Style

Destino

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› 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

The Old-Fashioned Way at Hemlock Tavern

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LOCAL LIVE The first triumph of the night was simply that no one lost an eye. The Hemlock Tavern stage isn’t much more than a low corner deck, and the Old-Fashioned Way work a swooning fiddle into their akimbo art pop, which meant that whenever Marie MacBain launched an arpeggio, her bow looked like a weapon.

Such are the risks of bringing bits of a philharmonic onto the barroom circuit, an increasingly popular move — blame Montreal — that’s rarely handled with the charm of this six-piece. You won’t find bespectacled frontman Chris Wu miming Win Butler. Onstage he’s a picture of basso profundo calm, a seated yogi growling an indie rocker’s version of eightfold-path prescriptions: "Tea early morning, Earl Grey / And coffee all day / Tecate all night / Or just something with bite."

Crowded around their sage leader, the rest of the OFW, who formed in 2005 and will release their first 7-inch this fall, give off the ease of a family band, though no member remotely resembles another. They’re Dickensian orphans, then, who’ve gathered to put on a minstrel show — and who’ve had to find a sound to fit their strange batch of instruments. The two red-blooded guitars and the drum kit give the songs a sturdy rock core when the band wishes it. But there are also, at points, a Paul McCartney–style toy bass, an accordion, a triangle, a wailing keyboard, and a melodica, which pile into a haunted and seductive sort of antipop, mournful and klezmerish on a track like "Robot on Fire" but boppy, harmonic, and needing a restroom on "Take Your Fluids." The latter was a live highlight, thanks to bassist Heather Logsdon’s soft and shy la la las, while "Zeitgeist" was goofy and quotidian but sweeter for it: "I threw on my clothes clumsily / And I kissed you on the head at 1:30 / Out the door and crushed by night / My hoodie reeked of beer and your Lucky Strikes."

THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY Thurs/20, 9 p.m., $8. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011, www.rickshawstop.com

The Dirty Projectors killed me with style at Bottom of the Hill

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By Ben Sinclair

At Bottom of the Hill last Wednesday, Sept. 12, a certain Brooklyn band, sounding a bit like an alchemy of Deerhoof and Prince, provoked what I would break down into three reactions: standing around and enjoying great music (the majority of the audience), sort of dancing (a minority), and lastly, small, isolated, and poor attempts at moshing.

Not that I don’t love the stuff when everyone wants to do it, but the latter tries at this show had to kindly be swatted down. The real success of this band was that they didn’t just provoke – they affected their fans diversely. On these grounds, how could I blame a lonely and intoxicated mosher? I resigned myself to jumping around and dancing inside my own head.

For a band that has been steered towards as many varying focuses as the Dirty Projectors, their name is strikingly apropos. Back when the David Longstreth-led group was showing off their looser, folkier side, the term “rough image” described their projection all too well. As Longstreth threw in classical compositional strategies for strings and voice, the only thing that became any clearer was that the dirt on this projector was not limited to its lens: the whole machine now felt and smelled like a digitized version of some shadowy attic antique, as if the influences of its primary function were sealed in the thin sedimentary layers of dust on its exterior.

“Remarkable Men” at Jack Hanley

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Monkeying around: Djordje Ozbolt’s Little Ricky.

By Amy Glasenapp

Friday night, Sept. 7, and art was in the air. Among the early evening spatter of exhibitions in the Mission District was “Meetings with Remarkable Men,” a small but salient show of paintings by Serbian artist Djordje Ozbolt. This collection made me want to trash what was left of my tepid, paper-bag-wrapped Budweiser tallboy and get a real beer, something like a Unibroue ale or a nice Belgian Leffe.

The subjects of Ozbolt’s recent work are usually people and animals – mostly zebras, horses, and giraffes – placed in creepy fairy tale settings and depicted in vivid pastel colors. His paintings are playfully sinister, if not outright morbid, and are palpably influenced by storybook illustrations. Here, all the pieces are portraits (of remarkable men, as the title of the exhibition suggests, and Ozbolt displays a sense of humor about who is, in fact, remarkable: a few paintings border on hilarity, showcasing faces marred by gaping nose-pores, dirty-yellow buck teeth, and monkey features. These particular works are decadently surrealist, almost animated – you can easily imagine those figures chortling, rolling their eyes, or noshing on bananas.

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Coo-coo catchoo: The Turd Man.

Other pieces are more disturbing, such as the portrait of a face that looks more like the inside of a head. Or maybe a bowl of carefully arranged moose turds. (Later, I found the title online, **The Turd Man,** and was dismayed that my scatological interpretation wasn’t unique or far-reaching.) Ozbolt varies his style in each painting, revealing a familiarity with both classical and contemporary techniques, while every piece is intrinsically fueled by color.

“Meetings” reminded me that the portraits are still capable of provocation and engagement, especially when compared with other forms I glimpsed that night – conceptual, overcompensating work that, in a harried attempt to appear arcane, ended up ultimately banal.

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King him: His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, Conquering Lion of the tribe of Judah, King of Kings of Ethiopia and Elect of God.

“Djordje Ozbolt: Meetings With Remarkable Men” runs through Sept. 29 at Jack Hanley Gallery, 395 Valencia St., SF. (415) 522-1623,

Why Women are for Obama

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By Sarah Phelan

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Photos by Charles Russo

Last week I witnessed presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama’s deliver a very powerful speech at the Women for Obama event in San Francisco. Obama spent a lot of time talking about his opposition to the war in Iraq and his plans to withdraw all combat troops by the end of 2008, as well as other issues that women really care about like health care and equal wages for all.

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Obama still had his toothy, crinkly edged smile and easy going style, but a fierceness came into his voice when he talked about the cost of the war to the troops and their families. And I wasn’t the only military mom in the house who appreciated Obama’s honest talk about Iraq.

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Up on stage with Obama, alongside San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, was Kim Mack. Mack, who is executive director for Sacramento for Obama, talked about why she is for Obama–and one big reason was her 23-year old son Bobby, who has been serving in Iraq for a year.

Record labels, quit playin’ games with my heart – hurry up and release these CDs over here already

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Sweet on unreleased-in-the-US Candie Payne.

By Todd Lavoie

Look, I know America is supposed to be the land of infinite choice and all – y’know, 287 types of toothpaste to choose from in the supermarket aisle, right next to the avalanche of deodorants eagerly waiting to cripple you with consumer-paralysis – but sometimes we really seem to let a lot of the good stuff slip clean out of our nets, don’t we? Take chocolate. Sure, we’ve got all sorts of lovely nibbles on offer in this country, but why, oh, why must it take a small miracle to track down a Crunchie Bar in Cheneyland? It shouldn’t be so hard for this young buck to snuff out a sticky-sweet choco-honeycomb yummable when he’s got the hankerin’ somewhere over yonder in the Heartland, should it? Say what you will about British cuisine, but they make some f-f-fine candybars – too bad you can’t find the damn things in Peoria. What did Mick and Keith say? “You can’t always get what you want.” Oh, yeah. So shut up and eat your Hershey Bar.

Now, if that’s not enough to wet my eyes, how about this sad state of affairs: here we are, with hundreds of record labels between our coasts, and yet some of the finest albums of the year come from artists who don’t even have American record deals! Or, in some cases, if they do have an American label, they still have to wait an eternity for its release. Case in point: my beloved Super Furry Animals, who I will get to later.

I could go on about the priorities of record companies, et cetera, but honestly, who cares? Economics bores me. Macro, micro – can I stifle this yawn? Me, I’ll take art, thanks. Too bad the music labels don’t always seem to feel the same way.

So, what I’ve done here is cobble up a humble list of noteworthy 2007 CDs that have yet to see the light of day here in the U. S. of A. It’s a low-down dirty shame that these little gems are import-only when the cut-out bins of every blue-polo-shirted, name-tag-requiring “music retailer” across the country are groaning with the latest round of Fall-Out Boy/Good Charlotte knockoffs that exited Hindenburg-style upon release. (Goading behavior, you say? Never!) And while I recognize that the Guardian may not move and shake in the same earth-shattering directions as the mighty-mighty Pitchfork.com in molding public taste – yet – here’s my bidding for making things right. Record execs, if you’re out there: take note. Folks need to hear this stuff. Record geeks, write these suckers down. They’re worth the extra cash.

1. Candie Payne, I Wish I Could Have Loved You More (Deltasonic) Do you swoon for Dusty Springfield and her bewitching white-girl soul confessions? Do Portishead’s spy-movie tearjerkers still give you the post-cocktail blues? Liverpool’s Candie Payne slinks and sashays somewhere in between the two, shimmying her simple – but elegant – see, pop can still be elegant! – blue party dress under a canopy of flute trills, soundtrack-worthy-string and brass arrangements, and some deliciously moody-ass organ. While she may not carry the same emotional devastation as Portishead’s Beth Gibbons – but who can, honestly? – Payne can be quite disarming with her sweetness, cooing away gently while sending an unequivocal kiss-off on the slow-shuffle of “Why Should I Settle For You?’ Another highlight, the Sandie Shaw/Petula Clark-informed “One More Chance,” is perhaps one of the most sweetly sincere baby-come-back songs I’ve ever heard. Or how about this video for the title track, in which you get every possible camera angle of Payne’s head? Oh, and she’s so tough on the eyes, too, poor thing:

Ed Jew For Wine and Food

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By Sarah Phelan

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OK, so “Ed Jew Legal Defense Fund For Wine and Food” probably isn’t what Jew meant when his team sent out this pulp fictionesque style invite (pictured above,) but the wording sure makes it look that way.

As the info on the inside of the “Support Jew’s speedy trial” envelope notes, City Law does not allow Supervisors to set up “legal defense funds” per se. Instead it allows them to raise $100 per source for “post-election legal proceedings,” in addition to the regular $500 in campaign funds.

That means if you already chipped in $500 to get Jew elected, you can add another $100 dollop . If not, you can give the whole $600 enchilada. Readers will doubtless remember that Jew’s legal problems began after he took $40,000 in cash from the owners of a tapioca bubble drink chain. So, we couldn’t help noticing that Jew’s fund raising event at Pier 33 is being hosted by Seafood Suppliers. Not that we’re saying that any of this sounds fishy, or anything.

Frugal feasts

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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

Written on the skin

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich, Federico Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni, Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune — legendary screen team-ups betwixt a vision-questing director and his or her alter ego star filter are the stuff of cinematic legend. Wet dreams for reviewers intent on imbuing criticism with the sticky glaze of biography, they’re also seemingly part of a mythical auteur-driven cinematic past that was untouched by the hard-line realities of big-budget, gun-for-hire studio economics.

So it’s remarkable to find a filmmaker like David Cronenberg reteaming with his A History of Violence (2005) star Viggo Mortensen for Eastern Promises — it’s only the second time that Cronenberg has repeated such a collaboration since his work with Jeremy Irons in M. Butterfly (1993) and the director’s masterwork, Dead Ringers (1988). Sure, the feature also revolves around the mob (this time the Russian Vory v Zakone rather than the Irish mafia) and family, of both the biological and the bloodily nonbiological sorts. But there must be something deeper going on here. Talking to an energetic, black-clad Cronenberg, temporarily sprawled on a damask couch at the Ritz-Carlton a few weeks back and preparing to head back to his hometown film festival in Toronto, I wondered what exactly was the nature of his and Mortensen’s obviously tight relationship.

"Oh, we’re in love," the 64-year-old director quipped dryly. Shall we alert the tabloids about forthcoming nuptials, in the scandalous style of Ingrid Bergman running off with Roberto Rossellini?

"Yeah, it’s kind of a brotherly love as well. I feel like he’s the brother I never had. We’re very close. No, we’re very close."

Cronenberg kids you — not a stance expected from the man once associated with a grotesque yet cerebral breed of filmic Grand Guignol. But perhaps it isn’t entirely unprecedented: he famously splattered the prepubescent screens of pop-cult consciousness with his literally mind-blowing Scanners (1981). Punctuating his points with sharp hand gestures and following every flicker of your glance, the man thinks and jests both on and off his feet — and spars and parries just as effortlessly.

For Cronenberg, Eastern Promises‘ attraction lay not in its focus on mafia or family but in the well-crafted, textural script by Dirty Pretty Things‘ Steven Knight. "I was particularly interested in the multicultural aspect, because London, like Toronto, prides itself on being multicultural, which is to say immigrants can come and maintain their national identity and still live within the English context," the filmmaker mused. "That’s a nice concept. Does it really work? There are a lot of frictions, hostilities, and enmities that are brought from the old country."

The multilingual, half-Danish Mortensen has proved the ideal specimen, or Cronenbergian vessel, through which to play out these ideas. In contrast to A History of Violence‘s Tom Stall, whose assimilative veneer of wholesome middle-American respectability is torn away by a sudden, almost sensually shocking outburst of violence to reveal a noirish mafia past, Mortensen’s mysterious Eastern Promises character, Nikolai Luzhin, is all cold and mechanistic as he moves carefully through the alienating turf of a Russian immigrant neighborhood in London. Behind his slick, sexually contained, rockabillyesque shades, suit, and pompadour, Nikolai keeps his past firmly hidden, showing only bodily badges of allegiance, a vividly baroque comic book constellation of Siberian prison tattoos. The mafia narrative has become a way of venturing into the shadow zones of biological and chosen families. In Eastern Promises, Cronenberg juxtaposes the quest of Anna (Naomi Watts) to find the relatives of a dead Russian girl’s infant with Nikolai’s search for acceptance within the family of crime boss Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl).

On its slick gray and black noirish surface, Eastern Promises doesn’t resemble offerings like 1979’s The Brood, 1983’s Videodrome, 1986’s The Fly, or 1996’s Crash, films that bound Cronenberg’s name to that of the phrase body horror. But one can’t help but glimpse the filmmaker’s themes in the starry ciphers on Mortensen’s form.

So what does Cronenberg think of so-called body horror today? "I think nothing!" he exclaims with a comic snort. "It does seem kind of ridiculous. When you think of it, horror is about mortality, and it’s about mortality seen as a very physical event. That’s what, to me, horror films are about. To me, the genre is about the body, really."

EASTERN PROMISES

Opens Fri/14 in Bay Area theaters

www.focusfeatures.com/easternpromises

Hispanics go hyphy

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Latinos rarely receive credit for all they’ve brought to the rap game. After all, it was primarily Puerto Ricans who authored those boogaloo break-dance moves in the Bronx. And what would Cali hip-hop be without the laid-back style of Chicano cholos and their "low lows"?

Currently, a contingent of local Latino rap artists is pushing hard for recognition. Its members are on the Thizz Latin label, an imprint of Mac Dre’s Thizz Entertainment group. Only a year old, Thizz Latin is the brainchild of Julio "Gold Toes" Sanchez, a Chicano MC and hip-hop impresario hell-bent on highlighting the diversity of the hyphy movement.

To the Mission District native, San Francisco is practically synonymous with diversity. "I’m a San Franciscan to the heart," Sanchez says. "I’m a melting pot within my mind and in my soul."

On this hot Mission afternoon, he rolls up in his cream-colored Cadillac to tell me the Peruvian joint where we planned to meet is closed. Instead, he takes me to a Chinese restaurant where the Asian immigrant owners greet him by first name. To some, Sanchez could be imposing, with his brawny build, shaved head, and fiery demeanor. To the restaurant’s proprietors, he’s just a neighborhood kid.

Sanchez is using his community-bridging skills and street hustle to build a wide audience for his label’s pan-Latin roster of rappers, including Mr. Kee, Tito B, Freddy Chingaz, and Louie Loc, who are of Cuban, Mexican, Salvadoran, and Nicaraguan descent, respectively. "We can go to Hunters Point and have it rocking. We can go to the Mission and have it rocking. We can go to Union Street, and we can have it crackin’ off the hook. We could go to Chinatown, and they’re gonna love us."

One of Thizz Latin’s premier artists, Chicano MC Jimmy Roses, opened the "Super Hyphy 18" concert recently in Santa Rosa. Minutes into his set, he made the remarkably mixed crowd of more than a thousand move with his feel-good anthem "Who Rock the Party," an ebullient track that received some airplay on local radio and galvanized what Sanchez calls the Latin hyphy movement.

Movement building, however, has been impeded by the peculiar racial politics of local commercial radio. Although Thizz Latin artists have garnered a few spins, radio play in the Bay largely eludes them, despite the fact that several of the imprint’s releases have sold more than 20,000 units. The explanation given by DJs and programmers? They’re not black enough for hip-hop and R&B stations, and they’re not Latin enough for the Hispanic format. In Sanchez’s words, "We’re everywhere but the motherfucking radio!"

The situation mirrors the marginal, neither-here-nor-there position of US Latinos, who comprise the nation’s largest minority yet rarely receive recognition in the mainstream media. The music industry in particular can’t seem to wrap its brain around the biculturalism of urban Latino youth, many of whom grew up listening to traditional Latin sounds yet are utterly immersed in hip-hop.

Thizz Latin beatmaker Ivan "Baby Boss" Martinez, a rising star at 18, is a perfect example of this. The Mexican American college freshman explains, "Whenever we’re with our families, we’re bumpin’ banda. We’re playing mariachi in the car. But when I’m with my clique, it’s just hip-hop and reggaetón."

Martinez’s dexterity in mixing multiple genres impressed "ShoBoy" Edgar, a popular DJ on fledgling KWZ, 100.7 FM ("La Kalle"). The reggaetón-heavy station, which specifically targets urban Latino youths, hired Martinez to produce a few commercials but seldom plays Thizz Latin tracks — ostensibly because they’re in English.

Even more galling to Sanchez is the lack of local hip-hop and R&B radio support, considering that both KMEL, 106.1 FM, and KYLD, 94.9 FM (Wild), regularly sponsor events such as Carnaval in the Mexican American community and even farm their DJs out for private quinceañera parties. Still, they refuse to put Latin rap on regular rotation. At press time, KMEL and KYLD representatives had not responded to requests for comment.

Interestingly, Thizz Latin MCs get more love in other regions, including central California and the Southwest, where they play to crowds as large as 5,000. The hip-hop hotbed of Houston is especially amenable to Latin rap — so much so that local players have begun to migrate there. Vallejo rapper Baby Bash moved to H-Town years ago and subsequently struck gold in record sales. San Jose’s Upstairs Records, home of SoCal Chicano-rap phenom Lil Rob, recently set up shop there.

Even Sanchez, a die-hard San Franciscan, feels the pull southward. He lived in Houston for a time and built strong connections there with top Chicano talent Chingo Bling and South Park Mexican, who both appear on Thizz Latin releases. So does Baby Bash, who recently paired up with Sanchez on "Thick ”N Juicy," a seductive track on Sanchez’s solo debut, Gold Toes Presents: The Gold Rush, set for a Sept. 18 release.

Something of a slow jam, "Thick ‘N Juicy" differs from Thizz Latin’s more hardcore hyphy output. The imprint’s vaguely thuggish brand of rap is offered as another excuse by radio programmers for why it doesn’t get played. But that argument doesn’t hold water considering both KMEL and La Kalle play classic gangsta rap by the likes of Snoop Dogg and 2Pac.

There are obviously racialized assumptions being made about what a real Latino is and what true hip-hop is. This rigid logic pushes Latino rappers into a broadcast border zone as migrant wanderers looking for a place to settle on the radio dial. Hopefully, they’ll find a home once Latinos gain a stronger foothold in the media.

www.myspace.com/blacknbrown

Let bison be bison

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Arguments for choosing bison over beef include the likelihood that bison is, on balance, better for you and is a meat from a once nearly extinct North American species whose prospects for survival are, perhaps ironically, enhanced by its homecoming as a food animal. Arguments against include cost (I paid about $29 per pound recently for some bison strip steaks) and, perhaps ironically, leanness, which complicates cooking. Still, when the numbers were crunched for the Labor Day weekend, the ayes had it.

Lean can mean tough and juiceless, especially if you’re using a dry-heat cooking implement, like a charcoal grill. And on Labor Day weekend, would you be using anything else? As a precaution, I asked the butcher to leave a strip of fat on each steak; as an additional precaution, I pounded each piece lightly with a tenderizing mallet. And I used a marinade — for Florentine-style grilled beef, from Bruce Aidells’s invaluable The Complete Meat Cookbook (Houghton Mifflin, 2001). The marinade consists of a few tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil, a teaspoon of kosher salt, some cracked black pepper, and some minced garlic, if you like. (I like.) You mix all that together in a broad dish, turn the pieces of meat in it until they’re nicely slicked, and let the ensemble stand, covered, in the refrigerator for several hours or (better) overnight.

Holiday grillers, overcome by enthusiasm and beer, often lay fires that are much too hot. For boneless steaks — and, for that matter, burgers — a moderately hot fire is plenty. You are cooking food, not competing in an inferno Olympics. You know your fire is too hot if the food burns on the outside while remaining rawish inside. By this time, of course, it’s too late.

My modest fire cooked the steaks in about five or six minutes per side and left nice grill marks too. The meat turned out to be a lovely medium rare, with each strip having a band of pink inside, deepening to rose toward the core. The texture was different from beef’s: not the velvet butteriness of filet mignon but not tough either. More like a tri-tip. As for the flavor: superbeefy, I thought, without a hint of gaminess. Others at the table thought the meat had a flavor distinct from beef’s but just as good. A veritable stampede of approval.

Paul Reidinger

› paulr@sfbg.com

Tough turf

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CULT FILM "WAAAR-ee-erzzz — come out to PLAAY-ee-ay!" This catchphrase, first spoken in an annoyingly unforgettable singsong (and supposedly improvised) by actor David Patrick Kelly, has infiltrated pop culture to the extent that it’s been sampled or mimicked by musicians from Twisted Sister to the Wu-Tang Clan to the Offspring. If you don’t know — how could you not? — it’s from The Warriors, Walter Hill’s 1979 urban action joyride. Revived this weekend at the Red Vic Movie House (hardly for the first time), The Warriors barely rippled across the radar of most respectable critics at the time (though the New Yorker and the New York Times liked it). Yet it’s grown more beloved and influential than all the prestige releases of 1979 combined (Apocalypse Now possibly aside). I mean, who quotes lines now from Kramer vs. Kramer or Norma Rae?

Based on a 1965 novel by Sol Yurick (very loosely, which he did not appreciate), the film finds nine representatives of Coney Island’s Warriors gang journeying in their scruffy-sexy little leather vests all the way to the Bronx. There, messianic Cyrus (Roger Hill) of the Black Panthers–like, paramilitaristic Gramercy Riffs has called a summit for all 100 New York City gangs. Saying their combined 60,000 soldiers could take over the city against a measly 20,000 cops if they united forces, he bellows, "We got the streets, suckers! Caaaan youuuu diiiiig iiiiitttt?"

Just cuz he can, weasly li’l psycho Luther (Kelly) of the Rogues chooses this moment to assassinate Cyrus. Amid the subsequent pandemonium, Luther pins the blame on the Warriors, whose black leader, Cleon (Dorsey Wright), is promptly lynched. This conveniently leaves the cutest white boy — Andy Gibb–coiffed, clench-jawed Michael Beck as Swan — in charge. He has to get the remaining Warriors, now pursued by every gang and cop around, safely home from "27 miles behind enemy lines." Their breathless all-night journey includes altercations with myriad rival units, all outlandishly outfitted in matching costumes: the Baseball Furies wear pinstripe uniforms and KISS-style makeup; the Punks look more like pop rockers, with overalls and a shaggy-haired boss on roller skates. Other groups look like mimes (now that’s tough), disco funksters, ninjas, and so on. Luther’s guys resemble extras from Scorpio Rising. The Lizzies are, uh, lezzies, though they pretend otherwise to entrap some easily dick-led Warriors.

Movies from the ’70s often seem idly paced now, yet The Warriors moves like greased lightning. There’s nonstop action yet surprisingly not all that much serious violence, save at the beginning and the end. But it didn’t seem that way to most observers in early ’79, when word quickly spread of gang beatdowns and three alleged murders taking place in or outside screenings. (Easy to see why actual gang members flocked to the movie — it flatters them with a fantasy of gang life as unflappable, thrill-a-minute, dark-superhero coolness.)

Naturally, there were also rumors that these reports were fake — drummed up by either the studio or procensorship types to create controversy. In the unlikely case that Paramount was behind it, its strategy certainly backfired, since the studio ended up having to pull ads and some prints and bankroll security at certain theaters. (Nonetheless, the film did pretty well nationwide.)

There were regrettable consequences for other movies too. Their suddenly skittish distributors didn’t do jack to promote two terrific movies now tainted by the gang label: Philip Kaufman’s wonderful The Wanderers, which was more an American Graffiti–style nostalgic flashback than anything else, and Jonathan Kaplan’s Over the Edge, a brilliant suburban-teen-revolt study. Both found their audiences in subsequent nonstop cable airings.

Most Warriors fanatics were dismayed when a director’s cut DVD came out earlier this year that inserted comic book–style freeze-frame graphics and a pretentious prologue. There may be worse indignities to come: Tony Scott, who’s never made a realistic movie in his life, is slated to direct a "more real, less camp" remake using Los Angeles gang members. Can you dig it? Er, no. (Dennis Harvey)

THE WARRIORS

Fri/14–Sat/15, 7:15 and 9:20 p.m. (also Sat/15, 2 and 4 p.m.), $5–$8.50

Red Vic Movie House

1727 Haight, SF

(415) 668-3994

www.redvicmoviehouse.com<

Northern Frights

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FESTIVAL REPORT Leave it to me to pack as much violence as possible into my first days at the Toronto International Film Festival. (And that’s with only having seen one entry in the horror-heavy Midnight Madness series.) In Spanish spookfest The Orphanage — featuring a Poltergeist shout-out for Zelda Rubenstein fans — fingers are slammed in doors, limbs are snapped, and a few unfortunate, uh, accidents occur. Jodie Foster goes aggro with a cause in The Brave One, poppin’ pricks with a pistol (and other handy tools). But the standout gross-outs so far are the Coen brothers’ Cormac McCarthy adaptation No Country for Old Men and Dario Argento’s long-awaited final entry in his Three Mothers trilogy, Mother of Tears.

"If this ain’t the mess," reckons No Country‘s Texas sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), "it’ll do till the mess gets here." The mess, later dubbed a "colossal goatfuck," is indeed a doozy of a rural crime scene, involving gun-shot bodies both fresh and long bloated, a dead dog, a truckload of drugs, much spent ammo, and a missing satchel containing $2 million. Clutching that dough is Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a ne’er-do-well who soon realizes his windfall will also be his downfall — in the form of Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem, exquisitely coiffed), a ruthless killer hired to hunt down the cash. No Country for Old Men is certainly the greatest Coen film in a good while — no Tom Hanks joking about waffles here. It’s beautifully shot and edited (aside from a maybe too-extended ending), and while there’s not much dialogue when Ed Tom’s not onscreen, every nugget’s worth waiting for. Bardem is particularly golden, but the whole cast is on point.

And yeah, since I know you wanna know, Mother of Tears is likewise certainly the greatest Argento film in a good while. I’m not saying it’s a perfect film, but it has all the gnarly stuff you expect from the director of Suspiria, Inferno, Phenomena, and Tenebre: over-the-top occult themes, shrill acting (Asia Argento’s the lead, and she turns it out), goth punk gangs of giggling witches, a plot that makes only sporadic sense, Udo Kier (as an exorcist!), a pounding electronic score, and, of course, eye gougings like they’re going out of style. Thank goodness they never will. (Cheryl Eddy)

For more reports from the Toronto International Film festival, go to Pixel Vision at www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision.

“It’s meant to be funny!”

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Day four of the Toronto International Film Fest: So, I was wrong. Nick Broomfield’s Battle for Haditha isn’t a documentary. Hell, it doesn’t even have any voice-over. It’s a drama — a docu-drama — that reenacts a real-life Iraq war incident in which a roadside IED led to the death of one American solider — and in turn, many Iraqi civilians (including children) shot to death by the fallen soldier’s weary, emotional, and confused squadmates. Shot in Jordan, the movie goes for a Flight 93-style realism, using mostly non-actors who represent more or less the characters they portray (Al-Qaeda aside, I’m guessing.) After the doc Heavy Metal in Baghdad, Battle for Haditha is the second Iraq-themed movie I’ve seen at the Toronto International Film Festival, and there are others on the bill I won’t have time to see, like Brian DePalma’s Redacted. Iraq is totally trendy … and timely. And in my festival-addled mind, I just realized tomorrow is September 11.

broomfield_large.jpg

Although Nick Broomfield is best-known for films like Kurt and Courtney and Biggie and Tupac, his latest is a fact-based drama, similar to his 2006 film Ghosts.

Feast: 7 homey hearths

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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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› 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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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*

Feast: 8 places to get your chocolate on

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It all starts innocently enough. One day you decide to order a mocha instead of your usual cappuccino; the next you grab a few Ghiradelli squares from the impulse aisle at Safeway. By the end of the week, you’ve blown your savings at Joseph Schmidt and are curled in a fetal position, watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on loop, stuffing your face with take-out pastries from Tartine. Scharffen Berger and Cocoa Bella are only the tip of the iceberg — San Francisco is host to one of the premiere chocolate cultures of the world. Submitted here are eight places to get your cocoa fix — no golden ticket required.

FOG CITY NEWS


Most San Franciscans know Fog City News as a gargantuan newsstand tucked into the insufferably bleak confines of the financial district. This Market Street storefront might sport the largest collection of periodicals by far in the Bay Area, but it’s also home to one of the largest selections of chocolate bars in the country. Every person on staff is a chocolate authority, well schooled in the nuances of the cacao bean and happy to help you choose from the hundreds of options. Just remember not to refer to any of the products as candy — they take their chocolate seriously here.

455 Market, SF. (415) 543-7400, www.fogcitynews.com

CIRCOLO


Sure, it’s novel to insist that chocolate is at the top of the aphrodisiacal pecking order, but we all know that when it comes to stroking the libido, nothing can topple alcohol from its throne. Luckily for us, every bartender with a cocktail shaker and a boredom streak fancies themselves a mixologist. The folks at Circolo have taken it a step further with their White Chocolate Martini, an inspired combination of Godiva chocolate liqueur, Chambord, and Frangelica. The deliciously creamy result is decadent enough to make even Dionysus blush.

500 Florida, SF. (415) 553-8560, www.circolosf.com

CHARLES CHOCOLATES


Recent studies trumpeting the antioxidant qualities of chocolate have raised eyebrows worldwide, but while the jury is still out on the cocoa bean, there isn’t a skeptic alive who would dare challenge the medicinal benefits of tea. The experts at Charles Chocolates have collaborated with the Berkeley tea room Teance to create the Tea Collection, milk chocolates infused with tea such as oolong, jasmine green, and even lichee red. No flavor-drop shortcuts for this boutique chocolatier — the leaves are actually steeped in milk to make sure every subtle note of the tea makes it into the chocolate.

6529 Hollis, Emeryville. (510) 652-4412, www.charleschocolates.com

BITTERSWEET CHOCOLATE CAFÉ


Chocolate has been consumed as a beverage for thousands of years, so anyone who sets out to make the perfect cup of hot chocolate has a long history to contend with. With its extensive menu of cocoa drinks, Bittersweet Chocolate Café is up to the challenge. From the exotic spices of its White Chocolate Dream to the pepper and rose of its Spicy! concoction, this Pac Heights café shows Swiss Miss who’s boss.

2123 Fillmore, SF. (415) 346-8715, www.bittersweetcafe.com

COLIBRI MEXICAN BISTRO


Mole is hard to get just right. The delicate balance of chile peppers, spices, and Mexican chocolate stewed together at the perfect ratio is something only a well-seasoned grandma can truly master, but Colibri comes close. Its flavorful Mole Poblano is prepared in classic Puebla style and represents the savory side of chocolate well. Bonus points for an obscenely large tequila selection.

438 Geary, SF. (415) 440-2737, www.colibrimexicanbistro.com

MAGGIEMUDD


During my vegan days, ice cream always proved to be a challenge. Once the thoughts of cookies and cream, mint chocolate chip, or the holy combo of chocolate and peanut butter started swirling through my mind like so much chocolate marbling, Tofutti Cuties just didn’t cut it. Thank goodness MaggieMudd realizes that vegans love chocolate too! The flavors scooped out at this Bernal Heights sweet spot taste better than their dairy counterparts. Seriously. Really. No joke.

903 Cortland, SF. (415) 641-5291, www.maggiemudd.com

CACAO ANASA


Anthony Ferguson just might be insane. The mad scientist behind San Francisco’s most eccentric culinary boutique, Cacao Anasa, runs his confection shop like a laboratory. No flavor is off limits in Ferguson’s kitchen: curry, basil, ginger, roses — hell, even merlot — all make their way into his artisinal truffles.

(415) 846-9240, www.cacaoanasa.com

GUITTARD CHOCOLATE CO.


The original gangster of San Francisco’s chocolate scene was founded during the gold rush, when a French immigrant realized that miners were willing to pay top dollar for fine chocolate. Guittard is still the oldest family-owned chocolate company in the United States; its baking products remain the top choice of pastry chefs world-round. The secret is in the simplicity: pure cane sugar, full-cream milk, and premium cacao beans have made Guittard’s a consistently perfect chocolate for almost 150 years.

10 Guittard, Burlingame. (650) 697-4427, www.guittard.com

Feast: 5 classic cafeterias

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When I was a wee lad in the sun-baked Los Angeles Basin, my maternal grandparents fostered what would become a lifetime obsession: the cafeteria. Products of World War II, they were people who appreciated the value of simple food and low prices. Add the fact that they were Roman Catholic and had eight mouths to feed, and their philosophy was pretty much a necessity. This is how I was introduced to carving boards of meat, steaming casseroles, and endless ice trays filled with shiny, multicolored geutf8 jewels. But where, oh where does one find these palaces of economic dining in San Francisco? The LA institution Clifton’s actually had an early genesis here, but it — along with Manning’s and Compton’s — didn’t survive the prosperity of the postwar years. It seems, however, that a strange cafeteria hybrid did: the hofbrau. Frankly, this comes as no surprise — as it really is just a cafeteria that serves booze, and, well, San Franciscans seem to never tire of the occasional nip. I set out to discover if the cafeteria is still thriving anywhere or if the hofbrau is really the answer, intent on experiencing these culinary relics and their gravy-laden wares.

TOMMY’S JOYNT


Little introduction is needed for this city icon, and it has no lack of fans, from the late Herb Caen to Metallica. It’s famous for its sandwiches and roast, as well as the décor: a mishmash of historical paraphernalia and signs screaming Where Turkey Is King! Tommy’s is equally fervent in the virtues of its buffalo stew and lists them accordingly. In addition to the myriad brews it has crammed behind the bar, it also serves liquor — and you can pretend you have the means for a three-martini lunch when they come priced at $3.75 each.

1101 Geary, SF. (415) 775-4126, www.tommysjoynt.com

LEFTY O’DOUL’S


Having been credited with discovering Joe DiMaggio and bringing baseball to Japan, O’Doul was that consummate old-school, bigger-than-life personality. So before the Bruce Willises, Sylvester Stalones, and others bestowed us with their culinary "treasures," O’Doul gave us this combination cafeteria–<\d>sports bar–tourist trap. The macaroni and cheese and the German potato salad are caloric bombs of goodness. And gnawing on a slice of American beef while staring at a giant statue of Marilyn Monroe is an experience vaguely reminiscent of listening to the Who’s Tommy.

333 Geary, SF. (415) 982-8900, www.leftyodouls.biz/index.html

CHICK-N-COOP


The closest to the sweet memories of my youth, Chick-N-Coop serves up all the goods while little old ladies prattle on about coupons over coffee and bowls of rice pudding. The Taraval location, with its early ’80s country atmosphere, boasts cheaper prices. But the best grub and experience is at the Excelsior location. Either way, the claim to fame here is the chicken, and the Chick-N-Coop does, indeed, know how to roast a bird. Sides are tasty, like the Greek-style spaghetti. And — be still, my beating heart — it has beautiful, beautiful Jell-O.

1055 Taraval, SF. (415) 664-5050; 4500 Mission, SF. (415) 586-1538

TOP’S CAFETERIA


One thing I learned during this search was that many of the old-timey joints — such as Manning’s, which used to be next door to the Emporium — were bought by Asian immigrants during the ’70s. Hence, today we have a proliferation of Chinese food to go and the ever-delicious Asian buffet, but that’s another tale. Top’s does, however, meld its former life with its current one, with interesting choices like lasagna and salad, Mongolian beef with shrimp, or Korean noodle soup. It wins big points for employing the linoleum-and-Formica aesthetic and for providing strange but lovely choices for low prices. Where else can you find a four-course meal for $23? Be ready when you approach the fair maiden at the counter, however, for the minute she claps her hands, you must know precisely what you want — and she waits for no one.

66 Dorman, SF. 415-285-2461

VA HOSPITAL CANTEEN


The word canteen in the name of this medical lunch room — the closest most of us get to a cafeteria these days — had me expecting the Andrews Sisters to greet me at the door, but alas, no one was rolling out any barrels. But the place wins, hands down, in the economy department: you can get a plate of fried chicken, pudding, and a Coke for three bucks. But this is a government institution, so leave your taste buds at the door. The dining room is an exercise in bright aqua and purple tones as only the late ’80s could have provided, but what keeps this establishment afloat above other like contenders is its magnificent view of the Pacific and the Marin Headlands. Though no destination, it’s still a cheap alternative to the Cliff House.

4150 Clement, Bldg 7, SF. 415-221-4810*

Feast: 5 sexy suppers

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Some dates are sweet. You go to a nice restaurant with lacy tablecloths, order food that won’t make your breath stink later, have polite conversation while shyly catching each other’s eye over the rim of your wine glass, and hold hands tentatively as you walk to the car, wondering if you’ll share a delicate kiss before you part ways for the night. But these aren’t usually the dates I want. More often, I like my dates down and dirty, boozy and bawdy, or, at the very least, out of the ordinary. I want to be either seduced by the cuisine or seduced by my company, but either way, I want my evening out to get me off. Here are some date destinations that are a guaranteed sure thing.

ASIASF


You can’t talk about food and sex and San Francisco without talking about this SoMa phenomenon. The food is good — the crab cakes are more crab than filler, and the beef in the steak salad was good quality — but the real reason you’re here is the drag show, though "drag show" is an anemic phrase for describing what you’ll see. This swanky spot features some of the hottest women this side of the Y chromosome (or Thailand) and some of the best dramatic performances this side of the Fringe Festival. My personal favorite? Red-haired Ginger, who downed a liter of Grey Goose and a bottle of "pills" while lip-syncing to "All by Myself." Pair her performance with the mint-heavy pomegranate mojito, and you’ll find yourself trying to take her home at the end of the night. (Note: She won’t go — she has a beau.)

201 Ninth St., SF. (415) 255-2742, www.asiasf.com

MAHARANI’S


You know those fantasies you have about being royalty in some foreign country while you seduce your polite, well-mannered, yet kinky lover-to-be over a plate of something steamy? This is the place you want to do it. The main dining room isn’t much to look at, but get a reservation for the Fantasy Room and you’ll find yourself in a private, beaded booth with cucumber-infused drinking water, warm towels scented with rose water, and Indian food served more elegantly than you ever imagined it could be (think geometric plates and California cuisine–<\d>style garnishes). The prix-fixe menu is a bit overpriced, but the Kama Sutra cocktail really is titilutf8g. And there’s something to be said for having control over your own lights and playing shoeless footsy under your private table.

1122 Post, SF. (415) 775-1988, www.maharanirestaurant.com

OVATION AT THE INN AT THE OPERA


San Francisco does dive bars, and does them well. But this city also does sexy elegance in a way that’s particularly ours, and Ovation is a perfect example. This hotel restaurant is opulent and classically romantic, with green velvet chairs and white tablecloths and entrées that cost more than most parking tickets. But in true Bay Area style, it’s also accessible, comfortable, and beautiful in an understated way — all of which make it sneakily sexy. The small, intimate bar grounds the dining room, and a fireplace warms the dignified décor, which might otherwise seem cold and baroque. Plus, is there anything hotter than illicit bathroom sex when you’re all dressed up?

333 Fulton, SF. (415) 553-8100

WOODHOUSE FISH CO.


I’m not sure I understand the appeal of oysters. I’ve trained myself to like them, especially with a bit of horseradish and ketchup. But are they really an aphrodisiac? Is it because of their obvious resemblance to female body parts? Or is it because you know that if your date can handle their mucusy texture and fishy flavor, they surely can handle, uh, yours? I can’t begin to guess. I prefer the sides of broccoli and fries (both well made) over the seafood at this joint in the Safeway district. But there’s one thing I find truly sexy about Woodhouse oysters: on Tuesday nights, they’re $1 apiece. Which means that after filling up, there’s still enough cash for a shot of tequila at the Transfer and coffee in the morning. And what’s sexier than shellfish? A date that doesn’t break the bank.

2073 Market, SF. (415) 473-CRAB, www.woodhousefish.com

SUPPERCLUB


Dinner in bed? It’s almost too obvious. But you can’t deny the appeal of overt sexuality, even if it’s delivered in a stylized, sometimes-too-LA package. The all-white dining room at this dinner-as-experience destination is striking, and I’ve rarely tasted food so delicious and subtle — particularly the vegetarian options — as it is here. And whether it was watching a tranny strip down, without fanfare or theatricality, to his bald, tattooed, masculine self, or whether it was the Late Night Sneaky I ordered (top-shelf tequila, a Corona, and an ExportA cigarette in a shot glass), or whether it was just settling into the couch cushions as my dirty martini settled into my bloodstream, it was hard to wait to jump my date until we got home.

657 Harrison, SF. (415) 348-0900, www.supperclub.com*

Paging Dr. Sumchai

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› sarah@sfbg.com

If mayoral candidate Ahimsa Porter Sumchai were a superhero, she’d be Rescue Girl, her petite athletic form encased in a silver jumpsuit and cape as she swooped in, using her understanding of complicated medical and scientific issues as her secret weapon, to save high-risk communities from environmental racism, economic disenfranchisement, and social displacement.

Instead, she’s the candidate who claims to be thankful her name was excluded from the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Aug. 11 coverage of the mayor’s race, in which Gavin Newsom’s challengers were dissed as a peanut gallery of lunatics.

"I’m glad the Chronicle did not disrespect me in the context of ‘a chicken, a wolf, and a grasshopper’-style jokes, like the race is a big laugh," says Sumchai, 55, as I pick her up at the corner of Third Street and Palau Avenue, which lies a stone’s throw from Sumchai’s campaign headquarters in the heart of Bayview–<\d>Hunters Point and a five-minute drive from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund site at the Hunters Point Shipyard.

This intersection was the main drag for Navy operations when the shipyard was active, Sumchai explains as we pass rows of tightly packed houses and a sprinkling of churches — including Grace Tabernacle Church, which has recently become a rallying point for hundreds of residents concerned about exposure to toxic asbestos dust at Lennar Corp.’s Parcel A redevelopment work site at the shipyard.

Sumchai has made that exposure a central focus of her campaign.

"When I become mayor, Lennar will shut down at Parcel A, and I will establish a plan that includes a human safety component and testing of potentially exposed residents," says Sumchai, who also opposes what she calls "the dirty transfer of the shipyard," through which Newsom has proposed folding Candlestick Point into the shipyard so he can build a stadium for the 49ers — and Lennar can build 6,500 more condos at Candlestick.

Sumchai, whose grandparents came from St. Louis in 1939 and whose father was exposed to asbestos when he worked as a shipping clerk at the shipyard, is an academic success story, emerging from the Sunnydale housing project to graduate from UC San Francisco medical school in 1982.

But while Sumchai is incredibly bright, her eggheadedness sometimes seems to get in the way of letting her make concise, down-to-earth statements. Instead, she often comes across as if she spent too much time in the library, a trait that can leave audiences who don’t have science degrees utterly baffled and uncertain as to what point she just tried to make.

And while the odds are clearly stacked against her in the mayor’s race, Sumchai is using her candidacy to ask tough questions on behalf of a community that is beginning to rally for environmental justice after decades of exposure to pollution from two power plants, two freeways, the shipyard, and a sewage plant that impacts five percent of the city’s population with the smell of treating 80 percent of the city’s solid waste.

"To continue with activities that are harmful challenges the fundamental ethics of being a physician, says Sumchai, who practiced emergency medicine for 20 years.

It’s an experience that informs her current crusade to halt Lennar’s construction on Parcel A at the shipyard. The community’s exposure to dust adds up to "an epidemic," she says.

"It gets on their clothing. It’s airborne. And then there’s the geographic proximity to the site of exposure," Sumchai explains, gesturing to the schools, residences, and neighborhoods that lie downwind of Lennar’s site.

From Monster Park, we take the freeway, exiting at Sunnydale, where Sumchai’s family moved when she was seven.

"When we talk about ‘affordable housing,’ what we really mean is affordable to people making $80,000, while people making $12,000 to $20,000, which is the real average median income in the Bayview, have nowhere to go," Sumchai says. She argues that developers on city-owned land should be required to offer 30 percent to 45 percent of their units at prices affordable to very low-income residents.

Crime is another issue that’s important to the candidate. Sumchai, who used to take the bus from Sunnydale to the Lutheran church on Palau and still uses public transit three times a day, says the gangs she saw then had low-velocity weapons and knives, while today they potentially have access to access military assault weapons.

"The lethality of the gang activity has become enormously problematic," she says, noting that the likelihood of getting enmeshed in the criminal justice system lessens for kids involved in after-school activities more than two times a week.

Sumchai has never lived the posh, comfortable life that is often associated in the public mind with successful physicians. In fact, she’s had to be rescued herself from "critical stressors, major traumas [that] could have led me down a path that was not so productive."

In 1999, she had to surrender her medical license. As California Medical Board records tell it, a series of personal catastrophes hit, and Sumchai was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after she experienced insomnia, anxiety, emotional upwellings, and re-experienced traumatic moments "when threatened-stressed or exposed to reminders of her graphic experiences as a emergency trauma physician." These upwellings became "explosive outbursts of anger and paranoia" and contributed to Sumchai’s problems, according to her records, which indicate that she received a 116-day stint in county jail, three years’ probation, and a $200 fine for resisting arrest.

Claiming that she did not receive the medical care she needed when she was imprisoned, Sumchai says, "I have as a physician been to the mountaintop and also to the bottom of the pit in terms of my experiences of how the sick, disabled, homeless, and mentally ill are looked upon and treated."

Crediting the influences of key mentors "who had the courage to intervene and bring in resources and moral compasses," Sumchai says her medical license was reinstated in December 2005, but she has no interest or intention of returning to work in emergency or trauma operations. Today she works as a personal trainer, a sports nutrition consultant, and a fitness industry administrator in between writing for the San Francisco Bay View, meditating, doing Pilates exercises, and running for mayor.

And she’s still constantly in fights — even with her friends. Joe O’Donoghue, the fiery former head of the Residential Builders Association, hired her as a personal trainer and told her earlier this year — in confidence, he insisted to us — that former superintendent Matt Gonzalez was getting ready to enter the mayor’s race. The moment she left the gym, Sumchai called Gonzalez — and O’Donoghue promptly fired her.

For now, Sumchai is setting her sights on bringing about change by debating issues that otherwise aren’t being voiced on behalf of folks whose needs and concerns are being neglected.

Editor’s note: The original version of this story failed to note that Sumchai is a practicing physician as well as a personal trainer and nutrition consultant. She has an active medical practice in West Portal.

Palmetto Restaurant and Lounge

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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

Board youth

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Wanna take your backyard pool party to the next level? You’ll need the Traditional Fools on speed dial: their infectious, scuzzy surf punk is the best accompaniment this century has to offer to the twist, the shimmy, and the ladling of tropical punch. The three young men who make up the Fools — guitarist-drummer-vocalist Ty Segall, bassist-vocalist Andrew Luttrell, and guitarist-drummer-vocalist David Fox — all grew up in sunny South Orange County but later moved to San Francisco, where they became acquainted shortly after arriving two years ago.

"We all just wanted to get out of Orange County," Luttrell, 21, explains. According to Luttrell, who gladly skateboarded along with Segall, 20, into the Mission to be interviewed, the Mexican food may be excellent back home, but when it comes to playing music in Orange County, "nobody cares except people in other bands." Reservations aside, the Fools consider themselves de facto products of Southern California, which makes sense when you hear them: they excitedly cite X, the Screamers, and the early ’80s Los Angeles punk generally found on the Dangerhouse label as a shared influence, and their eyes and smiles widen further at the mention of Redd Kross, from whose catalog the Fools can play a remarkable dozen covers at will, including a killer rendition of "Annette’s Got the Hits." All things considered, it’d be pretty inaccurate to pin down what they’re doing as straight-ahead surf rock: those kinds of riffs are most definitely present, but these guys sound way more subterranean than, say, Dick Dale or the Ventures.

When the three first musically convened early last year, they jammed on the Cramps’ "Human Fly," and it clicked quickly enough for them to crank out their first three songs: "Layback," "Street Surfin’," and "Rock ‘n’ Roll Baby," all prominently featured on their first demo CD-R, which was a surf-washed slice of garage punk glory. Their style has only become more refined since then, as evidenced by their fantastic live cassette, Live at Wizard Mountain (Wizard Mountain Tapes, 2007), and their new, self-titled 7-inch on the Bay Area’s Chocolate Covered Records. They block-printed all the covers for the single, which sports the benevolent gaze of a "chillin’ cheeseburger" and their sharpest tunes yet: "Surfin’ with the Phantom" gets the Vincent Price award for its spooktastic cackle and sense of impending wipe-out doom, and "River" is dialed in to the kind of raw, giddy party punk that Rocket from the Crypt were once able to muster.

The Fools have already opened for such heavyweights as the Phantom Surfers and strangely have never had to book themselves a Bay Area show, despite their frequent gig schedule: they’ve always been brought in by invitation, which also goes for their upcoming appearance at the now-renowned Budget Rock festival in Oakland. As well established as they may be locally, the Fools look poised to make waves overseas: their next release will be a split single put out by a label in Italy. In any case — look out, collectors! — they’re only getting 30 copies to sell themselves. "We’ll sell them for 15 bucks," Segall and Luttrell agree before laughing aloud. "Nah, we wouldn’t do that."<\!s>*

THE TRADITIONAL FOOLS

Sat/8, 8 p.m., $6

924 Gilman Street Project

924 Gilman, Berk.

(510) 525-9926

www.924gilman.org

Word on la calle

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Times are tough in the music biz. Not only are CD sales slumping, but radio stations are losing ad revenue to online ventures. One of the only genres or formats holding it down commercially is Latin music — a fact that falls well below the radar of your average gringo.

This shouldn’t be so surprising, considering that Latinos are the largest minority group in the United States and represent the fastest-growing segment of the population. Another factor fueling Latin music’s stateside success is the rise of reggaetón, the energetic blend of hip-hop, Jamaican dancehall, and Puerto Rican sounds that tops the Latin charts and even garners airplay on mainstream hip-hop and R&B stations. The so-called Latin boom that reggaetón triggered — far surpassing that of the late ’90s — inspired media behemoth Clear Channel to convert dozens of stations from English to Spanish in 2005 and roll out a new reggaetón-heavy format known as Hurban.

Although Hurban doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue — it’s an awkward combination of Hispanic and urban — radio execs are hoping it will be easy on the ears of US Latinos ages 35 and younger, who represent somewhere around $350 billion in purchasing power.

In the Bay Area, the Hurban phenomenon is represented by San Rafael radio station KWZ, 100.7 FM ("La Kalle"), owned by Hispanic media titan Univisión. Although the name suggests urban edginess, the station’s director of programming, Bismark Espinoza, explains, "It’s basically a top 40 station…. It’s a Spanish CHR [contemporary hit radio station], if you will." Earlier this summer, the station dumped its tagline "Reggaetón y más" as the gasolina-fueled genre hit a sales plateau. Pop artists such as Shakira, Maná, and teen sensation RBD get more airtime now. Reggaetón still dominates the playlist, however, and DJs lace their bilingual banter with Puerto Rican street slang like perreo, which can mean dirty dancing or doggy-style sex — either way, the Federal Communications Commission wouldn’t have a clue.

Bilingualism is the most innovative aspect of Hurban radio. In attempting to reach the ostensibly bicultural second- and third-generation young adults of Generation Ñ, Hurban stations hire on-air personalities who can code switch between Spanish and English with the fluidity of a United Nations translator — or a Spanglish-spitting street hustler. "If our audience talks like that, we just try to relate to them as much as we can," Espinoza says. "It’s just natural — the way they talk on the street, the way they talk to their families, the way they talk to their friends."

La Kalle has the language down. The music is another question. In June the station ranked number 24 in the region, with four other Latin stations ahead of it. In order to compete, the station’s programmers continually experiment with the format, trying to stay on top of the remarkably varied musical tastes of young Latinos. Espinoza contends that the latest craze is a hybrid of reggaetón and Dominican bachata balladry. Sometimes referred to as "crunkchata," the tropical style is favored by artists such as Aventura, Rakim y Ken-Y, and Toby Love, who top La Kalle’s request lists.

Tropical music? This is California, carnales. Given that the vast majority of Latinos in the Bay Area are of Mexican descent, where’s the Chicano rap? Where’s the Mexican banda? No doubt, Chicanos in San Francisco like their island music. They’ve been dancing to salsa con sabor since the days of Cesar’s Latin Palace in the Mission District. But the hottest thing right now among Mexican Americans is regional music from their homeland: ranchera, grupero, Tejano, norteño, and banda. All four of the top-ranked Bay Area Spanish-radio stations play some variation on a Mexican theme. For listeners between 18 and 34, the second most popular spot on the dial is KRZZ, 93.3 FM ("La Raza"), a regional Mexican station in San Francisco.

At its core, regional music is steeped in the cultural traditions of rural Mexico, in folkloric forms that have been around for more than a century. But Chicanos are coming up with their own cutting-edge hybrids of rap and Latin music. Los Angeles duo Akwid melds banda with breakbeats, and Jae-P pairs G-funk with norteño. These artists earn some airplay on Hurban stations but get very little love on Bay Area urban radio, despite the fact that they each sell hundreds of thousands of records.

La Kalle’s Espinoza insists that urban music with Afro-Caribbean roots is much hotter right now than "urban regional" sounds like Akwid’s. One notable exception to Mexican American obscurity is Chicano rapper Down, whose chart scorcher "Lean Like a Cholo" is currently in heavy rotation on La Kalle. Similar to urban-regional artists, Down wears his brown pride on his throwback jersey sleeve, but he does it by invoking Southern California barrios, not rural Mexican pueblos. His homeland is Nuevo LA, a city with the second-largest concentration of Mexicans in the world.

Given the size of the Mexican American population, you have to wonder how many Chicano artists are out there searching for a record deal or some airplay. "Some people blame the radio stations, some people blame the record companies," Espinoza wearily attests. "I don’t know. I listen to my kids — I play whatever is hot." But Mexican and Chicano music is hot right now. It just can’t seem to find a home on youth-oriented "urban rhythmic" radio formats like La Kalle, much less English-only Bay Area stations such as KMEL, 106.1 FM, and KYLD, 94.9 FM, whose audiences also lean heavily Hispanic.

Although Mexicans and Chicanos are currently relegated to the broadcast barrios of Spanish radio, it will be interesting to see how those borders open up once media companies realize the American mainstream is more brown and proud than ever.

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