Wine

Brilliant ideas

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS Here’s what I did: I roasted a chicken in a cast iron skillet, then I cooked a batch of drop biscuits in the drippins in the pan. They already of course had butter in them, but when they were done I halved them, buttered them again, and dipped them in the chicken juice. I washed this down, and the chicken down, with an elegant French wine, straight from the bottle, and worried about one day dying in a plane crash.

The thing about my cooking partner, Boink, is that he has a vision. Being all washed up, myself, and entirely out of original ideas (butter butter butter, chicken chicken chicken, plane crash), I rely on Boink for inspiration in the kitchen. Meaning the whole alternative weekly world will now have to rely on him too. If ever a three-year-old could handle this kind of pressure, Boink is the man. Boy.

"What kind of soup should we make today, Boink?" I ask.

"Pesto," he says. "Pesto soup."

Another time I wonder what else we might add to our banana bread.

"Pesto?" he says, chewing thoughtfully on his apron string.

Brilliant ideas, all, but don’t forget that I am a paid professional in this house. At the end of the day, when Mom and Dad come home and I put dinner on the table and then leave real fast while they’re all washing their hands and putting their bibs on, my actual income is on the line. Without which I could face eviction, repossession, disenfranchisement, bankruptcy, and, eventually, bunions. Whereas Boink’s biggest fear is time out.

So I’ve learned to funnel his fun, adventurous, if pestocentric decision-making by asking better questions, such as, "Hmm, what kind of sauce do you envision on this fettuccini, Chef Boink?" (Pesto!)

"What kind of spread, in your opinion, might be good on these sandwiches?" (Pesto!)

So the other day we’re making ravioli, which is a complicated, drawn out process and therefore one of the more effective ways to keep three-year-olds off the streets and out of gangs. In my opinion.

We rolled out our noodles, and I mushed up a barbecued squash for some of the ravioli, figuring ricotta cheese for the others. But I thought both fillings could use a little color and zing, so I opened the cupboard where they keep their pesto, pretended to rummage around a bit, and asked Boink what else he was thinking for our ravioli.

He didn’t hesitate. "Raisins," he said, with conviction.

I decided to throw a tantrum. It’s the best way to circumvent his, I’ve found. "Raisins??!!??!!" I stomped and scowled and threw up my hands, and he laughed and laughed. I’m good at this. I tugged my hair, squeezed my eyes closed, and shook my head real hard. "I can’t work like this," I said, taking off my apron and throwing it on the floor. "Raisins! In ravioli!!!"

"Not in the ravioli, Silly," he said, still laughing. "In the sauce."

There was a beautiful bolognese gurgling on the stove, and I was pretty sure it was the most wonderful creation I had ever created. Perfect, I thought. I brought the box of raisins to the stove, left the lid on, and shielding him from the action with my body, shook the box a wee bit, just to get a realistic rattle out of it.

The lid fell off and every raisin in the world plonked into my masterpiece. It could have been a Reese’s peanut butter cup moment, come to think of it — but not at the risk of homelessness. So, between all our spooning and folding and cutting and crimping, I kept revisiting the stove, and eventually tasted every single raisin out of the sauce.

Next week, to compensate for the cuteness of this week’s tiny tale, I will describe my diarrhea.

———————————

My new favorite restaurant is Dempsey’s Brewery in Petaluma. Especially if you park on the street. Because then you get to walk over a river on a wooden pedestrian bridge where I stopped once last summer to look at the water and kiss a guy. And there’s a real nice outdoor patio and pretty nice innards, too, with booths, good burgers, wood-oven pizza, and great beers. Red Rooster Ale. But if you park in the parking lot, you’re going to know that this quaint, cool brew pub is actually in a strip mall.

DEMPSEY’S RESTAURANT & BREWERY

Sun.–Thurs., 11:30 a.m.–9 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat., 11:30 a.m.–10 p.m.

50 E. Washington, Petaluma

(707) 765-9694

Full bar

AE/D/MC/V

Yaelisa and Caminos Flamencos

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PREVIEW How many outside the flamenco family — a sizable one in the Bay Area — realize just how special an artist Yaelisa is? In a less ghettoized genre, this Emmy-winning and always expanding and deepening performer and choreographer would be considered a superstar. Yaelisa foregoes some of the showbiz antics of her colleagues for performances that are no less captivating and, frequently, more intelligently planned and presented. Her monthly Café Flamenco sessions — every third Sunday of the month and currently at Theater Artaud — have become a Bay Area staple.

The Yaelisa and Caminos Flamenco ensemble includes Melissa Cruz, Christina Hall, Mariana Elana, and Fanny Ara. Each of these women is a soloist in her own right. For the company’s new program, Canciones, Yaelisa and her dancers are stepping beyond their comfort level into non-flamenco music — not exactly a new idea, but one that apparently Yaelisa has wanted to explore for a long time. The impetus came from a 2006 collaboration with tap virtuoso Savion Glover that involved Brazilian funk, Miles Davis, and Dave Brubeck. Canciones — with guest dancer Timo Nuñez — includes music by Iron and Wine and the Spanish pop group Ketama and live sounds by Sonikéte, as well as more traditional compositions by Isaac Albéniz. Latin percussionist Michael Spiro and vocalists Felix de Lola and Miguel Rosendo join music director and master flamenco artist Jason McGuire.

YAELISA AND CAMINOS FLAMENCOS Sat/1, 8 p.m., and Sun/2, 7 p.m., $15–$60. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF. (415) 978-ARTS, www.ybca.org>.

Nostalgia

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS Now that I am once again all chipper and cheerful and shit, albeit without wheels or money or, you know, prospects, I reckon I can return to writing about food. Anyway, I’m going to try.

My happiness is speculative. I figure, in a world with Alice Shaw and her biscuits in it, all things are not only possible, but likely. Right now, for example, I am lying outside in my tiny patch of woodsy sunshine, dreaming about becoming Canadian, if for no other reason because their Thanksgiving comes earlier than ours, and who wouldn’t want that?

What I love about sunbathing in the woods in October is that you don’t need to wear sunscreen. Or anything.

What I love about Canada …

What I love about fall is sitting in a pile of dead leaves on a sidewalk in Berkeley with Clara de la Cooter, wiggling our legs.

A couple weeks ago, when I was still engaging in defeatist activities such as dating, I was asked, over coffee, what my favorite restaurant was. I don’t believe the asker even knew I was a chicken farmer, let alone the chicken farmer, and that, therefore, my favorite restaurant was wherever I happened to be eating.

So it surprised me more than him when, instead of saying "all of them!" I waxed nostalgic over a particular one, Gravy’s, which has been boarded up for at least five years. If anything I should have said Penny’s Caribbean Café, which has been boarded up for less than one, and which I drive by once a week in the wild hope that she will have resurrected out of the flour and chickpea dust in her cluttered back-room kitchen on Sacramento Street.

Nostalgia happens. Fall’s a good time for it. It’s not a good or a bad thing. It’s nostalgia. It means that at one point in time, at least, you enjoyed life, and that your memory function is functioning. Unfortunately, it also implies that right now things aren’t so bacon for you. For example, you have no idea, say, where to get a good curry goat roti.

There’s a very plastic dollar-fitty-a-thing Chinese joint where Ann’s Café was. I went in there a couple months ago, and got it to go. What was Ann’s Café, in its entirety, is now just the kitchen. The grease on the walls back there looked familiar. I’ve been meaning to write about it.

Maybe next week.

Anything can happen. I have a recurring dream about Ann’s reopening in a food court kind of setting, a small, square, open-air restaurant with Her, Fran, in the middle, holding court and slinging omelets. It’s the same feeling as the one I have when I dream about my closest comrade ever, who died 20 years ago: that this is just wonderful, and not at all, not-even-the-slightest-bit real, like heaven.

While I dream of food courts, by way of conceptualizing a nonexistent afterlife, or bullshit reincarnation, some people get to have children!

Take my other old favorite restaurant, Yamo Thai Kitchen, or Mean-Lady Thai as its ardent fans affectionately called it. Of course, Yamo still stands, in name, reincarnated as Yamo, a Burmese joint.

What you may not know is that Yamo’s son and daughter-in-law (who used to cook at Yamo, near the end) have opened a Thai restaurant in the Excelsior District, hooray! My last first-date ever, the guy who asked me what my favorite restaurant was, launching this nostalgic fit … he not only knew this but had eaten there, turns out. I excused myself.

Outside I called Earl Butter on my cell phone and said, "Let’s go."

We went. My new favorite restaurant is Zabb. Familiarly great Thai food for familiarly cheap prices. Diehard fans of Yamo might miss the tight quarters and sweet tension of watching your meal happen from a front-row counter seat, but I liked Zabb’s atmosphere too. Spacious, unpretentious, and very friendly. They definitely put more effort into presentation. The spring rolls were, if anything, better than Mom’s. The choo-chee curry was fantastic. And they also serve my old Yamo favorites, red curry duck, and chef noodles. All this … this is good news, for me. *

ZABB

Wed.–Mon., 11 a.m.–9:30 p.m.

4440 Mission, SF

(415) 586-2455

Beer & wine

Little Delhi

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› paulr@sfbg.com

Manhattan joke: a part of Murray Hill, along Lexington Avenue in the ’20s, is known as Curry Hill because of its profusion of Indian and Pakistani restaurants. Even if you hadn’t heard the joke, you would probably recognize the neighborhood’s scent: no cuisine I’m aware of has a stronger or clearer olfactory signature. (Backyard barbecuing might deserve an honorable mention.)

We have our own Curry Hill, but it’s on Nob Hill, which pretty well mutes the word play, if not the scent. A major curry locus can be found on Jones Street south of Geary Boulevard, where the perfumed air is reminiscent of a spice market. But there is another node not far away, although perhaps — to vitiate the pun utterly — not on Nob Hill at all. I speak of the corner of Mason and Eddy streets, just a few steps from Union Square, the theater district, and the glamorous Westfield San Francisco Centre, and even fewer steps from the Tenderloin. If you’ve ever wondered what economic stratification, third world-style, might look like in a big American city, a brief reconnoiter of this largely flat area would give you a pretty good idea.

As for the corner itself: the air is redolent of curry, and for some of us, that means seduction. On one side of the street stands Punjab, wonderfully fragrant but with no table service, while on the other we find Little Delhi, an Indian restaurant that’s as comfortable as a pair of well-worn shoes, with table service.

As someone who bears witness to a great many restaurants that seem to have entered the world fully-formed under the godlike guidance of some designer, I warm to a place whose interior isn’t designed so much as accreted. Little Delhi has a well-lived-in look; its creamy walls are hung with portraits, tapestries, a map, and a flat-panel screen showing sports. The crowd is equally ad hoc: we noticed several tables full of what appeared to be (non-English-speaking) tourists, several more of possible neighborhood dwellers, including students (CCSF and Academy of Art College have campuses nearby), and a generous smattering of people who could have been of south Asian descent. This last convergence suggests, to me, a degree of authenticity. If people who grow up eating a cuisine later turn up in a restaurant serving the cuisine, there’s a reasonable chance the restaurant is turning out creditable versions of the food.

And Little Delhi is doing that — at moderate prices. Most of the menu consists of dishes that cost less than $10, and portions are generous. There are plenty of familiar faces in the crowd, including a notably good saag paneer ($7.99) — spiced spinach with cubes of white cheese — whose mild seasoning let through more spinach flavor than is usual. We were vaguely reminded of the creamed spinach that is a fixture of many a holiday repast in our part of the world.

A preparation I hadn’t seen before was badami chicken ($9.99), boneless chunks of tandoori-roasted meat in a curry (and yogurt-thickened?) sauce laced with slivers of pistachio and cashew nuts. It was a near, and crunchy, relation to that lovable stalwart, chicken tikka masala, but what most impressed me was a smokiness in the meat that managed to be heard through the assertive saucing.

Quite similar was lamb tikka masala ($9.99), cubes of tandoori-roasted lamb in another sensuous sauce, this one a bit redder, sweeter, and more tomatoey than its badami cousin, due perhaps to the presence of ketchup. (Ketchup — English ketchup in particular — plays a central role in the evolution of tikka masala.) Lamb’s gaminess stands up to strong saucing, though I caught no hint of smoke here as I had with the chicken.

As is typical at south Asian restaurants, the list of meatless possibilities is extensive, and this is good news for vegetarians, even us flexos. We were particularly impressed with chana masala ($6.99), a classic dish of chickpeas, enlivened here with slices of tomato and whole cardamom pods. These softened some from being braised and, when chewed on, gave off their refreshing woody flavor, with its hints of cinnamon and ginger. Cardamom is rich in a substance called cineole, a natural antiseptic that can fight bad breath. FYI.

From the oven: perfectly good naan ($1.50), cut into triangles for ease of use in sopping up all those irresistible sauces. For whole wheat aficionados, there’s roti (also $1.50) — virtually the same thing, except made from whole grain. Also useful for sauce-soppers is rice pillau ($2), a sizable dish of basmati rice. "Pillau" looks suspiciously like "pilaf," which would mean rice cooked in some kind of stock. This rice appeared to have been cooked in plain water, which didn’t do much for its color — it looked like a gritty heap of corn snow — but did show its wonderful nutty flavor to clearest effect.

Basmati is so tasty, in fact, that demand for it has been surging in India and throughout the Middle East. According to a story published in July in The Wall Street Journal, its price has risen between 100 and 200 percent in the past two years. So let’s count ourselves lucky to be able to enjoy this modest luxury for so little — a treat that won’t break the bank, not that there are all that many banks left to be broken. May the Fed be with you. *

LITTLE DELHI

Daily, 11:30 a.m.–11 p.m.

83 Eddy, SF

(415) 398-3173

Beer and wine

AE/DC/DS/MC/V

Moderately noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Chan Chan can cook

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› paulr@sfbg.com

One is tempted to say that Chan Chan Café Cubano is authentically Cuban, but one has no idea, really. These days it is easier for Americans to visit Albania than Cuba, which, after nearly 50 years, remains sequestered behind the rusty remains of the iron curtain. Maybe Barack, if he manages to fend off the dazzling Republicans — he a grizzled ex-maverick with recurrent skin cancer, she a sporty gunner-down of wolves from helicopters (Tail Gunner Sarah?) — will rethink the wisdom of our Cuba policy. First, of course, he’ll have to put Wall Street’s Humpty Dumpty back together again while finding some path out of two ruinous wars. The book of Genesis informs us that God created the earth in six days, "and he rested on the seventh day from all the work which he had done," but the president who succeeds the present crew won’t have it so easy.

The endless and preposterous isolation of Cuba reveals itself in many ways, among them a paucity of Cuban restaurants. We have a few, and we’ve had a few fail, among the latter the homey Los Flamingos (in Duboce Triangle) and the grander Habana (at the edge of Russian Hill). At the moment we have Laurel’s (in Hayes Valley) and Café Lo Cubano (in — oh, irony — Laurel Heights). And of course Chan Chan, which is nearly as isolated as Cuba itself.

The restaurant (opened in August by Ana Herrera and Michel Alvarez) occupies a snug space, very nearly at the head of 18th Street, that previously housed another restaurant but whose most historic occupant was Fran Gage’s Patisserie Française, a boutique bakery that helped set the table for today’s wealth of boutique bakeries. The patisserie was destroyed by fire in 1995, and the building seemed to sit there as a charred hulk for many months, perhaps years.

Signs of the fire are long gone. When I first stepped into Chan Chan, I discreetly looked for them and sniffed for them, but all I noticed were handsomely distressed wood frames around the doors and windows and the smell of flowers. Maybe my companion was wearing too much (flowery) cologne. The restaurant is small, with seating at about a half dozen tables for maybe 20 people. One wall looks like a gigantic finger painting, and there is a semi-exhibition kitchen where Alvarez, the young, rakish chef, works his magic.

And magic he does work. Chan Chan might look like a café, with a menu whose dishes are all demurely described — and modestly priced — as tapas, but the food is sophisticated and often sublime. Even the dipping sauces that accompany the warm bread are carefully conceived and executed; among these are a garlic-and-honey vinaigrette flecked with herbs and a smoothly savory tapenade of sun-dried tomato. (The restaurant’s menu describes the cooking style as "fusion," hence some of these cross-cultural borrowings.)

The salads and other vegetable-intensive dishes are of a lushness that might appeal to Cézanne. The tibia salad ($10.50), for instance, a variation on spinach salad, is a springtime meadow of deep green, tender leaves tossed with pine nuts, raisins, and chunks of seared apple, all of it bound together by a voluptuous, sweet-tart dressing. Similarly verdant is the aguacate relleno ($12.50), a beautifully ripe avocado split, peeled, filled with sautéed shrimp and scallops, and nestled in garden greens. Eating this dish is a little bit like stumbling on an avocado-shaped treasure chest in the woods and opening it to find a fortune of edible gold.

Given the historical importance of pork in both Spain and her New World colonies, it is slightly surprising that Chan Chan turns out such a wondrous lamb shank ($15). (The eating of pork has long served to distinguish Christians from Jews and Muslims, two groups well represented in medieval Spain, while pigs — carriers of brucellosis, among other diseases — were brought to the New World as a reliable and prolific food source by the conquistadores, as Charles C. Mann discusses in his incomparable book 1491. Lamb, meanwhile, has long been associated with the hot, dry climate of the Mediterranean and not so much with the muggy tropics.) The shank is braised in beer until the meat is tender, though not mushy, and it’s plenty big enough for two, especially if you have a plate of Spanish rice and black beans ($6.50) on the side. You should, if only for authenticity’s sake, although we did find both rice and legumes to be underseasoned — the only dish of which this could be said.

Flan for dessert teeters on the brink of cliché. In this sense it’s the Latin American answer to tiramisu. But Chan Chan actually has a good one ($6); it has something of the texture of bread pudding and the flavor of dulce de leche, and because it’s served as a square cut from a pan, like lasagna, its housemade provenance is apparent.

Chan Chan feels more isolated than it is. It sits in a tiny commercial strip (next to a busy hair salon) in a quiet residential quarter well uphill from the heart-of-the-Castro hubbub. But Muni’s 33-line trolleys glide by periodically, and Market Street is just steps away. And — I almost never get to write this — parking is easy! There are often spaces on 18th Street, and even more on Market. Free! In the Age of the Bailout, you can’t beat that.

CHAN CHAN CAFÉ CUBANO

Dinner: Tues.–Sat., 6–11 p.m.

Breakfast/lunch: Tues.–Sat., 9 a.m.–2 p.m.; Sun., 9 a.m.–4 p.m.

4690 18th St., SF

(866) 691-9975

www.chanchancafecubano.com

Beer and wine

AE/DS/MC/V

Pleasant noise level

Wheelchair accessible

Feast: 6 bloody sausages

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Almost every culture has its own version of blood sausage. The delicacy is a traditional post-slaughter meal, made at the beginning of winter as a way of using the entire animal. It has many names: morcilla (Spain), blood pudding (English and Irish), blutwurst (Germany), boudin noir (France), and soondae (Korea), to name only a few. In most cases, the animal’s blood is cooked until it thickens and then fillers are added, which usually are meat (usually pork), fat, suet, bread, potato, barley, or rice. Good blood sausage has a rich flavor, similar to pâte. Bad blood sausage has a metallic flavor, reminiscent of, ahem, blood. If you can’t get past the name, call it gravy sausage (after all, that’s exactly what it is). Don’t let nomenclature prevent you from experiencing a city filled with bloody goodness; it’s not just for vampires.

MORCILLA


Most of the ubiquitous restaurants in San Francisco serve morcilla. The Spanish version is usually made of onion, lard, salt, spices, and rice. (That’s right, there’s actually no meat in the sausage.)

Beginners can start at Ramblas (557 Valencia, SF. 415-565-0207, www.ramblastapas.com), where sauteed morcilla comes crumbled, like a hash, with Italian butter beans and tomatoes ($7.25). The rich morcilla flavor provides a unique undertone to the fresh beans and peas. Picaro (3120 16th St., SF. 415-431-4089, www.picarotapasrestaurant.com) and Esperpento (3295 22nd St., SF. 415-282-8867) are sister tapas restaurants with matching menus and Miro-esque graffiti. Great for groups and walk-ins, and conveniently located on two of the most bar-laden blocks in the Mission, their morcilla tapa is no-frills, hearty, and ready to share ($7). Plus, if you ask nicely, you can substitute morcilla for one of the other meat choices on the combination platter. If you want to get out of the Mission, head to lovely Belcher Street in the Financial District, an alley laden with long strands of lights and patio dining. B44 (44 Belden, SF. 415-986-6287, www.B44sf.com) is a great place for a fancy blood sausage adventure with a Spanish wine complement. Try a Rioja Temperanillo to go with the onion-based morcilla, served whole with white beans.

BOUDIN NOIR


The French know how to make even the oddest foods taste delicious by successfully pairing ironic flavors. The Boudin Noir dish at Cafe Bastille (22 Belden, SF. 415-986-5673, www.cafebastille.com) takes blood sausage to the next level, making a variety that’s liver-based and is served on a pile of mashed potatoes and caramelized apples. It’s like a high-class shepherd’s pie.

BLOOD PUDDING


Taraval Street, easily accessible by the L train, is a haven for unpretentious diners and Irish pubs that serve blood pudding. (Important note: blood pudding does not resemble pudding.) A favorite is New Taraval Cafe (1054 Taraval, SF. 415-731-3816) doesn’t look like much on the outside, but it serves up large portions of comfort food for a great price. The Irish breakfast comes with both black and white pudding (white is the bloodless, less tasty version of black pudding), two eggs, two pieces of Irish bacon, two Irish sausages, home fried potatoes, and toast ($8.50). The blood pudding has a consistency like that of most breakfast sausage, but less dense.

BLUTWURST


Gather a group of your beer guzzling friends and head to Suppenkuche (525 Laguna, SF. 415-252-9289, www.suppenkuche.com) for blutwurst, more of a wurst than a sausage. Varieties come with the cold meat appetizer plate (actually a cutting board) and resemble light, soft salame. Order the Vesperplatte ($13.50), which is served with German rye soda bread, mayonnaise, and a terrific sweet-and-spicy mustard.

SOONDAE (OR SUNDAE)


Korean soondae is a subtle, spicy, rice-based version of the delicacy, one that leaves a sausagey aftertaste. Try the pan-fried version with silver noodles at Cocobang (550 Taylor, SF. 415-292-5144), a surreal hole-in-the-wall that offers (also rice-based) Korean OB Lager, which makes its appearance in a giant, plastic, screw-top two-liter bottle. For a classier take on Korean BBQ, Muguboka Restaurant (401 Balboa, SF. 415-668-6007) has something for advanced lovers of blood sausage. Its sundae is big enough for four people and the menu provides a bare-bones definition of the dish. It’s best with spicy noodles on the side.

KASZANKA


If you want a home-cooked blood sausage meal, head to Geary Street. Despite the shortage of Polish restaurants in the city, there are plenty of Polish delis. Check out Seakor Polish Delicatessen and Sausage Factory (5957 Geary, SF., 415-387-8660) or New World Market (5641 Geary, SF. 415-751-8810) and discover a whole new world of sausages, wursts, salamis, and, of course, kaszanka — Poland’s take on blood sausage.

>>More Feast: The Guardian Guide to Bay Area Dining and Drinking

Feast: 5 Jewish joints

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It’s easy to assume that the Jews of San Francisco have been culinarily deprived. Unlike New York and Los Angeles, San Francisco doesn’t have an abundance of delis serving tongue-on-rye sandwiches or boiled bagels. But after tasting bowl after bowl of matzo ball soup at establishments across the Bay Area, I can assure Jews and Judeophiles alike that we aren’t that bad off. Whether you crave a delicious and moist knish or that dessert of racial integration, the black-and-white cookie, you’ll find what you’re looking for at one of these go-to Jew food locales.

MOISHE’S PIPPIC


As soon as you enter this Chicago-themed deli, you become a part of the Moishe’s Pippic family. Which means you’ll be privy to matzo ball soup almost like Bubbe used to make. Moishe’s variety, perhaps the best in the city, features seasoned dumplings floating in a perfectly salted broth with huge chunks of carrots. Also worth noting are sandwiches piled so high with whatever meat you want — including rare roast beef or, on Fridays, warm brisket with horseradish — that they might as well scream, "Eat! Eat! You’re too thin!" They offer kosher hot dogs and sausages, too, but sadly, few desserts.

425-A Hayes, SF. (415) 431-2440

HOUSE OF BAGELS


The quaint Geary Street eatery goes beyond lox on an onion bagel. Some of the flavors seem downright sacrilegious — chocolate? Corn? Whole wheat? — but all are delicious with regular or specialty cream-cheese spreads like honey or strawberry. Aside from bagels, the House offers a selection of deli sandwiches and various knishes wrapped in warm doughy crust. Best of all are the free mini challahs and dessert samples on the counter, ready for noshing while you wait. The black-and-whites are the perfect cakey confection; and Jewish favorites like kugel, latkes, and hammentaschen round out the menu. But skip the matzo ball soup — the matzoh balls fall apart and are as soupy as the unappetizing broth.

5030 Geary, SF. (415) 752–6000, www.houseofbagels.com

MILLER’S EAST COAST WEST DELICATESSEN


Bleu cheese and bacon on a burger? Oy! Miller’s may not be the most kosher of delicatessens, but the meat-stacked sandwiches do a good job of adhering to the Jew-food tradition. Also, unlike the café Jack Nicholson visited in the Seven Easy Pieces, Miller’s is flexible with its offerings: do you want cream cheese and lox on a slice of toasted challah? It may not be on the menu, but you can surely get this lovely combination. It’s my usual — that, plus a cup of the matzo ball soup, which has a good consistency and lots of veggies (though the broth could use some salt and a bay leaf). Get a big bowl of soup with a half-chicken and make a meal out of it, or turn it into a feast by adding latkes accompanied by an applesauce that’s like pie filling.

1725 Polk, SF. (415) 563- 3542, www.millersdelisf.com

MAX’S OPERA CAFÉ


This place seems a bit confused about what kind of restaurant it is, with deli-style items, diner decor, and a laminated menu that gives off a Denny’s vibe. But once inside, all that matters is the matzo ball soup, chock-full of vegetables, noodles, and generous cuts of lean chicken. Supplement it with traditional delights like corned beef, pastrami, or brisket with one of five mustard options, or try modern sandwiches like turkey with roasted pear and Brie. Another hearty option is the chicken potpie. Just beware: the servings are large and in charge.

601 Van Ness, SF. (415) 771-7300, www.maxsworld.com

TEL AVIV KOSHER MARKET


This is the place to be if you’re in need of some tasty kosher treats. They stock all of the essentials and beyond — whether it be matzo meal, Passover desserts, challah, meats of all kinds, gefilte fish, turkey meatballs, wine, Israeli candy, or Bazooka bubble gum. The Jew-food fun never ends. They also have a pre-made section hosting a scrumptious medley of carrots, eggplant, challah dogs, knishes, hummus, tahini, and falafel that you can enjoy on-site at one of their two tables. The challah is downright addictive and made locally. And delights imported from the Holy Land are just as good — and fun, like the dessert-in-a-box mix for chocolate balls dipped in sprinkles. (Follow the directions on the back, if you can read Hebrew.)

2495 Irving, SF, (415) 661-7588

>>More Feast: The Guardian Guide to Bay Area Dining and Drinking

Feast: 5 German delights

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Contrary to popular belief, German cuisine is not an oxymoronic phrase. Though traditional food from the Fatherland does tend to be heavier on meat and carbs than the modern American diet, it — like Southern food, which has been getting more respect from foodies in recent years — is as capable of being nuanced, innovative, and highbrow as any of its more popular siblings (see: Spanish tapas, French everything.) For me, the secret to the perfect German restaurant is a place that balances tradition and modernity, in both cuisine and atmosphere. And then there’s the spaetzle, the paisley-shaped egg pasta that’s as ubiquitous a side dish in Germany as french fries are in America — and one that’s hard to get right. Like gnocchi or risotto, the dish requires a certain attention to achieve its true potential. If the place does spaetzle well, you can assume it probably gets most other things right too. Guten appetit!

SUPPENKUCHE


Best. Spaetzle. Ever. Yes, this place won the prize for all-around best German food in the Bay, with its traditional menu expertly executed in an understatedly chic setting: white walls, beer hall–style tables, and a ceiling hung artistically with dried plants. The centerpiece is the bar, setting a casual, festive tone with plenty of beer choices. Everything I tried here was amazing, including a venison dish with cherry sauce. Potato pancakes were strange — more like hashbrowns than potato patties — but delicious. And the meal started with brown bread and chive butter, both excellent.

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

WALZWERK


This small, intimate East German eatery has a fine dining feel and the cuisine to match — without giving up tradition. Roulade is made with high-quality meat and a pickle spear as its center. Red cabbage strikes the perfect balance between sweet and sour. And the sauerkraut I took home was so delicious — accented with caraway — that I finished it before it made it to the fridge. The only disappointment was its spaetzle, which was a bit overcooked. Wine and beer offerings are fantastic, and there are several decent veggie menu options. The best indicator of its worthiness? Both the servers and the people sitting behind me were actually from Germany.

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

SCHNITZELHAUS


If there’s an American stereotype of a German restaurant, this is it — except maybe smaller. The tiny, wood-panelled eatery has the feel of a mountain lodge and the hearty menu to match. Schnitzelhaus isn’t trying to jump on the modern cuisine train — they’re just doing German food with simple earnestness. This place gets extra points for its extensive menu of schnitzels (true to its name) — most places offer only two options, weiner (chicken or veal with lemon) or jaeger (pork with mushroom sauce) and its offerings of German wines. I was unimpressed with the spaetzle, which was thin, greasy, and not grilled enough. But the lentils are to die for.

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

SCHROEDER’S CAFE


Left over from some kind of German American past (they’ve been around since 1893), Schroeder’s is like a German restaurant set up in an Elks lodge. It’s not trying to do the cutesy, kitschy thing: its decor is stark and no-frills. The food, too, is no nonsense — decent, but not entirely remarkable. The potato pancakes were too dense and greasy for my taste. The jagerschnitzel was overbreaded — though the mushroom sauce was delicious. The best thing about Schroeder’s, though, was the spaetzle, which was fluffy, doughy, and not too oily. Perhaps better for drinking than dining, you might want to check this place out on Fridays in October, when there’s live polka music.

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

SPEISEKAMMER


This beautiful Alameda outpost is an ideal option for those in the East Bay. The space is large, light, and sophisticated, including a beer garden illuminated by white lights and candles. Ideal for large celebrations and romantic dinners, this place features lots of beers on tap, a phenomenal wine list (by the glass and bottle), and a full bar, including a menu with several German-style cocktails (think fig vodka). The spaetzle and sauerkraut were both too greasy and the bread basket was unimpressive, but the atmosphere was perfect.

2425 Lincoln, Alameda. (510) 522-1300, www.speisekammer.com

>>More Feast: The Guardian Guide to Bay Area Dining and Drinking

Feast: 5 fierce cooking classes

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There’s something perfect about a cooking class for an adult — it’s a way to learn a new skill without making a huge commitment (Sure, I want to learn Italian — but who has time to spend a semester on it, only to know how to ask for directions?); it’s a way to get closer to existing friends or to meet new people (especially singles-themed events); and it has a practical application (One must eat. One mustn’t necessarily, say, do cross-stitch). So I’ve researched a selection of what the Bay Area has to offer, whether you’re looking to strengthen partnerships, find new ones, or just change your relationship with your kitchen (it is, apparently, more than a place to keep your beer). The most important thing I’ve learned is that many classes offer similar tips, skills, and seasonal menus. And all intend to demystify or intensify your relationship with food. So when choosing a class, consider what it is you really want to get from it. Do you want to know how to make a gourmet meal for a dinner party? Do you want to meet new people and have a good time? Do you want to put some food in your freezer? Or do you just want to figure out what your gas range-top is good for other than lighting cigarettes when your Bic’s out of fuel? Lucky for you, in a culinary-focused city like this one, there’s a class for all of you. Here are some of my favorites.

THE CULINARY SALON


The only thing more charming than Chef Joe Wittenbrook is his teaching space: a quaint street-level apartment with a picture window in Duboce Triangle. Wittenbrook’s focus is on the whole experience. This is not necessarily the class where you’ll perfect techniques, but you’ll learn more than you ever expected to — from the origin of the foods on your menu to special tips and tricks. His classes are small — a recent Saturday course had five students — and are therefore intimate and casual, made friendly and warm by Wittenbrook’s outgoing personality. Don’t forget the wine — you’re welcome to imbibe during class as well as the European family-style meal you’ll share together afterward. Or, get four or six friends together and you can have him to yourself.

16-B Sanchez, SF. (415) 626-4379, www.theculinarysalon.com

FIRST CLASS COOKING


The structure of these courses, hosted by Emily Dellas at her stunning SoMa loft, is similar to Wittenbrook’s: everyone gets a list of recipes, takes turns preparing dishes, and shares the resulting meal together. As a food-lover without much formal training, though, her approach is to pass on her love for cooking to those who might be intimidated by it, demystifying dishes like profiteroles (the pastry base of cream puffs and éclairs). She likes to create menus that people can not only prepare themselves, but can feel good about eating on a regular basis — light, healthy, and seasonal. Her courses have room for about 10 people apiece, which means less hands-on time for each person, but the potential for a more festive atmosphere. Bring a friend and a bottle of wine.

www.firstclasscooking.com

PARTIES THAT COOK


Though Parties That Cook does host public classes (in particular, one for singles at Sur La Table), its specialty is creating cooking-themed events for corporate team building or private gatherings. And the experience it provides is part class, part catered meal. PTC will come to your house or help you rent a space, bring ingredients and cooking utensils, organize staff to help with hands-on instruction, and, when the meal is done, serve you and your guests restaurant-style. As an ideal option when you want to create a special event according to your tastes, PTC can accommodate up to 600 people. PTC even offers a recipe deck, complete with illustrated instructions on 30 different small dishes, that you can purchase as party favors.

601 Minnesota, SF. (415) 441-3595, www.partiesthatcook.com

COOKS BOULEVARD


Though the independent kitchenware store hosts a variety of cooking classes, the cornerstone of its educational program is Essential Knife Skills, held monthly in the gorgeous, spacious teaching kitchen at the Katherine Michiels School. The concept of the course is to teach basic safety and techniques for wielding a cook’s most important weapon, with each of up to 10 people getting to practice at their own station (and getting one-on-one attention). A bit more formal than the private cooking classes, the course is divided in half by a lovely cheese-and-cracker break. Although it’s geared toward — and useful to — anyone, this seems like an ideal class for the intermediate cook who wants to develop the ability to cook more efficiently and beautifully. (Parents take note: the company Apron Strings [415-550-7976, www.apronstringssf.com] also hosts classes for kids at this lovely location.)

1335 Guerrero, SF. (415) 647-2665, www.cooksboulevard.com

FOOD WIZ


Like Dellas, chef Marcus Gordon wants to teach that cooking should be fun and "anybody can do it." The native New Yorker hosts small classes (limited to five people) in the remodeled kitchen of his Noe Valley home, offering hands-on experience, tips and tricks, a shared meal after the class (including a cocktail — but no drinking during class), and even food to take home. Most importantly, he wants his students to realize they can make better-than-restaurant cuisine at home and to enjoy his recipes of foods "that really jump around on your tongue."

29th St. (between Church and Dolores), SF. www.foodwizsf.com

>>More Feast: The Guardian Guide to Bay Area Dining and Drinking

Feast: 6 perfect cheese plates

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There’s an old wives’ tale that eating cheese before bed will produce nightmares; but I’ve found that after nibbling a good Gruyère or a buttery Brie, my dreams are only about consuming more of that dairy delight. Whether you prefer yours drizzled with honey, spread on warm bread, or paired with a juicy red wine, the cheese plates at these six locations guarantee will feed your fromage fetish too.

GARY DANKO


The Danko experience can be intimidating. Before going, one has to be physically and mentally prepared (palate sharp, Food Lover’s Guide consulted at length), as well as financially stable (it’s a go-to spot for birthdays and anniversaries, usually ones ending in "5" and "0.") Those who prefer to get their feet wet first instead of cannonballing into the deep end might find the cheese plate a perfect starting point. It’s worth a trip to the upscale eatery for the cheese plate alone, because, as with everything else here, it’s both epic and elegant. There are 16 to 20 types of cheese to choose from, with seasonal variations but typically including picks from local farms in addition to harder-to-find selections. Options are wheeled around the restaurant on elegant silver carts, and the servers describe the flavor and origin of each one before cutting your cheese (yes, we did) while you watch.

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

BAR BAMBINO


This cozy restaurant on 16th Street mostly carries Italian cheeses, augmented by a few artisanal American varieties. The chalkboard menu changes seasonally, with offerings you won’t find everywhere else. Not sure what you want? Sit at the bar or a small table and consult a cheese expert — soon adjectives will be flying like so many white handkerchiefs. When you get your order, the cheeses are arranged simply, accompanied with toasted brown bread, nuts, and fruit. Prices range from $12–$25 for three different sizes, making this place home to some of the more reasonably priced cheese plates we’ve found.

2931 16th St., SF. (415) 701-8466, barbambino.com

CAV


It is nigh impossible to ignore the cheese plates at wine bars, and Cav’s is probably the best of the bunch, thanks to its extensive selection. The current menu lists 20 cheeses, divided into cow, goat, sheep, and blue cheeses — most from Europe but some from small American artisans. The menu contains helpful tasting notes on the cheeses, and the staff are definitely cheese sophisticates, so ask them about their favorites. At $20–$85 per plate, this is one of the more spendy places, but it’s worthwhile for the substantial portions and the wonderful wine list.

1666 Market, SF. (415) 437-1770, cavwinebar.com

ABSINTHE


The cheese list at Absinthe may be concise — with about 10 European and three American varieties — but the plates stand out here because the cheeses are carefully chosen and thoughtfully paired. A French ash-rind goat’s milk cheese, for example, gets a garnish of glossy pickled cherries; marinated olives accompany a Spanish triple crème; and housemade candied kumquats balance a dry, tangy American blue. A single cheese with its pairing and toast points is $8, or you can make three selections for $22, or five for $38. You can also surrender to the decadence of your surroundings and try all, with accoutrements, for $99.

398 Hayes, SF. (415) 551-1590, absinthe.com

UVA ENOTECA


The formaggi at Uva Enoteca is formidable and comprises about a third of the nightly offerings. All the cheeses at Uva are Italian, and though the menu skips descriptions, well-informed servers are adept at describing the differences between a sheep’s milk cheese from Tuscany and a cow’s milk from Venice. The cheeses are served on a long wooden block, with various accompaniments ladled tableside, including a pear, apple, and black pepper compote, white truffle-scented honey, and sour cherry preserves. While elegant, Uva is decidedly unpretentious and surprisingly affordable: $10 gets you generous portions of three cheeses, $16 gets you five, and for $22 you can taste seven, which is almost half the menu.

568 Haight, SF. (415) 829-2024, uvaenoteca.com

COWGIRL CREAMERY


What’s better than hitting the farmer’s market, grabbing some cheese, fruit, and a baguette, and doing a cheese plate yourself? Nothing, we say. Nothing’s better. The Cowgirl Creamery cheese shop at the Ferry Building is well known for its dizzying selection of cheeses from around the world, as well as for its own locally made, highly addictive varieties like Mt. Tam (a glorious, creamy cow’s milk) and St. Pat (a sharp, delicious goat’s milk with an herbed rind.) The cheesemongers at Cowgirl are unstumpable, and will let you try samples to your heart’s content.

1 Ferry Building #17, SF. (415) 362-9354, cowgirlcreamery.com

>>More Feast: The Guardian Guide to Bay Area Dining and Drinking

Janitzi

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› paulr@sfbg.com

It’s hard to imagine a restaurant actually failing on Valencia Street, but from time to time one does notice a casualty. The west side of the block between 22nd and 23rd streets, in particular, has turned out to be something of a killing field lately. The long-running Saigon Saigon folded two years ago, leaving a memorial — I hope not permanent — of boarded-up windows. Next door is a sliver of a space, once home to the amazing Gravity Spot, that has had multiple occupants since the mid-1990s. At the moment it appears to be a nascent wraps shop.

Then there is the larger, and quite handsome, setting at 1152 Valencia. Around the turn of the millennium it opened as Watergate and featured a façade of tall casement windows and enough woodwork inside to do justice to a London gentlemen’s club. Later occupants included Watercress and Senses, each coming and going with a bit more alacrity than its predecessor, in the manner of some of the later Roman emperors.

Now we have Janitzi, which opened Labor Day weekend, serving "the cuisine of the Americas." The space remains as appealing (to me, at least) as ever, although the woodwork inside has given way to a paint job of vibrant lime green (along with ochre-colored floors that combine concrete and wood planks), while the unmissable facade, with its pilasters, has been painted sky blue with canary-yellow trim, just to make sure no one can possibly miss it.

Serving a pan-American cuisine is such a self-evidently good idea it’s a wonder we don’t have many such places — but at least we have this one. Janitzi’s direct culinary ancestor would probably be Yunza, which offered a similar menu along lower Fillmore but did not long survive an obscure and slightly seedy midblock setting. Janitzi has a large advantage here, despite the spotty history of the address.

And what is the nature of the menu? Janitzi’s Americas of "cuisine of the Americas" begins at the Rio Grande, apparently, and reaches south to Cape Horn. It includes favorites from Mexico (queso fundido), Peru (ceviche), Brazil (yucca fries), Venezuela (arepas), and Argentina (milanesa). And after being cooked up in the large exhibition kitchen at the rear of the dining room, it’s served in various portion sizes, at reasonable prices, on stylish modern tableware, spare white but with sexy undulations.

An unexpected theme of unification is french bread, the first rounds of which arrive at your table, accompanied by a marvelous salsa of avocado pureed with garlic, cilantro, and lime juice, soon after you’ve been seated. Another cycle turns up with the queso fundido ($9), which is less about queso than a heart-stopping wealth of Mexican-style chorizo. Usually you scoop queso fundido with tortilla chips or ladle it into warm tortillas; the bread rounds were adequate here, though not ideal.

Also in a Mexican vein were a pair of pasilla peppers ($9), charred, peeled, stuffed with shredded chicken and queso blanco, then bathed in a mild, creamy tomato sauce. The peppers had just enough bite to assert themselves through the sauce, and yet more bread rounds were on hand for mop-up duty.

A salad of shrimp and avocado ($14) left us underwhelmed, particularly considering the price. True, there were six or eight shrimp of decent size, peeled and tasty, and the avocado was artfully arranged in thin slices around the edge of the dish, like markers on a sundial. But most of the salad consisted of chopped romaine lettuce, which was about as interesting to look at as it was to eat, and that was not very, despite a heavy shower of toasted squash seeds added for texture and flavor and a potent-sounding vinaigrette of cilantro and jalapeño.

If the shrimp salad was overpriced, the rack of lamb ($20) made up for it. The ribs had been expertly frenched and arranged in the middle of the plate, like the frame of a wigwam. Elsewhere were pats of thyme butter and miniature logs of (mysteriously raw) baby carrot. Our only complaint was that the meat was slightly overcooked; there was just the faintest hint of pink inside. Juice flowed liberally, however, and the flavors were rich and full.

It was hard to tell if the Tarasco cakes ($12) — patties of seasoned, shredded beef leavened with oatmeal (or, the hamburger as experienced by the Tarasco Indians of Mexico’s central plateau) — were juicy or not. They didn’t need to be, since they were bathed in the same creamy tomato requesón sauce that coated the pasilla peppers. But even without that sauce, they would have been flavorful.

So-called protein dishes (the various meats, the seafood) include your choice of two sides, and these are among the most satisfying items on the menu. Corn, of course, which is native to the Yucatán peninsula, figures prominently in them. It doesn’t get much simpler than corn grilled on the cob, and if the corn is height-of-the-season white corn, it doesn’t need much tweaking beyond a hint of sweet butter.

Arepas, corn pancakes common in Venezuela and Colombia, were unadorned but creamy inside a nicely blistered crust. Yucca fries could have been crisper but still offered their distinctive sweet savoriness. Braised cabbage turned out to be a close relation of coleslaw, with shreds of red and green cabbage brightened with lime juice.

And, for dessert, a hint of the north: the vanilla dome ($6), vanilla ice cream encased in a shell of dark chocolate, with a heart of caramel. It’s like a big Dilly bar that slipped off its stick — the Dilly bar being, for some of us, one of childhood’s most memorable bits of (norte) Americana.

JANITZI

Daily, 10 a.m.–10 p.m.

1152 Valencia, SF

(415) 821-2310

Beer and wine pending

AE/DISC/MC/V

Moderately noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Hope blows

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS Hope does not spring eternal. It springs for about three years and four months. Just kidding. It springs eternal. For me it does, but I kind of wish it didn’t. My friends who have given up seem happy, and I look at them, laughing the dark laugh and drinking heavily, and I think, I want that. Thus the fascination with self-destructive habits like, yes, drinking, but also self-pity, insomnia, and burning the roof of your mouth on hot pizza.

You probably noticed that Cheap Eats has become a kind of a blues tune, featuring repetition and heartache. I’d love to stay right there, believe me, and close my eyes and just ever-so-slightly sway, real sexy, like buildings, while the harmonica, "brings it home" and the ice in everyone’s glasses melts.

This sounds nice, doesn’t it? Trust me. It does.

However, and this is a terrible attitude, I know: I keep having hope. Which springs eternal, like cockroaches.

But I would like to learn hopelessness, and am thinking about getting a television. That’s Earl Butter’s advice. "Don’t do drugs," he said, over coffee, down at the coffee shop, ’cause I asked. "Do TV."

Yeah! Food Network, I thought. That’s something I’ve heard about. As usual, Earl Butter has his finger on the pulse of — well, on my pulse.

And let’s be clear: I say learn hopelessness instead of be hopeless not because I’m a new age hippie chick, but the opposite. A chicken farmer. As chicken farmers know (from shoveling shit, chopping off heads, and watching the hawks circle) we are all, ultimately, hopeless. It springs eternal too! But it gets overlooked, so you have to learn it.

This week’s dating disaster blues song is too sad and scary to sing, even for me. So let’s cut the one-four-five, shitcan the harmonica player, shoot the piano player, and, pending his mommy’s permission, effectively turn Cheap Eats over to an adorable three-year-old boy named Boink, who loves to cook and hates to eat. I’m seeing a kind of an alternative weekly cooking show, wherein Boink, with the help of his washed-up chicken-farming nanny, invents pesto soup and generally tries to poison his little sister, who eats anything and is just the cutest little sweetie-pie ever to hit the alternative weekly world since Matt Gonzalez circa 10 years ago.

Let’s call it … I know: Cheap Eats! The first episode begins right now, with Boink at the counter doing what he does best: raising dust. Dust is his word for clouds of flour he inspires by 1) sticking his hands in the mixing bowl, 2) bringing them to face level and clapping, and 3) repeating steps one and two. His whole face, eyebrows, hair, clothes … he is coated in "dust."

I am standing nearby, holding Boink’s cute little sister Popeye the Sailor Baby, who is spewing puke all over me. I’m soaked. If her brother and I were to hug right now we would make, between us, a most disgusting batter.

In fact, let’s make it: puke pancakes! I’m disgusted, not because of the state of my nannywear, but because the day before, I am remembering, standing there dripping sickness, Popeye and me shared fresh figs under their back yard fig tree, alternating bites, while Boink tortured the chickens. I give myself 24 hours before I’m puking all over my nanny.

This feels more like a medical certainty than a prediction, but 24 hours later I feel fine. I feel great. Home, and clean, and hopeful, I call my TV-watching friends the Mountains and invite myself over for dinner. They accept! I e-mail the TV-watching couple I wrote about last time, and invite myself over after dinner for late-night meaningless sex. They accept!

In my car I listen to the debate, and begin to feel it. By the time the ribs and chickens come off the grill, I am on the Mountains’ bathroom floor, missing dinner and cell-phoning my couple to cancel them, too. I was off by six hours, but not off. Puke springs eternal.

My new favorite restaurant is Patxi’s, the Chicago pizza place in Hayes Valley. There are a couple other sources for deep-dish pizza in town, but none come as close to the East Bay’s great Zachary’s as this. In fact, um, I think I might like Patxi’s better. Meat slice (and they do sell stuffed slices) had pepperoni, sausage, and jalapeños — genuinely hot ones. Great crust, soccer on TV … *

PATXI’S

Tues.–Sun., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.

511 Hayes, SF

(415) 558-9991

Beer & wine

AE/MC/V

Free for all — and freewheelin’

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Hardly Strictly Bluegrass has never been about full-tilt traditionalism and musical purity, though real-deal legends like Ralph Stanley and Earl Scruggs, plus true believers such as the Del McCoury Band and the Roan Mountain Hilltoppers, have always graced its stages. Here are a few new, yet somehow familiar, and irreverent faces to the Golden Gate Park bash. (Kimberly Chun)

BONNIE "PRINCE" BILLY


Don’t get Will Oldham started on these whippersnapper actors today. When the subject of promising thespians came up during our recent interview, I suggested Shia LaBeouf. "I heard going into [Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull] that he was good, but it was awful and he was awful," said the Matewan child star, who saw it in Corte Madera during his recent Headlands Center for the Arts residency. "It was awful in the same way the first new Star Wars was awful — it seemed like it was designed to create the video games that were accompanying it."

Sun/5, 1 p.m., Rooster Stage

LOS CENZONTLES WITH SANTIAGO JIMENEZ


The Chicano band’s moniker may translate as the Mockingbirds, but there’s no mocking these activists’ grasp of Mexican roots sounds, including Tejano and Son Jarocho. Traditional folk instruments like the uke-like jarana will mingle with Jimenez’s Tex-Mex squeezebox stylings.

Sat/4, 11 a.m., Arrow Stage

HEAVY TRASH


Tube amps burst, echo machines eke out, and rockabilly kittens swoon when groovy-hate-fuck cats Jon Spencer and Matt Verta-Ray bend those badass notes.

Sun/5, 5:45 p.m., Star Stage

THE INFAMOUS STRINGDUSTERS


Three prizes at last year’s International Bluegrass Music Association Awards went to the combo.

Sun/5, 2:10 p.m., Arrow Stage

IRON AND WINE


A long-tressed Sam Beam and his Wine-ers broke onto Letterman with The Shepherd’s Dog (Sub Pop, 2007). So what’s next?

Sun/5, 3:25 p.m., Rooster Stage.

MARK OLSON AND GARY LOURIS


Two forces in the criminally unrecognized Jayhawks reunite — long after vocalist Mark Olson moved to the Joshua Tree area to be with now-ex Victoria Williams. Coming on the heels of Louris’ Vagabonds (Rykodisc) is their new Chris Robinson–produced collabo, Ready for the Flood (Hacktone).

Sat/4, 1:30 p.m., Rooster Stage

ROBERT PLANT AND ALISON KRAUSS


The warmth and intimacy of this simpatico musical coupling was enough to ward off the chill at this summer’s foggy show at the Greek Theatre as the lion-maned duo tamed the Zep-happy mob with hushed versions of "Black Dog" and "The Battle of Evermore."

Fri/3, 5:15 p.m., Banjo Stage

WACO BROTHERS


OK, these yobs are far from unknown: Jon Langford and Steve Goulding can be sighted among the many Mekons, and Alan Doughty survived Jesus Jones. Good-timers like "Drinkin’ Cheatin’ Death" show why this band drives its hometown Chicago crowds nutty.

Sat/4, 12:05 p.m., Star Stage

PEGI YOUNG


Neil Young spotters will hope he’ll sit in, but give the woman who masterminded the Bridge Benefit her due. Pegi’s self-titled debut (Warner Bros., 2007) found her stirring from the support role, wrapping sugar-dusted, languorous tones around slow-dances à la "When the Wildlife Betrays Me."

Sun/5, 4:30 p.m., Arrow Stage

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 8 runs from Fri/3-Sun/5, in Speedway Meadow, Golden Gate Park, SF. Free. www.strictlybluegrass.com.

Smoke signals

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS For those of you who are getting a vicarious thrill out of my nightmares d’amour … don’t! Nothing ever happens! It’s like if James Thurber wrote Harlequins, or Jim Jarmusch made porn. Either one might be entertaining, sure, but comic relief is neither to the players themselves.

Short story long: dude contacts me, likes my looks, my writing, and barbecue in general. (This is my online dating profile he’s responding to, not Cheap Eats.) Anyway, his wife and him are poly, she’s bi, and, well …

One thing leads to another, including her writing me too, calling me "doll," and being generally sweet. He sends me the requisite pictures of his penis. Only in this case, maybe because of all the talk of barbecue, it works! It looks absolutely, spectacularly delicious. I want it.

So, OK, so we make our date. It’s a barbecue date, but the implication is hot three-way sex. I take a long bath, do my nails and makeup, spend way too much time picking out my sexiest skirt and the shirt least likely to be ruined by barbecue sauce.

And I’m off. They live just up the road in a shack in the woods, on the river, which is redneck country. I’m thinking: Yay! My people! What I’m not thinking is that their seven-year-old daughter will be home. Or that while dad is busy with the grill and mom with her bong, it will be the daughter who shows me around the place, engages me in conversation, takes me through the trees to the playhouse she’s building, and asks me interesting questions.

I like the parents too, only I love this kid. While she flits about, chasing cats and climbing walls, me and mom and dad sit under the redwoods around an unlit fire pit, enjoying four kinds of potato chips and three kinds of dip, sipping our drinks, and waiting for the ribs.

I ask questions and they answer them, the wife leafing through a magazine. He’s not a huge practitioner of eye contact, either. Oddly, I’m enjoying myself. The woods, the smell of smoke … I feel right at home. And they’re attractive enough, I just kind of wish I could ditch them and run with their daughter. Who, during dinner, puts headphones on and plays violent computer games.

Instead of the deck or the dining room, we adults eat at the TV, plates on laps, and — get this — what’s showing is Sweeney Todd. Perfect! I’ve got the couch to myself, barbecue sauce all over my face and fingers, pork in my teeth … there’s blood squirting all over Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter at the meat grinder, and I am, as you might imagine, in chicken farmer heaven — at each slit of each throat squirming all over the couch and feeling finally sexy.

There’s a mattress on the floor under our feet. After the movie, when I come out of the bathroom, both parents are gone and the kid is jumping on the mattress, telling me about the next movie, how I’m going to love it and have to watch the whole thing with her. It’s a kids’ movie.

"Where are your mom and dad?" I ask, thinking maybe they’ve gone into their bedroom. I hope.

"Outside smoking," she says.

I find them at the potato chip buffet and they’re, like, "Hey."

It’s the woods, it’s dusk, sweet. I linger, trying to read the situation, but nobody asks me to sit or offers a drink, or gives me a sign, so I thank them for the meat and movie and get my purse. Wife gives me a hug. Husband walks me to my car and kisses me on the lips. And he’s tall, so I have to stand on my tiptoes, which I love. The next day I thank them again, in writing.

He writes back, says they had a nice time too, only he would’ve liked it better if I’d spent the night because, and I quote, he "really wanted to shove [his] cock down my throat, lol."

So. Tell me. How am I supposed to take this?

———————————–

My new favorite restaurant is Little Joe’s Pizza. They serve Italian and Mexican food. Which is especially poignant because it’s at the corner of Mission and Italy, in the Excelsior. We had a pizza party there for Deevee’s birthday. She’s 41. Salads, garlic bread, pizzas, and pitchers and pitchers of beer. We stayed for hours. Total damage: $20 per person, tip included! Great atmosphere. Black vinyl booths, red walls, very friendly.

LITTLE JOE’S

Sun.–Thu., 11:30 a.m.–midnight; Fri.–Sat., 11:30–1 a.m.

5006 Mission, SF

(415) 333-3684/5/6

Beer & wine

MC/V

Domo

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› paulr@sfbg.com

For lovers of sushi bars (like me!), a sushi restaurant with a dining room consisting entirely of counter space would indeed be a glimpse of heaven. Sushi could be the ultimate counter food: you sit, you order a few things and watch them be made by chefs whose skills can seem quite magical, and once you’ve eaten them, you order some more. It’s an incremental way of having dinner that amounts to a pleasant loosening of the usual Western pattern, in which everything (except possibly dessert) is ordered at once and then starts arriving in a bell-curve parade, beginning with modest nibbles and starters before proceeding to the great wallop of the main dish. There are no second acts in this ritual, and sushi is particularly ill-suited to it; I have long found it uncomfortable to sit stiffly at a distant table, waiting for a sushi dinner to be brought over an attenuated supply line from an unseen kitchen. One feels far away and awkward, like a step-diner.

Given the appeal, not to mention fundamental logic, of the multistage, sushi-bar dinner, a haunting question is why someone didn’t think to open a place like Domo years ago. Domo, the sushi restaurant that thinks it’s a sushi bar, opened in the spring under the auspices of Luke and Kitty Sung, of Isa in Cow Hollow. The new restaurant sits on a cozy stretch of Laguna Street in Hayes Valley, with Momi Toby’s Revolution Café across the street and the clamorous Il Borgo at the corner. Inside it’s even cozier: much of the tight space is lined with counter, and I noticed only one table. Domo is almost like a sushi kiosk (maybe at an airport or baseball park in some foofy city) that was given growth hormone. It’s a masterful idea with some eccentricities.

Part of the trouble is ergonomic. The stools are rather high, and there is an unsettling sense of being perched above things. Also, since all the restaurant’s patrons are facing outward, whether to window glass or walls — or, in the case of a small group of the elect, the chefs themselves — the plates of food must continually be presented over this or that hyperelevated shoulder. The serving staff simply doesn’t have easy access to the counters if the restaurant is full, which, because it’s so small, it often seems to be.

The food, fortunately, is quite good, in that urban-hipster-sushi way. You have your edamame ($3.50), your seaweed salad ($3.95) with its nicely balancing vinaigrette, your rolls with clever names, some familiar and some not. Spider roll ($8.95) seldom disappoints, and it didn’t here, with its star of soft-shell crab in tempura, along with shiso, cucumber, tobiko, avocado, and daikon sprouts. All the rolls were satisfying, whether they were old standards or young whippersnappers. One of the youngsters didn’t even look like a roll: Fire Cracker Balls ($9.95), which consisted of rounds of spicy tuna rolled in panko (the coarse Japanese-style bread crumbs). They were advertised as spicy-hot and were indeed — also a little dry, despite spicy mayo and unagi sauce.

Even hotter was a jalapeño-hamachi roll ($5.50), a simple and direct beam of chili power. But Spicy Hulk ($9.95), despite a formidable name, was cooled by wrappings of cucumber strips instead of the usual nori; inside lay spicy tuna, avocado, and tobiko, with a sauce like Bloody Mary mix drizzled over the top. One of our party liked this potion so much he poured the remainder into an empty wine glass and drank it as a constitutional.

For sheer heft, look to the Domo roll ($11.50), a California roll (of crab meat and avocado) baked under a roof of salmon slices and scallops, sauced with barbecue unagi glaze and spicy mayo, and festooned with tobiko and scallions. Overkill? Maybe a little, but every menu needs at least one item with true filling power. Still, our favorite among the rolls was negi-hama ($4.75), an elegant preparation of diced hamachi and scallions in which each ingredient spoke clearly and in harmony with the other.

In a multicultural vein, Domo offers a small selection of crudos ($5.95 for two). Tastes rather than full courses, they’re presented in porcelain soup ladles and might include spicy tuna with sriracha, sesame oil, cilantro, and avocado chunks; and uni, or sea urchin, which is slightly oozy and presented with avocado chunks, wasabi, soy sauce, and sea salt.

In the Hall of Disappointments I place, not for the first time, toro ($10.95) — fatty tuna, from the fish’s belly — and not only because of its pale, lard-like color. Fatty tuna is considered a great delicacy and is priced accordingly. But in my experience the more ordinary, ruby red flesh is prettier, tastier, and more tender. And we were not wowed by a Kobe beef tataki ($11.95); the flaps of beef were flavorful and voluptuously soft, but why was it thought wise to wrap them around half-raw asparagus spears? Beef tataki is one thing, asparagus tataki quite another.

Despite the peculiarities of Domo’s layout, the service staff is attentive and friendly: plates are cleared quickly while fresh dishes emerge from the kitchen at regular intervals. I did notice that water glasses could go some time without being refilled — not the biggest of deals, but not completely irrelevant in a restaurant serving fire cracker balls and spicy hulks. I almost typed "hunks," which wouldn’t have been a typo, actually, since Domo is part of the new Hayes Valley, and welcome to it.

DOMO

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

Lunch: Mon.–Fri., noon–2:30 p.m.

511 Laguna, SF

(415) 861-8887

www.domosf.com

Beer, wine, sake

MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

They made me realise

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› johnny@sfbg.com

This is an "I remember" groupie story about My Bloody Valentine. But I’ll try to tap into Joe Brainard’s conciseness and make certain my nostalgia has a point.

Two decades ago, when Om was a London three-piece named Loop, and Dave Segal, Michael Segal, and I were writing, typing, photocopying, and stapling a music zine called You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever, the Segals and I drove from Detroit to Toronto to join an audience of 20 or 30 Canadians at MBV’s first-ever North American show. We wanted to hear the instrumental bridge of "You Made Me Realise" — the precise recorded moment when MBV rose above C86, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Sonic Youth, and Dinosaur Jr., thanks to a guitar sound that levitated, compressed, and then shattered.

That night, that portion of that song was something different: a literally dizzying five-minute hurricane of noise.

When MBV played Detroit a week later, we hung out with Kevin Shields, Bilinda J. Butcher, Deb Googe, and Colm Ó Cíosóig upstairs by a piano at Saint Andrew’s Hall and interviewed them about the Lazy days of 1987’s Ecstasy and Strawberry Wine and the studio sleep deprivation that led to the breakthrough of You Made Me Realise (Creation, 1988) and Isn’t Anything (Warner Bros./Sire, 1988). Loveless (Creation, 1991) was still just an idea. Back then, Simon Reynolds, whom I interviewed for the same zine, was the group’s vanguard critical champion. In Melody Maker, he’d cite the French feminist theory of Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva, replacing academic jargon with playful alliteration when discussing the soft-focus gender-blur of MBV’s music and the way it even reshaped the phallic sound of the guitar. In imitation of Reynolds and in thrall to MBV, I’d write about the "noisebliss nosebleeds" they could generate, and compare their sound (on Isn’t Anything‘s "All I Need") to a giant heartbeat during a nuclear blast.

Some scoundrel has nicked my copy of Reynolds’s 1990 book Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock, but I don’t need him, Cixous, Irigaray, or Kristeva to point out why MBV were ahead of their time in 1988 and perhaps still are. Strip away their awesome sound and you’ll discover that MBV matter-of-factly brought gender equity to rock. This achievement seemed beside the point because the sound that bloomed from their masculine-feminine dynamic was so absolutely, identity-meltingly innovative. Sonic Youth and the Pixies included women playing bass, but MBV had guitarist-vocalist Butcher quietly facing down a life-threateningly abusive relationship in Isn’t Anything‘s mammothly funereal "No More Sorry," and the strapping Googe bringing a more muscular, dyke-in-a-white-T-shirt brand of bass to your face from start to finish of every song. No other band had MBV’s pleasure principle.

The last times I saw MBV were in 1991 and 1992. I went to a concert in wintry Chicago where Babes in Toyland opened, a billing that attested to the onset of riot grrrl and the fact that the United States was about to reach Nirvana — two "revolutions" that in some ways were regressions from MBV. Then I moved by Greyhound from Detroit to San Francisco, where I saw them twice — the more memorable concert taking place at the Kennel Club, now the Independent. There, the instrumental passage of "You Made Me Realise" expanded to hallucinatory dimensions, stretching for five, then 10, then 15, then 20-plus minutes. The shuddering layers of distortion piled one on top of another. A guy next to me went berserk in the maelstrom, screaming himself hoarse until his frayed vocal cords were just another part of the apocalyptic, self-annihiutf8g sound. It was an SF acid freak-out, hold the tab, no drugs necessary (not that I hadn’t done more than my share). The spirit of Comets on Fire probably emerged from that conflagration.

Now My Bloody Valentine has been revived. In fact, the slasher movie from which the group took its name has even been remade, in 3-D, for a February 2009 release. All tomorrow’s parties are composed of yesterday’s influences. I don’t even know if I’m going to see MBV this week. If I don’t, I suspect I’ll still hear their noise, or feel it, from across town. If I can touch that instrumental passage of "You Made Me Realise," I’ll grab on to a point within it. That point will be my nostalgia. It’ll levitate, compress, and then shatter.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE

Tues/30, 8 p.m., $47.50

Concourse

620 Seventh St., SF

www.livenation.com

Porcoteca

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› paulr@sfbg.com

Uva styles itself an enoteca — a wine bar — but when you step through the door, the first thing you see is a large chalkboard with a butcher’s sketch of a pig, with the major cuts labeled in Italian. The restaurant’s menu continues the porcine theme; an entire section of the card is given over to a listing of cured pork flesh in its various forms, some examples coming from Italy and others from over here but all of them available for a kind of mix-and-match antipasti experience.

Salume and wine are hardly incompatible, and Uva’s wine list is predictably extensive, with a broad array of bottlings available by the glass, in standard pours, or in quarter-liters. The latter are nicely shareable, if you’re the sort of person who’s inclined to share. Or maybe you just like your super-size-it option in wine as well as french fries.

What is less predictable about Uva is its location, smack in the middle of the Lower Haight. It’s like a Mission District restaurant — a second cousin of Beretta, maybe — that wound up in a neighborhood I associate more with beer than Barolo. A few steps one way is Memphis Minnie’s, a barbecue joint, while a few steps the other is a bar where people gather to watch soccer matches. These street cues don’t quite point in the direction of an endeavor whose tone is unmistakably that of a boutique. But then, the same sorts of street cues a few years ago didn’t prefigure the success of RNM, the neighborhood’s first high-style restaurant. The mix of locals and destinationers has been enough to sustain RNM, and from the early look of things, it will be enough to sustain Uva, too.

The enoteca, opened in early spring by Boris Nemchenok and Ben Hetzel, occupies a typical mid-block storefront space: narrow and deep, with high ceilings. The narrowness reminded me of the original Delfina, but there is more woody warmth here (along with a cream paint scheme and gentle glass light fixtures over the bar and on the walls) and less noise, though far from no noise. The crowd is young and well-dressed in an edgy, vintage-fedora way; everyone looks like an aspiring sommelier.

In keeping with the "enoteca" designation, the food is on the lighter side. The menu’s most substantial dishes are pizzas, tramezzini (stuffed flatbread rolls), and piadini (flatbread sandwiches sent through the panini press). And while the salume sets an unmistakable north-Italian tone, not all the food is northern Italian or even Italian. We were quite taken by a dish of yellowtail crudo ($8.50) that consisted of four elongated rectangles of flesh, about the size of emery boards, laid beside a pinkish block of Himalayan salt. The salt block could have passed for flavored ice, but its real purpose was for a bit of last-second, DIY curing; you lay your fish strip on the block for a few seconds before eating it. Chopsticks would have been useful here.

Salads abound, including a pile of little gem lettuces ($7), tossed with vinelike pea tendrils, slices of duck breast, and dried cherries. This sounded better than it turned out to be. The breast slices were tough and a little dry, while the cherries ended up on the bottom of the plate like spent grapeshot. They were pitted: a not-insubstantial mercy. But the salad as a whole seemed aimless, like a group of people at a meeting waiting for someone to come in and tell them what to do. How about a nice, assertive, glossy dressing to bring things together?

Pork in one form or another insinuated itself throughout the menu. Semolina gnocchi ($4.50) were seated on tabs of speck, a smoked prosciutto. Visually this was attractive, and the speck brought its distinctive salty-smoke aura to the otherwise rather pedestrian and slightly tough gnocchi. If the latter had been plopped totally naked on the plate, they would have looked like some rocks gathered on a geology class field trip. The way food looks does count, after all. A crock of fresh shelled beans ($4.50) was enlivened by flecks of crisped pancetta, tasty and textural if not quite comely. We enjoyed this dish, but would it have killed someone to straighten the knot and smooth the lapels before sending it out the door — a sprinkling of grated cheese, a dollop of rouille, something to say the beans weren’t just shoveled in there by some weary hasher?

A pizza ($13) topped with mozzarella, corn, and basil chiffonade was a good summery combination. Also, it featured no pork, which made the pie a kind of intermezzo. The basil was a bit wilted from the heat of the oven, but the pizza on the whole was decent-looking, if not a prom queen. Cured pork returned soon enough: as pancetta in a moist, colorful tramezze ($6) of shrimp and avocado, and as prosciutto in a piadine of asparagus spears and montasio, a mild, fresh cow’s-milk cheese from Friuli in northeastern Italy. The asparagus was a little underdone, but the montasio melted luxuriously in the panini press and had a way of making one let go of any misgivings. That’s part of the power of grilled-cheese sandwiches.

As at Beretta, the dessert menu is brief and gelato-heavy. Coppetta gianduja ($7), for instance, consists of a small chocolate torte nestled under a tower of two gelato globes and a squirt of vanilla cream. I found myself thinking of a possible new hat fantastication for Beach Blanket Babylon — in addition to a new porkpie hat for myself.

UVA ENOTECA

Dinner: nightly, 5–11:15 p.m.

568 Haight, SF

(415) 829-2024

www.uvaenoteca.com

Beer and wine

Noisy

AE/MC/V

Wheelchair accessible

Drama queen

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS I did think about drinking myself to death, I admit, but it wasn’t a serious thought. I just thought, I can drink and drink and drink … but everyone knows I can’t. I fall asleep after one. Sometimes I don’t even finish it.

Still, you like to pretend, and there’s a certain mystique to drinking oneself to death, like Billie Holliday. Or working oneself to death, like John Henry. Or crying oneself to death, like lots of people.

Mystique is good.

I know what you’re thinking, but it won’t work. My stomach is cast iron, and very well-seasoned at that; my metabolism, miraculous. I have, in fact, a pretty incredible body to live in. If I have an Achilles heel — and the anatomy experts among us are going, "You do!" times two — but if I have an Achilles heel, it’s the roof of my mouth. Or, the insides of my cheeks and lips where I’m constantly cannibalizing myself, by accident, because I eat like a wolf.

I am prone to mouth ulcers. Hmm …

It’s decided! I am going to eat-only-acidic-things to death. Tomatoes. Vinegar. Hot peppers. Grapes. Orange juice. Lemons. Tomatoes. Reckless rebel that I am, I shall henceforth bite the pizza the moment it arrives at the table! I don’t care. Already the sides of my tongue hurt when I chew. The roof of my mouth feels gritty like an inside-out worm. Soon it will shred, then crumble, then fall away and I’ll die, on the floor, an empty jar of peperoncini next to my head.

And everyone will say, "Whoa, she peperoncini’d herself to death. How mysterious, exotic, and, and, mystique-y!"

There will be a rush on my books and albums, so I better get busy. Tell you something about life, real fast: It sucks. Everyone knows this, because it’s wired right in. Life sucks, and rocks. What you may not know is that the split is exactly 50-50. And I don’t need a very big chalkboard to show you the math. One plus one = two things: the miraculous kick-ass fact of your point-of-view, and the sadly inescapable fact of its total cessation.

Now, life happens off of the chalkboard. Thanks to the decimal point, one of our tiniest and most powerful inventions, there are an infinity of possible percentages between none and 100. If you would describe yourself as 51 percent happy, you are 1 percent kidding yourself, or deluded, or lying, or repressed; at 49 percent happy, you are 1 percent whiner. If you’re 100 percent happy, you’re a spiritually enlightened new ager or religious zealot. In which case you may not even eat bacon. End of conversation.

My goal is 50-50, because that’s where you laugh the hardest and cry the most, and therefore where bacon tastes best.

My sister asked if I thought it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved. I said I sided with Alfred Lord, which is, to me, a no-brainer. Since loss is a given, you may as well love your socks and panties off getting there.

On a day when I never even made it out of my pajamas, I also talked for hours and hours with a friend in Bakersfield who is coaching me on dating married men. We knew each other only slightly and for about a year, many years ago. Apparently, we were sleeping with all the same guys at the same time, although I never knew this until she recently e-hunted me down and told me so.

I was, like, cool. A coach! Because, unlike me, she never digressed, and continues to this day to go for the enigma. Me, I digress. I have a problem, I know, and it isn’t depression so much as digression. Probably it isn’t even a problem. It’s just that —

Never mind.

Another person I talked to that day was my brother, who is in Ohio. I asked him if I was a drama queen and he hesitated.

My new favorite restaurant is Happy Garden because I didn’t get sick when I ate there. (I have high standards, huh?) Well, I have heard from neighbors of the place, in Oakland’s Laurel District, that pretty good meals could be had, but I went and got the salt and pepper oysters, and one smelled like shit. But, being me, I ate it anyway. No problem. Great place! *

HAPPY GARDEN

4112 MacArthur, Oakl.

(510) 482-3988

Mon.–Thu., 11 a.m.–9:30 p.m.; Fri.–Sun., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.

Beer and wine

MC/V

Sex and salad

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS I was crying long before my cleaver touched the onion. The trick, when slicing onions for a salad, is to slice them so thin that they flop like fettuccini. I like lots, white and worming, in my salad. The onion, I’ve decided, is going to help me die.

A guy told me about The Tibetan Book of the Dead. On a date! I was going, mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, and all the while I was thinking about onions. That will be the thing for me to focus on while I let go of my last breath. Probably in a cracked up car, or underwater, far from any real chance of salad. My eyes squeezed tight. The onion, hot and sad, on the tongue. There it is. Sexy, sweet, tearful, complex, layered … and out.

Whereas the best place to eat an apple is under the tree! Sitting down, hopefully, on a log, and alive. Very much alive, I was sitting on a log under my apple tree, eating apples. Just now, in the failing daylight, writing this in the dirt. Which never fails. The dirt. My apples, like me, are tart, juicy, and very green. They are wormy and temporary, also like me.

Today instead of being a writer I had online sex and phone sex, both for the first time. That I know of. I’m on OkCupid now. Imagine me — the chicken farmer — mixing it up with cool people and hipsters! They’re all polyamorous and spiritual and shit, and so far I have learned what "tats" means, and some other things, but I forget what. Mostly I don’t know what anyone’s talking about. What’s ttyl?

Here’s the context: a couple of pictures of the same penis from different angles, and the message, "here are a couple of pics for ya. ttyl." Um … T-Bone? Tabasco? You? Liver?

Tats means tattoos.

A married couple wants to do me. They’re into barbecue. Hey, me too! Then there’s this "generous" gentleman, also married. He wants to do me. And wants pictures. Of me … in lingerie.

I have lingerie. I have a camera. What does "generous" mean?

I’m going to meet all these people within the next week or two, and I’m going to do them, I don’t care. I already know that, like dirt. My profile clearly says: long-term dating, don’t need friends. Used to be a boy.

Nobody believes me, which is flattering, since my pictures are recent, and real. My strategy: to flush out all the too-cool-for-school hipsters and then school them. In chicken farmerology. They say they’re adventurous and open-minded. They think outside the box.

And I write them and say, "I have a box for you to think outside of." Bam! They are gushing over my hair, my smile, my sense of humor, and in one case my nose (?) … perhaps wondering (or not) about the faint scent of chicken shit. And onions.

Meanwhile, the really cool, really open-minded guys are contacting me. And they get it. And want it. Today I was just beginning a long-overdue e-mail to one of my many, many vagina-having girlfriends who wrote to ask me for Wine-Bottle Wiener’s phone number, and all of a sudden in the background, on OkCupid: Instant Message! Which — I just learned how to do this yesterday.

So, friend forgotten, me and this mister are typing back and forth, in my opinion setting up a check-you-out coffee date, when all of a sudden he’s, like, "What are you wearing?"

And I’m, like: What? You mean for coff — . Ohhhh … this is that thing. My first-ever what-are-you-wearing moment<0x2009>!

The truth: last night’s baggy hand-me-down pajama bottoms and a long-underwear shirt. It was 2 p.m.

"Just panties and a tank top," I typed. "It’s HOT up here." Lucky him, I’m a trained fiction writer. "What about you?"

When, eventually, my woodsy wireless connection failed us, we moved to the phone. And by the time his cell phone battery died, my actual clothes were all over the floor and I was crumpled on the bed, wormy and warm, craving a good, crisp salad and an even better cry.

———————————-

My new favorite restaurant is Saigon Cuisine. I needed a bowl of soup badly, to drown a very specific sorrow. Very specifically, the sorrow was that China Light, my old favorite restaurant in Santa Rosa, had closed. So instead of eating roast duck noodle soup, I ate pho. Great! I used all the jalapenos, and then a lot of hot sauce. And stopped crying almost immediately.

SAIGON CUISINE

Mon.–Sat., 11 a.m.–8 p.m.

320 W. Third St., Santa Rosa

(707) 528-8807

Beer & wine

MC/V

Hotel Biron’s grape ace: Meet Chris Fuqua

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Intrepid reporter Justin Juul hits the streets each week for our Meet Your Neighbors series, interviewing the Bay Area folks you’d like to know most.

biron3aa.jpg

Most wine bars suck. They’re stuffy, over priced, and full of pretentious assholes and bad food. But not Mid-Market hideaway Hotel Biron, located at 45 Rose Street. This place is awesome. Biron’s beer menu features obscure wheat brews from Germany, Pilsners from The Czech Republic, and even cans of Tecate, which means I can take my girlfriend there for a fancy date and enjoy myself at the same time. But that’s not all. Hotel Biron’s cheese/meat selection is insane and its wine-list is off the charts. Zins, Cabs, Pinot? Sheeeit. If that’s all you know about wine you need to get out of California and into Chris Fuqua’s brain. The dude may look like a truck driver from Alabama, but he knows more about wine than a sommelier from Paris.

biron1aa.jpg

Fuqua has been running Hotel Biron for years now, but business life hasn’t changed him much. He’s still a cook at heart.

SFBG: So what’s your deal?
Chris Fuqua: My name’s Chris Fuqua. I’m the owner and operator of Hotel Biron.

SFBG: So how did that come about? Do you have family contacts in the SF restaurant industry or something?
Fuqua: No. I grew up in a small town in Iowa, actually. I decided not to go to college after high school, probably because my dad wanted me too. So, like a lot of people, I eventually ended up in the food service business, working as a dishwasher and then as a busser and a waiter and eventually as a cook. At some point, I decided I wanted to cook for a living. So I enrolled in a culinary school in Vermont where I learned about San Francisco’s reputation as a culinary capital. After graduation, I wanted to work at either Zuni or Oliveto. As it turned out, I got a job at Zuni, which is how I found this place. I used to hang out here every night after work because it’s in the alley behind Zuni, about twenty paces away.

SFBG: How did you go from a dude who used to hang out here to becoming the owner?
Fuqua: Well, I was friends with the people who used to run Biron and I actually worked here to help them out sometimes. When one of them decided to move on, I was approached as a potential partner. It was a total shock. I mean, I was a cook, and I had never really thought of myself as the owner of anything. But my girlfriend and current partner in the bar, Jess, convinced me it was possible. So I just went for it. I was a partner in Biron with one of the original owners for a while and then I actually bought her out when she decided to move on. This situation totally fell in my lap. I’m really lucky.

SFBG: What’s it like owning a wine bar in San Francisco? It seems like there’s a lot of competition.

MarketBar

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› paulr@sfbg.com

We have the other white meat and the other woman, and in the Ferry Building we have had, for the past five years, the other restaurant, the Not-Slanted Door. Of course I mean MarketBar, which is pretty wonderful and surprisingly not pricey, and how often do you find yourself thinking that when you’re in or near the Ferry Building?

The Slanted Door has held the pole position in the Ferry Building since that venerable structure’s rebirth as a food mecca and the restaurant’s arrival therein by a hop-skip-and-jump route that began at its birthplace on Valencia Street in the mid-1990s and continued to an interregnum spot at an Embarcadero location previously held by Embarko and, later, La Suite. Those were nice digs, but the Slanted Door’s Ferry Building set-up is nonpareil: it’s huge, with huge windows looking on the water and a reputation that draws the building’s flocks of food cognoscenti like ducks — perhaps roasted with five-spice powder — to june bugs.

If the Ferry Building is the manse of a grand food family, then MarketBar is the younger brother who got the bedroom over the garage with the smaller closet. The restaurant looks not onto the bay but the Embarcadero itself, a much-beautified roadway but a roadway nonetheless, a swirling parfait of cars and streetcars and pedestrians. Yet the trade-off isn’t a bad one. While the Slanted Door enjoys Zen-tranquil water views, it can be chaotic inside; MarketBar looks upon the urban circus but is just far enough removed from it to remain peaceable.

A large part of the restaurant’s magic has to do with its immense sidewalk-side patio, set with large umbrellas and discreetly but firmly fenced off from the madding crowd. The Parisians are masters of this arrangement, but you don’t see it much here, maybe because the weather is less favorable or because our city doesn’t have the sorts of public places, like the Place de la Bastille, that Paris does. Many of our al fresco efforts are impromptu: a few flimsy tables and chairs teetering at the brink of the curb. MarketBar, by contrast, is built around, and seems to exist for, its patio.

There’s an inside too, a mirror-backed bar flanked by dining rooms like the wings of a big house. The colors are the reassuring ones of the earth, the look is classic San Francisco, and although no one is whispering, the noise is not insane. But what is everyone whispering about — the prix-fixe menu? Probably, since MarketBar has a good one, three courses for $29.95.

Usually I find a prix-fixe option to be irresistible. But chef Rick Hackett’s regular menu, a Mediterranean-inflected mélange, is chockablock with temptation: lively dishes at competitive prices. Some are little more than nibbles: a bowl of spicy peanuts ($3.75), say, with a nice balance of salt and sweetness; and fresh-cured green olives ($4.75), large, round, and vivid green — if you’ve ever been curious about fresh olive fruit, these orbs are close — draped with shreds of pickled red onion.

Some are big and substantial enough to be called sides, such as a warm salad of chopped romaine leaves and fresh fava beans ($5.75), simply dressed with a little shallot, olive oil, and salt. It made a nice starter; my only criticism is that it was too green, nothing but green, like a Monet painting of a lawn, bordered by shrubbery and surrounded by leafy trees.

As a rule I don’t have pasta much in restaurants, since I make it so often at home, but I was curious about MarketBar’s meatballs and pasta in broth ($14.75). I expected, more or less, a plate of spaghetti and meatballs, with more than the usual amount of sauce, but what I got was basically an Italian version of pho: a deep bowl filled with an herbed broth in which bobbed a half-dozen or so meatballs (rather beefy, I thought), along with several ravioli discs stuffed with spinach.

The prix-fixe menu includes first and main courses along with dessert, and there are choices within each of those categories. A simple salad of heirloom tomatoes and fresh mozzarella cheese reflected the lusciousness of this year’s tomato crop — the fruit has been intensely juicy and flavorful even in the early going — but while red tomatoes are handsome, so are the yellow, orange, green, and pink ones, and a little color play never hurts any salad.

Main dishes tend toward the straightforward and hearty: grilled veal rib eye with quartered new potatoes, morel mushrooms, and English peas; a swordfish filet striped with artichoke aioli and laid atop braised Swiss chard and spring onions. Desserts, as befits the restaurant’s name and location, are largely seasonal, and in berry season you naturally end up with marriages between berries and pastry, as galettes and little pies. But there are other sweet possibilities available, including an orange-soda float ($7.50) — "like a Dreamsicle," one of my companions said, except in liquid form and presented in a sundae glass. Creamy, but mighty sweet, as if Orange Crush and not Orangina was used.

The wine list is diverse and offers a fair number of choices by the glass, but these are pricier than the food would lead one to expect, with many costing well into double digits. Still, that’s a manageable splurge if you just plan to sit with a friend under the umbrella on the patio, sharing a bowl of spicy peanuts while watching others, many, many others, go about their business.

MARKETBAR

Dinner: nightly, 5–10 p.m.

Lunch: Mon.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–5 p.m.

Brunch: Sat.–Sun., 9 a.m.–3 p.m.

One Ferry Building, Embarcadero at Market, SF

(415) 434-1100

www.marketbar.com

Full bar

AE/MC/V

Comfortable noise level

Wheelchair accessible

Everybody should know about Sharon Robinson

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sharon robinson.jpg

SHARON ROBINSON
Everybody Knows
(Sharon Robinson Music)

By Todd Lavoie

Sharon Robinson is one smooth deceiver. On first listen, the singer-songwriter’s silken soul meditations might easily billow on overhead in drifts of nerve-soothing R&B – but pull your ears a little closer, and you’ll see that there’s much, much more at work here than merely setting up some hot-whisper mood music for kicking back with a bottle of wine and your sweet thing on the sofa. Her new release, Everybody Knows, certainly succeeds in creating such ambiance, yes, but further inspection shows enormous depth and complexity across these 10 elegantly arranged songs.

This isn’t to downplay the burning sensuality that casts an amorous glow throughout the disc – only the most puritanical of listeners could miss, or deny, the extended come-hither of Robinson’s songwriting and self-production. Still, what ultimately resonates the most profoundly is the sense of haunting, of introspection, which burrows itself firmly among the satiny synth textures and jazz-informed midnight grooves.

Such a realization shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to those already familiar with Robinson; the songwriter has been a longtime collaborator with Leonard Cohen, having co-written songs with him as well as producing his deliciously moody 2001 album, Ten New Songs (Columbia). (That’s her on the cover with him, by the way – an entirely appropriate sharing of the credit, too, given that her involvement included co-writing, arranging, electronic programming, and harmonizing throughout the recording.)

Stage names

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SEPT. 2

Estelle The British soul femme gets a chance to sing to the subjects of “American Boy.” Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1421, www.theindependentsf.com

SEPT. 8–9

Built to Spill Pulling off Perfect from Now On (Warner Bros., 1997) from start to finish. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. (415) 522-0333, www.slims-sf.com

SEPT. 10

Robert Forster Two years on from Grant McLennan’s unexpected death, the dandified half of the Go-Betweens’ now-fabled songwriting duo returns to the stage with an album that includes three songs cowritten with his old bandmate. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750, www.musichallsf.com

SEPT. 19–20

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Mellow with age? No way, say the Grinderman and crew. Warfield, 982 Market, SF. (415) 421-8497, www.ticketmaster.com

SEPT. 19

Al Green and Gladys Knight The Reverend is riding high on the acclaim for his latest recording, Lay It Down (Blue Knight), while Aaliyah’s aunt has kept her voice healthy and powerful in a manner that certain other divas must envy. Sleep Train Pavilion, 2000 Kirker Pass Rd., Concord. Also Oct. 7, Mountain Winery, 14831 Pierce, Saratoga. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

SEPT. 19

My Morning Jacket Southern men channel their Evil Urges (Ato). Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley, Berk. (510) 809-0100, www.anotherplanetent.com

SEPT. 20

Herbie Hancock Loved the fusion maestro’s bon mot to Joni Mitchell. Nob Hill Masonic Center, SF. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

This Land Is Your Land Songsmiths and word slingers Sheryl Crow, Cat Power, Henry Rollins, Mike Ness, and Son Volt pay homage to John Steinbeck, who’s been dubbed “the Woody Guthrie of American authors,” and Woody Guthrie, who has been described as “the soundtrack to Steinbeck.” Guthrie’s granddaughter Sarah Lee and husband (and Steinbeck nephew) Johnny Irion round out the bill of this event — a portion of the proceeds go to the Steinbeck and Guthrie family foundations. Sleep Train Pavilion, 2000 Kirker Pass Rd., Concord. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

SEPT. 20–21

Treasure Island Musical Festival Stunning views, equally awesome sounds — who could ask for anything more? Try a full day of dance beats (Justice, TV on the Radio, Goldfrapp, Hot Chip, et al.) followed by another of all-out indie rock (the Raconteurs, Tegan and Sara, Vampire Weekend, and the gang). Treasure Island, SF. www.treasureislandfestival.com

SEPT. 22–24

Spoon Can’t get enough of Britt Daniel and company? Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

SEPT. 24

Journey, Heart, and Cheap Trick Feathered-hair flashbacks in full effect. Sleep Train Pavilion, 2000 Kirker Pass Rd., Concord. Also Sept. 27, Shoreline Amphitheatre, 1 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com. Also Oct. 7, Mountain Winery, 14831 Pierce, Saratoga. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

SEPT. 25

Silver Jews With a likely gentle assist from Why?’s Yoni Wolf, David Berman flashes his sterling songwriting once more. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

SEPT. 26–27

Mission of Burma The Boston life-changers play 1982 post-punk classic Vs. (Ace of Hearts/Matador, 1982) in its entirety. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1422, www.theindependentsf.com

Rancid Up from Gilman and back on the ginormous Warfield stage, alongside the Adolescents and the Aquabats! Warfield, 982 Market, SF. (415) 421-8497, www.ticketmaster.com

SEPT. 26–28

San Francisco Blues Festival The 36th annual throwdown kicks off with a blues film series at the Roxie Theater and continues at the Great Meadow with Hot Tuna, the Delta Groove All Star Blues Revue, Johnny Winter, and Gospel Hummingbirds. Various locations. www.sfblues.com

SEPT. 28

Beach House Baltimore’s Alex Scully and Victoria Legrand — the niece of Michel — rewards the devotion of listeners who’ve discovered that the endlessly resplendent Devotion (Carpark) is a contender for album of the year. Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016, www.swedishamericanhall.com

Earth, Wind & Fire, Angie Stone, and Michael McDonald A slab of ’70s soul fantasy, a little stab at post–Celebrity Fit Club redemption, and a whole lotta distinctive yacht-rock vocalization, all under one roof. HP Pavilion, 525 W. Santa Clara, San Jose. (415) 421-8497, www.hppsj.com

SEPT. 30

My Bloody Valentine The moment has finally arrived for MBV fans. Will they stretch the distorted bridge of “You Made Me Realize” into infinity? Here’s hoping the answer is yes. Concourse, 620 Seventh St., SF. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

OCT. 3–5

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 8 Dang, bluegrass, country, and roots fans are in for one of the most diverse lineups yet: Earl Scruggs, Emmylou Harris, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss with T Bone Burnett, Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, Hazel Dickens, the Gourds, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Tift Merritt, and Greg Brown mix it up with Gogol Bordello, Odetta, Elvis Costello, Iron and Wine, Richard Thompson, the Jayhawks’ Mark Olson and Gary Louris, Heavy Trash, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and MC Hammer. A free downhome massive in every sense. Golden Gate Park, SF. www.strictlybluegrass.com

OCT. 3–NOV. 9

San Francisco Jazz Festival Lovers of singing can go straight to the source: the indomitable Jimmy Scott. Lovers of song can sit by the piano of one of the American songbook’s best-known authors: Randy Newman. Lovers of soul can pick up their prescriptions when Dr. Lonnie Smith leads a groove summit. Lovers of revolution can break free from election propaganda with the Brecht-tinged jazz of Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra. And lovers of the late Alice Coltrane can pay respects to the music of her son and bandmate Ravi. Various venues, SF. 1-866-920-JAZZ, www.sfjazz.org

OCT. 3

Sigur Rós All hail the Icelandic etherealists. Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley, Berk. (510) 809-0100, www.anotherplanetent.com

OCT. 4

Lovefest The dance music massive and procession is a-twirl with beatmakers à la Armin Van Buuren, Above and Beyond, Kyau and Albert, Deep Voices, Colette, Hil Huerta, and Green Velvet. Various locales, SF. www.sflovefest.org

OCT. 5

Cut Copy The spirit of ELO is a living thing that chugs through the stadium disco of these DFA-affiliated Aussies, and the swoon of OMD isn’t too far away. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 625-8880, www.mezzaninesf.com

OCT. 11–12

Santana The pater familias teams with his scion’s Salvador Santana Band. Shoreline Amphitheatre, 1 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, and Sleep Train Pavilion, 2000 Kirker Pass Road, Concord. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

OCT. 13

The Black Kids The Wizards of Ahhhs initiate the Virgins. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

OCT. 14–15

Brightblack Morning Light For those about to rock in a manner that makes Spiritualized seem like meth heads, we salute you. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016, www.cafedunord.com

OCT. 18

Mary J. Blige Mary, Mary, quite contrary to … smoothie opener Robin Thicke. Sleep Train Pavilion, 2000 Kirker Pass Road, Concord. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

OCT. 23–26

Budget Rock Seven Magnifico garage-rock from folks who mean it — and love it. Don’t you dare miss Mummies’ Russell Quan’s 50th birthday with Hypstrz and the Rantouls; Ray Loney and the Phantom Movers with Apache; Hank IV with the Lamps and Bare Wires; and Thee Makeout Party with the Pets. Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph, Oakl. www.storkcluboakland.com.

OCT. 27–28

Girl Talk Master of megamix mayhem Gregg Gillis returns to SF, albeit without the pay-what-you-like system offered to those who purchase his latest album. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

OCT. 31

Yelle The French electro vixen pops up again. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 625-8880, www.mezzaninesf.com

NOV. 1–2

Madonna Break it down, New York magazine-style. Tabloid sensation dissipates, while ageless sex appeal, hardcore show-womanship, and — please remember, your Madge-sty — good songs are a girl’s real best friend. Oracle Arena, 7000 Coliseum, Oakl. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

>>More Fall Arts Preview

Notes of a dirty old man.

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"YOWWWWWWW!"

I was having visions in those days. They came mostly when I was drying out, not drinking, waiting around for money or something to arrive, and the visions were very real — Technicolor and with music — mostly they flashed across the top of the ceiling while I was on the bed in a half-slumberous state. I had worked in too many factories, had seen too many jails, had drunk too many bottles of cheap wine to maintain any sort of cool and intelligent state toward my visions —

"OH, GO AWAY YOU BASTARDS! I BEG YOU! GET THE HELL OUT! YOU’RE GOING TO FLAKE ME FOR SURE! OH MY GOD OH MY JESUS, MERCY!"

It was San Francisco. Then I’d hear a knock on the door. It was the old woman who ran the place, Mama Fazzio.

"Mr. Bukowski?" she said through the door.

"AAAAAAAAKKKK!"

"What?"

"Ulll. Ummph…."

"Are you all right?"

"Oh, sure."

"Can I come in?"

I’d get up and open the door, sweat now cold behind my ears.

"Say …"

"What?"

"You need something to keep your wine and beer cold, you don’t have a refrigerator. Even a pan of water with ice in it would help. I’ll get you a pan of water with ice in it."

"Thanks."

"And I remember when you were here two years ago you used to have a phonograph. You’d play symphony music all the time. Don’t you miss your music?"

"Yeah."

Then she left. I was afraid to lie down on the bed or the visions would come again. They always came just the moment before sleep. Or the moment before one would have slept. Horrible things: spiders eating fat babies in webs, babies with milk-white skin and sea-blue eyes. Then came faces, 3 feet across with puss-holes circled with red, white, and blue circles. Things like that. I sat in a hard wooden chair and peered at the San Francisco Bay Bridge. Then I heard a rumbling sound on the stairway. Some giant beast crawling toward me? I opened the door. There was Mama Fazzio, 80 years old, pushing and twisting an ancient stand-up green wooden Victrola, the wind-’em-up kind, and the thing must have been twice her weight and clumsy up that narrow stairway and I stood there and said, "Jesus Christ, hold it, don’t move!"

"I can get it!"

"You’re going to kill yourself!"

I ran down and grabbed the thing but she insisted on helping me. We took it into my room. It looked good.

"There. Now you can have some music."

"Yes. Thanks very much. As soon as I get some records."

"You had breakfast?"

"Not hungry."

"Come on down to breakfast any day."

"Thanks."

"And if you don’t have the rent, don’t pay it."

"I’ll try to have the rent."

"And excuse me, but my daughter was helping me clean your room when she found some papers with writing on them. She was very fascinated with your writing. She and her husband want you to come to dinner at their place."

"No."

"I told them that you were funny. I told them that you wouldn’t come."

"Thanks."

After she left I walked around the block a few times and when I came back there was a huge pan of ice with 6 or 7 quarts of beer floating in it plus 2 bottles of good Italian wine. Mama came up 3 or 4 hours later and had a beer.

"You goin’ to dinner at my daughter’s?"

"You’ve bought my soul, Mama. Name the night."

She fooled me. She named the night.

The rest of that night I drank the stuff and wound up the old Victrola and watched the empty felt-covered wheel run at different speeds, and I put my head down to the little wooden slits in the belly of the machine and listened to the humming sound. The whole machine smelled good, holy, and sad; the thing fascinated me like graveyards and pictures of the dead, and the night went well. Later in the night I even found a lone record in the belly of the machine and I put it on:

"He’s got the whole world

in His hands

He’s got you and me, brother

He’s got the little babies

in His hands

He’s got everybody

in His hands….."

This scared me so much that the next day, hangover and all, I went out and got a job as a stock boy in a department store. I started the day after. Some old gal in cosmetics (she seemed to be at the bad age for women — 46 to 53) kept hollering that she had to have the stuff RIGHT AWAY. I think it was the insistent shrill insanity in her voice. I told her: "Keep your pants on, baby, I’ll be along soon to relieve you of your tensions…." The manager fired me 5 minutes later. I could hear her screaming over the phone: "If that isn’t the damndest SNOTTIEST STOCK BOY I ever heard!!! Who the hell does he think he is?"

"Now, Mrs. Jason, please calm yourself …"

At the dinner it was confusing also. The daughter looked real good and the husband was a big Italian. They were both communists. He had a fine fancy night job somewhere and she just laid around and read books and rubbed her lovely legs. They poured me Italian wine. But nothing made sense to me. I felt like an idiot. Communism didn’t make any more sense to me than democracy. And the thought often did come to me as it came to me at the table that night: I am an idiot. Can’t everybody see that? What’s this wine? What’s this talk? I’m not interested. It had no connection with me. Can’t they see through my skin, can’t they see that I am nothing?

"We like your writing. You remind us of Voltaire," she said.

"Who’s Voltaire?" I asked.

"Oh Jesus," said the husband.

They mostly ate and talked and I mostly drank the Italian wine. I got the idea that they were disgusted with me but since I had expected that, it didn’t bother me. I mean, not too much. He had to go to work and I stayed on.

"I might rape your wife," I told him. He laughed all the way down the stairway.

She sat in front of the fireplace, showing her legs above the knees. I sat in a chair, watching. I hadn’t had a piece of ass in two years. "There’s this very sensitive boy," she said, "who goes with my girlfriend. They both sit around and talk communism for hours and he never touches her. It’s very strange. She’s confused and …"

"Lift your dress higher."

"What?"

"I said, lift your dress higher. I want to see more of your legs. Pretend I’m Voltaire."

She did show me a little more. I was surprised. But it was more than I could stand. I walked over and pulled her dress back to her hips. Then I pulled her to the floor and was on top of her like some sick thing. I got the panties off. It was hot in front of that fire, very hot. Then when it was over I became the idiot again:

"I’m sorry. I’m out of my mind. Do you want to call the police? How can you be so young when your mother is so old?"

"It’s grandma. She just calls me ‘daughter.’ I’m going to the bathroom. Be right back."

"Sure."

I wiped off with my shorts and when she came out we had some small talk and then I opened the door to leave and walked into a closetful of overcoats and various things. We both laughed.

"Goddamn," I said, "I’m crazy."

"No, you’re not."

I walked on down the stairway, back over the streets of San Francisco, and back to my room. And there in the pan was more beer, more wine, floating in water and ice. I drank it all, sitting there in that wooden chair by the window, all the lights out in the room, looking out, drinking.

The luck was mine. A hundred dollar piece of ass and ten bucks worth of drink. It could go on and on. I could get luckier and luckier. More fine Italian wine, more fine Italian ass; free breakfast, free rent, the flowing and glowing of the goddamned soul overtaking everything. Each man was a name and a way but what a horrible waste most of them were. I was going to be different. I kept drinking and didn’t quite remember going to bed.

In the morning it wasn’t bad. I found a half empty and warm quart bottle of beer. Drank that. Then I lay down on the bed, started to sweat. I laid there quite a time, became sleepy.

This time it was a lampshade that turned into a very evil and large face and then back into a lampshade again. It went on and on, like a repeat movie, and I sweated sweated sweated, thinking that each time, that face would be the unbearable thing to me, whatever that unbearable thing was. There it came AGAIN!

"AAAAAAAAKKKKK! AKKKKK! JESUS! JESUS EAT PUSSY! SAVE ME, OH LORD JESUS!

The knock on the door.

"Mr. Bukowski?"

"Ummph?"

"Are you all right?"

"Yowp?"

"I said, ‘Are you all right?’"

"Oh fine, just fine!"

In came old Mama Fazzio. "You drank all your stuff."

"Yes, it was a hot night last night."

"You got records yet?"

"Just ‘He’s got the little babies in His hands.’"

"My daughter wants you to come to dinner again."

"I can’t. Got something going. Got to clear it up."

"What do you mean?"

"Sacramento, by the 26th of this month."

"Are you in trouble of some sort?"

"Oh no, Mama, no trouble at all."

"I like you. When you come back, you come live with us again."

"Sure, Mama."

I listened to the old woman going down the stairs. Then I threw myself down on the mattress. How the wind howls in the mouth of the brain; how sad it is to be alive with arms and legs and eyes and brain and cock and balls and bellybutton and all the else and waiting waiting waiting for the whole thing to die, so silly, but nothing else to do, nothing else to do, really. A Tom Mix life with a constipation flaw. I was almost asleep.

"AAAAHHHHHHHHKKKKK! WHEEEEE! MOTHER OF MARY!"

"Mr. Bukowski?"

"Glaglaa$$$"

"What’s wrong?"

"Wha’?"

"Are you all right?"

"Oh, fine, jus’ fine!"

I finally had to get out of San Francisco. They were driving me crazy. With their free wine and free everything. I’m in Los Angeles now where they don’t give anything away, and I’m feeling a little bit better…

HEY! What was THAT??? …

Reprinted from National Underground Review, May 15, 1968, courtesy of David Stephen Calonne.

From the forthcoming City Lights collection Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook: Uncollected Stories and Essays 1944-1990, edited by David Stephen Calonne.

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