Restaurants

Appetite: Sustainable seafood with Gaston Acurio

Andrew Lam
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Appetite: Sustainable seafood with Gaston Acurio

The average American still doesn’t know enough about sustainable fish. Most of us eat whatever is on the menu with little to regard to where it’s sourced, its health properties (or lack thereof) — totally unaware if the creature we’re eating is endangered or close to it. Consider this Appetite your 101 on the latest happenings in sustainable fish — and a primer on how to make sure your seafood dinner is safe for the waters of the world. 

I was privileged to attend a recent intimate round-table discussion with Peru’s leading chef Gaston Acurio and management from Monterey Bay Aquarium, the number one seafood source in the nation on what is or isn’t safe to eat at any given time.

Naturally, we met in the offices of La Mar Cebicheria, Acurio’s first stateside restaurant and my top spot in SF for Peruvian (New York is also about to get its first La Mar outpost). As San Francisco’s breezy, bayside location of La Mar just went fully sustainable, it was an ideal time to discuss the necessity of planet-minded dining.

(Bait and) tackle these apps at Ki without fear of deprieving your grandkids of maritime meals

Acurio says chefs, cooks, and kitchen staff in general, are “the best weapons” in the struggle to change America’s fish-eating habits. While many say consumers should educate themselves, Acurio rightly pinpoints a need for education among restaurant staff. He shared a story of a Peruvian restaurant relaying to diners that their children would not know what their beloved local river shrimp tasted like if over-fishing in the area continued. With this kind of schooling, consumers themselves began asking every restaurant they dined at not to serve the shrimp. Locals changed habits – and may have saved the shrimp based on information learned on a night out.

The Peruvian’s commitment to sustainability is apparent. Acurio is working to take the message he’s spread throughout his home country worldwide. “Restaurants are instruments for sharing our culture with the world,” he says. He prefers to train his staff by inspiration, getting them involved in a mission — not just teaching them to perform a predetermined role.

Here are three things that restaurant staff and individual consumers can do to support sustainable seafood consumption, thus preserving the over-fished seafood we are at risk of losing like tuna and mahi mahi. (And remember, downloadable guides of what to eat and what to avoid avoid are available on the Monterey Aquarium website.): 

1. Support local fisherman. Locally, buy sustainable fish at places like Royal Hawaiian in Potrero Hill or in the Ferry Plaza Building at San Francisco Fish Co.

2. Eat “down” the food chain – smaller fish need less time to mature, and make more sustainable catches. Try clams, anchovies, sardines, mussels, etc. 

3. Avoid aquaculture, farmed fish raised in controlled conditions.

Acurio believes more creativity happens when one cooks with what is fresh and available on a day-to-day basis. Rather than being limited by the diner who’s going to be upset that you didn’t serve tuna tartare, he challenges his chefs to “dream big”: to create dishes that will win customers over to a new way of looking at fish dinner. 

A few local restaurants serving only sustainable seafood:

1. Tataki and Tataki South, Pacific Heights and Noe Valley – The first fully-sustainable sushi restaurant in the US was Tataki, right here in our own backyard.

2. Ki, SoMa – Part of the funky, spacious “Zen Compound” that includes Temple Nightclub and a rooftop garden. Ki is an artsy new izakaya-sushi-drinks lounge.

3. Hecho, FiDi – Sustainable sushi sources called out by name – with tequila to accompany.

4. Pacific Catch, Marina – has elected June to be its sustainable shrimp month – it will be serving safe shrimp from various parts of the world.

And a little homework for those who’d like to learn more about keeping your sea meals safe for the ocean environment: don’t miss local resident Casson Trenor’s book, Sustainable Sushi (Trenor helped launch both Tataki and Ki). Also, the fabulous 18 Reasons is throwing a “Good Fish” event (cooking demo and lecture, $25-35) Sunday afternoon, June 12, sure to help you navigate the confusing terms that are involved in selecting a more sustainable fish.

— Subscribe to Virginia’s twice-monthly newsletter The Perfect Spot

 

Campos plans to plug loophole in SF health care law

Mary Magee
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Campos plans to plug loophole in SF health care law

Back in 2006, when Tom Ammiano was a supervisor, the Board approved his trailblazing San Francisco Health Care Security Ordinance (HCSO).  But the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, which presumably prefers you get served by folks who don’t have health insurance (“Waiter, there’s a booger in my soup!”) sued the city over the program. GRRA was hoping to invalidate the employer spending requirements of the City’s ordinance on the grounds that it violated the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act. And in its quest, GGRA, which represents restaurants statewide and was concerned that Ammiano’s citywide legislation would spread to other municipalities, tried to take its case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. But in June 2010, the “Supremes” denied review to GGRA’s legal challenge, ending a contentious four-year legal battle over “Healthy San Francisco.” Or so everybody thought.But according to Sup. David Campos, who succeeded Ammiano as D9 supervisor and champion of the city’s health care legislation, some employers have been exploiting a loophole in the HCSo legislation to avoid their obligations under the law. And Campos now plans to stick a cork in this loophole.

Since 2008, HCSO has mandated that private businesses with 20 or more employees make minimum health care expenditures to, or on behalf of, their covered employees each quarter. But instead of paying for health insurance or paying into Healthy San Francisco (which provides workers with free or reduced-cost enrollment) some employers allocated money on paper to an account workers can access to reimburse out-of-pocket medical expenses.

“The problem is that most of these accounts are set up with ‘use-it-or-lose it’ provisions, “ a press release from Campos’ office explains. “The employers are credited with making the expenditures, but the balances in the accounts are wiped-out at the end of every year (or when the worker quits or gets fired) and the employers keep the money.” Oops.

So, Campos is introducing an amendment to the HCSO that would close what he’s calling a “don’t get sick in January” loophole (when employers zero-out the account balance at the end of the year, their employees begin the next year without any money available to reimburse health care costs). 

According to Campos, only 20 percent of the $62 million allocated to such reimbursement plans last year was actually reimbursed to the employees.“This means that $50 million, or 80 percent, of the health care expenditure was not spent on employee health care,” Campos stated. “Moreover, employers that meet the spending requirement via use-it-or-lose-it reimbursement accounts have a financial incentive to limit their use (in order to retain more funds at the end of the year).”

Campos’ office cites the words of auto mechanic Ron (who prefers not to use his last name for fear of retaliation by his employer) to explain this problem.

 “My employer provides me and my co-workers with a use-it-or-lose-it reimbursement account to satisfy part of its spending requirement under the Health Care Security Ordinance,” Ron stated. “But the employer does not allow us to use the money to pay for health insurance premiums and has limited the services eligible for reimbursement to such an extent that it is difficult to make good use of the account. As a result, we use a small portion of the money and lose the rest every year.  I finally decided to join Kaiser as a dependent of my wife who is a city employee.” 
 
Campos’ proposed amendment would close the loophole by re-affirming the traditional understanding of a “health care expenditure.”: employers will not be credited with making mandatory health care expenditures unless the expenditure is “irrevocably paid” (the money carries over from quarter to quarter and year to year to the employee.)

Campos’ proposed legislation also requires employers to provide written notice to their employees explaining how they are meeting their health care expenditure, and it streamlines penalties for noncompliant employers.

Zazie restaurant owner Jennifer Piallat says she supports the amendment because it “levels the playing field” for the vast majority of businesses in San Francisco that provide health insurance to their employees.

“A loophole should not disadvantage those of us who agree with the spirit of the Health Care Security Ordinance and who believe that employers should contribute to the well being of our employees,” Piallat stated.

Whether this loophole means that restaurants that were allegedly adding up to 4 percent in surcharges to customers’ bill to cover the alleged cost of paying contributions to their employees’ healthcare costs, have been pocketing the difference remains to be seen. An HCSO analysis by the city’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement notes that the city’s Treasurer and Tax Collector did not collect industry data from businesses in 2009 and 2010, and therefore expenditures by industry are not available for those years.

But i industry data from 2008 shows that the “accommodations and food services” industry (think hotels and restaurants) “elected reimbursement plans as their primary expenditure at a substantially higher rate than any other industry in 2008,” the OLSE report states. (A table atttached to OLSE’s report shows that this rate was 47 percent in 2008—which was 36 percent more than the next highest ranking industry group listed.)

OLSE’s analysis also reveals that in 2010, 90 percent of all health care dollars were spent on health insurance, 3 percent were spent on Healthy San Francisco (the health access program San Francisco established as an option within HCSO) and only & percent were allocated to reimbursement plans. So, in other words, in 2010, most employers were doing the right thing by their employees, at least in terms of making required health care expenditures.

“The average reimbursement rate of money allocated to reimbursement plans in 2010 was low: only 20 percent of the $62.5 million allocated to such plans in 2010 was actually reimbursed to employees,” states the executive summary of OLSE’s analysis. “The remaining 80 percent, or $50.1 million, went unutilized. The median reimbursement rate for the 29 percent of employers (860 in total) that allocated money to a reimbursement plan in 2010 was even lower, just 12 percent.

OLSE’s report notes that this low utilization rate of reimbursement dollars is consistent with prior years.
“For example, in each of the past three years, over 50 percent of such plans (53 percent in 2008, 52 percent in 2009, and 57 percent in 2010) had a reimbursement rate of between 0 and 10 percent,” OLSE observed. “In other words, more than half of the employers who elected to meet their health care expenditure requirement (entirely or in part) by providing reimbursement plans retained over 90 percent of the money allocated to reimbursement plans. The increase in the percentage of employers utilizing reimbursement plans coupled with continued low reimbursement rates raises public policy concerns.”

Campos will be holding a press conference tomorrow (Friday June 10) at 11.30 a.m. in his office (Room 279 in City Hall) to flesh out the gory details. He’ll be joined by Tim Paulson, Executive Director of the Labor Council; Jennifer Piallat, owner of Zazie; Ron, auto mechanic; Tiffany Crain, Young Workers United; and Matt Goldberg, from the city’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement.
 

Cold comfort

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Cold comfort

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS I write to you from Dot’s Diner in Jefferson Parish, La. Hedgehog is getting her knee looked at down the road, and I thought I would find me a place to sit that wasn’t the waiting room. Or a pool hall. Or bar. Or fast food joint or automotive shop. Or warehouse, thrift store, or — but only because it’s 9:30 a.m. and I ain’t the slightest bit hungry — a fried seafood shack or po-boy shop.

Jefferson’s got good eats in its own right. Crabby Jack’s is here, and at the French Canadian Quarter Festival this spring they fed me the best boudin I ever had, but at 9:30 a.m. the only way you can get a table, apparently, is if you’re an upside-down chair.

If it were 10 a.m. or even three hours later, I would have been in heaven. All’s I really required was a good strong cup a coffee and a seat, but this ain’t California or Seattle or even New Orleans. It’s the parish, as the locals call it, where you can’t exactly sit down without having a meal.

But how pretentious of them to refer to their parish as “the parish.” Don’t you think that’s pretty arrogant? Louisiana has a lot of parishes. They’re like counties everywhere else.

Whatever, I’m sure you’re more interested in what I’ve been eating San Franciscowise than Dot’s Diner’s biscuit with a fried egg on top, smothered in crawfish julie.

I will tell you: duck soup.

As always I have been on the prowl, trying to find the city’s best bowl of cold medicine and antidepressant.

It ain’t at Big Lantern here in the ‘hood, I can promise you that. Me and Hedgehog went there the last time we were in the city together, and I was fighting a cold. A fight, by the way, that I lost.

I’m human. I get sick. In fact, I get sick more than most people, being not only human but a hypochondriac. (Not that I’ve been diagnosed with hypochondria. I can just tell I have it.)

Anyway, I had wanted to show Hedgehog something special like Zuni, Delfina, or Slanted Door, but I felt too much like crap to eat anything but duck noodle soup, pea sprouts in garlic, and string beans with smoked pork.

There were dumplings, too. I forget what they were called on the dim sum menu. Some kind of “little buns,” I think. The ones that were soupy inside, they were great, but some weren’t so soupy. They had lost their juice. Not so great.

I can’t really complain about the duck soup because it wasn’t technically on the menu. Nor was it all that half bad. But the pea sprouts needed a lot of doctoring to taste like anything, and the beans with smoked pork were some of the worst things ever. About half of the beans were lifelessly old tough shriveled ones, overcooked. And the pork was like pork jerky. Very dry. Very tough. Which — granted — maybe that’s what smoked pork means in Chinese restaurants. I don’t often order it, and won’t often order it again, to be safe.

To their credit, the garlic pea sprouts and the beans and pork got better the next day for lunch, and better still the day after that, because I doctored and doctored them back to life.

The soup hit the spot, but as long as I’m healthy enough to get on BART and buses, I will be having my future duck soups in Chinatown, at Great Eastern Restaurant, thank you.

The legendary Jackson Street standby, it turns out, has a rich, flavorful dark broth with perfectly succulent roast duck and great homemade noodles. Or wontons. Or both. For $9, it’s the reigning duck noodle champion, in my book.

I would like to thank John’s Snack and Deli for being out of kimchi burritos again, or else I might never have found this out.

Oh, and Great Eastern also has crocodile soup and soft-shell turtle soup, by the way. In case you’re not sick when you go there. *

New favorite restaurant! *

GREAT EASTERN RESTAURANT

Daily: 10 a.m.–1 a.m.

649 Jackson, SF

(415) 986-5603

Beer and wine

MC/V

Don Pisto’s

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Don Pisto’s

DINE Not all restaurants have mantras, but Don Pisto’s must be “our kitchen is small.” It’s what we heard over and over from our server. Actually, we didn’t hear her; we just read her lips as best we could. When Don Pisto’s starts to fill up — and, being snug, it fills up quickly — it becomes as noisy a restaurant as I’ve been in. If you’ve ever stood near the end of a runway as a fully loaded 747 roared into the sky over your head, you’ll have some idea of the decibels, which reach such levels as to become a fourth dimension. I was deafened. Maybe that was a mercy.

Food chic has migrated outside, to trucks, in the past few years, so Don Pisto’s (which opened late in 2009) represents a countertrend of sorts. It’s a food truck, or at least the personality of a food truck, implanted into a handsome old building of exposed brick walls. From its trio of bordello-red lights along the sidewalk to its nicely burnished wooden tables and chairs and its youthful crowd, it’s about as visually appealing a place as could be. All it needs is a Mute button. (Food-truck chic, incidentally, strikes me as an odd development in the senescent years of petroleum, but it does suggest the profound American attachment between eating and motor vehicles. Fifty years ago, people were thrilled to drive to McDonald’s; now the restaurant drives to them.)

Considering the size of the kitchen, which is very much on display at the rear of the space and not at all big (especially considering that there is a semi-subterranean private dining room to go with the main one), the food is both electrifyingly good and reasonably priced. Part of the magic lies in menu brevity; on offer are about a half-dozen or so taco plates, a comparable number of house specialties, a smattering of seafood dishes, and a couple of sides. All of it fits on one side of a small card. (The other side holds the equally to-the-point drinks list: a few beers, a few wines, a margarita, a sangría made with açai berry juice.)

The kitchen’s marquee item is the hamburguesa ($9), and it’s possibly the most intense hamburger experience I’ve ever had. It’s not enhanced with cheese or swaddled within a fancy, heavily buttered bun. But the meat is “marinated” with bacon and onions, and bacon largely seems to mean pork fat, while marinated means permeated. The beefiness of the burger does survive the presence of these other formidable players, but they are mingled in a way that transforms them all. The result is something greater than the sum of its parts. It’s possible you could get a burger this intense from a street truck or cart, but it would be from one that was unusually conscientious and not in a hurry. If you were served this burger at a Wolfgang Puck restaurant, you would probably think it was well worth the $30 they would probably charge you.

At least two other items on the menu rival the hamburguesa for memorable verve. One is the platter of mussels ($13) simmered in white wine then stuffed with crumblings of house-made chorizo. The sausage brought out the mussels’ meatiness, while the toast spears were useful in sopping up the broth, mostly white wine and cilantro enlivened by the tasty chorizo.

The other is the Mexican sashimi ($11), flaps of tombo tuna laid out in a chain on a long, narrow platter and scattered with rounds of serrano chile, red-onion slivers, minced scallion, and cilantro, and finished with lime juice and soy sauce. The only minus is that you don’t get any bread to mop up the sauce. (On the other hand, you do get endless baskets of tortilla chips, along with an addictive tomatillo salsa, but the chips are thick and more than usually useless for sopping.)

The tacos are sized the way tacos should be sized: they’re more than bites or nibbles, but they don’t become unwieldy behemoths that spill half their contents like wet paper sacks when you pick them up. Each plate holds two tortillas, made from proper masa (not wheat flour), about three inches in diameter, and laid flat. You get to fold them yourself. Of the available fillings, I would say the carnitas ($8) — with onions, cilantro, and arbol salsa — is exceptional, with ropes of juicy meat just slightly crisped at the edges. We were also offered an unlisted vegetarian option ($6) of rice, pinto beans, cheese, and a smear of guacamole. It was commendable, though as a partier it wasn’t quite up to the standard of the carnitas. But a little diffidence isn’t going to drag down a party like the one at Don Pisto’s.

DON PISTO’S

Dinner: Tues.–Sun., 5:30 p.m.–12:30 a.m.

Brunch: Sat.–Sun., 11 a.m.–3 p.m.

510 Union, SF

(415) 395-0939

www.donpistos.com

Beer and wine

MC/V

Deafeningly loud

Wheelchair accessible; bathrooms on lower level

 

Appetite: Island bites, part five

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

 

HOTELS

Grand Hyatt Kauai, Poipu Beach:

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

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

 

Outrigger Waipoli Beach Resort, Kapaa:

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

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

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

 

DRINKS

Kauai Coffee Plantation, Eleele: 

The coast from the caffeinated climes of Kauai Coffee

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

 

Coffee plant at Kauai Coffee

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

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

Coffee beans roasting

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

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

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

 

Koloa Rum, Lihue: 

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

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

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

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

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

 

Java Kai, Kapaa: 

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

 

Kalaheo Cafe, Kalaheo: 

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


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

 

The secret life of Michael Peevey

Maria Poblet
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The secret life of Michael Peevey

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Inside a legislative hearing room at the state capitol, things were beginning to get uncomfortable. Roughly five weeks had passed since a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. pipeline explosion killed eight and leveled an entire San Bruno neighborhood, and this California Senate committee hearing was an early attempt to get answers.

San Bruno residents who lost loved ones in the deadly explosion huddled in the front row, their eyes fixed on company representatives and agency bureaucrats as they spoke. At the back of the room, a band of immaculately dressed PG&E executives and utility lawyers sat clustered together.

Richard Clark, director of the consumer protection and safety division of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), fielded questions from visibly frustrated state legislators. Sen. Dean Florez (D-Shafter) wanted know why the CPUC hadn’t done anything when PG&E ignored an impaired section of the ruptured pipeline even after it was granted $5 million to fix it.

“Did the PUC do any accounting when you gave them $5 million?” Florez demanded. “Do we just give them money and cross our fingers and hope they fix it? Is that what we do? Until some terrible tragedy occurs?”

Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) said the CPUC needed to step it up and start practicing serious hands-on oversight. He recalled a tragedy that occurred in 2008 when a gas leak in Rancho Cordova triggered a pipeline explosion, killing one person and injuring several others. Although an investigation determined that PG&E was at fault, the CPUC hadn’t yet gotten around to fining the company.

“We’ve got a pattern here,” Leno said. “And we’re not doing anything differently.”

Less than three weeks after CPUC staff members were grilled in Sacramento, Michael Peevey — president of the CPUC and the top energy official in the state — boarded an airplane for Madrid. He was embarking on a 12-day travel-study excursion, with stops in Sevilla and Barcelona, sponsored by the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy (CFEE).

Peevey’s wife, California Sen. Carol Liu (D-Glendale), was along for the trip. So were two other state senators, several members of the state Assembly, CPUC commissioner Nancy Ryan, and a host of representatives from the energy industry. The group included executives from Chevron, Mirant (now GenOn, the owner of the Potrero power plant), Covanta Energy Corporation, Shell Energy North America, and engineering giant AECOM. High-ranking executives of the state’s investor-owned utilities also participated, including Fong Wan, the senior vice president of energy procurement for PG&E.

Although strict rules normally govern commissioners’ interactions with parties that have a financial stake in the outcomes of commission rulings, there wasn’t anything especially unusual about Peevey traveling internationally with a group that included representatives from the same companies his regulatory commission oversees. CFEE trips happen every year. The nonprofit has footed the bill to fly groups of regulators, legislators, and utility executives to prime vacation destinations like Italy, Brazil, and South Africa in recent years, excursions organizers say are critical for educating top-level stakeholders about worldwide best practices for sustainable systems. However, groups such as The Utility Reform Network (TURN) have decried CFEE trips as “lobbying junkets.”

As PG&E and the CPUC both work to win back the public’s confidence after their latest deadly failure, it’s worth analyzing whether their relationship — shaped by vacations together at exotic locales — has grown too cozy.

 

THE BUDDY SYSTEM

CFEE isn’t the only nonprofit that regularly flies Peevey overseas for green travel tours with high-ranking utility executives, and the 12 days he spent in Spain wasn’t the only time he spent away from official duties and in the company of the corporations his commission regulates.

These controversial getaways are just a small part of Peevey’s involvement with private-sector interests. He also chairs the board of a nonprofit investment fund created as part of a $30 million settlement agreement with PG&E. Called the California Clean Energy Fund, it funnels money into private venture-capital funds that invest in green start-ups, plus a few companies in the fossil-fuel sector.

While legislators have voiced frustration that lax CPUC oversight of PG&E on pipeline-safety issues opened the door to disaster in San Bruno, inside observers are critical of the outright favors Peevey has granted utilities, such as guaranteeing an unprecedented, higher-than-ever profit margin for PG&E as part of the company’s 2004 bankruptcy settlement.

The CPUC is set up to perform as a watchdog agency, yet social and professional ties running deep within California’s insular energy community mean regulators sometimes run in the same circles as the executives who answer to them, making for cozier relationships than the general public might anticipate. It’s an old-fashioned insider game that one longtime observer wryly characterizes as “the buddy system.” But the buddy system can bring consequences.

As the public face of the CPUC, Peevey repeatedly has been thrust into the spotlight. He has absorbed advocates’ concerns about pipeline safety, rising electricity rates, SmartMeters, missed targets for energy efficiency, and municipalities’ David-vs.-Goliath battles with PG&E to implement community choice aggregation (CCA), to name a few. He’s a magnet for public scrutiny while occupying the center seat at commission meetings, but Peevey’s behind-the-scenes engagements with private-sector organizations bent on shaping statewide energy policy demonstrate how power is wielded in California’s energy world, a system in which regulators seem to be partnering with utilities rather than policing them.

Based at Pier 35 in San Francisco, CFEE’s board of directors is composed of a small group of officers, plus a long list of members who hail from some of the most prominent businesses nationwide. Shell, Chevron, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, AT&T, and PG&E all hold positions on CFEE’s membership board, and each entity chips in to fund the foundation’s activities and travel excursions.

The group also includes representatives from labor organizations like the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and mainstream environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council. Among the emeritus members of CFEE’s governing board are some high-ranking figures, such as CIA director-turned-Pentagon boss Leon Panetta. CFEE received $45,000 in donations from PG&E in 2009 (the most recent year available) and was granted similar amounts in prior years.

CFEE spokesperson P.J. Johnston, the son of former state senator and CFEE officer Patrick Johnston and the press secretary under former Mayor Willie Brown, described the trips as valuable opportunities for top-level stakeholders to gain insight on best practices and engage in noncombative dialogue on key issues.

“The idea for us was that it made sense to have someplace where it was nonconfrontational to engage in policy, work-type discussions,” Johnston explained. He added that the trips are “all about policy, on the 30,000-foot level,” and emphasized that discussions aren’t about specific decisions pending before the CPUC.

Loretta Lynch, a former president of the CPUC who brought a reformist spirit to the agency and was never shy about rebuking utilities, is skeptical of CFEE’s stated program goals. When she was first appointed to the commission, Lynch said, CFEE contacted her to ask where she wanted to travel. If the trips are arranged to fly regulators to destinations they’ve been itching to visit, she reasoned, must-see green innovations probably aren’t dictating the itineraries. “To me,” Lynch said, “they don’t have anything to study in mind.”

 

“PARTYING WITH THE JUDGE”

The CFEE trip to Spain included a briefing on developing wind energy from AES, a company working on wind and solar development in California that also operates polluting, gas-fired power plants in Huntington Beach, Long Beach, and Redondo Beach. There was a round table on solar energy featuring a presentation from the Independent Energy Producers Association, a trade group that regularly files petitions and comments on CPUC proceedings. The trip included a tour of a desalination plant, a talk from the president of the Madrid Chamber of Commerce, and discussions about California’s energy market. Scheduled activities ended by midafternoon on some days, and the itinerary left a Friday afternoon, Saturday, and Sunday in Sevilla wide open.

Asked to comment on concerns about inappropriate lobbying, Johnston said: “We’re not guarding against anyone’s potential behavior any more than we would be on the streets of Sacramento. We’re not setting ourselves up as the guardians. We’re not facilitating that, per se, either.” He added, “I realize there are critics of any kind of travel and any kind of commingling. But it is wise for us not to close our eyes to the rest of the world, and there’s not a great appetite for spending taxpayer money on these trips.”

Yet Lynch countered that there is an important distinction between the roles of Sacramento legislators and that of utility commissioners. “Regulators are not legislators,” Lynch said. “They’re more like judges. Their decisions have the power of a judge’s decision.” By inviting commissioners along on these lavish getaways, she said, “it’s as if you’re partying with the judge.”

Mindy Spatt, a spokesperson for TURN, echoed Lynch’s concerns. “These ostensibly educational trips are essentially lobbying junkets, where utilities … wine and dine legislators,” Spatt said. TURN raised the issue several years ago, she said, when Peevey joined a CFEE trip attended by a representative of Southern California Edison “just coincidentally at the exact same time that he was penning an alternate decision in Edison’s rate case.” She added: “In TURN’s perspective, the commissioners need to be more in touch with what actual utility customers are experiencing, rather than in touch with the top restaurants in Brazil.”

While Peevey is only one of a host of officials who attend CFEE trips, he has more than just a casual tie to the nonprofit. From 1973 to 1983, he served as president of the California Coalition for Environment and Economic Balance (CCEEB), an organization CFEE grew out of and whose membership shares some overlap with CFEE.

Based in San Francisco, CCEEB was founded by Edmund G. “Pat” Brown (Gov. Jerry Brown’s father) in 1973. CCEEB backed a late-1970s proposal to construct a series of nuclear power plants along the California coastline. More recently, the group honored BP with a 2009 award for environmental education — shortly before the company and lax federal regulators were responsible for the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

 

A YEAR IN THE LIFE

Spain wasn’t the only country Peevey jetted off to with complimentary airfare in 2010. According to a Form 700 filing with the Fair Political Practices Commission, he also traveled to Germany from Aug. 1–5 for a sustainable energy study tour organized by the Energy Coalition. Joining that trip were representatives from investor-owned utilities PG&E, Southern California Edison, and Sempra, plus various city officials and energy experts from the Swedish Energy Agency.

The group stayed at the Radisson Blu Berlin Hotel, which is famous for its AquaDom. “Standing at 25 meters high, it is the world’s largest cylindrical aquarium containing 1 million liters of saltwater,” according to the hotel website. All Radisson Blu Berlin guests have free access to “the hotel’s well-being area,” called Splash, which features a pool, sauna, steam bath, and fitness room.

Based in Irvine, the Energy Coalition’s Board of Directors is chaired by Warren Mitchell, a retired chair of the Southern California Gas Co. and San Diego Gas & Electric Co.. Another director is a utility lawyer who also sits on the board of directors of the Northeast Gas Association, a consortium of natural gas companies in the northeastern U.S.

Founded in the late 1970s by John Phillips to get large businesses to reduce energy consumption in partnership with utilities, the Energy Coalition has arranged excursions for years to bring energy regulators, city officials, and utility executives to Sweden (where Phillips’ wife was born) to exchange ideas on energy issues. The nonprofit organizes an annual summit called the Aspen Accord, “an energy policy forum where cities, utilities, regulators, and end-users collaborate to identify problems and propose solutions to our most pressing energy issues,” according to a 2009 tax filing. While it used to be held in Aspen, Colo., the most recent Aspen Accord was held at San Francisco’s Westin St. Francis. Peevey gave introductory remarks, and the conference featured talks from PG&E, among others.

Craig Perkins, executive director, told the Guardian that the Aspen Accord and study trips are designed to create a venue for major stakeholders to arrive at outside-the-box solutions. “What we try to do is get everybody out of their comfort zone, if you will — that’s the best way to support more creative thinking,” he said. Official regulatory proceedings are “so rigidly legalistic and bureaucratic that it almost prevents any creative thought from happening,” he added. “We’re not in San Francisco, we’re not in Sacramento, we’re not in corporate offices — let’s just talk about these really big issues, and really big challenges.”

The Germany tour included meetings with the Berlin Energy Agency, talks about climate policy, and a tour of an eco-community in Freiburg. Perkins said utility companies must to pay their own way on the trips, but costs are covered for governmental officials.

An Energy Coalition tax filing reveals that board members receive a monthly retainer of $1,000, quarterly meeting fees of $1,000, plus $500 for each board committee meeting. Teleconferences also result in $500 meeting fees.

Several years ago, the Energy Coalition partnered with PG&E to create the Business Energy Coalition, which paid businesses including Bank of America and the Westin St. Francis $50 per KW of energy savings for banding together to reduce energy during peak load hours. According to a tax filing, total annual Energy Coalition revenue dropped from $10.7 million in 2008 to $3.75 million in 2009 “due to large revenue receipts for participant incentives” for the Business Energy Coalition program, as “revenues were used for direct pass-through payments to program participants and contractors.” In 2006, according to a CPUC filing, PG&E paid the Energy Coalition $227,373 for unspecified consulting services.

In addition to the $8,880 trip to Spain (comped), and the $6,583 trip to Germany last year (comped), Peevey’s 2010 disclosure form shows that he also went to Australia May 14-19 to participate in a conference hosted by the Sydney-based Total Environment Center called “Smart Metering to Empower the Smart Grid” ($12,577, comped). And while it doesn’t show up on his FPPC filing, an agenda for CFEE’s Energy Roundtable Summit from Dec. 9-10 at the Carneros Inn in Napa lists Peevey as a participant. A glance through past filings suggests that 2010 was no anomaly; it’s a typical year in the life of a jet-setting utilities regulator.

 

GREEN CAPITALISM

Peevey once served as president of the Southern California Edison, an investor-owned utility, and was president of NewEnergy, Inc., an electricity company that later was sold to Williams Energy. Yet his professional image is that of a forward-thinker on climate change. According to a bio on the CPUC website, he’s received awards for achievements on green and sustainable energy from various organizations throughout California.

In 2005, speaking in Berkeley at an annual conference for the California Climate Action Registry, Peevey touted a list of his accomplishments on sustainable energy. “My final example of PUC actions on climate change is related to PG&E‘s bankruptcy,“ he said. “When they emerged from bankruptcy last year, one of many conditions of our support for their reorganization plan was that they create a $30 million Clean Energy Fund, devoted to investing in California businesses developing and producing clean technologies.“

What Peevey didn‘t mention is that he chairs the board of directors of that fund. As a “nonprofit venture capital fund,“ the obscure, San Francisco-based CalCEF sounds like an oxymoron. Based on the terms of the PG&E bankruptcy settlement, it‘s governed by a nine-member board consisting of three CPUC appointees, three PG&E appointees, and the rest selected jointly by the CPUC and PG&E appointees. Other board members include past PG&E executives, a former member of the California Energy Commission, and a former chair of the board of governors of the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO), the body that ensures statewide grid reliability and blocked the closure of the Mirant Potrero Power Plant for years.

The nonprofit’s stated mission is to catalyze clean energy investment to aid in the state’s transition away from fossil fuels. CalCEF president Dan Adler described it as a sort of seasoned guide for fledgling green companies that might otherwise fail to navigate the murky, complicated clean-energy sector. CalCEF is in a position to usher start-ups toward success with a combination of funding, networking, and insider wisdom on state energy policy.

Among the challenges that the clean-energy sector faces, Adler said, are the utilities themselves. “They are effectively monopoly, or oligopoly, controllers of the energy industry,” he said. “And they don’t like outside innovation coming and disrupting their work process or their relationship with their customers.”

CalCEF aims to guide the finance community “to be partners with what public policy is doing around clean tech and clean energy,” Adler went on. “There’s a tremendous amount of money to be made, but there’s also a lot of opportunity for money to be wasted. If you don’t have a private-sector investment community that understands these rules and can put their money alongside these rules in a collaborative framework, we’re very unlikely to achieve the really aggressive energy targets that California has set.”

Yet as one skeptical energy insider noted, “there are 15 to 20 other funds, with 10 times as much money, an hour south in the same field,” referring to the burgeoning clean-tech hub in Silicon Valley. It’s questionable whether the CPUC is actually fulfilling some dire need with CalCEF, this person said.

Lynch, not surprisingly, takes a dim view of CalCEF. The former CPUC president questions what business the CPUC has creating a private foundation to guide venture capital investment. “It is a fundamental distortion of the PUC’s authority,” she charged, “all in service of Peevey’s ambitions.”

Peevey’s economic disclosure showed that he holds more than $1 million in a private family trust, without disclosing whether private investments contributed to that fund.

Adler stressed that there is arms-length relationship between CalCEF board members and the companies that benefit from the fund’s investments. “Because we are a nonprofit, and because we have on our board members of the regulatory community, we recognized quickly that we can’t be making direct investments into companies,” said Adler, a former CPUC staff member who was highly regarded even by the critics of CalCEF. “So … we’ve picked the venture-capital funds that we wanted to partner with.”

CalCEF funnels its capital into three different for-profit investment firms, which in turn select the companies that will be included in CalCEF’s investment portfolio. Several directors of the partnering investment firms also sit on the boards of directors of the companies they invest in. The startups run the gamut, from carbon-offset outfits, to energy-efficient lighting manufacturers to solar and wind companies, to biofuels startups to various kinds of technology firms related to the smart grid.

But CalCEF has also poured money into companies that bolster the fossil-fuel industry. One of its first investments was CoalTek, a company developing technology for so-called “clean coal.” Asked to explain why, Adler told the Guardian, “We don’t have veto power on every deal that goes down.”

Adler said he personally believes that “there’s no such thing as clean coal,” but tempered this by adding, “there are some very smart people in our community who will tell you that there’s no future … without coal.”

Another CalCEF investment, DynaPump, is developing technology to make it more energy efficient to pump oil and gas. Asked about this decision, Adler responded: “I will say that when we were approached with this investment by the venture partner that ultimately undertook it, we had our misgivings. If you can save energy in the production of oil and gas, then you’re definitely making a contribution to overall energy efficiency.”

 

TAX-EXEMPT TESLA

There appear to be some closer-than-arms-length links between CalCEF board members and the investment fund’s beneficiaries. A bio for CalCEF director Nancy Pfund, for example, notes that in her capacity as manager of an outside investment fund, she had “worked closely” with Tesla Motors, a CalCEF investment. Tesla provided CalCEF’s first investment return earlier this year after Tesla went public. A principal of one of the investment firms that works with CalCEF, Stephen Jurvetson of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, holds Tesla shares in a personal trust, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Tesla manufactures sleek, electric, zero-emission sports cars with prices in the six-figures, and it’s gearing up to roll out a model that will cost somewhere closer to $50,000. The company’s success was helped by a sales-and-use-tax exclusion granted by the state of California last year. Peevey had a hand in that, too. Few Californians may have heard of the California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority (CAEATFA), a state body within the Office of the Treasurer, which has the power to authorize sales-tax exclusions for companies that are developing alternative energy technologies. Peevey has a seat on it.

In October 2009, according to a CAEATFA document, Tesla was granted a sales tax exclusion from that financing authority. The sports car manufacturer had received a tax break of $3.3 million as of December 2010, and stands to gain a tax break as large as $29.1 million, depending on its property purchases. As a CAEATFA member, Peevey approved the deal by proxy.

A central question is whether the CalCEF dollars that benefited Tesla and other CalCEF portfolio investments were originally derived from PG&E shareholder profits or ratepayer funds. Adler was careful to note that the initial $30 million came from company shareholders, not PG&E customers. But Lynch pointed out that every dime in PG&E coffers originates with the millions of customers who pay utility bills.

Lynch noted another provision of the bankruptcy settlement agreement, which guarantees PG&E a minimum annual profit of 11.2 percent, catapulting it forever into a higher rate of return than the 8 percent to 11 percent profit traditionally granted by the CPUC in prior decades. “They’re manipulating how big this bucket is to siphon off funds into programs like CalCEF,” Lynch said. “It’s all to give Peevey and his friends access — and to greenwash what was a very stinky deal for the ratepayer.”

 

ELUSIVE CLEAN ENERGY FUTURE

In California, a national leader in addressing climate change, the stakes are high in the energy sector. The CPUC is tasked not only with shoring up transmission-pipeline safety to prevent another San Bruno disaster, but helping to chart a course away from reliance on fossil fuel-powered energy sources.

CFEE, the Energy Coalition, and CalCEF share a common thread — their missions relate to advancing the cause of a clean energy future in California. And while utility funding and partnership is evident in all three operations, the overarching goal is understood to be green.

But as Adler observed, the utilities themselves present one of the greatest obstacles to progress on a clean-energy transition. While California has increased renewable energy sources, it’s done a poor job at supplanting fossil fuel generation with green alternatives, in part because the CPUC has allowed for increasing fossil fuel power generation even as renewable energy expands. According to a listing on the California Energy Commission website, nine natural gas power plants have won approval statewide and are moving toward construction, while six new ones are under review.

The CalCEF approach to addressing climate change, rather than aggressively targeting polluting industries, is to encourage the fledgling green industry in hopes of facilitating success in partnership with the financial sector. In many cases, the backers of the clean-tech companies are the same players behind the big energy giants.

Environmental advocates are critical. “If anyone thinks the CPUC is set up to serve public interests, forget that,” says Al Weinrub, executive director of the Local Clean Energy Alliance, a group that organized against PG&E’s ill-fated Proposition 16 last year. “They never have and they never will.”

Weinrub said he viewed proponents of green energy as falling into two camps: Moneyed interests motivated by a growing new market sector, and activists motivated by environmental and social justice causes. Major green investment firms “want to de-carbonize capitalism,” he observed. “But everything else stays the same.”

Peevey is considered a major driver behind the state’s climate change legislation, and he’s highly regarded for his dedication to green energy. Yet as long as the interlocking dynamic between energy regulators and California’s largest utilities goes unchallenged, change will only come in a way that’s as comfortable, profitable, and manageable for the state’s top polluters as they wish. And in a state with an aging energy infrastructure that’s vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, that pace isn’t nearly quick enough. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appetite: Napa’s affordable eats and surprising treats

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

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

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

Napa Valley Marriott: Sleep… and a superior burger 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Ubuntu: Vegetarian perfection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Bistro Sabor: Funky, fun Latin

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

 

Yountville Coffee Caboose: Coffee lovers

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

6523 Washington, Yountville

 

Grace’s Table: Local’s breakfast 

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

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

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

 

C Casa Taqueria: Breakfast to go 

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

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

 

Ad Hoc: Ok, one splurge

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

Summer fairs and festivals

Maria Poblet
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0
Summer fairs and festivals

ONGOING

Young At Art Festival de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, SF. (415) 695-2441, www.youngatartsf.com. Through May 22, free. The creative achievements of our city’s youth are celebrated in this eight day event curated and hosted by the de Young Museum.

* Oakland Asian Cultural Center Asian Pacific Heritage Festival Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 Ninth St., Oakl. (510) 637-0462, www.oacc.cc. Through May 26. Times and prices vary. Music, lectures, performances, family-friendly events in honor of Asian and Pacific American culture and traditions.

DIVAfest Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF. (415) 931-2699, www.theexit.org. Through May 28. Times and prices vary. Bastion of the alternative, EXIT Theatre showcases its 10th annual buffet of fierce women writers, performers, and directors. This year features two plays, beat poetry, musical exploration, and more.

* Yerba Buena Gardens Festival Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission and Third St., SF. (415) 543-1718, www.ybgf.org. Through Oct. 31. Times vary, free. A series of cultural events, performances, activities, music, and children and family programs to highlight the green goodness of SoMa’s landscaped oasis.

 

May 18-June 5

San Francisco International Arts Festival Various venues. (415) 399-9554, www.sfiaf.org. Times and prices vary. Celebrate the arts through with this mish-mash of artistic collaborations dedicated to increasing human awareness. Artists included hail from around the world and right here in the Bay Area.

 

May 21

* A La Carte & Art Castro St. between Church and Evelyn, Mountain View. (650) 964-3395, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-6pm, free. With vendors selling handmade crafts, microbrewed beers, fresh foods, a farmers market, and even a fun zone for kids, there’s little you won’t find at this all-in-one fun fair.• Asian Heritage Street Celebration Larkin and McAllister, SF. www.asianfairsf.com. 11am-6pm, free. This year’s at the country’s largest gathering of APA’s promises a Muay Thai kickboxing ring, DJs, and the latest in Asian pop culture fanfare — as well as tasty bites to keep your strength up.

Freestone Fermentation Festival Salmon Creek School, 1935 Bohemian Hwy, Sonoma. (707) 479-3557, www.freestonefermentationfestival.com. Noon-5pm, $12. Learn about the magical wonders of fermentation with hands-on and mouth-on demonstrations, exhibits, and tasty live food nibbles.

Uncorked! San Francisco Wine Festival Ghirardelli Square, SF. (415) 775-5500, www.ghirardellisq.com. 1-6pm, $45-50 for tasting tickets, free for other activities. Uncorked! brings you the real California wine experience with tastings, cooking demonstrations, and even a wine 101 class for those who are feeling not quite wine-refined.

 

May 20-29

SF Sex Worker Film and Art Festival Various venues, SF. (415) 751-1659, www.sexworkerfest.com. Times and prices vary. Webcam workshops, empowering film screenings, shared dialogues on plant healing to sex work in the age of HIV: this fest has everything to offer sex workers and the people who love ’em.

 

May 22

Lagunitas Beer Circus Lagunitas Brewing Co., 1280 N McDowell, Petaluma. (303) 447-0816, www.craftbeer.com. Noon-6pm, $40. All the wonders of a live circus — snake charmers, plate spinners, and sword swallowers — doing their thing inside of a brewery!

 

May 21-22

* Maker Faire San Mateo County Event Center, 2495 South Delaware, San Mateo. www.makerfaire.com. Sat, 10am- 8pm; Sun, 10am-6pm, $5-25. Make Magazine’s annual showcase of all things DIY is a tribute to human craftiness. This is where the making minds meet.• Castroville Artichoke Festival Castroville, Calif. (831) 633-0485, www.artichokefestival.org. Sat., 10am- 6pm; Sun., 11 am- 4:30 p.m., free. Pay homage to the only vegetable with a heart: the artichoke. This fest does just that, with music, parades, and camping.

 

May 28-29 

San Francisco Carnaval Harrison between 16th and 22nd St., SF. 10am-6pm, free. The theme of this year’s showcase of Latin and Caribbean culture is “Live Your Fantasy” — bound to bring dreams alive on the streets of the Mission.

 

June 3-12

Healdsburg Jazz Festival Various venues, Healdsburg. (707) 433-463, www.healdsburgjazzfestival.org. Times and prices vary. Bask in the lounge-lit glow of all things jazz-related at this celebration in Sonoma’s wine county.

 

June 3-July 3 

SF Ethnic Dance Festival Zellerbach Hall, Berk. and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF. www.worldartswest.org. Times and prices vary. A powerful display of world dance and music taking to the stage over the course of five weekends.

 

June 4

* Berkeley World Music Festival Telegraph, Berk. www.berkeleyworldmusicfestival.org. Noon-9pm, free. Fourteen world music artists serenade the streets and stores of Telegraph Avenue and al fresco admirers in People’s Park.

Huicha Music Festival Gundlach Bundschu Winery, 2000 Denmark St., Sonoma. (707) 938-5277, www.gunbun.com/hmfevent. 2-11pm, $55. Indie music in the fields of a wine country: Fruit Bats, J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr, Sonny and the Sunsets, and more.

 

June 4-5

Union Street Eco-Urban Festival Union from Gough to Steiner and parts of Octavia, SF. (800) 310-6563, www.unionstreetfestival.com. 10am-6pm, free. Festival goers will have traffic-free access to Cow Hollow merchants and restaurant booths. The eco-urban theme highlights progressive, green-minded advocates and products.

The Great San Francisco Crystal Fair Fort Mason Center, Building A., SF. (415) 383-7837, home.earthlink.net/~sfxtl/index.html. Sat., 10am-6pm; Sun., 10am-4pm, $6. Gems and all they have to offer: beauty, fashion, and mysterious healing powers.

 

June 5

* Israel in the Gardens Yerba Buena Gardens, SF. (415) 512-6420, www.sfjcf.org. 11am-5pm, free. One full day of food, music, film, family activities, and ceremonies celebrating the Bay Area’s Jewish community and Israel’s 63rd birthday.

 

June 10-12

Harmony Festival Sonoma County Fairgrounds, 1350 Bennett Valley, Santa Rosa. www.harmonyfestival.com. 10am-10pm, $45 one day, $120 for three day passes. This is where your love for tea, The Flaming Lips, goddess culture, techno, eco-living, spirituality, and getting drunk with your fellow hippies come together in one wild weekend.

Queer Women of Color Film Festival Brava Theater. 2789 24th St., SF. (415) 752-0868, www.qwocmap.org. Times vary, free. A panel discussion called “Thinkers and Trouble Makers,” bisects three days of screenings from up-and-coming filmmakers with stories all their own.

 

June 11-12

* Live Oak Park Fair 1301 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 227-7110, www.liveoakparkfair.com. 10am-6pm, free. This festival’s 41st year brings the latest handmade treasures from Berkeley’s vibrant arts and crafts community. With food, face-paint, and entertainment, this fair is perfect for a weekend activity with the family.

 

June 11-19 

San Mateo County Fair San Mateo County Fairgrounds. 2495 S. Delaware, San Mateo. www.sanmateocountyfair.com. June 11, 14, 18, and 19, 11am-10pm; all other days, noon-10pm, $10 for adults. It features competitive exhibits from farmers, foodies, and even technological developers — but let’s face it, we’re going to see the pig races.

 

June 12

* Haight Ashbury Street Fair Haight between Stanyan and Ashbury, SF. www.haightashburystreetfair.org. 11am-5:30pm, free. Make your way down to the grooviest corner in history and celebrate the long-standing diversity and color of the Haight Ashbury neighborhood, featuring the annual battle of the bands.

 

June 16-26

Frameline Film Festival Various venues, SF. www.frameline.org. Times and prices vary. This unique LGBT film festival comes back for its 35th year showcasing queer documentaries, shorts, and features.

 

June 17-19 Sierra Nevada World Music Festival Mendocino County Fairgrounds. 14400 CA-128, Boonville. (916) 777-5550, www.snwmf.com. Fri, 6pm-midnight; Sat, 11am-midnight; Sun, 11am-10pm, $60 for Friday and Sunday day pass; $70 for Saturday day pass, $150 three day pass. Featuring Rebulution, Toots and the Maytals, and Jah Love Sound System, this fest comes with a message of peace, unity, and love through music.

 

June 18 

Summer SAILstice Encinal Yacht Club, 1251 Pacific Marina, Alameda. (415) 412-6961, www.summersailstice.com. 8am-8pm, free. Boat building, sailboat rides, sailing seminars, informational booths, music, a kid zone, and of course, wind, sun, and water.

Pinot Days Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason Center, SF. (415) 382-8663, www.pinotdays.com. 1-5pm, $50. Break out your corkscrews and head over to this unique event. With 220 artisan winemakers pouring up tastes of their one-of-a-kind vino, you better make sure you’ve got a DD for the ride home.

 

June 18-19

North Beach Festival Washington Square Park, SF. (800) 310-6563, www.northbeachchamber.com. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-6pm, free. Make your way down to the spaghetti capital of SF and enjoy food, music, arts and crafts booths, and the traditional blessing of the animals.

Marin Art Festival Marin Civic Center, San Rafael. (415) 388-0151, www.marinartfestival.com. 10am-6pm, $10. A city center designed by Frank Lloyd Wright plays host to this idyllic art festival. Strolling through pavilions, sampling wines, eating grilled oysters, and viewing the work of hundreds of creative types.

 

June 20-Aug 21

Stern Grove Music Festival Stern Grove. Sloat and 19th Ave., SF. (415) 252-6252, www.sterngrove.org. Sundays 2pm, free. This free outdoor concert series is a must-do for San Francisco summers. This year’s lineup includes Neko Case, the SF Symphony, Sharon Jones, and much more.

 

June 25-26

San Francisco Pride Celebration Civic Center Plaza, SF; Parade starts at Market and Beale. (415) 864-FREE, www.sfpride.org. Parade starts at 10:30am, free. Gays, trannies, queers, and the rest of the rainbow waits all year for this grand-scale celebration of diversity, love, and being fabulous.• San Francisco Free Folk Festival Presidio Middle School. 450 30th Ave., SF. (415) 661-2217, www.sffolkfest.org. Noon-10pm, free. Folk-y times for the whole family — not just music but crafts, dance workshops, crafts, and food vendors too.

 

June 29-July 3

International Queer Tango Festival La Pista. 768 Brannan, SF. www.queertango.freehosting.net. Times vary, $10-35. Spice up your Pride (and Frameline film fest) week with some queer positive tango lessons in culturally diverse, welcoming groups of same sex couples.

 

June 30-July 3

High Sierra Music Festival Plumas-Sierra Fairgrounds, Quincy. www.highsierramusic.com. Gates open at 8am Thursday. $205 weekend pass, $90 parking fee. Yonder Mountain String Band, My Morning Jacket, and most importantly, Ween. Bring out your sleeping bags for this four day mountaintop grassroots festival.

 

July 2

Vans Warped Tour Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View. www.vanswarpedtour.com. 11am, $46-72. Skating, pop punk, hardcore, screamo, and a whole lot of emo fun.

 

July 2-3

Fillmore Jazz Festival Fillmore between Jackson and Eddy, SF, 1-800-310-6563, www.fillmorejazzfestival.com. 10am-6pm, free. Thousands of people get jazzed-up every year for this musical feast in a historically soulful neighborhood.

 

July 4

City of San Francisco Fourth of July waterfront celebration Pier 39, Embarcadero and Beach, SF. (415) 709-5500, www.pier39.com. Noon-9:30pm, free. Ring in the USA’s birthday on the water, with a day full of music and end up at in the city’s front row when the fireworks take to the sky.

 

July 9-10

Renegade Craft Fair Fort Mason Festival Pavilion. Buchanan and Marina, SF. (312) 496-3215, www.renegadecraft.com. 11am-7pm, free. Put a bird on it at this craft fair for the particularly indie at heart.

 

July 14-24

Midsummer Mozart Festival Various Bay Area venues. (415) 627-9141, www.midsummermozart.org. Prices vary. You won’t be hearing any Beethoven or Schubert at this midsummer series — the name of the day is Mr. Mozart alone.

 

July 16-17

Connoisseur’s Marketplace Santa Cruz between Camino and Johnson, Menlo Park. (650) 325-2818, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-6pm, free. Let the artisans do what they do best — you’ll polish off the fruits of their labor at this outdoor expo of artisan food, wine, and craft.

 

July 21-Aug 8

SF Jewish Film Festival Various Bay Area venues. www.sfjff.org. Times and prices vary. A three week smorgasbord of world premiere Jewish films at theaters in SF, Berkeley, the Peninsula, and Marin County.

 

July 22-Aug 13

Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival Menlo School, 50 Valparaiso, Atherton. (650) 330-2030, www.musicatmenlo.org. Classical chamber music at its best: this year’s theme “Through Brahms,” will take you on a journey through Johannes’ most notable works.

 

July 23-Sept 25

 SF Shakespeare Festival Various Bay Area venues. www.sfshakes.org. Various times, free. Picnic with Princess Innogen and her crew with dropping a dime at this year’s production of Cymbeline. It’s by that playwriter guy… what’s his name again?

 

July 30

Oakland A’s Beer Festival Eastside Club at the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum, 7000 Coliseum Way, Oakl. www.oakland.athletics.mlb.com. 4:05-6:05pm, free with game ticket. Booze your way through the Oakland A’s vs. Minnesota Twins game while the coliseum is filled with brewskies from over 30 microbreweries, there for the chugging in your souvenir A’s beer mug.

 

July 30-31

 Berkeley Kite Festival Cesar Chavez Park, 11 Spinnaker, Berk. www.highlinekites.com. 10am-5pm, free. A joyous selection of Berkeley’s coolest kites, all in one easy location.

 

July 31

Up Your Alley Dore between Folsom and Howard, SF. www.folsomstreetfair.com. 11am-6pm, $7-10 suggested donation. Whether you are into BDSM, leather, paddles, nipple clamps, hardcore — or don’t know what any of the above means, this Dore Alley stroll is surprisingly friendly and cute once you get past all the whips!

 

Aug 1-7

SF Chefs Various venues, SF. www.sfchefs2011.com. Times and prices vary. Those that love to taste test will rejoice during this foodie’s paradise of culinary stars sharing their latest bites. Best of all, the goal for 2011’s event is tons of taste with zero waste.

 

Aug 7

SF Theater Festival Fort Mason Center. Buchanan and Marina, SF. www.sftheaterfestival.org. 11am-5pm, free. Think you can face about 100 live theater acts in one day? Set a personal record at this indoor and outdoor celebration of thespians.

 

Aug 13

San Rafael Food and Wine Festival Falkirk Cultural Center, 1408 Mission, San Rafael. 1-800-310-6563, www.sresproductions.com. Noon-6pm, $25 food and wine tasting, $15 food tasting only. A sampler’s paradise, this festival features an array of tastes from the Bay’s best wineries and restaurants.

 

Aug 13-14

* Nihonmachi Street Fair Post and Webster, SF. www.nihonmachistreetfair.org. 11am-6pm, free. Founded by Asian Pacific American youths, this Japantown tradition is a yearly tribute to the difficult history and prevailing spirit of Asian American culture in this SF neighborhood.

 

Aug 20-21

Oakland Art and Soul Festival Entrances at 14th St. and Broadway, 16th St. and San Pablo, Oakl. (510) 444-CITY, www.artandsouloakland.com. $15. A musical entertainment tribute to downtown Oakland’s art and soul, this festival features nationally-known R&B, jazz, gospel, and rock artists.

 

Aug 20-22

* SF Street Food Festival Folsom St from Twenty Sixth to Twenty Second, SF. www.sfstreetfoodfest.com. 11am-7pm, free. All of the city’s best food, available without having to go indoors — or sit down. 2011 brings a bigger and better Street Food Fest, perfect for SF’s burgeoning addiction to pavement meals.

 

Aug 29-Sept 5

Burning Man Black Rock City, Nev. (415) TO-FLAME, www.burningman.com. $320. This year’s theme, “Rites of Passage,” is set to explore transitional spaces and feelings. Gather with the best of the burned-out at one of the world’s weirdest, most renowned parties.

 

Sep 10-11

* Autumn Moon Festival Street Fair Grant between California and Broadway, SF. (415) 982-6306, www.moonfestival.org. 11am-6pm, free. A time to celebrate the summer harvest and the end of summer full-moon, rejoice in bounty with the moon goddess.

 

Sept 17-18

SF International Dragon Boat Festival California and Avenue D, Treasure Island. www.sfdragonboat.com. 10am-5pm, free. The country’s largest dragon boat festival sees beautiful man-powered boats take to the water in 300 and 500 meter competitive races.

 

Sept 23-25

SF Greek Food Festival Annunciation Cathedral. 245 Valencia, SF. www.sfgreekfoodfestival.org. Fri.-Sat., 11am-10pm; Sun., noon-9pm, free with advance ticket. Get your baba ghanoush on during this late summer festival, complete with traditional Greek dancing, music, and wine.

 

Sept 25

Folsom Street Fair Folsom between 7th and 12th St., SF. www.folsomstreetfair.org. 11am-6pm, free. The urban Burning Man equivalent for leather enthusiasts, going to this expansive SoMa celebration of kink and fetish culture is the surest way to see a penis in public (you dirty dog!).

 

Sept 30-Oct 2

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Speedway Meadows, Golden Gate Park, SF. www.strictlybluegrass.com. 11am-7pm, free. Pack some whiskey and shoulder your banjo: this free three day festival draws record-breaking crowds — and top names in a variety of twangy genres — each year.

 

Items with asterisks note family-fun activities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

A tale of two cocktail trends

Maria Poblet
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A tale of two cocktail trends

virginia@sfbg.com

In the shifting sea of drink menus around San Francisco, one of the world’s leading cocktail cities, excellent cocktails have long been the standard rather than the stand-out. Keeping up on trends can be exhausting — but staying abreast of a great mixology culture can be well worth the hefty bar tabs. This week, we examine two new shakes to the cocktail scene that hail from outside city limits — and have us asking the bartender for another round.

 

BARREL AGING

Thanks to Jeffrey Morgenthaler of southeast Portland, Ore.’s Clyde Common restaurant, the barrel-aged cocktail phenomenon has taken off over the past year. If you’re new to the aging scene, here’s the gist: take an already brilliant drink — Morgenthaler finds his muse in a classic negroni — and age it in a barrel for weeks or months, letting the flavors meld into a more integrated whole.

And barrel-aged cocktails have made it to the Bay Area in a big way. Joel Teitelbaum of Zero Zero launched a barrel-aged negroni of his own earlier this spring. Made with Beefeater gin, Campari, sweet vermouth, and aged in an American oak barrel for three months, it’s a sexy, lush version — even deeper than an iconic negroni when you taste the two side by side. Still thirsty? Head in a slightly different direction with Teitelbaum’s negroni bianco: Leopold’s gin, infused Cocchi, and white vermouth.

On a recent trip across the bay to Oakland’s forward-thinking Adesso, I tried a house barrel-aged martini made with Karlsson’s Gold vodka, an already unusual (read: flavorful and high quality) spirit. The white vermouth and vodka meld into a sophisticated, layered martini.

If you see a barrel-aged cocktail on a menu, order it — and quickly, since a bar’s stock of these beauties can run out rapidly. Even better, sample one next to its young version to fully comprehend the difference a little oak aging can make. It’s a trend whose novelty may pass eventually, but the barrel aging technique can put a new spin on your favorite cocktail.

 

WINE COUNTRY RISING

Sonoma County has long had one of the best bartenders in the country in Scott Beattie, formerly of Cyrus and now at Spoonbar, even if wine country on the whole continues to be far better known for, well, the wine. But a cocktail renaissance seems to be on the rise.

In early 2009, a wave of new restaurants debuted, including Bardessono in Yountville, whose farm-fresh cocktail menu was assembled by SF experts like Thad Vogler. Around the same time, old school-spirited Jack & Tony’s opened in Santa Rosa, heavy on boozy cocktail classics and whiskey selections. Sweeping change did not follow; nor has the wine country become a cocktail mecca. Yet slowly, steadily, it has been gaining momentum.

Healdsburg’s Spoonbar serves some of the best cocktails anywhere. Recently, beloved culinary destinations like Terra opened a more casual bar focused around — you guessed it — cocktails. At Bar Terra, you can get a Jack Rose or a Rob Roy as easily as a glass of Cep Vineyards rosé.

One of the best places for cocktails in Sonoma county is Medlock Ames’ Alexander Valley Bar. It’s a winery, but if you arrive after 5 p.m., walk around to the back side of the tasting room. There you’ll find a retro-casual bar with design touches of Prohibition and the Wild West mingling with a vintage photo booth and a bar lined with herbs and citrus. Cocktails like the Verdant Virtue/Vice exemplify the garden fresh harvest of ingredients from Medlock’s own backyard. Hendrick’s Gin and green Chartreuse are amplified with mint, basil, rosemary, cucumber, and lime to yield refreshing beauty. A nocino manhattan plays heavier and muskier with Buck Bourbon, Carpano Antica, and the nuttiness of nocino walnut liqueur.

And while wine still reigns in Napa and Sonoma counties, contests like Charbay and Perfect Puree’s second annual wine country cocktail competition, held May 16, showcase the increasing array of talent in both counties. It may not be up with the big cities yet, but the region has caught onto the cocktail renaissance, infusing it with its fresh local flair. It would seem that the wine country is not just for winos anymore. 

Subscribe to Virginia’s twice monthly newsletter, the Perfect Spot.

 

Duck soup

Maria Poblet
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Duck soup

I shouldn’t be so hard on Kaiser. I myself am prone to misdiagnoses. Example: the knee injury I sang the blues about two weeks ago that turned out to be a hamstring problem.

When I passed out in the bathroom at 5 a.m. and came to, all bonked and a-crumple, my first thought was Too Much Whiskey. Then I realized I hadn’t drunk anything for at least two weeks. So I must have been dehydrated.

Whatever. As you know, my cure for almost anything — including the common cold, uncommon anxiety, hammies, depression, and dehydration — is roast duck noodle soup. So when I saw Thailand Restaurant on Castro Street across from the theater, after all these years, I wondered if they had it.

The last time I ate at Thailand Restaurant, just to give you an idea, might have been the first time I had ever eaten Thai food. I’m pretty sure it was the first time I had tom ka gai. We’re talking early ’90s.

I was hungry. Then, I was always hungry. Now I’m just hungry when I’m awake. Like last week when I renoticed Thailand Restaurant. I was awake, depressed, dehydrated, and hamstring challenged. Plus some other things, so even though it was only 5 p.m., I ascended the steps.

And they did have roast duck noodle soup! Like a regular walking into a bar, I ordered it before I even sat down. Then I sat down. In the window. And I looked out the window and thought about my old friend Satchel Paige the Pitcher.

He lives in Thailand now. Teaches English, is married to a Thai woman named Ann Paige the Pitcher, and they have cute little half-Thai, half-tall kids. Every couple years or so I get to see them, usually in Sacramento.

I would like to go to Thailand one day.

I’m not sure what I would do there, besides eat, but the other day Satchel Paige the Pitcher surprised the pus out of me by knocking on my door.

I opened it and just blinked and blinked.

“Hi Dani,” he said. It’s dark in my apartment. It’s also small.

“Satchel Paige the Pitcher!” I said. And I gave him a big hug and welcomed him to my small, dark apartment. Which he barely fit into.

Embarrassingly, I was still in my pajamas, even though it was afternoon. I was writing; I just hadn’t bothered to get dressed yet because sometimes, you know, I don’t. On writing days. I am rarely visited, and even rarelier by Satchel Paige the Pitcher.

I mean really, the only person who ever drops by besides Earl Butter — who doesn’t count cause he lives upstairs — is the Maze. And the Maze comes at night, so I tend to have clothes on. Lately he brings chicken saag from my new favorite restaurant, Pakwan, because it’s one of the worst restaurants in the city to eat in at, and I happen to live two blocks away.

And I happen to love their chicken saag.

But that ain’t what this is about. This is about me being in the darkest of moods, for the third week in a row, and sitting in a second-story window, looking down on Castro Street, thinking about Satchel Paige the Pitcher and waiting for duck soup to come fix everything.

He’s moving back, you know, he thinks. Maybe. Probably, but to Sacramento. And do you know why? Because in Thailand, he says, girls don’t play team sports.

His cute little kids being girls, and Thai ones, I can’t think of a better reason to move to Sacramento. Where would I be, for example, without team sports? I could draw a line all the way back to my earliest memories: football, soccer, baseball, football, volleyball, baseball, golf. Ironically, that was where I started: golf. But that ain’t a team sport, and I already said I’m not going to golf.

There must be a gene. Before I am a writer, a musician, a woman even, or a queer, I am an athlete. Satch has got it. His kids, probably. And if I don’t get back out there, soon — happy birthday to me — I am going to go absolutely fucking bonkers. Here’s my soup. 

THAILAND RESTAURANT

Sun.–Thurs. 11 a.m.–10 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat. 11 a.m.–10:30 p.m.

438-A Castro, SF

(415) 863-6868

Beer and wine

MC/V

Appetite: Island bites, part four

Andrew Lam
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Appetite: Island bites, part four

I spent some brilliant days — and the first three of five installations in my Hawaiian series — exploring Oahu. But based on what every traveler I’d ever met had told me, I knew it could only get better with Kauai. This time around, let’s talk the restaurant scene on Kauai – next time, I’ll feature its hotels and drink. 

But first, the ugly: traffic jams are jarring shocks on the island’s east side near Lihue, particularly in Kapaa. One-lane roads at a dead stop along stetches of strip malls are downright irritating. I almost missed my flight home when it took one hour to go 10 miles from Kapaa to Lihue Airport (the day before the same route took 10 minutes).

But on the South and North shores there was little to no traffic. Even in Lihue, where the main airport is based, mountains and fields surround the tiny town. Kauai is imminently more laid back than the already relaxed Oahu — a distinction I savored, even if Honolulu is clearly the leader in food and dining.

A helicopter ride over the famed Napali Coast and around the entirety of Kauai is nothing short of magical. Though you will spend roughly $350 per person, it’s worth it. It cost $250 when we payed in cash at Inter-island Helicopters – whose friendly, fun staff and pilot gave us a wonderful, hour-long tour, just take note: those shiny, red copters on the website are not the ones we rode, ours was more like an old army helicopters, with open air, no doors — terrifying to take off in, but one quickly acclimates to the feeling.

You’ll need a helicopter ride to take in the Napali Coast, sans blisters

I can honestly say this was one of the best travel adventures of my life, and I’ve traveled to five continents. Views are breathtaking, yes, but getting up close and personal is the real thrill.

On a less windy day, our pilot flew close into craters and mountain niches, through the gorgeous Waimea Canyon, over blowholes and coffee plantations, and along the coastline. We covered the entire island, smelled rain from the highest peaks, and took in the pristine blue of the ocean.

Whatever you do on Kauai, do this. Next time I will try an ocean boat ride, the only other way to actually see the Napali Coast without hiking it (an arduous journey meant for the hardcore and even then, limited paths mean you can’t hike it in its entirety). I’m sure a boat ride can be full of thrills, but it can’t give the all-encompassing view of the entire island you can see via air.

But no matter how you see it, see Kauai at least once in your life. It’s incredible how a tiny island can enchant. Even for a big city girl like myself, Kauai had a way of wrapping my days up in its mellow spell.

 

CHEAP EATS

Mark’s Place, Lihue:

Mark’s Place musubi, for those who like their Hawaiian snacks authentic

My favorite plate lunch of the trip, Mark’s Place is a true local’s gem. It’s a clean hole-in-the-wall with creative daily specials and desserts and salads on top of traditional loco moco, beef stew, and chicken katsu.

Specials were not just ultra-fresh, they were gourmet. I loved a dish of blackened mahi mahi ($8.95) gently drizzled in a lilikoi (passion fruit) mustard sauce, served over quinoa and sauteed spinach. A green salad in papaya seed dressing accompanied the fish.

At that price, the dish was a steal, and you’d expect it to shine in any restaurant setting – only you order it as take-out in an industrial neighborhood frequented by blue collar workers, with whom you’ll be sharing one outdoor picnic table. Mark’s Place’s simple, fresh musubi ($2.25), particularly the teriyaki beef variety, makes a fine snack.

 

Kountry Kitchen, Kapaa: 

Kountry Kitchen was my top breakfast on Kauai. Packed with locals, my eyes widened at the sight of what must have been the most massive pancakes I’ve seen (and I’ve had some gigantic ones). Good thing I saw them before ordering two — it’s a mere $6-8 for two pancakes, which could feed a few tourist between them.

Macadamia nut pancakes are a popular pick at Kountry Kitchen, but I couldn’t resist the day’s special: Elvis pancakes. Yes, this means peanut butter and bananas, the King’s beloved combo. Accompanied with awesome housemade coconut syrup, they were perfection.

 

Shrimp Station, Waimea:

If you’re going to Waimea, don’t miss this classic shrimp window with outdoor picnic tables, reminiscent of the shrimp trucks and window fronts on Oahu’s North Shore. Shrimp Station serves killer coconut shrimp, plus beer-battered, garlic, or sweet chili garlic.

A basket of coconut shrimp was juicy and savory with ginger-papaya tartar sauce. Our pace was slow while we lingered at the picnic tables in this sleepy little town. Quintessential southern Kauai.

 

Koloa Fish Market, Koloa: 

An authentic, plate lunch take-out only shop, Koloa Fish Market is beloved in southern Kauai. It serves heaps of Kalua pork, lau lau (shredded pork wrapped in a taro leaf), and all kinds of poke, from raw ahi to octopus. Ordering food and taking it back to our Grand Hyatt porch with a bottle of wine was a pleasure.

Though cheap and plentiful, I found Koloa’s flavors not particularly impressive. I’m crazy about fish (raw, cooked, any which way), but this is no pristine poke experience. Fresh as it is, I find eating at similar hole-in-the-walls around Hawaii, authenticity seems to mean hunks of seafood drowning in oil — well-prepared but lacking that ultra-fresh, of-the-sea taste. I find plenty to love in local Hawaiian cooking, but personally find more flavor and finesse with raw fish in other culinary styles.

Salty, fall-apart pork (in lau lau or Kalua styles) was better than the seafood but not as satisfying for me as pulled pork barbecue from the South. 

 

Papalani Gelato, Koloa: 

It’s no Italian gelato or San Francisco ice cream (à la Humphry or Bi-Rite), but Papalani Gelato is organic, with straightforward island flavors like lilikoi, mango, papaya, and macadamia nut. It’s the go-to local ice cream shop (as opposed to sugary, lower quality cream at the shop a couple doors down – I tried both).

 

Mermaids Cafe, Kapaa:

Mermaids Cafe is about one thing: ahi nori wraps ($9.45). Basically a giant burrito made with a green tortilla with a layer of nori, or seawood, they come stuffed with seared ahi tuna tossed in wasabi cream, pickled ginger, and rice.

This hippie-spirited walk-up counter isn’t quite what I’d call gourmet – there is something slightly amateur about the food (are things cooked in burnt oil?) But the cafe does bring fresh, vegetarian-oriented food and hippie clientele to the island — and those factors hardly mask its Hawaiian spirit. Plus, you can fill up for $10.

 

MID-RANGE

22 North, Lihue: 

Maybe the best meal I had in Kauai, and certainly the most creative, 22 North is on the grounds of Kilohana Plantation. Kilohana, if you squint past the touristy jewelry shops and such, is among the last remaining glimpses of the sugar glory days of Hawaii. The 1930s spirit prevails, lazy breezes blowing through the original house (where a few rooms still showcase ’30s decor), while whiffs of whole pig roasting underground in expectation of a luau intoxicate.

Tourist trappings aside, I enjoyed an hour and a half ride on the plantation’s 1939 Whitcomb diesel engine train, taking in 50 varieties of fruits and vegetables growing alongside the tracks that ran through the working farm. The best part was stopping to feed bread to a herd of pigs.

Afterwards, I sat in the courtyard of the plantation house for a meal at 22 North. Farm fresh is no exaggeration here — many ingredients come straight from the surrounding fields. 

The playful, contemporary hand given to many a dish is reason enough to dine here. But 22 North’s cocktails were the best I had on Kauai. Intriguingly, one was unlike any other I’ve had before – a rare occurrence for me anywhere, much less in a region not known for cocktails. Blue Rhum ($8) impressed me with its light rum, home-grown Kilohana pineapple, lime, and a stunning frond of African blue basil – it was aromatic and sophisticated. 

The rest were a mixed bag. The Paloma Fresca ($8) was unable to find a harmony between its tequila and grapefruit, but it benefited from local citrus and Kiawe honey. Fried Green Tomatoes ($11) gave a nod to the Southern United States with tomatoes from the farm encrusted in cornmeal, served with a romaine salad in a Maui onion buttermilk chive dressing.

22 North’s burger ($11) was satisfyingly juicy, made with local meat (rotates between beef, lamb, and veal). The cubano sandwich ($9) was pulled pork and house-cured ham laden with homemade pickles and mustard. The restaurant serve gougères ($5) made with fennel honey butter, baccala fritters ($7) with macadamia nut romesco, and sesame-crusted tuna ($28) poached in carrot, ginger, and white wine with a “forbidden rice cake.”

Dessert (all $8) is another highlight here. Local fruit pie benefits from even more home-grown produce, served warm, enclosed in a surprisingly French pie crust that was flaky and buttery, and topped with a scoop of Kauai’s own Lappert’s vanilla ice cream.

22 North has four different “adult floats” ($12) all made with ice cream and beer or spirits — oddly delightful. Though I’ve had beer floats before, I’ve never had one with the refreshing tang of the coconut porter float made with Maui Brewing Co. coconut porter and toasted coconut.

All around, this meal was the most uniquely satisfying of my Kauai visit, and the one that best represents local bounty.

 

EXPENSIVE

Tidepools, Koloa:

Tidepools at the otherworldly Grand Hyatt captures the magic of its setting in a Disneyland-esque way. It almost feels fake: tiki torches light up a lagoon as you dine under open-air, thatched-roof huts listening to frogs croak. Idyllic.

Certainly the menu reads old school – and there is a dated air about the place, but there are culinary surprises that hold the spell of the setting. It’s $32-55 for entrees and a more reasonable $9-15 for appetizers. You’re right: in the scheme of fine restaurants, it’s not worth that high price tag. But you’re in Kauai and this is one of the best meals you’ll have there, in an environment that helps that cost go down more easily.

Salads (like $9 Manoa lettuce with a creamy Maui onion-garlic dressing and shaved manchego cheese) and sashimi starters (like $15 ahi with Hawaiian hearts of palm and shiso leaf) are fresh and pleasing. Brandt Farms organic prime NY strip steak ($48) is shockingly juicy when cooked medium-rare, and packed with flavor. The other surprise is the crowd-pleasing macadamia nut mahi mahi ($32): lightly encrusted in nuts over coconut jasmine rice in a tropical rum buerre blanc. It tastes of Hawaii: redolent of the sea, gently sweet, with a nutty goodness.


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

 

Ideale

Maria Poblet
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0
Ideale

paulr@sfbg.com

Grant Street is so strongly associated with Chinatown that it’s easy to forget there’s a segment of it north of Columbus. There, running along the west shoulder of Telegraph Hill, it becomes a part of — and maybe the heart of — Little Italy. In its narrowness and festive congestion, the street does come to seem Roman, and, as in Rome, it has better restaurants than the bigger, gaudier boulevard nearby. American tourists in Rome, it is said, will not leave the well-lighted thoroughfares to investigate dimmer side streets, so those thoroughfares are where you’re most likely to find rip-off joints with “turistica” menus in English.

Our own Columbus Avenue, while splendid in its way, is a kind of Fisherman’s Wharf of Italian cooking, so it’s no surprise that a restaurant like Ideale would situate itself on nearby Grant, out of sight of the hoi polloi, who are attracted to neon and other manifestations of brightness the way moths are to porch lamps. Ideale, which opened in late in the 1990s, is the kind of place you would seek out if you were in Rome; it draws the locals, and it is a curious fact of even the most touristy neighborhoods that they’re filled with locals. Locals are the fourth dimension in such one-dimensional universes.

The restaurant is bigger than it appears, because its second dining room, in the adjoining storefront, is fully separated from the main one and the entryway. And (huzzah!) its walls are hung with splendid paintings, which we supposed to be oil on stretched canvas, with impasto visible even from distant tables, like the little nubs you see in linen. There are few spectacles more discouraging to me than bare restaurant walls. The sweeps of emptiness make me think of prison, or foreclosure.

Chef Maurizio Bruschi is said to have learned to cook from his grandmother, and his style accordingly emphasizes the Italian classics, at least as those are understood in this country. Your first clue about the cooking can be found in the house-baked bread, which in true Italian fashion we found to be adequately salted. Salt makes an enormous difference in most foods, but particularly in bread, which is almost impossible to season after the fact. And Italian chefs, in my experience, aren’t afraid to salt their food. We took Bruschi’s bread to be a good omen. (Is he any relation of Tedy Bruschi? Probably not.)

Good bread implies good pizza, and Ideale’s pies are intense. (Naples is said to be the birthplace of Italian pizza, but Roman pies are reliably sensational.) We were particularly smitten with the funghi e salsiccia version ($14), which combined a crispy thin crust, a judicious ladling of well-seasoned and garlicky tomato sauce, enough mozzarella to glue things together, and a tossing of mushroom slices and bits of sausage that didn’t taste overwhelmingly of fennel — a frequent fault of Italian-style sausage as made in this country, in my view.

We noticed several effusions of fresh arugula. One thatch appeared beside the eggplant parmigiana ($11), which was baked in a crock like a little lasagna — not remarkable, but any halfway decent handling of eggplant gets at least one gold star from me. More arugula turned up with the grilled local calamari ($12), mostly tubes, nicely charred but still tender and lemony.

Risotto alla pescatore has to be, at $17.75, one of the better buys on this or any comparable menu. For one thing, it was just choked with seafood, including black mussels, clams, calamari, and prawns. For another, the rice was cooked in flavorful liquid. The menu card mentioned pinot grigio and garlic, but I suspected the presence, too, of some kind of seafood stock, whether shrimp, clam, or fish. Makers of risotto tend to be obsessed with the complex mechanics, in particular the need to stir the rice constantly for 18 minutes, and to keep the stock at a simmer as you add it cupful by cupful, so you produce the characteristic creaminess. You can make perfectly creamy risotto with plain water, then tart it up Milanese-style with butter, pepper, and parmesan. But there is nothing like cooking rice, whether arborio or some other kind, in flavorful stock or broth, as here.

The flaps of veal in saltimbocca ($23) were generously overlaid with flaps of prosciutto,, whose saltiness helped balance the sauce, a frascati wine reduction infused with rosemary. Frascati is the wonderfully fruity white wine produced in Lazio, the region around Rome — highly drinkable, but if it isn’t on the wine list, having it as a sauce isn’t a bad fallback position. The plate was finished with coins of roasted potato and asparagus tips, the pinnacle of adequacy.

Dessert: how about profiteroles ($7)? With a twist: the pastry balls were filled with pastry cream, while the vanilla ice cream (as a scoop) had to wait outside. Lots of chocolate sauce. too, just the way Nonna used to do it.

IDEALE

Dinner: Mon.–Thurs., 5:30–10:30 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat., 5:30–11 p.m.; Sun., 5–10 p.m.

1315 Grant, SF

(415) 391-4129

www.idealerestaurant.com

Beer and wine

AE/DS/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

 

Appetite: Source’s vegetarian victories

Andrew Lam
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4
Appetite: Source’s vegetarian victories

Yes, I’m a meat eater. I want animals treated humanely and have loving care and long lives. But I don’t feel I could possibly be a full-fledged food writer and not eat virtually everything. Food prejudices are not allowed. My motto: if any culture of the world eats it, I can too (followed by: if I don’t like something, I keep eating it until I do).

But leave it to two New York brothers to make a vegetarian meal that’s surprisingly hearty, satisfying, and inventive. In Potrero Hill’s design district, a non-descript warehouse holds Source (there’s even parking out front – take note!). The recently-opened space is modern and peaceful (though it stops short of a Zen or hippie feel) with a wall of running water and filtered air circulating through the dining room and open kitchen. A dramatic, gas-fired Mugnaini brick oven reads as a gaping dragon’s mouth. It certainly stands out, another one-of-a-kind feature that makes you curious as to what the restaurant is all about.

Water comes to your table triple filtered, ionized, and energized ($3.55 a carafe). Executive chef Mitchell Fox and his brother and co-owner, Andrew Fox, have thought through every detail of the atmosphere, menu, and experience. As Andrew says: “Source is more than an eating establishment. It is a place for people to be nurtured — their body, their mind, their soul.”

I dive into the vegetarian-vegan menu of sandwiches, salads, dosas, and pizzas prepared to eat fresh ingredients but still wondering what the level of flavor and satisfaction will be. But Source had me at the avocado, oink bits, and mozzarella burger ($8.95). Ok, it’s not really a burger, but a veggie patty made of black beans, beets, celery, carrots, wild rice, and onions inside a pita. 

I’m a burger fanatic and nothing can replace a perfect beef burger. But Source’s version stands on its own. The patty retains a smoky, grilled essence, black beans give it heft, and each ingredient adds nuance. It’s fresh yet savory — an exciting vegetarian offering that even a meat eater could love.

Tacos to da Bronx: Source’s perfect pies

Moving on to pizzas. The Fox brothers grew up in the Bronx and my old high school stomping grounds of New Jersey, places where you are legally required to know about pizza. But I was still shocked at how good these pies are. The dough, a special recipe 25 years in the making, is reminiscent of Una Pizza Napoletana. (Yeah, I said it.) It’s warm, doughy texture is addictive. The taco version ($13.95) comes loaded with salad, cheddar, salsa, guacamole, and soy sour cream. But I’d go straight for Da Bronx ($9.95) to savor the purity of the dough, sweet-savory tomato sauce, EVOO and homemade mozzarella. 

Though the pizza and burger are reasons enough to cross town, there are many pleasures here. The fries ($3.95) are fun, particularly with their accompanying range of salt choices and delightful dipping sauces like Caribbean banana ketchup, jalapeno jam, and Gilroy garlic aioli. Meat substitute entrees are surprisingly tasty, like the Jamaican jerk cluck (a chicken subsitute that clocks in at $13.95). Baked goods are another house specialty (vegan and gluten free options available), from whoopie pies to raw food rocky road cheesecake.

Doctor’s orders

Another pleasure is Source’s elixir bar, created in consultation with an herbalist and alternative doctor. Non-alcoholic sips include fermented elixirs, house sodas, teas, herbal blends, and smoothies with cashew milk. They even do their versions of a New York egg cream and creamsicle. The three drinks I tried were all worthwhile, even elegant.

With a casual order at the counter set-up and an über friendly staff, this is a welcoming place to eat in or take-out. And as far as I’m concerned, it’s already among the best vegetarian restaurants in San Francisco.


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

 

Globe

Andrew Lam
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1
Globe

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE When Globe opened nearly a decade and a half ago, it almost instantly developed a reputation as the place where you could find chefs having dinner at 1 a.m., after their own places had closed. The heart of the Barbary Coast restaurant (opened by Joseph Manzare and Mary Klingbell and still run by them) was a wood-burning oven that glared out over the dining room like the Eye of Sauron, and there was a wonderful perfume of woodsmoke in the air. (I think smokiness should be added as a flavor, incidentally, to make six. For years we were stuck with sweet, salty, sour, and bitter, and than umami, or meatiness, was added. Smokiness is distinct from those five, and also quite real.)

The march of time is often cruel to restaurants, and, as someone who last stepped into Globe before Bill Clinton got himself impeached, I wondered what I would find in these later days. An insider friend, discussing a famous San Francisco restaurant with me recently at a dinner party, ended up gently dismissing it by saying, “Well, it is a 30-year-old restaurant,” as if to say that loss of freshness is inevitable. But restaurants aren’t heads of iceberg lettuce in a refrigerator, de-freshening with every tick of the clock, and Globe isn’t even 15 yet.

My first impression, on stepping inside recently, was that the place is still recognizable. The walls are of exposed brick, the floors are simple wood plank stained dark; the stairs to the private dining room and restrooms downstairs are made from plain, workmanlike steel; and the dangling light fixtures over the small bar, of glass in several colors and elongated shapes, are mildly ornamental but not garish. The look is spare, muscular, and elegant, like that of an athlete in an ancient Olympic Games, clad only in a loincloth. (Actually such an athlete would probably have been naked, but put such thoughts from your mind.)

The menu is as pared-down and purposeful as the décor. I am heartened by brief menus, even though brevity is a kind of heresy in this gassy culture, where more is always better and is preferred without question or argument. Brief means: these are the dishes the kitchen believes in. And Globe’s kitchen obviously believes in its succinct list.

The restaurant’s wood-burning oven made it an important precursor of the current pizza chic, and pizza remains a significant element of the menu. The crusts, though thin, retain a distinctive elasticity and chewiness — which means that once you get some into your mouth, it’s a complex, satisfying experience. The downsides are that such crusts can be more difficult to cut, with slices sticking together, and the points can suffer from droopiness. Drooping pizza points remind me of the ears of a dog who’s just been chastised for some offense he doesn’t quite understand. We found the gambori mushroom pie ($16), boosted by white truffle oil, to be powerfully earthy, although the tomato sauce could have used a bit more salt.

Tuna tartare ($15) combined coarsely chopped fish with scallions, wonderfully peppery Genovese basil, and olive oil. The tartare was served with oily levain toasts and an Easter egg of black-olive tapenade, which provided a necessary correction of salt (and umami). We did think the macaroni and cheese ($8), made with Tillamook cheese — is that a selling point? — was good but not up to snuff, the bar having been raised sharply in the past few years. The best versions of mac ‘n’ cheese now use unusual pasta shapes, more intricate blends of cheeses, additions of fortifying and flavor-enhancing ingredients, and often a bread-crumb gratin. A gratin alone here would have made a big difference.

Several of the main courses offered an attractive char. A filet of wild coho salmon ($22) was laid atop a bed of boccacino pasta, with braised rapini, aglio e olio, and salsa verde — a Globe classic. One small niggle: the pasta, long fat tubes like bucatini on steroids, was awkward to eat gracefully. More user-friendly was the Cornish game hen ($21). The little bird seemed to have been largely boned out, and was plated atop a marvelous green garlic risotto that was not only beautifully cooked and seasoned but as bright a green as spring itself.

Only in the desserts did I detect any sign of fatigue and disengagement. A slice of amaretto cheesecake ($8) was quite good, very intense with almond and just sweet enough to win the day, but the apple tart ($8) could have used a serious rethink. The idea seemed to have been to deconstruct it, with apple slices laid on what looked like a napkin of pastry and topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. The glory of apple tarts is the melding of caramelized apple with nicely crisped pastry; here the pastry was sepulchral, the apples not caramelized. It was the flat-earth version, in need of some roundedness. 

GLOBE

Dinner: Mon.–Sat., 6 p.m.–1 a.m.; Sun., 6 p.m.–midnight

Lunch: Mon.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m.

290 Pacific, SF

(415) 391-4132

www.globerestaurant.com

Full bar

AE/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

 

The San Francisco-Jalisco añejo

Andrew Lam
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1
The San Francisco-Jalisco añejo

virginia@sfbg.com

DRINKS Tequila is not tequila unless it’s made in the Jalisco region of Mexico. So strictly speaking, you’re not going to find a local tequila in the Bay Area. But the case of Don Pilar is about as close as you’re going to get — his story is written by lines drawn directly between San Francisco and the Jalisco of his youth.

Pilar (a.k.a. Jose Pilar Contreras) is a Bay Area entrepreneur in the truest sense of the word, an all-around Mexican American success story. Born and raised in the Jaliscan highlands where his Don Pilar tequila is now distilled near the town of San Jose de Gracia, knowledge of the liquor runs in his blood. “My father is a proud alteño, a highland gentlemen,” says Juan Carlos Contreras, Pilar’s son and brand ambassador. “During the 40 years he’s spent in the U.S., he has always kept his heart in the highlands.”

Pilar moved to California in the 1960s to work its orchards and fields. After years of grueling labor, he joined two business partners (now commonly referred to as “the tres amigos”) to open the popular Tres Amigos Restaurant in Half Moon Bay in the 1980s, now with three locations. Pilar launched his own Amigos Grill in Portola Valley and in 2002, returned to Mexico to pursue his next venture: making his own añejo tequila.

“We are lucky to have [San Francisco] as our home base,” says Contreras. “People [here] are hip to trends and small, up-and-coming brands like us.” He cites the “great community” the city has bred of aficionados and tastemakers — like Julio Bermejo of Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant and Tequila Bar and Lippy the Tequila Whisperer — as one of the reasons that his family’s tequila business has been able to prosper and sell. Plus, “the large Latino community has been supportive of my father’s tequila, especially because of his immigrant story of success.”

Pilar is that rare figurehead who stays hands-on in his businesses. It’s not uncommon to find him buying supplies and produce for the restaurants, or to catch him supervising agave fields in Jalisco.

“In Spanish, you’d say that my father is a jalador,” Contreras reflects. “He and my mom work seven days a week. If he’s not at a local store signing bottles for customers, you’ll find him washing dishes at his restaurant. This is the key to his story of success.”

Yet another key would be value — you’d be hard-pressed to find a better añejo at this price (it’s often sold locally in the low $30 range).

An aged, golden version of tequila, añejos cost much more than blanco or reposado tequila. Pilar’s double-distilled release is aged in virgin American white oak barrels with a medium char. The taste is redolent of butterscotch, chocolate, and toasted agave. With a full, round finish, it has won a number of awards, often surpassing añejos that cost at least twice as much.

Recently the family has added to their tequila family with a blanco, a young, un-aged tequila. Where the añejo bottle features a photo of Pilar the patriarch, the blanco’s has a younger Pilar of years past. Clean and bright with pineapple and citrus zest notes, the blanco has a gentle, creamy finish, a standout among its peers.

It’s all built on traditional Jaliscan knowledge of the liquor — but Pilar adds a touch of artistic San Francisco spirit. His crew uses the Mozart method of fermentation, coaxing the process along by playing baroque music — Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, to be exact. They believe that the musical ambiance optimizes the tequila’s conversion from sugars to alcohol. 

Subscribe to Virginia’s twice-monthly newsletter, the Perfect Spot 

 

FEAST: 5 tapioca delights

Andrew Lam
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0
FEAST: 5 tapioca delights

diane@sfbg.com

When it comes to tapioca pudding, levels of neurosis tend to equal levels of nostalgia, with the haters depicting the starchy little pearls as “gummy, scary fish eyes” and the aficionados invoking Mom patiently stirring vanilla extract into the sweet milky mixture over a prairie Wedgewood.

Pearl drinks notwithstanding — and haven’t all those bubble tea places peaked yet? — tapioca pudding remains a rarity outside of a few Jewish delis and Southeast Asian restaurants. But when you do see it, the all-white comfort food has been getting a foodie and fusion makeover, with infusions of lime, maple syrup, and Grand Marnier; bases of cream, orange juice, or coconut milk (join us, lactose intolerant ones!); real vanilla beans instead of extract (sorry, moms), and purees of passionfruit, banana, and mango. Here are five places that serve their tapioca pudding proudly. Indeed, at a few of them, you either eat your tapioca (or sticky rice) or end your meal on a sour note. You choose. (Diane Sussman)

 

OUT THE DOOR

Oh, Charles Phan — is there no humble Vietnamese street food you can’t turn into a sought-after gourmet delicacy? Not even tapioca pudding — to which you added a dollop of mango mousse for extra sweetness, a splash of lemon juice for refreshing tartness, a bit of cream for extra richness, all in a smooth coconut milk base? If there’s any criticism to be had, it’s that OTD’s tapioca pudding is only offered every day at the Westfield Centre outpost (sorry, Ferry Buildingers, you have to wait until summer to get yours). Not nice, Charles Phan, making us traverse the carny ride of an escalator for a bit of tapioca. And while we’re at it, here’s another criticism: OTD’s Ferry Building tapioca comes in prepackaged plastic containers — or is it a compostable composite? — so BYOB (bowl).

845 Market, SF. (415) 541-9913, www.outthedoors.com

 

LE COLONIAL

Who says a night on the town can’t end in tapioca pudding? At the classic and classy Le Colonial, the French-Vietnamese restaurant in the Financial District, you can have it all. Le Colonial may also be the only restaurant in town that suggests a wine pairing for your tapioca pudding (a 2003 Royal Tokaji Aszu 5 Puttonyos). And, Le Colonial serves its tapioca, infused with coconut, over banana custard. That’s right, puddin’ heads, you don’t have to choose! Sop up the two-fer with Le Col’s wonton crisps, and get your textural, salty contrast. Granted, this tapioca isn’t cheap ($9). But this is your big night out — go ahead and splurge in your own homey, comfy way.

20 Cosmo Place, SF. (415) 931-3600, www.lecolonialsf.com

 

THE HOUSE

The House, along with lingering traces of the Beats, are two small respites from North Beach’s Italian theme-park vibe. Situated in an off-kilter, oddly-painted building on a triangulated corner at Grant and Fresno, the House serves Asian fusion fare like Maine crab cake with pickled ginger remoulade and wasabi noodles with Angus steak. Fusions aside, the House’s tapioca pudding may well be prettiest in all the land (take that, shellacked and air-brushed Martha Stewart Living centerfolds). For starters, House decorates its tapioca with a flowery swirl of mango puree that melds into the pudding for a jolt of extra sweetness. But it’s not just the artistry that makes it worth the $4 price tag: the pudding is smooth and creamy, with large pearls that have had all traces of gumminess warmed out of them.

1230 Grant, SF. (415) 986-8612, www.thehse.com

 

PHUKET THAI

If there’s a tapioca pudding that has remained faithful to its pedestrian roots, this is it. No cream, no liqueur, no mousse. Indeed, compared to other places, Phuket’s tapioca can seem on the thin side, and the corn kernels for added sweetness and texture are decidedly off-trend. But Phuket has one thing going for it that no other local tapioca purveyor has: it serves its tapioca warm. That’s right, the cooks make it just for you. And nothing says “ma-ma” like tapioca right off the stove.

248 Divsadero, SF. (415) 864-8584, www.phuketthaisf.com

 

WHOLE FOODS

Some days you need tapioca. You need it bad. You need it bad and you sure as hell aren’t going to make it yourself. And you’re certainly not going to eat another satay dish just to get to the tapioca, or resort to Kozy Shack (not because it’s bad — it’s good — but because the four-ounce containers are just too damn small and you’d have to eat the whole pack). Those are the days to head to Whole Foods’ prepared foods section, where eight-ounce containers of tapioca await. Although Whole Foods takes a classic approach to tapioca, it does up the gourmet ante by using cream (and milk) and a generous helping of vanilla. The result, of course, is smooth, creamy, and sweet — the way you wish your Mom had made it, if she hadn’t been saving the cream for something “special.”

Various locations, www.wholefoodsmarkets.com

 

This place

Andrew Lam
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0
This place

arts@sfbg.com

LIT Begun in part as a series of maps accompanying public lectures, Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas (University of California Press, 167 pages, $24.95) is a remarkable act of gathering, one that presents myriad versions and visions of San Francisco and its surrounding areas that can inform a reader’s experience.

Infinite City was recently selected by the Northern California Independent Booksellers as one of its 2011 winners. Duality is a fundamental aspect of the book’s breadth and depth and sense of sharply critical appreciation — structurally, Solnit pairs distinct maps with corresponding chapter-length essays. In keeping with that characteristic, and also with the book’s group spirit (though admittedly on a much smaller and less intensive scale), I asked different Guardian contributors to share appraisals of one, or in most cases two, of the 22 sections. The result provides just a hint of what can be found within Infinite City. (Johnny Ray Huston)

MAP 3. “Cinema City: Muybridge Inventing Movies, Hitchcock Making Vertigo“

The map for this chapter tracks the San Francisco life of Eadweard (sic) Muybridge, alongside landmarks from Alfred Hitchcock’s Bay Area masterpiece Vertigo. In “The Eyes of the Gods,” Solnit, who won the National Book Critics Circle award for her 2003 Muybridge bio River of Shadows, writes of the 19th century artist’s breakthrough high-speed photography, “It was as though the ice of frozen photographic time had broken free into a river of images.”

Many such rivers flowed all over this fair city when Vertigo premiered at the Stage Door Theatre at 420 Mason St. on May 9, 1958. Alas, only 10 of the more than 60 single-screen venues extant that year, all demarcated on Shizue Seigel’s fine map, are still functioning. Solnit rightly describes the shift to watching films on various digital delivery mechanisms as leaving contemporary culture with a “curious imagistic poverty.” As she concisely describes watching Milk and Once Upon a Time in the West on the Castro Theatre’s giant screen, we’re reminded that there is no comparison between enjoying cinema in such a grand setting and staring at a laptop. The great 20th century memoirist and observer Quentin Crisp wrote, “We ought to visit a cinema as we would go to a church. Those of us who wait for films to be made available for television are as deeply suspicious as lost souls who claim to be religious but who boast that they never go to church.”

That applies to you too, Netflix subscribers! The Roxie, Castro, Red Vic, Clay, and a small number of other houses of worship are still in business, so what are you waiting for? (Ben Terrall)

MAP 4. “Right Wing of the Dove: The Bay Area as Conservative/Military Brain Trust”

In “The Sinews of War are Boundless Money and the Brains of War Are in the Bay Area,” Solnit argues that antiwar, green, and left Bay Area hotspots are well known and don’t need to be charted again — unlike military contractors and assorted other forces of reaction in the region.

Solnit notes that many military bases that used to operate in the Bay Area are closed, “but the research, development, and profiteering continue as a dense tangle of civilian and military work, technological innovation, economic muscle, and political maneuvering for both economic and ideological purposes.”

Among the hard-right compounds providing counterevidence for that demonstration chestnut “the people united will never be defeated”: Lawrence Livermore National Labs (birthplace of Star Wars — the Reagan era money pit, not the George Lucas movie); Lockheed Martin, world’s largest “defense” contractor; the Hoover Institution, Stanford’s reactionary think tank; and Northrop Grumman, missile component designer. It’s useful to have so many of them in one place, if queasy-making.

On the lower left of the map sits Sandow Birk’s beautifully warped code of arms, which features the Cicero quote (Nervi belli pecunia infinita) that Solnit cites in her chapter title, under a half eagle/half dove, a rifle-toting soldier, and a scythe-clutching skeleton. It should be on the door of every U.S. military recruiting center. (Terrall)

MAP 6. “Monarchs and Queens: Butterfly Habits and Queer Public Spaces”

“How thoroughly the lexical landscape of gay history is invested with [a] paradigm of emergence,” notes poet Aaron Shurin in “Full Spectrum,” the chapter accompanying Infinite City‘s sixth map. Like one of the dazzlingly-named butterfly species rendered by Mona Caron on the map, Shurin flits gracefully between memoir and historiography as he tracks San Francisco’s ongoing evolution as a locus for queer emergence.

From North Beach to Polk Gulch, from Folsom to Castro, LGBT folk — be they American painted ladies, Satyr angel wings, or Mission blues — have continually migrated to and within the city to shed their cocoons and show their true colors. Local faux-queen Fauxnique traced this metamorphosis at the 2003 Miss Trannyshack Pageant when she climatically emerged as a regal butterfly to Elton John’s “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” (apropos to Shurin’s royalty motif, she won the crown). So too did the late Age of Aquarius painter Chuck Arnett, who often nestled butterfly imagery into his portraits of SoMa’s leather demimonde, and whose murals once adorned some of the many now-extinct bars also denoted by Ben Pease’s cartography. Only more than half a dozen of these “wildlife sanctuaries,” in Shurin’s parlance, have survived, with the Eagle Tavern’s announced closure marking another loss of habitat. Queers, though, are if anything adaptive, and my hope is that the future fluttering tribes of San Francisco will keep alighting on new ground to unfurl their wings. (Matt Sussman)

MAP 7. “Poison/Palate: The Bay Area in Your Body”

“Food is part of the Bay Area you hear about nowadays, exquisite upscale food at famous restaurants and gourmet markets. But it’s so boring we couldn’t stay focused on it in this map.” These refreshing, if rarely uttered words come two-thirds of the way through the chapter that accompanies the “Poison/Palate” map, Rebecca Solnit’s “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Gourmet.”

The phony Tuscany of Napa and the once-orchard-filled, now-EPA-Superfund-site-speckled Silicon Valley are wisely singled out for derision, a convenient duality in both geography and culture and the perfect framework on which to hang a critique of the local culinary community’s smug, myopic self-indulgence, by raising the not-so-elite-specters in Bay Area food history (the It’s It, the Popsicle, the Hangtown Fry, the Rice-a-Roni), and reintroducing the politics of food into the conversation, in the form of the chemical tonnage used to produce wine grapes, food giveaways at community gardens, Diet for a Small Planet, and Black Panther breakfast programs for school-kids. The sprawling topic is almost given too short a shrift, threatening to leap its mutant-mermaid-bedecked map.

Better is the 18th chapter, “How to Get From Ethiopia to Ocean Beach.” Solnit begins by loosely charting the ingredients that go into your cuppa joe: the water from Hetch Hetchy, the milk from West Marin, the coffee that courses through the port of Oakland, and, impishly, the leavings that flow toward the Southeast Water Pollution Control Plant. All that’s missing from the equation is the sugar that I need to make the darkest, brandy-and-cherry-tinged brew palatable. SF’s cafe culture is also deservedly lionized — though some might want to hurl china due to the exclusions on the accompanying map: why, for instance, call out Blue Danube Coffee House and not the grungier, more Chinese-populated Java Source? (Kimberly Chun)

MAP 8. “Shipyards and Sounds: The Black Bay Area since World War II”

Though author Joshua Jelly-Schapiro opens this chapter, subtitled “High Tide, Low Ebb,” with an eloquent invocation of Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” — penned in Sausalito, by the way — it was the slight mention of Lowell Fulson’s “San Francisco Blues” that most resonated with me. “Ohh, San Francisco,” the lyric goes, “Please make room for me.” The facts presented in “Shipyards and Sounds” record The City’s answer as a genteel and progressive “No nigger.”

Beginning at the start of WWII, when Southern blacks migrated to the Bay Area to build ships in Hunters Point, Jelly-Schapiro points out that the main areas of wartime shipbuilding (Richmond, Hunters Point, Marin City) are “places that today remain centers of black population and of black poverty.” Indicating, to me, that little has changed since the 1940s in some significant ways. Don’t get mad at me, I didn’t say it. Jelly-Schapiro did.

Jelly-Schapiro also shows how terms like “redevelopment” displaced black Fillmore District residents to housing projects they’d been banned from during the war and land-grab euphemisms like “urban renewal” decimated black neighborhoods such as West Oakland. Electoral laws mandating that the SF Board of Supervisors be elected by citywide contests and not by district allowed a city that desegregated its schools and transit system in the 1860s to remain progressive and very, very white.

Jelly-Schapiro’s conclusion contains a critique of Bay Area celebrations when “Negro president” Barack Obama was elected in 2008. What he won’t say is covered in Shizue Seigel’s map. A sidebar shows the dwindling soul of a city, while the headers cover the founding of the Black Panthers and Sylvester’s solo debut at Bimbo’s. (D. Scot Miller)

MAP 9. “Fillmore: Promenading the Boulevard of Gone”

After the damned disheartening facts presented in the previous chapter, it’s both merciful and hopeful that “Little Pieces of Many Wars” — though just as rage-inducing — establishes some kind of equilibrium.

Gent Sturgeon’s incredible Rorschach-inspired artwork opens a thoroughly-researched piece on Fillmore Street and its many incarnations. Mary Ellen Pleasant’s abolitionist work and her eucalyptus trees — which still stand on the corners of Bush and Octavia streets — are a starting point for a leisurely stroll with Solnit, who runs the voodoo down, “The war between the states left its traces here,” she says, “as did the Second World War, and the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the stale and ancient war of racism, and the various forms of freelance violence.”

She remembers San Francisco as an abolitionist headquarters, and Fillmore Street as the first place Allen Ginsberg read “Howl.” Recalling the Fillmore’s rich heritage of jazz, poetry, and art, Solnit takes it even further, adding, “The wealthy sometimes claim to bring civilization to rough neighborhoods, but the Upper Fillmore neighborhood that was so culturally rich when it was the property of poor people in the 1950s is smoothed over in significance now.”

The tragedy of Japanese internment, and the cross-cultural exchange that was demolished by it and redevelopment loom like white sheets over the city to this day. But Solnit closes with an optimistic sense of resurgence, even though Nickie’s has gone Irish.

Ben Pease’s cartography shows the cross-currents of culture of yesterday’s Fillmore Street, but not much else. That’s not a complaint, really. (Miller)

 MAP 13. “The Mission: North of Home, South of Safe”

Two 2009 shootings on 24th Street pop out, in blood red, on the map accompanying Adriana Camarena’s “The Geography of the Unseen,” in much the same way that the spate of shooting deaths the previous year marked my brief time spent living in the Mission. In ’08, I lived in a Victorian flat at Treat and 23rd, distinguished by the fact that it was a favorite hang for the teenaged homies — its steps were slightly tucked back off the street, ideal when it came to hiding out, smoking dope, and snacking out — until my landlords installed a fence, ostensibly to keep the steps free of spit.

We were on the same block as an appliance-loaded junkyard; the last stop of an ancient Mission industrial railroad; and the Parque Niños Unidos, with its swampy, grassy corner, so often cordoned off to keep the tots from wading in the mud, its circling ice cream carts and its de facto refreshment stand, El Gallo Giro taco truck; and the community garden, where the feral kittens tumbled and hid and fresh produce was given away free every Sunday afternoon.

The Parque likely was the last thing 18-year-old poet Jorge Hurtado saw when he was shot and killed on our corner at 1 a.m. that year. I remember waking up that night to what sounded like a cannon boom, only the first of a slew that sweltering, ominous summer — Mark Guardado, president of the SF chapter of the Hells Angels, was killed a little over a week later, down Treat, in front of Dirty Thieves. The tension was thick and gooey in the air — who was next? The beauty of Shizue Seigel’s Mission map lies in how intimate it is, how it’s threaded around the shaggy-dog snatches of yarns Camarena catches among the day laborers waiting at Cesar Chavez and Bayshore, from the long litany of splintered families, time spent in the refuge of gangs at 24th and Shotwell, and then, in Frank Pena’s case, lives cut sadly short farther up 24th at Potrero. The included stories, rarely straying beyond the tellers’ voices and the facts they choose to reveal, stay with you — even if her sources’ internal lives remain, as the chapter’s subtitle goes, “the Geography of the Unseen.” (Chun)


NORTHERN CALIFORNIA INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS 2011 BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS

 

FICTION

 

Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, stories, Yiyun Li (Random House, 240 pages, $25)

Nonfiction

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, Mary Roach (W.W. Norton and Company, 336 pages, $15.95)

Honorable Mention: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1, (University of California, 760 pages, $34.95)

 

POETRY

Come On All You Ghosts, Matthew Zapruder (Copper Canyon, 96 pages, $16)

Food Writing

My Calabria: Rustic Family Cooking from Italy’s Undiscovered South, Rosetta Costantino, Janet Fletcher, and Shelley Lindgren (W.W. Norton and Company, 416 pages, $35)

Children’s Picture Book

The Quiet Book, Deborah Underwood and Renata Liwska (Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 32 pages, $12.95)

Honorable mention: Zero, Kathryn Otoshi (KO Kids, 32 pages, $17.95)

 

TEEN LIT

The Sky is Everywhere, Jandy Nelson (Dial, 288 pages, $17.99)

Honorable mention: The Mockingbirds, Daisy Whitney (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 352 pages, $16.99)

 

REGIONAL TITLE

Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, Rebecca Solnit (University of California, 167 pages, $24.95)

Honorable mention: A State of Change: Forgotten Landscapes of California, Laura Cunningham (Heyday, 352 pages, $50)

 

La vida vegan

Andrew Lam
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5
La vida vegan

caitlin@sfbg.com

DINE It’s a wild, woolly world when you won’t eat its cheeseburgers. Or so I discovered last autumn when I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals and found that my inner logician could no longer justify consuming products from the loins (and udders, and uteri) of animals that spent their lives experiencing the systematic abuse of factory farms.

But the most shocking tiding from Foer? A University of Chicago study, he writes, found that omnivores contribute seven times the volume of greenhouse gas of vegans. My bicycle eyed me from its perch on the storage hook in our apartment’s foyer. Environmentalists, are we?

So we traipse along the hippie-liberal continuum — just one more step to independence from fossil fuels, I suppose. But though I’ve been riding the pescatarian train for years, going animal product-free was harder than a piquant wedge of manchego (Jesus, even my metaphors have dairy products in them).

I was surprised how many places I would go — even here, in the befigged plate of the Bay Area! — where wearing my vegan hat meant going underfed and, by extension, becoming a whiny envelope-full of social anthrax addressed to my dining companions. Some restaurants even ghettoize our kind with separate menus, as if vegan food holds no interest for the general dining public.

Surely, though, this is nothing compared to the brave, ice cream-rejecting, pizza cheese-peeling pioneers of the vegan world! Even if it’s still hard to break society’s “five food groups” programming, as a whole our country is well out of the “what’s a vegan?” stage of cultural development.

It was high time for a pulse check. So one rainy spring day, I met with some of the Bay’s best and brightest vegans for a potluck and chat on where living animal-free is at these days. Food activists, chefs, moms, a boyfriend, a blogger. We ate like kings and bitched about steaks. We called it the Summit of the Vegans. I’ll tell you more — but first, a word on our vegans …

 

TAMEARRA DYSON

Vegan cred: Owner of Souley Vegan and self-taught chef

Comes natural: “When someone asks me what I use instead of milk or butter, I don’t even know how to answer that. What do you use? You just don’t use it!”

 

MARK BENEDETTO AND CARMEN VAZQUEZ

Vegan cred: Chefs. Started the now-defunct vegan Brassica Supperclub. Now the manager of Frog Hollow Farm’s Ferry Building store and kitchen supervisor at Gracias Madre, with a restaurant of their own on the horizon.

Vegans on the lam: The couple’s underground supper club was shut down by the fuzz in 2009 for lacking required permits.

A love that knows no animal products: “There are a ton of factions, splinter cells,” Benedetto says, “but all vegans secretly, quietly love other vegans.”

 

NANCY LOEWEN

Vegan cred: Nurse and vice president of the SF Vegetarian Society

Don’t even try to win that argument: “The Vegetarian Society has been around for 40 years. We continue to be a small group, but the number of vegetarians continue to grow. I love animals; I don’t like to go to the doctor; there are the environmental reasons; and I love the food. You just can’t win that argument!”

 

BILL EVANS

Vegan cred: Guardian production manager. Has been animal product-free for years. Our Joe Vegan.

Breaking down the meat lines: “The things that crack me up and annoy me at the same time: my girlfriend is the opposite of vegan and she’ll order a steak and invariably the waiter will come back and give me the steak and her my salad. There are some societal expectations about what’s a manly food.”

 

LAURA BECK

Vegan cred: Founding blogger of vegansaurus.com

Loves her job because: “The vast majority of my commenter are so rad. They’re smart, awesome activists, not preachy dicks, which is what a lot of people think vegans are.”

When’s she’s not blogging: Beck’s favorite Bay Area vegan eats include Encuentro, Golden Era, the flan at Gracias Madre, schwarmas from Herbivore, Saha, Jay’s Cheesesteaks, and Souley Vegan.

Note: Beck was sick for our summit but I hollered at her afterward so she could still join the conversation.

Elbow-deep as we were in the toothsome culinary contributions my summit attendees had whipped up for the occasion, it was perhaps no surprise to learn that food cravings were the least of the challenges to their vegan lifestyles. Indeed, to a (wo)man, our panel participants — many of whom had been vegans for the better part of a decade — found their eats superior to more omnivorous spreads.

“There are only five or six animals that people eat for meat,” said Loewen, who works at a senior citizen center by day and spends her free time organizing events like the Vegetarian Society’s annual Meat Out. “But we’ve got so many options in terms of grains and vegetables.”

One of the upsides to being vegan — in addition to the animal treatment and health and well-being issues that panelists cited as their salient motivations to make their lifestyle switch — is that it compels a certain amount of creativity in the kitchen. When you’re operating largely outside the parameters of what your family considers a standard meal, you tend to think outside the prepackaged box.

Dyson runs my favorite reason to cross the Bay Bridge — Souley Vegan’s crispy tofu burger and mac ‘n’ cheese have magical properties. She came to veganism when she had a visceral reaction as a teenager to a chicken bone, and now can’t imagine life any other way. She started her cooking career at a farmers market booth and now brings Souley Vegan’s cuisine to African American expos and public schools, where it teaches people about life, post-pork flavoring.

We talked about living vegan in the Bay Area, where my panelists agreed the vegan community had yet to come together the way in has in places like Austin. They pinned this lack of cohesion on the dearth of a central cultural hub, and Beck affirmed that a need for just such a meeting space was one of her motivations behind Vegansaurus.

Evans bemoaned the “ideological chasm” that separates omnivores and vegans and makes it difficult to share information and understanding between the two. The group debated over whether the “vegan movement” could truly be said to exist — and yeah, we talked shit too.

“I think it’s bullshit!” Loewen opined suddenly when I asked the group how they felt about Michael Pollan’s assertion that eating sustainably is more important than eating animal-product-free. “[That view] takes out the ethical aspect. That animal is going to die — free range animals want to live even more than other animals.”

Benedetto and Vazquez attended the California Culinary Academy (where they met and Vazquez became vegan) and were the summit’s official “vegans on the front lines” because of it. The school, they said, accommodated their desire not to work with meat — to a point. They still had to cook a steak for a final exam and take a two-week butchery course. “It smelled like death,” grimaced Benedetto. “Postgrad, I decided I would rather work retail than have to cook meat.”

Bottom line? There are challenges to being a Bay Area vegan. But there are victories as well: feeling “lighter,” minimizing your impact on the environment, being your own person, and delicious meals, to name a few. After hearing everyone’s stories, I realized that becoming a vegan in the Bay is a lot like being a human in the Bay: endlessly frustrating, completely crazy, but also a chance to be a part of an earnest try for a more sustainable world.

 

Appetite: Island bites, part three

Andrew Lam
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0
Appetite: Island bites, part three

After a dreamy week in Hawaii, I have a slew of recommendations to share with you in a multi-part series. In part one, I covered farmers market street food in Oahu. In part two, Honolulu’s cocktail scene. Now we dine in Honolulu, on the hunt for the best. (Next up, Kauai.)

 

THE SPENDY

Sushi Sasabune:

Starting off with a bang, the first course was Canadian albacore sashimi in miso. All photos by Virginia Miller

Though Honolulu’s Sasabune is related to the restaurant by the same name in LA, I had a superior experience here in Hawaii – probably due to the fact that I went whole hog here and ordered the 13 course omakase menu. It’s around $120 per person at lunch and costs over $200 for the same menu at dinner.

Lunch is peaceful – only the hardcore patronize Sasbune during the daytime hours. The restaurant’s decor is humble and pleasant with classic jazz playing.

13 courses really means over 20 varied bites as many courses include two different pieces of nigiri. You can spend less by stopping before your 13 courses have been brought out – just give the sushi chefs a few minutes’ warning, they prep a course or two ahead. 

Though I was stuffed around course nine, I couldn’t bring myself to tell them to stop, such was my desire to see what they would serve me next. Everything was impeccably fresh and expertly prepared — one of the best sushi meals of my life.

 

The Royal Hawaiian Hotel’s Azure:

Azure’s butter-poached filet of Wagyu beef

Island spirit and urban sophistication reign at Azure, one of the newer, hotter restaurants in Waikiki. It’s dinner companion is the magical Mai Tai Bar, which sits just outside its front door. 

I sat at a cabana-covered area on the sand amid ocean breezes, sipping from the well-chosen wine list. The a la carte menu is pricey ($12-29 for appetizers, $35-60 for entrees), making the ‘steal’ the five-course, $69 tasting menu – it only costs an additional $20 for wine pairings.

My tasting menu included a sashimi starter of Hawaiian yellowtail ahi and Japanese hamachi over an avocado and watermelon radish salad. Ginger syrup and a hint of lemongrass enhance the dish’s Asian spirit. A 2009 Crios de Susana Balbo malbec rose made for a refreshing pairing.

The second course was the strongest: the ocean cappuccino, a creamy bouillabaisse with chunks of Dungeness crab, black tiger shrimp, and potato, accented by Thai basil. Another highlight was an intermezzo between third and fourth courses, a lemon basil sorbet infused with pop rocks.

Third course was the Kona lobster tail risotto. Though I adore lobster tail, the risotto was not on par with the silky texture I expect from a Italian risotto.

Fourth course was butter-poached filet of Wagyu beef. The sweetness of Madeira and brandy played off the earthiness of taro and black truffle in the sauces. The presentation of the dish was striking: crowned with a fried duck egg, it came out under glass cover, smoke swirling inside.

For dessert we had local Kula strawberries and fior di latte cheese ice cream drizzled in balsamic and cinnamon syrup. A clean, straightforward finish.

 

Hiroshi:

Luxurious miso butterfish at Hiroshi

Our experience turned out to be a mixed bag at Hiroshi: despite the sweetest hosts at the door, our waiter was lackluster and disinterested. No explanation of dishes were offered until we asked for them. The other downside? A corporate, bland decor that lacks warmth or even casual sophistication. 

I’m keeping it on my recommendation list for one reason alone: chef Hiroshi Fukui’s creative food. A fish fanatic, he catches some of the menu’s offerings himself.

Fukui’s foie gras sushi ($10.50) was as decadent as it sounds: two nigiri pieces topped with lush foie gras and drizzled with a teriyaki-shiso glaze. Portuguese sausage potstickers ($9) came surrounded by sweet corn and tatsoi (rosette bok choy) with a kimchee foam that I wish had tasted more like kimchee.

Another stand-out was the miso yaki butterfish ($14.50). The small serving of butterfish melts and lingers like a luxurious dream, brightened with lemon ume gelee. Chef Hiroshi shows off his deft hand with a crispy skin New Zealand snapper ($24.95). The fish flakes beautifully in a tomato-hijiki (brown sea vegetable) broth. Tofu, fennel, edamame, and local Kahuku corn round out the platter. Try to ignore the service as you savor some of the more imaginative dishes and impeccable fish preparation in Honolulu.

 

THE MID-RANGE

Side Street Inn:

Prepare ye for gigantic plates of family-style Hawaiian food. Side Street Inn has two locations and both are packed with locals gorging on mountains of meat. Given the size of the plates ($11-15 for your average dish, $17-26 for steak/beef and pork entrees), eating here can be a steal. Beware of over-ordering. 

You’ll leave happy after traditional dishes like fresh ahi poke tossed with Maui onions, signature pan-fried island pork chops ($22), or lilikoi-glazed baby back ribs ($17). 

The two most satisfying dishes out of the eight I tried? One was the straightforward, utterly comforting kim chee fried rice ($13), a mountain of rice laced with everything from Portuguese sausage to peas. Number two was the catch of the day, the opakapaka (Hawaiian pink snapper), a giant whole fish grilled in citrus and oil. Flaky and delicious, this was the more elegant of the otherwise hearty platters, and a fine example of local fish specialties. It’s easy to see why this is a local classic. But whatever you do, come starving.

 

Alan Wong’s Pineapple Room: 

The Pineapple Room’s superb Loco Moco

As my schedule sadly did not afford time for dinner at Alan Wong‘s signature restaurant, I made do with what I would knew would be a distant second, lunch at his more casual Pineapple Room inside the Macy’s at the Ala Moana Center.

The Pineapple Room threw me off with its mall setting and Denny’s-style diner place settings. They would have been fine if they fit the decor, but it was a discordant mix of vintage Hawaiian plantation with dated 70’s tableware. But casual is great as long as the food is good, and here the food is playful and generously-portioned, one dish often enough for two.

$15.75 is a lot for a rueben, but Wong’s is a big one. Too bad the reuben didn’t hold up to exemplary versions elsewhere, although the addition of kimchee is conceptually brilliant. The sandwich was dry and the pastrami decent but lackluster — a side of wasabi potato salad fared much better.

The popular stir-fried soybeans ($8.50) were likewise disappointing: a pile of beans soaked in sesame oil, garlic, and chilies. They sounded better than they tasted, missing the crisp snap and heat that could have made the dish addictive.

The dish that got me, however, was Wong’s updated version of classic Loco Moco ($18.50). Using quality Kuahiwi Ranch natural beef for the hamburger patty, it rested on fried rice in a veal jus, topped with two Peterson Farm fried eggs. This was a blue collar dish elevated to culinary heights.

Skip the cocktails – the passionfruit “mojito” ($12) sounded good, made with cachaca, basil, tarragon, and mint, but I could not taste any cachaca. Better to go with Wong’s house-made fountain sodas. At $6 a pop, they hold a lot more flavor. I loved the intense tart of the yuzu soda.

 

THE CHEAP

Char Hung Sut: 

Making manapua at Char Hung Sut

Dingy Char Hung Sut was among the best food of my entire Hawaiian trip. Chinese women and men rolled dough for pork buns and formed dumplings as friendly staff chatted me up while I ordered just about everything on the menu. For less than $5, I walked out with a bag full of dim sum from this humble, take-out only storefront. 

The sticky sweet half moon dumpling contrasted nicely with the savory manapua (local term for pork bun): among THE best pork buns I’ve ever tasted. Completely unique to traditional Chinese versions, these are Hawaiian-style pork buns. The filling’s dark pink color comes from marinating the pork with just a bit of saltpeter (stone salt) prior to slow roasting. Dumplings were equally exemplary. Order everything. You’ll leave happy.

 

Liliha Bakery:

Liliha Bakery is a dated bakeshop serving what is now legendary in Honolulu: Liliha Bakery’s Coco Puffs. I can’t say I get the craze exactly. Chocolate pudding filled mini-cream puffs aren’t exactly melt-in-your-mouth. The pastry is a little dry and thick pudding filling is decidedly old school. But more power to ’em.

Where they got me was with lilikoi (passion fruit) or haupia (coconut cream)-filled malasadas. These sugar-crusted, Portuguese donut-like pastries are perfection filled with either. I have been craving them ever since I left the islands.

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

 

Appetite: Island bites, part two

Andrew Lam
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0
Appetite: Island bites, part two

After a dreamy week in Hawaii, I have a slew of food and drink recommendations to share. Part one of these covered farmers market and street food in Honolulu and snacks from the North Shore of Oahu. This time, we sleep and drink in Honolulu. In part three, we’ll talk Honolulu restaurants.

Though I arrived islandside with a head full of romantic, slightly improbable Blue Hawaii dreams — me wearing a vintage bathing suit, lei, and a mai tai being serenaded by Elvis — my vacation reality was no letdown. No doubt the touristy scourge of chain shops, restaurants, and photo-snapping throngs do indeed exist in Waikiki, but contrary to what some told me, Hawaii’s largest city can be clean and relaxed. Though you truly find “island time” on Kauai and quieter locales, Honolulu is by no means hectic (if you ignore the traffic). It is that island city where you can while away hours at the beach, explore hole-in-the-wall eats, or listen to live music as the sun sets.

Hotel Renew, Waikiki Beach: 

With Asian-modern, Zen-like decor, clean lines and big city chic, these rooms are a welcome respite from the all-day party of Waikiki surfers and sunbathers. No pool or beachfront property here, though upper rooms on the south side have views of the beach. After long walks and lots of sun, I was grateful to enter the heavy front doors of Renew and be welcomed by the tinkle of the lobby’s water fountain. I’d grab a glass of water laced with fresh oranges and head up to my room with ultra-comfy bed and an ocean view.

The winning points of Hotel Renew, which is located on the eastern end of Waikiki, is affordability and peace. Plus, you can always take their complimentary boogie boards and towels a block away to the beach. But the best part? As overpriced as Waikiki can be, here you can get a room on a busy weekend for $180 to $225 a night. 

 

COCKTAILS

The cocktail renaissance is finally hitting Hawaii. Here’s a handful of places and bartenders forging the way.

Lobby Bar at The Waikiki Edition:

Although it is to be found by pushing aside a bookshelf in a hotel lobby, the Lobby Bar is no speakeasy — it’s a white, urban bar with muted lighting and long couches with a semi-exclusive, yet unpretentious air in The Edition, a hot hotel perfect for ultra-cool poolside lounging.

Bar manager Sam Treadway hails direct from Boston’s best-known cocktail bar, Drink and he’s clearly loving the warm island breezes, playing off of the canon of island classics, like the deconstructed mai tai ($11). Treadway has toned down the drink’s characteristic sweetness, amping up the rum (Pyrat XO) and orgeat (almond syrup) and topping it off with mai tai foam and a shiso leaf. He served me a lovely rum manhattan made with Montecristo 12 year rum, and he’s also handy with mezcal. The Agony and the Ecstasy ($11 – nice literary reference) is a winning mix of Del Maguey’s Mezcal Vida, St. Germain, and fresh grapefruit juice, topped with a house ginger beer. Spicy, smoky, gently sweet.

The cherry on top? Treadway combines Mezcal Vida, Campari, and soda to create, yes, a mezcal negroni. I long for the day when I can get one here, in my own negroni-obsessed city.

Town:

Another of the city’s great bartenders is Town‘s Dave Power. Located in Kaimuki, just a few minutes drive from Waikiki, Town feels like I’m back home in San Francisco. Local, organic foods served with with rustic, Italian technique, all-American heart, gourmet animal parts, and classic cocktails (all $10).

Power executes cocktails simply but with a beautifully, even literary, bent. His tequila negroni is a revelation. He explains that his inspiration is M.F.K. Fisher‘s love of equal parts gin, vermouth, and bitters in her cocktail. His version adds an equal part of Don Julio Reposado and a Campari infused with local Hawaiian Kiawe wood chips for a gentle smoky taste.

He also makes a Very Very Good Martini (this being how it’s listed on the menu) and my beloved Death’s Door — something you don’t see much in these parts — and a white manhattan with moonshine (white whiskey) and Dolin Blanc vermouth.

I’d recommend eating as well as drinking here. It’s a special place that evokes other big cities, but uses Hawaiian ingredients and laid-back charm.

Mai Tai Bar:

I am in love with the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. A pink, playful beacon that jumps out of the town’s blanket of highrises, it is the one hotel that evokes the history of old Waikiki. Built in 1927 and dubbed the Pink Palace of the Pacific, this is the classic Hawaii I dreamed of.

I’ll stay there one day. But in the meantime, one can always head through its grove of trees laden with hanging lights, past torches, through the lobby, and out to the back lawn where the Mai Tai Bar looks out over the beach. Live music at sunset and my own private cabana on the beach made this scene one of the most magical I spent in Honolulu.

This is not the place for refined cocktails but the bar has a history of providing tropical oceanside drinks. Manager Mike Swerdloff is a wine lover himself, but keeps up on the national cocktail scene and is passionate about great service, food and drink.

As for cocktails, there are various versions of the mai tai here — all too sweet for me, but they’re destined to be crowd-pleasers, and are greatly enhanced by the paradisical surroundings. Were I to really go for sweetness here, I’d prefer the Chi ($13), made from coconut and Maui’s organic Ocean Vodka and perked up with fresh pineapple and basil; or Pina Rocks ($10): Bacardi 8 year, coconut cream, pineapple, and a lemon-thyme float.

We had a lot of fun with our Smoking Gun mai tai, a winner in last year’s Mai Tai Festival on Kona. A glass of Whaler’s dark rum, Bacardi White, and a housemade velvet falernum was torched with smoke, then topped with a brown sugar-torched pineapple wedge. The presentation was quite dramatic — smoke even spilled out from the glass — but I could still taste the propane when I sipped the drink. That aside, the Smoking Gun yielded a delightfully sweet, smoky island imbibement that evoked roasting marshmallows over a campfire.

Lewers Lounge:

Inside the gorgeous Halekulani Hotel hides a classic New York hotel bar, rich with history and flush with jazz. And the music really is the reason to come. Nightly live jazz sets the classy, upscale tone of Lewers — don’t you dare wear shorts or flip-flops because this elegance is maintained with a strict dress code. You’ll also need a reservation on many nights.

Despite the legendary stamp of Dale DeGroff on the menu (he created it), drinks are of the sweet, fruity variety, like the refreshing ginger lychee caipirissima ($12). More ambitious efforts like the Amante Picante ($12) — tequila with cucumber, cilantro, green tabasco — have the right idea but lack balance. All in the execution?

What is impressive is the bar’s dessert menu. The ever-popular Halekulani coconut cake ($9) is ordered for weddings all over the islands, even from as far as LA. Adult gourmet versions of popsicles and ice cream sandwiches on ice are also available. One can always order from the spirits and wine lists and enjoy a sip of brandy and a slice of cake while taking in Tennyson Stephens and Rocky Holmes’ delightful jazz duo.

La Mariana:

No, I am not recommending La Mariana Sailing Club for the drinks — this write-up is a nod to the historical appeal and charm of a rundown but well-loved space. One of the last remaining kitschy tiki bars from the 1950′s, it can be an adventure just getting here.

Located way out on a harbor, you won’t be sure you’ve found it even when you’ve arrived at the right spot. Park on the street near the “sailing club” sign, then walk around to the right side of the building and enter through the back along the water. Tiki decor and thatched roofs abound in a multi-room layout with open air patio.

The day after the Japanese tsunami hit Hawaii’s shores, I sat here with a pina colada watching boat owners pull their damaged sailboats out of the water. Crusty, sun-scorched sailors sipped mai tais and beers around me, comparing damage done to their boats.

If you go, be sure to read the story of owner Annette Nahinu on the menu. She’s the sort of local character that will make you fall in love with Honolulu and its colorful international history.

Note: I tried to make it to a new Honolulu hotspot that local bartenders recommended, Apartment 3, but couldn’t make it there on a day when Kyle was bartending (Friday nights at the moment). I hear he’s a whiskey lover like myself, and I was sure he’d be another envelope-pushing bartender on this list.

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

 

A Beirut festival

Andrew Lam
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A Beirut festival

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE Mazzat used to be a deli, and some of the badges and incidents of deli-hood remain — mostly the glass cases, full of delectables, that run deep into the restaurant like a half-wall. The neighborhood setting is unusual. The old Central Freeway used to run almost directly overhead as a kind of hellish roof of concrete, but it’s gone now, leaving — across the street — a large gap with an improvised garden: an open wound that’s slowly healing. The setting reminds me of Prenzlauer Berg, an area of what was once East Berlin, with weedy emptiness and the memory of damage just steps away from gleaming renewal.

Mazzat (which opened in December in the old Apollo Market & Deli space) does gleam. With its rather formal look — of polished dark wood and taupe paint, inverted tulip lamps, white linen tablecloths, and a handsome wooden wine rack at the rear of the narrow dining room — it belongs in spirit to the renewed heart of Hayes Valley rather than to the whitewater river of traffic surging along Fell Street past the restaurant’s front door. It also implies much higher prices than those you actually find, with the majority of items — the menu is Lebanese — under $10, and in many cases well under $10. You can enjoy a brilliant feast at Mazzat and still find yourself looking at surprisingly reasonable number at the end.

The menu includes quite a few choices you would expect to find throughout the eastern Mediterranean, including dolma, tabbouleh, and baba ghanoush. The hummus ($5), served in a slanted oval bowl, was wonderful, with its potentially overbearing constituents, including garlic, lemon, and tahini (which can be quite bitter) held in a proper balance. On the side came warm pita triangles in a bottomless basket. Even better was the yogurt-cucumber dish known in Greece as tzatziki ($5); it tasted as if it had been made with whole-milk yogurt, which has a velvety quality its more gelatinous low-fat cousins can’t match.

The Lebanese salad fattoush ($8) is something of an analog to the Italian bread salad panzanella, in that each is a way of making use of stale bread. In fattoush, the bread is pita, and at Mazzat, the toasted pita chunks were tossed with shreds of romaine, chopped red pepper, and bits of cucumber. It was as if a panzanella had collided with a caesar salad and the result given a tangy-sweet dressing.

Also slightly sweet were the meat pies ($6 for four), pastry rosettes filled with chopped beef that had been simmered with onion and tomato. I would have liked the filling a little better if it had been a bit less sweet and more savory (onion has surprising sweetening power, almost like carrot, when cooked enough), but it was easy to balance the sweetness with a hit of tzatziki.

On the savory-verging-on-salty part of the spectrum, there is the halloumi cheese ($4), presented as a quartet of fried chips with a slight softness and rubberiness inside. Halloumi is a Cypriot cheese, typically made with blend of cow and sheep milk, and this halloumi did indeed seem like a well-trained feta, with some of the pungency and saltiness nicely muted by the cow milk. If you like saganaki (the Greek cheese that gets doused with brandy and set on fire tableside) and can live with less theatrics, you’ll like the halloumi.

There was a divergence of views on the chicken shawerma wrap ($8), a burrito-sized cylinder of lavash stuffed with chicken that smelled and tasted of clove. The party of the second part didn’t care for the clove, and I understood the objection — clove has a strong personality — without joining it. The discordant association, for me, had to do with Christmas, since clove, with its penetrating perfume, is a key ingredient of mulled cider, a holiday favorite. On the other hand, the presence of clove meant that the wrap (with its flatbread skin nicely pressed and warm like a freshly ironed shirt) would never be mistaken for a burrito.

The desserts were of a proportion I would call ideal. They were bigger than petits fours, but several degrees of magnitude smaller than what you usually find at restaurants — and pay $9 or $10 for now. Nammura ($2.50), a kind of semolina cake that looked like a rectangle of corn bread, was nicely moist and just sweet enough to qualify as a dessert, although it did look lonely and naked on its plate. Almost anything would have helped: a scattering of berries, a sifting of powdered sugar, a splash of liqueur — maybe some arak, the Lebanese answer to pastis? More complete was the baklava ($3), intense with honey and fresh chopped pistachio, which also lent a lovely sheen of pale green, a hint of spring inside Mazzat as in the garden across the way.

MAZZAT

Mon.–Thurs., 4–10 p.m. Fri.–Sun., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.

501 Fell, SF

(415) 525-3901

www.mazzatsf.com

Wine and beer

DS/MC/V

Not noisy

Wheelchair accessible

 

Appetite: Island bites, part one

Andrew Lam
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Appetite: Island bites, part one

With an increased number of flights to Hawaii — accompanied by correspondingly more competitive airfares — including resumed direct routes out to Kauai, it’s easier than it’s been in years to get to that island getaway you’ve been dreaming about. My recent visit yielded plenty of rewards for foodies — not to mention some excellent hotels that are offering various discounts and deals. 

This time around, I focus on street food and the KCC farmer’s market in Honolulu, then food on Oahu’s fabulous North Shore, surfing capital of the world. Stay tuned for a multi-part series on neighboring oasis Kauai and Honolulu’s bars and restaurants.

HONOLULU

KCC Farmers Market: 

Held in the tony Diamond Head neighborhood — adjacent to the touristy but absolutely breathtaking hike over the Diamond Head Summit trail from Waikiki — I’d call this farmer’s market a must for any foodie. It’s got passionate purveyors, memorable local eats, and a bustling crowd. Here’s my ultimate game plan for KCC.

Start with taro dips from Tom Purdy of Taro Delight. I liked his red chili and coconut milk and his Thai green curry – taronaise, a taro root substitute for mayo, made for an interesting alternative. 

From there, move on to Korean-influenced sausages on a stick from Kukui Sausage Co., in particular the kimchee and pineapple sausages, which I loved. Savor an ultra-salty salmon fried rice from Ohana Seafoods, cooked on a wok right in front of you. Order two to six pieces of Kona Coast abalone. Wash it all down with refreshing kalamansi lime, ginger, and seltzer drink made with PacifiKool’s award-winning ginger syrup. 

Also availabe at Saturday’s KCC farmers market were OnoPops, one of my favorite tastes from the entire trip – they’d be a massive hit in San Francisco. Ultra-fresh ingredients are paired in unique flavor combos like ume Thai basil and kalamansi coriander. Lilikoi (passionfruit) 50-50 combines passion fruit with cream, while the tart kumquat pop is loaded with candied kumquat rinds. Pick a flavor – you cannot lose here. Coupled with a sweet staff, this cart is a must-stop. 

The Soul empire:

Available at his restaurant Soul and his food truck named Soul Patrol, chef Sean Priester is overtaking Honolulu with authentic Southern soul food — something you don’t find much of on the islands. Though it felt wrong ordering chicken and waffles ($12) in Hawaii while surrounded by foods unique to the region, I was pleased to taste Priester’s authentic flavors, which strangely enough, felt right at home on the islands.

 

NORTH SHORE-HALEIWA

Driving from Honolulu along Oahu’s Eastern side to the North Shore was one of the most delightful experiences in my time on Oahu. Unforgettable vistas and quiet beach towns unfolded before us, waving their gentle, aloha welcome as we passed by, compelling us to stop for multiple beach strolls along the way.

The famed North Shore is certainly a crowded surfer’s mecca. It’s a bit of a kill joy to suddenly be in bumper-to-bumper traffic on a two-lane road through such an otherwise relaxed setting. But the beach town vibe of Haleiwa is enchanting nonetheless – and its shrimp trucks and shave ice make it all better.

We trekked to a nearly private beach further west of Haleiwa, tromping through fields of flowers and horses to get to the beach, where we could swim in solitude and lay on the sand watching sky divers jump out of a plane above.

Giovanni’s Original White Shrimp Truck:

 If you find yourself in Kahuku, the tiny town on Oahu’s northeastern shore, look for the dinged-up white truck covered in scribbles that only a good day would qualify as graffiti. You’ll be rewarded with kick-ass shrimp. Giovanni’s, the first shrimp truck on the North Shore, launched the shrimp truck craze that has since taken over the area.

The original has similar offerings as its competitors, from spicy to lemon shrimp, but Giovanni’s signature is shrimp scampi, loaded with butter, a delightfully generous amount of garlic, two scoops of rice, and a squeeze of lemon to complete the dish. 

Eat your meal surrounded by local families under a large, covered patio, drinking juice from a coconut purchased at a neighboring juice truck. You’ll catch the spirit of Kahuku: laid back, funky — and delicious.

Romy’s:

Another Kahuku gem. The joy of Romy’s, besides more winning shrimp (sweet and spicy!) is that they farm all their own shrimp in a pond behind the bright red storefront. Red picnic tables dot the grounds near the pond and under awnings next to the shrimp shack. But plan ahead – the wait for a simple plate of shrimp can grow to agonizing lengths at mealtimes: come early or late.

Grammer be damned — don’t call it “shaved ice,” especially at Matsumoto’s

Matsumoto’s shave ice:

Shave ice is a North Shore invention and Matsumoto’s was the originator of this snow cone-like treat back in 1951. The humble little Haleiwa shop has a perpetual line out the door, movie star clientele, and tons of touristy merchandise surrounding it. 

More finely milled than a snow cone and reminiscent of my beloved sno-balls in New Orleans, Matsumoto’s shave ice is ideal on those balmy island days. Shave ice colors are unnaturally neon bright, which gave me cause for concern. But I chose flavors carefully: a mix of lilikoi, coconut, and Chinese sour plum, with azuki (red) beans on the bottom. You can also get condensed milk poured on top, but I chose vanilla ice cream, which melted over the beans and ice. It’s oddly addictive, a quintessential North Shore experience I highly recommend. (Note: Aoki’s Shave Ice is a popular alternative a few doors down.)

Ted’s Bakery:

Another Haleiwa classic, there’s only one reason to go to Ted’s: chocolate haupia pie, a layered dessert made of a tier of the traditional Hawaiian coconut pudding like dessert, haupia, and chocolate. I’m not a cream pie fan and this old school pie has a crust like those you buy in a grocery store, and a thick pudding texture. But for a couple dollars, it’s worth trying a slice — the haupia exudes a rich coconut essence that contrasts nicely with the pie’s chocolate.

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