Restaurants Archives — Page 27 of 32 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Newsom kills the party

November 7, 2007

EDITORIAL It was a typical Halloween night this year in New York City: two million people in Greenwich Village, 50,000 participants in a wild costume parade, national media attention … and no real problems. Since 1973, New York has managed to handle a homegrown event that exploded into a tourist attraction in an urban neighborhood. It’s a signature part of the city’s landscape, something world famous that shows the best of the city to the eyes of the world and generates a small fortune in tourist revenue.

Why can’t San Francisco, which by all rights ought to have a claim on Halloween as a national holiday, seem to get it together enough to manage its version of this event? Why was the city’s response simply to give up, to kill the party, to send out so many cops that the Castro was effectively in lockdown? Why spend millions to keep an event from happening while giving up on the small businesses that depend on that night’s revenue?

The scene on Castro Street on Oct. 31 was surreal; at least 500 law enforcement officers kept the barricaded streets blocked off. Anyone who so much as stuck a toe off the sidewalk was harshly reprimanded and pushed back. Local restaurants were shuttered — and the few that tried to stay open faced reprisals. The would-be revelers tried to be festive, but they weren’t given much support. Mayor Gavin Newsom and Sup. Bevan Dufty had effectively cancelled Halloween.

They did so with little public input, operating mostly in secrecy, without revealing any specific plans to anyone in the community. It was a startlingly un–San Franciscan way of doing business, autocratic and mean-spirited. In fact, Newsom’s press secretary, Nathan Ballard, was almost mocking of any community concern; when we asked if the mayor or any of his staff would be holding any press events to discuss Halloween plans or let the community know what was in store, he tersely responded, "Halloween has been cancelled."

Newsom referred to the evening as "an incredible success," and if the goals were to make sure that nobody had any fun, nobody spent any money, and the Castro District was largely dead, it’s hard to argue with his logic.

On the other hand, if you think it ought to be possible for San Francisco to host a big party without creating panic and fear — that Halloween ought to be something to improve on and fix, not utterly shut down and abandon — then Oct. 31 was a civic embarrassment.

In a city where thousands of homeless people still wander the streets, where the price of housing is driving families out of town, where the homicide rate is soaring, the fate of a party is hardly the top issue on anyone’s agenda. And it’s tempting to give up, focus on more important things, and let the city’s tradition of wild Halloween fun just die.

But this is part of a larger trend that’s been happening in this town, and it’s directly related to the gentrification that’s changing the face of San Francisco. We’ve called it "the death of fun" — anything that might make a little noise and bother some well-off neighbor, anything that might create a little mess, anything that’s just a little out of control … the folks in the Newsom administration would just as soon see it go away. These days permits for live music events are tougher to get. Street fairs are facing prohibitive fees and regulations. Dance clubs are being told to quiet down. And we’re getting sick of it.

Next year Halloween will fall on a Friday, and the Castro simply can’t shut down then. Even Dufty admits something different will have to be done, and there’s no shortage of ideas. A Halloween street fair — perhaps with a modest donation asked of anyone not wearing a costume — shouldn’t be impossible to manage. A parade, similar to that of the New York gala’s, could start in the Castro and wind down at Civic Center, thus eliminating the problems that have some neighbors up in arms. But any solution will require extensive community input, and the mayor and Dufty need to set up a legitimate community task force — now, not next summer — to start talking about plans.

Some people suggest that the mayor needs to create an office of special events, which isn’t a bad idea. But he needs to do something else first: say that he’s not dead set against fun.

Burrito will eat you

October 25, 2007

Ed Note: We know this is a little late, breaking-news-wise, but we just can’t seem to get over it. Especially while we’re eating canned spinach for lunch.

By Duncan Scott Davidson

Boy, am I glad there are no Hardee’s restaurants in California, or I’d have to eat one of these:

That’s the Country Breakfast Burrito, made, according to www.hardees.com, with “2 loaded omelets, 5 hashrounds, shredded cheddar cheese, and sausage gravy.” Just so you know, a “loaded omelet” has eggs, bacon, and ham in it. Which, in layman’s terms, is 920 calories and 60 grams of delicious, pork-based fat. Which, really, is not a whole lot, compared to eating a whole suckling pig, or a Hardee’s chicken salad, which has 1100 calories and 83 grams of fat. I mean, at least the breakfast burrito won’t dupe you into thinking you’re making the healthy choice by getting the salad. Hell no–there’s no fuckin’ vegetable matter up in this bitch. Lettuce is for suckers. This is the type of thing you order and say, “I’m gonna order that, eat half of it while watching football, get a little comatose, maybe wake up and finish it and/or barf, and/or barf and finish it, then watch some more football, maybe jerk off to porn, and go back to sleep.” It’s not a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, gonna start the day right menu item, here, folks. It’s a plan of your Sunday. It’s a low-cost vacation in a tortilla, friends. Look at the gravy and cheese oozing out of that thing…if that doesn’t scream “relaxation,” I don’t know what does.

All the do-gooder internet nutrition-nazis are decrying this one-way ticket to Slumberland, as you knew they would: CNN, Fitsugar, Foodfacts …

Of course, they’re getting it all wrong.

Airlines demand corporate welfare

October 23, 2007

› news@sfbg.com

The major airlines that serve the Bay Area, with the help of the Hotel Council of San Francisco, are trying to get out of paying millions of dollars in taxes to the city by claiming the right to use a law that was designed to help San Francisco’s poorest residents. And they’re threatening to prevent their employees from staying in the city if the Board of Supervisors doesn’t acquiesce to the corporate welfare demand.

At issue is the city’s 14 percent Transient Occupancy Tax, which is paid by hotel guests. It is the third-largest source of local tax revenue, after property taxes and payroll taxes, bringing in $177 million in the last fiscal year. The only major exemption from the tax is for permanent hotel residents, generally those on the brink of homelessness who live in the run-down single-room-occupancy hotels for months or even years on end.

Major airlines house hundreds of their employees in San Francisco’s hotels each night. They are arguing that because of past court rulings on corporate personhood — in which judges have deemed that corporations have the same rights as individuals — the airlines should be exempt from paying the tax when they rent blocks of rooms for their employees.

The airlines, in collusion with some hotels in the city, have long used the exemption to avoid paying taxes on many of the rooms they rent (about two-thirds, according to the Hotel Council, which translates into millions in lost city revenue every year). A few years ago city officials told the corporations that the exemption didn’t apply to them and that they should be paying the tax.

Enacted in 1960, the Permanent Resident Exclusion exempts from the tax individuals who occupy or have the right to occupy the same hotel room for at least 30 consecutive days. “We looked at the legislative history, and it was clearly put there to help formerly homeless people,” Treasurer José Cisneros told the Guardian. “The city has always said that 30 consecutive one-night stays are not the same as a 30-night stay by an individual.”

The hotels and airlines challenged that interpretation and had their case thrown out of court. So now they’ve turned to the Board of Supervisors in the hope that they can win this chunk of corporate welfare by using threats of an economic exodus.

CORPORATE SHAKEDOWN

In October 2004, American Airlines and the San Francisco Hilton filed a lawsuit against the city arguing that airline crew members staying in San Francisco hotels qualified for an exemption from the hotel tax. The lawsuit was dismissed in May 2006 without going to trial, with Superior Court Judge James Warren ruling that the plaintiffs “did not assert and did not present any evidence that any particular room at the Hilton was continuously registered to American Airlines for more than 30 days.”

To clarify any ambiguity in the law, Cisneros in May issued an interpretation stating, “Although an agreement between a person and a hotel may require that the person pay the hotel for a minimum number of ‘guaranteed’ daily reservations for the person’s employees over a period of time longer than 30 days, such an agreement does not create any permanent resident exemption for any guest rooms unless the above criteria are satisfied,” referring to criteria that include “a person is a registered hotel guest” and “that person or any of that person’s employees continuously occupy or have the right to occupy the same room for 30 days or more.”

Yet now, at the request of Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, the Board of Supervisors’ Government Oversight and Auditing Committee has scheduled a Nov. 19 hearing for the purpose of “explor[ing] the unintended consequences of this decision, including the loss of revenue to the City when the airlines inevitably move their crews to another location in the Bay Area where room rates are more competitive.”

That implied threat comes from Hotel Council executive director Patricia Breslin, who paints a doomsday scenario if the airlines have to pay the hotel tax on every room they rent. Breslin warns that if the Board of Supervisors does not offer concessions to the airline industry, it could bring about an “economic tsunami” that would hit hotels, restaurants, and city government.

Airline employees occupy an average of 1,050 hotel rooms per night in San Francisco, according to Smith Travel Research, an information and data provider for the lodging industry. Given that the tax is collected by the hotels, Cisneros doesn’t have data on how much the airlines should be paying the city. But assuming the airlines negotiate rates of about $100 per night, that would translate into more than $5 million per year.

“We pushed so hard to get them to pay it that they sued us,” Cisneros told us.

Breslin said the airlines have been paying about $1.7 million per year in hotel taxes and that sales taxes generated by airline employees bring another $1.4 million into the city, all money that would be lost if the airlines go elsewhere. She said the airlines have threatened to begin putting their employees in hotels in Peninsula cities near the airport, like Burlingame, San Mateo, and even San Jose, to cut costs. Already Mexicana Airlines has stopped using San Francisco’s hotels for its employees. Other airlines, such as Virgin Atlantic, United, Cathay Pacific, and Lufthansa, have threatened to follow suit.

Breslin said hotels would be forced to lay off cleaners, servers, and other low-income workers due to the loss of business that would accompany the exodus of airline employees. San Francisco, she argues, would “lose a significant revenue stream” if the airlines lose their appeal.

“It will change the economics of San Francisco,” she told us. “This is not a frivolous issue.”

CALLING THEIR BLUFF

Granting the exemption would cost the city millions of dollars, but that isn’t the only reason being offered for opposing the gambit. Some city officials simply don’t believe the airlines — or their employees, most of whom are union members, many of whom have contracts specifying their accommodations be in urban centers — will abandon San Francisco.

Sup. Chris Daly, who is on the Oversight and Auditing Committee, is against granting the exemption to the airlines. “They blow smoke all the time,” he told us, referring to major industries such as the hotel and airline industries. “That’s how they get away with not paying taxes.”

Cisneros argues the airlines’ threat to move their employees into suburban hotels isn’t logical, noting that San Francisco hotel rooms are already far more expensive than their suburban counterparts — with or without the hotel tax — and the airlines have always chosen to keep their employees here anyway.

“I just don’t think the threat is realistic at all,” Cisneros said. “If they were basing their decision on which hotels are cheapest, they would have never been staying in San Francisco.”

Recently compiled data and trends in tourism and hotel occupancy rates also suggest that Breslin’s warning of a crippling economic backlash are unfounded. According to an August article in the San Francisco Business Times by Ryan Tate, “Next year promises to be by far the most robust for leisure and business travel in San Francisco since the dot-com boom.”

He continues, “Convention business will reach more than 900,000 hotel rooms in 2008, well above the 740,000 room nights booked by conventions in 2007.” The San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau forecasts that overall tourism will top 16 million visitors next year and that visitor spending will exceed last year’s record $7.8 billion.

The taxes the city collects from hotels go toward funding a wide range of public services. Some of the money is earmarked for the Convention and Visitors Bureau and for maintaining convention facilities. Some funds are allocated for low-income housing and rent supplements. The War Memorial Department, the Asian Art Museum, and the Arts Commission all receive funding through the hotel tax as well, with excess dollars poured into the city’s General Fund.

San Francisco’s tourism industry is the city’s largest industry and its second-largest employer, after the city and county government. “You want to make sure your number one industry is protected,” Breslin told us.

Yet the policy that she’s asking the city to enact runs counter to the policies in other major cities, including those thought to be less politically progressive than San Francisco. In Los Angeles, for example, only individuals can be granted exemptions from paying the hotel tax. In Chicago the exemption is even stricter and only applies to people who use hotel rooms as their domicile.

41st Anniversary Special: Bilking the links

October 17, 2007

› news@sfbg.com

By now, even most nongolfing residents of San Francisco have heard the dire refrain coming from City Hall: San Francisco’s public golf courses are sucking millions of dollars from the city treasury! Dozens of media stories have trumpeted this bleak pronouncement, and city leaders are using the shortfall to push for outsourcing control of the century-old open spaces. But a Guardian review of the Golf Fund shows that the links are not nearly as down-and-out as pro-privatization forces have led us to believe.

Recreation and Park Department accounting documents we obtained show revenues at the city’s six publicly owned golf courses last year were up nearly $1.5 million from 2005 to 2006 and more than $2.2 million dollars from 2004 to 2005, an increase of nearly 30 percent. But the cost of a lavish contract with a large, out-of-state golf-management corporation has risen precipitously over the same time frame and drained most of these new funds.

For the 2006–07 fiscal year the city shelled out more than $3.25 million to Kemper Sports Management to operate the pro shop and clubhouse at the Harding Park Golf Course and its nine-hole neighbor, Fleming. By comparison, in 2004–05, Kemper’s tab at Harding and Fleming was a still eye-popping $2.07 million, but that number is nearly $1.2 million less than what the city had to pay last year. These increased costs, as well as a hefty loan repayment for Harding Park’s botched remodel in 2002 and 2003, have eaten up the links’ improved revenue and forced the city to throw in an extra $1.4 million from the General Fund to keep golf solvent.

"What’s going on up at Harding is a disaster," Bob Killian told the Guardian. Killian ran the city’s golf operations profitably for two decades until 2001. "When I was in charge we had contracts with various managers for the pro shops and the restaurants, and they made us money. They paid us. Now, Harding is run at a deficit. Where the fuck is the money going? What’s it for? Nobody knows. It’s all this big secret…. It’s a scandal."

Kemper’s seven-year deal is unique, to say the least. At every other publicly managed course, the city leases control of the pro shops and clubhouses to outside companies. In exchange for a flat fee paid into city coffers, those companies bear all of the risk and reap most of the rewards of operating the facilities. But at Harding, the city pays Illinois’s Kemper $192,000 per year, regardless of its performance, to act as an on-site manager, plus a 5 percent incentive fee for gross revenues over $6 million. But those guaranteed sums are only the beginning of the bill.

Kemper hires staff, rents golf carts, and orders the supplies to be sold in the pro shop and the clubhouse. Unlike in the city’s lease arrangements at other courses, though, the company bears none of the risk. It simply invoices the city for its expenses, and the city signs the tab. And the tab just keeps growing.

One public-golf insider who declined to be identified for fear of retribution said, "They’ve got this enormous staff there, managers and assistant managers and assistants to assistants of managers. It’s a golf course, not a hospital! I hear the payroll for the restaurant alone is like $600,000. And it’s only open for one shift a day…. They stock their pro shop with top-of-the-line gear that just sits there. If they order 20 Arnold Palmer shirts and only sell two, who cares? The city still pays for all 20."

In an e-mail to the Guardian, Kemper’s general manager at Harding, Steve Argo, told us it has between 60 and 80 employees, depending on the season. Citing this seasonal variability and "competitive reasons," he did not break down those numbers between management and nonmanagement, as we requested.

Both Argo and Katharine Petrucione, Rec and Park’s chief financial officer, attributed much of the added costs at Harding to the opening of a new permanent clubhouse there in late 2005. Argo said the increased revenues from the clubhouse have "more than covered the city’s increase in payments." But while Rec and Park’s ledgers do show that concessions revenues at Harding and Fleming have gone up since the clubhouse opened, the increase in Kemper’s bill has gone up nearly as much. All in all, with Kemper’s multimillion-dollar deal and loan payments for the over-budget remodel at the course, accounts still put the course at more than $500,000 in the red — even though a round of golf there now costs well over $100 and Kemper is still making a handsome profit.

It doesn’t end there. Petrucione said Kemper’s contract costs taxpayers even more than meets the eye. Because the company submits monthly and yearly budget projections as well as reams of invoices and expenses for reimbursement, Rec and Park staffers spend hours examining Kemper’s paperwork and activities — essentially managing the manager. When we asked her for an accounting of how much the Kemper contract costs the city in staff hours for these oversight duties, Petrucione replied, "It definitely requires more time and effort … than a lease agreement [like those at every other course] would."

During a recent radio interview, Sup. Jake McGoldrick called Rec and Park’s deal with Kemper "the worst contract I’ve ever seen." He added, "We don’t have a golfer problem. Golfers are coming out and playing. We have an accountancy problem."

The golf insider we spoke with echoed McGoldrick’s sentiments: "Business is up like 30 percent this year, but Kemper’s contract is jeopardizing the whole department…. If we redid the greens, tees, and fairways [at the other courses], just Band-Aid stuff like that, we would have the premier municipal system in the country. But instead they’ve given this cushy deal to a company from Chicago with no connection to San Francisco. It’s so unfair."

Despite the controversy over Kemper’s all-expenses-paid arrangement, Mayor Gavin Newsom, Rec and Park general manager Yomi Agunbiade, and others at City Hall have been using the deficits largely brought on by Kemper’s contract to push for more private control of the city’s links. In June the Mayor’s Office put forward a plan to outsource not just clubhouse and pro-shop management but all golf operations at the city’s premier courses, including Harding. The proposal was tabled after several contentious hearings at the Board of Supervisors, but many observers expect that it will make its way back to the board in the near future.

"In a perfect scenario, the city could [manage the courses efficiently], but the city has proven that it doesn’t have the ability to do it," Sup. Sean Elsbernd told us in July. Elsbernd has been one of the most vocal supporters of bringing in private golf management.

But McGoldrick, Killian, and other opponents of the idea point out that the city provided quality, inexpensive golf for nearly 100 years. They worry that private managers will find profit in higher greens fees, more part-time workers, and lower salaries and fewer benefits for full-time staff. But beyond those concerns, they see the mayor’s plan as yet another example of publicly owned assets being offered up for private gain.

The courses, McGoldrick told us, are "priceless…. We can’t just dump [them] because you’ve got folks from the Mayor’s Office and his Rec and Park Department who don’t want to be bothered."

In his endorsement interview with the Guardian, Newsom said about the golf courses, "You gotta deal with the reality of where we are and what our core competencies are. Golf courses do not reflect a core competency of government. We’re losing hundreds of thousands of dollars and about to lose over a million dollars a year, and that comes from somewhere. So rather than continuing to do what we’ve done and hope for a different result, we’re looking at best practices across the country and finding ways to manage our assets differently, and I’m not apologetic for exploring those things."

Pete’s Tavern

October 16, 2007

› paulr@sfbg.com

With the recent cashiering of Barry Bonds, the House that Barry Built goes into receivership, while the neighborhood pauses to reflect. Perhaps the foul odors that have gathered over AT&T Park in recent seasons — bad-team and steroid-scandal stinks — will now dissipate. Perhaps the park will be given a more euphonious name, one that actually has something to do with baseball, the team, and the city, and is not just a reference to the highest corporate bidder du jour.

Are people thinking these sorts of deep thoughts at Pete’s Tavern, a new venture by the canny Peter Osborne, who opened MoMo’s in the neighborhood before there was much of a neighborhood? I doubt it. For one thing, it is hard to think any sort of thought when you are a sodden sports nut in your Alabama sweatshirt, watching Crimson Tide football on one of the many flat-panel screens mounted high around the huge bar and bellowing like an agitated zoo gorilla at every first down and penalty flag — sloshing beer on your sweatshirt too. Yes, Pete’s is part sports bar, and while it happens to be across the street from a major sports temple, it would be what it is no matter where it was. Sports culture, like cyberspace, is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, and the people who plug into it tend to float free from the reality-based community.

But Pete’s (which opened in August) isn’t just a sports bar, a place where postcollegiate men sit with pitchers of beer and luxuriate in periodic outbursts of boorishness. It’s also a restaurant, and it serves food I might be tempted to describe as "surprising" if MoMo’s weren’t so good. Osborne is obviously a savvy entrepreneur who understands the lure of sports in attracting crowds, but his restaurants (including, once upon a time, the Washington Square Bar and Grill) have been estimable despite their often raucous venues, and Pete’s Tavern, in a Falstaffian way, adds to this legacy.

"Tavern" suggests dim lighting, at least to me, and Pete’s can be very dim indeed. When we stepped into the place’s large vestibule over a recent sunny noon hour, it was as if we’d gone blind.

"If it were any darker, there’d be a lawsuit," said my friend. We halted for a moment to let our eyes adjust and thoughts of litigation clear. Then we mounted the half-staircase to the main room, where an enormous bar stands at center court, with tables and chairs lining the sidewalls. The noise factor at Pete’s is not inconsiderable; apart from the oft-madding crowd there is, even in moments of relative lassitude, a soundtrack of thumping music that reverberates off a world of hard surfaces, including handsome but rather chilly zinc-topped tables.

The mood, then, was distinctly unpromising in those first moments. Then the bruschetta ($9) arrived, and when I bit into a point of beautifully pillowy grilled garlic bread laden with chunks of fresh mozzarella, drippingly ripe slices of heirloom tomato, and julienne of basil — the whole enlivened with a judicious flick or two of salt — my spirits rose. Clearly the kitchen (under the direction of chef de cuisine Damon Hall) wasn’t stinting on ingredients nor sending out plates of food that hadn’t been properly seasoned.

The chili con carne ($5 for a bowl) was meaty as could be with what seemed to be high-quality, house-ground chuck, and it was nicely decorated with matchsticks of crisped tortilla. A tuna salad ($10), meanwhile, featured fresh tuna (mashed with mayonnaise and lightly browned so as to resemble a pat of goat cheese) nested in mixed greens, with cherry tomatoes, quartered hard-boiled eggs, and a creamy vinaigrette on the side.

Prices are not terrible for what you get and considering where you’re getting it, but they do seem higher than the pubby average. Zucchini strings were a little dear at $7, though the pile was haystack huge. (This dish, consisting of batter-fried shreds, was the only one we found to be underseasoned. A side cup of ranch dressing, for dipping, helped.) And $12 for an open-faced turkey sandwich? Well, all right, especially since the gravy, flecked with green peas and carrots, was intensely flavorful and the flaps of meat were draped over tasty cheddar biscuits.

On the other hand, $13 for half a rotisserie chicken seemed fair enough, given the snap of the house-made sauce and the moist tenderness of the bird, which wasn’t quite confitlike but was in the (sorry!) ballpark. By the time we were staggering toward the far end of this plate of food (which included quarters of roasted new potatoes, just to make sure), we were revisiting the wisdom of having opened with chicken and chorizo nachos ($10) in addition to the zucchini strings. The nachos plate was like many a nachos plate in many a sports bar: a great coming-together of tortilla chips under an oozy cap of melted cheese, with large mounds of sour cream, salsa, and guacamole on top, the last two house-made. The nachos, plus a pitcher or two of beer, would have been plenty to keep a couple of ex–frat rats satisfied into extra innings.

But there were no extra innings that night, just another Giants loss, and an exodus of fans streaming forth into the mild evening as we stepped out of Pete’s. We waved at old Barry, but he didn’t see us, just as we hadn’t seen him. *

PETE’S TAVERN

Daily, 11 a.m.–midnight

128 King, SF

(415) 817-5040

www.petestavernsf.com

Full bar

AE/DS/MC/V

Very noisy

Wheelchair accessible

John Barleycorn must die

October 16, 2007

› molly@sfbg.com

"There was three men come out o’ the west, their fortunes for to try,

And these three men made a solemn vow, John Barleycorn must die.

They plowed, they sowed, they harrowed him in, throwed clods upon his head,

And these three men made a solemn vow, John Barleycorn was dead."

From an old English folk song

It’s a dark, rainy Friday night, and Larkin Street is eerily quiet except for one beacon of light: the John Barleycorn pub. Inside this almost 40-year-old watering hole, logs crackle in a fireplace built with cobblestones from old San Francisco streets.

Neighbors, law students from a nearby university, and longtime regulars cluster together on cable car benches and onetime church pews, tippling and talking quietly beneath a ceiling made from the beams of an old Petaluma chicken coop.

Behind the bar, owner Larry Ayre, with rosy cheeks hugged by a pair of spectacles, serves drinks and good cheer the same way he has for more than three decades. Some of his customers have been coming here for just as long.

"There’s only one bar you call your home bar, and somehow, they have to take you in," Ayre said. "In here, you can be whoever you want to be."

Unfortunately for the Barleycorn, its lease is up, and it’s part of a building that was recently purchased by Louisa Hanson, a controversial local entrepreneur who owns several other properties in the area, including Louisa’s on Union Street and Delaney’s in the Marina. Hanson refuses to renew the Barleycorn’s lease, and it’s rumored she plans to turn the building into a new restaurant.

So tonight the mood is bittersweet. Ayre’s birthday is tomorrow, and neighbors are already stopping by. But no one’s forgetting that the pub’s doom is imminent, and unless a miracle happens the beloved bar will shut its doors October 26. For good.

Pub supporters nonetheless began appealing to Hanson last December when they heard of her plans not to renew the ‘Corn’s lease. They tried to make the case that the popular pub is the right size and scale for the neighborhood, that any other venture would be hard to support in such a tough retail environment, and that the bar is so well loved, Hanson would alienate potential future customers by closing it.

But the notoriously elusive Hanson — who’s obtained licenses for more than 22 businesses in the past two decades, most of which closed within two years or never opened at all — wouldn’t discuss the future of the ‘Corn, much less consider their pleas.

In an effort to save it, weekend bartender and longtime patron Tony Antico helped found the Save the John Barleycorn Coalition. Volunteers gathered more than 4,000 signatures from friends and fans in 30 countries and 20 states. They staged a demonstration outside Hanson’s Union Street restaurant. They lined up formal support from the SF Appreciation Society, the Polk Corridor Business and Middle Polk Neighborhood associations, Lower Polk Neighbors, and Sup. Aaron Peskin, who represents the district. The Board of Supervisors even passed a resolution commending the pub and recommending it be kept open.

"In America you can be a mean nut, and if you own property, the law protects you," Peskin told the Guardian.

Despite all the effort, Hanson is heavily invested in the property and appears to have little incentive to back off now. Public records show that she first bought it for $2.3 million in autumn 2005 and then took out two loans against it totaling $2.5 million.

She seems so eager to develop the property, in fact, that in June city building inspectors found ongoing construction work being conducted at Barleycorn’s neighbor, the former Front Room, without a permit, including taking out a wall and removing fixtures.

But Hanson is no stranger to conflict. Superior Court records show that she’s been the target of a fairly steady stream of litigation since the 1980s, ranging from allegations that she refused to pay contractors or employees to charges that she disregarded contractual agreements with business partners.

One case, brought against Hanson in 2003 by the former owners of her Marina restaurant, alleged that she agreed to a purchase but then withheld payments in hopes of forcing a better deal when the sellers grew desperate. According to the suit, the "alleged secret intent" of Hanson "constitutes an intentional misrepresentation, deceit, or concealment of a material fact that has caused injury" to the former owners. A judge ruled against Hanson and demanded that she pay the plaintiffs $183,674.

That case didn’t surprise Vickie Hall, who had a similar experience when she tried to sell her coffee shop in Amador County to Hanson earlier this year. After agreeing to pay full price for Hall’s homegrown business, Hanson allegedly held the deal in escrow, and therefore off the market for sale to someone else, until Hall would agree to a lower purchase price.

Hall claims that when she begrudgingly agreed but asked for a higher deposit, Hanson simply never responded to the counteroffer. Hall says Hanson couldn’t be reached for six weeks to sign over the original deposit money.

"It was a bad situation with a woman who I think is ruthless and could give a hoot about how her business practices are handled," said Hall, now living in Arkansas, who only sold the business because she and her partner are now on disability.

Look Hanson up on Yelp.com and you’ll find a litany of complaints from former employees, neighbors, business partners, and customers. There’s even a blog dedicated to the "eccentricities and out-and-out weirdness of San Francisco’s worst entrepreneur," located at Luisaconfidential.blogspot.com.

In fact, Barleycorn supporter John Clark, who has lived in the city 25 years and worked in local restaurants for eight years, was warned by peers not to pursue a job in any of her restaurants, so he avoided them.

"She’s a bad businesswoman and unscrupulous," Clark said. And the Barleycorn "is a great little English pub. I’m tired of the character that makes this city what it is getting sucked out of it. This is just another long-standing neighborhood institution being closed because of greed."

So far, Hanson has refused to discuss the Barleycorn, not returning calls from Ayre, Peskin, or the Guardian for this story. Her response to the demonstration outside her Union Street business was to give pub supporters the Italian version of the bird (video posted at savethebarleycorn.org).

In fact, the only thing anyone, including government officials, can do now is make it hard for her to open a new business in the building by changing zoning laws or refusing permits — actions that may hurt Hanson in the long run but won’t change the Barleycorn’s fate.

For now, the ‘Corn’s supporters are trying to maintain their optimism while being realistic. At Ayre’s birthday party Oct. 13, patrons continued to add their names to the petition at the end of the bar while Ayre’s wife explained where in their house the couple would put the historic wooden countertop once the bar closes. But no one will be done enjoying the establishment, or fighting to keep it open, until the last minute of its last day.

"I always believe that little miracles can happen," Peskin said. "I’m waiting for one."

Bilking the links

October 12, 2007

By now, even most non-golfing residents of San Francisco have heard the dire refrain coming out of City Hall: San Francisco’s public golf courses are sucking millions of dollars from the city treasury! Dozens of media stories have trumpeted these bleak pronouncements, and city leaders are using the shortfall to push for outsourcing control of the century-old open spaces. But a Guardian review of the “Golf Fund” shows that the links are not nearly as down and out as pro-privatization forces have led us to believe.

Recreation and Park Department accounting documents we obtained show revenues at the city’s six publicly-owned golf courses last year were up nearly $1.5 million from 2005-2006 and over $2.2 million dollars from 2004-2005, an increase of nearly 30 percent. But the costs of a lavish contract with a large, out-of-state golf management corporation have risen precipitously over the same time frame and drained off most of these new funds.

For the 2006-2007 fiscal year, the city shelled out more than $3.25 million to Kemper Sports Management to operate the pro shop and clubhouse at the Harding Park Golf Course and its nine-hole neighbor, Fleming. By comparison, in 2004-2005, Kemper’s tab at Harding and Fleming was a still eye-popping $2.07 million, but that number was nearly $1.2 million less than what the city had to pay last year. These increased costs, as well as a hefty loan repayment for Harding Park’s botched remodel in 2002 and 2003, have eaten up the links’ improved revenues and forced the city to throw in an extra $1.4 million from the General Fund to keep golf solvent.

“What’s going on up at Harding is a disaster,” Bob Killian told the Guardian. Killian ran the city’s golf operations profitably for two decades until 2001. “When I was in charge, we had contracts with various managers for the pro shops and the restaurants and they made us money. They paid us. Now, Harding is run at a deficit. Where the fuck is the money going? What’s it for? Nobody knows. It’s all this big secret … It’s a scandal.”

Kemper’s seven year deal is unique, to say the least. At every other publicly managed course, the city leases control of the pro shops and clubhouses to outside companies. In exchange for a flat fee paid into city coffers, those companies bear all the risk, and reap most of the rewards, for operating the facilities. But at Harding, the city pays the Illinois-based Kemper $192,000 a year, regardless of their performance, to act as an on-site manager, plus a 5% “incentive fee” for gross revenues over $6 million. But those guaranteed sums are only the beginning of the bill.

Kemper hires staff, rents golf carts, and orders the supplies to be sold in the pro shop and the clubhouse. Unlike the city’s lease arrangements at other courses, though, they bear none of the risk. They simply invoice the city for their expenses and the city signs the tab. And the tab just keeps growing.

One public golf insider who declined to be identified for fear of retribution grumbled, “They’ve got this enormous staff there, managers and assistant managers and assistants to assistants of managers. It’s a golf course, not a hospital! I hear the payroll for the restaurant alone is like $600,000. And it’s only open for one shift a day … They stock their pro shop with top of the line gear that just sits there. If they order 20 Arnold Palmer shirts and only sell two, who cares? The city still pays for all 20.”

In an email to the Guardian, Kemper’s general manager at Harding, Steve Argo, told us they have between 60 and 80 employees, depending on the season. Citing this seasonal variability and “competitive reasons,” he did not break those numbers down between management and non-management, as we requested.

Both Argo and Katharine Petrucione, Rec and Parks’ Chief Financial Officer, attributed much of the added costs at Harding to the opening of a new “permanent clubhouse” there in late 2005. Argo said the increased revenues from the clubhouse have “more than covered the city’s increase in payments.” But while Rec and Parks’ ledgers do show that concessions revenues at Harding and Fleming have gone up since the clubhouse opened, the increase in Kemper’s bill has gone up nearly as much. All in all, with Kemper’s multimillion dollar deal and loan payments for the over-budget remodel at the course, accounts still put the course at more $500,000 dollars in the red – even though a round of golf there now costs well over $100 and Kemper is still making a handsome profit.

It doesn’t end there. Petrucione said Kemper’s contract actually costs taxpayers even more than meets the eye. Because the company submits monthly and yearly budget projections, as well as reams of invoices and expenses for reimbursement, Rec and Park staffers spend hours examining Kemper’s paperwork and activities – essentially managing the manager. When we asked her for an accounting of how much the Kemper contract costs the city in staff hours for these oversight duties, Petrucione replied, “It definitely requires more time and effort … than a lease agreement [like those at every other course] would.”

During a recent radio interview, Sup. Jake McGoldrick called Rec and Park’s deal with Kemper, “The worst contract I’ve ever seen…We don’t have a golfer problem,” he added. “Golfers are coming out and playing. We have an accountancy problem.”

The golf insider we spoke with echoed McGoldrick’s sentiments, “Business is up like 30% this year, but Kemper’s contract is jeopardizing the whole department … If we redid the greens, tees and fairways [at the other courses besides Harding], just Band-aid stuff like that, we would have the premiere municipal system in the country. But instead they’ve given this cushy deal to a company from Chicago with no connection to San Francisco. It’s so unfair.”

Despite the controversy over Kemper’s all-expenses-paid arrangement, Mayor Gavin Newsom, Rec and Park general manager Yomi Agunbiade, and others at City Hall have been using the deficits largely brought on by Kemper’s contract to push for more private control over the city’s links. In June, the Mayor’s office put forward a plan to outsource not just clubhouse and pro shop management, but all golf operations at the city’s premiere courses, including Harding. The proposal was tabled after several contentious hearings at the Board of Supervisors, but many observers expect that it will make its way back to the Board in the near future.

“In a perfect scenario the city could [manage the courses efficiently] but the city has proven that it doesn’t have the ability to do it,” Supervisor Sean Elsbernd told us back in July. Elsbernd has been one of the most vocal supporters of bringing in private golf management.

But McGoldrick, Killian and other opponents of the idea point out that the city provided quality, inexpensive golf for nearly 100 years. They worry that private managers will find profit in higher greens fees, more part time workers, and lower salaries and less benefits for full time staff. But beyond those concerns, they see the Mayor’s plan as yet another example of publicly owned assets being offered up for private gain.

The courses, McGoldrick told us, are “priceless … we can’t just dump [them] because you’ve got folks from the Mayor’s office and his Rec and Park department who don’t want to be bothered.”

A pizza bust?

October 10, 2007

If the NFL’s powers that be conclude that New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, recently busted for unauthorized reconnaissance of other teams’ signals, needs a more stinging punishment than a large fine, might I respectfully suggest that he be sentenced to eat a pizza at Figs, the Todd English restaurant on Boston’s posh Beacon Hill?

I mean no calumny against Boston, a jewel of urban sophistication and civility and a city full of all sorts of interesting restaurants and farmers markets, including a big one in the Back Bay’s Copley Square. But I don’t think I’ve ever had a more miserable restaurant meal than the one we endured on a recent weekend night at Figs — a place with a big-name chef! In a neighborhood full of rich people who, whatever else one might think of them, surely know good food from bad, especially when bad means really bad.

Begin with a native heirloom salad, more or less a Caprese, with various colorful orbs sliced into quarters and served with chunks of soft mozzarella under a basting of basil vinaigrette. While I would be willing to cut New Englanders some slack on the matter of growing seasons, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that a reputable restaurant should be able to find late-summer tomatoes that are at least reasonably ripe rather than hard and crisp as autumn apples. I had to cut them up with a steak knife. For the first time in my life, I considered sending back a salad on the ground that it was inedible.

Then the pizza arrived, looking like a small magic carpet. In a moment of inattention, I’d let my companion order a "crispy calamari" pie. How bad could it be? Even bad pizza is usually edible, with some flavor. But not this one. This pie — a square of dough, swabbed with tomato paste and arugula, then topped with a shower of calamari batter-fried separately — defied being eaten. Perhaps we should have taken the hint. The calamari bits rolled around and off the crust like barrels of wine on the deck of a storm-tossed sailing ship, while the Kevlar-like crust itself resisted even the sharp teeth of the steak knife. Our server wisely did not ask what we thought of the pizza. I was thinking of a word, and it was worse than bust.

Paul Reidinger

› paulr@sfbg.com

Golden Rice Bowl and San Tung

October 9, 2007

› paulr@sfbg.com

If you think chicken is restaurant food for losers, you haven’t been getting out to enough Chinese restaurants lately. And who could blame you? Going out for Chinese food these days is a little like voting in a presidential primary: there are far too many choices that seem far too much alike, and most of them turn out to be disappointing. But we mustn’t let ourselves become discouraged by mediocrity, which after all is the usual state of human affairs and the human beings who conduct them. There are always jewels to be found, glittering in the muck of the mundane, and the task at hand is the pleasant one of discovery.

The chicken-is-for-losers argument was put forth explicitly by Anthony Bourdain in his book Kitchen Confidential. When you don’t know what you want, you order chicken. Probably you will forget about the chicken as soon as it’s gone, like an episode of bad sex. But maybe you won’t forget, if you were lucky or wise enough to have the dry-fried chicken, and to have had it at either of a pair of places on Irving in the Inner Sunset: San Tung or Golden Rice Bowl. As Chinese restaurants in the city go, these places look like strictly neighborhood joints, with not much in the way of décor or other atmospherics, and service that’s not exactly coddling, though friendly and competent. But the chicken!

And what is dry-fried chicken, exactly? It could begin with either wings or thigh meat — but thigh meat, which is boneless, gives a higher edible yield. The pieces of flesh are dipped in batter or otherwise given some kind of coating, then fried in oil until lightly crisped. The result is a heap of golden chunks and shards, juicy within envelopes of delicate crunch. There might be a discreet flow of spicy sauce. For those who like a certain muscularity in their Chinese cooking, dry-fried chicken could be just the ticket, and the variations between the approaches taken by the respective kitchens at San Tung and Golden Rice Bowl will be a prod to ongoing interest.

We found San Tung’s version ($5.50 at lunch, $8 at dinner) to consist of large, flattish chunks of meat, like rocks you could skip across a pond on a summer afternoon. The chunks had been battered and fried to a sturdy gold, with ginger, garlic, and red chile peppers lending an appealingly blunt heat to the proceedings. Across the street, meanwhile, Golden Rice Bowl’s edition ($5.50 at lunch, $8.25 at dinner) gave its slightly more cylindrical bits of meat a coating that was less batter looking than some kind of dredging (in cornmeal and pepper); after the hot-oil treatment, the textural effect was similar to that of pepper-fried calamari. The dish also included a slightly sweet sauce, as glossy and dark as molasses and dotted with chunks of red chili pepper for a bit of heat. And the winner is … a draw.

I don’t mean to imply that the two restaurants are identical, or even fraternal, twins. San Tung seems to be, overall, more of a spice-heat palace, as suggested by the little complimentary plate of kimchee that’s brought to your table after you’re seated. (At Golden Rice Bowl, the nibble consists of daikon and carrot sticks, on the sweet side of pickled.) Perhaps the fire accounts for San Tung’s throngs of the young and the trendy; Golden Rice Bowl’s demographic appears to be a little older, less noisy, and distinctly Asian — this last detail always reassuring, at least to this occidental person.

More San Tung zing can be found in the three deluxe spicy sauce noodles ($7), a quite large bowl filled with linguinelike homemade noodles, shrimp, calamari, and scallops in a reddish, sweet-heat sauce under a rough green cap of cucumber splinters. Across the street at GRB you can get something similar and just as tasty but milder: seafood Hong Kong–<\d>style crispy noodles ($7.25), a stir-fry of shellfish, calamari, snow peas, carrot sticks, whole baby shiitake mushrooms, and leaves of nappa cabbage laid atop a broad nest of crisped vermicelli-style noodles. The well-modulated tone here seems rather Cantonese.

Soups track a similar divide. San Tung’s hot and sour soup ($4.95), chockablock with strips of tofu, peas, bamboo shoots, and willow-tree mushrooms, arrives on the tongue with a nice sourness but later releases a pepper heat that vents up through one’s nostrils. Golden Rice Bowl’s seaweed egg flower soup ($4.50), on the other hand, is almost like liquid sushi, with its black webbings of kelp giving off their subtle but distinctive odor; ballast (and some color) is provided by diced root vegetables and peas.

We pause briefly to acknowledge San Tung’s fabulous shrimp and leek dumplings ($6.50 for 12 — a deal). The menu describes them as "little," but really they’re about the size and shape of potstickers, though steamed instead of pan-fried. What is most remarkable is their richly juicy filling, a fragrant blend of ground shrimp mixed with ginger, garlic, and Chinese chives. You could make a meal out of a plate of these.

Golden Rice Bowl has an aquarium — a nice touch, especially since it’s purely decorative and not a holding tank full of creatures waiting to be plucked out and turned into somebody’s dinner. The place is also more gently lit than its neighbor across the way, where overhead lights glare and the atmosphere is not for the faint of heart — or who are, as we used to say in grade school, chicken.

GOLDEN RICE BOWL

Daily, 11 a.m.–9:30 p.m.

1030 Irving, SF

(415) 731-8110

Beer and wine

AE/MC/V

Not noisy

Wheelchair accessible

SAN TUNG

Mon.–Tues. and Thurs.–Sun., 11 a.m.–9:30 p.m.

1031 Irving, SF

(415) 242-0828

Beer and wine

MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Metro Kathmandu

October 3, 2007

› paulr@sfbg.com

On the list of pleasures a restaurant can offer, let’s agree that unexpectedness sits pretty high. Scene: you are drifting along Divisadero in the lower Haight, a still-scruffy region filled with filling stations, along with cafes and liquor stores whose signage has faded. You are hungry and not feeling especially picky. You stop in front of a place that used to be a decent French bistro, Metro, and note that it is now called Metro Kathmandu. You wonder if it has become a French bistro serving Nepalese food, in some wrinkle of a twist of a trend. Stranger things have happened — they happen all the time. Clearly something has happened; change has come. You shrug your shoulders and, because you detect pangs amidships, you step inside, not supposing that when you emerge, an hour or so later, you will scarcely be able to remember how modest your expectations were as you went in, nor how wildly they were exceeded.

Metro Kathmandu opened over the summer under the auspices of Jacques Manuera, a name that gives us a clue as to why the place is so good so soon. For one of Manuera’s earlier ventures was Baker Street Bistro, an astounding little French jewel tucked into a side street near the Presidio’s Lombard Gate. Manuera knows how to run small restaurants to the highest standards, and with the help of a partner and co-owner, Roshan K, and a gifted chef, Bishnu Chaudhary, he has done it again, this time with a Himalayan accent.

The foods of Nepal aren’t completely exotic here. For the past several years, the adventurous have had a choice between Little Nepal, in Bernal Heights, and Taste of the Himalayas (which replaced a Tibetan restaurant, Lhasa Moon) on Lombard. Those places are good, in their way, but Metro Kathmandu is remarkable, bringing forth dish after splendid dish at low prices in an appealingly modern setting. My dinnertime confrere, never one for fatuous praise ("I don’t need to come back here!" is an oft-made comment), allowed that the restaurant is among the best he’s ever been in.

Well, what is the secret? Little touches, of course, combined with some subtle surprises. Because Nepal lies along the border between India and China, its cooking is Indochinese in the broadest sense, a blend of influences from these two huge neighbors. At a given moment, you could easily mistake chicken momos ($6) — steamed dumplings filled with chicken, garlic, and ginger — for Chinese pot stickers (except they’re not seared on the bottom), and the next moment you are dunking your momo into a chutney of sesame and tomato while daydreaming of the Taj Mahal.

That said, the food seems more Indian than anything else. The department of bread offers roti ($2) and buttery paratha ($3). The kitchen, having presented your table with a complimentary dish of pickled daikon radish, turns out a splendid, creamy dal ($3) in which the red Indian lentils are puréed into a thick, peach-colored sauce for the al dente cooking of dark green (possibly Puy) lentils. This is an unusual and elegant multilayering. Pakodas, or fritters — whether of shrimp ($7) or a vegetarian combination ($6) of baby spinach, onions, and cabbage — are made feather light, yet golden crisp, by a coating of garbanzo bean flour. And saag paneer ($7), spinach cooked in spices with cubes of fresh white cheese, is none the worse for having been enjoyed many times before.

Despite the preponderance of Indian and Chinese influences, the cooking occasionally ranges farther afield. We caught a hint of Thailand in the shrimp masala ($9), whose intensely flavorful sauce seemed to carry some of the thickness and sweetness of coconut milk. And the menu offers an array of kebabs, including a daily fish kebab ($8). One day’s fish was tilapia, which I found a little uninspiring, but at least the kitchen gave the flesh a good spicing up before grilling it, then plated the pieces with quartered tomato slices and long slivers of green bell pepper (though no skewers).

Two dishes were novel to me. The first was chana chatpat ($5), a chickpea salad that differed from its better-known near relation, chana masala, in dispensing with a curry sauce in favor of a toss in a lemon vinaigrette, along with tomato slices and rings of sweet onion. The second, lamb chhoila ($7) featured several kebablike chunks of boneless lamb meat, seared and tossed with a sharp-edged ensemble of ginger, garlic, and chile pepper.

Given the high style of the savory cooking and the handsome redo of the now vividly red dining room — modifications include an encircling belt of Swiss-cheese mirrors, black chairs in an updated taverna style, and clusters of fanciful light fixtures, like big parade balloons with their bottoms cut off — the dessert menu is perfunctory. We did, one evening, treat ourselves to a carrot-cardamom pudding ($5), a molded disk of seasoned, lightly sweetened carrot shreds. I wouldn’t put it on any best-dessert list, but it was unusual, not fattening, and better than the usual choices at such places.

The "metro" in Metro Kathmandu reminds us of the restaurant that once occupied the space, of course, but it also sends a subliminal signal of urbanity. Metro Kathmandu is in some sense an "ethnic" restaurant, and its cooking, while sophisticated and impeccable, is more conservative and traditional than was the case at, say, Tallula, which for a few brief but memorable years fused subcontinental and French themes in the Castro. At the same time, it is a date restaurant, full of style and atmosphere and suggestive energy. Now all you need is a date.

METRO KATHMANDU

Brunch: Sat.–Sun., 9:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m. Dinner: Tues.–Sun., 6 p.m.–1 a.m.

311 Divisadero, SF

(415) 552-0903

www.metrokathmandu.com

Beer and wine

MC/V

Moderately noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Girl power – with goodies!

October 2, 2007

By Soo Oh

Every year in September, Girls Incorporated holds its Women of Taste event at the terraced gardens of Oakland Museum to support young girls in Alameda County, encouraging them to be “strong, smart, and bold.” It doesn’t hurt to be a patron (matron?) to the cause when it involves three levels of catered food from Bay Area restaurants on a slightly breezy Saturday night in the East Bay.

Hayes and Kebab and Stacks’

September 25, 2007

› paulr@sfbg.com

On a warm late summer afternoon a few weeks ago, a friend and I stood in front of a shuttered market on Hayes Street, marveling at the shutters themselves. These really weren’t shutters but a kind of corrugated-steel fortification, the sort of thing people in hurricane country buy at Sears so high winds don’t blow out all the windows. Here the danger would not have been hurricanes but vandalism and perhaps an occasional touch of civil unrest — but during our momentary vigil we saw nothing of the kind, not a possibility nor even a hint. Just a dowdy old market that had come to seem out of place, slightly scruffy and paranoid, on what has become, in the past 15 years or so, one of the city’s most transformed stretches of culture and commerce.

Although Hayes Street’s darkest days probably fell in the mid-1990s — when a long symphony strike turned the western precincts of the Civic Center into a ghost town — the neighborhood’s prospects were already brightening even then. True, the idling of the symphony meant that the area’s restaurants had fewer people to serve preperformance dinners or postperformance desserts to, and things were already bad enough with the earthquake-related closures of government buildings near City Hall and the dislocation of the people who worked in them and made up a reliable lunch crowd. But the elevated Central Freeway, the malignant tendril of concrete that cut the neighborhood in two, was succumbing, bit by bit, to ballot initiatives, and removal of that blight meant that there was nowhere to go but up.

When the sun shines in Hayes Valley these days, it’s difficult to remember that dank structure and its scary shadows, or how unsettling it could be to walk along Hayes west of Gough in the evening. Today the scene is one of quirky, pricey boutiques, the wonderful village green, which is full of lunchtime people and romping dogs and whizzing bicycles — and of course restaurants.

There are some excellent restaurants in the vicinity: Jardinière, Hayes Street Grill, Indigo, Absinthe. Although Essencia is too new to put firmly in this category, its bona fides are impressive. But all these places are east of or on Gough. West of Gough, there’s still surprisingly little beyond various sorts of cantinas that cater to the lunch folk.

Suppenküche, with its au courant German cooking, is interesting and worthy in an oddball sort of way, but it’s held down its far corner for more than a decade. Modern Tea, across the street, is also interesting and worthy, but its food service, while estimable, is circumscribed. Frjtz has fabulous frites and sandwiches, Patxi some excellent pizzas, but you’re in and out of those places.

For a time there seemed the possibility of something notable opening in the glassy new building at the corner of Octavia. The restaurant space was large and commanded views of the green, but the first occupant was Café Grillades, which was essentially a creperie. Some months ago the place reopened as Stacks’ — as in stacks of pancakes, as in we deal in breakfast and lunch and, like West Coast stockbrokers, are done by midafternoon.

The restricted hours appear to have heightened the restaurant’s allure. Grillades served dinner but was often emptyish in the after-dark hours. Stacks’, by contrast, actually seems to have people waiting at the host’s station for tables. I would like to say the public’s renewed enthusiasm has to do with the food, but Stacks’ menu doesn’t seem too different from Grillades’ and even includes a wide selection of crepes, along with Belgian waffles, omelets, soups, and sandwiches.

The food is good rather than memorable, except for the prices, which reflect the chichification of Hayes Street. Soup and sandwich (the combination changes daily) will run you $8.69. For that you get a pretty-good-size bowl of, say, chicken noodle soup (with plenty of wide, fettucelike noodles) and a turkey and cheese sandwich on soft whole wheat bread. This is just the sort of lunch your nutrition-involved mother would make you eat, if she could still make you do anything.

A plaudit too for the turkey burger ($8.89), which was cooked through — as is essential with poultry — but not dry. Turkey burgers need a secret ingredient; I use an egg yolk, which helps keep the meat moist and also provides a binding effect. Could this be the Stacks’ technique? I couldn’t tell, but the kitchen knows what it’s doing here.

For years a noontime stalwart was Sage, one of those Chinese restaurants that seemed as if it had always been there and always would be. Then, one day last fall, it wasn’t. Now it is a Middle Eastern place called Hayes and Kebab. Not much has changed except the cuisine, and the fact that there is no longer full table service: you order at the counter, take a numbered placard, and wait for the food to be brought to you.

The falafel ($5.95) is served burrito-style, wrapped in lavash instead of the usual pita bread, and this is an improvement. There is also, squirting gently from the cylinder, a tasty sauce of yogurt spiked with paprika — a nice touch, since falafel can be dry. We liked the charcoal-grilled chicken shish kebab ($9.95), in part because the marinated meat remained juicy and because it was presented with tasty little salads of bulgur wheat and rice pilaf dotted with green peas, raisins, and slivered almonds.

Hayes and Kebab serves dinner, if you can’t get into Essencia next door or you overlooked Stacks’ daylight-only policy. Said King Théoden as he led the Rohirrim into battle before the walls of Minas Tirith, "Fear no darkness!"

HAYES AND KEBAB

Mon.–Thurs. and Sun., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.; Fri.–Sat., 11 a.m.–11 p.m.

406 Hayes, SF

(415) 552-3440

Beer and wine

AE/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

STACKS’

Daily, 7 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

501 Hayes, SF

(415) 241-9011

www.stacksrestaurant.com

Beer and wine

AE/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Phil Frank memorial service Monday

September 20, 2007

Lee Houskeeper (no pesky e) sent out this press release announcing the public memorial service for Phil “Farley” Frank from noon to l p.m. Monday at Washington Square Park (Camp Farley).

If I were writing a story for the Guardian, or most any other newspaper, I would take this release and convert it into a story. I would make sure that Houskeeper’s name, as the press guy for the Frank family, would not appear. After all, he did all the work and that would not be good to reveal.

However, since this is the Bruce blog, and I can do any damn thing I like, I am going to run the Houskeeper press release as is, since it is a good one and lays out the information and the art straightforwardly in good Farley form. That’s why I like blogging now and then. See my previous blogs for more Frank lore and his early front page graphics for the Guardian. Our then Art Director Louis Dunn spotted Frank as a real talent and immediately pressed him into front service and his work appeared first in the Guardian, starting in 1972. Click here to see some early 70’s Phil Frank Guardian covers. B3

A Farley Celebration of Phil Frank

Monday, September 24th, 2007

Washington Square Park (Camp Farley)
12:00 Noon—1:00 PM

Attire: Favorite Farley character

Hosts: San Francisco Chronicle & Friends of Phil

Lunch: BYO to park (Possible Frank Hot Dog Concession)
Chris Tellis MC
Washington Square Bar & Grill and other North Beach Restaurants alerted
Fog City Diner (hosting Park Service Mounted patrol)

Speakers:

Phil Bronstein-Publisher San Francisco Chronicle
Honorable Gavin Newsom
Honorable Willie Brown
Mike Tollefson-Superentendent-Yosemite & Park Ranger Mia Munro-Muir Woods
MC: Mike Cerre-Correspondent

Entertainment:
Beach Blanket Babylon
Green Street Mortuary Band
Tried & True Gospel Singers
National Park Service mounted Color Guard Patrol
SFPD Parking Enforcement “Precision Scooter Team”

Destino

-

September 18, 2007
0

› paulr@sfbg.com

A venerable bit of wisdom from the Greek sage Heraclitus teaches that you can never step in the same river twice, for neither you nor the ceaselessly flowing river remains the same. Your odds are better at restaurants, which also change, though not quite ceaselessly. (I am extrapoutf8g from Heraclitus here; if the man ever made remarks about restaurants, posterity has forgotten them.) Crowds come and go, of course — but decor and menu can remain little changed for months or even years. In a restless culture, such stability can seem boring or even slightly sinister, a dawdling on the way to some new and improved destiny. Yet there are those of us who like our points of reference.

Destino, which opened a little more than seven years ago in a boxy storefront space previously occupied by a pretty good restaurant called Dame and just a few steps from an ugly freeway overpass, has now donned the mantle of "bistro." Also, the overpass is gone — demolished a few years ago per the edict of some ballot initiative. I would describe both of these developments as improvements, though Destino was always a bistro, really — and is still serving "nuevo Latino" food — while the demise of the overpass failed to produce the expected utopian decline in auto traffic, which now whizzes in every direction at ground level. Let the walker beware.

Once safely inside Destino, the walker will find the restaurant’s look barely altered from its early days. The color scheme is still golden-ruddy, with shades of copper and umber on textured walls, one of which continues to be hung with three large, ornately framed mirrors. The keepers of the bar just inside the front door are young and rakishly handsome; apart from their black garb, they’re scarcely distinguishable from the clientele, whose clothes are tepidly polychromatic in that rich-hipster way, with plenty of untucked, close-fitting shirts in pale blues and grays and many, many fancified versions of those Italian bicycle shoes. Would someone please turn the page? How about a designer version of ski boots, in two-tone Italian calfskin?

Chef-owner James Schenk’s latest menu includes a prix fixe offering, three courses (with a couple of choices at each stage) for $31.95. Not a bad deal. The bill of fare also emphasizes tapas these days, perhaps in part because smaller, shareable dishes are more consistent with the social style of the young, who (I would guess) prefer less hierarchy at the table as elsewhere. The prix fixe, by contrast, is hierarchy embodied, and, as I am a flinty-eyed hierarchist, I regularly submit to its charms.

Item one: a chile relleno, though not the usual kind, batter-fried and slathered in melted cheese. Here the presentation was more subtle; the pepper, a crisp poblano, was charred and skinned, then filled with Niman Ranch ground sirloin, sauced with a creamy chipotle salsa, piped on top with crème fraîche, and plated in sections, for easier eating. Across the way, the ceviche hound was tucking into a martini glass filled with Asian-inflected ceviche: the Destino Chino ($12.50), a medley of yellowtail tuna and tiger prawns glistening with lemongrass oil and wearing a pleasantly assertive perfume of ginger. The hound could have had ceviche — but not the Destino Chino — within the confines of the prix fixe; a larger issue was that the fixed menu’s main courses didn’t appeal.

They all appealed to me, on the other hand, and I was particularly glad to find a lighter entrant among them: a pastel of quinoa — the couscouslike grain of the ancient Inca — tossed with Peruvian artichoke hearts and topped with a crisscrossing of romesco salsa, a rouille look-alike. The dish, served in an earthenware crock, could easily have been passed off to the inattentive as some kind of couscous casserole.

Soon after we were seated, the hound could be seen briefly flirting with the prix fixe because, in the dim light, our failing eyes had misread "Duart" (as in Loch Duart, farmer of salmon) as "duck." When not snapping up ceviche, the ceviche hound is a duck hound. But, on a squinting review, we discovered our error and were chastened. The evening’s poultry choice turned out to be chicken, in the form of aji gallina ($18): shredded flesh bathed in a creamy sauce of aji amarillo (a kind of chili pepper) and served with home-style yucca fries. The chicken was lovely; the fries slightly less so. They were crisp but underseasoned and mealy inside, and I wondered if they wouldn’t have been better if they’d been cut to a slimmer profile.

The gold standard for Peruvian cooking in this city seems to be, by my informal but emphatic tally, Mochica. Destino is good; its aji de gallina is delicious — but Mochica serves a mean aji de gallina too, and unseating Mochica from is perch of preeminence is going to be a wicked project for somebody. Pretenders to the throne might do some of their strategic pondering over Destino’s excellent churros y chocolate ($7) — a trio of ridged, torpedo-shaped, cinnamon-scented beignets suitable for dipping into a demitasse full of warm chocolate sauce — though those with long memories might respond to the suspiro, a dulce de leche treat that’s been on the menu for years. Hip 30-year-olds in tight shirts have to be concerned about their figures, of course (irrespective of sex), but Destino’s desserts aren’t especially fattening, and anyway you can always walk it off, taking care to look both ways — all ways — always.*

DESTINO

Brunch: Sun., 11 a.m.–2 p.m. Dinner: Mon.–Thurs. and Sun., 5–10 p.m.; Fri.–Sat., 5–11 p.m.

1815 Market, SF

(415) 552-4451

www.destinosf.com

Full bar

AE/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

My kingdom for a legume!

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September 18, 2007
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› paulr@sfbg.com

Today’s homeland traveler must run a gauntlet of tribulation, beginning with the holy sacraments of shoe doffing and toothpaste Ziplocking and continuing to flight delays and $10 for an airborne box of chicken salad, but at the end of all the woe and insult is the comfort of knowing that there’s more where that came from, generally in the form of superfluous starch.

I noticed, in the course of several days spent recently in the heart of the heart of the country, that a broad no-legume policy seemed to be both unstated and strictly observed. Restaurants high and low didn’t offer so much as a lentil or chickpea, and as for breakfast at Denny’s or Perkins, where I went each morning with my squad of elders, you could have potatoes with your bread, or bread with your potatoes, you could have eggs a thousand different ways — in pastry! with cheese! — and cinnamon buns and oceans of weak coffee, and after all that you knew better than to think about glycemic indexes or your blood sugar level. Oatmeal? Consult the small print at the bottom of the laminated page.

At a nice Italian restaurant in St. Paul, Minn., I clicked my heels together three times and waited for Garrison Keillor to come through the door from his redoubt on nearby Summit Avenue. He did not; was this because he too is distressed at the lack of legumes in Lake Wobegon and its environs? Or was he at Perkins, chomping his way through mountainous platefuls of hash browns and bread?

Minnesota’s Twin Cities are hardly unsophisticated. St. Paul, in fact, has a Jewish deli, Cecil’s, that’s at least the match of any such place I knew in Chicago and far better than any deli here. But Jewish delis, no matter how wondrous their rye breads, aren’t known as hotbeds of legume culture, and if a good Italian restaurant doesn’t even have a white-bean soup or salad on the menu, what hope is there?

Does this matter? Yes. Legumes — whether white or black or cranberry beans, lentils, or chickpeas — are among nature’s near-perfect foods. They’re tasty, healthy, and flexible; they make good main dishes and side dishes, and they work in soup and as beds for other things. If you’re on your way to Lake Wobegon, don’t leave home without them.

Frugal feasts

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September 12, 2007
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>>Click here for FEAST, our guide to sexy suppers, classic cocktails, and more hot eats for the season

At Cowgirlpalooza, I ate four bowls of gumbo. I’m not bragging, just setting a scene — a scene featuring the smell of gumbo and the flavor of gumbo, with heart-shaped corn bread and phallic biscuits that were possibly supposed to resemble guitars or banjos or drumsticks but, uh, didn’t. The patio at El Rio, early evening, Outer Mission, lemon trees, blue sky, the chill of oncoming fog, Denise Funiami, five or six twangy bands, and the sticky syncopation of flip-flops on the dance floor …

Every time I made eye contact with Denise, whom I personally consider the queen of San Francisco’s country music scene (although she was conspicuously absent from the stage that day), she would raise her eyebrows questioningly. I would look at the current bowl of gumbo in my left hand, look back at her, and hold up however many fingers. When I got to three, she cursed me loudly, over a sea of cowboy hats, and she cursed my whole family with our hollow legs.

I get bored with drinking. And broke with drinking. There was a $10 cover charge. My family doesn’t have hollow legs so much as empty pockets. This is Gastro-Economy 101: $5 for a beer, and the gumbo’s free. What, are you kidding me?

As usual, I was the soberest person in the place. Afterward I staggered home like everyone else and opened my refrigerator door, like everyone else, and stood there stuffed, with my eyes half open, in a sort of a swoon. Was everyone else looking at what I was looking at? Do you keep a jar of salsa from Papalote Mexican Grill in your fridge? Do you treat it with respect and reverence? Turn to it for solace and support in times of need, boredom … loneliness? I’m talking about the stuff with roasted tomatoes and pumpkin seeds in it.

If you came into a kitchen in a house in the middle of the night and saw me licking this San Francisco delicacy off a stick of celery (in lieu of tortilla chips), my eyes glazed and my lips on fire, my hardly hollow legs already weak with gumbo … I don’t know if you would fall in love with me or not, but you would almost certainly invite me out to eat sometime.

Everybody wants to eat with me. I’m not bragging — just exaggerating. A lot of people want to eat with me. Even vegans, and that’s a journalistic fact. A dude I’ve known for years but have hardly ever eaten with (so for all I know he might be magic) says, in an e-mail, "I would love to make you a salad."

Bam, crash, boom: I’m seduced. No matter which way I take the simple sentiment, I am so there. I love salad and would love to be salad.

Someone else has a new favorite Korean restaurant, ohmigod, the Kim Chee, or a barbecue joint, and they want me in on it. And I want in on it! I’m the luckiest little chicken farmer chick alive, and don’t think I don’t know that. Miraculously, given my two-year campaign to destroy my credibility as a critic, if not a human being, by declaring every single place I eat my new favorite restaurant, people still think I know shit.

Or they want me to. Or something.

Truth is, philosophical fine points aside, as well as semantic silliness (but no way am I giving up hyperbole, so don’t ask), there are certain things at certain restaurants, yes, that I dream about and drool over and want to marry and couldn’t live without. Flavors, textures, smells, memories, fucking feelings that can call out to me even after a burrito or four bowls of gumbo and bring me to my knees. I’m talking about my favorite favorites, if you will, for real and in no particular order. I love each and every one of these dishes more than madly. I love them beyond numbers, alphabets, art, or laws of gravity and with all my hollow heart, until death do us part and then some.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN WINGS AT MEMPHIS MINNIE’S

There’s this thing in folk music or blues, right, or … I don’t know where it comes from originally, but you have to have heard at least one take on it: "When I die, don’t bury me at all/ Just pickle my bones in alcohol/ Put bottles of whiskey at my head and feet/ And then I know that I will keep."

My song substitutes butter for alcohol, of course, but in real life, between me and you, I would prefer to be preserved in barbecue sauce. I just couldn’t think of anything that rhymes with it.

Since Cliff’s closed, my go-to rib joint has been Memphis Minnie’s in San Francisco, only I don’t get no ribs. And — surprise — I don’t much care for any of the three kinds of sauce they keep on the tables either. If you mix the so-so vinegar-based one with the so-so tomato-based one, that’ll put you somewhere between North Carolina and Texas, or in other words, Birmingham, Ala., which has fine barbecue, but Christ, Flint’s is just over the bridge in Oakland. If you want ribs or brisket, go to Flint’s.

But if you want chicken wings, and I, for one, do, Memphis Minnie’s not only has you covered, it’s got you covered in the best barbecue sauce I know of right now. It’s sticky, a little bit sweet, and a lot hot, and why it ain’t in bottles on the tables with the so-so ones is for better minds than mine to figure out.

You have to order the Smoky Mountain Wings if you want that particular sauce. If you don’t want the wings, get them anyway and lick and suck them dry. Chicken is hit or miss at barbecue joints, I know. But two out of every three times, you do want the wings. They’re smoked and fried, for crying out loud — on the starters menu for $5.75. Order them twice, if you must, or once, with a side of my favorite slaw (no mayo!) and a big glass of sweet tea.

Who the hell else serves sweet tea around here? That in itself would make Memphis Minnie’s one of my favorite favorite restaurants. The Smoky Mountain flap-flaps just seal the deal. And the tart and tangy slaw sweetens — or sours — it.

576 Haight, SF. (415) 864-7675, www.memphisminnies.com

MARINATED RAW BEEF AT LE CHEVAL

Now, I’ve been carrying on for years about fried barbecued chicken, or barbecued fried chicken (which is the order I do it in). But actually, my all-time favorite favorite way to cook meat is not to cook it, not even once.

I’m thinking specifically about that raw beef salad you sometimes find at Vietnamese restaurants. At Le Cheval, which is just a great place, period (although not undiscovered), the bò tái chanh ($9) will make you fly out of your seat and zip willy-rip-snort all over the place’s considerable atmosphere like a blown-up-and-let-go balloon. I’m speaking figuratively. Although, if you’re a vegetarian, you might in fact have visions.

Otherwise, expect to be instantly hooked and almost explosively happy when your teeth and tongue hit this thin-sliced, lemon-drenched meat, with 1) cilantro, 2) mint, 3) ginger, and 4) onions. I mean, come on. It’s almost not fair to stack the deck like that. These are, if not the essential elements of our universe, the exact ingredients that make it wacky and wonderful and that cause the people in it to have to sing. Cilantro, mint, ginger, onions, lemons.

Not to mention peanuts and sesame. (I was afraid if I put them all in the same paragraph I might lose my readership.) And not to mention the meat itself, which kind of half seviches and half stays pink, and in any case is wholly succulent and tender.

If they put a bò tái chanh stand at either end of the Golden Gate Bridge, you would never again have to hear or think about the words suicide barrier in connection with the span. I’m convinced of that.

1007 Clay, Oakl. (510) 763-8495, www.lecheval.com

CURRY GOAT ROTI AT PENNY’S CARIBBEAN CAFE

I’m also, of course, a clown. The first time I ate at Penny’s Caribbean Cafe in Berkeley, I was moved to go out to the van and get my steel drum and come back in and serenade the chef and the server and the proprietor, in fact the only person in the place, Penny.

Since then I have been back at least 30 times with at least 30 different people. My mission: to single-handedly or double-handedly or in any case greasy-handedly keep this place in business. Because I’m afraid it’s too good to be true, like those dreams in which your dearly departed loved ones are alive again, in the yard, pecking corn and laying eggs.

I’ll say it: curry goat roti ($8) is my favorite favorite thing to eat, and Penny’s is my favorite favorite restaurant. And Penny is one of those rare people, like Fran of the late Ann’s Cafe, whom I love even beyond her capacity to cook. If bò tái chanh literally did contain all the most fun pieces of the universe, Penny might be the universe itself. I just want to hug her, to disappear into her floury apron and kitchen smells, then decide for myself whether or not to come back.

Know what I mean?

Then maybe you should give this place a try. It’s a dive, in the divine sense: it has two or three tables, and it’s not always exactly all the way clean, or quick (she makes everything to order). Neither efficient nor organized, Penny’s is not a well-oiled machine. But you will be after your roti, which you eat with your hands, like Ethiopian food.

Just so you know, West Indian roti is nothing like East Indian roti. It’s a soft, layered dough with chickpeas crumbled into it and enough flavor to start or stop wars, even before the curry goat touches it. You can also get curry chicken, jerked chicken, or just vegetables. That’s chickpeas, potatoes, and sometimes maybe some other things, like spinach. With or without your meat, it’s ridiculously, eyes-rolling-back-in-the-headedly delicious.

But get the meat. The goat. Trust me on this. Goat is actually smoother and subtler tasting than lamb, if you’re worried about it. In which case you must not have ever had it.

2836 Sacramento, Berk. (510) 486-1202

BEEF LARB AT MANORA’S THAI

Here’s a dish, larb, that I had and had and had about a million times, on the East Coast and on this one, not to mention most points in between, since even small towns in Kansas have Thai restaurants now. Why I ordered larb so many times, considering that I never once liked it, is a big fat mystery, even to me. Theories include: 1) it’s just an irresistibly funny word, and 2) maybe I knew, deep down inside (where all the weird, oniony dream images hang), that one day I would find Manora’s Thai Restaurant in San Francisco.

Manora’s is my favorite Thai place now. It looks like it’s going to cost you, because the atmosphere is nice, as in fancy-framed pictures, cloth tablecloths, candles, flowers, chandeliers, and a waitstaff who all have good posture.

But don’t be scared off. The food is great, and it’s really not any more expensive than anywhere else — just nicer. Larb, basically a meat salad, goes for $7.50. However, whereas most places make their larb with ground or minced beef (or chicken or sometimes duck), Manora’s uses chunks of grilled steak. It’s got juice to it, even pinkness, sometimes even redness, and you know how I feel about all that.

Also: lemon, mint, and hot pepper, hoorah, but the distinctive flavor is roasted ground rice. And I think maybe most places overroast the rice or overrice the roast, just to mess with me. The bastards! If you haven’t tried larb, don’t — not until you can try it at Manora’s.

And if you know of another place that uses grilled, not ground, meat in this dish — take me there.

1600 Folsom, SF. (415) 861-6224, www.manorathai.com

LONGANISA AT JUST FOR YOU

My favorite favorite breakfast place is still Just for You. I love the beignets. I love the cornmeal pancakes. I love the chili scramble over corn bread. I love, love, love the Hangtown fry (oysters and bacon together — I rest my case)…. But the thing that I dream about and wake up craving, of course, is longanisa.

That’s those Filipino sausages I affectionately (and foolishly) refer to as sausage donuts. They have nothing to do with dough. They’re just meat. They’re sausages, only absurdly and sweetly and greasily delicious. Like donuts.

Because they are sweet and pork and therefore good for you, they make a perfect, perfectly healthy breakfast sausage. Why don’t more places have them on the menu? I blame the chicken and apple industries. Not even all Filipino restaurants serve longanisa.

Just for You is not a Filipino restaurant. It’s a New Orleans–y, Southern-style joint with some Mexican touches. For going above and beyond the call of duty to bring me longanisa, Just for You will always be for me.

732 22nd St., SF. (415) 647-3033, www.justforyoucafe.com

CARNE ASADA BURRITO AT PAPALOTE

Everyone, no matter where they live, has to have a favorite breakfast place. If you live in San Francisco, you have to have a favorite burrito place too. This is a burden. For years, for me, it was easy: Taqueria Can-Cún. Then I finally tired of its on-again, off-again carne asada, its stale chips …

For the next few years I didn’t have a favorite taquería and was so embarrassed that I moved to Sonoma County.

Well, I’m back in the city, for now, and so I had to have a favorite taquería again. Right? No-brainer: Papalote! I resisted it for a long time, because it looked so fancy-pants and hipsterish. But then I got over all my snobby prejudices and gave the place half a chance.

Holy shit, the salsa! Last time I tasted such an earth-shaking, mind-blowing, eye-watering condiment, it was the green bread-dip Peruvian potion at Rincon Peruano in 1996. Papalote’s salsa, served with actually warm, fresh tortilla chips, is roasted Roma–based, flourished by cilantro and hot, hot peppers, and the secret ingredient is pumpkin seeds.

You can bring a jar and fill it up to bring home, but what the hell, you may as well suck down a carne asada burrito ($5.49) while you’re there. I’m not sure I can forgive Papalote for not having lard in its beans, but the meat is grilled to order, not sitting in a bin, and that makes a huge difference.

Then too, they could be rolling up dog food with leftover fried rice and hospital cafeteria beans in a stale, store-bought tortilla, and, drenched in my favorite favorite salsa in the history of the whole wide world, ever, it would still be the best burrito in town. I swear.

3409 24th St., SF. (415) 970-8815

DUCK NOODLE SOUP AT CHINA LIGHT RESTAURANT

Sorry to take you out of town for this one, but get in the car. We’re going to Santa Rosa. And I’m not shuttling you to no wine country froufrou, chichi chateau either. We’re eating at one of the scariest- and sorriest-looking Chinese dives in one of the bluest-collarest parts of a pretty dumb-ass town: China Light Restaurant, where warehouse workers and truck mechanics break for lunch.

I was pretty much zombied into this place, initially, against even my better judgment, by the irresistible allure of a dish called oil-dripped chicken. It was the most appetizing sounding of seven $4.35 lunch specials.

Five, six, seven visits later, and I still haven’t tasted this sure-to-be-spectacular specialty. I was permanently derailed by a sheet of plain white paper under the glass on the table casually mentioning, among other things (but don’t ask me what else), duck noodle soup ($6.15).

I looked up from those three simple promises with tears of hunger forming in the corners of my eyes and a drop of drool on my lip. I remember there was an old guy wearing rubber boots slowly sloshing from the kitchen, across the dining room, to the parking lot in a manner I would describe, retrospeculatively, as plumberesque.

Don’t fret! Get back in the car! Get back in the car! I have saved the best for last, I promise.

Now, I know there is no shortage of duck noodle soup right here in the city. If anyone wanted me to, I would very, very (very, very, very) happily do another one of those detailed investigative reports on just duck soup. A lot of Thai restaurants and noodle houses have it, and it almost always floors me. In a good way.

In the best possible way.

I just love duck noodle soup, and right now my favorite favorite example of it is an hour away. It’s Chinese, not Thai. It’s like a whole half of a roasted duck, bones and skin and all, chopped up on a bed of thick noodles and bok choy in a dark, rich broth. But you can’t even see any of this other stuff for the meat, and by the time you get to it, you are pretty much full and silly and slippery and just juiced.

China Light’s duck noodle soup makes me crazy and makes me do crazy things — like right now, in my mind, in my hollow, insatiable head, I am driving a little tiny car full of every single one of my readers, even vegans, all the way to Santa fucking Rosa. For dinner. Tonight.

Right now.

Close your eyes.

80 College, Santa Rosa. (707) 527-0558

L.E. Leone is a Bay Area writer and musician and the author of The Meaning of Lunch and Eat This, San Francisco. Her next collection of stories, Big Bend, is forthcoming from Sparkle Street Books. She writes the weekly Cheap Eats column in the Guardian.

› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

Feast: 6 noodle-icious dishes

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September 6, 2007
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I’m a guy who knows a little something about noodles. How could I not, living in San Francisco? From the steamy rice-stick pho of the Tenderloin to the hand-pulled ramen of Japantown (RIP, Mr. Noodle), the Outer Richmond’s squiggly fried delights, and the sauce-smothered delicacies of North Beach, the city’s awash in traditional noodley goodness. As winter’s rain approaches, folks like me start scouring the town for fortifying — and unexpected — pasta gems. We’re Marco Polos on a mouthwatering mission, searching high and low for pressed dough.

HOÀNH THÁNH MÌ HÀI KÝ

A robust bowl of Vietnamese yum, served at the unassuming Hai Ky Mi Gia in the Tenderloin, this dish ($6.45) is basically an Asian mulligatawny, containing shredded chicken and pork, fish balls, delectable wontons, and strips of Spamlike pressed meat served over a bed of thick or thin egg noodles and doused with one of the most delicious chicken-based broths I’ve ever had the pleasure of slurping down. (Yes, I tipped the bowl.) Also available in an equally slurpable vit tìm version ($6.95), with a whole braised duck leg tossed into the bowl. Difficult to navigate with chopsticks but, I’m proud to tell you, entirely possible.

707 Ellis, SF. (415) 771-2577

MADILLI AL PESTO

Mi dio, mi dio! Served at brand spanking new Italian stunner Farina Focaccia and Cuccina Italiano in the Mission, this is handkerchief pasta smothered in pesto ($15). What is handkerchief pasta? It’s basically one giant noodle — uncut, unedited, and layered gently on the plate. But to pasta lovers like me, it’s a dream pillow. The light, garlicky pesto laces each tender bite with a kick of heavenly spice. When it’s accompanied by Farina’s justly famous cappon magro vecchia Genova ($15) — chilled salad with halibut, lobster, mussels, shrimp, cauliflower, carrot, green bean, potato, beet, and boiled eggs — you’ll float off contentedly into the night.

3560 18th St., SF. (415) 565-0360

SEAFOOD GAN ZAZANG

This one’s only for the truly hardy among us, but incredibly rewarding. Order this at Zazang Korean Noodle in the Western Addition and you’ll be served a bowl of curly yellow flour-based noodles, a side dish of pickled vegetables, raw onions, and gooey duck sauce, and another bowl — the main event — of black bean pasta sauce so dark it almost swallows the high-beam fluorescent light buzzing about the place. The sauce contains calamari, mussels, shrimp, and chunks of fish — and once the squid ink settles in with the black beans, the sauce evokes the flavor and texture of dark chocolate fudge. Mix it with the noodles, swallow a few mouthfuls, and you may never want to leave. Also of interest is the goo choo jap chae ($12.95) — clear yam noodles, stir-fried with bell pepper, onion, and juicy beef. Fair warning: each order is enough to stuff four.

2340 Geary, SF. (415) 447-0655, www.zazangworld.com

GEBRATENE REHMEDAILLIONS IN ROTWEIN-PFLAUMENSOSSE MIT ROTKOHL UND SPÄTZLE

Purists will object, protesting that spaetzle reside more in the dumpling wing of the house of pasta, but, hey, I’m a rebel, and in German cuisine these doughy tidbits, or "little sparrows," serve much the same function as noodles. This dish ($18.50), from Suppenküche in Hayes Valley, is a heaping plateful of hearty venison medallions in a thick red wine and plum sauce, accompanied by a pile of savory red cabbage salad and a big scoop of buttery Knöpfle, or button spaetzle. After washing it all down with a giant glass of Köstritzer beer, you may feel yourself sinking through one of Suppenküche’s table-benches into pure Teutonic bliss. Arrive early, though — ever since the new Hayes Green opened nearby, this restaurant has been packed to the Germanic gills.

525 Laguna, SF. (415) 252-9289, www.suppenkuche.com

WHOLE ROAST CRAB WITH GARLIC NOODLES

Get that bib on — PPQ Dungeness Island in the Outer Richmond is about to soak you in garlic butter like you’ve never been soaked before. First of all, hurray for Dungeness crab season (already reaching full Alaskan swing and about to hit our fair shores in November.) Second, a fond how-do-you-do to PPQ’s prix fixe whole crab menu ($50 for two). Mouthwatering Imperial rolls and piquant shredded cabbage with chicken launch your 90-minute culinary journey, and fried bananas with ice cream bring you back around, but in the middle — oh, the middle: a steaming, full-size, whole roast crab drenched in thick butter sauce and spattered with chunks of garlic, served with a generous bowlful of PPQ’s renowned sticky garlic noodles, perfect for dipping into the creamy pool beneath the crab’s soon-to-be demolished shell.

2332 Clement, SF. (415) 386-8266, www.ppqdungeness.com

TAGLIOLINI "PEPATI"

Hand-crafted thin, flat egg noodles in a blissful roasted tomato sauce with smoked bacon, thickly sliced jalapeños, butter, arugula, garlic, and peccorino and asana cheeses, topped with grated parmesan. Wow. This kicky, diet-busting wonder ($12), created at Aperto in Portrero Hill, rivals any similar North Beach concoction — even those available at one of my favorite restaurants of all time, L’Osteria del Forno. If you’re lucky enough to order this for lunch on a day when Aperto is serving its fabulous carrot-fennel soup, you may want to cancel your afternoon appointments, order a couple of glasses of sangiovese, and savor every mouthful. That’s what I did.

1434 18th St., SF. (415) 252-1625, www.apertosf.com

Feast: 7 homey hearths

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September 6, 2007
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Amber is my living room, and not just because I really like Pabst Blue Ribbon and smoking inside. It’s also because I live in a city where rents are high and living space is scarce, where community rooms are shared with multiple people (if there are community rooms at all), and backyards tend only to be big enough for the recycling bin. In suburban places, people share community and comfort around backyard barbecue pits and luxurious living-room couches. They have dinner parties and cocktail hours and invite friends over for tea. But here, we go to bars and restaurants and taverns and coffee shops. These are the places where we meet our neighbors, celebrate special occasions, while away idle hours, have intense conversations. And so, in many ways, these places — particularly those in our neighborhoods — become extensions of our homes and hearths. As the cold weather approaches (global warming willing), I’ve been thinking more about the literal interpretation of hearth; Amber serves me for late-night writing sessions and drunken postdate tell-alls, but where will I go when I want to curl up with a hot chocolate — or a hot toddy — and a long Russian novel? When I want to play Trivial Pursuit late into the cold night with a small group of good friends? When the weather outside is frightful and my date is so delightful? Where, by god, are the fireplaces? In this city of Edwardian apartments retrofitted with gas heaters (and roomies who have to get up early), here is a list of places with flickering flames and belly-warming booze.

BITTER END

I don’t think the Irish invented the fireplace, but they may have the patent on its best use. Wood paneling? A flaming heat source? Thick beer and hot soup? All Irish pubs seem to have ’em — and this Irish-style Richmond locale is no different. Stumbling into the Bitter End feels a bit like wandering into an O’Malley’s or a McSweeney’s in any country in the world — and with items like shepherd’s pie, Gaelic chicken with whiskey, and beer-battered appetizers on the menu, it’s almost like wandering into one in Ireland itself.

441 Clement, SF. (415) 221-9538

MCKENZIE’S

Sometimes you want cozy and kooky all in the same shot — and those are the times you end up at McKenzie’s. This small local favorite is half neighborhood bar in a mountain town (downstairs) and half cheap hostel (upstairs). Either way, it’s charming: small tables cluster around a fireplace over which a flat-screen television broadcasts sports, a jukebox blasts cheesy-but-lovable ’80s hits, and a live-feed video camera in the upstairs lounge, its images visible to every patron downstairs, lends itself to endless prank possibilities.

5320 Geary, SF. (415) 379-6814

ZEKI’S

Wanting no frills in Nob Hill? Try Zeki’s, which boasts two fireplaces — one by the pool table and one directly across from the leather-lined bar. With paraphernalia from old movies lining the walls and a good selection of European beers on tap, you’ll quickly see why this is a favorite spot for both old-school regulars and just-stumbled-in newbies.

1319 California, SF. (415) 928-0677, www.zekisbar.com

JOHN BARLEYCORN

If ever there were a place that personified hearth, it would be John Barleycorn, the little mountain lodge in the city that’s in danger of disappearing by November. This is the place to order strong whiskey from a salty but jovial bartender, to sip it while sitting on church pews in front of roaring flames, to break out a game of rummy or Scrabble (housed in a cozy room behind the chimney) long after you’d already planned to go home.

1415 Larkin, SF. (415) 771-1620

FIRESIDE

A cross between a dive bar and a swanky hipster joint, this Sunset watering hole embodies the schizophrenia of its up-and-coming neighborhood. Which seems to be fine with the down-to-earth drinkers who perch on leather couches around the neon-lit fireplace that anchors the room’s otherwise understated decor.

603 Irving, SF. (415) 731-6433

WILD SIDE WEST

A favorite of lesbians citywide and heteros in the know, this Bernal Heights beauty is most famous for its gorgeous garden patio. But a woodstove, a great jukebox, and strong, well-made drinks also make it perfect for those cold, foggy nights when all you want is a soft scarf, a smooth Scotch, and someone — boy, boi, or girl — to spoon with.

424 Cortland, SF. (415) 647-3099

HIDDEN VINE

OK. Including Hidden Vine may be cheating, as this secret hideaway doesn’t have a fireplace per se. But it’s sure got the atmosphere. Though this is a high-end drinkery, featuring a different wine region every month and offering an impressive selection of artisanal cheeses, the Vine is more comfy than chichi. And a display of white votive candles gives the impression — if not the heat — of a fireplace’s warmth.

620 Post, SF. (415) 674-3567, www.thehiddenvine.com*

Feast: A refulgence of pizza

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September 6, 2007
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› paulr@sfbg.com

You might think a city with broad and deep Italian roots would be a city with great pizza, and you’d be right — if you were thinking of New York or Chicago, havens of thin crust and deep-dish, respectively. But San Francisco? Despite the obvious Italian character of this town, despite its being named for an Italian saint, Francis of Assisi, pizza here has long tended to be a little rummy, as the English are wont to put it — and the English know from rummy food, and especially from rummy pizza. Pizza in England? Let’s get some fish onto bicycles.

The crusts of too many of our local pies have tended to be too thick, bready, or spongy, and they’ve often turned soggy from too much sauce. Toppings have been relied on to make up in point-warping bulk what they lack in inherent interest; sausage has generally meant Italian sausage, reeking of fennel seed, with mushrooms of the button variety, presliced and quite possibly frozen, and the highly suspect cheese an industrial-process mozzarella. Then there is the terrible take-out question: it doesn’t help any pizza to be birthed from a cardboard box, after a long gestation period in a car driven by a teenage delivery boy with pimples.

Even in the dark ages of pizza, of course, when bad pizzas were enjoyed with bad pizza wines poured from ignominious jugs, there were points of light, monasteries of wondrousness. When Rose Pistola (532 Columbus, SF; 415-399-0499, www.rosepistolasf.com) opened in North Beach in the mid-1990s, the place was almost instantly notable for the pizza-style flatbreads emerging from the wood-fired oven, whose smoky perfume filled the entire restaurant. Crusts were elegantly thin and crisp, while toppings were imaginative without becoming silly and were laid on with some judiciousness. Restaurant LuLu (816 Folsom, SF; 415-495-5775, www.restaurantlulu.com) too had it going on, with first-rate pies emerging from its wood-fired oven (were we seeing the beginnings of a pattern there?), including one with an unforgettable topping of calamari. And over in the Gold Coast, toward the frenzied end of the 1990s, you could find a first rate tarte flambé — an Alsatian pizza, finished with blue cheese and caramelized onions, at Adi Dassler’s gorgeous if dot-commie–swamped (and now defunct) MC2.

And so it went. If you wanted good pizza, you could get it, but you’d have to go to one of just a few pretty nice restaurants with white-linen napkins, and you’d pay. While doubtless these places were flattered by your interest in their pies, they were also hoping you were interested in, and would order, something more, something pricier. Lately, though, one has noticed a definite surge in artisanal pizza and in pizza for its own sake.

The renaissance might have begun in the Marina, of all places, with the opening of A16 (2355 Chestnut, SF; 415-771-2216, www.a16sf.com) in the space (with a wood-fired oven!) long occupied by Zinzino. A16’s inaugural chef was an authentic pizzaiolo, certified by Neapolitan authorities, and although the restaurant offered a full menu of dishes that owed much to the Italian region of Campania, you could go there for pizza and not be ashamed.

The pizza-friendly trend among full-spectrum restaurants has only accelerated. At La Ciccia, which opened two years ago in Upper Noe Valley, the pizza (like the rest of the food) has a Sardinian slant, and in a retrograde pleasure, you get to butcher the pies yourself, with a steak knife. And at the freshly opened Farina (3560 18th St., SF; 415-565-0360), in the Mistro, you can treat yourself to a Ligurian-style flatbread that’s as good as any thin-crust pizza you’d find in New York’s Little Italy.

But the real revolution has been the blooming of pizzerias, restaurants that emphasize pizza but not take-out pizza (though takeout, box and all, tends to be available at them). Rome is full of such places, and such places are usually full of Romans, sitting at sidewalk tables in the warm evenings with sweaty bottles of Nastro Azzurro beer, waiting for their pies. Maybe our dearth of mild evenings helps explain our dearth of pizzerias, or maybe it’s the lack of Nastro Azzurro. But if evenings haven’t grown balmier around here, the shortage of pizzerias appears to be ending.

Our first stop is Pizzetta 211 (211 23rd Ave., SF; 415-379-9880, www.pizzetta211.com), which has been packing them in for several years despite the un-Roman fog that so often shrouds its Richmond neighborhood. Fog or no, you can sit, Roman-style, at sidewalk tables at Pizzetta 211 — and you might have to, since the pizzeria occupies a modest storefront and most of the space is given over to the kitchen. There are just a few tables, along with a counter set with a globe of olives and books about Italian wine, and the indoor seats fill up quickly. The pizzas themselves have a Zuni-like quality, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that the pizzas are the sorts of pizzas you’d expect to find at Zuni, if Zuni were a tiny pizzeria deep in the Avenues. Organic ingredients are stressed, and each pizza crust is tossed by hand while you watch. Hunger pangs while you wait? Nibble some olives.

The highest profile of new pizzerias has to be Pizzeria Delfina (3621 18th St., SF; 415-552-4055, www.delfinasf.com), which opened three summers ago next door to the mother ship, Delfina, in a tight space appealingly trimmed with stainless steel, blond wood, and plenty of glass. If Pizzetta 211 is urban rustic, with a certain bohemian air, then Pizzeria Delfina is modern Milanese: chic, sleek, slim, knowing. The place was a scene from the moment it opened, and while the sidewalk tables (within little stainless-steel corrals) help alleviate overcrowding inside, they also raise the watch-me factor. It’s almost like a cruise bar, except with pizza, and the pizza is superior: wonderfully thin, with blistered crusts and toppings both innovative and traditional. And there is a wealth of well-conceived, well-made side dishes that emphasize our local trinity: seasonal, local, organic.

A little homier is Gialina (2842 Diamond, SF; 415-239-8500, www.gialina.com), which opened earlier this year in the Glen Park village center. That village center has been utterly transformed in the past few years by the arrival of such concerns as Canyon Market — a kind of cross between Whole Foods, Rainbow, and Bi-Rite — and Le P’tit Laurent, an au courant French bistro, and Gialina reflects the new ethic. The clientele appears to be young and well-off; more than a few have small children. Gialina accommodates the tot community and is the noisier for it, but the pizzas — not quite round, not quite square — are more than enough to compensate. Crusts are brilliantly thin, and toppings tend toward the seasonal and eclectic (green garlic in springtime, say). They’re also bold. If the menu says that some combination is spicy, take this seriously. Gialina also offers a few nonpizza dishes, including antipasti and a nightly roast of some sort, but pizza is the main attraction.

Far across the city, in the onetime industrial wasteland of Dogpatch, we find yet another avatar of first-class pizza. The purveyor’s name is Piccino (801 22nd St., SF; 415-824-4224, www.piccinocafe.com), which suggests smallness, and the place is indeed small: no more than a few seats bigger than Pizzetta 211, if that, and much of the space likewise given over to the kitchen. And — again likewise — there’s sidewalk seating. Since the weather in Dogpatch can actually be warm and sunny from time to time, with little or no wind, eating alfresco isn’t quite the exercise in chilled futility it can be in the city’s more windward quarters.

Piccino is, perhaps, slightly less a pure pizzeria than Pizzeria Delfina and Gialina. Or we might say the menu is pizza-plus. In the evenings, particularly, the cooking broadens to a wider palette of Franco-Italian dishes, and you might have a brief vision of being at some junior offshoot of Slow Club. Then the neighbors start showing up to claim their take-out pies, duly boxed — pies topped with arugula, maybe, and speck (a smoked prosciutto-style ham), or maybe with just tomato sauce, mozzarella, and basil (the faithful margherita pizza) or capers, black olives, and anchovies (a Neapolitan-style pie). Crusts, of course, are wafer-thin and crisp.

The horse having galloped from the barn, let me now pointlessly close the door by disclosing that I prefer, strongly, obviously, thin-crust pizza. It is more elegant, less starchy, and harder to make well. Also, it does not thrive in boxes, which means it is, in a sense, as perishable as a delicate piece of fruit. A good thin-crust pizza has to come right out of the oven and be hurried to the table, where people are eagerly waiting. Anticipation is one of life’s most impressive pleasures, especially when the pleasure we’re anticipating is subject to rapid depreciation. The moment will pass, the ship will sail, we made the train or we missed the train, and the crust is soggy, and we will have to wait until next year — or if not next year, a little while, at least.

I like deep-dish pizza too, though it resembles a macho quiche at least as much as pizza and has never been much of a player here. Zachary’s (1853 Solano, Berk.; 510-525-5950, www.zacharys.com) wins regular plaudits, and even people I know who’ve lived in Chicago and eaten Lou Malnati’s deep-dish pizza speak respectfully of it. This must count for something. On the other hand, competition is minimal. For some years, the Chicago chain Pizzeria Uno operated an outpost on Lombard; I went once and found it satisfactory in the way that McDonald’s cheeseburgers in London are satisfactory: the food is a recognizable and edible simulacrum of the authentic item, a credible counterfeit. The Uno on Lombard closed and became something else. Deep-dish pizza remains a mystery here. Thin is the word.*

Feast: 6 eateries uber alles

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September 6, 2007
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French and Italian cuisines always get the raves; German food tends to get short shrift. It’s usually called heavy, not comfort food, and beets, pickles, and sauerkraut aren’t on the instant craving gratification list for most Americans. But they are for me. And while I’ve yet to sample a schnitzel as heavenly as I did last year in Leipzig, local interpretations of German cuisine are worthy competitors. As summer comes to a close (or to Burning Man) and my thoughts may turn to Oktoberfest (which, you should know, happens in September in Germany), I find myself wanting to eat German food over everything else … essen über alles, if you will. Without belaboring the obvious — like how good-looking Teutonic folk are, and how the massive lists of German beer can be poured out in half liters, liters, or glass boots to suit your drink kink — here are a handful of very spaetzle spots.

SUPPENKÜCHE

The cool, understated interior design that pairs monastery style with a beer-hall aesthetic — two German traditions — reveals owner-chef Fabrizio Wiest’s former life as a graphic designer. He also makes special T-shirts for events like Oktoberfest and, last year, Germany’s hosting of the World Cup. Suppenküche has been the kaiser of SF German restaurants since opening in 1993; its food, vibe, and crowd are among the most engaging of any such place in this city. The venison medallions in red wine plum sauce are my personal favorite, but just about every dish here is outstanding — washed down, of course, with a choice from a deluge of amazing brews.

525 Laguna, SF. (415) 252-9289, www.suppenkuche.com

WALZWERK

Part the thick, pinckel-yellow plastic curtain and enter the mesmerizing, anachronistic world of Walzwerk, San Francisco’s East German restaurant. Relish the redness of your beet soup below giant portraits of Engels, Marx, and Lenin, or devour hearty garlic roast pork or jaegerschnitzel with your comrades under a Young Pioneers camping poster. Walzwerk feels entirely foreign and imaginary, like someone’s grandmother’s East Berlin basement circa 1975. One of the city’s best culinary hideouts with a museumlike bathroom, Walzwerk probably won’t stay secret much longer as it increasingly enters the lives of others.

381 S. Van Ness, SF. (415) 551-7181, www.walzwerk.com

SCHNITZELHAUS

Wooden planks all rise to the same ceiling point with Austro-Germanic symmetry at SoMa’s cozy, Alpine-style hideaway. Go early on weekend nights for schweinehaxen, a pork leg dish (it runs out quickly), and pick the exceptional potato soup over salad. There are five sausage plates (but sadly not a combo sausage plate), lots of sauce-topped schnitzel variations (cream, pepper, lemon, anchovy), and other solid dishes like deer ragout and stellar sauerkraut. Despite occasional food downers (cold spaetzle), Schnitzelhaus is still a great little place.

294 Ninth St., SF. (415) 864-4038, www.schnitzel-haus.net

SCHROEDER’S

Gather your mates at Schroeder’s on Fridays for after-work beers and maybe a sausage appetizer plate. Enjoy the ladies’ beer-chugging contest. Drink more beer. Hop around clumsily with a buxom waitress in Bavarian costume to the sound of the polka band. Drink more beer. Watch as the fantastic murals become creepier and the deer heads continue staring at you — your clue to call a cab, right after you yell, "Endlich Freitag!" to the wall, or to the guys in lederhosen, and everyone laughs and hoists their mugs in a TGIF salute. Despite Schroeder’s status as the West Coast’s oldest German restaurant (it opened in 1893), the tour-bus quality deserves an upgrade. But it’s one of the best places to drink yourself silly, and I love it for that.

240 Front, SF. (415) 421-4778, www.schroederssf.com

ROSAMUNDE SAUSAGE GRILL/TORONADO

You don’t always want to sit down and pay for a big meal. Sometimes you just need something salty, meaty, and cheap … but a changeup from tacos. Hit the Lower Haight, mein Freund, for one wicked tandem. Get the meat fix (say, wild boar and apple sausage) at Rosamunde Sausage Grill, and bring it next door to Toronado for a German (and many, many other kinds) of beer.

545 Haight, SF. (415) 437-6851; 547 Haight, SF. (415) 863-2776, www.toronado.com

LEHR’S GERMAN SPECIALITIES

If your enthusiasm for German food has you craving special pickles, mustard, wursts, or spaetzle mix, visit Lehr’s in Noe Valley. Go anyway, actually, sample some of the chocolates and candy, and enjoy a spectacular throwback to family-run, neighborhood grocery stores. Let’s do the time warp again.

1581 Church, SF. (415) 282-6803*

Palmetto Restaurant and Lounge

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September 4, 2007
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› paulr@sfbg.com

Let us now parse famous streets — in particular, Chestnut and Union streets, those parallel avenues and venues of Marina culture, so near to yet far from each other. As someone who cannot be said to be a habitué of either promenade, I speak with the authority of the outworlder, the sporadic visitor whose perceptions are freshened by infrequency. Therefore: Chestnut Street seems to me to be peopled by post-collegiate sorts in their 20s, while Union Street, a few blocks up the hill, strikes me as more thirtysomething country. There the upland air, while still smelling strongly of youth, acquires a crisp note of adultness. One notices better shoes, and certainly fewer chain and fast-food restaurants, than in the nearby bottomlands. Union Street, in fact, is a pretty good place to eat; Betelnut is still there and well into its second decade of life, while just a block or so away we now find Palmetto Restaurant and Lounge, which opened over the summer in a unique space long occupied by Café de Paris L’Entrecote. (And, for Tales of the City nostalgists, the lights of Perry’s are still a-twinkle.)

Palmetto’s street persona is that of a glassy cottage that’s begun to sink decorously into the pavement. You make your entrance by taking a few counterintuitive steps downward, and you find yourself at the edge of an airy, open, well-lit solarium with, behind the host’s station, a bar that could easily be a sports bar. The clientele is fearsomely athletic-looking, as if everyone is a model awaiting an imminent photo shoot for Power Bars. But the restaurant’s ruling muse turns out to be elegance, not brawn. The interior was redesigned by the noted architect Cass Calder Smith, and the idea, as in a certain sort of cooking, is to let the space speak in its own voice. The overall effect is one of warm minimalism — an apparent paradox, yet one is bewitched by the scale of the rear dining room (which is far larger than the glassy little house on the street implies) and the easy fluidity of human movement. There is even, in a throwback, an exhibition kitchen at the restaurant’s very rear — a discreet nod to the culinary voyeurs who still lurk among us.

Chef Andy Kitko (a Gary Danko alumnus) has picked up the script left behind by the departure, some years ago, of 42 Degrees — as in 42 degrees of latitude, as in, more or less, a line running near the coasts of southern Europe and northern Africa, through Italy and the Balkans and on to the Black Sea, whose south shore consists mostly of Turkey. The word the restaurant uses to describe Kitko’s panoramic menu is "contemporary Mediterranean," and although "Mediterranean" has lately become a squishy term, here its big-tent roominess seems right. "Contemporary," of course, is code for "California," meaning, more or less, we’ll try anything once.

The food tilts toward small plates, along with soups, salads, and pastas available by the half-size. These last are not inconsiderable. Maccaronis amatriciana ($8) featured the classic Roman sauce of pancetta, onion, chili, and tomato — pleasantly spicy, with a hint of smoke — spooned over a healthy portion of house-made pasta, like stubby straws that had been slit open.

The bigger plates, interestingly, are on the not-huge side. The burger ($12) was just right, about a third of a pound of Meyers Ranch beef — and it was also fabulously juicy and full of flavor, a best-in-show contender. It would have been satisfying even if it hadn’t come with a cone of crisp, well-salted frites and their sidekick trio of sauces: ketchup, tomato, and cumin aioli, with its breath of the Maghreb. King salmon ($24), meanwhile, was given a yogurt marinade and served atop a tabbouleh paste with peas and cumin carrots; it felt vaguely Turkish to us.

But, as is so often the case, the kitchen saves its best work for the smaller jewels. A trio of arancini ($8), basically risotto fritters that look like batter-fried golf balls, were scented with Meyer lemon and carried a secret cargo of tarragon crème fraîche. House-made lamb sausage ($10) arrived, still sizzling from the grill, on a ragout of navy and fava beans, while flaps of grilled Monterey Bay sardines ($8) were mounted on rounds of toast, with rich, dark caponata on hand to help balance the fish’s oiliness.

Some of the stuff drifted toward the ordinary: an heirloom tomato salad ($12), with burrata di bufala and balsamic drizzle was good, but practically every restaurant in town is offering something similar; and a wild mushroom soup ($8) with garlic chives and a crouton, was also good and only slightly less familiar. Some of the so-called accompaniments, on the other hand, were unexpected and tasty. A Castilian-style pisto ($6) resembled its summer-bounty relatives, ratatouille and caponata, but put more emphasis on diced eggplant and added haricots verts for color, while grilled corn with lime butter ($5) fitted the butter, in melting pats, atop disks of cob that looked like yellow nigiri.

There is at least one extraordinary dessert awaiting your attention. It bears the nearly unmanageable name of galaktoboureko ($8). If you can make it understood that this is what you want, you will soon be feasting on a pair of crisped phyllo tubes filled with lemon-infused semolina custard and plated with lavender honey and grilled fig halves that look like pieces of candy. I like figs about as much as I like chestnuts, which is not very, but here we have a dessert that’s greater than the sum of its parts — or, an artful union.<\!s>*

PALMETTO RESTAURANT AND LOUNGE

Brunch: Sat.–Sun., 9:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m. Dinner: Sun.–Thurs., 5:30–10 p.m.; Fri.–Sat., 5:30–11 p.m.

2032 Union, SF

(415) 931-5006

www.palmetto-sf.com

Full bar

AE/DISC/MC/V

Well-managed noise

Wheelchair accessible

The original queer district

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August 29, 2007
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The Tenderloin and its more settled fringe, Polk Gulch, have a long history in queer San Francisco.

The city’s street prostitutes were pushed into the Tenderloin after the 1914 Red-Light Abatement Law led to a crackdown on the Barbary Coast. Police crackdowns on gay bars in North Beach in the early 1960s led to the ascendance of Polk Gulch as the city’s gay center.

In the 1960s, a vibrant queer culture consisting of young butch hustlers, drag queens, transgendered sex workers, and older men spanned lower Polk and the adjacent Tenderloin. By 1966, the area supported more than two dozen gay bars and baths, sex shops, restaurants, men’s clothing stores, gay theaters, and gay hotels, according to GLBT Historical Society records. The Gay Freedom Day Parade passed through Polk Gulch in the early 1970s. Before Halloween in the Castro, Halloween was in the Polk.

A 1966 police riot at Compton’s Cafeteria, an all-night hangout for hustlers and street queens just a few blocks from Polk Gulch, predates New York’s famous Stonewall riot by three years.

Many gay men from Polk Gulch migrated to the Castro in the mid-1970s, and their businesses left with them. But Polk Street remained a vital center for poor queers of color, hustlers, runaway youths, trannies, and drug users who were generally not welcome in the Castro. The AIDS epidemic hit the Polk hard in the 1980s, which also saw a rise in crime and drugs in the area.

The dot-com boom of 1999–2001 hastened this collapse, accelerating gentrification in the area. A series of fires at SROs, including one in 1998 at the Polk Street Leland Hotel, displaced low-income tenants, while condos began to be constructed in their place. Increased policing, tied in with new upscale businesses and tenants, the aging of the bars’ owners and core clientele, and competition from the new technology of the Internet, also changed the neighborhood’s character.

In the past few years especially, businesses began buying up limping gay bars, transforming them into hip, heterosexual meeting places. RendezVous was razed. The Polk Gulch Saloon became the Lush Lounge. Reflections, a male hustler bar, became the Vertigo Lounge. The Giraffe, a gay bar since 1979, became the Hemlock Tavern. The dive bar Katie’s became Blur. (Plaster)

Elisa’s Cafe and L’s Caffe

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August 29, 2007
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› paulr@sfbg.com

No matter how you prefer to spell café — or caffe, or even cafe — you probably have a favorite one. Haunting a particular café is a prerogative of city dwelling, and in a coffee-involved city like ours, the possible forums for such socially acceptable loitering are vast, even including places that don’t have espresso machines. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Cafés, you see, don’t have to be about coffee, really, though most serve it in some form and some serve it in many forms. Cafés can also be about food, and in this sense we use the word in more or less the same sense the Parisians do, to describe the most casual sort of restaurant, the sort of place that doesn’t necessarily have full table service but does have tables where you are welcome to linger and discuss and rap your knuckles for emphasis even after you’ve finished eating whatever it was you were eating.

And what were you eating? Nacatamales? Have my typing fingers gone into spasm? Did I mean to type tamales but succumbed to overenthusiasm? No: I meant to type nacatamales because the nacatamal is the tamale of Nicaragua (and Honduras), and you can get them at Elisa’s Café, along with other Central American delicacies. Along with coffee — but not espresso.

Elisa’s opened late in the spring in the Excelsior space occupied for a number of years by Bistro E Europe, a restaurant that served the foods of Hungary and the Roma (a.k.a. the gypsies). The rather Spartan-looking space has been given a nice freshening, with peach paint and black furniture, and you no longer have that forgotten-city feeling while sitting in the window, watching the world go by.

Nacatamales ($5.50), as prepared by Elisa’s kitchen, are bigger and squarer than ordinary tamales. They’re about the size of a watch box and are steamed in plantain leaves, which are peeled away before the plate is presented to you. Otherwise, the similarities are manifest; we are talking about a squarish molding of masa (a close, corn-meal relation of polenta) in which potatoes, rice, tomatoes, onions, raisins, mint leaves, and possibly beef, pork, or chicken, have been cooked, as in a clafoutis or berry muffin. The boundary between the filling and the enclosure is indistinct, in other words.

The nacatamales are big. One is plenty for a single person and might even be splittable if you open your repast with, say, some soup. Soups vary according to the day of the week, and some are pricier than others. The least costly appears on Friday and is meatless: a black-bean soup ($4.50), whose namesake legumes are reduced to a thin purée in which bob peeled boiled eggs and coiled ropes of red pepper. Since the soup is basically mild, enlivenment is provided on the side in the form of a white salsa, a mince of onions steeped in vinegar. The sauce emits almost unbreathable fumes, but once in the soup it settles down to the general benefit.

Other dishes seem more familiar — the sorts of things you might find at other restaurants serving the foods of Mesoamerica — including bistec encebollado ($8.75), several pieces of beef sliced minute-steak thin, then pan-fried and finished with a tousled cap of sautéed onions. There’s also a salad on the side, iceberg lettuce with cucumber coins and quartered tomatoes. Quite American, I thought, as if the shock of Nicaraguan cooking must be buffered somehow for yanqui sensibilities.

When you are sitting in L’s Caffe, on 24th Street between Bryant and Florida, you are sitting in what I think of as the deepest heart of the Mission. And because the Mission is changeable and ever-changing, a café at its heart would almost necessarily be polyglot. The principals of L’s are all named Lozano — which is a Spanish name but also turns up occasionally in Italy. Italy and Spain, of course, have taken turns ruling bits of each other over the centuries.

As if to honor this long entwinement, the café offers a casually international menu, with definite Italian flourishes along with Spanish touches spoken in a New World accent. You can get bagels smeared with lox and cream cheese, or with hummus; you can get a PB&J or a sandwich with pepperoni, mozzarella, and pesto. You can get Chilean-style empanadas ($3 each), half-moon shaped pastry pouches filled with shredded chicken or just vegetables — which might mean mostly spinach.

There’s a minestrone soup ($4.50) whose thick, spicy tomato sauce and flotsam of white beans and pasta would do credit to many an Italian restaurant. The soup goes nicely with, perhaps, a turkey and Swiss sandwich ($5.95), which would be totally all-American if not for the swoosh of hummus on the top slice of whole-wheat bread. Even a five-bean salad ($3.25), a staple of midsummer picnics, features a broad constituency of legumes: black, pinto, lima, and green beans, along with chickpeas.

Not all recent changes in the Mission are awful, if we factor into our judgment L’s Caffe’s commitment to organic agriculture — all the coffee beans are organic, as is much of the food — and to reducing its waste stream through a conscientious program of composting and recycling. As someone who recently had a burrito at a long-beloved taqueria (also in the Mission) and was horrified to see a reckless flow of aluminum foil, Styrofoam, and other manufactured leavings into the garbage, I can tell you that this matters.

ELISA’S CAFÉ

Mon.–Fri., 7 a.m.–7 p.m.; Sat–Sun., 8 a.m.–5 p.m.

4901 Mission, SF

(415) 333-3177

Beer and wine

AE/MC/V

Not noisy

Wheelchair accessible

L’S CAFFE

Mon.–Thurs., 6 a.m.–9 p.m.; Fri., 6 a.m.–10 p.m.; Sat–Sun., 7 a.m.–9 p.m.

2871 24th St., SF

(415) 206-0274

www.lscaffe.net

Beer and wine

DC/DISC/MC/V

Not noisy

Wheelchair accessible

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