Wine

Suds on sea legs: A photo journey through Brews on the Bay

Andrew Lam
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All photos by Allen David

“Fuck the wine industry! I mean, I drink wine like everybody else.” Brenden Dobel, brewmaster at Thirsty Bear Brewing Company may be tipsy — but then again, we are on a boat.

A bigass boat in fact — the S.S. Jeremiah O’Brien, one of the mere two Liberty ships still afloat from the batch of 2,710 that were constructed during WWII. But we were pretty far from Normandy on Saturday; the O’Brien was hosting Brews on the Bay, a celebration of San Francisco’s alcoholic beverage of choice.

At least, that’s how Dobel would have it. “Our entire civilization is based on beer — and I’ll stand by that statement,” said the brewer from behind his aviator glasses and cigarette, hanging out by the cask ale at his brewery’s tasting table, perched on a platform atop the 441-foot boat. 

But for too long California wine producers have been outhustling brewers in terms of public relations, even in the food pairing arena (“wine cannot handle heavy cheeses, spicy food — beer has much more dimensions,” he says). Dobel and other SF brewers’ answer to the problem was to form the SF Brewer’s Guild in 2003. The associationa has been holding Brews on the Bay for eight years to celebrate San Francisco beer — suds from “the birthplace of the American craft brewery revolution,” as Dobel puts it. 

This weekend, 50 beers from eight breweries were on offer to the exuberant crowd of mostly-young people swilling on the O’Brien’s deck. Thirsty Bear’s brewmaster was excited about the possibilities of adding more guild members in the years to come, possibly from the ranks of the nanobreweries that have begun to make their mark on the San Francisco scene. 

“By 2013, we should have 11 breweries here,” he shares — although from the look of the crowd swerving down the gangplank at the end of the day (your author definitely included), Brews of the Bay’s beer selection left nothing to be desired. 

Dick Meister: VIVA EL BOICOTTEO!

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By Dick Meister

(Third part of a five part daily series)

Although the United Farm Workers initially relied solely on strikes in its drive to win union contracts for California’s farm workers, it soon switched to the much more effective weapon of the boycott.

Growers could easily replace strikers, and often did. But they couldn’t do much about customers – individuals and institutions – who heeded the UFW’s call to not buy any grapes, lettuce or wine from growers who continued to rebuff the UFW demands for union recognition.

The boycotts helped forge a potent coalition of clergymen, industrial unionists, young activists and civil rights advocates, liberal Democratic politicians, socially conscious shoppers and others. They also waved crimson banners, sang the farm workers’ songs, chanted their slogans and espoused non-violence, on city streets, outside supermarkets, in meeting halls, wherever they could. There were an estimated 17 million of them worldwide between 1968 and 1975, including 10 to 12 percent of all U.S. adults. Later boycotts drew less support but were nevertheless effective in winning new contracts.

John Giumarra Jr., a young lawyer who spoke for the grape growers who signed the first UFW contracts, declared that boycott pressures had been threatening to “destroy a number of farmers.” Lionel Steinberg, a major Coachella Valley grape grower who was the first to agree to a UFW contract, urged others to quickly reach an agreement, lest they continue losing millions of dollars in sales.

Steinberg told his fellow growers, “It is costing us more to produce and sell our grapes than we are getting paid for them. We are losing maybe 20 percent of our market. The boycott is illegal and immoral, but it also is a fact.”

The signing of the union contracts with grape growers in Delano signaled the inevitable. California’s farm workers were going to be organized, and the next target would be those in the nearby Salinas and Santa Maria valleys, which produced 70 percent of the nation’s iceberg lettuce and much of its other vegetables. It was called “America’s Salad Bowl,” a flat, fertile place where morning fog hung heavy over land carpeted green for miles.

Men and women hovered over the land, gripping hoes so short their handles scarcely protruded above their fast-moving hands as they stooped and cut, stooped and cut. Most worked under the supervision of men with the broad accents of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas who had wielded hoes for small independent growers before giant corporations bought up the land and hired them to manage their new holdings. These men were among the Dust Bowl Refugees of the 1930s who had made their own violently opposed demands for better working lives during the Great Depression.

Many of the former Dust Bowl Refugees were lured into urban employment when the depression ended, but those who remained as managers joined the farm corporations to oppose the demands of the Chicano and Filipino American farm workers who replaced the at the bottom of the economic totem pole.

The demands were for union recognition elections in which the UFW seemed a certain winner. But if they didn’t agree to elections, the growers faced the certain prospect of a boycott like that which had been so costly to grape growers.

There was, however, an alternative that the growers had overlooked until the inevitability of unionization arrived with the UFW demands. They might arrange to bypass elections and sign with another union that would demand less than the aggressive, unorthodox UFW and at the same time ease the sting of a boycott by enabling by enabling growers to point out that their workers were unionized.

The growers found their alternative in the Teamsters Union, which feared that UFW strikes and boycotts would endanger the flow of produce handled by truck drivers, cannery workers and other Teamster members. What’s more, Teamster officials were eager for representation rights that would allow them to control the field workers. The potential was immense: more than 30,000 farm workers in the two valleys alone. That would bring a lot of new money into the dues and pension funds used by leaders of the corruption-ridden Teamsters to gain power, influence and fat salaries for themselves.

Virtually all the 170 growers in the two valleys soon announced they had signed Teamster contracts, even though the Teamsters had no farm worker members. The growers and Teamsters hadn’t even agreed on specific contract terms. They were in so great a rush to head off the UFW, they merely signed agreements that the terms would be filled in later. The terms, however, would not be decided in consultation with the workers or their union. Terms were left solely to grower and Teamster representatives.

The workers were not even allowed to ratify the contracts, although they would be required to join the Teamsters and have union dues deducted from their paychecks. If they didn’t join the Teamsters, they’d be fired. Most workers got basic pay raises of 10 to 50 cents an hour in return for forced membership in the Teamsters and some minimal health and welfare benefits – but that was all.

Teamster recognition was a very small price for growers to pay in exchange for maintaining their ability to make decisions on pay and working conditions in isolation from the direct collective demands of their employees. Since the Teamsters’ main interest lay elsewhere, in transportation and food processing, growers also could expect that even the minimal terms of the contracts would not be fully enforced and that strikes and boycotts were hardly a possibility. But on the slim chance that the growers might still feel insecure, the contracts were written to stand for five years.

Chavez was outraged at the Teamsters’ “act of treason against the legitimate aspirations of farm workers.” He declared “all-out war against the Teamsters and the bosses ” and marched into Salinas with several hundred farm workers and an AFL-CIO contingent headed by Organizing Director Bill Kircher. Pickets went immediately to a farm where 250 workers had been fired for not joining the Teamsters. Hundreds of workers struck at other farms and the UFW began preparing for legal action and a nationwide lettuce boycott.

Growers got a court order against what was ruled an illegal jurisdictional dispute, but the pickets and boycotters kept marching nevertheless and Chavez began “a penitential fast against injustice.”

In less than two weeks, the Teamsters were asking for a treaty with the UFW. It was quickly reached. The Teamsters agreed to reallocate jurisdiction over field workers to the UFW and agreed that growers who had signed with the Teamsters could switch to the UFW without penalty.

But there was a catch. Growers who had signed Teamster contracts would not give them up. Finally, UFW members voted to strike. It was, at the start, the largest and most effective farm strike since the mid-1930s. More than 5000 workers left their jobs at nearly 150 farms, and produce shipments were cut from 200 carloads a day to 75 or less. Growers were losing an average of $500,000 a day.

Unlike the vineyard strike, this dispute was violent, with beatings suffered by UFW and Teamster partisans alike. Some of the turmoil was caused by officials of a Teamster cannery workers local who were charged with using $25,000 in union funds to hire some of the local’s burly members to “guard” fields from UFW organizers.

A judge ruled there could only be one informational picket at 22 of the Salinas Valley farms that made up the strikers’ main targets, none at the eight others. Nor would the UFW be allowed to call a boycott against any of the 170 growers who held Teamster contracts. The union nevertheless called a boycott. Officially, the strike continued, but the major effort was at food markets in 64 cities across the country, where UFW members and supporters urged shoppers to bypass lettuce from the struck growers.

A judge ordered Chavez arrested. He went to jail accompanied by more than 2000 UFW members and supporters, including Coretta King and Ethel Kennedy. They cheered Chavez’ parting advice to “boycott the hell out of them!” and then began a series of prayer vigils and other highly publicized demonstrations. After three weeks, Chavez was released, pending the outcome of a UFW appeal.

The boycott continued at an intensified pace throughout the early months of 1971 until a committee of Catholic bishops mediated a settlement between national Teamster and AFL-CIO leaders. But growers still refused to give up their Teamster contracts. They held them for a half-dozen years more, until the Teamsters, beaten badly in a series of union representation elections under California’s new farm worker bargaining law, finally abandoned as futile the fierce fight they had waged against the UFW for more than a decade.

Meanwhile, the boycott continued, as the UFW expanded its organizing efforts to Florida and Arizona. The UFW’s victory in California was truly spectacular. Imagine, one of the youngest and smallest unions in the country, representing the most oppressed of American workers, decisively beating the country’s largest and most powerful union.

It was the UFW’s incredible use of the boycott that did it,  the major non-violent weapon available to all who would seek justice from an oppressor.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

 

Txoko

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Txoko

› paulr@sfbg.com

DINE Among the reasons to regret the passing of Enrico’s and its replacement by Txoko is that “Enrico’s” was pretty straightforward to pronounce, whereas the new endeavor, with its impossible juxtaposition of t and x — the spelling equivalent of dividing by zero — does not seem to be. Txoko, despite its modest five letters, has the look of what Sam (having heard Dwarvish spoken for the first time) called “a fair jaw-cracker” in The Lord of the Rings. The good news is that “tx” is pronounced “ch,” so the restaurant’s name is “choke-o,” which sounds like the stage name of a particularly menacing rapper.

As a cultural signifier, “tx” tells us that we’re in or near the Basque country, and I know this mainly because I love the wonderful white wines produced in Spain’s Basque provinces from the Txakoli grape. (The same grape is now grown in Chile and spelled, mercifully, chacoli. ) The wine — Txoko offers a lovely example from Uriondo for $9 a glass — is sharp, bright, minerally, and sour, about as close as a white wine could be to lemon juice passed through a gravel filter. This could be an acquired taste, and if so, I’ve acquired it. The Basques, incidentally, are a singular people; their language is not known to be related to any other in the world, and their Iberian origins are believed to run back 40,000 years or more, to a time when early homo sapiens sapiens and the people we know as Neanderthal might have coexisted and perhaps, as judge advocate general types like to put it, fraternized.

Enrico’s always had a slightly fraternal air for me, and the new regime doesn’t seem to have changed much about the space’s appearance. It’s still a dark, stage-like vault, with a concave face of window glass that looks south, soaking up all the available sunlight like a snowbird in Florida on a weeklong January holiday. All the daylight streaming in makes the interior seem that much darker and lounge-like; it’s as though you’re looking right at a flashbulb as it goes off.

Chef Ian Begg’s menu deals mainly in small plates, among them pintxos, the Basque edition of tapas. There’s only one main dish offered: a $65 ribeye steak for two, which might be a sort of oblique answer to Zuni Cafe’s roast chicken for two. A giant steak sounds pretty all-American, and indeed the tone of much of the rest of the food is mainly Cal-Med: grilled Delta asparagus ($9), for instance, topped with a fried egg and a marvelously cheesy green garlic hollandaise sauce. There are various ways of dealing with asparagus’s grassiness if, like me, you’re not wild about it; Begg’s pincer movement — grilling plus a heavy wash of fat — was most effective.

A wild mushroom empanada ($5), rather pastry-ish, did have an Iberian flair, along with intense fungal flavor. Equally fungal was the wild mushroom arroz ($10), similar to a risotto but with a powerfully concentrated reduction (from chanterelles, baby shiitake, and hen-of-the-wood) that hinted at soup. A batter-fried squash blossom ($3) seemed rather Italian; this version was stuffed with herbed ricotta and presented on a toasted levain spear, with a smear of goat cheese nearby.

One of the more striking items turned out by the kitchen wasn’t even a headliner on the menu card. It was the summer squash and tomato tartlet that accompanied a tiny fist of grilled lamb loin chop ($11). The lamb itself was flavorful and juicy, though slightly complex to eat, despite its size, because a bit of bone that had to be carved around. But the tartlet was a small masterpiece, a kind of ratatouille napoleon reminiscent of the pièce de resistance in the Pixar movie Ratatouille. It looked like a tomato-slathered disk, but under the tomato cap was the summer squash, thin coins carefully arranged into coiling strands, like DNA. The bean salad accompanying a small filet of butter-braised halibut ($12), by contrast, was much more free-form, in fact totally free-form, though several of the players were notable, among them fava beans, fresh chickpeas, and sea beans, an unusual edible that could pass as a cross between kelp and asparagus.

In keeping with a strong recent trend, desserts are excellent. We warmed to a date bread pudding ($8), which had the velvet-sponge consistency of angelfood cake and was finished with a pair of mock-savory witticisms: a sail (stuck into the top) of latticed chorizo crisped like a tuile, and a smear of black-olive caramel sauce, a clever recasting of that current vogue item, sea-salt caramel. The gâteau Basque ($8) also made imaginative use of an herb, thyme, we usually associate with the savory; here it was combined with peaches into what amounted to a fabulously moist clafoutis, capped with crottin of Straus frozen yogurt. Easy on the jaws.

TXOKO

Dinner: Tues.-Sat. from 5 p.m.

504 Broadway, SF

(415) 500-2744

www.txokosf.com

Full bar

MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

5 Things: August 26, 2011

Andrew Lam
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>>WATER WORKS Everyone’s abuzz about Ali Farzat, the Syrian cartoonist whose hands were broken after creating wildly popular illustrated works critiquing the government. The assault on Farzat is a reminder that art has the power to change minds and lives — an idea that US artists with Estria Miyashiro’s Water Writes mural series were fully with when they teamed up with young people to create eight environmental justice-themed murals at water purification sites in eight days in Gaza. The beleaguered city was the project’s fifth stop — including already-completed Phillipines and Hawaii walls, the Water Writes project will go to 10 worldwide cities in total.

>>BABY BANKROLL Back in June, Tim Redmond looked at the reasons for why families stay in San Francisco. His isn’t the only clan that is sticking in the city: Broke Ass Stuart just launched a new column called Mommy No Bucks that’ll be looking at how all us broke asses (with children!!) make it work in the concrete jungle. 

Not til you’re 21, honey. 

>>CHEESE IT! With all the experimental mixologists in San Francisco and our very own grilled cheese food truck, Toasty Melts, you’d think we’d be the first to come up with this: the grilled cheese martini. The Internet has been aglow in gooey praise/disgust the past few days over this concoction, which can be ordered at Bennett’s Pure Food Bistro in Seattle and the Cellar at Beecher’s in New York – both owned by Kurt Beecher Dammeier. It consists of grilled cheese sandwich-infused vodka (“six piping hot sandwiches in 10 gallons of vodka”), fresh tomatoes, basil, and tomato juice. Sounds like vomit central.

>>WINING DOWN We went to check out the public premiere of Wine From Here, a documentary on California’s nascent natural wine culture. Natural wine, we say? Yeah, the definition’s under a fair amount of debate — never more evident than at the filmmaker Q&A after last night’s screening at the Victoria Theatre. The crowd quibbled over things like the use of oak barrels (shouldn’t the fragrant wood be considered an additive since it alters vino’s flavor profile?), labeling moratoriums, and relative price points of wine grown with and without the addition of foreign yeasts, dyes, and government-approved chemicals. Hopefully the differences of opinion were smoothed over at the screening’s after-party at natural wine-friendly Heart, where the profiled vignerons’ bottles were on the menu, including pours from Coturri Winery and Berkeley’s Edmund St. John.

>>BLAST-OFF TO THE WEEKEND When the aliens come for us, we hope they have noodle faces like the claymates in the new Hopie Spitshard and Del the Funky Homosapien video for Hopie’s single “Space Case,” shot outside Beauty Bar and around the Yay. And we hope they transmorgrify our faces with the same fly colorblock eyeshadow as Bay Area MC Hopie’s. And we hope that the ray of light doesn’t come for us today — we wanna catch Spitshard’s show at 111 Minna tonight, part of a fundraiser for Alameda’s Bohol Circle Filipino community center. 

 

CORRECTION: SF Natural Wine Week a no-go

Andrew Lam
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CORRECTION: SF Natural Wine Week a no-go

In my post yesterday, I mistakenly published the schedule for last year’s 2010 SF Natural Wine Week. The actual event taking place today with Naked Wine author and wine critic Alice Feiring is this:

 

Naked Wine tasting with Alice Feiring

Biondivino Wine Boutique

1415 Green, SF

(415) 673-2320

Facebook: Biondivino Tasting Naked Wine

 

No weeks’ worth of close-to-the-earth wine tastings, sadly. Sorry to everyone who I riled all up with the prospect of a week’s worth of low-chemical boozing. 

Bestivals

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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caitlin@sfbg.com

FALL ARTS Now that even the quaintest neighborhood block parties publish music lineups in advance and big beat fests give as much shine to snack vendors as secondary stages, it’s becoming clear that the events on our fall fair and festival listings are all just part of one big movement. Leading to what, you might ask? Leading to you having a celebrate-good-times kind of autumn in the Bay Area. Seize the day, pack your sunscreen, bring cash: from film to activism to chocolate, here comes the sun.

 

NOW-SEPT. 25

Shakespeare in the Park Presidio’s Main Post Parade Ground Lawn, between Graham and Keyes, SF. (415) 558-0888, www.sfshakes.org. Times vary, free. Whilst thou be satisfied with the Bard’s hits in the open air, free for you and the clan? The line-up, from Cymbeline to Macbeth, suggests that it won’t be so hard.

 

AUG. 27

J Pop Summit Japantown Peace Plaza, SF. www.newpeopleworld.com. 11 a.m.-6 p.m., free. Enter the kaleidoscope of anime, manga, Lolita, androgynously cute boys in tuxedo jackets, keyboard theatrics, and Vocaloid (a computer program that creates complete songs, vocals and all) contests at this unique festival marathon of Japanese pop culture.

Rock The Bells Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View. www.rockthebells.net. 10:55 a.m.-10:25 p.m., $55.50-281.00. Lauryn Hill, Nas, GZA, Common, Black Star — the country’s biggest hip-hop festival hits the Bay, bigger than ever.

 

SEPT. 3

International Cannabis and Hemp Expo Telegraph from 16th to 20th sts. and Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakl. intche.eventbrite.com. Noon-8 p.m., $18-300. 120 different strains of Mary Jane should be enough to get you through eight hours of festival — if not, there will be three stages of music and educational speakers for pot pals to trip on.

 

SEPT. 3-4

Zine Fest SF County Fair Building, 1199 Ninth Ave., SF. www.sfzinefest.org. 11 a.m.- 6 p.m., free. If arbiter of Bay indie comic cute Lark Pien’s original kitty cat Zine Fest 2011 poster doesn’t hook you (how?), you’re sure to find something that tickles your cut-and-paste among the aisles at this assemblage of DIY publishers and comic heads.

Millbrae Art and Wine Festival Broadway between Victoria and Meadow Glen, Millbrae. (650) 697-7324, www.miramarevents.com. 10 a.m.- 5 p.m., free. Celebrate Labor Day at this multi-faceted celebration of artisan comestibles, classic cars, live tunes, and hundreds of crafters — it even has a kids talent show.

 

SEPT. 4

EcoFair Marin Marin County Fairgrounds, San Rafael. www.ecofairmarin.org. 10 a.m.-7 p.m., $5. The keynote speaker at this expo of all things green and cutting-edge is Temple Grandin, Ph.D., one of the world’s leading autism advocates.

 

SEPT. 7-18

Fringe Festival Various locations, times, prices. www.sffringe.org. This festival’s egalitarian method of stage assignments mean that there’s no better time of year in the city to check out first-time playwrights and original (yes, sometimes wonky) scripts.

 

SEPT. 8-11

Electronic Music Festival Brava Theater Center, 2789 24th St., SF. www.sfemf.org. The Bay’s new music artists pop off together for this long weekend of exploration of the sonic spectrum.

 

SEPT. 10

Brews on the Bay Pier 45, SF. www.sfbrewersguild.org. Noon-5 p.m., $45. The city’s biggest brewers: Magnolia, Beach Chalet, Anchor, and Speakeasy among others, pour out endless tastes at this Bay-side swigfest

 

SEPT.10-11

Ghirardelli Square Chocolate Festival Ghriradelli Square, North Point and Larkin sts., SF. (415) 775-5500, www.ghirardellisq.com. Noon-5 p.m., $20 for 15 samples. A benefit for chronically ill and housebound elderly folks, chocolatier demonstrations and ice cream sandwich-eating contests sprinkle over this day of chocolate tasting par excellence.

 

SEPT. 14-18

Berkeley Old Time Music Convention Times, locations, and prices vary. www.berkeleyoldtimemusic.org. Loosen up them joints — it’s time to get goofy and gangly to some banjos and flat-footin’ at this multi-day Americana celebration of film screenings, concerts, open jams, and more.

Power and Sailboat Expo Jack London Square, Broadway and First St., Oakl. (510) 536-6000, www.ncma.com. Wed.-Fri., noon — 6 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 10 a.m.-6 p.m., $10. In the market for a rubber inflatable raft? Wanna scope haute yachts? Sail away to this family-friendly event on the Bay.

 

SEPT. 15 — DEC. 18

SF Jazz Fest Times, locations, and prices vary. (866) 920-5299, www.sfjazz.org. Esperanza Spalding, Booker T., Aaron Neville, and performances by SF’s most talented high school jazz players mark this season of innovative concerts and jazz appreciation events.

 

SEPT. 23-25

Eat Real Jack London Square, Broadway and First St., Oakl. (510) 250-7811, www.eatrealfest.com. Fri, 1-8 p.m.; Sat, 11 a.m.-8 p.m.; Sun, 11 a.m.-7 p.m., free. A celebration of all foods local and sustainable, you can enter your prize pickles in a contest at this burgeoning fest, learn how to be a backyard farmer, and of course, eat good food til you burst.

 

SEPT. 23 — OCT. 16

24 Days of Central Market Arts www.centralmarketarts.org. Most events are free. The heart of the city organizes this smorgasboard of art events — from world class dance to circus to quirky theater pieces. Take your brown bag (lunch? something else?) down to Civic Center for one of the free performances.

 

SEPT. 24

Lovevolution Oakland Coliseum, 7000 Coliseum Way, Oakl. www.sflovevolution.org. Noon- 8 p.m., $25. The days of prancing neon-ly down Market Street are over but hey, Oakland’s got better weather! This year’s massive outdoor rave stages its traditional parade around the circumference of the coliseum’s parking lot.

 

SEPT. 25

Folsom Street Fair Folsom between Seventh and 12th sts., SF. www.folsomstreetfair.org. 11 a.m.- 6 p.m., $10 suggested donation. Sure, it’s touristy, but this kink community mega-event has its heart in the right place (between its legs). The premier place to get whipped in public, hands down.

 

SEPT. 30 — OCT. 2

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Speedway Meadows, Golden Gate Park, SF. www.strictlybluegrass.com. Sure this homegrown free twangfest gets more crowded by the year — but attendance numbers are directly tied to the ever-more-badass lineup of multi-genre legends. This year: Emmylou Harris, Bright Eyes, Broken Social Scene, Robert Plant — and yes, MC Hammer.

Oktoberfest By the Bay Pier 48, SF. 1-888-746-7522, www.oktoberfestbythebay.com. Fri, 5 p.m.-midnight; Sat, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. and 6 p.m.-midnight; Sun, 11 a.m.-6 p.m., $25-65. Oompah, it’s time for some bratwurst! Raise your stein to this boozy celebration of German culture.

 

OCT. 1

Wildlife Conservation Expo Mission Bay Conference Center, 1675 Owens, SF. www.wildnet.org. 10 a.m.- 6 p.m., $30-60. Save the Botswanan cheetahs and okapis! Learn from leading conservationists about innovative environmental projects around the world.

 

OCT. 1-2

World Vegetarian Day County Fair Building, 9th Ave. and Lincoln, SF. (415) 273-5481, www.worldvegfestival.com. 10 a.m.-6 p.m., $10 suggested donation, free before 10:30 a.m. The 40-year old SF Vegetarian Society sponsors this expo of veggie livin’ — expert speakers talk science and advocacy, and there’ll even be a round of vegan speed dating for those hoping to share their quinoa with a like-minded meatless mama.

Alternative Press Expo (APE) Concourse Exhibition Center, 635 Eighth St., SF. (619) 491-1029, www.comic-con.org/ape. Check website for times and prices. The indie version of Comic-Con offers a weekend designed to give budding comics a leg up: workshops, keynote talks by slammin’ scribblers, issue-based panel discussions, and tons of comics for sale.

 

OCT. 2

Castro Street Fair Castro and Market, SF. (415) 841-1824, www.castrostreetfair.org. 11 a.m.- 6 p.m., free. This is no standard block party — big name acts take the stage at our historic homo ‘hood’s neighborhood get down, and along the curbs, crafters and chefs park alike.

 

OCT. 7-15

Litquake Times, locations, and prices vary. www.litquake.org. Our very own literary festival has grown a lot — the Valencia Street LitCrawl tradition has even spread to Austin and New York — check out its schedule for a chance to see one of your favorite scribes live and reading.

 

OCT. 9

Italian Heritage Day Parade Begins at Jefferson and Stockton sts., SF. (415) 703-9888, www.sfcolumbusday.org. 12:30 p.m., free. Peroni floats and courts of teenaged “Isabellas” reign supreme at this long-running North Beach cultural day.

Decompression Indiana outside Cafe Cocomo, SF. www.burningman.com. Check website for times prices. The Burning Man after-after-after party will be slammin’ this year, what with all the playa peeps that couldn’t score a ticket in the sell-out.

 

OCT. 15

Potrero Hill Festival 20th St. between Missouri and Arkansas, SF. potrerohillfestival.eventbrite.com. 9 a.m.- 4:30 p.m., free. $12 for brunch. A New Orleans-style mimosa brunch with live music kicks off this neighborhood gathering, also featuring a petting zoo and traditional Chinese dancers.

Noe Valley Harvest Festival 24th St. between Sanchez and Castro, SF. www.noevalleyharvestfestival.com. 10 a.m.- 5 p.m., free. Your little pumpkins can get their faces painted at this neighborhood fest, while you cruise the farmer’s market and meet the neighbors.

 

OCT. 15-16

Treasure Island Music Festival Treasure Island, SF. www.treasureislandfestival.com. $69.50-219.50. Indie fever takes a hold of the island this weekend, with a varied lineup this year featuring Aloe Blacc, Death Cab for Cutie, Empire of the Sun, and Dizzee Rascal.

 

OCT. 22

CUESA Harvest Festival In front of the Ferry Building, Embarcadero and Market, SF. www.cuesa.org. 10 a.m.-1 p.m., free. Butter churning, cider pressing, weaving demonstrations, and a chance to pick the mind of Bi-Rite Market founder Sam Morgannam.

 

NOV. 12-13

Green Festival SF Concourse Exhibition Center, 635 Eighth St., SF. www.greenfestivals.org. Sat, 10 a.m.- 7 p.m.; Sun, 11 a.m.- 6 p.m. Check website for prices. What would the sustainability movement be without endless halls of hemp backpacks and urban farming lectures? Keep up with the (Van) Joneses at this marquee environmental event.

Bluestem Brasserie

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Bluestem Brasserie

› paulr@sfbg.com

DINE In Bizarro world, dinner would begin with dessert — I know someone who truly hopes this particular sun will indeed rise in the west one day. And if your pastry chef happened to be James Ormsby, you not only would probably not get around to your savory courses, you might very well not be able to get up from the table. Ormsby, interestingly, is the pastry chef at the newly opened Bluestem, and he does not disappoint, though his confections are right where convention says they should be, at the end of the meal.

Bluestem occupies a spot at the Market Street head of the block-long Yerba Buena pedestrian mall, which has become a mini-restaurant row, with Amber and Tropisueño just steps away. But the new place does bring a distinctive identity, as a kind of New American brasserie, with steakhouse-y overtones, to the ménage. Also, the floor is striking: a mosaic of wood tiles cut from a single tropical tree. Each looks like a giant version of a cell being examined on a slide under a microscope.

Ormsby, who ran the kitchens at PlumpJack Cafe and Jack Falstaff, is probably better-known than the man in charge of Bluestem’s savory operation. That would be Sean Canavan, whose pedigree is not unimpressive; he’s cooked at La Folie and Jeanty at Jack’s, among other places. His Gallic background is perhaps most apparent in the restaurant’s charcuterie service, which has a build-your-own angle. The base price ($8.75) brings you sweet mustard pickles, several spears of grilled bread, smears of fruit chutney and stone-ground mustard, and a choice of meat — from rustic country paté with pistachios to duck rillettes and pig’s head terrine — and you can add others for $2.50 each. Although refrigeration is a basic aspect of food safety in our time, it turns out that charcuterie, like wine, can be served overchilled, and if it is served that way, a certain creaminess is lost. If you’re going to eat all that fat, you should at least have the sinful sensation of it on your tongue.

In the more temperate latitudes we turned up a corn and fava-bean succotash ($5), a marvelous, deeply American dish deeply influenced here, in color and flavor, by strips of roasted red pepper. At first I wondered why the menu made no mention of the dominant ingredient, but I came to suppose that corn and beans mean succotash, while red pepper doesn’t — plus, fava beans are rather glamorous, if any bean can be said to be glamorous. Still, red-pepper succotash would have given a clearer sense of this elegantly composed dish.

A great virtue of brasserie-style cooking is that it isn’t overwrought, and Canavan’s main dishes are exercises in well-controlled forcefulness. He allows ingredients to speak in their own way. This can be a tricky path when dealing with seafood, which so often needs a deft touch or two. Halibut is one of the rare fish (tuna is another) that can largely stand on its own, like beef, and Bluestem’s version ($24) consisted of a brick-like filet, topped with brown butter and set on a broad, flat pediment of cheddar grits (substituted for the succotash). The fish was firm, moist, and flaky — perfect — and the accompanying elements boosted it rather than trying to compete.

Calf’s liver ($21) I just don’t like and never will, but there are those who take to it almost as if it were a dessert. Here the flaps of sautéed meat were embedded in mashed potatoes, topped with ribbons of caramelized onion, and — nice touch — given a bit of smoky-sweet harmony by grilled-peach quarters.

A few housekeeping odds and ends: You get bread only if you ask for it. There is much to recommend this policy as a matter of reducing waste and the eating of needless starch calories, but it does seem stingy. Your server will also set one more bottles (still or fizzy or both) of complimentary water on your table; but then, annoyingly, some member of the staff will pop by every few minutes to see if you’ve had a sip, whereupon your glass will be topped up. I found this attention to be slightly maniacal — a restaurant version of hovering helicopter parents.

Ormsby’s desserts: well, they’re worth the wait and all the water refills. A Bing cherry sundae ($8), served in a parfait glass, could have sprung from 1950s soda fountains. It consisted of cherry gelée, fresh cherries, cherry sorbet, vanilla ice cream, and a couple of chocolate-chip cookes. There also seemed to be something crumbly inside. My only criticism would be that because Bings are sweet and mild, their delicate flavor suffered in the cold. A shot of Kirsch might have bucked them up a bit.

The Honolulu hangover ($8) had the layered, slightly boozy look of tiramisù but carried the flavors of chocolate and coconut: a chocolate-coconut layer cake amended with puffs of marshmallow cream dotted with bits of toasted coconut. It seemed to combine, somehow, a tropical flair and the memory of many backyard cookouts on the Fourth of July, with something shamelessly creamy for dessert. The end.

BLUESTEM BRASSERIE

Daily, 11 a.m.-11 p.m.

One Yerba Buena Lane, SF

(415) 547-1111

www.bluestembrasserie.com

Full bar

AE/MC/V

Moderate noise

Wheelchair accessible

Maximum Consumption: Singing and slinging with One Ring Zero

Tony Robles
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1

This is the first installment of our new series, Maximum Consumption, an unseasoned look at the increasingly overlapping fields of music and culinary arts. So if you’re in a band and looking to talk chop, or a chef that moonlights as an acoustic guitar-playing busker, we’d like to talk to you.

An enticing little book landed on my desk last week. It’s part cookbook, part music journalism, part rock opus, and hell, part coffee table book. The Recipe Project (subhead “A Delectable Extravaganza of Food and Music) is a concept spearheaded by New York-based gypsy-klezmer act One Ring Zero. The band’s co-founders, Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp, created songs using the recipes of well-known chefs (Mario Batali, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, Chris Cosentino) as the word-for-word lyrics. The meals themselves served as musical influence; each recipe inspired a different sound.

While the songs are not likely ones you’d listen to say, on a long lonesome drive, they do have a certain childlike glint of glee. It’s conceptual. The true genius of this project is its overall cohesiveness. It’s an all-in-one package. Follow the recipe, listen to the song, get some interesting background factoids. There’s also the starpower — and that goes for both rockers and chefs.

Celebrated vegan author Isa Chandra Moskowitz, a.k.a one-half of Post Punk Kitchen, offers her recipe for peanut butter brunettes, and to match it One Ring Zero brought in singer Tanya Donelly (of Belly, the Breeders, and Throwing Muses) to add dreamy pop vocals. Donelly also makes another appearance later in the book as the author of a recipe called the ugly muffin.

San Francisco’s Cosentino, of Incanto, includes a recipe for brains and eggs and One Ring Zero matched it with a hyper Beastie Boys-esque rap song, as Cosentino suggested. In the preface, the reader learns that Cosentino’s brains and eggs recipe was the original impetus for the project, given its lyrical instructions. I, however, am particularly fond of the song matching Mark Kurlansky’s recipe for a raw peach. With the whisk-whisk-whisk of an old record scratch kicking off the song, it naturally leads to a sweet vintage Parisian-style ditty, you might as well be wandering the Champs-Élysées munching some ripe fruit.

But it’s not all just matchy-match recipes with songs, The Recipe Project also includes full recipe playlists, articles rock journalists, and some pretty interesting interviews with chefs, along with “A Wine Lover’s Guide to Mexican Music.” Those in-between articles start off with headlines such as “Raspberries, Moussaka, and Metallica” in which we learn that chef Michael Symon is “America’s MVP of pork” — and that Stevie Ray Vaughan is the musical equivalent.

It’s a cookbook that’s worth a spin. The Recipe Project is out Oct. 15, 2011 on Black Balloon Publishing.

Una Pizza Napoletana

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Una Pizza Napoletana

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE If food is art (probably not, by the way), then Una Pizza Napoletana is probably the closest thing we have to a food-art installation.

This phrase, “art installation,” isn’t exactly euphonious. You install mufflers and software, and (if you’re the new head coach of the 49ers) the West Coast offense. You install a new dishwasher. Art, whatever it may or may not be, deserves a more supple verb.

Picture a white cube with high walls, mostly bare except for white tile wainscoting (rather restroom-y, I thought, but most likely practical). At the center behind the glass podium, a pizza oven of turquoise tiles like a huge Navajo artifact recovered from an archaeological dig. The space, on a nondescript SoMa corner, looks like one of the art galleries you might find in the western reaches of Chelsea, in the part of New York City where the avenues are a little wider, the buildings less tall, and the city feels not quite so breathlessly compacted.

Una Pizza Napoletana’s crowd fits the space: it’s youthful and knowing, ritualistically peering into smart phones, willing to wait for a table at a place that is so plainly and peculiarly happening. Young people don’t want to miss out, it’s their greatest fear.

What they will find missing here is anything other than pizza. That is the menu: pizza in five versions, no substitutions, no polluting table-side condiments like oregano or chili flakes (but salt and pepper, in demure shakers). That is all. No side dishes, soups or salads, no fritti misti, no pastas or roasts. The pizza isn’t sliced for you either; it’s uncut, we might say. Seinfeld had the Soup Nazi (not to mention that lunatic mohel), and we have this.

The maestro of this remarkable production, Antonio Mangieri, can be observed behind the podium manning the oven, wielding his long-handled peel like a medieval knight with a lance. He could be a mime, a figure of soundless kinesis: he stretches, he thrusts, in goes a pie, out comes another, on goes a drizzle of olive oil from his copper urn and a handful of fresh arugula.

It’s hard not to watch his act, because he’s at the very center of things. Also, you’re likely to be quite hungry and wondering if the pizza he’s lifting from the oven might be headed for your table. If it is, you’ll be happy, because the pies, despite their stark lack of trappings are worth waiting for and even suffering (a little) for.

The heart of any pizza is the crust, and UPN’s crusts deserve the ultimate compliment: they could stand on their own, without any toppings at all. They have a slight thickness and focaccia-like sponginess that cuts against current cracker-crust vogue, and they taste quite distinctly of sourdough. It is rare in my experience that pizza crust, even in good pizzerias contributes flavor. Mostly one is attentive to, and grateful for, texture (chewy? crispy?) and the structural question of whether or not the points droop. UPN’s did droop for us a little, but that was probably because we were hacking our way through them haphazardly, so the pieces weren’t symmetric.

Another factor in the droopiness would likely be that the pies are generously laden with toppings. You don’t get a dusting of this and a few gratings of that. These pizzas are loaded. The bianca ($20) for instance, was fitted out with extra-virgin olive oil, garlic, sea salt, at least a dozen thumbs of buffalo mozzarella, and plenty of basil leaves which interestingly accompanied the rest of the pie into the oven rather than being put on after the pie had baked — and were accordingly blistered. Basil’s flavor can withstand rougher handling than that of most other herbs (you can keep pesto made from your summer surplus frozen for months without having it go flat), but I did think that in this case the high heat had diminished the leaves’ fragrant, peppery bite.

The Ilaria pie ($22) by contrast was strewn with fresh arugula leaves, but these were aftermarket add-ons and had not been asked to face a 900-degree Fahrenheit oven. As a result they retained their fresh, nutty flavor, but they also were not well-integrated with the rest of the toppings. Instead they amounted to a mat laid over their accompaniments — a kind of roof to the crust’s floor. Those other toppings included extra-virgin olive oil, sea salt, cherry tomatoes, and smoked mozzarella. I thought the last would be the dominant flavor — smoked anything often asserts itself over other ingredients in the vicinity — but it was mild and muted here.

Service is excellent, and a brief wine list offers several unusual, pizza-friendly Italian bottlings in both red and white by the glass. But I noticed quite a few bottles of Moretti beer on nearby tables, too. If beer matches up with almost any food, then pizza — more than almost any other food — matches up with practically any drink euphoric in nature.

UNA PIZZA NAPOLETANA

Dinner: Wed.-Sat., from 5 p.m.

210 11th St., SF

(415) 861-3444

www.unapizza.com

Beer and wine

MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

An unresponsive landlord could mean the end of Sixth Street’s DA Arts

Andrew Lam
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All photos by Allison Ekevara / The Aperturist

“When I was growing up, the space was empty the whole time.” And as it stands, Sixth Street resident and photographer Reynaldo Ruetas Cayetano Jr. will be seeing the storefront gallery where his collective Inks of Truth created a community art project stand empty once again. 

“No one’s even been back in to turn off the lights,” he told the Guardian when he stopped by our offices last week. On August 6, Inks of Truth was holding a release party for its new zine – until the owner of 135 Sixth Street (which also houses the Sunshine Hotel, an SRO) stopped by to kick everyone out.

Cayetano grew up across the street from the DA Arts building, which occupies a central space on Sixth and Minna streets. It was once a liaison office for the city’s district attorney, filled with file cabinets. But the space became a creative hub in 2006 when Tenderloin Housing Clinic started leasing it to display art by local residents. 

Years of gallery shows culminated in THC turning artistic control of the space over to Ujima Artists, a group that hosted four to five shows before, THC artistic director Patrick Flanagan remembers, members began squatting in the small space, which faces onto Sixth Street and has massive windows. 

“It was a total party scene,” says Flanagan, who told the Guardian he ignored the misuse until he found crack vials in the gallery. Ujima Artists were kicked out, but the PR damage done to the gallery may have been too late to correct.

But Cayetano was ready for his crack at DA Arts. He contacted Flanagan, and within a month Inks of Truth had cleaned out the space. Mikio “Ears” Rose airbrushed galaxy designs across the walls, and on April 1 of this year, the group held a block party that attracted young artists, older Sixth Street residents, and everyone in between. On the gallery walls: black-and-white photos of the neighbors that rendered Sixth Street in all its grittiness, but also showed all the striving and community on the block.

“Not everyone can just go in there and have this community event. Knowing how my neighborhood is, I wanted [the people that live on Sixth Street] to be comfortable,” says Cayetano. 

Inks of Truth made a concerted effort to include everyone – not just artists and conventional art lovers, but the low-income elderly folk and those dealing with addiction. The gallery became a space for those who’d never shown an interest in art before, passers-by excited by their likenesses on the wall asking collective members where they could get a camera of their own.

Cayetano says his events rendered the neighborhood become a more inclusive place. “Basically, every time we had a show at DA Arts we all had a hood pass.”

But was the gallery’s owner impressed by the changes taking place on his ground floor?

Apparently not. When Flanagan, Cayetano, and Inks of Truth member Chris Beale attempted to set up a meeting with the owner of DA Arts and the Sunshine Hotel about extending THC’s lease on the place past May 28, Surajnaben Indrasinh Solanki was less than enthusiastic. In fact, he would hardly get back to them at all. 

“The guy’s not saying anything. He’s not even giving us an offer,” says Flanagan, who along with the Inks of Truth members left phone numbers and messages for Solanki at the Sunshine Hotel’s front desk to little avail. (The Guardian had a similar experience – Sunshine Hotel staff would hang up on us when we called to speak with Solanki, and leaving contact information in person at the front desk didn’t yield a call back). 

Eventually, the three managed to set up a meeting with Solanki on August 1. When the day came, he stood them up. 

“It reflects his style of overseeing that space,” says Cayetano.

Later that week Flanagan (who lives across Minna Street at the Rose Hotel and flips the lights on at DA Arts every evening to illuminate the corner and the art inside the gallery) ran into Solanki. “He told me not to go into the space, that we weren’t supposed to be in there, and that’d he call the police.”

Which Flanagan could have done – but he didn’t. “The ball’s was in his court,” he told the Guardian, frustrated that Solanki wouldn’t communicate with the Inks of Truth team about the future of the building. “So I said, let’s keep putting on shows.” 

When asked why he thought Solanki didn’t express any interest in the young people holding their events at DA Arts, Flanagan had two theories: that the owner is reluctant to get involved in any more leases because he’d like to be able to sell the building (which is in a SF Redevelopment Agency project area), or maybe because he was wary of Flanagan’s history as a tenant organizer. 

At any rate, Flanagan told Cayetano to go along with the previously-scheduled zine release party. 

So they did – and for a few hours, Inks of Truth and the rest of Sixth Street got to see their images published and bound (you can too – go here for a copy of Sixth Sense). That’s when Solanki finally showed up, yelling for everyone to get out. 

The collective grabbed everything from the gallery – framed photography, boxes of zines, the bottles of red wine that were being shared, everything but the Best of the Bay award they’d won the week before – and migrated across the street to Rancho Parnassus, a cafe that’s hosted Inks of Truth shows in the past. 

There, they rearranged the photos on the cafe tables and regrouped. Cayetano hyped the group up for October’s Sixth Street art walk, and reassured everyone that Inks of Truth would still have a presence on Sixth Street, with or without DA Arts. 

Reflecting on the tribulations the collective has undergone, Cayetano’s not ready to let go of his dream of bringing pride to his neighborhood. “We’re not here just to have a show and disappear,” he says. “Sixth Street is the heart for me.”

 

Tasty tunes

Andrew Lam
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0
Tasty tunes

virginia@sfbg.com

FESTIVAL Outside Lands has been descending on lush Golden Gate Park for three years now. As the music lineup continues to feature some of the biggest acts on the summer tour circuit, the festival’s local food and drink offerings have been steadily increasing their profile. A Taste of the Bay Area, OL’s edible arena, hosts 54 food vendors, and 30 wineries and winemakers pour 100 different wines amid whimsical barrel seating under the big tent of Wine Lands. As if our dancecards weren’t already full of all the music we want to see!

To maximize your opportunities to stuff yourself, we’ve compiled an eating-drinking guide for the weekend that pairs just a few of each day’s musicians with harmonious eats. Also included: suggestions for your inter-set hydration intervals. (Read: the best booze and caffeine on offer.)

 

FRIDAY

New Orleans Klezmer Allstars, noon, Land’s End Stage Take traditional Jewish klezmer, amplify to the power of New Orleans, and suddenly you have New Orleans Klezmer Allstars on your hands. As you’re gyrating wildly to the sounds of the group’s clarinet and accordion, snack on some fried kosher dill pickles. Those Fabulous Frickle Brothers will be serving deep fried “frickle” chips and fried green tomatoes perfect for dipping in the booth’s cukaracha Sriracha, or perhaps its tasty curry mustard.

Drink interlude Avail yourself to a range of Kermit Lynch’s imported wines — the Berkeley local (a musician himself) was a key player in the introduction of French wines to the United States.

Phish, 6:30 p.m., Land’s End Stage Call us hippies, but what could go better with the ultimate jam band high than sweet summer produce? Full Belly Farms will be offering plump melons, peaches, tomatoes, corn, green beans, and bell peppers. Another farm-fresh pick: cucumber-melon spritzers from Flour + Water’s soon-to-open Salumeria. Pick up a porchetta sandwiches there to counteract all that good health.

Big Audio Dynamite, 7 p.m., Twin Peak Stage Don’t call it a comeback. With the return of Big Audio Dynamite (BAD), playful good times are sure to ensue — a perfect pair for Hayes Valley restaurant Straw’s Outside Lands carnival game, (also called Playful), which will be taking place in the Corral area of the festival. Don’t worry if you don’t win any prizes — Straw’s sweet potato tots and its falafel and schawarma snow cones will be reward enough.

Erykah Badu, 7:50 p.m., Sutro Stage Maybe you won’t be at your sexiest while slurping Split Pea Seduction’s soups, but sounds from the sultry Ms. Badu make a creation like sweet corn and smoked trout chowder oh-so-alluring — not to mention the stand’s spit-roasted lamb and Puerto Rican pork pernil sandwiches.

 

SATURDAY

Nicki Bluhm & The Gramblers, 12:05 p.m., Sutro Stage Nicki Bluhm’s lazy sunny day tunes will make it feel like summer, even if (when) the fog rolls into Golden Gate Park. Fresh seafood can also bring out that summer shine, particularly Woodhouse Fish Co.’s BBQ or fresh oysters. Even better for when that condensation does convene is its excellent clam chowder.

Drink interlude Elegant Rhône varietals and Chardonnay from the central coast’s Qupé winery have made many a fan forget the next set they wanted to see.

The Black Keys, 6:15 p.m., Land’s End Stage The guttural blues rock of Ohio natives Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney is sure to be one of this year’s highlights. The group is the first ever act to play multiple years at Outside Lands, so you’ll want real crowd pleasing snacks at its show. Nombe’s ever-satisfying Japanese izakaya eats should fit the bill — its popular chicken wings, honey-sweetened, lime-and-fish-sauce perky, rarely leave their audience underplussed. Nombe will also be serving up odango (fried rice balls) and fried tofu for vegetarian music lovers.

The Roots, 6:50 p.m., Twin Peaks Stage The Roots have been interjecting ensemble musicianship into the hip-hop scene since 1987. You know what else is keeping it real? American Grilled Cheese Kitchen. We look forward to seeing what multi-voiced sandwiches it will be grilling up — will the Jalapeno Popper with chèvre, jack, applewood-smoked bacon, and apricot-jalapeño relish make an appearance? What about the Mousetrap, with its sharp cheddar, havarti, and jack?

Drink interlude Wind Gap’s grapes are grown from the Sonoma Coast down to Paso Robles, resulting in earnest, heartfelt wines that express a sampling of California’s terroir. Known for its syrahs, the winery also produces Chardonnay, grenache, and pinot gris.

Muse, 8:10 p.m., Land’s End Stage All of Muse’s dramatic intensity and rock opera influences mean you’ll need to lube up your vocal chords if you want to hit those soaring vocals alongside frontman Matthew Bellamy. Down a cup of Juice To You’s energizing green juice, watermelon juice, or Thai young coconut water before you belt it out.

 

SUNDAY

Drink interlude Hedge your energy for the last day of festivities with Ritual Coffee Roaster’s iced joe or a strong coffee brew from Philz.

Mavis Staples, 1:45 p.m., Land’s End Stage From her days with the Staples Singers to her latest Grammy-winning, Jeff Tweedy-produced album You Are Not Alone, this woman bleeds heart and soul. You’ll taste both in 4505 Meats’ raved-about chicharrones and hot dogs, Namu’s Korean tacos, or Rosamunde’s beer, chicken-cherry, and apple-sage sausages.

Drink interlude Manhattan restaurateur and sommelier Paul Grieco of Hearth and Terroir Wine Bar will be at the festival on his Summer of Riesling tour, touting — you guessed it — refreshing, crisp rieslings.

Julieta Venegas, 3:50 p.m., Sutro Stage Tijuana native Julieta Venegas has earned fans globally with her Spanish language rock. Augment her Latina vibes with El Huarache Loco’s huaraches or Little Chihuahua’s dreamy fried plantain-black bean burritos. For dessert skip to the Southern Hemisphere for mouth-watering Argentinean treats: Sabores del Sur’s dreamy alfajores, powdered sugar-dusted butter cookies sandwiched around creamy dulce de leche.

John Fogerty, 4:45 p.m., Land’s End Stage Creedence Clearwater Revival’s frontman is a living legend. No one epitomizes roots rock like Fogerty — who, despite CCR’s famous Southern sound, is a Berkeley native. His one-of-a-kind local vocals make a happy pair with Little Skillet’s fried chicken, Maverick’s pulled pork sandwiches, or Criolla Kitchen’s shrimp po’ boys.

www.sfoutsidelands.com/taste

 

Perbacco

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Perbacco

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE In the little gathering of restaurants on the 200 block of California Street deep in the Financial District, Perbacco is one of the middle children, at least physically. Mid-block positions can be awkward for restaurants, since your would-be customers are likely to have to do a bit of searching for you instead of finding you in mighty command of some conspicuous corner. On the other hand, if your nearest neighbors are Michael Mina (née Aqua) and Tadich Grill, the foot-traffic factor could tilt in your favor.

Perbacco, which turns five later this year, is relatively narrow and deep, which is not atypical of mid-block spaces. Within those friendly confines it does offer a few points of topographical interest, including a mezzanine and, at the very rear, an open kitchen that redefines “open kitchen”: a kitchen so open that it has no physical barrier or marker to separate it from the rest of the restaurant. It reminded me in an odd way of those federal prisons without fences — the so-called Club Feds — where Michael Millken and the other high-finance hucksters of the 1980s did their time. It was odd to glance back there and see young chefs just milling around. Even in a star-struck culture like ours, there can be such a thing as overexposure.

It would also be fair to say that the design scheme emphasizes earth tones.

“It’s brown in here” was a pithy observation that reached me from the pithy observer across the table. Some cream tones too, yes, but still. One imagines that the grand men’s clubs of old London, White’s, and the Atheneum, among others, must look something like this inside, not that I’ve ever managed a peek.

If you’ve been to Italy, particularly in the north, you’ll probably agree that Italians eat more meat than is generally supposed, and in this sense, chef-owner Staffan Terje’s menu does reflect a profound Italian aesthetic. (Its principal influences are from the northern regions of Piemonte and Liguria.) The kitchen turns out its own salumi, and an $18 plate of it (the small version) is most impressive in range, flavor, and sheer heft. If you open with this, you should plan accordingly for what you want to follow, because you don’t just get a couple of crostini smeared with paté and some cornichons. You get, instead, a sizable plate dizzyingly arrayed with such treats as testa in cassetta di Gavi, pancetta, several types each of lardo and salame, and — for a bit of crunchy acid — a bouquet of pickled cauliflower florets.

The passion for meat, in particular for cured meat, even insinuated itself into the salads, where we found a witty reimagining of the classic cantaloupe with prosciutto in the form of ripe peach slices ($12) set amid baby lettuces with flaps of smoked goose breast that could easily have passed for speck or pancetta affogata except for their color, which was more of a telltale red. The salad was dressed with a stone-fruit vinaigrette, but this salad was that rare thing, a salad that, laden with juicy ripe fruit and pungent flesh, would have been fine with no dressing at all.

Yet more meat turned up in the pasta courses (many interesting and unusual shapes here), in the form of short-rib ragu ladled over pappardelle ($17), the wide ribbons that look like fledgling lasagne. The ragu was intensely earthy, and horseradish shavings brought some bite, but I did question the addition of a roasted cipolline confit, whose almost jelly-like texture and sweetness seemed to me to disrupt the harmony of the dish. So much of the brilliance of Italian cooking has to do with simplicity — i.e., resisting the temptation to add ingredients and omitting them instead — and this dish would have been better with no onion confit.

Actual short ribs ($24) were also available, cooked long and slow (stracotto is the Italian word), given a bone-marrow crust (rich!), and plated with pea tendrils, chanterelle mushrooms, and more cipolline onions, which for some reason did not wreak the havoc here they did with the pasta and actually might have helped balance the richness of the bone marrow.

The dessert menu, like its savory counterpart, reflects a surprisingly friendly pricing scheme. Everything is $8, except for the sorbetti ($7) and the panforte ($3). And the preparations are complex enough so that you feel you’re actually getting more than one thing. For example, a strawberry semifreddo (a flat pink disk with the consistency of sherbet kept in a too-cold freezer) was festooned with crumbles of pistachio cake and tumbles of zabaglione, the marvelous — and marvelously simple — concoction of egg yolks whipped in a bain marie with sugar and some kind of sweet wine, usually marsala, but flat champagne works well, too. The zabaglione had a faint green sheen; had it been doctored with pistachios, like the cake? Pink plus green beats brown every time.

PERBACCO

Dinner: Mon.-Sat., 5:30-10 p.m.

Lunch: Mon.-Fri., 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.

230 California, SF

(415) 955-0663

www.perbaccosf.com

Full bar

AE/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Portuguese delights at the Secret Wine Shop and lenga|lenga

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

Up on the second floor of an industrial warehouse in SOMA, you can find a small, stylishly decorated loft filled with secret spirits. I’m not talking about a haunted house. I’m talking about the Secret Wine Shop. It’s also the home of owner Christy Bergman — and homebase for her endeavor to bring unique and delicious wines to an eager audience, in a nontraditional and extremely intimate environment.

On July 25, I went to Bergman’s Portuguese food and wine event, which was a collaboration with lenga|lenga, a new catering biz specializing in traditional Portuguese flavors.  Needless to say, it was one secret that deserves to be shared.

All six-courses were perfectly paired with a wonderfully robust, small-production wine, either from Portugal or made with Portuguese grapes. According to the chefs, there are 1001 ways to cook cod, so several of the dishes used this delicate, flaky fish, including the main course of creamy codfish, cooked with potatoes and white sauce, a Portuguese twist on potatoes au gratin or Spanish brandade.

As we made our way through the long list of wines, each one better than the last, we socialized with the resident cat Diesel, examined the eclectic art on the walls, and got to know our fellow wine aficionados, in what was essentially somebody’s living room. This is truly a special wine tasting experience, and with the expert wine selection by Bergman, your palette will be pleasantly surprised by the diversity of flavors that one evening can encompass. As they say in Portuguese as they clink their glasses together … saúde!

Appetite: Plans of attack for SF Chefs

Andrew Lam
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SF Chefs year three starts this Monday, an event that has become San Francisco’s biggest food and drink showcase – our “food and wine classic”, if you will — utilizing much of the Bay Area’s best talent. (You can check out my coverage of the event from last year here).  

The event takes over Union Square for a week with events, classes, grand tastings, and nightly parties. There’s something magical about a tented Union Square, especially with the cable cars gliding by and tourists casually wondering what kind of fun is going on. After hours of tastings and music, one can walk to afterparties atop the Westin or other nearby locales, taking in the city lights until the wee hours with dancing and yes, more impeccable food and drink.

But with a week full of events, how does one begin to choose what to attend? I have covered a lot of ground every year I’ve attended and have some specific advice on what to make sure you don’t miss, depending on your preferences. Oh, and don’t forget to allow your stomach some recovery time.

If you’re a cocktail hound or celebrity chef follower

Don’t miss Friday night’s opening celebration and grand tasting (6:30-10 p.m.). Sure, the chef line-up is impressive. Everyone from Michael Mina to Tyler Florence will be there serving creative tastes of their food. There will be more food than you’ll ever be able to fit in one stomach, especially if you attempt to sample from the over 35 chefs who’ll be there.

On the cocktail front, you’ll work double-time to keep up with the amazing bartenders and bars represented as they shake up special event cocktails. There’s fine bartenders at many SF Chefs events, but Friday night particularly showcases a larger number of our city’s best bars in one place.

There’s also plenty of wine, beer, and spirits. You won’t suffer from choices. Chef Joey Altman and the Soul Peppers provide the live blues backdrop. Oh, did I mention that all tastes are unlimited with price of admission? That way you can keep going back for your favorites, if you do happen to pack stomach No. 2. 


If you want all this — and dancing too

Saturday night is another big shindig in “Union Square: Decadence After Dark” (7-10:30pm), again with over 35 chefs plus spirits, wine, beer, cocktails. Again, all unlimited. There will be dancing (if you’re still mobile) along with eats from chefs like David Bazirgan of Fifth Floor and Thomas McNaughton of flour + water.

Save room for the after parties. Friday night’s mayhem happens 10 p.m.-1 a.m. in private rooms at the City Club. With sponsors like Cigar Aficionado and Wente Vineyards, there’s cigars given out and Wente wines flowing along with cocktails, beer, chocolates, coffee, caviar, oysters, and desserts from Pastry Chef Leena Hung (The Restaurant at Wente Vineyards). Best of all, Hubert Keller will be stationed at the turntable. That man does everything.  

Saturday night offers a second afterparty option, this one hosted by Top Chef All-Stars winner Richard Blais and SF-based Skyy Spirits, the latter of whose portfolio includes beloved classics Campari and Wild Turkey, as well as the delightful Espolon Tequila. Chef Blais heads up a team of former Top Chef contestants (Fabio Viviani, Jen Biesty, Marisa Churchill, Mattin Noblia, Ryan Scott) for bites to go with cocktail creations by the Bon Vivants. There’s even more food from Dennis Lee (Namu) and Ryan Farr (4505 Meats) and music from Hot Pocket – a quintet comprised of members of the Best of the Bay winning group Bayonics – and DJ Dojah so you can dance it all off.

 

If you want demos, classes, and unlimited tastings 

There’s individual classes during the week, but for a full feast included, hit up the grand tasting tent all afternoon Saturday or Sunday. Both days feature food from over 30 big-name chefs like Hubert Keller and Elizabeth Faulkner. But there’s also ongoing demos from chefs like Martin Yan, NY’s Cesare Casella, Fabio Viviani, and Gary Danko, while cocktail experts such as H. Joseph Ehrmann and Charlotte Voisey school you on spirits and cocktails. Watch for a Negroni cart where top bartenders will mix you a classic negroni, a sbagliato (basically a sparkling negroni… with prosecco), or a negroni variation of your choice (even better, Campari is donating $200 per hour the cart is in operation to support USBG’s Bartenders Relief Fund).

 

If you want to get up close and personal

Choose from an array of classes, demos and meals taking place in the Westin for a more intimate focus than you’ll get in bustling Union Square during the Grand Tasting Tent and evening parties. You could watch Chris Cosentino (Incanto) and Elizabeth Falkner (Citizen Cake & Orson) take on Dominique Crenn (Atelier Crenn) and Russell Jackson (Lafitte) in a chef’s challenge. Maybe you want to attend a demo with Tyler Florence, a bartender’s cocktail breakfast, a Wine Spectator pinot noir panel, “Secrets of the Sommeliers” with Rajat Parr and Jordan Mackay, or a family cooking demo led by chefs Michael Mina, Craig Stoll (Delfina), Gerald Hirigoyen (Piperade), and their kids.

Another winning night last year was Thursday’s ‘Sugar and Spice” party. Smaller than Union Square events, tastes cover palate extremes, while cocktails from key bartenders and local wineries are featured. The line-up is strong (including Hoss Zaré of Zaré at Flytrap and Mourad Lahlou of Aziza), but it’s manageable and memorable in the stunning mezzanine ballroom of the Westin.

 

SF Chefs

Mon/1-Sun/7, $25-150

Various SF venues

www.sfchefs2011.com

 

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

 

Best of the Bay 2011: BEST SMALL WORLDS AFTER ALL

Andrew Lam
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Apparently all the people who came of age in the late 1960s and early ’70s are either dead or too busy filling out Social Security forms to notice that at least one of their cherished craft projects is making a comeback. (No, not candle-splattered Mateus wine bottles or macramé hanging plant slings.) We’re talking about terrariums, the terrestrial equivalent of a ship in a bottle. So what if many G4-era terrarium enthusiasts call them “terraniums”? Their variation on vivarium nomenclature does nothing to diminish the charm of these glassed-in mini-worlds. And particularly high on the charm assessment scale are the creations of the good women of Studio Choo, part of Prairie Collective, whose arrangements of tiny ferns, succulents, and other floral inspire full minutes of unbroken, smart phone-free contemplation.

Available at Prairie Collective 262 Divisadero. (415) 701-8701, www.studiochoo.com, www.prairiecollective.com

 

Best of the Bay 2011: BEST SLICE OF POSTAPOCALYPTIC PARADISE

Andrew Lam
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Maybe it’s the late summer evenings we’ve spent here drinking cheap wine on a slab of concrete while looking out over the San Francisco Bay. Maybe it’s the graffiti-adorned rocks or the handmade concrete hut, evocative of Dr. Seuss creation. Maybe it’s the bizarre formations of twisted rebar and spinning bike parts that can be found dotting the landscape amid tall, scraggly weeds. Maybe because it’s the prettiest former landfill we’ve ever explored. Whatever the source of its charm, there will always be a special place in our hearts for the Albany Bulb, which makes a great dog park but is also great for anyone who needs to get off their leash and run around. To get to the park, head bay-ward from Golden Gate Fields in Albany.

Best of the Bay 2011 Editors Picks: Shopping

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Best of the Bay 2011 Editors Picks

Shopping

 

BEST VINYL FLIPPERS

Tweekin Records in the Lower Haight was one of the centers of Bay Area dance music culture for the better part of two decades. But besides the basic insanity of operating a specialty record store in these e-times, the Tweekin brand had gotten a bit ragged over the years. So it was a charge for vinyl lovers when Manny Alferez and crew stepped up for a reinvigoration, unveiling Black Pancake Records. Pretty much the same concept reigns: great funk, soul, house, techno, jazz, and even (gasp!) rock records, plus a friendly staff with some primo recommendations. Perhaps best of all, there are a couple of those rarest of beasts — listening stations. Yep, you can put the actual circular whatsit on the doohickey that spins around and hear it make the music, little Johnny. All without clickety-clicking on the wee mouse-thingy.

593 Haight, SF. (415) 626-6995, www.blackpancakerecords.com

 

BEST EVERYDAY KAN DO

Peruse the labels of say, a kitty-shaped exfoliating washcloth or exquisitely lacquered bento box at Ichiban Kan, and you’re likely to see a Good Housekeeping seal of approval-style label trumpeting that the item won a design award in Japan. At times it seems like everything wins a design award in Japan, then the realization sets in that no other country seems to have dedicated itself so fervently to assuring that the everyday things of life — from paper clips to cooking utensils — be attractive, eminently functional, durable, and well-designed. When we want to load up on the best of the quotidian (we’re particular fans of the rolls of plastic wrap for $1), we come here.

Various locations, www.ichibankanusa.com

 

BEST GEEKDOM: THE GATHERING

It’s a constant nerd alert — not that that’s a bad thing — at Cards and Comics Central, a Richmond District shop where employees know the difference between vine whips and seed bombs and can explain why destroy effects don’t harm a cattank. Kids into Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokémon, or Magic will be overwhelmed by the shop’s vast selection. Parents will be overwhelmed at the price tag — you can spend more than $100 on a single card, though assorted decks (available for under $10) might keep the average young collector sated. Check out the back room for the real action — pale adults playing Magic with an intensity you won’t find at most Vegas poker tables.

5424 Geary, SF. (415) 668-3544, www.candccentral.com

 

BEST REFILL, NOT LANDFILL

What does it take to win a gazillion green business awards? It certainly starts with a great concept, a seriously vetted supply chain, and a commitment to spreading the eco-word. It also helps to have a pleasing storefront in Noe Valley, cute and eager staff, luscious products, and bulk-store prices without the forklifts and doublewide shopping carts. Green 11, launched by married couple Marco Pietschmann and Bettina Limaco and inspired by a Rachel Carson observation (“For the first time in history, every human being is being subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception to death.”), offers soaps, cleaning supplies, pet food, shampoo, conditioners, and lotions, all ready for your refillable, affordable use. Bring your own containers or put for up a starter container at the store.

3980 24th St., SF. (415) 425-5195. www.shopgreen11.com

 

BEST FAIR FEATHERS

You think your head hurts from the plumage parade that alit on Dolo Park this year? Think of the feather-farm roosters and other avian amigos that have lost their lives to appease the current mania for quill jewelry and hair extensions. Happily, two gentle crafters have taken the torture out of the trend: Erykah Prentice and Martha Hudson started their accessories label Divine Dandelions for peace, not plucking. The two create their cascading earrings and fanciful headdresses from foraged feathers, selling them from a sweet little gazebo at festivals up and down the West Coast. If you find yourself Bay-bound during next month’s Gaia Festival (up in the hills of Laytonville), you can always check out their Kahlil Gibran-quoting website for custom-made creations.

www.divinedandelions.com

 

BEST MEMORY TRANSFERENCE

Are your childhood camcorder memories gathering worrisome mildew by the minute? Entrust your VHS-ed precious moments to the Mission’s Video Transfer Center run by Jennifer Miko, a 2008 graduate of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation and a collaborator with the Image Permanence Institute. Miko, along with husband Buck Bito, boasts some of the best equipment in the biz — including a fancy-pants transfer system for 8mm and Super-8 that the center says is California’s first and only. For a small fee, the team will inspect, repair, and transfer your film memories to a digital format that will last forever … or at least until we figure out brain-to-brain info-beaming.

395 South Van Ness, SF. (415) 558-8815, www.videotransfercenter.com

 

BEST BUGS BUNNY B-BOY FLASHBACKS

Mission vintage stores tend to cater to your typical high-waisted jean-clad, chain-smoking-in-front-of-Four-Barrel kind of girl. (We love her!) But New Jack City is a breath of fresh hype air. This “throwback goods” outpost at 15th and Guerrero streets specializes in sports gear and B-boy stylings straight from your favorite scene in Houseparty 2. Vintage Giants jackets, old school stripes, Bugs Bunny tees of various ages, priceless Afro-centric relics, and breezy caps repping teams or just plain reppin’ … . Actual 1980s and ’90s B-boys (and newer admirers) will feel they never left their Cold Crush Brothers and KRS-One cassettes in their cousin’s janky hoopty’s deck once they step inside.

299 Guerrero, SF. (415) 624-3751, newjackcitysf.blogspot.com

 

BEST REASON TO NOT GET OUT OF BED

You know those girls who flounce down 24th Street, vintage pastel print sundresses fluttering over their kicky cork wedge sandals, carrying a perfect sexy grandma purse? We know their style secret. Oakland’s Field Day Wearables’ bedding dresses are handmade by a crunchy-awesome label that wants to take the disposable out of fashion. They’ve got pockets and detachable straps that double as a matchy-match headband, and you can find them in patterns from striped to pansied to Batman (yes, they’re made from actual sheets). Score ’em at myriad brick-and-mortar distributing boutiques — or even better, by trying them on over your jeans at one of the craft fairs and street walks where FDW sets up a pretty post.

Available at various Bay Area locations. www.fielddaywearables.com

 

BEST SMALL WORLDS AFTER ALL

Apparently all the people who came of age in the late 1960s and early ’70s are either dead or too busy filling out Social Security forms to notice that at least one of their cherished craft projects is making a comeback. (No, not candle-splattered Mateus wine bottles or macramé hanging plant slings.) We’re talking about terrariums, the terrestrial equivalent of a ship in a bottle. So what if many G4-era terrarium enthusiasts call them “terraniums”? Their variation on vivarium nomenclature does nothing to diminish the charm of these glassed-in mini-worlds. And particularly high on the charm assessment scale are the creations of the good women of Studio Choo, part of Prairie Collective, whose arrangements of tiny ferns, succulents, and other floral inspire full minutes of unbroken, smart phone-free contemplation.

Available at Prairie Collective 262 Divisadero. (415) 701-8701, www.studiochoo.com, www.prairiecollective.com


BEST BET FOR BAROQUE BEAUTY

You’ve redecorated your living room, but still something is missing. Could it be? Yes it is — a fuchsia-toned chaise lounge. Do not despair, for we have your marching orders: SF Antiques and Design Mall. The 13-year-old Bayview behemoth is something akin to an indoor flea market, and is home to 200 experts in the art of antique, all of whom have booths filled to the brim with fanciful paperweights, glittering heaps of costume jewelry, and ever-so-whimsical seating options. Seriously, if your interior design is hankering for a touch of the over-embellished, a whiff of kitsch, or perhaps a splash of hanging basket chair, you will find it here.

701 Bayshore, SF. (415) 656-3530, www.sfantique.com

 

BEST FASHION SHRINE

Natural wooden tables, colorful blankets spread here and there, a goat’s head staring placidly down on wonder-covered shelves — Hayes Valley’s Reliquary could be a gaucho explorer’s treasure room. And — minus the gaucho part — that’s pretty much what boutique owner Leah Bershad has created it to be. Bershad stocks the year-old space with crafts and vintage finds from all around the country, plus Europe and — in the case of some elaborate bead-and-quilt satchels stacked near the counter — Afghanistan. The store’s racks of secondhand embroidered dresses and its smattering of designer wear like high-waisted Court denim mean that, as far as fashion church goes, Reliquary lives up to its name: a container for sacred relics.

537 Octavia, SF. (415) 431-4000, reliquarysf.tumblr.com

 

BEST PLACE TO BUY 300 PAIRS OF PANTS, 250 TELEPHONES, OR 7,651 RUBBER GASKETS

If you’ve ever spent an afternoon wistfully clicking your way through the Craigslist “free” section — pondering all you could do with an extra this or that — you’ve sampled a certain seductive sweet taste. Beware: the California Materials Exchange is crack to Craigslist’s cocaine. It’s eBay on steroids, Urban Ore for colossi. A state-sponsored recycling program, CalMAX facilitates the transfer of bulk, odd, and industrially useful products for wholesale and discount rates, and sometimes for free. So, looking for extra cubicles? How ’bout a free 1000-gallon asphalt-emulsion tank? Or 7,500 pounds of apparel, including 300 women’s black twill pants missing only the waist button? That’ll cost you a paltry 10 grand, but for someone with a plan — and a lot of storage — it could be just the thing.

www.calrecycle.ca.gov/CalMAX

 

BEST SHOP FOR THE SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS STITCH

A sobering fact: your clothes were probably made in a sweatshop (sorry). Most of our industrially produced togs — you are probably aware — are made by people making far from decent wages, working with toxic, health-shattering dyes. Small wonder then that local fiber movements are beginning to stitch. Visit Oakland yarn shop A Verb For Keeping Warm to be indoctrinated. Owner Kristine Vejar sells an in-house line of local fibers and natural dyes, and stocks other brands as well. Plus she gives classes on the skills you need to clothe yourself sustainably and hosts free sewing nights to develop community among people who purl — responsibly.

6328 San Pablo, Oakl. (510) 595-8372, www.averbforkeepingwarm.com

 

BEST WAY TO SIGN UP

Beautify the street and bolster your curb appeal in classic style with some legit hand-lettering from New Bohemia Signs. Using traditional enamels and gold leaf, New Bohemia practices its old-school art with pride — snazzing up placards with over-the-top fonts, providing elegant window signage for boutiques and restaurants, crafting appetizing menu boards, even revamping your Victorian with a gilded transom. Founder Damon Styer and crew have also branched out into the gallery scene: a recent art show at Guerrero Gallery featured work by present and past New Bohemia staff. The vintage feel, handmade aesthetic, and design-addict cache — New Bohemia’s products have even been salivated over in The New York Times — seem a perfect sign of our local, small-batch, skill-appreciative times.

281 Ninth St., SF. (415) 864-7057, www.newbohemiasigns.com

 

BEST PROTOTYPES (PRIMATE OR OTHERWISE)

The website of the Foam Monkeys concept modeling studio has an “awards” section that admits, “While we can’t honestly recall Foam Monkeys ever actually being mentioned for an award, the company has certainly been a part of many award-winning product development teams.” But we’re giving the company itself a real, bona fide Best of the Bay to boast about. Why? Because! Here you can not only construct a polyurethane primate, but also all sorts of useful stuff — like prototypes for everything from MacBooks to microchips. Sure, the company is geared toward creating serious conceptual models for industrial design and product development, but that doesn’t make the idea of an accessible foam-based 3-D modeling studio any less awesome.

32 Shotwell, SF. (415) 552-5577, www.foammonkeys.com

 

BEST SONIC SAFARI

Deep in the thick of the taquerias, bodegas, butcher shops , and joyerias of 24th Street dwells this exotic little shopping outpost for fearless cultural adventurers. Explorist International captain Chris Dixon (known on assorted music bills as Phengren Oswald) lets his collector come out to play here, sharing new and used recordings of global party riddims, heady jazz, weird old folk and country blues, and various unclassifiables — as well as art books, micro-run zines, and McSweeney’s volumes. The record bins are where the real action is, though: Moondog vinyl canoodles with Sperm Walls rarities, and Charlie Nothing crashes with the Indonesian prog and funk of Those Shocking, Shaking Days. Would we like to snag that vinyl copy of Luk Thung: Classic and Obscure 78s from the Thai Countryside? Yes, Dr. Livingstone, we would indeed.

3174 24th St., SF. (415) 400-5850, www.exploristinternational.com

 

BEST CHEAP PLACE TO SCORE A CUP AND A CONRAD

Literature and coffee: such sweet, sweet dependencies. Enable both on the cheap at Reader’s Café . Inconspicuous to those on a casual Fort Mason stroll, this used book treasure trove on the bay is infinite and grand once found. With $20, it’s possible to take home a few written works (some only $1!) and still have change for indulging in a custom-brewed cup of Blue Bottle. Reader’s is a production of the San Francisco Friends of the Library, so not only does each purchase soothe the DTs, it’s for a good cause.

Building C, Room 165, Fort Mason Center, SF. (415) 771-1076, www.readerscafe.org

 

BEST PARTNER IN PREUSED PURCHASE

In a perfect world, each visit to the Apartment would be a leisurely half-day treasure hunt. The Mission District store is packed with vintage furnishings, boxes of old family photos and 1960s magazines, even a $1 tray for affordable finds. No plywood or cheap IKEA stuff here — everything on offer is well maintained and crafted. Of course, that quality comes with some heft, but if you’ve fallen in love with a cedar armoire when you were supposed to be on the hunt for a throw rug, the Apartment will pay for its delivery: $65 plus $10 for every flight of stairs it must ascend to your door. So accommodating!

3469 18th St., SF. (415) 255-1100

 

BEST ANTI-GOLIATH GAME FACE

After a five-year effort by chain-wary neighborhood activists to keep it off the grand hippie boulevard, megachain Whole Foods opened at Haight and Stanyan streets early this year. It furthered the neighborhood’s fitful transmogrification into Fancy Town (or Ashbury Valley, the ‘hood’s new NoPa-like real estate agency-created moniker), but Haight Street Market is rising to this market-share challenge. With shifts starting before the crack of dawn, the 30-year-old family-owned shop has stepped it up, adding a high-quality butcher counter, a deli, the least pricey and most diverse beer selection in the Upper Haight, and a buffed-up coffee selection. If only all small businesses could up their game in the face of corporate claims.

1530 Haight, SF. (415) 255-0644, www.haightstreetmarket.com

 

BEST LEATHER-SCENTED TIME WARP

Stepping into cobbler Suzanne George’s shop is like entering a hide-covered time warp. George crafts her clodhoppers in much the same way that shoes were made several hundred years ago. She works the leather by hand, stitching the pieces with thread and hammering it all together with actual nails. Not only are the shoes custom-made to fit every tootsie they encase, they are also unique pieces of art, nearly too lovely to take tramping on the dirty pavement. George shares her high-quality, low-technology workshop with Peter, a shoemaker originally from Italy who used to make sandals for Mother Teresa. Together they make some damn fine throwback sling-backs.

1787 Church, SF. (415) 775-1775, www.suzannegeorgeshoes.com

 

BEST COUCH-BOUND — BUT COMMUNITY-MINDED — STONER’S DREAM COME TRUE

While a marijuana home delivery business may sound like nothing more than a couch-bound stoner’s dream come true, the Green Cross actually offers a valuable service to many of the city’s neediest residents who are less mobile as a result of illness, disability, or age. And this is no slapdash selection, either. Brick-and-mortar dispensaries can’t beat its impressive array of hard-to-find THC-infused specialty items like olive oil and agave nectar. Plus it boasts vegan, gluten-free, and nut-free goodies, all made in-house. So toke it all in — a portion of the proceeds are reinvested in the community, supporting social service agencies like the SF AIDS Foundation and the YMCA.

(415) 648-4420, www.thegreencross.org

 

BEST GOAL-GETTERS

Toby and Libby Rappolt hardly leave the balls behind when they exit their 20-year business, Sunset Soccer Supply, for the day. The Rappolts are players, coaches, and fans too. If they’re not holding up the counter at their shop, chatting with regulars about the most recent match or the best way to teach a kid to dribble or selling a team-sized box of scrimmage vests, there’s a good chance they’re out supporting the SF soccer community. The business is especially into rooting for women’s teams: it was present at the Civic Center showing of the World Cup final, it sponsors tournaments, and it has even invited players to in-store signings.

3401 Irving, SF. (415) 753-2666, www.sunsetsoccer.com

 

BEST PLACE TO PUT A CORD ON IT

Where to trundle if you want to wear that pretty pierced stone you found on your first anniversary hike up Mount Diablo? The Bead Store has a vast assortment of necklace-ready cords, and the Castro shop’s friendly staff can point you toward a nice clasp, or even tie a slip-knot for you if you’re not fancy. It’s the city’s smallest and oldest bead store — it has been in the same spot since 1964 — and stocks centuries-old beads and rare stones you won’t find anywhere else, as well as the standard tools you need to take your diamonds from the rough.

417 Castro, SF. (415) 861-7332, www.thebeadstoresf.com

 

BEST RING OF SUCCESS

Jewelry — it can be scary! We don’t mean the fun ornamental kind of jewelry, like Celtic nipple rings or jade idol earrings or purple pentagram pendants (although those can be scary too). No, we’re referring to real jewelry — like the fancy traditional kind you’d better get right or Bridezilla/o is gonna ‘splode and slap you silly with a rolled-up copy of Country Weddings magazine. How will you know how to score the perfect engagement ring, or wedding band, or anniversary bracelet, or birthday watch? Don’t fret. The enormously helpful and nice folks of Just Bands will help you with everything, from sizing and color to design and polish. Their showroom in the labyrinthine San Francisco Gift Center sparkles not just with diamonds and silver, but with the smiles of satisfied lovers whose romance wasn’t tarnished by stressful transactions.

888 Brannan, Suite 151, SF. (415) 626-2318

 

BEST THROUGH THE RABBIT HOLE

The N-Judah thunders by it dozens of times a day, but because it’s tucked well back in a garden courtyard, you’d never know this spirited, magickal little “multitraditional world mysticism” shop existed. Unless you capital-K Know. Look into your third eye: do you Know? Randy, the genial owner of the Sword and the Rose — a man who is part Keith Richards, part Baba Yaga — definitely Knows. And he’ll graciously tell you, spinning tales of about gods and goddesses from esoteric cultures past and present, or reading your tarot cards in a cozy nook warmed by an amber fire, or selling you his house-produced incense, or offering lessons in spellcraft, all while bestowing friendly (if a bit confusing to the uninitiated) guidance to more transcendent realms. First stop: Cole and Carl streets. Next stop: the Divine.

85 Carl, SF. (415) 681-5434

 

BEST BARREL FULL OF MONKEY SUITS

Let’s face it, if you’re a happenin’ gentleman or a trouser-trusting lady in this fancy-pants city, you’re going to need to bust out the occasional tuxedo. But who wants to spend a few hundred bucks on a new tux? Screw that noise, get over to Held Over, and check out the selection of $20 used tux shirts and wide variety of full monkey suits — from the 1970s-style mariachi look to something a bit more classic. Hell, why don’t you mix-and-match it up? They’ve already got you in a suit, so you might as well have some fun with it.

1542 Haight, SF. (415) 864-0818

 

BEST GRAND POOBAH OF THE PAST

A visit to the cavernous Potrero Hill digs of Big Daddy’s Antiques ushers you into a wondrous, uncannily postmodern version of the past. There’s definitely a little vintage-meets-steampunk aesthetic going on — Big Daddy grand poobah Shane Brown and his magic elves have collected enough old-school film lights, globes, wooden angel wings, horse-drawn buggies, large animal heads, giant pillars, and studio cameras with bellows to kit out the dreams of antique queens and cyber-fanboys alike. (Tech guys, please get your decor here.) And the large collection of Depression-era Americana like shoe shop signs and flag bunting adds to the pleasantly discombobulating Twilight Zone feel. Don’t worry though; the amiable Big Daddy’s staff will guide you though it all.

1550 17th St., SF. (415) 621-6800, www.bdantiques.com

 

BEST SHOT OF PANACHE

We just have one question for you, Revolver: can we move in? We would fit so well in your charming, roomy, homey, comfy store-and-gallery. On warm summer days, we could don one of your light summer frocks and Illesteva sunglasses, like contemporary post-ironic preppies but not that heavy; seal in our dewy look with one of your delicious moisturizers; and have coffee while pondering the art on display in your back room. Evenings, we could venture out in a pair of Tretorn rubber boots or suede Volta high tops and Creep khaki chinos, then settle in for the night on one of your durable cotton Japanese Workers pillow covers. In short, Revolver, we like everything about your small, beautifully curated store. Just one more thing: Is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you glad to see us?

136 Fillmore, SF. (415) 578-3363, www.revolversf.com

 

BEST HOLGA ROLLS

You know what’s tired? Using your iPhone to take a picture of yourself in the mirror for your Google+ profile. You know what’s not tired? Using a low-fi medium format 120 film Chinese toy camera from the 1980s to snap that same pic. Sure, you could just download Hipstamatic, but the hardcore among us prefer to use the delightful original mechanism — an actual Holga camera — which, thanks to a mini-craze in the past few years, has become readily available in the U.S. But you’ll need the right roll of film, and the awesome Photoworks is here to provide. Photoworks stocks hard-to-find film from all over the world, offers excellent print production services, and will even stretch your Holga hotness on a canvas to hang in your hallway.

2077-A Market, SF. (415) 626-6800, www.photoworkssf.com

 

BEST NATURE NOOKIE NAPSACKS

Backpacks, tents, and BPA-free utensils designed with an eye for classic retro outdoors-y accouterments (think 1980s L.L. Bean and 1970s RV campers), Mission District-based camping company Alite Designs‘ gear is innovative, body conscious, and oh-so-considerate of our decadent ways. Take for example its Sexy Hotness sleeping bag — at first glance, just a pretty sack for camp-crashing, but unzip the center fastener and it becomes a thermo-Snuggie with built-in feet, its center zipper freeing your nether regions for trips to the john or even a little nature nookie. Plus, the bags connect endlessly, so if you roll deep ‘n’ dirty, your camp orgies will be well served.

2505 Mariposa, SF. (415) 626-1526, www.alitedesigns.com

Best of the Bay 2011 Readers Poll: Food and Drink

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Best of the Bay 2011 Readers Poll: Food and Drink

BEST OF THE BAY READERS POLL 2011

FOOD AND DRINK

 

BEST OVERALL RESTAURANT

Nopa

560 Divisadero, SF. (415) 864-8643, www.nopasf.com

 

BEST NEW RESTAURANT

Wayfare Tavern

558 Sacramento, SF. (415) 772-9060, www.wayfaretavern.com

 

BEST BUDGET RESTAURANT

Jake’s Steaks

3301 Buchanan, SF. (415) 922-2211, www.jakessteaks.net

 

BEST SPLURGE RESTAURANT

Millennium

580 Geary, SF. (415) 345-3900, www.millenniumrestaurant.com

 

BEST LATE NIGHT RESTAURANT

Sparky’s Diner

242 Church, SF. (415) 692-7673, www.sparkysdinersf.com

 

BEST ROMANTIC RESTAURANT

The Cliff House

1090 Point Lobos, SF. (415) 386-3330, www.cliffhouse.com

 

BEST FOOD CART

Curry Up Now

www.curryupnow.com

 

BEST FARMER’S MARKET

Ferry Plaza

1 Ferry Building, SF. (415) 291-3276, www.cuesa.org

 

BEST PIZZA

Little Star

Various locations, www.littlestarpizza.com

 

BEST SANDWICHES

Ike’s Place

3489 16th St., SF. (415) 553-6888, www.ilikeikesplace.com

 

BEST BURRITOS

Papalote

3409 24th St., SF. (415) 970-8815 and 1777 Fulton, SF. (415) 776-0106, www.papalote-sf.com

 

BEST SMALL PLATES

Cha Cha Cha

1801 Haight, SF. (415) 386-7670 and 2327 Mission, SF. (415) 824-1502, www.cha3.com

 

BEST BURGER AND FRIES

Burgermeister

Various locations, www.burgermeistersf.com

 

BEST BARBECUE

Memphis Minnie’s

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

 

BEST SUSHI

Ichi Sushi

3369 Mission, SF. (415) 535-4750, www.ichisushi.com

 

BEST BOWL OF NOODLES

Turtle Tower

631 Larkin, SF. (415) 409-3333 and 5716 Geary, SF. (415) 221-9890, www.turtletowersf.com

 

BEST SEAFOOD RESTAURANT

Woodhouse Fish Co.

2073 Market, SF. and 1914 Fillmore, SF. (415) 437-2722, www.woodhousefish.com

 

BEST ITALIAN RESTAURANT

Delfina

3621 18th St., SF. (415) 552-4055, www.delfinasf.com

 

BEST MIDDLE EASTERN RESTAURANT

Café La Mediterranée

Various locations, www.cafelamed.com

 

BEST INDIAN RESTAURANT

Dosa

995 Valencia, SF. (415) 642-3672 and 1700 Fillmore (415) 441-3672, www.dosasf.com

 

BEST MEXICAN RESTAURANT

Puerto Alegre

546 Valencia, SF. (415) 255-8201

 

BEST CHINESE RESTAURANT

Mission Chinese

2234 Mission, SF. (415) 863-2800, www.missionchinesefood.com

 

BEST THAI RESTAURANT

Osha Thai

Various locations, www.oshathai.com

 

BEST VEGETARIAN RESTAURANT

Greens

Fort Mason, Building A, SF. (415) 771-6222, www.greensrestaurant.com

 

BEST VEGAN RESTAURANT

Gracias Madre

2211 Mission, SF. (415) 683-1346, www.gracias-madre.com

 

BEST BREAKFAST

Chloe’s Café

1399 Church, SF. (415) 648-4116

 

BEST BRUNCH

Zazie

941 Cole, SF. (415) 564-5332, www.zaziesf.com

 

BEST LUNCH

San Francisco Soup Co.

Various locations, www.sfsoupco.com

 

BEST DESSERT

Bi-Rite Creamery

3692 18th St., SF. (415) 626-5600, www.biritecreamery.com

 

BEST SERVICE

Gary Danko

800 North Point, SF. (415) 749-2060, www.garydanko.com

 

BEST FOOD/DRINKS BLOG OR SITE

Tablehopper

www.tablehopper.com

 

BEST CAFÉ

Café Flore

2298 Market, SF. (415) 621-8579, www.cafeflore.com

 

BEST CUP OF COFFEE

Blue Bottle

Various locations, www.bluebottlecoffee.net

 

BEST CUP OF TEA

Satori Tea Company

37 N. San Pedro St., San Jose. (408) 292-1502, www.thesatoriteacompany.com

 

BEST OVERALL BAR

Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge

1304 Lincoln, Alameda. (510) 749-0332, www.forbiddenislandalameda.com

 

BEST DIVE BAR

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF. (415) 282-3325, www.elriosf.com

 

BEST SWANKY BAR

Bourbon and Branch

501 Jones, SF. (415) 931-7292, www.bourbonandbranch.com

 

BEST SINGLES BAR

Blackbird

2124 Market, SF. (415) 503-0630, www.blackbirdbar.com

 

BEST HAPPY HOUR

Midnight Sun

4067 18th St., SF. (415) 861-4186, www.midnightsunsf.com

 

BEST WINERY

V Sattui

1111 White Lane, St. Helena. (707) 963-7774, www.vsattui.com

 

BEST WINE BAR

Noeteca

1551 Dolores, SF. (415) 824-5524, www.noeteca.com

 

BEST BREWERY

Anchor Steam Brewery

1705 Mariposa, SF. (415) 863-8350. www.anchorbrewing.com

 

BEST SELECTION OF BEERS

Toronado

547 Haight, SF. (415) 863-2276, www.toronado.com

 

BEST COCKTAILS

Smuggler’s Cove

650 Gough, SF. (415) 869-1900, www.smugglerscovesf.com

 

BEST BLOODY MARY

Zeitgeist

199 Valencia, SF. (415) 255-7505, www.zeitgeistsf.com

 

BEST BAR STAFF

DNA Lounge

375 11th St., SF. (415) 626-1409, www.dnalounge.com

 

BEST POT EDIBLES

The Vapor Room

607A Haight, SF. (415) 633-6072, www.vaporroom.com

 

BEST BAKERY

Tartine

600 Guerrero, SF. (415) 487-2600, www.tartinebakery.com

 

BEST BUTCHER SHOP

Drewes Bros.

1706 Church, SF. (415) 821-0515, www.drewesbros.com

 

BEST CHEESE SHOP

Cowgirl Creamery

1 Ferry Building No. 17, SF. (415) 362-9354, www.cowgirlcreamery.com

 

BEST CHOCOLATIER

Recchiuti Confections

1 Ferry Building No. 30, SF. (415) 834-9494, www.recchuiti.com

 

Appetite: Jasper’s menu brightens up the Corner Tap

Andrew Lam
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All photos by Virginia Miller

You heard it here a couple weeks ago: Jasper’s Corner Tap & Kitchen is going to be a drink destination, no doubt about it. Pair its all-star bartender line-up and impeccable cocktail menu with 18 beers on draft (like Telegraph Reserve Wheat from Santa Barbara), a fine wine list with playful categories like “Flower Power” and “We’ve Got the Funk”, satisfying bar food, (eventually) open-all-day hours – and plunk the whole thing down next to Union Square, a perfect tavern space for your downtown rendevous? The set-up is already screaming hit.

If a sneak taste yesterday is any indication, it’s the type of place to bring friends for casual comfort food – house-made sausages, fish and chips, and lamb shepherd’s pie — with well-crafted yet un-fussy cocktails or craft beers in a space that manages to be industrial and warm at the same time. Bar service bodes well with a  talented staff that includes not only Kevin Diedrich (formerly of Burritt Room and NYC’s PDT), but also Brian MacGregor (Jardiniere), Francis Kelly (Ponzu, Presidio Social Club), and Allison Webber (Portland’s Irving Street Kitchen and The Gilt Club). 

As bar manager Kevin Diedrich told me, the menu is meant to be “approachable and not too geeky,” yet in signature Diedrich style, perfectly balanced and nuanced (for a delicious example of Diedrich balance, try his Soda Jerk, in which blanco tequila and Campari get tart with hits of lime and passion fruit, then fizzy and gently sweet with cream soda and egg white). 

Upping the game, Jasper’s will be the first known bar to have Bols Genever on draft! Starting next week, get your fill of a beloved Dutch spirit, flowing fresh and lush. Stay tuned for future unusual draft and barrel-aged offerings.

Enjoying bar bites (Berkshire pork riblettes, anyone?), I tasted through a wide range of the cocktail menu. With playful descriptions under each drink and plenty of house bitters and syrups, it satisfies the cocktail aficionado but, as Diedrich mentions, keeps bartenders and customers happy by not being painstaking or pretentious. Some drinks only have a handful of ingredients, others require a simple mix and stir and they’re ready. Elegant but straightforward. 

Join me on a little sneak-peek photo journey through a few food and cocktail highlights. Cocktail recipes are Kevin Diedrich’s unless otherwise noted. 

Jasper’s Corner Tap and Kitchen

401 Taylor, SF

(415) 775-7979

www.jasperscornertap.com

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

 

Best of the Bay 2011: BEST FRENCH KISS (ON BOTH CHEEKS)

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

Ah, the French. They may be derided as pretentious and spoofed for pomposity, but really, is there anything more irresistibly charmant than a mâitre d’ with a French accent who runs to greet, addresses you as "monsieur" or "madame," kisses your hand, and almost renders you dizzy with the inebriating bonhomie wafting from his person? We don’t think so. And when we want this kind of treatment — and some superlative food and wine — we head to Bistro Central Parc. A Panhandle institution long before NoPa was NoPa (the neighborhood) and NoPa had Nopa (the restaurant), this friendly Francais fixture excels at staples like beef bourguignon and duck confit. Can’t find it? Follow the neighbors, and the mingled smells of bouillabaisse and frites.

560 Central, SF. (415) 750-1111. www.bistrocentralparc.com

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