it is roast chicken ($12.50), a leg and thigh slow-cooked to a gold-dripping tenderness and served with a bright mix of chard, lemon slices, and black olives adrift in the jus. Fries go quite as well with roast chicken as with beef, but at Claude you have to order them on the side ($4, plenty for two). They are sprinkled with herbs and served with a “sauce piquant,” a kind of paprika-enhanced sauce gribiche, lumpy with stubs of cornichons.
The duck rillette ($5) situates a petite slice of meaty pâté, about the size of a brownie, in a vast nest of greens. If shared by two people, the dish is like a charcuterie version of an Easter egg hunt, with the spoils consisting of a single egg. It is best to think of the rillette as a tasting experience: a burst or two of flavor, then on to something weightier, such as that excellent blast from the past, coquilles St. Jacques ($11). Here we have a trio of sea scallops on the half shell bundled with shrimp, mussels, and mushrooms and sealed, oysters Rockefeller–style, under a broiled cap of Gruyère and bread crumbs. The presentation is simple but impressive, and there is a definite unwrapping-a-present pleasure in cracking through the cap to the glistening treasures within.
Weightier still is lamb confit ($23), two rounds of lamb loin braised to pot-roast tenderness and served atop shreds of green cabbage dotted with black olives and bits of red bell pepper. Lamb fat can get pungent if heated, and I had a worry or two beforehand that lamb cooked in lamb fat would be a little too gamy, but the dinnertime kitchen (under chef Leo Salazar) succeeded in discreetly hitting the mute button, with the result a nice lamby — but not too lamby — flavor.
Complaints: the roast-carrot soup ($7), with a submerged reef of Emmentaler gratings, was tongue-searingly hot. A napoleon ($12) of sliced tomatoes and tabs of feta cheese was underseasoned, though the heirloom tomatoes were gloriously ripe. A pan bagnat ($10) featured a smear of tuna salad apparently made from ordinary canned tuna.
But all this was forgiven and then some when the list of digestifs was found to include Armagnac. Armagnac! A snifter for $8 — not bad. Could this be the next big thing? I sippingly pondered that question while the clafouti monster across the table dove into a griotte cherry version ($7) — eggy, I thought (upon a sample or two), but attractively so and baked in a handsome dish of white porcelain.
Cafe Claude must be one of the nicest spots in town to eat outside. There is less tumult and wind than on Belden, and while conventional wisdom teaches that the alfresco season is fleeting in this land of pampered softies, we must remember that the French have a different view: Parisians will take their coffee at sidewalk cafés even with snowflakes twirling softly down around them. So there is northern charm after all. SFBG

CAFE CLAUDE
Continuous service: Mon.–Sat., 11:30 a.m.–10:30 p.m. Dinner: Sun., 5:30–10:30 p.m.
7 Claude Lane, SF
(415) 392-3515
www.cafeclaude.com
Full bar
Noisy
AE/DC/DS/MC/V
Wheelchair accessible

Mild to wild

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› paulr@sfbg.com
“Mandarin” is a word that suggests a certain grandeur or even haughtiness. Mandarin English is the language of such pompmeisters as William F. Buckley Jr., George F. Will, and all those other East Coast bow-tied toffs with Roman numerals after their names. As for mandarin food: if you are enjoying this style of Chinese cooking, you must sit up straight, keep your napkin in your lap, and not eat with your fingers. Can you see Buckley or Will eating pot stickers with their fingers?
Perhaps that is a needlessly nightmarish image. Mandarin need not mean “chokingly formal.” Even the Mandarin in Ghirardelli Square, despite much plushness and high style, retains an agreeably casual air — and the Mandarin is not the exclusive home of mandarin cooking in the city. Although mandarin cuisine is sometimes known as “the food of the emperors” and is strongly associated with Beijing — China’s imperial city — it can be found in creditable form here in such neighborhood restaurants as Ah Lin, which opened last year on Cathedral Hill in a space left behind when the peripatetic the Window returned to its original home on Valencia.
If you’re looking for cathedrals, Cathedral Hill isn’t a bad place to start your search: at one end of Ah Lin’s Bush Street block stands Trinity Episcopal, an imposing gothic edifice that looks as if it were transplanted from some village in the north of England. If that doesn’t suit, there are plenty of alternative choices just a brief journey down Gough. And at the other end of Ah Lin’s little urban world (to complete our sacred-and-profane cycle) is Wheel Works, a temple of the automotive, whose large, white, mostly windowless garage takes up most of the view through the restaurant’s windows.
Fortunately, it is not necessary to look outside, because the interior of the restaurant is appealing in its modest way: walls done up in a paint scheme of rich blue, with peach accents and some framed art pieces, along with a good-sized light box whose ground-level plantings give it the look of a big (and slightly tippy) terrarium. Linoleum? Didn’t notice any, but then, I wasn’t looking, and one of the reasons I wasn’t looking — apart from the childish hope that if I didn’t notice it, it couldn’t be there — was because I was too engrossed in the food.
As a devotee of spicy food, my Chinese preferences over the years have tended toward Szechuan and Hunan cooking, each of which makes liberal use of chiles — and chilis — to kindle that characteristic blaze on the lips. Mandarin dishes, on the other hand, tend to be milder, but mild does not mean bland, and as the kitchen at Ah Lin proves over and over, even even-tempered dishes can have their own sort of savory intensity.
The restaurant’s chow fun ($6.95), for instance, sounded very Clark Kent–ish to us — wide noodles with a restful choice of chicken, beef, shrimp, or vegetable — but while the array of these last was routine (snow peas, broccoli florets, sliced mushrooms), the noodles themselves tasted as if they had been cooked in some kind of broth. (Chicken, perhaps? Vegetarian sticklers will want to inquire.) This is a very easy and effective way to enliven starches, but just to make sure, the kitchen also added shreds of basil for some freshening perfume.
Another subtly addictive, peppery broth was the basis of the ocean party soup ($5.50 for a small bowl that was more than enough for two people), a mélange of shrimp, bay scallops, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and snow peas. Having sampled this soup and the chow fun, we did feel we probably could have passed a pop quiz on what the restaurant’s vegetable bin held.
The menu is full of classic preparations. I fell into a Proustian reverie — memories of long ago and far away on Halsted Street — while engulfing the excellent mu shu pork ($7.50), notable here for its tender pancakes. Even more impressive was a roasted half duck ($8.25). The bird carried a faint and unsurprising whiff of five-spice powder, but its real power lay in the combination of wonderfully crisp, cognac-colored skin and confitlike meat, juicy and tender. At the price, it’s one of the best bargains going.
There is some spice to be had, mainly at lunch. Orange-peel beef ($5.75) is one of those cardiac-arrest dishes you know you shouldn’t have but can’t resist, and there’s a good reason you can’t resist: the knobbly shreds of meat are perfectly crisp and the dark-brown sauce intense with citrus and basil; this is just the kind of thing we might find Homer Simpson gorging on from a big paper bucket, if only it were a little dryer. Hunan fish ($5.75), meanwhile, featured a tangy-sweet sauce with a discreet hint of heat, but what was more striking was the fish itself — fish cakes, really, with a certain sponginess of texture the price of uniformity in size (for more reliable cooking) and the chance to mix seasonings with the flesh. The cakes aren’t unmanageably rubbery, but they can’t match the more usual cod or flounder filets for velvetiness. Lunches come with a cup of soup, a quite lively sweet-and-sour maybe, and rice — brown rice, if you prefer.
Although the restaurant is quite small, service can be stressed. The noontime crowd is sizable, and in the evening take-out orders pile up on the cashier’s podium at the rear of the dining room. So: serenity now, and your order will be along soon enough. SFBG
AH LIN
Continuous service: Mon.–Fri., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.; Sat., noon–9:30 p.m.; Sun., 4:30–9:30 p.m.
1634 Bush, SF
(415) 922-5279
www.ahlinrestaurant.com
Beer and wine
AE/MC/V
Moderately noisy
Wheelchair accessible

Pot. Kettle. Black.

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By Steven T. Jones
District 6 supervisorial candidate Rob Black called a press conference this afternoon to accuse incumbent Sup. Chris Daly of “illegal campaigning.” The charges involve the letters that Daly and other supervisors send to their constituents. Frankly, I don’t have time right now to fully get into all the dimensions of this incident, which is rich with good color and hypocrisy. I’ll spin the full tale for y’all tomorrow. But for now, suffice it to say that the City Attorney’s Office — which Daly checked with before sending out the letters in batches of less than 200 each — doesn’t think this is illegal. That’s point one. Point two is that desperate candidates calling for a Fair Political Practices Commission investigation during the height of an election is trite, transparent, and downright cliche. But the third point is the most important. Black is a candidate that has benefitted mightly from a series of unethical, deceptive, expensive, and probably illegal attacks on Daly, many of which were orchestrated by Black’s mentor and former boss, campaign attorney Jim Sutton. These are attacks that Black has refused to fully condemn or disassociate himself from. So that’s what made today’s press conference not just ironic, but downright amusing. Check back tomorrow when I’ll have more, including good links to much of the above so you don’t just have to accept my perspective on the situation.

Don’t call the feds

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EDITORIAL It’s bad enough that the federal government is aggressively infringing on the rights of three Bay Area journalists, the sovereignty of California, and the freedom of San Franciscans to choose — through the elections of our district attorney, sheriff, and mayor — how laws should be enforced in this city. It’s even worse that the San Francisco Police Department has actively invited the feds in to abuse the city’s citizens.
Now is the time for Mayor Gavin Newsom and Police Chief Heather Fong to strongly, clearly, and publicly spell out when the officers under their control are permitted to federalize investigations rather than turning them over to the District Attorney’s Office. Particularly during this dark period when the Bush administration has shown a flagrant disregard for the rule of law, those in positions of public trust within San Francisco must safeguard the rights and liberties that generations of Americans have fought hard to win.
Specifically, Newsom and Fong should join the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in calling for a federal shield law similar to the one enshrined in the California Constitution, which allows journalists to protect their sources and unpublished notes and other materials. Until that happens, it should be the policy of San Francisco to refuse to cooperate with federal prosecutions of journalists, an action that would be similar to existing police policies of refusing to take part in raids on marijuana dispensaries or in operations targeting those suspected of vioutf8g immigration laws.
Instead, in the case of videographer Josh Wolf — who has been jailed for refusing to turn over his work to a federal grand jury — it appears that the SFPD was the agency that used a dubious interpretation of the law to bring in the feds for this unconscionable witch hunt. This is a disgrace and an affront to local control and basic American values.
As Sarah Phelan reports in this issue (“The SFPD’s Punt,” page 10), the cowboys who run the SFPD have been so intent on nailing those responsible for injuring an officer during a protest last year that they have deceptively morphed the investigation into one involving a broken taillight on a police cruiser. The idea was to argue that because some federal funds helped purchase the cruiser, then it was legitimate to turn this case over to the feds — which was simply a ruse to get around the California shield law. Perhaps even scarier is that it was done under the guise of fighting terrorism, even though the cops knew they were talking about homegrown anarchists who have legitimate concerns about US trade policies.
Over and over — in openly defying local beliefs about drug and sex laws and the death penalty — SFPD officers have shown contempt for San Francisco values. Even Newsom and Fong said as much during last year’s police video scandal, when they chastised officers for making videos that mocked Bayview residents, the homeless, Asians, and transgender people.
Yet that incident wasn’t as obscene as the decision by the SFPD to turn the murder investigations of Bayview gangs over to the feds rather than allow them to be prosecuted by District Attorney Kamala Harris, with whom the SFPD has feuded. The still-high murder rate in this city is a problem that will only be solved when we come together to address it as a community, rather than simply calling in heavy-handed outsiders.
It’s no wonder that communities of color in this city don’t trust the SFPD, which bypasses the black woman we’ve elected as our district attorney in favor of the US Justice Department and its facilitator of empire, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez.
Newsom has already demonstrated that he’s willing to stand up to unjust state and federal laws, as he did on same-sex marriage, pot clubs, and illegal wiretapping by the Bush administration. Now it’s time for him to say that we’re not going to invite unjust federal prosecutions into this proudly progressive city. SFBG
PS We also must strongly condemn the federal prosecution of Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada. They are facing jail time for refusing to reveal how they obtained grand jury information that indicated San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds knowingly took steroids. Journalists must be allowed to fully investigate important stories, particularly those involving public figures, without fearing they will be jailed for their work. Again, this case strongly begs for a federal shield law.
PPS Peter Scheer of the California First Amendment Coalition summed up the argument well in a commentary now posted on the Guardian’s Web site, www.sfbg.com, calling the prosecutions “a wholesale usurpation of state sovereignty. The Bush administration, which has been justly criticized for attempting to enhance executive power at the expense of Congress, is now eviscerating states’ rights in order to expand the power of the federal government. William Rehnquist, the conservative former chief justice of the US Supreme Court and intellectual champion of American ‘federalism,’ is no doubt turning over in his grave.”

Topping the hoop

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› culture@sfbg.com
“Wowza, how’d you get that gnarly bruise?” wide-eyed oglers at the office, in line at the taquería, or on my MySpace blog would ask with awe after peeping the five-inch-long trophy wound on my hip.
“Oh, this old thing,” I’d sniff. “No big deal. Just picked it up in hula hoop dance class.”
“Hula hoop dance class?” my friends back home would reply incredulously, their tiny brains atrophied by played-out calorie burners like hiking and cycling. “You got that from hula hooping? [Guffaw, guffaw, insert joke about pitiful lack of physical endurance here.]”
“Yes, friend, you see, I’m doing an article about this new fitness trend, hoop dance, and …”
“HULA HOOP DANCE CLASS!?!? Only in California, dude, only in California.”
Well, yeah, bitches. That’s right: California. Utopian birthplace of an endless array of revolutionary fitness regimens. Jazzercise. Tae Bo. Heck, according to Wikipedia, Jack LaLanne invented the jumping jack right here in California.
It’s true, though, that when it comes to wacky-sounding physical fitness, it’s been a while since the Golden State unleashed any new trends upon the world. Opportunities for women to get their saucy swivel on have been dwindling — spinning’s hardly saucy, girlfriend — with nary a Curves-free shimmy in sight in some parts of the country.
So yes, indeed, I say thank heavens for the hula hoop, God’s sexiest training wheel. Not only is the hoop helping to polish the state’s tarnished gym-class cred, it’s also spawned hoop dance, a swayin’ and slithery new workout aimed at squeezing the inner juiciness out of average dames like you and me (or possibly your girlfriend or even your mom).
The practice has already gained a healthy following in San Francisco, thanks to inspirational instructor Christabel Zamor, a.k.a. HoopGirl (winner of the 2006 Guardian Best of the Bay Award for Best Personal Trainer). But what about my hoop-deprived friends back East? When and how will they ever get their jaded swivel on?
Good news for all: having wisely determined that despite her effervescent charm and spiritual buoyancy she simply can’t be everywhere at once, HoopGirl’s now passing her hard-earned knowledge along to a bevy of women from all over the country who seek opportunity in this brand-new industry. After all, what better way to sneak erotic exercise into the red states than via the seemingly innocuous hula hoop, Trojan horse of the fitness world?
The 10 women who attended Zamor’s first weekend-long teacher certification workshop in June formed a broad career spectrum: a nurse, a raw food chef, an elementary school teacher, a massage therapist, an architectural assistant, and, of course, a handful of professional fitness instructors. All possessed the requisite hoop skills, and a few even had teaching experience.
What they came to learn, however, was the nitty-gritty of the hoop dance biz, something that Zamor did not have the benefit of knowing at the beginning of her own career. In fact, Zamor’s first exposure to hoop dance came while she was pursuing a career as an anthropology professor at UC Santa Barbara.
“When I was studying anthropology, I loved teaching, but I was really interested in ethnic dance and music traditions,” she says. “The academic environment only contextualized these things in terms of their own preestablished academic jargon. I had been very naive going into graduate school. I really thought it was about exposing myself to the beauty of dance.”
She found herself entranced by hoop dancers at a rave outside of Los Angeles. Disillusioned with the academic environment, she committed herself to learning hoop dance. She returned to Santa Barbara with a hula hoop and started practicing in the park.
“It was a new field, based on no other cultural dance form,” she explains. “And all of a sudden people were beating down my door for hoop dance.”
After struggling in an environment in which she was constantly forced to defend the legitimacy of studying African dance traditions, Zamor found herself at the epicenter of a dance revolution. Within three months of her first hoop dance experience, she found herself teaching group classes.
Today, the hoop dance teacher certification course is the latest addition to Zamor’s hula-shake empire, which includes group classes, private lessons, instructional DVDs, and performances. It’s also a crash course in running your own business.
Over three days, students learn everything they need to effectively teach a hoop dance fitness course, including how to clearly explain and demonstrate the key principles of hoop dance (squat and shimmy, very important); how to make use of imagery and metaphors (“Reach into the honey pot!”); the physiological and psychological benefits of hooping (“Did you know that the most beautiful sound in the world is the sound of a hoop hitting the floor? That’s the sound of learning and growing.”); class structures (hoop jam!); and how to deal with the top five difficult situations (a cranky, clumsy reporter in your midst, perhaps). The course also leaves students with a sense of marketing savvy and all the esoterica involved in operating a small business, such as insurance, liability waivers, pricing, and property rental.
“I really respect Christabel as an artist and a business woman,” says Candice Schutter, a movement facilitator and life coach from Portland. “She’s given us a workable structure that can be used right away to create a thriving business.”
But Zamor said she hopes the women take away much more than technical know-how. “The most important thing that I want the teachers to exude, so that other people can absorb it, is confidence,” she says. “It’s the key to learning hoop dance. It’s a feeling. It’s not something people can memorize. You just have to believe it.” SFBG
The next HoopGirl teacher-training course will be in San Francisco, Oct. 6–8. To register or for more information, go to www.hoopgirl.com.

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Welcome to our dining listings, a detailed guide by neighborhood of some great places to grab a bite, hang out with friends, or impress the ones you love with thorough knowledge of this delectable city. Restaurants are reviewed by Paul Reidinger (PR) or staff. All area codes are 415, and all restaurants are wheelchair accessible, except where noted.
B Breakfast
BR Saturday and/or Sunday brunch
L Lunch
D Dinner
AE American Express
DC Diners Club
DISC Discover
MC MasterCard
V Visa
¢ less than $7 per entrée
$ $7–$12
$$ $13–$20
$$$ more than $20
DOWNTOWN/EMBARCADERO
Acme Chophouse brings Traci des Jardins’s high-end meat-and-potatoes menu right into the confines of Pac Bell Park. Good enough to be a destination, though stranguutf8g traffic is an issue on game days. (Staff) 24 Willie Mays Plaza, SF. 644-0240. American, L/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.
Ana Mandara looks and feels like a soundstage, but the menu offers what is probably the best high-end Vietnamese-style food in town. (Staff) 891 Beach, SF. 771-6800. Vietnamese, L/D, $$$, AE/MC/V.
Anjou is the other restaurant on Campton Place — a lovely little warren of brick and brass serving an unpretentious, and sometimes inventive, French bistro menu. (Staff) 44 Campton Place, SF. 392-5373. French, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
B44 brings Daniel Olivella’s Catalan cooking to al fresco-friendly Belden Place. The salt cod-studded menu is stronger in first than main dishes. Frenchy desserts. (Staff) 44 Belden Place, SF. 986-6287. Catalan, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Bix radiates an unmistakable aura of American power and luxury, Jazz Age style. The food is simply splendid. (Staff) 56 Gold, SF. 433-6300. American, L/D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Bocadillos serves bocadillos — little Spanish-style sandwiches on little round buns — but the menu ranges more widely, through a variety of Spanish and Basque delights. Decor is handsome, though a little too stark-modern to be quite cozy. (PR, 8/04) 710 Montgomery, SF. Spanish/Basque, L/D, $, MC/V.
Boulevard runs with ethereal smoothness — you are cosseted as if at a chic private party — but despite much fame the place retains its brasserie trappings and joyous energy. (Staff) 1 Mission, SF. 543-6084. American, L/D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Brindisi Cucina di Mare cooks seafood the south Italian way, and that means many, many ways, with many, many sorts of seafood. (PR, 4/04) 88 Belden Place, SF. 593-8000. Italian/seafood, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Chaya Brasserie brings a taste of LA’s preen-and-be-seen culture to the waterfront. The Japanese-influenced food is mostly French, and very expensive. (Staff) 132 Embarcadero, SF. 777-8688. Fusion, D, $$$, AE/DC/MC/V.
Cortez has a Scandinavian Designs-on-acid look — lots of heavy, weird multicolored mobiles — but Pascal Rigo’s Mediterranean-influenced small plates will quickly make you forget you’re eating in a hotel. (Staff) 550 Geary (in the Hotel Adagio), SF. 292-6360. Mediterranean, B/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Cosmopolitan Cafe seems like a huge Pullman car. The New American menu emphasizes heartiness. (Staff) 121 Spear, SF. 543-4001. American, L/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.
Fleur de Lys gives its haute French cuisine a certain California whimsy in a setting that could be the world’s most luxurious tent. There is a vegetarian tasting menu and an extensive, remarkably pricey wine list. (PR, 2/05) 777 Sutter, SF. 673-7779. French, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Fog City Diner still doesn’t take American Express but does still serve a tasty polyglot menu in a romantically dining car-like setting. (Staff) 1300 Battery, SF. 982-2000. Eclectic/American, B/L/D, $$, DISC/MC/V.
Il Fornaio offers a spectacular setting (complete with terrace and tinkling fountain), simple and elegant Italian cooking, first-rate breads, and spotty service. (Staff) 1265 Battery, SF. 986-0100. Italian, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
*Gary Danko is an exercise in symmetries, with food, ambience, and service in a fine balance. Danko’s California cooking is distinctive, but the real closer is the cheese cart, laden with the exquisite and the rare. (Staff) 800 North Point, SF. 749-2060. California, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Jeanty at Jack’s introduces Philippe Jeanty’s earthy French cooking into the vertiginous old Jack’s space, and the result is leisurely fabulousness, at least at dinnertime. At lunch, the pace is more harried, the prices too high. (Staff) 615 Sacramento, SF. 693-0941. French, L/D, $$$, AE/MC/V.
Kyo-Ya may not be the best Japanese restaurant in the city, but it’s certainly one of them. Elegantly padded surroundings, sublime sushi, and a wide selection of cooked dishes attract an international mercantile class. (Staff) 2 New Montgomery, SF. 512-1111. Japanese, L/D, $$$, AE/MC/V.
MacArthur Park still occupies a gorgeous brick cavern in the Barbary Coast, but the restaurant these days is more a neighborhood spot than a destination, and the emphasis seems to be on takeout. (Staff) 607 Front, SF. 398-5700. Barbecue, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Mandarin, though a Gen Xer by birth and a longtime resident of touristy Ghirardelli Square, still offers a matchlessly elegant experience in Chinese fine dining: a surprising number of genuinely spicy dishes, superior service, and wine emphasized over beer. (PR, 9/04) 900 North Point (in Ghirardelli Square), SF. Chinese, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
*Mijita shows that Traci des Jardins can go down-market with the best of them. The Mexican street food is convincingly lusty, but in keeping with the Ferry Building setting, it’s also made mostly with organic, high-quality ingredients. (PR, 4/05) 1 Ferry Bldg, Suite 44, SF. 399-0814. Mexican, B/L/D, ¢, AE/MC/V.
MoMo’s San Francisco Grill The New American food at MoMo’s is surprisingly excellent, and the interior decoration is opulent, with prairie-style furniture, wood trim, dark green carpeting, and dimpled leather upholstery on the banquettes. (PR, 11/98) 760 Second St, SF. 227-8660. American, BR/L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Paragon has left behind its fratty Marina incarnation to become, near the Giants’ new ballpark, a stylish haven of gastronomic Americana. Something for everyone in a strikingly vertical space. (Staff) 701 Second St, SF. 537-9020. American, L/D, $$, MC/V.
Plouf Mussels 10 ways — need we say more? Plouf knows its turf, and that’s surf. All the seafood sparkles at this chic spot tucked away on pedestrians-only Belden Place, though mussels are a house specialty, impeccably fresh and served in brimming bowlfuls. Lots of outdoor seating reinforces the French-café feel. (Staff) 40 Belden Place, SF. 986-6491. French, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Ponzu opened early in 2000 but is likely to be remembered as one of that year’s best new restaurants. The decor manages to be warm, bright, and modern without going over the top. (Staff) 401 Taylor, SF. 775-7979. Asian, B/D, $$, MC/V.
*Postrio might be the last place on earth where you can still get a taste of the elegantly lusty cooking that made Wolfgang Puck and his first Spago famous. (Staff) 545 Post, SF. 776-7825. California, B/BR/L/D, $$$, AE/DC/MC/V.
Puccini and Pinetti practically shouts festivity: bright, primary-colors decor (with an emphasis on yellow and blue), plenty of noise, and solidly rendered Italian-American comfort food. (Staff) 129 Ellis, SF. 392-5500. Italian, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Shanghai 1930 resembles a cross between a speakeasy and one of Saddam Hussein’s famous bunkers. The high-end Chinese menu is a marvel of freshness and priciness. (Staff) 133 Steuart, SF. 896-5600. Chinese, L/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.
Tadich Grill is the city’s oldest restaurant (150 years and counting), and it still packs ’em in, specializing in seafood and most anything grilled. (Staff) 240 California, SF. 391-1849. Grill, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Tlaloc rises like a multistory loft on its Financial District lane, the better to accommodate the hordes of suits crowding in for a noontime burrito-and-salsa fix. They serve a mean pipián burrito and decent fish tacos. (Staff) 525 Commercial, SF. 981-7800. Mexican, L/D, ¢, AE/MC/V.
Tommy Toy’s Haute Cuisine Chinois is a cross between a steak house and The Last Emperor. The food is rich and fatty and only occasionally good. (Staff) 655 Montgomery, SF. 397-4888. Chinese, L/D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Town’s End Restaurant and Bakery enjoys a reputation for a fabulous weekend brunch (getting in can be a trick), but the restaurant serves a polished California menu at dinner too. (Staff) 2 Townsend, SF. 512-0749. California, B/BR/L/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.
Tu Lan has few luxuries except the food, which is a luxury to the wealthiest palate. Raw foods converge in salads and stir-fries that’ll leave you wondering why your own cooking doesn’t look as easy and taste as good. (Staff) 8 Sixth St, SF. 626-0927. Vietnamese, L/D, ¢.
NORTH BEACH/CHINATOWN
Da Flora advertises Venetian specialties, but notes from Central Europe (veal in paprika cream sauce) and points east (whiffs of nutmeg) creep into other fine dishes. (Staff) 701 Columbus, SF. 981-4664. Italian, D, $$, MC/V.
Dalla Torre is one of the most inaccessible restaurants in the city. The multilevel dining room — a cross between an Italian country inn and a Frank Lloyd Wright house — offers memorable bay views, but the pricey food is erratic. (Staff) 1349 Montgomery, SF. 296-1111. Italian, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Enrico’s Sidewalk Cafe remains a classic see-and-be-seen part of the North Beach scene. The full bar and extensive menu of tapas, pizzas, pastas, and grills make dropping in at any hour a real treat. (Staff) 504 Broadway, SF. 982-6223. Mediterranean, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Gondola captures the varied flavors of Venice and the Veneto in charmingly low-key style. The main theme is the classic one of simplicity, while service strikes just the right balance between efficiency and warmth. (Staff) 15 Columbus, SF. 956-5528. Italian, L/D, $, MC/V.
House of Nanking never fails to garner raves from restaurant reviewers and Guardian readers alike. Chinatown ambience, great food, good prices. (Best Ofs, 1994) 919 Kearny, SF. 421-1429. Chinese, L/D, ¢.
Maykadeh Persian Cuisine is a great date restaurant, classy but not too pricey, and there are lots of veggie options both for appetizers and entrées. Khoresht bademjan was a delectable, deep red stew of tomato and eggplant with a rich, sweet, almost chocolatey undertone. (Staff) 470 Green, SF. 362-8286. Persian, L/D, $, MC/V.
Michelangelo Cafe There’s always a line outside this quintessential North Beach restaurant, but it’s well worth the sidewalk time for Michelangelo’s excellent Italian, served in a bustling, family-style atmosphere. The seafood dishes are recommended; approach the postprandial Gummi Bears at your own risk. (Staff) 597 Columbus, SF. 986-4058. Italian, D, $$.
Moose’s is famous for the Mooseburger, but the rest of the menu is comfortably sophisticated. The crowd is moneyed but not showy and definitely not nouveau. (Staff) 1652 Stockton, SF. 989-7800. American, BR/L/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.
Pena Pacha Mama offers organic Bolivian cuisine as well as weekly performances of Andean song and dance. Dine on crusted lamb and yucca frita while watching a genuine flamenco performance in this intimate setting. (Staff) 1630 Powell, SF. 646-0018. Bolivian, BR/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Rico’s touts its salsas, and they are good, but so is almost everything else on the mainstream Mexican menu. (Staff) 943 Columbus, SF. 928-5404. Mexican, L/D, ¢, AE/MC/V.
Rose Pistola cooks it up in the style of Liguria, and that means lots of seafood, olive oil, and lemons — along with a wealth of first-rate flat breads (pizzas, focaccias, farinatas) baked in the wood-burning oven. (PR, 7/05) 532 Columbus, SF. 399-0499. Italian, L/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.
Washington Square Bar and Grill offers stylish Cal-Ital food at reasonable prices in a storied setting. (Staff) 1707 Powell, SF. 982-8123. Italian, $$, L/D, MC/V.
SOMA
AsiaSF Priscilla, Queen of the Desert meets Asian-influenced tapas at this amusingly surreal lounge. The drag queen burlesque spectacle draws a varied audience that’s a show in itself. (Staff) 201 Ninth St, SF. 255-2742. Fusion, D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Bacar means “wine goblet,” and its wine menu is extensive — and affordable. Chef Arnold Wong’s eclectic American-global food plays along nicely. (Staff) 448 Brannan, SF. 904-4100. American, D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Basil A serene, upscale oasis amid the industrial supply warehouses, Basil offers California-influenced Thai cuisine that’s lively and creative. (Staff) 1175 Folsom, SF. 552-8999. Thai, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Big Nate’s Barbecue is pretty stark inside — mostly linoleum arranged around a pair of massive brick ovens. But the hot sauce will make you sneeze. (Staff) 1665 Folsom, SF. 861-4242. Barbecue, L/D, $, MC/V.
Butler and the Chef brings a taste of Parisian café society — complete with pâtés, cornichons, and croques monsieurs — to sunny South Park. (PR, 5/04) 155A South Park, SF. French, B/L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Le Charm is the perfect spot to settle into a padded banquette and order wine and lamb chops and lovely little crèmes caramels. (Staff) 315 Fifth St, SF. 546-6128. French, L/D, $$, MC/V.
Chez Spencer brings Laurent Katgely’s precise French cooking into the rustic-industrial urban cathedral that once housed Citizen Cake. Get something from the wood-burning oven. (Staff) 82 14th St, SF. 864-2191. French, BR/L/D, $$, MC/V.
Fly Trap Restaurant captures a bit of that old-time San Francisco feel, from the intricate plaster ceiling to the straightforward menu: celery Victor, grilled salmon filet with beurre blanc. A good lunchtime spot. (Staff) 606 Folsom, SF. 243-0580. American, L/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.
*Fringale still satisfies the urge to eat in true French bistro style, with Basque flourishes. The paella roll is a small masterpiece of food narrative; the frites are superior. (PR, 7/04) 570 Fourth St, SF. 543-0573. French/Basque, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Hawthorne Lane comes about as close to restaurant perfection as is possible in this world. The California cooking shows marked Asian influences; the mutedly elegant decor is welcoming, not stuffy. Sublime service. (Staff) 22 Hawthorne Lane (between Second St and Third St at Howard), SF. 777-9779. California, L/D, $$$, MC/V.
India Garden indeed has a lovely garden and an excellent lunch buffet that does credit to South Asian standards. (Staff) 1261 Folsom, SF. 626-2798. Indian, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Jack Falstaff pays homage to the slow-food movement: there are emphases on the organic, the housemade, the local, and the healthful — and at the same time it’s all tasty and served in voluptuous, supper-club-style surroundings. (PR, 4/05) 598 Second St, SF. 836-9239. American, L/D, $$$, AE/MC/V.
Julie’s Kitchen offers a lunchtime buffet with, literally, a bit of everything, from roast turkey to sushi, with plenty of interesting items in between. (Staff) 680 Eighth St, SF. 431-1255. Eclectic, B/L, $, DC/MC/V.
Left Coast Cafe brings a breath of California freshness to the otherwise slightly antiseptic atrium of the Dolby Building. Healthy sandwiches (tuna, hummus), a decent Caesar, good mom-style cookies and brownies. (Staff) 999 Brannan, SF. 522-0232. California, B/L, ¢, cash only.
LJ’s Martini Bar and Grill sits on the second floor of the urban mall we know as Metreon, but its menu of American favorites and international alternatives is stylishly executed and reasonably priced in a sophisticated environment. For lunch, sit on the sunny terrace. (PR, 9/04) 101 Fourth St, SF. 369-6114. American, L/D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.
LuLu defines the modern California restaurant. Many dishes acquire a heart-swelling smokiness from the oven — a plate of portobello mushrooms, say, with soft polenta and mascarpone butter. (Staff) 816 Folsom, SF. 495-5775. Mediterranean, L/D, $$$, AE/MC/V.
Maya is like a good French restaurant serving elegant food that tastes Mexican. There are unforgettable flavors here: corn kernels steeped in vanilla, lovely grilled pork tenderloin served with a pipian sauce of pumpkin seed and tamarind. And for those weekday take-out lunches, there’s Maya (Next Door), a taquería that operates to the left of the host’s podium. (PR, 8/04) 303 Second St, SF. 543-6709. Mexican, L/D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
*Mochica serves quite possibly the best Peruvian food in the city, at extremely reasonable prices. The location is iffy, mostly because of speeding traffic. Jaywalk with care. (PR, 6/04) 937 Harrison, SF. 278-0480. Peruvian, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Moshi Moshi serves a full palette of Japanese standards, from sushi to tempura to immense bowls of udon and near-udon. An ideal spot for neighborhood watching. (Staff) 2092 Third St, SF. Japanese, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Nova still serves infused vodkas (remember Infusion?), but its orientation is less toward South Park than toward Pac Bell Park: sports on the TV above the bar, solid New American food, sleek pubbish looks. (Staff) 555 Second St, SF. 543-2282. American, L/D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.
Oola gives Ola Fendert his own platform at last, and the result is a modern, golden SoMa restaurant with a menu that mixes playful opulence with local standards. (PR, 10/04) 860 Folsom, SF. 995-2061. California, D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Public brings a Tuscan-tinged, Delfina-ish menu to a splendid multilevel space in a grand old brick building. Youthful but well-informed staff, incomparable chocolate bread pudding. (Staff) 1489 Folsom, SF. 552-3065. California/Mediterranean, D, $$, AE/MC/V.
[TK]Sneaky Tiki redoes the old Hamburger Mary’s space with a Polynesian flair, though you can still get a decent burger. Many dishes for two, including a huge, multitiered pupu platter. The human tone is sleek, with some echoes of the disco past. (PR, 10/05) 1582 Folsom, SF. 701-TIKI. Polynesian, L/D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.
Sushi Groove South continues the westward march of hipsterdom through SoMa. The food — traditional sushi augmented by quietly stylish fusion dishes — is spectacular. The setting — a candlelit grotto abrim with black-clad young — is charged with high romance. (Staff) 1516 Folsom, SF. 503-1950. Japanese/sushi, L/D, $, AE/DC/MC/V.
Tamal offers inventive Mexican-influenced small plates, including a selection of namesake tamales, in a lonely corner of southwest SoMa. The food can be inconsistent, but the best dishes are wonderful. (PR, 4/05) 1599 Howard, SF. 864-2446. Nuevo Latino/tapas, D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.
Town Hall offers the lusty American cooking of the Rosenthal brothers in an elegantly spare New England-ish setting. There is a large communal table for seat-of-the-pants types and those who like their conviviality to have a faintly medieval air. (Staff) 342 Howard, SF. 908-3900. American, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Vino e Cucina offers a pleasantly oasislike setting and solid Italian food — with the occasional pleasant surprise — on a gritty stretch of Third Street. (Staff) 489 Third St, SF. 543-6962. Italian, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
XYZ joins the pantheon of fabulous restaurants in the city’s hotels. Lusty California cooking glows like a campfire in a cool (if slightly deracinated) urban setting. (Staff) 181 Third St, SF. 817-7836. California, B/BR/L/D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
NOB HILL/RUSSIAN HILL
Acquerello reminds us that the Italians, like the French, have a high cuisine — sophisticated and earthy and offered in a onetime chapel with exposed rafters and sumptuous fabrics on the banquettes. Service is as knowledgeable and civilized as at any restaurant in the city. (PR, 3/05) 1722 Sacramento, SF. 567-5432. Italian, $$$, D, AE/DISC/MC/V.
Alborz looks more like a hotel restaurant than a den of Persian cuisine, but there are flavors here — of barberry and dried lime, among others — you won’t easily find elsewhere. (Staff) 1245 Van Ness, SF. 440-4321. Persian, L/D, $, MC/V.
Bacio offers homey, traditional Italian dishes in a charmingly cozy rustic space. Service can be slow. (PR, 1/05) 835 Hyde, SF. 292-7999. Italian, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Cordon Bleu has huge portions, tiny prices, and a hoppin’ location right next to the Lumiere Theatre. (Staff) 1574 California, SF. 673-5637. Vietnamese, L/D, ¢.
Crustacean is famous for its roast Dungeness crab; the rest of the “Euro/Asian” menu is refreshingly Asian in emphasis. (Staff) 1475 Polk, SF. 776-2722. Fusion, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
East Coast West Delicatessen doesn’t look like a New York deli (too much space, air, light), but the huge, fattily satisfying Reubens, platters of meat loaf, black-and-white cookies, and all the other standards compare commendably to their East Coast cousins. (Staff) 1725 Polk, SF. 563-3542. Deli, BR/L/D, $, MC/V.
[TK]La Folie could be a neighborhood spot or a destination or both, but either way or both ways it is sensational: an exercise in haute cuisine leavened with a West Coast sense of informality and playfulness. There is a full vegetarian menu and an ample selection of wines by the half bottle. (PR, 2/06) 2316 Polk, SF. 776-5577. French, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Grubstake might look like your typical Polk Gulch diner — sandwiches and burgers, open very late — but the kitchen also turns out some good mom-style Portuguese dishes, replete with olives, salt cod, and linguica. If you crave caldo verde at 3 a.m., this is the place. (Staff) 1525 Pine, SF. 673-8268. Portuguese/American, B/L/D, ¢, cash only.
*Matterhorn Restaurant offers dishes that aren’t fondue, but fondue (especially with beef) is the big deal and the answer to big appetites. For dessert: chocolate fondue! (Staff) 2323 Van Ness, SF. 885-6116. Swiss, $$, D, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
O’Reilly’s Holy Grail, a redo of the old Maye’s Oyster House that strikes harmonious notes of chapel and lounge, serves a sophisticated and contemporary Cal-Irish menu. (PR, 10/05) 1233 Polk, SF. 928-1233. California/Irish, BR/L/D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.
Persimmon offers a tasty, fairly priced Middle Eastern menu to tourists, theatergoers, and neighbors alike. Excellent hummus. (PR, 9/05) 582 Sutter, SF. 433-5525. Middle Eastern, B/L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Le Petit Robert offers classy French cooking as a wealth of small plates, along with a few larger ones, in a setting that’s at once spacious and warm. Not cheap, but good value. (Staff) 2300 Polk, SF. 922-8100. French, L/D, $$, MC/V.
Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse brings on the lipids in a big, big way — even the salads are well marbled — but if you’re not worried about fat, you’ll find the food to be quite tasty, the mood soothingly refined. (Staff) 1601 Van Ness, SF. 673-0557. Steak, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Wasabi and Ginger looks to become a popular neighborhood spot. The sushi is first rate, but the great stuff on the menu is cooked: buttery-tender beef short ribs and a seafood-miso soup served in a teapot. (Staff) 2299 Van Ness, SF. 345-1368. Japanese, L/D, $, MC/V.
Yabbies Coastal Kitchen There’s lots to shuck and swallow at the raw bar, but don’t miss tropical seafood cocktails (like the crab with mango and lemongrass) piled glamorously into martini glasses. (Staff) 2237 Polk, SF. 474-4088. California, D, $$, MC/V.
Zarzuela’s rich selection of truly delicious tapas and full meals makes it a neighborhood favorite. (Staff) 2000 Hyde, SF. 346-0800. Tapas, D, $$, DISC/MC/V.
CIVIC CENTER/TENDERLOIN
A la Turca is a surprisingly stylish spot on a not particularly stylish block. Excellent pides and Turkish beer. (PR, 3/04) 869 Geary, SF. 345-1011. Turkish, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Ananda Fuara serves a distinctly Indian-influenced vegetarian menu in the sort of calm surroundings that are increasingly the exception to the rule. (Staff) 1298 Market, SF. 621-1994. Vegetarian, L/D, ¢, cash only.
[TK]*Bodega Bistro has a certain colonial formality — much of the menu is given in French — and it does attract a tony expat crowd. The food is elegant but not fancy (lobster, rack of lamb, both simply presented); if even those are too much, look to the “Hanoi Street Cuisine” items. (PR, 11/05) 607 Larkin, SF. 921-1218. Vietnamese, L/D, $$, DC/DISC/MC/V.
Canto do Brasil The draw here is lusty yeoman cooking, Brazilian style, at beguilingly low prices. The tropically cerulean interior design enhances the illusion of sitting at a beach café. (Staff) 41 Franklin, SF. 626-8727. Brazilian, L/D, $, MC/V.
Chutney combines elements of college-town haunt and California bistro. The Pakistani-Indian food is fresh, bright, spicy, and cheap. (Staff) 511 Jones, SF. 931-5541. Indian/Pakistani, L/D, ¢.
Gyro Kebab adds to the Turkish presence in the Tenderloin. The signature dish, swordfish kebab, is estimable, but almost everything else on the menu is crisply prepared too. (PR, 4/05) 637 Larkin, SF. 775-5526. Turkish, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Gyro King has that Istanbul feeling: lots of kebabs and gyros, hummus, dolma, eggplant salad, and of course baklava fistikli for dessert. It’s all cheap, and it makes for a good, quick Civic Center lunch. (Staff) 25 Grove, SF. 621-8313. Turkish/Mediterranean, B/L/D, ¢, MC/V.
Indigo serves up good California cuisine in a pleasantly stylish setting. A great presymphony choice. (Staff) 687 McAllister, SF. 673-9353. California, D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Jardinière combines an aggressively elegant Pat Kuleto design with the calm confidence of Traci Des Jardins’s cooking. The best dishes are unforgettable. (Staff) 300 Grove, SF. 861-5555. California, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
[TK]Mangosteen radiates lime green good cheer from its corner perch in the Tenderloin. Inexpensive Vietnamese standards are rendered with thoughtful little touches and an emphasis on the freshest ingredients. (PR, 11/05) 601 Larkin, SF. 776-3999. Vietnamese, L/D, $, cash only.
Max’s Opera Cafe Huge food is the theme here, from softball-size matzo balls to towering desserts. Your basic Jewish deli. (Staff) 601 Van Ness, SF. 771-7300. American, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
[TK]Mekong Restaurant serves the foods of the Mekong River basin. There is a distinct Thai presence but also dishes with Laotian, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and even Chinese accents. (PR, 1/06) 791 O’Farrell, SF. 928-2772. Pan-Asian, L/D, $, MC/V.
Olive might look like a tapas bar, but what you want are the thin-crust pizzas, the simpler the toppings the better. The small plates offer eclectic pleasures, especially the Tuscan pâté and beef satay with peanut sauce. (Staff) 743 Larkin, SF. 776-9814. Pizza/eclectic, D, $, AE/DISC/MC/V.
Pagolac For $10.95 a person you and two or more of your favorite beef eaters can dive into Pagolac’s specialty: seven-flavor beef. Less carnivorous types can try the cold spring rolls, shrimp on sugarcane, or lemongrass tofu. (Staff) 655 Larkin, SF. 776-3234. Vietnamese, L/D, ¢.
*Saha serves “Arabic fusion cuisine” — a blend of the Middle East and California — in a cool, spare setting behind the concierge’s desk at the Hotel Carlton. One senses the imminence of young rock stars, drawn perhaps by the lovely chocolate fondue. (PR, 9/04) 1075 Sutter, SF. 345-9547. Arabic/fusion, B/BR/D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.
HAYES VALLEY
Absinthe restyles the rustic foods of southern France into sleek urban classics. No absinthe; have a pastis instead. (Staff) 398 Hayes, SF. 551-1590. Southern French, B/BR/L/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.
Arlequin offers light Provençal and Mediterranean food for takeout, but the best place to take your stuff is to the sunny, tranquil garden in the rear. (Staff) 384B Hayes, SF. 863-0926. Mediterranean, B/L/D, ¢, MC/V.
Destino reweaves traditional Peruvian flavors into a tapestry of extraordinary vividness and style, and the storefront interior has been given a golden glow that would have satisfied the most restless conquistador. (Staff) 1815 Market, SF. 552-4451. Peruvian, D, $$, MC/V.
Espetus means “skewer” in Portuguese, and since the place is a Brazilian grill, the (huge) skewers are laden with a variety of meat, poultry, and seafood. The giant buffet at the rear assures that you will not — you cannot — leave hungry. (PR, 3/04) 1686 Market, SF. 552-8792. Brazilian, L/D, $$$, MC/V.
Frjtz serves first-rate Belgian fries, beer, crepes, and sandwiches in an art-house atmosphere. If the noise overwhelms, take refuge in the lovely rear garden. (Staff) 579 Hayes, SF. 864-7654; also at Ghirardelli Square, SF. 928-3886. Belgian, B/L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Hayes Street Grill still offers a workable formula: the best fish, prepared with conservative expertise and offered with a choice of sauce and excellent pommes frites. An old, reliable friend. (Staff) 320 Hayes, SF. 863-5545. Seafood, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Sauce enjoys the services of chef Ben Paula, whose uninhibited California cooking is as easy to like as a good pop song. (PR, 5/05) 131 Gough, SF. 252-1369. California, D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.
Suppenküche has a Busvan for Bargains, butcher-block look that gives context to its German cuisine. If you like schnitzel, brats, roasted potatoes, eggs, cheese, cucumber salad, cold cuts, and cold beer, you’ll love it here. (Staff) 601 Hayes, SF. 252-9289. German, BR/D, $, AE/MC/V.
*Zuni Cafe is one of the most celebrated — and durable — restaurants in town, perhaps because its kitchen has honored the rustic country cooking of France and Italy for the better part of two decades. (PR, 2/05) 1658 Market, SF. 552-2522. California, B/L/D, $$$, AE/MC/V.
CASTRO/NOE VALLEY/GLEN PARK
Alice’s sits on an obscure corner of outer Noe Valley, but the Chinese food is reliably fresh, tasty, and cheap. The decor is surprisingly elegant too: Wedgwood place settings and displays of blown glass. (Staff) 1599 Sanchez, SF. 282-8999. Chinese, L/D, $, MC/V.
Amberjack Sushi is like a miniature version of Blowfish or Tokyo Go Go. The more complex dishes, such as a tuna-sashimi tartare with lemon olive oil, are better than the simple, traditional stuff, which can be overchilled. (Staff) 1497 Church, SF. 920-1797. Japanese, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Bacco breathes north Italian authenticity, from the terra-cotta-colored walls to the traditional but vivid veal preparations. One of the best neighborhood Italian restaurants in town. (Staff) 737 Diamond, SF. 282-4969. Italian, D, $$, MC/V.
Blue dishes up home cooking as good as any mom’s, in a downtown New York environment — of mirrors, gray-blue walls, and spotlights — that would blow most moms away. (Staff) 2337 Market, SF. 863-2583. American, BR/L/D, $, MC/V.
Burgermeister uses top-grade Niman Ranch beef for its burgers, but nonetheless they’re splendid, with soft buns and crisp, well-salted fries. Foofy California wrinkles are available if you want them, but why would you? (PR, 5/04) 138 Church, SF. 437-2874. Burgers, L/D, $.
Catch offers some excellent seafood pastas and a fabulous dish of mussels in Pernod over frites, while the atmosphere is full of Castro festivity. (Staff) 2362 Market, SF. 431-5000. Seafood, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Chenery Park is the restaurant Glen Park has been waiting for all these years: a calm, understated setting and an eclectic American menu with plenty of sly twists. (Staff) 683 Chenery, SF. 337-8537. American, D, $$, MC/V.
Chow serves up an easy Californian blend of American and Italian favorites, with a few Asian elements thrown into the mix. (Staff) 215 Church, SF. 552-2469. California, L/D, ¢, MC/V.
Côté Sud brings a stylish breath of Provence to the Castro. The cooking reflects an unfussy elegance; service is as crisp as a neatly folded linen napkin. Nota bene: you must climb a set of steps to reach the place. (Staff) 4238 18th St, SF. 255-6565. French, D, $$, MC/V.
Eric’s Dig into the likes of mango shrimp, hoisin green beans, and spicy eggplant with chicken in this bright, airy space. (Staff) 1500 Church, SF. 282-0919. Chinese, L/D, $, MC/V.
*Firefly remains an exemplar of the neighborhood restaurant in San Francisco: it is homey and classy, hip and friendly, serving an American menu — deftly inflected with ethnic and vegetarian touches — that’s the match of any in the city. (PR, 9/04) 4288 24th St, SF. 821-7652. American, D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Firewood Cafe serves up delicious thin chewy-crusted pizzas, four kinds of tortellini, rotisserie-roasted chicken, and big bowls of salad. (Staff) 4248 18th St, SF. 252-0999. Italian, L/D, ¢, MC/V.
Los Flamingos mingles Cuban and Mexican specialties in a relaxed, leafy, walk-oriented neighborhood setting. Lots of pink on the walls; even more starch on the plates. (PR, 11/04) 151 Noe, SF. 252-7450. Cuban/Mexican, BR/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Fresca raises the already high bar a little higher for Peruvian restaurants in town. Many of the dishes are complex assemblies of unusual and distinctive ingredients, but some of the best are among the simplest. The skylighted barrel-ceiling setting is quietly spectacular. (PR, 7/05) 3945 24th St, SF. 695-0549. Peruvian, L/D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.
Hamano Sushi packs them in despite a slightly dowdy setting and food of variable appeal. The best stuff is as good as it gets, though, and prices aren’t bad. (Staff) 1332 Castro, SF. 826-0825. Japanese, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Home sounds homey, and it is, at least foodwise: first-rate pot roast, macaroni and cheese, broccoli with white cheddar cheese sauce; the occasional dressier dish. The crowd has a strong clubland look. (Staff) 2100 Market, SF. 503-0333. New American, D, $, AE/MC/V.
Incanto sets the bar a bit higher for neighborhood Italian restaurants. Gorgeous stonework, a chapel-like wine room, and skillful cooking that ranges confidently from pastas to braised lamb shanks. (Staff) 1550 Church, SF. 641-4500. Italian, D, $$, MC/V.
Long Island Restaurant dishes up reliable Chinese standards in a space that’s been considerably brightened since the passing of the previous occupant. (PR, 3/04) 1689 Church, SF. 695-7678/79. Chinese, L/D, $, MC/V.
Lucky Time drifts happily between the foods of Vietnam and China. Low prices, fast service, reasonably nice decor, location vastly convenient to public transport. (PR, 3/05) 708 14th St, SF. 861-2682. Vietnamese/Chinese, L/D, $, MC/V.
Lupa, in the old Noi-Little Italy space, serves a strong pan-Italian menu with Roman accents. Service is knowledgeable and familial, the food competitive in a competitive neighborhood. (Staff) 4109 24th St, SF. 282-5872. Italian, D, $$, MC/V.
[TK]Malacca serves the foods of the Strait of Malacca region, and the sophisticated mix is unmistakably Singaporean, from Portuguese noodles (with basil, tomato, garlic, and ginger) to beef rendang. Wine is emphasized over beer, and the decor of unduutf8g bamboo is quietly striking. (PR, 11/05) 4039 18th St, SF. 863-0679. Pan-Asian, D, $$, MC/V.
Nirvana offers a peaceful respite from busy Castro streets. Although noodles make up the bulk of the menu, there’s also a list of entrées that range from stir-fried jicama to grilled lemongrass chicken. (Staff) 544 Castro, SF. 861-2226. Pan-Asian, L/D, $, MC/V.
La Provence bestows a welcome dash of south-of-France sunshine to an often befogged city. Many fine Provençal standards, including a memorable tarte tropézienne. (PR, 9/05) 1001 Guerrero, SF. 643-4333. French, D, $$, MC/V.
Samovar Tea Lounge has tea — of course, and of many, many kinds — but also food to go with your tea and a gorgeous setting of fluttering fabrics to enjoy it all in. A world of tea culture. (Staff) 498 Sanchez, SF. 626-4700. Eclectic, B/L/D, ¢, AE/MC/V.
Savor has transformed the old Courtyard Cafe into a fantasy of a Mediterranean country inn. Pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, et al, occur in various permutations throughout the menu’s crepes, omelets, frittatas, sandwiches, and salads. (Staff) 3913 24th St, SF. 282-0344. Mediterranean, B/L/D, $, MC/V.
Tangerine occupies one of the lovelier and more tree-lined corners in the Castro, and the “fusion” cooking is really more of a potpourri, ably ranging from gumbo to deep-fried calamari to sea bass edamame. (Staff) 3499 16th St, SF. 626-1700. Fusion, L/D, $, MC/V.
Tao Cafe exudes rich atmosphere — a beautiful two-tone green paint scheme, ceiling fans, bronze fittings — and the attractively brief menu has some smart French touches, including a Vietnamese-style beef bourguignon. Quite cheap considering the high style. (Staff) 1000 Guerrero, SF. 641-9955. Vietnamese, D, $, AE/MC/V.
*Tapeo at Metro City Bar has a leg up on most of the city’s tapas places, since it is part of an actual bar (and a gay bar!) in the true tapas tradition. It has a second leg up because the food is both innovative and authentically Iberian. An excellent locale for street surveillance. (PR, 8/04) 3600 16th St, SF. 703-9750. Spanish/tapas, D, $, MC/V.
Thai Chef joins the ranks of top-tier Thai restaurants in the city. Virtually every dish with meat, fish, or poultry is available in meatless guise. (PR, 3/05) 4133 18th St, SF. 551-CHEF. Thai, L/D, $, MC/V.
Tita’s Hale Aina Traditional dishes include a tasty lomi lomi scramble chock-full of scallions, tomatoes, and salmon, and refreshing cold green tea soba noodles. (Staff) 3870 17th St, SF. 626-2477. Hawaiian, B/L/D, ¢.
2223 could easily be a happening queer bar, what with all that male energy. But the American menu joins familiarity with high style, and the ambience is that of a great party where you’re bound to meet somebody hot. (Staff) 2223 Market, SF. 431-0692. American, BR/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.
Yianni’s brings a bit of Greek sunshine to outer Church Street. All the standards — saganaki and pastitsio, among others — are here, as well as “Greek” pizzas and fries. (Staff) 1708 Church, SF. 647-3200. Greek, BR/D, $$, MC/V.
Le Zinc brings a French bistro presence to 24th Street. The setting is lovely, the food and service uneven and not cheap. But the possibility for something spectacularly good persists. (Staff) 4063 24th St, SF. 647-9400. French, B/BR/L/D, $$$, AE/MC/V.
HAIGHT/COLE VALLEY/WESTERN ADDITION
Alamo Square is an archetype for the “good little place around the corner.” Five different kinds of fish are offered next to three cooking techniques and five sauces. (Staff) 803 Fillmore, SF. 440-2828. Seafood, D, $, MC/V.
Ali Baba’s Cave Veggie shish kebabs are grilled fresh to order; the hummus and baba ghanoush are subtly seasoned and delicious. (Staff) 531 Haight (at Fillmore), SF. 255-7820; 799 Valencia, SF. 863-3054. Middle Eastern, L/D, ¢, MC/V.
All You Knead emphasizes the wonderful world of yeast — sandwiches, pizzas, etc. — in a space reminiscent of beer halls near Big 10 campuses. (Staff) 1466 Haight, SF. 552-4550. American, B/L/D, ¢, MC/V.
Asqew Grill reinvents the world of fine fast food on a budget with skewers, served in under 10 minutes for under 10 bucks. (Staff) 1607 Haight, SF. 701-9301. California, L/D, ¢, MC/V.
Bia’s Restaurant and Wine Bar proves hippies know what’s what in matters of food and wine. An excellent menu of homey items with Middle Eastern and Persian accents; a tight, widely varied wine list. (PR, 11/04) 1640 Haight, SF. 861-8868. California/Middle Eastern, L/D, $, AE/DC/MC/V.
Blue Jay Cafe has the Mayberry, RFD, look and giant platters of Southernish food, including a good catfish po’boy and crispy fried chicken. Everything is under $10. (PR, 4/04) 919 Divisadero, SF. 447-6066. American/soul, BR/L/D, $, MC/V.
Brother-in-Laws Bar-B-Cue always wins the “Best Barbecue” prize in our annual Best of the Bay edition: the ribs, chickens, links, and brisket are smoky and succulent; the aroma sucks you in like a tractor beam. (Staff) 705 Divisadero, SF. 931-7427. Barbecue, L/D, $.
Burgermeister uses top-grade Niman Ranch beef for its burgers, but nonetheless they’re splendid, with soft buns and crisp, well-salted fries. Foofy California wrinkles are available if you want them, but why would you? (PR, 5/04) 86 Carl, SF. 566-1274. Burgers, L/D, $.
Eos serves one of the best fusion menus in town, but be prepared for scads of yuppies and lots of noise. (Staff) 901 Cole, SF. 566-3063. Fusion, D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Fly could easily host séances, but if your only interest is food and drink, you’ll be happy too. Good pizzas and small plates; plenty for omnivores and vegetarians alike. Tons of sake drinks to wash it all down. (Staff) 762 Divisadero, SF. 931-4359. Mediterranean, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
*Frankie’s Bohemian Cafe has Pilsener Urquell, a Bohemian beer, on tap for a touch of Czech authenticity, but the crowd is young, exuberant, Pacific Heights, het. Follow the crowd and stick with the burgers. (PR, 2/05) 1682 Divisadero, SF. 921-4725. Czech/American, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Grandeho’s Kamekyo Sushi Bar Always packed, Grandeho serves up excellent sushi along with a full Japanese menu. (Staff) 943 Cole, SF. 759-5693. Japanese, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Hukilau brings a dash of Big Island conviviality — and Big Island (i.e., big) portions — to a wind- and traffic-swept corner of the big city. Spam too, if you want it. (Staff) 5 Masonic, SF. 921-6242. Hawaiian/American, BR/L/D, $, MC/V.
Kate’s Kitchen dishes up the best scallion-cheese biscuits out west. The lines on the weekends can be long. (Staff) 471 Haight, SF. 626-3984. American, B/L, ¢.
Magnolia Pub and Brewery A mellow atmosphere and beers that taste distinctly hand crafted make great accompaniments to burgers, chicken wings, ale-steamed mussels, and pizzas, along with some unexpected Cali fusion like grilled soy-sesame eggplant. (Staff) 1398 Haight, SF. 864-PINT. Brew pub, BR/L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Metro Cafe brings the earthy chic of Paris’s 11th arrondissement to the Lower Haight, prix fixe and all. (Staff) 311 Divisadero, SF. 552-0903. French, B/BR/L/D, $, MC/V.
New Ganges Restaurant is short on style — it is as if the upmarket revolution in vegetarian restaurants never happened — but there is a homemade freshness to the food you won’t find at many other places. (Staff) 775 Frederick, SF. 681-4355. Vegetarian/Indian, L/D, $, MC/V.
Raja Cuisine of India serves up decent renditions of Indian standards in an unassuming, even spare, setting. Low prices. (Staff) 500 Haight, SF. 255-6000. Indian, L/D, $, MC/V.
Rotee isn’t the fanciest south Asian restaurant in the neighborhood, but it is certainly one of the most fragrant, and its bright oranges and yellows (food, walls) do bring good cheer. Excellent tandoori fish. (PR, 12/04) 400 Haight, SF. 552-8309. Indian/Pakistani, L/D, $, MC/V.
Tsunami Sushi and Sake Bar brings hip Japanese-style seafood to the already hip Café Abir complex. Skull-capped sushi chefs, hefty and innovative rolls. (Staff) 1306 Fulton, SF. 567-7664. Japanese/sushi, D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Winterland borrows the nostalgic name of the onetime ice-skating rink cum music venue that once stood on the spot, but the food is pure — and foamy — Euro avant-garde, served to a glam crowd dressed in shades of SoMa black. For a less vertiginous experience, enjoy the bar menu. (PR, 6/05) 2101 Sutter, SF. 563-5025. International, D, $$$, AE/MC/V.
[TK]Zoya takes some finding — it is in the little turret of the Days Inn Motor Lodge at Grove and Gough — but the view over the street’s treetops is bucolic, and the cooking is simple, seasonal, direct, and ingredient driven. (PR, 12/05) 465 Grove, SF. 626-9692. California, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
MISSION/BERNAL HEIGHTS/POTRERO HILL
Al’s Cafe Good Food Al’s is the best dang diner in town. Everything here is great, from the home fries and eggs to the chili and burgers, and even the toast in between. (Staff) 3286 Mission, SF. 641-8445. American, B/L, ¢.
Amira melds virtuosic belly dancing shows with veggie kebabs; smoky, delicate walnut dip with pita chips; and the star choice, Turkish eggplant, a handsome portion of unbelievably tender sautéed aubergine in a marinara sauce. (Staff) 590 Valencia, SF. 621-6213. Middle Eastern, D, $, MC/V.
Angkor Borei Nicely presented smallish portions of really good food, friendly service, and excellent atmosphere way down on Mission Street. (Staff) 3471 Mission, SF. 550-8417. Cambodian, L/D, $, AE/DISC/MC/V.
[TK]*Baku de Thai unites the elegant cuisines of Thailand and France with memorable — and affordable — results. The dinnertime prix fixe, available earlyish, is an especially appealing deal. (PR, 11/05) 400 Valencia, SF. 437-4788. Thai/fusion, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Baobab Bar and Grill serves great-tasting West African specialties like couscous, fried plantains, and savory rice dishes for a reasonable price. (Staff) 3388 19th St, SF. 643-3558. African, BR/D, ¢.
Baraka takes the French-Spanish tapas concept, gives it a beguiling Moroccan accent — harissa, preserved lemons, merguez sausage — and the result is astonishingly good food. (Staff) 288 Connecticut, SF. 255-0370. Moroccan/Mediterranean, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Bistro Annex occupies a narrow space like a glorified broom closet and serves a French-inflected, west-Med menu at very low prices. (PR, 5/05) 1136 Valencia, SF. 648-9020. French, D, $, MC/V.
Blowfish glows red and inviting on an otherwise industrial and residential stretch of Bryant Street. Sushi — in pristine fingers of nigiri or in a half dozen inventive hand rolls — is a marvel. (Staff) 2170 Bryant, SF. 285-3848. Sushi, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Blue Plate has a diner aura — bustle, clatter — but the Mediterranean food is stylishly flavorful. A great value. (Staff) 3218 Mission, SF. 282-6777. Mediterranean, D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Bombay Ice Cream and Chaat Stop in for some Indian chaat — cheap, delicious fast food such as samosas and curries. (Staff) 552 Valencia, SF. 431-1103. Indian takeout, L/D, ¢.
Burger Joint makes hamburgers like you remember from your childhood, with lettuce, onion, tomato, and mayonnaise. (Staff) 807 Valencia, SF. 824-3494. American, L/D, ¢.
Cafe Bella Vista brings a stylish touch of Catalonia to the Inner Mission. Excellent gazpacho and tortilla española. The interior decor is sleek and modern, though the space itself seems slightly squashed by the apartment building overhead. (PR, 6/04) 2598 Harrison, SF. 641-6195. Spanish, B/BR/L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Cafe Ethiopia It’s basically a coffeehouse, serving all the same coffees and teas and Toranis as anyone else. It’s just that they also have great, cheap Ethiopian food. (Staff) 878 Valencia, SF. 285-2728. Ethiopian, B/L/D, ¢.
Cafe Gratitude specializes in surprisingly delicious, painstakingly prepared raw and vegan cuisine with a hippie attitude. For less than $10, you will be full and healthy from buckwheat and Brazil nut cheese pizza, mock tuna salad and other herbaceous nut-based spreads, and sumptuous date-based smoothies. (Staff) 2400 Harrison, SF. 824-4652. Vegan, B/BR/L/D, ¢, MC/V.
Cafe Phoenix looks like a junior-high cafeteria, but the California-deli food is fresh, tasty, and honest, and the people making it are part of a program to help the emotionally troubled return to employability. (Staff) 1234 Indiana, SF. 282-9675, ext. 239. California, B/L, ¢, MC/V.
Caffe Cozzolino Get it to go: everything’s about two to four bucks more if you eat it there. (Staff) 300 Precita, SF. 285-6005. Italian, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Caffe d’Melanio is the place to go if you want your pound of coffee beans roasted while you enjoy an Argentine-Italian dinner of pasta, milanesa, and chimichurri sauce. During the day the café offers a more typically Cal-American menu of better-than-average quality. First-rate coffee beans. (PR, 10/04) 1314 Ocean, SF. 333-3665. Italian/Argentine, B/L/D, $, MC/V.
Il Cantuccio strikingly evokes that little trattoria you found near the Ponte Vecchio on your last trip to Florence. (Staff) 3228 16th St, SF. 861-3899. Italian, D, $, MC/V.
Chez Papa Bistrot sits like a beret atop Potrero Hill. The food is good, the staff’s French accents authentic, the crowd a lively cross section, but the place needs a few more scuffs and quirks before it can start feeling real. (Staff) 1401 18th St, SF. 824-8210. French, BR/L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Circolo Restaurant and Lounge brings Peruvian- and Asian-influenced cooking into a stylishly barnlike urban space where dot-commers gathered of old. Some of the dishes are overwrought, but the food is splendid on the whole. (PR, 6/04) 500 Florida, SF. 553-8560. Nuevo Latino/Asian, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
[TK]Couleur Café reminds us that French food need be neither fancy nor insular. The kitchen playfully deploys a world of influences — the duck-confit quesadilla is fabulous — and service is precise and attentive despite the modest setting at the foot of Potrero Hill. (PR, 2/06) 300 De Haro, SF. 255-1021. French, BR/L/D, $, AE/DC/MC/V.
*Delfina has grown from a neighborhood restaurant to an event, but an expanded dining room has brought the noise under control, and as always, the food — intense variations on a theme of Tuscany — could not be better. (PR, 2/04) 3621 18th St, SF. 552-4055. California, D, $$, MC/V.
[TK]Dosa serves dosas, the south Indian crepes, along with a wealth of other, and generally quite spicy, dishes from the south of the subcontinent. The cooking tends toward a natural meatlessness; the crowds are intense, like hordes of passengers inquiring about a delayed international flight. (PR, 1/06) 995 Valencia, SF. 642-3672. South Indian, BR/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Double Play sits across the street from what once was Seals Stadium, but while the field and team are gone, the restaurant persists as an authentic sports bar with a solidly masculine aura — mitts on the walls, lots of dark wood, et cetera. The all-American food (soups, sandwiches, pastas, meat dishes, lots of fries) is outstanding. (Staff) 2401 16th St, SF. 621-9859. American, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack offers a tasty, inexpensive, late-night alternative to Pasta Pomodoro. The touch of human hands is everywhere evident. (Staff) 18 Virginia, SF. 206-2086. Italian, D, $, cash only.
Foreign Cinema serves some fine New American food in a spare setting of concrete and glass that warms up romantically once the sun goes down. (Staff) 2534 Mission, SF. 648-7600. California, D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Geranium occupies an old butcher shop and serves vegetarian comfort food that, in its meatless meatiness, manages to honor both past and present in a way that should make everyone happy. (PR, 8/04) 615 Cortland, SF. 647-0118. Vegetarian, BR/D, $$, MC/V.
Herbivore is adorned in the immaculate-architect style: angular blond-wood surfaces and precise cubbyholes abound. (Staff) 983 Valencia, SF. 826-5657; 531 Divisadero (at Fell), SF. 885-7133. Vegetarian, L/D, $, MC/V.
Jasmine Tea House feels vaguely Italian, with its pastel pink walls and peals of opera floating from the kitchen, but the classic Chinese cooking is bright and crisp. Avoid the deep-fried stuff. (Staff) 3253 Mission, SF. 826-6288. Chinese, L/D, $, MC/V.
Joe’s Cable Car is the place where “Joe grinds his own fresh meat daily,” and it shows. Fill up with a thick milkshake on the side, but skip the disappointing fries. (Staff) 4320 Mission, SF. 334-6699. American, L/D, $, MC/V.
[TK]Kiji announces itself with red lanterns, one above the door, the rest inside. The food is hipster sushi, immaculate and imaginative, with some interesting cooked dishes thrown in. (PR, 1/06) 1009 Guerrero, SF. 282-0400. Japanese, D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Last Supper Club is really a trattoria, and an impressive one, from its half-lit reddish-gold interior to its always tasty and sometimes astounding food. Don’t miss the Sicilian-style ahi tartare on house-made potato chips. (Staff) 1199 Valencia, SF. 695-1199. Italian, BR/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Liberties reinvents the Irish pub for digital times. The food has an unmistakably masculine cast. (Staff) 998 Guerrero, SF. Irish, BR/L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Liberty Cafe specializes in simple, perfect food: a Caesar salad that outshines all others, the best chicken potpie in the city, and down-home desserts even a bake sale in Iowa couldn’t beat. (Staff) 410 Cortland, SF. 695-8777. American, BR/L/D, $-$$, AE/MC/V.
Little Baobab reminds us that creole cooking isn’t just from New Orleans; the excellent (and inexpensive) food takes its influences from French island culture in the Caribbean Sea and Indian Ocean. (Staff) 3388 19th St, SF. 643-3558. Creole, D, $, MC/V.
*Little Nepal assembles a wealth of sensory cues (sauna-style blond wood, brass table services) and an Indian-influenced Himalayan cuisine into a singular experience that appeals to all of Bernal Heights and beyond, including tots in their strollers. (Staff) 925 Cortland, SF. 643-3881. Nepalese, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
La Luna gives its fine nuevo Latino cuisine a distinctly Argentine spin. The parrillada (for two) is more than enough to sate even incorrigible carnivores, and the Mediterranean-blue color scheme is agreeably muted. (Staff) 3126 24th St, SF. 282-7110. Nuevo Latino, D, $$, MC/V.
Luna Park bubbles over with the new Mission’s nouveau riche, but even so, the food is exceptionally satisfying and not too expensive. (Staff) 694 Valencia, SF. 553-8584. Californian, L/D, $, MC/V.
Maharaja offers romantically half-lit pastels and great spicy food, including a fine chicken tikka masala and a dish of lamb chunks in dal. Lunch forswears the usual steam-table buffet in favor of set specials, as in a Chinese place. (Staff) 525 Valencia, SF. 552-7901. Indian, L/D, $, MC/V.
Mariachi’s serves up its fare in a cheery pastel-painted space, and its chalkboard menu features ingredients like sautéed mushrooms, pineapple, and pesto. (Staff) 508 Valencia, SF. 621-4358. Mexican, L/D, ¢.
Maverick holds several winning cards, including a menu of first-rate New American food, a clutch of interesting wines by the glass and half glass, and a handsome, spare Mission District setting discreetly cushioned for sound control. (PR, 9/05) 3316 17th St, SF. 863-3061. American, L/D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.
Medjool doesn’t offer much by way of its namesake date, food of the ancient pharaohs, but the pan-Mediterranean menu (which emphasizes small plates) is mostly tasty, and the setting is appealingly layered, from a sidewalk terrace to a moody dining room behind a set of big carved-wood doors. (PR, 11/04) 2522 Mission, SF. 550-9055. Mediterranean, B/L/D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.
Mi Lindo Perú dishes up mom-style cooking, Peruvian style, in illimitable portions. The shrimp chowder is astounding. Lots of tapas too. (Staff) 3226 Mission, SF. 642-4897. Peruvian, L/D, $, MC/V.
Mi Lindo Yucatán looks a bit tatty inside, but the regional Mexican cooking is cheap and full of pleasant surprises. (PR, 3/04) 401 Valencia, SF. 861-4935. Mexican, L/D, ¢, cash only.
Moki’s Sushi and Pacific Grill serves imaginative specialty makis along with items from a pan-Asian grill in a small, bustling neighborhood spot. (Staff) 830 Cortland, SF. 970-9336. Japanese, D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.
Napper Tandy serves good Irish pub-grub standards of immeasurable scale. Little-known Irish beers on tap make a good match with the food. (PR, 5/04) 3200 24th St, SF. 550-7510. Irish, L/D, $, MC/V.
New Central Restaurant serves Mexican comfort food, while ambience flows from the jukebox near the door. (Staff) 399 S Van Ness, SF. 255-8247, 621-9608. Mexican, B/L, ¢, cash only.
Pakwan has a little secret: a secluded garden out back. It’s the perfect place to enjoy the fiery foods of India and Pakistan. (Staff) 3180 16th St, SF. 255-2440. Indian/Pakistani, L/D, ¢, cash only.
Panchita’s No. 3 plays a much-needed role, as a kind of Salvadoran-Mexican bistro or taverna. The food is straightforward and strong and presented with just a bit of flair; the setting shows small touches of elegance. (Staff) 3115 22nd St, SF. 821-6660. Salvadoran/Mexican, L/D, $, MC/V.
Pancho Villa The best word for this 16th Street taquería is big, from the large space to the jumbo-size burritos to the grand dinner plates of grilled shrimp. The only small thing is the price. (Staff) 3071 16th St, SF. 864-8840. Mexican, BR/L/D, ¢.
Papalote Mexican Grill relieves our Mexican favorites of much of their fat and calories without sacrificing flavor. Surprisingly excellent soyrizo and aguas frescas; sexily varied crowd. (Staff) 3409 24th St, SF. 970-8815. Mexican, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Parkside serves a decent affordable California menu — under the stars, if you like, in a spacious walled garden at the rear. (Staff) 1600 17th St, SF. 503-0393. California, BR/L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Phoenix is a little of this, a little of that — bar, nightclub, restaurant — but the accent of the place is unmistakably Celtic. Order anything with Irish bacon. Gut-swelling pasta dishes, the occasional weirdly successful soup. (Staff) 811 Valencia, SF. 695-1811. Irish, BR/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Platanos joins the Mission’s Roller Derby of freshened Latino cooking with a potpourri menu of dishes from throughout the Spanish-speaking Americas. Good seviche, an excellent chile relleno, and of course plantains every which way. (Staff) 598 Guerrero, SF. 252-9281. Pan-Latino, D, $, AE/MC/V.
Ramblas resists the globalized-tapa trend by serving up Spanish classics. And they are good, from grilled black sausage to calamares a la plancha to crisp potato cubes bathed in a vivid red-pepper sauce. (Staff) 557 Valencia, SF. 565-0207. Spanish/tapas, D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Range recaptures the dot-com spirit of 1999 with its generically edgy postmodern look, but the food at its best is honest and spirited. The coffee-rubbed pork shoulder, a variation on mole, is a one-in-a-million dish. (PR, 9/05) 842 Valencia, SF. 282-8283. California, D, $$, MC/V.
Rasoi The food here is milder than the fiery south Indian curries, and it’s very vegetarian friendly. Slowly revolving ceiling fans give a pleasant illusion of heat even when it’s freezing outside. (Staff) 1037 Valencia, SF. 695-0599. Indian, D, $, AE/MC/V.
Restaurant YoYo joins the food maelstrom at Valencia and 16th Street bearing a powerful tool: sushi, good and cheap. The Mel’s-diner interior, on the other hand, is pure Americana. (Staff) 3092 16th St, SF. 255-9181. Japanese/sushi, L/D, $, MC/V.
Sally’s serves mainly lunch — lots of people work around the northern foot of Potrero Hill — but there’s breakfast too, and even early dinner, if you can live with sandwiches, salads, burritos, and chili. There’s also a bakery. (Staff) 300 De Haro, SF. 626-6006. Deli, B/L/D, ¢, MC/V.
*Slow Club still has a speakeasy charm, and the California cooking that emerges from the tiny, clamorous kitchen is still the class of the northeast Mission. (PR, 1/05) 2501 Mariposa, SF. 241-9390. California, BR/L/D, $$, MC/V.
Sunflower strikes all the right notes of today’s Mission: good inexpensive Vietnamese food in a modish California ambience, with friendly, casual service. (Staff) 506 Valencia, SF. 626-5023. Vietnamese, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Taquería Can-Cun serves up one of the best veggie burritos in town — delicious, juicy, and huge. (Staff) 2288 Mission (at 19th St), SF. 252-9560; 1003 Market, SF. 864-6773; 3211 Mission (at Valencia), SF. 550-1414. Mexican, L/D, ¢.
Ti Couz’s menu of entrées consists exclusively of crepes — from light snacks to full meals, from sweet to savory — served up in a bright, boisterous café environment. (Staff) 3108 16th St, SF. 252-7373. Crepes, BR/L/D, $, MC/V.
Tokyo Go Go’s simplest dishes are the best. Given the location and the thick crowds of people dressed in black, the noise level is surprisingly moderate. (Staff) 3174 16th St, SF. 864-2288. Japanese, D, $$, MC/V.
[TK]Universal Café does California cooking the way it’s meant to be done. The mingled influences of Italy, France, and the Pacific Coast result in such unforgettable dishes as split-pea soup freshened with mint and a grilled flatbread with melted leeks and salume. (PR, 1/06) 2814 19th St, SF. 821-4608. California, BR/L/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.
[TK]Velvet Cantina has the feel of a Nogales brothel and carefree food to match, though the kitchen has some pedigree and upscale aspirations. The mood is one of raucous conviviality, moving to the heartbeat thump of techno music. (PR, 2/06) 3349 23rd St, SF. 648-4142. Mexican, D, $$, MC/V.
Vogalonga Trattoria continues a tradition of excellent rustic cooking in a setting of cozy warmth. Despite the gondolier etched on the front window, the menu includes standards from all regions of Italy. (Staff) 3234 22nd St, SF. 642-0298. Italian, D, $, MC/V.
Walzwerk bills itself as an “East German” restaurant, but don’t be frightened: the food is fresh, clever, tasty, and surprisingly light. The decor has a definite Cabaret edge. (Staff) 381 S Van Ness, SF. 551-7181. German, D, $, MC/V.
Watercress succeeds Watergate — the space is still handsome and the food is still French-Indo-Chinese fusion, but the prices are lower and the prix fixe option is so generous as to be irresistible. One of the best values in town. (Staff) 1152 Valencia, SF. 648-6000. Fusion, D, $, AE/DC/MC/V.
[tk: closed?]Wilde Oscar’s slings decent Irish pub food — burgers, curries, plenty of fries — in a comfortably homo-inflected environment. Wilde witticisms adorn the walls. (Staff) 1900 Folsom, SF. 621-7145. Irish/pub, L/D, $, MC/V.
*Woodward’s Garden defies its under-the-freeway setting with a seasonal, reasonably priced California-cuisine menu that explains how a restaurant has managed to thrive for more than a decade in a seemingly unpromising location. Dim lighting can make reading the menu a chore. (PR, 3/05) 1700 Mission, SF. 621-7122. California, D, $$, MC/V.
Zante Pizza and Indian Cuisine is that famous Indian pizza place. Meaning it’s got Indian food, it’s got pizza, and it’s got Indian pizza. (Staff) 3489 Mission, SF. 821-3949. Indian, L/D, $, AE/DISC/MC/V.
MARINA/PACIFIC HEIGHTS/LAUREL HEIGHTS
L’Amour dans le Four gives a nice local boho twist to classic French bistro style. Many dishes from the oven. Tiny, noisy, intimate. (Staff) 1602 Lombard, SF. 775-2134. French, D, $, AE/MC/V.
Annie’s Bistro is a small jewel that offers stylish downtown cooking at neighborhood prices, with an extensive California wine list available by the glass and half glass. (Staff) 2819 California, SF. 922-9669. California, D, $$, MC/V.
*A16 refers to an Italian highway near Naples, and the food (in the old Zinzino space) is stylishly Neapolitan — lots of interesting pizzas, along with other treats from the wood-burning oven. (PR, 3/04) 2355 Chestnut, SF. Italian, L/BR/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Betelnut Peiju Wu is a pan-Asian version of a tapas bar, drawing a sleek postcollegiate crowd with its wide assortment of dumplings, noodles, soups, and snacks. (Staff) 2030 Union, SF. 929-8855. Asian, L/D, $$, MC/V.
Bistro Yoffi offers a homey California menu in a paradise of potted plants. Splendid al fresco dining (under heat lamps) in the rear. (Staff) 2231 Chestnut, SF. 885-5133. California, L/D, $$, MC/V.
Cafe Maritime captures something of the feel of a New England seafood restaurant. Despite the touristy location, the food is honest and good. (PR, 7/04) 2417 Lombard, SF. 885-2530. Seafood, D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Chez Nous fills the French slot in our town’s tapas derby, and it does so with imagination, panache, and surprising economy. The menu features touches from around the Mediterranean, but much of the best stuff is unmistakably Gallic. (Staff) 1911 Fillmore, SF. 441-8044. French, L/D, $, MC/V.
Chouquet’s gives stylish little spins to all sorts of French bistro standards and some nonstandards. The general look and tone is sleek and Parisian. (PR, 6/05) 2500 Washington, SF. 359-0075. French, BR/L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Curbside Too, younger sibling to the Curbside Cafe, looks like a roadside greasy spoon. But come dinnertime the Mexican brunch influences melt into a sublime French saucefest. (Staff) 2769 Lombard, SF. 921-4442. French, D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Dragon Well looks like an annex of the cavernous Pottery Barn down the street, but its traditional Chinese menu is radiant with fresh ingredients and careful preparation. Prices are modest, the service swift and professional. (Staff) 2142 Chestnut, SF. 474-6888. Chinese, L/D, ¢, MC/V.
Eastside West fits right into the Cow Hollow scene. It’s comfortably upscale, with first-rate service and stylishly relaxed Cal-American food. (Staff) 3154 Fillmore, SF. 885-4000. California/American, BR/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Elite Cafe A welcoming place. The menu has plenty of familiar Creole and Cajun favorites along with more typical California fare. (Staff) 2049 Fillmore, SF. 346-8668. Cajun, BR/D, $$, MC/V.
Ella’s serves breakfast, lunch, and supper, but brunch is the real destination at this friendly corner eatery. (Staff) 500 Presidio, SF. 441-5669. American, B/BR/L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Eunice’s Cafe is the place to go when you’d rather have a conversation than make a big entrance. Good soups, sandwiches, pizzas, and quiches, with a world of influences. (Staff) 3336 Sacramento, SF. 440-3330. Brazilian/eclectic, B/L, ¢, MC/V.
Greens All the elements that made it famous are still intact: pristine produce, an emphasis on luxury rather than health, that gorgeous view. (Staff) Fort Mason Center, Bldg A, Marina at Laguna, SF. 771-6222. Vegetarian, L/D, $$, DISC/MC/V.
*Harris’ Restaurant is a timeless temple to beef, which appears most memorably as slices of rib roast, but in other ways too. Uncheap. (PR, 5/04) 2100 Van Ness, SF. 673-1888. Steakhouse/American, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Kiss is tiny, industrial, not particularly Anglophonic — and serves some of the best sushi in the city. Warning: the very best stuff (from the specials menu) can be very pricey. (Staff) 1700 Laguna, SF. 474-2866. Japanese, D, $$$, MC/V.
Letitia’s has claimed the old Alta Plaza space and dispensed with the huge cruise mirror. The Mexican standards are pretty good and still pricey, though they don’t seem quite as dear in Pacific Heights as they did in the Castro. (PR, 6/04) 2301 Fillmore, SF. 922-1722. Mexican, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Mezes glows with sunny Greek hospitality, and the plates coming off the grill are terrific, though not huge. Bulk up with a fine Greek salad. (Staff) 2373 Chestnut, SF. 409-7111. Greek, D, $, MC/V.
Plump Jack Café If you had to take your parents to dinner in the Marina, this would be the place. A small but authentic jewel. (Staff) 3127 Fillmore, SF. 563-4755. California, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
*Quince doesn’t much resemble its precursor, the Meetinghouse: the setting is more overtly luxurious, the food a pristine Franco-Cal-Ital variant rather than hearty New American. Still, it’s an appealing place to meet. (PR, 7/04) 1701 Octavia, SF. 775-8500. California, D, $$$, AE/MC/V.
Rigolo combines the best of Pascal Rigo’s boulangeries — including the spectacular breads — with some of the simpler elements (such as roast chicken) of his higher-end places. The result is excellent value in a bustling setting. (PR, 1/05) 3465 California, SF. 876-7777. California/Mediterranean, B/L/D, $, MC/V.
Rose’s Cafe has a flexible, all-day menu that starts with breakfast sandwiches; moves into bruschettas, salads, and pizzas; and finishes with grilled dinner specials such as salmon, chicken, and flat-iron steak. (Staff) 2298 Union, SF. 775-2200. California, B/L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Rosti Getting half a chicken along with roasted potatoes and an assortment of vegetables for $7.95 in the Marina is cause for celebration in itself. (Staff) 2060 Chestnut, SF. 929-9300. Italian, L/D, $, AE/DISC/V.
Saji Japanese Cuisine Sit at the sushi bar and ask the resident sushi makers what’s particularly good that day. As for the hot dishes, seafood yosenabe, served in a clay pot, is a virtual Discovery Channel of finned and scaly beasts, all tasty and fresh. (Staff) 3232 Scott, SF. 931-0563. Japanese, D, $, AE/DC/MC/V.
Sociale serves first-rate Cal-Ital food in bewitching surroundings — a heated courtyard, a beautifully upholstered interior — that will remind you of some hidden square in some city of Mediterranean Europe. (Staff) 3665 Sacramento, SF. 921-3200. Mediterranean, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Sushi Groove is easily as cool as its name. Behind wasabi green velvet curtains, salads can be inconsistent, but the sushi is impeccable, especially the silky salmon and special white tuna nigiri. (Staff) 1916 Hyde, SF. 440-1905. Japanese, D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Takara The menu offers plenty of sushi and sashimi, as well as udon, broiled items, and the occasional curiosity, such as grated yam. (Staff) 22 Peace Plaza, Suite 202 (Japan Center), SF. 921-2000. Japanese, L/D, $, MC/V.
Taste of the Himalayas is primarily Nepalese, but the Indian influences on the food are many, and there are a few Tibetan items. Spicing is vivid, value excellent. (PR, 10/04) 2420 Lombard, SF. 674-9898. Nepalese/Tibetan, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
*YaYa deals in Mesopotamian cuisine, and that means unusual and haunting combinations of sweet, sour, and salty. The halogen-lit setting of blue and gold includes a trompe l’oeil mural of an ancient Babylonian city. (PR, 6/05) 2424 Van Ness, SF. 440-0455. Mesopotamian, D, $$, MC/V.
ZAO Noodle Bar manages the seemingly impossible: the food’s good, cheap, and fresh; the service is friendly; and there’s an inexpensive parking lot half a block away. (Staff) 2406 California, SF. 345-8088. Asian, L/D, ¢, MC/V.
SUNSET
Bursa Kebabs brings a taste of Turkey to West Portal. The elegant pistachio-colored decor suggests a California bistro, but the carefully prepared food is traditional. (PR, 3/04) 60 West Portal (at Vicente), SF. 564-4006. Turkish, L/D, $, MC/V.
Cafe for All Seasons reflects the friendly vibrancy of its West Portal neighborhood. The California comfort food doesn’t set off fireworks, but it’s reliably good and fresh. (Staff) 150 West Portal, SF. 665-0900. California, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Chouchou Patisserie Artisanale and French Bistro is the place to go for pastry, whether you like it as an edible cap on your potpies or as a crust beneath your fruit or chocolate tarts. French standards — charcuterie, onion soup — are executed with verve. (Staff) 400 Dewey, SF. 242-0960. French, L/D, $$, MC/V.
*Dragonfly serves the best contemporary Vietnamese food in town, in a calmer environment and at a fraction of the cost of better-known places. (PR, 8/05) 420 Judah, SF. 661-7755. Vietnamese, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Eldos is a cross between a brew pub and a taquería, with a few standard American items thrown in. Fabulous chicken posole. (Staff) 1326 Ninth Ave, SF. 564-0425. Mexican/brew pub, L/D, $, AE/DC/MC/V.
Fresca has gone upscale, and its Peruvian menu has been expanded beyond burritos. Still excellent roast chicken, seviche, enchiladas. (Staff) 24 West Portal, SF. 759-8087. Peruvian, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
[TK]Gold Mirror tells a tale of old San Francisco west of Twin Peaks, where the servers are in black tie and the menu is rich in veal, from saltimbocca to piccata and beyond. Baroque decor; large weekend dinner crowds. (PR, 11/05) 800 Taraval, SF. 564-0401. Italian, L/D, $$$, AE/DC/MC/V.
Hotei is a marvel of great Japanese fare combined with efficient, accommodating service. Four types of noodles are the foundation around which swirl lively broths. (Staff) 1290 Ninth Ave, SF. 753-6045. Japanese, L/D, ¢, AE/DC/MC/V.
Ichi-ban Kan Cafe serves sushi, sandwiches, burgers, teriyaki, an all-you-can-eat buffet — are you getting the picture? The winning neighborhood tone is reminiscent of Mayberry, RFD. (Staff) 1500 Irving, SF. 566-1696. Japanese/American, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Jimisan brings a stylish and value-conscious sushi option to the Ninth Avenue restaurant row. Good cooked stuff too. (PR, 8/05) 1380 Ninth Ave, SF. 564-8989. Japanese/sushi, L/D, $, AE/DISC/MC/V.
Jitra Thai Cuisine serves up creditable Thai standards in a pink dollhouse setting. (Staff) 2545 Ocean, SF. 585-7251. Thai, L/D, $, MC/V.
Ladda’s Seaview Thai Cuisine gazes upon the mists and surfers of Ocean Beach. The kitchen divides its attentions between Thai and American standards. Free parking in the always near-empty lot. (PR, 5/05) 1225 La Playa, SF. 665-0185. Thai/American, B/L/D, ¢, AE/MC/V.
Marnee Thai A friendly, low-key neighborhood restaurant — now in two neighborhoods — that just happens to serve some of the best Thai food in town. (PR, 1/04) 2225 Irving, SF. 665-9500; 1243 Ninth Ave (at Lincoln), SF. 731-9999. Thai, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Masala means “spice mixture,” and spices aplenty you will find in the South Asian menu. Be sure to order plenty of naan to sop up the sauce with. (Staff) 1220 Ninth Ave, SF. 566-6976. Indian/Pakistani, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Nan King Road Bistro laces its mostly Chinese menu with little touches from around Asia (sake sauces, Korean noodles), and the result is a spectacular saucefest. Spare, cool environment. (Staff) 1360 Ninth Ave, SF. 753-2900. Pan-Asian, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Park Chow could probably thrive on its basic dishes, such as the burger royale with cheese ($6.95), but if you’re willing to spend an extra five bucks or so, the kitchen can really flash you some thigh. (Staff) 1240 Ninth Ave, SF. 665-9912. California, BR/L/D, $, MC/V.
P.J.’s Oyster Bed Of all the US regional cultures, southern Louisiana’s may be the most beloved, and at P.J.’s you can taste why. (Staff) 737 Irving, SF. 566-7775. Seafood, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Pomelo Big portions of Asian- and Italian-inspired noodle dishes. If you need something quick, cheap, and fresh, pop in here. (Staff) 92 Judah, SF. 731-6175. Noodles, L/D, $, cash only.
Sabella’s carries a famous seafood name into the heart of West Portal. Good nonseafood stuff too. (Staff) 53 West Portal, SF. 753-3130. Italian/seafood, $, L/D, MC/V.
Sea Breeze Cafe looks like a dive, but the California cooking is elevated, literally and figuratively. Lots of witty salads, a rum-rich crème brûlée. (Staff) 3940 Judah, SF. 242-6022. California, BR/L/D, $$, MC/V.
Tasty Curry still shows traces of an earlier life as a Korean hibachi restaurant (i.e., venting hoods above most of the tables), but the South Asian food is cheap, fresh, and packs a strong kick. (PR, 1/04) 1375 Ninth Ave, SF. 753-5122. Indian/Pakistani, L/D, ¢, MC/V.
Tennessee Grill could as easily be called the Topeka Grill, since its atmosphere is redolent of Middle America. Belly up to the salad bar for huge helpings of the basics to accompany your meat loaf or calf’s liver. (Staff) 1128 Taraval, SF. 664-7834. American, B/L/D, $, MC/V.
Thai Cottage isn’t really a cottage, but it is small in the homey way, and its Thai menu is sharp and vivid in the home-cooking way. Cheap, and the N train stops practically at the front door. (PR, 8/04) 4041 Judah, SF. 566-5311. Thai, L/D, $, MC/V.
*Xiao Loong elevates the neighborhood Chinese restaurant experience to one of fine dining, with immaculate ingredients and skillful preparation in a calm architectural setting. (PR, 8/05) 250 West Portal, SF. 753-5678. Chinese, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Yum Yum Fish is basically a fish store: three or four little tables with fish-print tablecloths under glass, fish-chart art along the wall, and fish-price signs all over the place. (Staff) 2181 Irving, SF. 566-6433. Sushi, L/D, ¢.
RICHMOND
Angkor Wat still serves tasty Cambodian food for not much money in a setting of Zenlike calm. (Staff) 4217 Geary, SF. 221-7887. Cambodian, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Assab dishes up unforgettably spicy Eritrean food, family style, in a comfortable space near the University of San Francisco. Honey wine, for those so inclined. (PR, 9/05) 2845 Geary, SF. 441-7083. Eritrean, L/D, $, AE/DISC/MC/V.
*Aziza shimmers with Moroccan grace, from the pewter ewer and basin that circulate for the washing of hands to the profusion of preserved Meyer lemons in the splendid cooking. (Staff) 5800 Geary, SF. 752-2222. Moroccan, D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Bamboo Village serves excellent Indonesian food in a comfortably modest setting for not much money. Take-out orders can slow the kitchen down considerably. (Staff) 3015 Geary, SF. 751-8006. Indonesian, L/D, ¢, MC/V.
Bella might make you feel as if you’ve ended up inside a piece of tiramisu, but the classic Italian cooking will definitely make you happy. (Staff) 3854 Geary, SF. 221-0305. Italian, L/D, $$, MC/V.
Blue Fin Sushi does indeed have a blue-finned sport fish mounted over the bar and, more interesting, an attached sports bar, Prime Time, where you can enjoy nigiri and cheeseburgers. Lots of imaginative Japanese-style cooked dishes. (PR, 3/05) 1814 Clement, SF. 387-2441. Sushi/American, D, $$, MC/V.
*Chapeau! serves some of the best food in the city — at shockingly reasonable prices. The French cooking reflects as much style and imagination as any California menu. (Staff) 1408 Clement, SF. 750-9787. French, D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.
Clement Street Bar and Grill The high-backed booths spell romance at this always crowded spot. Grilled fish dishes snap with flavor, and there are always a couple of delicious-sounding vegetarian options. (Staff) 708 Clement, SF. 386-2200. American, L/D, $-$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Clémentine offers comfortable sophistication at a fair price. Free valet parking. (Staff) 126 Clement, SF. 387-0408. French, BR/D, $$, MC/V.
Katia’s, a Russian Tea Room evokes the bourgeois romance of old Russia, and the classic Slavic food is carefully prepared and presented. Silken Crimean port is served in a tiny glass shaped like a Cossack boot. (PR, 12/04) 600 Fifth Ave, SF. 668-9292. Russian, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Kitaro This Japanese restaurant, unlike many others, has a lot of options for vegetarians. (Staff) 5850 Geary, SF. 386-2777. Japanese, L/D, ¢, MC/V.
Lucky Fortune serves up a wide variety of Chinese-style seafood in a cheerfully blah setting. Prices are astoundingly low, portions large. (Staff) 5715 Geary, SF. 751-2888. Chinese, L/D, ¢, MC/V.
Mai’s Restaurant On the basis of the hot-and-sour shrimp soup with pineapple alone, Mai’s deserves a line out the door. (Staff) 316 Clement, SF. 221-3046. Vietnamese, L/D, ¢, AE/DC/MC/V.
Mandalay Restaurant still packs them in after 21 years with moderate prices, a handsomely understated decor, and confidently seasoned food of considerable Burmese and Mandarin variety. (PR, 5/05) 4348 California, SF. 386-3896. Burmese, L/D, $, MC/V.
Al-Masri suggests, in food and ambience, the many influences that have swept across the Nile delta: feta cheese and olives from Greece or a quasi-Indian stew of peas and tomatoes, served with basmati rice. (Staff) 4031 Balboa, SF. 876-2300. Egyptian, D, $, AE/DISC/MC/V.
Melisa’s deals in spicy Chinese food, and if that’s what you’re after, you won’t mind the brutally bleak decor. Dishes bearing Melisa’s name are especially tasty. (Staff) 450 Balboa, SF. 387-1680. Chinese, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Pachi’s brings sophisticated Peruvian cooking to outer Clement. The menu includes a few Spanish dishes, such as paella, but the food in the main emphasizes those longtime Peruvian staples seafood and the potato, each in a variety of guises and subtly spiced. The setting is handsome, though on the spare side of spare. (PR, 2/05) 1801 Clement, SF. 422-0502. Peruvian, BR/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Pacific Cafe serves simple, reliable seafood in an atmosphere redolent of 1974, when it opened. Lots of dark wood and faintly psychedelic glass in the windows. (Staff) 7000 Geary, SF. 387-7091. Seafood, D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Pera combines elements of Istanbul café and college-town hangout. The Turkish food is vividly flavored, cheap, and served in big portions. Excellent street-gazing possibilities. (PR, 6/05) 349 Clement, SF. 666-3839. Turkish, B/L/D, $, DISC/MC/V.
*Pizzetta 211 practices the art of the pizza in a glowing little storefront space. Thin crusts, unusual combinations, a few side dishes of the highest quality. (PR, 2/04) 211 23rd Ave, SF. 379-9880. Pizza/Italian, L/D, $.
Q rocks, both American-diner-food-wise and noisy-music-wise. Servings of such gratifyingly tasty dishes as barbecued ribs, fish tacos, and rosemary croquettes are huge. (Staff) 225 Clement, SF. 752-2298. American, BR/L/D, $, MC/V.
RoHan Lounge serves a variety of soju cocktails to help wash down all those Asian tapas. Beware the kimchee. Lovely curvaceous banquettes. (Staff) 3809 Geary, SF. 221-5095. Asian, D, $, AE/MC/V.
Singapore Malaysian Restaurant eschews decor for cheap, tasty plates, where you’ll find flavors ranging from Indian to Dutch colonial to Thai. Seafood predominates in curries, soups, grills, and plenty of rice and noodle dishes. (Staff) 836 Clement, SF. 750-9518. Malaysian, L/D, ¢, MC/V.
Spices! has an exclamation point for a reason: its Chinese food, mainly Szechuan and Taiwanese, with an oasis of Shanghai-style dishes, is fabulously hot. Big young crowds, pulsing house music, a shocking orange and yellow paint scheme. Go prepared, leave happy. (Staff) 294 Eighth Ave, SF. 752-8884. Szechuan/Chinese, L/D, $, MC/V.
*Straits Cafe has a slightly campy faux-tropical decor, but its Singaporean menu is a kaleidoscope of mingled satisfactions; masterful deployment of unusual ingredients all the way to a dessert of rice pudding in palm sugar syrup. (Staff) 3300 Geary, SF. 668-1783. Singaporean, L/D, $, AE/DC/MC/V.
Tawan’s Thai Food It’s tiny, it’s cute, the prices are reasonable, and the food is tasty. (Staff) 4403 Geary, SF. 751-5175. Thai, L/D, $, AE/DC/MC/V.
Thai Time proves that good things come in little packages. The food is tremendous. (Staff) 315 Eighth Ave, SF. 831-3663. Thai, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Tia Margarita is an old-style Mexican restaurant with big servings and big flavor. Go hungry. (Staff) 300 19th Ave, SF. 752-9274. Mexican, D, $, MC/V.
Traktir serves as a kind of town hall for the local Russian community, but the food has a distinct international flavor: dolma, feta-cheese salad, Georgian wine, curry-spiked pieces of cold chicken. (Staff) 4036 Balboa, SF. 386-9800. Russian, D, $, MC/V.
Twilight Cafe and Deli is a bit of an oldster, having opened in 1980, but the Middle Eastern menu is full of delights, from falafel and hummus to foul muddamas, a cumin-scented fava bean stew. A fabulous mural on one wall relieves the standard deli dreariness. (Staff) 2600 McAllister, SF. 386-6115. Middle Eastern, B/L/D, ¢, MC/V.
BAYVIEW/HUNTERS POINT/SOUTH
Cable Car Coffee Shop Atmospherically speaking, you’re looking at your basic downtown South San Francisco old-style joint, one that serves a great Pacific Scramble for $4.95 and the most perfectest hash browns to be tasted. (Staff) 423 Grand, South SF. (650) 952-9533. American, B/BR/L, ¢.
Cliff’s Bar-B-Q and Seafood Some things Cliff’s got going for him: excellent mustard greens, just drenched in flavorfulness, and barbecued you name it. Brisket. Rib tips. Hot links. Pork ribs. Beef ribs. Baby backs. And then there are fried chickens and, by way of health food, fried fishes. (Staff) 2177 Bayshore, SF. 330-0736. Barbecue, L/D, ¢, AE/DC/MC/V.
JoAnn’s Cafe and Pantry has gotten some word-of-mouth recommendations as a dive, but it serves upscale breakfasts with decidedly nondive sides such as low-fat chicken basil sausage, bagels, and homemade muffins and scones. (Staff) 1131 El Camino Real, South SF. (650) 872-2810. American, B/L, $.
Old Clam House really is old — it’s been in the same location since the Civil War — but the seafood preparations are fresh, in an old-fashioned way. Matchless cioppino. Sports types cluster at the bar, under the shadow of a halved, mounted Jaguar E-type. (Staff) 299 Bayshore, SF. 826-4880. Seafood, L/D, $$, MC/V.
Peking Wok is a great Chinese dive in Bayview, right smack on the way to Candlestick. Not counting the 18 special combos for $3.25-$4.50, there are 109 items on the menu. At least 101 of them are under five bucks. (Staff) 4920 Third St, SF. 822-1818. Chinese, L/D, ¢.
Soo Fong features good inexpensive Chinese food. For the heat-seeking diner, its fiery Szechuan specialties will hit the spot. Nice chow fun and other noodle dishes too. (Staff) Bayview Plaza, 3801 Third St, SF. 285-2828. Chinese, L/D, ¢.
Taqueria el Potrillo serves one of the best chicken burritos in town, if not the best. You can get your bird grilled or barbecued or have steak instead or tacos. Excellent salsas and aguas frescas, and warmer weather than practically anywhere else in town. (Staff) 300A Bayshore Blvd, SF. 642-1612. Mexican, B/L/D, ¢, cash only.
Young’s Cafe A restaurant full of cheap, big, decent Chinese food, Young’s serves up 15 rice dishes, most of them for $2.95, and 64 other standard Chinese things. Only four of those are more than five bucks. (Staff) 732 22nd St, SF. 285-6046. Chinese, L/D, ¢.
BERKELEY/EMERYVILLE/NORTH
Ajanta offers a variety of deftly seasoned regional dishes from the Asian subcontinent. (Staff) 1888 Solano, Berk. (510) 526-4373. Indian, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
La Bayou serves up an astounding array of authentic New Orleans staples, including jambalaya, (greaseless!) fried catfish, and homemade pralines. (Staff) 3278 Adeline, Berk. (510) 594-9302. Cajun/Creole, L/D, ¢-$, MC/V.
Breads of India and Gourmet Curries The menu changes every day, so nothing is refrigerated overnight, and the curries benefit from obvious loving care. (Staff) 2448 Sacramento, Berk. (510) 848-7684. Indian, L/D, ¢, MC/V.
Café de la Paz Specialties include African-Brazilian “xim xim” curries, Venezuelan corn pancakes, and heavenly blackened seacakes served with orange-onion yogurt. (Staff) 1600 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 843-0662. Latin American, BR/L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Cafe Rouge All the red meat here comes from highly regarded Niman Ranch, and all charcuterie are made in-house. (Staff) 1782 Fourth St, Berk. (510) 525-1440. American, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
César You’ll be tempted to nibble for hours from Chez Panisse-related César’s Spanish-inspired tapas — unless you can’t get past the addictive sage-and-rosemary-flecked fried potatoes. (Staff) 1515 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 883-0222. Spanish, D, $, DISC/MC/V.
Cha-Ya Everything chef-proprietor Atsushi Katsumata makes, from the pot stickers and nigiri sushi to the steaming bowls of udon, hews to strict vegan standards. (Staff) 1686 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 981-1213. Japanese/Vegetarian, D, $, MC/V.
Chez Panisse may be an old-timer, but a devotion to the best seasonal ingredients (often organic), grilled on its wood-fired open hearth, means the restaurant’s distinctive Franco-Cal-Ital signature remains unmistakable and unmatched. (Staff) 1517 Shattuck, Berk. Café, (510) 548-5049, L/D, $$; restaurant, (510) 548-5525, D, $$$. California, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Christopher’s Nothing Fancy Café Chicken, beef, veggie, and prawn fajitas are the sizzling specialties. (Staff) 1019 San Pablo, Albany. (510) 526-1185. Mexican, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Clay Pot Seafood House specialties include steaming clay pots full of fascinating broths and such ingredients as meatballs, Chinese sausage, and whole fish. (Staff) 809 San Pablo, Albany. (510) 559-8976. Chinese, L/D, $, DISC/MC/V.
Holy Land transforms falafel, hummus, tahini, tabbouleh, and other Middle Eastern standards into gourmet-quality yet home-style delights. (Staff) 2965 College, Berk. (510) 665-1672. Middle Eastern/Kosher, L/D, $, AE/DC/MC/V.
Lalime’s is a long-standing institution in East Bay haute cuisine culture, but there’s nothing institutional about the attentive service or the creative and gorgeous dishes. (Staff) 1329 Gilman, Berk. (510) 527-9838. French/Mediterranean, D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.
Locanda Olmo Fine versions of risotto, gnocchi, and soft polenta pie, terrific thin-crust pizzas, and good traditional desserts have made Locanda Olmo a reliable anchor in the burgeoning Elmwood neighborhood. (Staff) 2985 College, Berk. (510) 848-5544. Italian, D, $, MC/V.
La Note Unique egg dishes and pancakes, big luncheon salads, fancy baguette sandwiches, and hearty weekend dinners. (Staff) 2337 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 843-1535. Country French, B/BR/L/D, $$, AE/MC/V. Restroom not wheelchair accessible.
Rick and Ann’s serves some of the best shoestring fries on earth, along with excellent (if nouvelle) renditions of such Americana as meat loaf and chicken potpie baked under a cheddar cheese biscuit. (Staff) 2922 Domingo, Berk. (510) 649-8538. American, BR/L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Rivoli is a near-perfect balance of the neighborhood eatery and the eclectic California cuisine destination restaurant. (Staff) 1539 Solano, Berk. (510) 526-2542. California, D, $, AE/DISC/MC/V.
Sam’s Log Cabin Daily special egg scrambles, great griddle cakes and corn cakes, and exceptional scones and muffins top the morning fare, which also includes gourmet sausage and bacon, hot and cold cereals, and organic coffee. (Staff) 945 San Pablo Ave, Berk. (510) 558-0494. American, B/L, ¢, cash only.
Vik’s Chaat Corner For less than the price of a scone and a latte, you can try lentil dumplings, curries, or a variety of flat or puffed crisp puris with various vegetarian fillings. (Staff) 726 Allston Way, Berk. (510) 644-4412. Indian, L/D, ¢, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Your Place Venture away from typical Thai menu items toward neau yang num, laab gai, blackboard specials, and at lunch, the “boat noodles” soups. (Staff) 1267-71 University, Berk. (510) 548-9781. Thai, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Zachary’s Chicago Pizza The stuffed pizza is simply out of this world. The fact that both Zachary’s outlets are always busy speaks for itself. (Staff) 1853 Solano, Berk. (510) 525-5950; 5801 College (at Oak Grove), Berk. (510) 655-6385. Pizza, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.
OAKLAND/ALAMEDA
Arizmendi is a worker-owned bakery where bread rolls out in seemingly infinite varieties — potato, Asiago, sesame-sunflower. (Staff) 3265 Lakeshore, Oakl. (510) 268-8849. Bakery, B/L/D, ¢. Not wheelchair accessible.
Asena Restaurant Good dishes at Asena, a charming Med-Cal cuisine spot, include individual pizzas and grilled marinated lamb sirloin in a burgundy-rosemary demi-glace. (Staff) 2508 Santa Clara, Alameda. (510) 521-4100. California/Mediterranean, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Le Cheval Shrimp rolls and peanut sauce, the fried Dungeness crab, the marinated “orange flavor” beef, the buttery lemongrass prawns — it’s all fabulous. (Staff) 1007 Clay, Oakl. (510) 763-8495. Vietnamese, L/D, ¢, MC/V.
Connie’s Cantina fashions unique variations on standard Mexican fare — enchiladas, tamales, fajitas, rellenos. (Staff) 3340 Grand, Oakl. (510) 839-4986. Mexican, L/D, ¢, MC/V.
Garibaldi’s on College focuses on Mediterranean-style seafood. (Staff) 5356 College, Oakl. (510) 595-4000. Mediterranean, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.
Gerardo’s Mexican Restaurant offers all the expected taquería fare. But a main reason to visit is to pick up a dozen of Maria’s wonderfully down-home chicken or pork tamales. (Staff) 3811 MacArthur, Oakl. (510) 531-5255. Mexican, B/L/D, ¢-$.
Mama’s Royal Cafe Breakfast is the draw here — even just-coffee-for-me types might succumb when confronted with waffles, French toast, pancakes, tofu scrambles, huevos rancheros, and 20 different omelets. (Staff) 4012 Broadway, Oakl. (510) 547-7600. American, B/L, ¢.
La Mexicana has a 40-year tradition of stuffing its customers with delicious, simply prepared staples (enchiladas, tacos, tamales, chile rellenos, menudo) and specials (carnitas, chicken mole), all served in generous portions at moderate prices. (Staff) 3930 E 14th St, Oakl. (510) 533-8818. Mexican, L/D, ¢, MC/V.
Nan Yang offers too many great dishes — ginger salad, spicy fried potato cakes, coconut chicken noodle soup, garlic noodles, succulent lamb curry that melts in your mouth — to experience in one visit. (Staff) 6048 College, Oakl. (510) 655-3298. Burmese, L/D, $, MC/V.
Ninna You’ll find steaks, duck breast, and pork loin on the same menu as chicken in yellow curry, as well as such intriguing and successful fusions as penne pasta “pad Thai” style and veal “Ithaila.” (Staff) 4066 Piedmont, Oakl. (510) 601-6441. Thai fusion, L/D, $-$$, MC/V.
Il Porcellino When faced with a menu like Il Porcellino’s, any concern for health benefits should take a backseat to hedonism. (Staff) 6111 LaSalle, Oakl. (510) 339-2149. Italian, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.
Restaurante Doña Tomás offers upscale versions of enchiladas and carnitas, as well as tantalizing chicken-lime-cilantro soup and bountiful pozole. (Staff) 5004 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 450-0522. Mexican, BR/D, $, AE/MC/V.
Rockridge Café offers bountiful breakfasts, a savory meat-loaf special, and hearty cassoulet. But the burgers, wide-cut fries, and straw-clogging milkshakes remain the cornerstones of the menu. (Staff) 5492 College, Oakl. (510) 653-1567. American, B/L/D, $, MC/V.
Taquería Ramiro and Sons typically has customers lined up to the door for (mostly take-out) burritos and tacos and quesadillas. The menu nods to contemporary tastes with black beans and spinach or tomato tortilla options. (Staff) 2321 Alameda, Alameda. (510) 523-5071. Mexican, L/D, ¢, cash only.
Tijuana serves big round bowls and plates teeming with shrimp, crab, octopus, and fish in cocktails, salads, and soups. The place is usually packed and loud. (Staff) 1308 International Blvd, Oakl. (510) 532-5575. Mexican, L/D, $, MC/V. Not wheelchair accessible.
Tropix Dig into a heap of spicy grilled jerk chicken or wallow in the wonders of the shrimp pawpaw: curried vegetables and fat shrimp piled up over meltingly ripe papaya. (Staff) 3814 Piedmont, Oakl. (510) 653-2444. Caribbean, L/D, $, AE/DC/MC/V. Patio not wheelchair accessible. SFBG

Zeitgeist

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By Steven T. Jones
Zeitgeist, in addition to being my satellite office, is an aptly named bar. The place and the people it attracts seem to capture the spirit of our troubled times, drawing together counterculture rebels and many of the cogs in the very machines that we are fighting against (albeit usually young people striving to stay hip despite their day jobs).
After a few days worth of a running e-mail argument with SFSOS’s Ryan Chamberlin about his ridiculous but successful efforts to stop a pot club from locating in his Fisherman’s Wharf neighborhood, it was weird to bump into him at Zeitgeist. We rarely see eye-to-eye about anything politically, but we each try not to hold grudges and share an appreciation for the Zeitgeist…as well as this bar.
So we continued our e-argument face-to-face over beers. He likes the wholesomeness of red states and wants there to be little red enclaves in San Francisco, free from pot clubs and other undesirable elements. Ya know, for “the children.” I argue that he’s being moralistic, judgmental, and unrealistically trying to control things beyond his control.
Soon, some guy next to us was leaning into the conversation, and when I asked where he stood on the question, he backed me up. But then he got a mischievous smile on his face when I asked for his story. “I work in the White House,” he said, to which I replied for both of their benefits, “Well, you guys should get along great.”
They didn’t, but he and I did. Well, from there it got curiouser and curiouser, they say, as my new friend (whose identity I confirmed, but will protect for now), his buddy, and I headed down the rabbit hole of discussing at length American empire, international law, Iraq, war crimes, and impeachment – all with a White House lawyer, around my age of 37, who is directly involved with all these questions. He’s a careerist who just happened to fall in with the neocons, and he shared my belief in the malevolence of characters like Dick Cheney, but he still believes that only American power, exerting globally on people whether they like it or not, can fix this almost hopeless situation our country has created for itself.
And I came away feeling like all of us, from local activists and journalists to those controlling the levers of power, are just bumbling our way through life, pretending like we know what we’re doing and trying not to fuck things up worse than they were before. Maybe that is the modern American Zeitgeist.

Flame on

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› kimberly@sfbg.com
SONIC REDUCER To the naked eye — and deep-fried, extra-crispy spirit — working fast food is a lot like what the Flaming Lips call the “sound of failure” on their latest album, At War with the Mystics (Warner Bros). It’s the worst of times … and the worst of times. And I can feel the pain — I once broke my back and suffered hypothermia of the right hand for Häagen-Dazs.
That’s probably why I found it so poignant when, in the recent Lips doc by SF filmmaker Bradley Beesley, The Fearless Freaks, Wayne Coyne went back to the Long John Silver, the spot where he’d donned a ludicrous pirate getup and tossed salted bits of seafood as a fry cook for more than a decade. And it was inspiring — because Coyne, now 45, is so shameless and proud about his contributions to our fast food nation. “I think that kind of mindless manual labor really does save the world in a way because you’re just busy doing stuff,” he told me over the phone from his Oklahoma City home in April. “Being busy keeps you out of trouble — keeps you away from too much existential doubt.”
Who’d’ve thunk that grease monkey in the plumed hat would become the blood-spattered, bubble-riding, balloon-shoving ringleader to a Flaming Lips nation? Certainly not me when I caught their brave but somewhat ineffective Walkman experiment at the Fillmore in ’99, during their Music Against Brain Degeneration/Soft Bulletin tour. Tuning into the selected radio channel, I could barely hear anything of the show through the flimsy headsets. But I guess word spread because the scene at this year’s Noise Pop opening show with the Lips was beyond standing room.
The opening moments of the show were worth it — the band tore into the stirring, trebly melody of “Race for the Prize,” Coyne whipped a lit-up sling around his head, smoke poured off the stage, and Santa-suited techs threw far too many balloons into the sold-out crowd. The punks had taken acid, to paraphrase the title of the 2002 Lips compilation, and it was a genuine spectacle, replete with darkness (in the form of Coyne’s monologues critiquing the Bush administration) and light (the cute animal costumes) and sing-alongs to Queen’s seemingly uncoverable “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The key to regime change lay with each individual, declared pop philosopher Coyne, suggesting that his audience make it “popular to be gay, smoke pot, and have abortions” throughout the country, not just in San Francisco.
“Maybe I’m a fool, maybe I’m embarrassing, maybe it’s humiliating, but at least it opens it up to say, ‘Well, you speak your mind,’” Coyne said later. “In San Francisco, you guys don’t grapple with the same problems that you would in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City doesn’t have a tolerance of smoking pot, and gay people are on the verge of having all their rights taken away. You almost wonder, will people at some point try to reverse the civil rights movement.”
Speaking about the Lips’ 1983 inception, Coyne told Staring at Sound biographer Jim DeRogatis that “he’d like to be in a band like the Grateful Dead, throw big parties with people coming to them and having a great time.” DeRogatis said, “[Coyne] also said, ‘We’d like to be different; we’d like to still make records that don’t suck.’ They have elements of a jam band following, they have people from the indie rock ’80s. They have people who’ve discovered them in the alternative era. They have new Gen Y fans that downloaded The Soft Bulletin and think it’s incredible. Their audience is all over the map — they don’t fit into any demographic in terms of the way that corporations are slicing up the audience.”
The trick, said Coyne, is to never get too comfortable. “We always force ourselves to do something new, even if we’re not comfortable with it. I don’t think we really have any agenda other than to freak ourselves out.”
Ushered in with The Fearless Freaks; 20 Years of Weird: the Flaming Lips 1986–2006 (a collection of live recordings and oddities), their current tour, the DeRogatis book, the Fearless Freaks documentary, and next year with luck Christmas on Mars (Coyne’s feature film debut as a director), At War turns out to be, indeed, a war album, questioning uses and abuses of power with the opening track, “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song.”
But that’s not to say Coyne shies away from the band’s evangelical tendencies. “We’re using drama and music and sort of heightening the whole experience to be somewhat of a religious experience,” he explains. “I think all good rock ’n’ roll has that. But hopefully the agenda is that you, as an individual, at the end of the day, decide what’s great about your life instead of looking to some rulebook or some invisible force up in space somewhere. Music is just one part of it, and at the end of the day, to me, it’s dumb entertainment.” Aye, aye, matey? SFBG
FLAMING LIPS
With Ween and the Go! Team
Sat/22, 6:30 p.m.
Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley, Berk.
$41.50
www.ticketmaster.com
SAY WHAT?
ROOTS OF OCHIS
Get down with these pulsating Northern Cali indie darlings. Just do it. No questions. Wed/19, 9:30 p.m., Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. $7. (415) 923-0923.
PAPERCUTS
The lovely Bay Area indie rockers’ album is coming out on Devendra Banhart and Andy Cabic’s label, Gnomensong. Thurs/20, 9 p.m., Café du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. $7. (415) 861-5016.
RACONTEURS AND KELLEY STOLTZ
Midwestern rock supergroupies meet the Detroit native–SF vinyl diehard (who was pals with Brendan Benson back in the day). Sat/22–Sun/23, 8 p.m., Warfield, 982 Market, SF. $29.50–$37.50. (415) 775-7722.
MINDERS
Enter It’s a Bright Guilty World (Future Farmer); then enter the dragon. The Kingdom and Junior Panthers also perform. Sun/23, 9 p.m., Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. $8–$10. (415) 621-4455.
MAVIS STAPLES
Legendary gospel-soul sister communes with the eucalyptus. Sun/23, 2 p.m., Stern Grove, SF. Free. sterngrove.org.

The hemp chronicles

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Assemblyman Mark Leno’s industrial hemp bill is headed for the state Senate, and the OC Weekly’s staff blog has a wonderful interview with the “joint” author, Republican Chuck DeVore. Devore, a lieutenant colonel in the national guard and hardly a pot-smoking San Francisco liberal, just thinks the bill makes good policy sense. Why shouldn’t California farmers be able to grow a product that it’s perfectly legal to import from Canada?

George Skelton of the LA Times has an interesting hit: The guv, he points out, seems to like the nutritional supplements industry, and hemp oil makes for great supplements. Is there any way he can still veto this bill?

Town and country

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› paulr@sfbg.com
It is safe to say that when city people talk about going on a jaunt to the country, the country they are talking about going on a jaunt to qualifies as the country mostly by virtue of not being the city. Jaunters are not proposing to leave civilization; city people do not drive to Healdsburg on a tranquil Saturday afternoon in June, braving bridge traffic and 101 traffic, so that they can milk cows or pull weeds at a biodynamic winery. City people go, one suspects, largely in hopes of escaping the city’s fog and wind, of seeing the sun and being able to wear short-sleeve shirts without shivering or looking like foolish tourists.
If these simple graces are what you have in mind, then you will find Healdsburg an accommodating place in early summer. Later the weather will grow torrid, and even the lush, arboreal green of the quaint town square will not be enough to banish the faint fear of heatstroke. But the square will still cast its 19th-century spell, and if you are seated in Bistro Ralph, on the north edge of the square, you might find yourself looking out the plate-glass windows to the shady prospect and imagining that you are beside a cooling pond somewhere in Monet-land, at Giverny itself, perhaps.
Ralph Tingle opened Bistro Ralph in 1992, and I remember peering inside the restaurant on a mid-1990s jaunt with European friends and thinking, How chic, how citified! At that time, Healdsburg still seemed to me to be mostly a dusty, sleepy country town — a more relaxed version of day-trippy Sonoma — and Bistro Ralph an aberration arresting in its sleekness, not a harbinger. But … it turns out to have been a harbinger. Today the town square on a warm weekend afternoon is like Union Square, aswarm with expensively dressed pedestrians and honking, bumper-to-bumper traffic: late model cars furiously getting in one another’s way. The wealth of spanking-new or just-renovated buildings — there is one for Gallo, another for a restaurant called Zin — look as if they belonged on the set of a Spielberg movie.
In this transformed locale, Bistro Ralph is no longer quite so striking. You could walk right by it, in fact, if your thoughts were elsewhere (it’s narrow and midblock, unlike Gallo and Zin, a pair of cornerstones), and once inside, you might find yourself paying less attention to the restaurant’s kinship with Zuni and Mecca than to its resemblance to an old Roman storefront: narrow, deep, and cool under a high tin ceiling. Toward the rear of the dining room stands a longitudinal bar, while at the very rear is a semi-exhibition kitchen — not big, but then the restaurant itself is quite snug, not much larger than the original Delfina.
The wine list consists exclusively of bottlings from the Healdsburg vicinity, and this bias gives our first hint as to what Tingle’s food is going to be like. Although California wines have their virtues, they do tend to be fruity and a little boisterous — not the food-friendliest qualities, unless the food is equally assertive. And Bistro Ralph’s is. The only dish we could find on the shy side, in fact, was a Caesar salad ($8), which lacked anchovies, used a mild aged–jack cheese from Vella instead of the traditional parmesan, and was tossed with a dressing in want of more garlic. On the other hand, the spears of romaine were immaculate, and a pair of croutons smeared with a loud red rouille gave a nice murder-mystery twist.
But let us forgive and forget the salad. The rest of the dishes were notable for their muscularity, beginning with a heap of calamari ($11) dipped in a peppery batter before being flash-fried. The pepper was enough to carry the day, but just to make sure, the kitchen provided a pot of gingery sesame-soy sauce for dipping. A bowl of tortilla soup ($6), thick and glossy like velouté, was the most intensely flavored such soup I’ve ever tasted: a liqueur of roasted corn. There was visual and textural interest here too, from crispy strands of fried tortilla and drizzlings of cilantro oil, but, as with the calamari, the soup could easily have stood on its own.
Liver raises a flag for some of us — calves’ liver especially; chicken livers are manageable. Tingle’s version ($12) presents the latter sautéed in a rich yet nicely acidic bath of balsamic vinegar, caramelized onions, and pancetta, with a block of fried polenta to one side, a golden promontory over a moody brown sea. If you’re inclined toward the reddish orange end of the spectrum, you will like the lamb burger ($9.50), whose spicing appears to include (sweet) paprika. Of at least as much note, though, is the pile of sublimely crisp matchstick fries on the plate.
The dessert list is largely a choco-fest. An exception is the “best” crème brûlée ($7.50), whose custard is flecked with vanilla bean to reinforce the claim of superlativity. As for chocolate: It gets no more chocolatey than the marquise Taillevent ($7.50), two petite slabs — rectangles, not squares — of a substance our server described as “a cross between a mousse and fudge,” adrift in a puddle of crème anglaise. Like any great dessert, this one disappears quickly but leaves you with a memory, a pleasurable tingle. SFBG
BISTRO RALPH
Lunch, Mon.–Sat., 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.
Dinner, Mon.–Sat., 5:30–9 p.m.
109 Plaza, Healdsburg
(707) 433-1380
Full bar
MC/V
Can get noisy
Wheelchair accessible

Headbanger’s call to glory – line one

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com
Zakk Wylde is a postmodern metal god. Or perhaps a modern post-metal god. With his long, flowing hair and beard, bulging muscles, and Les Paul wielded like a battle ax, he is a figure straight out of mythology. His story mines Joseph Campbell territory as well: A working-class kid from Jersey one day receives the call from God (Ozzy Osbourne — well, Sharon, actually) and his life is changed forever.
From odd jobs in gas stations and supermarkets to sold-out stadiums around the world, Osbourne’s musical right-hand man and the heir apparent to Randy Rhoads’s throne (the most coveted position in the metal guitar pantheon), Wylde became a minor deity overnight, anointed by the Prince of Darkness himself. Since that day the figure of Oz has loomed large in Wylde’s career: the vocalist playing Jehovah to the guitarist’s Noah, Ozzy the Allfather to Zakk’s Thor, the Godfather to his Sonny. Literally — Osbourne is the godfather of Wylde’s son.
But Wylde’s newfound glory was threatened by history. His call had come in the late 1980s, just as metal’s star was dimming in the mass market. Within a few years it was totally eclipsed by the poppy neo-punk of Nirvana and their legions of imitators. Wylde, rather than cutting his hair and going flannel (as so many metal apologists did in those dark years), retained his locks and Samson-like strength in an era of cultivated weakness and whiny shoe-gazing, and kept the faith.
He didn’t retreat into the metal ghetto, however — he wasn’t content to preach to the converted. Instead, he embraced his unique position at the crossroads of generations of popular heavy rock music. Both his songwriting and playing style reflect this, and he freely incorporates the past and present of the oeuvre, from before metal’s heyday through its zenith, and after. He has an uncanny ability to invoke the swagger of southern rock, as on “Lowdown,�? from Black Label Society’s Alcohol Fueled Brewtality Live (Spitfire, 2001); the sentimental mush of the power ballad, displayed on “In This River,” from BLS’s Mafia (Artemis, 2005); acoustic neo-folk earthiness, as heard on “Spoke in the Wheel,” from his solo Sonic Brew (Spitfire, 1999); and good old-fashioned chunk-a-chunk (see “Suicide Messiah,” also from Mafia). But his music is more melting-pot than balkanized, more stew than pastiche, and he never loses the spirit of metal.
In addition, for many Osbourne fans, Wylde is the most worthy replacement yet for the late, great guitarist Rhoads. Rhoads helped launch Osbourne’s solo career in the early 1980s and in the process redefined heavy metal guitar playing and songwriting by incorporating classically inspired harmonies and virtuosity with strong pop songwriting instincts. His tragic death in 1982 left a void that has never really been filled, though Osbourne would continue to perform and record with various other guitar players. With Wylde, Osbourne finally found one who could serve as a worthy long-term collaborator and their musical relationship, though on-and-off over the years for assorted reasons, has produced some of the strongest and most consistent work Osbourne has made since his first two records with Rhoads.
The guitarists’ playing styles vary: Wylde’s huge sound and rhythmic feel are his main weapons — as opposed to Rhoads’s awesome technique and interesting scale choices — yet he can shred when he needs to and is clearly influenced by his legendary predecessor. Their writing styles differ as well; Wylde’s is more riff-based and bluesy than that of Rhoads, who tended to employ more gothic chord changes than static riffs (compare “No More Tears” with, say, “Mr. Crowley”). Yet in his collaborations with Wylde, Osbourne finally seemed to find the chemistry and energy that had been missing since Rhoads’s untimely passing.
Throughout his career, Wylde has maintained his perspective while high in heavy metal Valhalla. He has accepted his role in history and moved beyond the stylistic camps and divisions of hard rock, tracing the historic threads that tie Hendrix to Rhoads to Dimebag, redefining metal as the sum of its various fractions, fluid and constantly in play, and finding its unifying truth in its many separate and antagonistic truths. Call him the postmodernist’s metal hero, the mythologist’s new immortal, the modern headbanger’s best hope for salvation. Remember his role when he plays guitar with Osbourne on the main stage at this year’s Ozzfest and fronts with his own band, Black Label Society, on the second stage. Expect him to embody his metal warrior’s creed: “Strength. Determination. Merciless. Forever.” SFBG
OZZFEST XI
Sat/1, 10:30 a.m.
Shoreline Amphitheatre
1 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View
$35–$135
(415) 421-TIXS
www.shorelineamp.com

Why is Asa Sullivan dead?

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> gwschulz@sfbg.com

Kahlil Sullivan hasn’t had time to do much lately other than plan for his younger brother’s funeral. He hasn’t even had time to find out exactly why his brother is dead.
“We feel like we’re lost,” he said over the phone a week after his cornered and unarmed brother was shot and killed by the San Francisco Police Department.
The cops have offered two stories as to why officers fired a still-undisclosed number of bullets into the body of Asa Sullivan on June 6. And neither one seems to make much sense or explain why they shot Sullivan.
Meanwhile, the family hasn’t been offered a dime for burial expenses from the Victim Services Division of the District Attorney’s Office. The state won’t spend money to help the families of former felons, but there’s local money available too. That’s off-limits, it turns out, because the SFPD hasn’t classified Sullivan’s death as an “unlawful killing,” according to the DA’s office.
Sullivan’s mother, Kathleen Espinosa, even told us on the day of his funeral, June 15, that the department did not provide a liaison to the family, as the Office of Citizen Complaints two years ago recommended the SFPD do for the families of officer-involved shooting victims.
In fact, Espinosa hasn’t heard a word from the department. Everything she knows has come largely from two stories in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Espinosa, a short, relentlessly cheerful woman with chestnut hair, held a smile throughout her son’s funeral while hugging Sullivan’s tearful young friends. She said any new information from the department right now hardly matters.
“Let them get their story straight first before they come to me,” she said. “I don’t want another wrong story.”
According to early reports, Sullivan and his friend, 25-year-old Jason Martin, were staying with two tenants at a Villas Parkmerced townhouse, part of a 3,200-unit complex close to the San Francisco State University campus. Sullivan had been in some trouble in the past; his criminal record included an armed robbery, and he was on probation for selling pot. But he’d secured a job at Goodwill and had a six-year-old son to look after.
Martin and Sullivan were helping to clean up the townhouse so their friends could receive their security deposit when they moved out. The tenants were being evicted for not paying rent, but a Parkmerced official told the media that the tenants were still legally living there.
The cops said a neighbor called the police, believing the unit had been taken over by nonresidents. Police Chief Heather Fong insisted in press statements that the complex was having problems with squatters. But Parkmerced public policy director Bert Polacci told the Guardian that the complex had no such problems. If the cops had called him, he might have cleared up the residency status of the occupants of 2 Garces Drive.
When Officers Michelle Alvis and John Keesor arrived, they immediately detained Martin, in response to the neighbor’s complaint. Sullivan, who feared going to jail for a probation violation, fled to a two-and-a-half-foot-high attic space.
The officers attempted to talk him down with Martin’s help but eventually went into the attic. Martin later insisted, according to Espinosa, that he told the officers Sullivan was unarmed before they went after him.
The way the cops tell it, Sullivan — who would have been unable to stand up in the tiny space — took a combative stance from inside the attic, and the officers believed he had aimed a gun at them.
The department first reported that Sullivan had shot at the officers through the attic floor. Further, the cops reported that Sullivan’s gun was found at the scene. The truth is, all they found was the case to a pair of eyeglasses.
SFPD spokesperson Neville Gittens told us only that the first story was based on “secondhand information” and “witness statements.”
The official story changed several hours after the department offered its first explanation of what happened. According to Gittens, Keesor fired first, and a ricochet nicked his partner’s ear, “perhaps” causing her to fire as well. When the smoke cleared, Sullivan was dead. No gun was ever found.
“They got flashlights,” Sullivan’s brother Kahlil exclaimed. “Can’t they see his hands? Why didn’t they ask him questions first? We may never know the truth.”
One of the two officers had their flashlights on, Gittens said, but he couldn’t confirm whether the illumination was enough to identify exactly what was in Sullivan’s hand. Gittens told the Guardian that Fong has not yet made a decision about whether to return the officers to regular duty.
Gittens initially refused on June 9 to release the names of the officers involved to the Guardian, but the day after we asked for them, they appeared in the Chronicle. And the department has not yet responded to a Guardian request for documents associated with the shooting.
In 2004, the police commission voted unanimously to conditionally require the disclosure of incident reports to the families of officer-involved shooting victims as swiftly as possible. That change, and the request that the SFPD provide a liaison to the family, were inspired by the death of Cammerin Boyd, who was shot and killed in the spring of 2004 by SFPD officers following a car chase.
But during several subsequent commission meetings, the recommendations disappeared into the ether. And it’s not the first time that proposed reforms were simply ignored by the SFPD, a fact commission vice president Theresa Sparks readily admits.
“I was a little surprised the chief released the names as fast as she did,” Sparks told us.
Sparks nonetheless said that she is still troubled by the so-far inconsistent stories the department has offered to the public and the commission.
“The first story that came out was totally incorrect, [and] the chief could not tell us why the story changed,” Sparks said. “It’s criminal that these families sit there with no specific knowledge about what happened.”
Sullivan’s funeral was attended by his siblings — Kahlil, brother Sangh, and sisters T-sha Sullivan and Tasha Mosby-Greer — and a capacity crowd of Asa’s friends and other family, all in Duggan’s Funeral Home, right across from the Mission Police Station.
Born on Sept. 8, 1980, Asa grew up in San Francisco and attended Bay Area schools. Friends remembered his playful sense of humor. For a time recently, he stayed with his mom while working at Goodwill, commuting from San Jose at 5 a.m. and returning late.
“He made everybody laugh,” Espinosa said. “He didn’t deserve to be cornered in an attic and gunned down.”
The family has contacted Oakland civil rights attorney John Burris, who told the Guardian that during his handling of hundreds of officer-misconduct cases, he’s seen families victimized by police denied documents, explanations, and the truth.
“If there’s one thing I’ve found, it’s police agencies do a disservice to the victim’s family when they don’t provide information,” Burris said. “When the families ask questions, they don’t respond.” SFBG

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