Artist Laurel Lee hosts a fine art class geared towards women, lesbians, and female-identified people on Saturday.
————-
>> CSC Film Night: Happy Endings?
CSC presents an intriguing exploration of the Asian massage parlor industry in Providence, Rhode Island.
Wed/14, 7:30pm
$5-$15
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF www.sexandculture.org
————-
>> Barbary Coast Burlesque
Wear a costume, wine a prize, and enjoy drink specials while Virginia Suicide hosts this monthly show, featuring Mae Western, Cupcake, Kitty Von Quimm, Balla Fire, and more.
CHEAP EATS Earl Butter and me decided there was one thing we wanted to see at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. So I stole my downstairs neighbor’s bike, borrowed a lock from another neighbor … who had to figure out the combination on the Internet … which took time … me thinking …
Can bike thieves get online?
Banking on probably not, I put the heavy lock in my purse, raced to BART without a helmet, almost falling every time I stopped because the seat was so high, carried it up the steps and onto BART, which became crowded, and 45 minutes later had to carry it up even more steps than before.
And when I came up from underground I was almost blown over by the wind. My handlebars were bent at a weird angle to the front wheel, but I managed to make it to Earl Butter’s house without veering into any busses or anything. Then we rode to Golden Gate Park.
The sun was setting. The temperature was arctic. Elsewhere in the Bay Area, houses were falling down. (Well, one did, I heard later on the radio.) On north-to-south streets we would have been blowed sideways into parked cars were it not for the ingeniousness of spokes. As long as we were aiming west, the wind was merely pushing us backward. Which seemed safe enough, except for the blinding sun. I couldn’t see Earl Butter in front of me, and wondered how in the world car drivers would see me.
Still, that’s the way you gotta go to get from the Mission to the park: west. At every other corner or so, Earl Butter would wait for me to catch up. I was so surprised: I’m supposed to be a soccer player. I can play three games in one Sunday, but I can’t ride a bike up a hill.
Six hours later we arrived at the festival.
There was nowhere to lock our bikes. I wished I had a camera, it was so beautiful, bikes totemed onto, around, and up every single signpost and pole, clinging at impossible angles, colorful and Seussian.
"I suggest you lock them to trees," the guy at the gate suggested, but even all the trees were taken, bikes hanging from every reachable limb, strange fruit. It was so pretty. I tried to think of this as an art exhibit, and my reason for coming, since I knew the Flatlanders, the last act of the evening, were already halfway through their set.
We had to do a little bushwhacking, but we eventually found some uncharted trees to lock onto. It was getting dark by then, and I realized I would need two things I didn’t have to get my bike back later: a flashlight and reading glasses. There was some solace in the thought that a bike thief would need at least one of those things, plus Internet access. Or, I guess, a saw.
We found our stage in time to catch four songs, none of which were particular favorites of mine, and then, thanks to full moons and the glow of my iPod, we found and even unlocked our bikes. By this time I couldn’t feel my toes, my fingers, or my nose. And it finally occurred to me that my borrowedish bike had not one single reflector anywhere on it, let alone a light, and that I was wearing all black and was about to die.
Now if there’s one thing you know about me after all these years on the toilet, it’s that I absolutely positively hate to die on an empty stomach. And that’s where Chiang Mai comes in. So once again, my fear of dying hungry saved my life.
Because this cute little Thai place on Geary Street was warm in more ways than one: 1) it was warm; 2) it was sweet and cozy, all a-clutter with plants and cute things and shit, which restored my will to live; and 3) tom yum.
"Medium?" the waitressperson guessed.
I shook my head, said, "Hot as you got."
Side a noodles, cause I knew I’d need the carbohoohaw just to get back out to the sidewalk, let alone home. And now I have a new favorite restaurant.
CHIANG MAI
Mon.–Fri. 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m. & 5 p.m.–10 p.m.;
Sat.–Sun. 5 p.m.–10 p.m.
5020 Geary, SF
(415) 387-1299
Beer & wine
AE/D/MC/V
L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.
Imagine a casting call for a beer commercial — a beer, I should add, marketed toward cool young people and not geezers or swollen couch slugs — and you’ll have some idea of the scene at Magnolia Gastropub & Brewery on any given night. Loose halter tops, soccer butts, and headsful of tousled hair dot the Rathskeller-scape, while the human noise (let’s call it the roar of youth) is so loud and steady as to achieve a transcendence. The noise is beyond noise; it warps reality and becomes another dimension. As a confirmed hater of noise, I should have hated it passionately, but it’s hard to sustain that kind of energy when you are engulfed in a sea of jubilant 20-somethings. Like all human moods, exuberance is communicable, and you won’t see many long faces coming out of Magnolia. On the other hand, you might well see some people, probably older than 40, gingerly checking to make sure their ears are still attached to their skulls as they regain the (comparatively) tranquil street.
Magnolia has been a beacon-like presence at the corner of Haight and Masonic for 15 years. In part, and in true pub fashion, it’s a neighborhood joint, but from the beginning the microbrewed beers have provided a broader draw. Magnolia was among the first of the city’s modern brewpubs — places that brewed their own beer and matched good food to go with it. And while the kitchen has recently undergone a change of chef, with Ronnie New now in charge, the food retains its gastro-pubby, beer-friendly edge. There’s a daily pizza, a burger made with Prather Ranch beef, and (at lunch) a meatloaf sandwich. But New has Louisiana roots, and he’s infused Magnolia’s new menu with various Cajun and Creole touches.
You’ll find quite a few of these among the side dishes ($5), which include collard greens, dirty rice, cheese grits, and black-eyed peas simmered with ham hocks. I love black-eyed peas and consider them a real delicacy, and how could you go wrong simmering them with ham hocks? But something did go wrong — maybe a total dearth of salt — and the result was lifelessness. There was considerably more kick in the vinegary (though non-bayou) sauerkraut, but when we asked whether it was house-made, our server shook her head. (Service is surprisingly good, by the way, considering the intensity of the evening rush, but the service staff’s manner is Parisian in its emphasis on efficiency rather than fawning.)
Okra, a staple of bayou cooking, makes its presence felt in ways subtle and not. You can have it more or less straight up, as a buttermilk-battered and deep-fried appetizer, but it also appears in the succotash that accompanies a slab of pan-seared halibut ($19). The fish, topped by a beret of basil aioli, is nicely cooked, moist and flaky, but the plate is dominated by the colorful succotash, a gravelly mat of corn kernels, halved cherry tomatoes, and okra splinters.
Not all the food is Louisiana-inflected or even pubby. We were especially impressed by a watermelon salad ($7), which managed to give the late-summer bounty of California a sly Saharan aura. The cubes of melon were tossed with slices of peeled, seeded cucumber and chunks of goat cheese and then dressed with a saba vinaigrette and shreds of mint. Some sweetness, some tang; a bit of creaminess, a bit of crunch. (The watermelon, incidentally, is thought to be native to Egypt and was cultivated as a means of carrying water in the desert.)
And a summer tomato soup ($7) could have been on the menu at many a California-cuisine spot. The (hot) soup had a pleasant coarseness, but the real treat was the archipelago of croutons, coated with melted Gruyère, bobbing in the middle of the bowl.
In a surprising development, desserts are quite good — neither overwrought nor (as is so often the case at pub-style establishments) ordinary and perfunctory. A plum crisp ($7) was deftly enlivened by the addition of tomatoes; their texture was difficult to distinguish from that of the plums, but their earthy acidity helped damp the sweetness. I would have called this dish a crumble, since it was in effect a shallow dish of stewed fruit with the pastry bits scattered over the top like sprinkles on a doughnut. There was no proper crust.
A pair of tiny ice-cream sandwiches ($7), like sliders, reached the table in a supercooled condition, and we were told to let them stand for five minutes so they could relax. The crisp, alas, didn’t last that long, so when we turned to the sandwiches, they were still slightly gelid. But the flavor of the Bi-Rite roasted banana ice cream glowed through the cold, and the graham-cracker cookies were like un-lemony madeleines. (Perhaps to compensate for the lack of lemon, the inner faces of the cookies were smeared with white chocolate.) The bite- (or two-bite-) size of the sandwiches was also a bit of caloric discipline for those of us no longer in our 20s. A diamond might be forever, but not a soccer butt. *
“First Thursday” is, you guessed it, the first Thursday of every month, but it’s also an open house art event where 30-plus galleries, mostly concentrated in downtown SF, invite you to look and hopefully buy their art things from around 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
But, what if — like me — you struggle making decisions that involve seemingly endless options and finite resources (time, money, stomach space)? If at restaurants you get overwhelmed by the menu’s dimensions, eventually narrow it down to the french toast and panini, but linger between the combinations tirelessly? You can choose at random, allowing chance to dictate your indecisiveness, or, you give in, exercising volition. Neither option, however, will erase the pangs of what was left out — what if the wild arugula salad would have been the one?
Oh the anguish of living in a liberal democracy! How does one make a decision and avoid the anxiety of absence? The answer: suicide. Not the act, but the drink. Filling a 64 ounce mug from every soda pop spout from Hawaiian Punch to Mountain Dew reconciles the dilemma at hand, because everything is chosen and nothing left out. Sure, the result tastes like shit, but at least you’ve experienced all there was to experience, albeit all at once.
This was my logic for “First Thursday.” There was just one problem: given that there’s over 30 participating galleries and only a two-hour window, that leaves less than four minutes per gallery, excluding commute time. Impossible.
The next best alternative? Hit the most concentrated area: 49 Geary St. With five floors and 20 galleries, two hours allow five minutes per gallery and 20 minutes in the hallways and stairs. Most galleries get boring after mere seconds anyways, so five minutes is plenty of time to drink a glass of wine, do a quick perusal, snap some photos, and jot down some impressions. In order to avoid another decision, these shotgun summaries are limited to 49 words each, constrained, like each gallery’s space, by the building. In order of viewing, here are 20 extremely hasty reviews of the 49 Geary St. galleries:
1. Bekris Gallery: “Common Ground” (continues through Nov. 21) www.bekrisgallery.com
Importantly dressed buyer-types regaling each other of trips to Africa and chanting, “Oh, how do you do?” “How do you do.” Broom-like statues of African subjects, and lively colored paintings with tricky ciphers fill the room. General, by William Kentridge, is the most attractive piece in the place.
General by William Kentridge. All photos by Spencer Young.
2. George Lawson Gallery: Clem Crosby, Tad Wiley, Transfocus (continues through Oct. 3) www.rfprfp.com
Eerily empty compared to Bekris Gallery. Clem Crosby: crude, ugly, drippy oil paintings seemingly painted with fingers, fists, and libidinal angst. Tad Wiley: solemn, yet inviting graphic arts balanced-shape paintings on paper. Transfocus: haunting photos of the abstract, awash in yummy colors. Uhh… where is the wine?
Every week, Virginia Miller of personalized itinerary service and monthly food, drink, and travel newsletter, www.theperfectspotsf.com, shares foodie news, events, and deals. View the last installment here.
Whiskeyfest events and tastings all week long. Sazerac cocktail photo by Daniel Stumpf
Through 10/17 – Whiskeyfest happenings all week long
I told you about Whiskeyfest happening this Friday in last week’s Appetite, but for those who either can’t afford the big blowout at the Marriott on Friday, or who want to keep the celebration (and tasting) going all week, pick from a stellar line-up and range of events happening through Saturday. Whiskeyfest’s Web site has a comprehensive listing, as does one of my favorite spirits’ blogs, Camper English’s Alcademics. There are tasting sessions from distillers and whiskey experts at restaurants and bars around town, like Elixir and 15 Romolo, roundtable tastings and a Glenfiddich & Cigars night at whiskey dive bar haven, Broken Record, Fifth Floor’s always classy Whiskey Wednesdays and other special happy hours, and even a whiskey dinner at the Alembic put on by K&L Wine Merchants. So many choices, (thankfully) all of them involving whiskey. www.maltadvocate.com
10/17 – Lower Fillmore’s Cool Black Ball
Here’s sexy way to drink and dine… in a night that evokes the jazz glory days of Lower Fillmore, come out in your 1920’s-50’s dress for Cool Black Ball, darting in and out of Fillmore’s jazz clubs and restaurants, like 1300 on Fillmore, Yoshi’s, Rasselas, Sheba Piano Lounge. Each will feature special menu items, jazz bands and dancing till 2am, concerts included with the price of a ticket (or a free show at Bruno’s on Fillmore; note details on the website for getting half off your ticket if you dine at Yoshi’s or Rasselas). In the Fillmore Center Plaza from 7:30-8:30pm, there’s free swing lessons and open dancing in the plaza from 8:30-10pm. Think vintage clothing from any of those four decades, with emphasis on “cool, classy, sexy, hip and all black”. Certainly non-vintage black is welcome, and watching Fillmore come alive with finely dressed partiers should be a surreal experience. Come out for a little night music… and some food. 10/17, 7pm-2am
$30 Advance; $40 at door (Fillmore Center Plaza)
Lower Fillmore Street (between Post and Eddy) www.coolblackball.com
I’m the lady in the joint without a g-string and waxed chocha.
Winter dressed and the money in my pocket afforded me a Heineken.
I have no ones to offer to thighs that can headlock Washington.
Coins work best for parking meters and wishes.
When the next dancer arrives to stage, she brings a blanket.
The basket and wine are missing. She wipes the pole
with a moist napkin — the abracadabra is gone.
Gestures to the wall to press start, positions her gingham
so it doesn’t abandon her when she scripts her alphabet.
She takes an interest in me — this is not ego —
she sees the wardrobe of long sleeves and pants in how I stare.
Weeks ago, I saw her forefinger in some butch’s belt loop,
coupled like his and hers towels. Maybe she noticed me then.
She comes to my earring and requests, slap my ass.
Shakes it like wind went through her leaves.
My hands are on pause. She laughs
then brings her undulations to a man in woodsman flannel.
She returns her legs, fans the sweet of green
apples ripe in my nose. In doggy style, demonstrates.
Her spank is the utter of unbreakable dishware.
Again — thud. No shatter.
She encourages me, recognizes this is my first time on a two-wheeler.
I grab the Heineken to cool the singing in my palm.
I’m ordered to give it to her, and like the kid in band
who plays cymbals, counting to cue, I make her bottom ring like Saturn.
She wanes from stage with a fête of smiles in her strut.
CHEAP EATS At a pretty good restaurant in a small town, other side of the mountains, we were greeted and seated by a small boy, age 9, 10, 11 tops. We looked at each other, looked at the kid, looked at each other, shrugged, and followed him to our table.
"Can I get you anything to drink?" he said.
We had just emerged from Death Valley, where the heat was intense and the scenery surreal, and milk was the last thing on our minds.
"Um, what kind of lemonades do you have?" I said, scanning the menu very quickly. It was an inside joke between me and me — one of my specialties.
Romeo ordered a beer. He lives in Germany, and his favorite brew is Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
Well, we were doing it. Setting up camp together, if not house. After a few days of cooking on fires, sleeping in tents, squatting in the bushes, and not washing at all, Romeo said he felt like he had got to meet Dan Leone. He said he liked him OK, but maybe we should get a motel room for one night.
I agreed. It was weird to be cut in half like that and, though I have never been one to run from weirdness, I do prefer speaking of myself in the first person. A bath seemed like a very good idea.
A bath, a pluck, a night of mattressousness, change of clothes in the morning, and I would be myself again. But first, while I was still Dan Leone, I had to order a buffalo burger with bacon, cheese, barbecue sauce, and chili on it, because … I mean, come on, were we or were we not a couple of smelly cowboygirls just in from a roundup?
Of course we were. The more interesting question is what was the fuck re: the fourth- or fifth-grade waitchild. Sixth-grade tops. Do we have child labor laws here? My German wanted to know. I think so, I thought, but maybe they don’t apply to family-run restaurants in tiny middle-of-nowhere towns. Clearly that was what this was, a family. There was a strong resemblance between the kid, a slightly older kid also waiting tables, a slightly-older-than-that kid, and the cat in charge, their father, who seemed too young to have three kids, including at least one teenager, so maybe he was the oldest brother, I don’t know.
Anyway, it was a school night.
And I still can’t decide if the whole thing was cute or creepy, so I’ll just tell you that the burger was great. Even though it may well be mean, unfair, and irresponsible of me to tell you so, according to a whole pile of e-style mail waiting for me upon my return to civilization.
Apparently a popular restaurant that I slagged a couple weeks ago is run by a positive force in the community, and so therefore I shouldn’t say anything bad about their carne asada. Which sucked. But most of the people who called for my resignation, apologies, do-overs, and so forth, admitted that they were vegetarians, and so presumably have never had the carne asada (which sucks) at their favorite restaurant.
Really, I doubt I’ll like the vegetarian food there either, because the rice and beans didn’t impress me and the salsa was even worse than the meat, but I am nothing if not a good sport. I will re-review the Sunrise, and I will order something vegetarian this time, provided one of the vegetarians calling for my head/job/apology agrees to a) pay for it, and b) sit across from me and eat carne asada.
You’ll get your do-over, and I’ll get to watch a vegetarian eat meat. Which is one of my favorite pastimes.
Just so you know though: I’ll say exactly what I think about anything I eat, I don’t care if Jesus Hisself runs the joint. I calls ’em like I tastes ’em, and if I don’t like His bread and wine, or carne asada …
Oh, but I did like that buffalo burger, very much. What a shame, that a child labor law scofflaw and/or mean dad can be a better cook than a sweetie-pie.
Cruel world!
MOUNT WHITNEY RESTAURANT
Daily: 6 a.m.–9 p.m.
227 S. Main, Lone Pine
(760) 876-5751
Beer & wine
MC/V
L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.
An as-yet unnamed phenomenon involves the transformation of stylish or distinctive restaurant spaces into homier Asian spots. The most conspicuous example I can think of is the restaurant adjoining the Hotel Milano, at Fifth and Mission. At one point, about 15 years ago, it held a Michel Richard venture, Bistro M, and now it’s a Thai joint, with purple neon signage.
A more recent exhibit is the migration, or extension, of the Vietnamese restaurant Sunflower from its longtime haunt at Valencia and 16th streets to the old Baraka space on Potrero Hill. For years, Sunflower has been a perfectly decent, modestly priced, rather ordinary-looking restaurant in a stratified and hypercompetitive venue, while Baraka was a small jewel, slightly above the fray on its hillside perch. I would not have foreseen the melding of the two. But now, when you step into what was Baraka, you’ll smell lemongrass — and much as I liked Baraka in its several guises over the past six years, I like lemongrass as much. (Outside, incidentally, you’re likely to smell the garlic breath of Goat Hill Pizza across the street.)
The restaurant’s décor looks to have been (so far) little touched by the regime change and the new, golden name. The walls of the h-shaped dining room are still a throbbing red, and there is no host’s station, which means that a line of tables begins within a few feet of the front door. This is awkward for all parties concerned, and it would be worse if the staff was less attentive. But they are very attentive, and blockages are cleared quickly. Still, the tables just inside the door are not exactly choice, and if you can find your way to a table on either side of the dining room, or deeper in, you’ll probably be happier.
The menu reflects the degree to which Vietnamese cooking has come to be accepted as another variety of American comfort food. You can certainly get similar stuff for quite a bit less in the Tenderloin, where it is served in much more modest settings that remind us of how ragged things were for many Vietnamese immigrants a generation ago, at the close of the Vietnam War. And you can get far fancier — and pricier — food at the Slanted Door. Sunflower sits somewhere between these two poles; it is upscale, in a mild, neighborhood way, while remaining more or less traditional and comparatively inexpensive in its cooking.
You can get imperial rolls, you can get pho (although it’s not called that), you can get garlic noodles ($7.95), and they are excellent. You can also get spring rolls, either with shrimp or in vegetarian guise ($6.95 either way); we found the vegetarian version to be a little heavy on the tofu — big, spongy blocks of tastelessness right in the middle of things.
Better were the vegetarian pot stickers ($6.95), which had been steamed (instead of wok-seared in the Chinese style) and therefore lacked that nicely caramelized base. They were also damper overall than their Chinese counterparts, and contained tofu. But they also held a wealth of shredded cabbage and mushroom chunks and were served with a velvet-smooth peanut sauce that helped make up any flavor deficiency.
If you like imperial rolls but are hesitant about ordering deep-fried items outright, you can find them slipped into your vermicelli ($7.95), a big bowl of fine rice noodles overlaid with bean sprouts, mint, ground peanuts, nuoc nam (the ubiquitous, salty-sweet sauce), and some kind of flesh, or no flesh. The barbecued beef in a lemongrass marinade was ethereally tender and fragrant, while the imperial rolls were flawless: nicely crisped skins (with a bit of stubble) enclosing an earthy blend of minced pork and taro.
Grilled lemongrass chicken ($13.95) is generally a bulletproof favorite. Here the kitchen uses strips of boneless breast meat, and as any Thanksgiving cook knows, it’s the white breast meat that’s most in peril of drying out. Our strips were pretty dry and slightly tough, though chicken never gets really tough. Fortunately, lemongrass has powerful therapeutic, or at least distractive, effects, and nuoc nam (a saucer of which seems to be a perpetual presence on most of the tables) is a useful moisturizer.
A dish that helped put Slanted Door on the map, way back when, was shaken (or shaking) beef. Sunflower offers its own, quite worthy version, and if, at $11.95, it isn’t quite a steal, it’s pretty close. The meat (filet mignon or a similar cut, I would guess from the lean tenderness) is cubed, then wokked with garlic and chilies. It isn’t as aromatic as the lemongrass items (and can initially be overwhelmed by them if they’re served simultaneously), but once you start to taste the garlic and feel the chili heat, it becomes addictive.
And may I offer a brief huzzah in the matter of Sunflower’s rice continence: You’re asked if you want it at all, and if you do, the serving for one is about the size and shape of an inverted teacup. Brown rice ($1.75) has an appealing mottled inkiness and a nice toasty taste that reminded me, a little, of sunflower seeds.
Every week, Virginia Miller of personalized itinerary service and monthly food, drink, and travel newsletter, www.theperfectspotsf.com, shares foodie news, events, and deals. View the last installment here.
10/14 Wine & Spirits Top 100 Event at SF Design Center
Six years strong, I’ve heard that Wine & Spirits Top 100 Tasting, honoring their pick of the Top 100 Wineries of the Year from around the globe, is one of the better wine events of the year, full of tastings, food, and merriment. Yes, you can meet the winemakers while sampling their award-winning wines. Just a few wineries at this year’s event include Krug, Louis Roederer, Diamond Creek, Henschke, Shafer, Williams Selyem. Never fear, foodies, the food is equally a draw. They’ve assembled a line-up of eats from the classic (Cliff House) to the latest and greatest, like Flour+Water, RN74, Gitane, Il Cane Rosso and Showdogs. There’s even signature specialties from the likes of 4505 Meats, Candybar, Barefoot Coffee, Brix and Hog Island. Sounds way better than happy hour. 6:30-8:30pm (VIP 6pm)
General admission $95, VIP $125
The Galleria at SF Design Center
101 Henry Adams Street www.wineandspiritsmagazine.com/top100
10/16 SF WhiskeyFest at the Marriott Call me a lush, but knowing there will be some of the world’s finest whiskeys (and whiskies – yes, there is a difference) all under the roof of the San Francisco Marriott for Whiskeyfest makes me a bit giddy. It’s three hours of tasting bourbons, scotches, and ryes from around the globe. Distillers and experts will be pouring themselves, so you can ask questions, dialogue, and find new favorites. A charity whisky table features ultra-rare bottles (donations for tasting go to Meals on Wheels San Francisco), and bartenders, like the Bourbon & Branch crew, will be mixing special cocktails at their booths. There’s also seminars, a food buffet, and with the price of admission, a Scottish crystal glass, and a one-year subscription to Malt Advocate. If you still want more (you greedy aficianado, you), $150 VIP passes secure access one hour before everyone else arrives, plus an additional number of rare pours. 6:30-9:30pm
Regular $110, VIP $150
San Francisco Marriott
55 4th Street
800-610-MALT www.maltadvocate.com/docs/whiskyfest/san_francisco
Every week, Virginia Miller of personalized itinerary service and monthly food, drink, and travel newsletter, www.theperfectspotsf.com, shares foodie news, events, and deals. View the last installment here.
10/14 Wine & Spirits Top 100 Event at SF Design Center
Six years strong, I’ve heard that Wine & Spirits Top 100 Tasting, honoring their pick of the Top 100 Wineries of the Year from around the globe, is one of the better wine events of the year, full of tastings, food, and merriment. Yes, you can meet the winemakers while sampling their award-winning wines. Just a few wineries at this year’s event include Krug, Louis Roederer, Diamond Creek, Henschke, Shafer, Williams Selyem. Never fear, foodies, the food is equally a draw. They’ve assembled a line-up of eats from the classic (Cliff House) to the latest and greatest, like Flour+Water, RN74, Gitane, Il Cane Rosso and Showdogs. There’s even signature specialties from the likes of 4505 Meats, Candybar, Barefoot Coffee, Brix and Hog Island. Sounds way better than happy hour. 6:30-8:30pm (VIP 6pm)
General admission $95, VIP $125
The Galleria at SF Design Center
101 Henry Adams Street www.wineandspiritsmagazine.com/top100
10/16 SF WhiskeyFest at the Marriott Call me a lush, but knowing there will be some of the world’s finest whiskeys (and whiskies – yes, there is a difference) all under the roof of the San Francisco Marriott for Whiskeyfest makes me a bit giddy. It’s three hours of tasting bourbons, scotches, and ryes from around the globe. Distillers and experts will be pouring themselves, so you can ask questions, dialogue, and find new favorites. A charity whisky table features ultra-rare bottles (donations for tasting go to Meals on Wheels San Francisco), and bartenders, like the Bourbon & Branch crew, will be mixing special cocktails at their booths. There’s also seminars, a food buffet, and with the price of admission, a Scottish crystal glass, and a one-year subscription to Malt Advocate. If you still want more (you greedy aficianado, you), $150 VIP passes secure access one hour before everyone else arrives, plus an additional number of rare pours. 6:30-9:30pm
Regular $110, VIP $150
San Francisco Marriott
55 4th Street
800-610-MALT www.maltadvocate.com/docs/whiskyfest/san_francisco
Every week, Virginia Miller of personalized itinerary service and monthly food, drink, and travel newsletter, www.theperfectspotsf.com, shares foodie news, events, and deals. View the last installment here.
10/11 Soul Food Farm Fundraiser from Il Cane Rosso & Coi
Our Nor Cal food and farm community was saddened to hear about 30 burned acres and 1000 baby chicks lost in a recent devastating fire at Soul Food Farm in Vacaville. Daniel Patterson and his dynamic duo of restaurants, Il Cane Rosso and Coi, sponsor a fundraising dinner next week where all proceeds go to Soul Food Farm and you’re treated to a three course, family-style meal at Il Cane Rosso. Two seatings (between 5:30-6 pm, or 7:30-8 pm), offer a communal, heartwarming meal prepared with generously donated ingredients from Prather Ranch, Mariquita Farm and Full Belly. It feels good to help… and eat well at the same time.
$50 (including wine, not including tax & gratuity) 10/11, Sunday, 5:30-6pm or 7:30-8pm seatings
Il Cane Rosso, Ferry Building
415-391-7599 www.canerossosf.com http://soulfoodfarm.com/blog/2009/09/cane-russo
———–
Magnolia’s new Southern-inspired brunch
Magnolia Gastropub is one of our best local breweries and a darn good restaurant to boot. With my great love for New Orleans comes excitement at Chef Ronnie New’s Southern-inspired brunch menu (he is from New Orleans, after all). Saturdays and Sundays there’s dishes Shrimp & Grits (made from the best, naturally: Anson Mills Grits), Crab Cake Benedict, even Pheasant Eggs & Toast. Magnolia’s best is still on offer, including their house-made sausages), excellent Chicken & Waffles, French Toast, and so on. So whether you prefer your brunch with Blue Bottle Coffee or Magnolia’s renowned suds (the sampler lets you try six), you know the morning after can be nearly as fun as the night before. Saturdays and Sunday, 10am-2:30pm
1398 Haight Street
415-864-7468 www.magnoliapub.com
Every week, Virginia Miller of personalized itinerary service and monthly food, drink, and travel newsletter, www.theperfectspotsf.com, shares foodie news, events, and deals. View the last installment here.
10/11 Soul Food Farm Fundraiser from Il Cane Rosso & Coi
Our Nor Cal food and farm community was saddened to hear about 30 burned acres and 1000 baby chicks lost in a recent devastating fire at Soul Food Farm in Vacaville. Daniel Patterson and his dynamic duo of restaurants, Il Cane Rosso and Coi, sponsor a fundraising dinner next week where all proceeds go to Soul Food Farm and you’re treated to a three course, family-style meal at Il Cane Rosso. Two seatings (between 5:30-6 pm, or 7:30-8 pm), offer a communal, heartwarming meal prepared with generously donated ingredients from Prather Ranch, Mariquita Farm and Full Belly. It feels good to help… and eat well at the same time.
$50 (including wine, not including tax & gratuity) 10/11, Sunday, 5:30-6pm or 7:30-8pm seatings
Il Cane Rosso, Ferry Building
415-391-7599 www.canerossosf.com http://soulfoodfarm.com/blog/2009/09/cane-russo
———–
Magnolia’s new Southern-inspired brunch
Magnolia Gastropub is one of our best local breweries and a darn good restaurant to boot. With my great love for New Orleans comes excitement at Chef Ronnie New’s Southern-inspired brunch menu (he is from New Orleans, after all). Saturdays and Sundays there’s dishes Shrimp & Grits (made from the best, naturally: Anson Mills Grits), Crab Cake Benedict, even Pheasant Eggs & Toast. Magnolia’s best is still on offer, including their house-made sausages), excellent Chicken & Waffles, French Toast, and so on. So whether you prefer your brunch with Blue Bottle Coffee or Magnolia’s renowned suds (the sampler lets you try six), you know the morning after can be nearly as fun as the night before. Saturdays and Sunday, 10am-2:30pm
1398 Haight Street
415-864-7468 www.magnoliapub.com
Every week, Virginia Miller of personalized itinerary service and monthly food, drink, and travel newsletter, www.theperfectspotsf.com, shares foodie news, events, and deals. View the last installment here.
EVENTS 10/10 Beer & Nosh presents Notoberfest
Jesse Friedman, whose popular blog Beer and Nosh is one of the best out there on the sudsy stuff and accompanying foods, throws an event beer and food lovers shouldn’t miss. But be forewarned… the event is already half sold out though weeks away.
With a cap at 150 people, Friedman told me he plans to keep it a comfortable party with various outposts around the room, flowing with food and beer. In the spirit of collaboration, Jesse assembled quite a line-up. None other than Ryan Farr and the 4505 Meats team prepare a feast with details not completely confirmed, though I hear rumors of grass-fed beef roasted over a fire, malt-studded/malt extract-glazed pork belly (yes!), barley beer brats on a stick, fried croquet on barley & sour apple chutney, and hopped rolled face on a fence(!) Dessert promises to be equally stunning with Humphry Slocombe creating six custom beer ice creams and treats just for this event. Wow.
Sampling the goods with Steve Altamari (Valley Brew), Ryan Farr (4505 Meats), and Jake Godby (Humphry Slocombe). Photo from www.beerandnosh.com
And the beer? Valley Brewing Co. serves their suds: Reinheitsgebot-breaking beers, each non-traditional, modern takes on heirloom styles:
* Luna Blanca – Central Valley Golden Ale
* a tart Olallieberry Sour that’s been fermented using wild yeast
* Brandy Barrel-aged “Collaborative Evil” Belgian Strong Golden Ale
* India Pale Ale
* Bourbon Barrel Russian Imperial Stout
* a rich Valley Brew Skullsplitter Root Beer
* the event’s signature beer, “Notoberfest” Bourbon Barrel Maibock Lager
This collaborative night brings together passionate craftspeople serving one-of-a-kind beers, meats and ice cream. If you need any more reasons to attend, I can’t think of them. October 10, 1-5pm
$50 pre-purchase; $60 at the door (if not sold out): includes beer, food, commemorative glass and poster (shown on Web site)
Mars Bar
798 Brannan Street
415-621-6277 www.beerandnosh.com/notoberfest
This just in: Dinners from Chef Melissa Axelrod
Read about wine or beer pairing dinners around town from Chef Melissa Claire in my current issue of The Perfect Spot. www.melissaclaire.com
Every week, Virginia Miller of personalized itinerary service and monthly food, drink, and travel newsletter, www.theperfectspotsf.com, shares foodie news, events, and deals. View the last installment here.
EVENTS 10/10 Beer & Nosh presents Notoberfest
Jesse Friedman, whose popular blog Beer and Nosh is one of the best out there on the sudsy stuff and accompanying foods, throws an event beer and food lovers shouldn’t miss. But be forewarned… the event is already half sold out though weeks away.
With a cap at 150 people, Friedman told me he plans to keep it a comfortable party with various outposts around the room, flowing with food and beer. In the spirit of collaboration, Jesse assembled quite a line-up. None other than Ryan Farr and the 4505 Meats team prepare a feast with details not completely confirmed, though I hear rumors of grass-fed beef roasted over a fire, malt-studded/malt extract-glazed pork belly (yes!), barley beer brats on a stick, fried croquet on barley & sour apple chutney, and hopped rolled face on a fence(!) Dessert promises to be equally stunning with Humphry Slocombe creating six custom beer ice creams and treats just for this event. Wow.
Sampling the goods with Steve Altamari (Valley Brew), Ryan Farr (4505 Meats), and Jake Godby (Humphry Slocombe). Photo from www.beerandnosh.com
And the beer? Valley Brewing Co. serves their suds: Reinheitsgebot-breaking beers, each non-traditional, modern takes on heirloom styles:
* Luna Blanca – Central Valley Golden Ale
* a tart Olallieberry Sour that’s been fermented using wild yeast
* Brandy Barrel-aged “Collaborative Evil” Belgian Strong Golden Ale
* India Pale Ale
* Bourbon Barrel Russian Imperial Stout
* a rich Valley Brew Skullsplitter Root Beer
* the event’s signature beer, “Notoberfest” Bourbon Barrel Maibock Lager
This collaborative night brings together passionate craftspeople serving one-of-a-kind beers, meats and ice cream. If you need any more reasons to attend, I can’t think of them. October 10, 1-5pm
$50 pre-purchase; $60 at the door (if not sold out): includes beer, food, commemorative glass and poster (shown on Web site)
Mars Bar
798 Brannan Street
415-621-6277 www.beerandnosh.com/notoberfest
This just in: Dinners from Chef Melissa Axelrod
Read about wine or beer pairing dinners around town from Chef Melissa Claire in my current issue of The Perfect Spot. www.melissaclaire.com
CHEAP EATS I take back everything I said about Kaiser. Not because the receptionist at the Oakland lab asked if my semen sample was my husband’s, and not because not one sperm was seen in said sample (although both these little details did make me smile) … but because the day after my incendiary diatribe hit the streets, causing widespread rioting or at least a knowing chuckle on the 21 Hayes bus, I got a phone call from an endocrinologist in Martinez.
A Kaiser endocrinologist, mind you.
Who was not a buffoon, mind you.
Rather, he spent more than an hour on the phone with me, which is longer talk-time than I had with my previous endocrinologist in four years, total. Whereas my previous n-doc said, and I quote, "Hormone therapy is not rocket science" (which is true, I admit, but still a pretty dumb thing to say while you are getting someone’s hormones all screwed up).
The new guy, who had researched my entire Kaiser career before he called, got it all back together, my hormones, my head … He knew every single thing about my medical past. He asked me questions no one else had ever asked, about my work, my mom, my kids, my opinions. He even asked me what my questions were, and when I said what they were, he answered them intelligently, patiently, and in detail, in many cases contradicting what other doctors had told me. An hour plus … on the phone!
While I was at work!
I’d never had a medical experience like this, where somebody both seems to care and has the time to do a thorough job of it. After we talked I got a long e-mail from him, putting it all in writing.
While we were talking, he completely rewrote my hormone regimen, likely adding 13 1/2 years to my life (just a guess). He made sure the new, safer prescription would be ready at the pharmacy of my choice by the next day. (It was!) He figured out the probable cause of my eight-week headache, effectively ending it on the spot. And, as if all that weren’t enough, he went ahead and gave me a hysterectomy.
"Excuse me?" I said.
He said he was putting it in the computer that I’d had a hysterectomy — that way I’d stop getting bugged by computerized notices and nurses about my next Pap smear.
To perform such a delicate operation over the phone seemed above and beyond the call of medicine; it bordered on miraculous. Dazzled by my new favorite doctor’s medical prowess, I neglected to mention that I actually love it when nurses try to schedule me for a Pap smear, or ask about my period, or if I’m pregnant — stuff like that. But I’m glad I didn’t say anything, because in retrospect I would gladly trade those fleeting moments of real-girl-glory for the even gloriouser distinction of having had an over-the-phone hysterectomy.
Who wouldn’t want one of those? I mean, Pap smears and periods come and go, but a hysterectomy is forever, even if you have it in a doctor’s office or operating room.
But speaking of carne asada, there’s the Sunrise Restaurant on 24th Street between Shotwell and Folsom. Judging from its name, and the extensive Latino and Americano breakfast choices on the menu, it’s more of a morning place. I went there at sunset, and wished I’d had breakfast for dinner.
The carne asada plate ($9.95) comes with black beans, rice, and salsa. OK: the steak was tough, and there’s nothing you can do about that but shake your head, maybe make a mental note to get something else next time. But: the beans and the rice really really wanted flavor. They didn’t taste like much of anything.
There are things you can do about that, one of which is called salsa. But the little tiny tin of what-they-call-salsa was surprisingly shockingly inedibly yucky.
Meaning: there won’t be a next time. When even the salsa sucks, you are sitting in an irredeemable restaurant. Or, in other words, ugh.
If it wasn’t for good old table top Tapatío, I would have gone away entirely undernourished. As it was, I went away caloried, but not much else. No nice taste in my mouth. No plan of ever returning. No good stories to tell.
SUNRISE RESTAURANT
Mon., Wed.–Thu.: 7 a.m.–8 p.m.;
Fri.–Sun.: 7 a.m.–9 p.m.
3126 24th St., SF
(415) 206-1219
Beer and wine
MC,V
L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books).
DINE The brightness of Yahya Salih’s new restaurant, Jannah, belies — or redeems — what went before. Jannah’s immediate predecessor was a place called Gabin, a Korean-inflected karaoke bar that drew some spicy Yelp commentary. Before that, it was Café Daebul, also Korean-influenced, maybe a bit less commentable. Both places were, apparently, on the gloomy, claustrophobic side.
Jannah, by contrast, is all about openness. Huge plate-glass windows look onto the lively Fulton-at-Masonic street scene, while the interior consists of a vast, pillarless dining room embroidered by a bar set off by a half-wall. The main floor is an expanse of wood planks worthy of a basketball court, but the ceiling is a little low, so it would probably have to be Nerf basketball. And BYO hoops.
Salih’s other city endeavor, the four-year-old YaYa (on Van Ness at the western edge of Russian Hill), manages to combine Iraqi and Californian influences to impressive effect, and Jannah does much the same thing, at a lower price point, as befits its quasi-college-town location. (USF and its hordes of collegians on budgets is practically across the street.) All the main courses are $11, and, as if that weren’t enough, the list includes dishes and ingredients you don’t often see, including fesenjoon (the chicken dish associated both with Iraq and Iran) and a version of masgouf, the grilled-fish preparation that is one of the gastronomic signatures of Iraq.
Of course, the menu offers plenty of items that will seem familiar, including that trinity of tasty mushes from the Middle East, tabbouleh, hummus, and baba ghanoush — or, as it is spelled at Jannah, ghnooge. There’s even falafel, but it’s not like the falafel we generally see, chickpea fritters the size and shape of golf balls. Instead the batter is worked into a small disk ($5) and, like a pizza, topped with a tasty Mediterranean mélange of eggplant, roasted red-bell pepper, scallions, red onions, shiitake mushrooms, diced tomatoes, and feta and goat cheeses. The crust, in the best triangle-slice tradition, is sufficiently rigid even at the point to support the toppings without wilting or crumbling, and it’s tasty enough to stand on its own. In an odd way, the pie reminded me of the chickpea-flour tort known as a farinata in Liguria and a socca in the south of France.
Kelecha ($3) are ravioli-like dough pockets, stuffed here with dates, cardamom, and cinnamon and topped with yogurt that’s been coarsened with chopped walnuts and subtly eniched with Parmesan cheese. The menu lists this dish as a starter, with other salads and dips, but it’s also just sweet enough to qualify as a light dessert. The yogurt sauce, in particular, is reminiscent of the cream-cheese frosting often found on carrot cakes.
We did think the variety of pickles ($3) tended a little too much toward saltiness — especially the cauliflower florets. But the plate (which also included radish, cabbage, peppers, and olives) was a festival of slightly surreal colors worthy of the Enterprise cafeteria on the original Star Trek, with lime green, bubble-gum red, and electric yellow being well-represented.
The main courses include an array of phyllo-dough preparations that vaguely resemble pot pies: the principal ingredients are sealed in a pastry crust and baked. In the case of kubsee ($11), the pastry is formed into a squat cylinder, then filled with prawns, scallops, fava beans, chickpeas, and rice. The rather staggering roster of seasonings includes cardamom, cinnamon, cumin, almond, tomato paste, hot pepper, and sun-dried lime, and the whole thing is ringee by a smoky tomato-eggplant purée.
Sun-dried lime, incidentally, is one of those ingredients that’s almost unknown in the occidental kitchen and helps give this kind of cooking a lot of its distinctive aura. To get a better idea of its flavor, you can have it as a lightly sweetened drink, a kind of Middle Eastern limeade whose sunset color won’t give you any sort of clue as to what it’s made of.
The masgouf ($11) features a subtly seasoned, butterflied trout — a freshwater fish (often sustainably farmed now) whose pinkish flesh is reminiscent of salmon. The freshwater angle is appropriate here, since Iraqis tend to grill fish taken from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and it also lends the final result a certain similarity to gravlax. The rest of the plate consists of a heap of rice, another of tomato-eggplant compote, and a colorful honor guard of cauliflower and broccoli florets and carrot and yellow summer squash coins, all steamed and arranged around the periphery.
For dessert (assuming you don’t want the kelecha or had them earlier on), how about kahi ($5), a pair of fried pastry triangles, like a child’s set of military hats from the 18th century, bronzed for posterity? They are stuffed with cardamon whipped cream (which has a cheesy-thick texture, neither pleasant nor unpleasant) and are set afloat on a small red sea of raspberry purée, which is nearly an event in itself. Bright, too.
CHEAP EATS Don’t worry, I sat down at the conference table in my office in Oakland with Earl Butter, a big bottle of gin, a small bottle of grapefruit soda, a bowl of ice, and two small glasses, and we talked until almost midnight. It’s taken care of. We’re all going to be okay. Even you.
He’d brought a couple bones over from Looney’s Barbecue, around the corner, but I’d already bloated myself on takeout pho from Kang Nam, around the other corner. While we were talking, a mosquito came in through one of the many open windows in my hot hot upstairs apartment, and established itself in the bedroom. Weirdo the Cat blinked.
Earl Butter is a peach. Technically, this isn’t true, but in some respects it’s the perfect way to describe him. He’s soft and furry and sweet, and there’s a little stem sticking out of the top of his head.
He grows on trees, for another example.
One of my favorite things about pho (pronounced pha) is that it’s pronounced pha (but spelled pho). Those crazy Vietnameses! The good thing about getting pho to go (pronounced pha to ga) is that — if all goes well — you will find they have packaged the "rare beef" separately. So it’s raw beef, sliced really very thin, and it cooks in the broth when you put the two together. That’s the idea. But you can always let the broth sit in your bowl, and go to the bathroom, and make a couple phone calls, and check your e-mail, and lecture your cat, and clear off your desk, maybe put a load of laundry in, and then add the beef to the broth. That way it won’t cook so much as warm up a little, and that’s how I like it. Jalapeños, bean sprouts, fresh basil and cilantro …
We go back a long way, me and all those things, but especially Earl Butter. It’s one of those friendships that, in spite of everything — remote control ownership disputes, abandonment issues, actual abandonment, bad advice given (and taken), pork-related deception, petty jealousy, petty thievery of hats, grand theft of an automobile, grand jealousy, strange smells in the bathroom, botched interventions, band blowups, automotive breakdowns, nervous ones, and, you know, everything, tube socks … you get the sense that nothing can stop you, no one can beat you. You go back a long way and you’re going to go forward an even longer way.
Being which as it may, the fucker brings me two cold bones, one spoon’s worth of black-eyed peas, onion rings (and I don’t like onion rings), and a half of a crab-cake with mayonnaise in it. True, I had already eaten, but did he know this?
No. He did not. Wait, maybe he did. I’m trying to remember our phone conversation while I was waiting for my broth to cool off.
Anyway, this isn’t about Earl Butter, or me, or barbecue, or pho, or even my love, Romeo (pronounced Romea), who will be here in five, four, three days. Watch out, everybody. You are about to be absolutely grossed out. If scenes of romantical bliss make you barf, close your eyes, OK? I’ll tell you when to open them.
Really the person I really meant for this one to be about was the mosquito. But you know what? I’m in love, and feeling intoxicated and insane. I’ll let you imagine the cartoonish battle of wits that went down in the bedroom. All. Night. That. Night. And the bloody mess I left on the bathroom door the next morning, when, Popeye-armed and pissed off, I finally found him, or her.
Call me crazy, but I’m going to leave you with a few words about Kang Nam: it’s a both is and isn’t kind of place. Nice track lighting and big, ugly overhead fluorescents. Nice art on the wall and taped-on paper flyers for specials. Of the two waitresspersonpeople I encountered, one was calm, the other running around like a waitressperson with her head still on.
I didn’t see what the hurry was.
I did like my soup. A lot.
KANG NAM PHO HOUSE
Daily: 10 a.m.-10 p.m.
4419 Telegraph, Oakl
(510) 984-0900
Beer & wine
MC/V
L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.
A half-score (or so) years ago, there came to the border country between the upper and lower Haight a restaurant called Metro Café. The place was an offshoot of Baker Street Bistro, and, like its progenitor, it was rather wonderful and quite affordable. In the mid-aughts the restaurant morphed into Metro Kathmandu, which served a Nepalese-Indian menu. The change was improbable, but the food was just as good in its way. Now, after a too-short run, Metro Kathmandu has disappeared, only to become … Metro Café again.
Actually, it hasn’t altogether disappeared: the look of the dining room remains the same, with a tendency toward red and umber tones and fanciful light fixtures that look like bubbles of colored Plexiglass that someone sawed off the bottoms of. Nor is it quite accurate, perhaps, to speak of the new Metro Café as a return of the original. There are points of similarity, yes, mainly in the emphasis on a three-course prix-fixe menu. At $25, it’s quite a bit more than in the good old days (on the order of $10 more), but what isn’t? It’s still a good deal, especially when you consider that you can have any starter, main dish, and dessert. And no surcharges for the fancier stuff like New York steak or duck confit. I call that sporting.
But the food doesn’t seem to be quite as pointedly French as the last time. The pediment of Chef Jacques Rousseau’s style is unmistakably Gallic — he offers snails, and need we say more? — but the menu is Californian, not French. There are dishes here you’d have a tough time finding in Paris — and not just macaroni and cheese ($8), although Metro’s version is quite tony, with cheddar, Swiss, and Parmesan mingling under a thick crust of garlic-bread crumbs. The only thing missing was a bit of salt, but this was easily added from a shaker already on the table. We liked the serving dish, an earthenware crock in the shape of a paddle.
Equally in a Ameri-Cali, if more elevated, vein was a plate of grilled squid ($6.50), accompanied by white beans, bits of frisee and chopped black olives, and a beguilingly fragrant olive oil infused with preserved lemon. The pieces of squid were beautifully tender — no small trick; squid overcooks and toughens easily — while the lemon oil cast a spell like sunshine over everything.
And I do not think you’d easily find in Paris any preparation to match the baby back ribs ($15), with their glaze of honey, cardamom, and coffee — darkly sweet but also a little smoky, like a demitasse of espresso with a half-cube of sugar. Since pork is naturally sweet, a sly mix of sweetness and smoke produced a complex harmony with the meat. The ribs arrived atop a generous slathering of green lentils, properly cooked al dente.
As for the ultimate French treat, les esgargots ($7): they came discreetly swaddled in pastry pockets that looked like empanadas. There was plenty of garlic on hand and, on the floor of the plate, a garish pool of red-pepper purée; these were quite useful flourishes if you needed some distraction from the advertised main ingredient. But the real main ingredient turned out not to be snails but pastry.
Duck confit ($16) is another quintessentially French dish, and Rousseau’s kitchen handles it with aplomb. The result: tender, juicy meat inside appealingly crisp, golden skin. The potatoes landaise did not particularly impress, however; instead of the traditional Pyrenees-style version, of potato cubes fried with onion, garlic, and ham, Metro offered what appeared to be handful of roasted, and underseasoned, potato quarters. An underseasoned potato is a piteous thing, naked and flabby, even if there’s some red-pepper purée on the plate for consolation.
The dessert list is the most purely French sector of the menu. Tarte tatin? Check. It costs $6 and is distinguished by large chunks of apple that are the shape of Gary Oldman’s strange, puffy hair in Dracula. The apple also retained some of its texture — a plus — but I did suspect the kitchen had used big, sweetish apples (maybe some sort of Delicious) rather than one of the smaller, sourer, denser varieties that, in my experience, work better in this tart.
The one non-French note struck among the desserts involved the chocolate cake ($6), which turned out to be a layered mousse cake that included a stratum of raspberry preserves. Sort of a variation on the Viennese specialty Sachertorte, with the raspberry preserves substituted for apricot. I like these kinds of small flourishes, which go a long way toward lifting the pall of enslavement that can sometimes hang over French-influenced restaurants in our corner of the New World. If, at some point, Metro Café becomes Cosmo Café, I would gladly clink my champagne flute.
Every week, Virginia Miller of personalized itinerary service and monthly food, drink, and travel newsletter, www.theperfectspotsf.com, shares foodie news, events, and deals. View the last installment here.
DEALS Just for You’s new happy hour and New Orleans inspired bites
Despite this past weekend’s thunderstorms, our Summer is still in its early stages – Just for You Cafe commemorates an SF Indian Summer (and their nostalgia for New Orleans, which I acutely share) with new menu items and Wednesday through Friday happy hour specials. There’s $4.50 Root Beer Floats made with Nawlins’ own Abita Root Beer and our Mitchell’s Ice Cream. And it wouldn’t be an ode to the South without Red Beans and Rice ($4.50, $2 to add Louisiana hot sausage), Hush Puppies ($4) or a Creole Sampler ($6) of red beans and rice, jambalaya, and shrimp creole. Heineken and Miller beers are $2 and there’s Chicken Empanadas ($2.25) or Crispy Chicken Tacos ($2.95) for a veer off the New Orleans’ path. Wednesdays-Fridays, 4:30-6:30pm 732 22nd Street 415-647-3033 www.justforyoucafe.com/specials
————
NEW OPENING Fish & Farm launches American Box
Gourmet lunches from top notch chefs continue to proliferate downtown, with Fish & Farm now in the mix, launching American Box. Executive chef, Chad Newton, created a menu that, similar to the flagship restaurant, is farm-fresh, local, sustainable. Eat from changing menu items, like a "Chop" Salad ($9) with Molinari salami, a Double Taco Box ($7), or a Grilled Moist Melt Box ($8, a rye, cheddar, pickle, caramelized onion sandwich), to go or in Fish & Farm’s dining room. Save room for cookies or brownies for dessert. Monday-Friday, 10:30am-1:30pm
Cash only
339 Taylor Street
415-474-3474 www.americanboxlunch.com
————-
EVENTS Test your blind wine tasting skills at Press Club all month
So the Governator himself has dubbed September California Wine Month (isn’t every month?) No matter… I like the sound of Press Club‘s Blind Tasting throughout the month – to test or improve your tasting skills, as the case may be. In Press Club’s roomy underground environs, $17 will get you pours of three wines, each selected from some of Nor Cal’s best wineries. If you’re feeling comfortable, submit your guesses as to each wine in the blind tasting and be entered to win a $50 private tasting for two. 20 Yerba Buena Lane
415-744-5000 www.pressclubsf.com
Every week, Virginia Miller of personalized itinerary service and monthly food, drink, and travel newsletter, www.theperfectspotsf.com, shares foodie news, events, and deals. View the last installment here.
DEALS Just for You’s new happy hour and New Orleans inspired bites
Despite this past weekend’s thunderstorms, our Summer is still in its early stages – Just for You Cafe commemorates an SF Indian Summer (and their nostalgia for New Orleans, which I acutely share) with new menu items and Wednesday through Friday happy hour specials. There’s $4.50 Root Beer Floats made with Nawlins’ own Abita Root Beer and our Mitchell’s Ice Cream. And it wouldn’t be an ode to the South without Red Beans and Rice ($4.50, $2 to add Louisiana hot sausage), Hush Puppies ($4) or a Creole Sampler ($6) of red beans and rice, jambalaya, and shrimp creole. Heineken and Miller beers are $2 and there’s Chicken Empanadas ($2.25) or Crispy Chicken Tacos ($2.95) for a veer off the New Orleans’ path. Wednesdays-Fridays, 4:30-6:30pm 732 22nd Street 415-647-3033 www.justforyoucafe.com/specials
————
NEW OPENING Fish & Farm launches American Box
Gourmet lunches from top notch chefs continue to proliferate downtown, with Fish & Farm now in the mix, launching American Box. Executive chef, Chad Newton, created a menu that, similar to the flagship restaurant, is farm-fresh, local, sustainable. Eat from changing menu items, like a "Chop" Salad ($9) with Molinari salami, a Double Taco Box ($7), or a Grilled Moist Melt Box ($8, a rye, cheddar, pickle, caramelized onion sandwich), to go or in Fish & Farm’s dining room. Save room for cookies or brownies for dessert. Monday-Friday, 10:30am-1:30pm
Cash only
339 Taylor Street
415-474-3474 www.americanboxlunch.com
————-
EVENTS Test your blind wine tasting skills at Press Club all month
So the Governator himself has dubbed September California Wine Month (isn’t every month?) No matter… I like the sound of Press Club‘s Blind Tasting throughout the month – to test or improve your tasting skills, as the case may be. In Press Club’s roomy underground environs, $17 will get you pours of three wines, each selected from some of Nor Cal’s best wineries. If you’re feeling comfortable, submit your guesses as to each wine in the blind tasting and be entered to win a $50 private tasting for two. 20 Yerba Buena Lane
415-744-5000 www.pressclubsf.com
After I met my nutrition coach Matt Lascala, (in my spanking class at Good Vibrations no less), I was told that eliminating all sugars, dairy, and grains from my diet would be helpful to me. I was somewhat skeptical to say the least – okay, I thought, I’ll try it for a week or two, and then maybe let it go. After only three days I had much more energy, slept well at night (I had tendencies towards insomnia), became more productive and basically regained a new sense of pleasure in life! I was sold.
I have always been interested in cuisine and decided long ago not to become a chef because I was afraid of losing my creative compunctions in the kitchen from working long hours for other people. So I became a Dominatrix. The PaleoZone diet has opened up a new sense of creativity for me as far as foods I can and cannot eat and how to get that crazy Provencial Gourmande feel from such a paltry sounding diet. It has been a phenomenal inspiration. I liken its rustic feel to Medieval debauchery, and since I love playing as well as eating, I decided to start “pairing” my meals with my play.
Modifications:
Technically, one does not drink wine while dieting, but since this regimen is for optimal health and not for weight loss (though I have lost 10 lobs or so in the first six weeks), I keep wine because it gives the Mistress a certain quality of life she enjoys. You may wish to modify things as well, depending on your dietary and quality of life needs.
Menu:
Pork Spare Ribs Braised with Beets and Onions
Collard Greens and Baby Daikon
Cirtrus Peaches with Filberts
a&eletters@sfbg.com
When there is no firm ground, the only sensible thing to do is to keep moving. Lester Bangs wrote that, but countless wandering souls have lived it since the first humans stumbled across the continents. Long after land bridges dissolved and the great cities of the world were mapped, San Francisco — the legendary land’s-end haven for dreamers, kooks, and hedonists — became a butterfly net for the world’s drifters. Prismatic crowds have come and gone through the decades, helping to grow one of the world’s great music scenes.
"There’s just a certain point where you realize that nothing is going to satisfy you all the time," muses Christopher Owens, one of two masterminds behind the SF band Girls. "The solution is to be a person who’s always looking for the next thing. Oscar Wilde said that the meaning of life is the search for meaning of life. But there is no meaning to life — it’s just never laying down and accepting your surroundings, even if they’re comfortable. It’s like the Rolling Stones song, "(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction." I think I’ve always felt like that, and always will be like that."
Girls, “Lust for Life”
Looking up from peeling the label off a kombucha bottle and blinking his big eyes, Chet "JR" White nonchalantly nods: "I’m really never content, hardly ever happy, but every once in a while I’m both. Everything’s about getting somewhere else, I think."
While most bands fade slowly or implode, ever so rarely one explodes into something transcendent because it’s hit a nerve or two and tapped into the human experience in a profound way. Girls is that kind of band. Owens and White have been around for years, playing raucous live shows while quietly perfecting their imminent debut LP, Album (True Panther/Matador). A collection of glam-pop with that genre’s flair for artifice, it also — unlike traditional glam pop — possesses an emotional authenticity absent from so much music being churned out today.
Owens and White first united as roommates in San Francisco, but their lives couldn’t have started out more differently. While White was playing in punk bands in his parents’ Santa Cruz garage and going to recording school, Owens was growing up as part of the Slovenian sect of the Children of God cult, where secular music was forbidden unless one of the cult’s adults decided to indulge the younger members’ desire to learn the occasional Beatles or 1960s folk tune.
Owens broke away from the Children of God at 16 to live with his sister in Amarillo, Texas. Everything the rest of us had heard a thousand times before we were teenagers was a revelation to him. "When I learned to play the guitar, I was still in the cult and I didn’t really know anything but their music," he says. "When I turned 16 and left the group, it was like the whole world was in front of me. I got the Cranberries, the Cure, Black Sabbath, Sinead O’Connor, Michael Jackson, and the Romeo + Juliet movie soundtrack, and I’d play them on my stereo in my room and learn them and play guitar. The next wave was pop music. When I turned 18, I had become an American teen."
Owens was quickly engulfed by the small town’s punk scene: "I threw away seven years of my life there. All I have is tattoos from Amarillo." He played in a few punk bands, the music drawing him in because it was "really angsty." But after a few years, he felt the itch to do something new. "There wasn’t really anything in particular that drew me to San Francisco," he says. "I made a commitment that I was gonna leave Amarillo on New Year’s Day in 2005. All my friends moved to Austin, which I thought was the lamest thing in the world. I wanted absolute change. I wanted to totally reinvent myself and leave all those people behind."
Shortly after he landed in the Bay Area, Owens was asked to join the L.A. band Holy Shit. "I only played in the band because I was totally obsessed with Ariel Pink and Matt Fishbeck," he says, referring to the band’s underground-hero founders. "I started to write these songs to impress them and to vent my feelings, but the main driving force was that I wanted to be like them so much. I kept thinking I’m gonna make something that’s gonna blow their minds. I wanted to make something really classic that everyone could say they liked."
And that’s what he did. Owens wrote dozens of songs inspired by his friends, ex-lovers, and San Francisco itself, and recorded them, guided by White’s keen ear for grandeur. After scrapping song takes recorded on a four-track, the pair spent money on a proper tape machine and used only a few microphones to keep Album crisp and clear.
"I like big, amazing sounding records," says engineering wizard and bassist White, who counts Wrecking Crew bassist Carol Kaye as an influence. "I hate lo-fi music. Early on, people would call us lo-fi and I would take it kind of hard. We were just attempting to make the best-sounding thing we could with what we had — as good as any big record that had a lot of money put into it. I always like records that are made under some sort of duress. I think those records are great, if you can hear it. When I hear ours, I can hear the moments that go along with the music."
With Album, Owens and White edge closer to timelessness than any of their San Francisco contemporaries. While much of the city’s rock scene is embroiled in a hot and noisy love affair with psychedelic garage music, the boys of Girls have come up with something different: classic melodic songs for a restless soul in search of freedom and purpose in this whirlwind world. It doesn’t hurt that behind Owens’ lyrical pearls one discovers lush and unadulterated arrangements and majestic Wall of Sound-esque moments.
Album‘s magnum opus, "Hellhole Ratrace," is a plaintive hymn about the urge to cut loose and live. It starts off with simple guitar strumming, which in turn is soon immersed in a mesmerizing swell of buried organ work, slow hand claps, and trilling guitars that elevates it into an anthem. "I don’t wanna die without shaking up a leg or two /I wanna do some dancin’ too," sings Owens. "I don’t wanna cry /my whole life through /Yeah I wanna do some laughin’ too / So come on, come on, come on, come on and dance with me."
This year has already been one hell of a ride for Girls, which now includes guitarist John Anderson ("He’s the best guitar player I’ve ever played with in my life," says Owens) and drummer Garett Godard. The group has been on tour nearly constantly for several months across America and Europe. For a pair of nomads like Owens and White, it seems like the perfect gig, at least for now. Both harbor dreams of being thrust into the canon with the rest of the greats, and that reality may not be so far off.
"I want to write a song that’s as good as "Let It Be" or "I Will Always Love You." I want to write a song that everybody in the world knows," says Owens, glancing at his bandmate.
"I just want to be one of those bands that becomes culturally ingrained, one of those bands that’s unavoidable," echoes White. "One of those bands that is larger than music itself."
Impassioned youth, existential wisdom, and stories of aching romance weave together to make Album a slice of true Californian pop that never stops hitting home. When you hear Owens’ voice, unshackled by fuzz or distortion, crooning about the fear of dying before ever accomplishing anything, you remember that you’ve felt the same way dozens of times too. And when he starts chirping, "I wish I had a suntan /I wish I had a pizza and a bottle of wine," on the sarcastic, ecstatic opener "Lust for Life," you want to drop everything and run through the streets to join him.
The color of cooked crawfish isn’t red, exactly — more a garnet. If it were a wine, it would be a medium-bodied pinot noir. Certainly it would never be mistaken for cooked lobster, which (pace Red Lobster) isn’t red at all, but more of an inflamed orange. You see plenty of crawfish being rushed from the evening kitchen at Red Crawfish in the Tenderloin; the crustaceans make the journey in shallow white bowls and reach tables full of eager patrons who’ve fitted themselves out with plastic bibs in anticipation of mess.
Red Crawfish, like the Green Hornet, has something of a dual identity. By day it’s a quasi pan-Asian place tending toward Chinese and Vietnamese favorites. But as the sun sets, it dons a Cajun guise, and a menu filled with familiars like five-spice chicken and beef noodle soup suddenly develops a bayou section that includes (besides crawfish) treats such as gumbo and Cajun fries.
The dual-identity restaurant is a rare phenomenon, but not an unknown one. Some years ago there was a spot on lower Haight Street that appeared to be an all-American café by day but turned into a Senegalese joint on certain nights of the week. And, in the present moment, we have Coffee Bar, which daytimers know as a coffee bar but becomes host to Radio Africa Kitchen several nights a week. Red Crawfish is close kin to these spots, but it has the additional charm of joining compatible, if unlikely, cuisines without fusing them. The Cajun dishes remain Cajun and the Asian dishes Asian, but they do make a nice harmony: a communion of spiciness.
The cathedral in which this union takes place is unprepossessing, in true Tenderloin fashion. The dining room is deep and very narrow — a half-storefront — with a long mirror along one wall to give the illusion of greater spaciousness. Ceiling fans do offer a hint of New Orleans. But the furniture, though plain, is well-made, the tabletops are clean, and you are greeted and seated promptly when you step through the door.
The Cajun dishes are dialed up according to the patron’s preferred level of heat (on a four-step scale) and style of seasoning. For the seafood combo ($13.99), for instance, you choose among lemon-pepper, garlic butter, and red crawfish flavor palettes. The last turned out to be a deep red, slightly oily, iridescent soup flecked with dried chili and giving a faint charge of fruity acidity; had it been spiked with a mild vinegar? In this shallow pond frolicked shrimp (partly shucked), oysters (fully shucked), and chunks of calamari and white fish. The second-lowest level of heat ("spicy") proved to be more than sufficient, while the pre-shucking, while probably indicative of slackerdom on our part, also made the dish much easier to eat and enjoy and at the same time limited the mess. That’s a lot of upside.
Cajun fries ($3.99 for a semi-gigantic plate) were fine but ordinary. We did detect a faint dusting of cayenne pepper on them, but not enough to make a serious impression. Better, for flavored-up starch, were the garlic noodles ($6.50). They would have gone brilliantly with the gumbo ($10.99), but the gumbo was somewhat late in arriving. In fact, it arrived last and, like a folk act following a death-metal group, its luster was at first somewhat dimmed by the potency of the seafood combo that preceded it.
But the gumbo found traction after a bite or two and was thick and satisfying even without rice — or garlic noodles. The thickener was okra, whose flavor has a ghostly bite, and the result wasn’t particularly pretty: a bowlful of lumpy gray-green sludge. The lumps, though, consisted of delectables such as shrimp, chicken, and pork, and added enough heft to make the gumbo into a (potential) meal in itself.
An unexpected rival for meal-in-itself (although not heart-healthy) honors might be the beignets ($4.50), a quartet of deep-fried pastries shaped like little top hats and served with a pair of massive ice-cream torpedoes. The ice cream was vanilla, and the torpedoes were cross-hatched with chocolate sauce, and that alone would have been enough for two people — even two hungry, greedy people bewitched by the crunchy fattiness of the beignets. (To describe these as "deep-fried" does not quite capture the reality.)
In sunshine — or fogshine, as the case may be — the restaurant slips into east Asian character. Salt and pepper calamari ($5.50) are batter-fried and presented with a nuoc nam-based dipping sauce whose sharpness helps cut the grease. Mixed vegetables with tofu ($5.95) sets a low mountain of broccoli florets, carrots, cabbage, and tofu cubes on a huge pediment of white rice. The vegetables are crisp and fresh; the soy-heavy brown sauce, a little bland. Five-spice chicken ($7.50), on the other hand, with egg rolls and vermicelli, is enhanced with mint, which brings both color and sweet breath to the rescue. That color is green, by the way. *
Events listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.
WEDNESDAY 9
Beatles Day Amoeba Music, 1855 Haight, SF; (415) 831-1200. 11am-8pm, free. Celebrate the release of the newly remastered Beatles CDs with Beatles DJ sets, fab four trivia and giveaways, a Beatles cover band, and a Beatles look-like contest.
THURSDAY 10
Red Vic Benefit Mercury Café, 201 Octavia, SF; (415) 252-7855. 7pm, $10-30 sliding scale. Help out your favorite local rep house while having a good time at this benefit featuring live music by Tango No.9 and Toshio Hirano, silent auction with art and film-related items, and a raffle.
Supergirls Cartoon Art Museum, 655 Mission, SF; (415) CAR-TOON. 7pm, free. Hear Mike Madrid, author of The Supergirls, discuss the cultural history of the superheroine, like how their search for identity, battle for equality, and juggling the dual roles of career and motherhood mirrors real life. Wine tasting hosted by Small Vines Wines.
FRIDAY 11
Neighborhood Free Days California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse, Golden Gate Park, SF; (415) 379-8000. 9:30am-5pm, Friday – Sunday; free for select zip codes. Visit www.calacademy.org to find out which weekend your SF zip code will gain you free admission to the museum. This weekend’s lucky residents are from Sunset, Parkside, Stonestown, Lakeshore, and St. Francis Woods.
Party for the People SubMission, 2183 Mission, SF; (415) 431-4210. 8:30pm, $5-20 sliding scale. Enjoy live Latin music, DJs, raffles, fresh Mexican juices, and veggie tacos at this event where all proceeds will benefit PODER, a Mission/Excelsior District community organization where local youth lead environmental justice projects.
SATURDAY 12
Babylon Salon Cantina, 580 Sutter, SF; (415) 398-0195. 8pm, free. This literary night features performances by well known authors Pamela Uschuk and Daniel Alarcon and emerging writers Anthony Gonzales, K.G. Schneider, and Michela Martini.
IXFF Kick-off Party El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; (415) 282-3325. 9pm, $7. Celebrate Good Vibrations’ Fourth Annual Independent Erotic Film Festival with a special screening of Courtney Trouble’s new film, Speakeasy, music with DJ Justin Credible, prizes, and more.
Power to the Peaceful Speedway Meadow, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.powertothepeaceful.org. 9am-5pm; free, donations accepted. This music, arts, action, and yoga festival featuring performances by Michael Franti and Spearhead, Alanis Morissette, Sellassie, and more is dedicated to issues of social justice, non-violence, cultural co-existence, and environmental sustainability.
BAY AREA
Crossword Puzzle Tournament Alameda High School Cafeteria, 2250 Central, Alameda; www.bayareacrosswords.org. 10:30am, $30. Challenge yourself with some crossword competition at the second annual Bay Area Crossword Puzzle Tournament, featuring three unpublished New York Times puzzles donated by the legendary Will Shortz.
SUNDAY 13
BAY AREA
Dash for a Cure Oakland Aviation Museum, 8252 Earhart Rd., Bldg 621, Oakland International Airport, Oak.; (510) 638-7100. 2pm, free. Experience, through video clips, photos and PowerPoint, the thrilling account of CarolAnn Garratt ‘s World Record breaking flight around the world to raise money and awareness for ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
MONDAY 14
Fixing U.S. Healthcare Commonwealth Club, 2nd floor, 595 Market, SF; (415) 597-6700. Noon, $15. Hear T.R. Reid, correspondent for the Washington Post, commentator for NPR, and author of The Healing of America, weigh in on whether or not the U.S. can really fix healthcare and how we can learn from health-care models across the globe.
