L.E. Leone

Truckin’

David Talbot
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0
Truckin’

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Jo Jo Hoot is a kind of a guru of the Bay Area taco truck scene. Fifteen years ago, the first time I wrote about him, he was taking me on a taco truck tour of East Oakland. Now he lives in San Francisco in the Mission District, and I run into his bright-eyed and brilliant wife, Ha Ha Hoot, at the grocery store.

Ha Ha and me were in a band together for 10 minutes, so we have a lot to talk about. We talk about taco trucks. Also, of course: love. I’m pretty sure she was one of my friends who shed literal tears with me over my Germany story after I came back, but it might have been some taqueria’s carne asada having gone downhill that upset her.

Either way, of this I am certain: we were standing up.

But the recurringest theme of our chance neighborly meetings, all non-sequitage aside, has been a taco truck called El Gallo Giro in their neck of the Mission that, apparently, I needed to know about. They have the best carnitas within the city limits, it happens, and how lucky are Mr. and Mrs. Hoot? It’s just a block from their house, at Treat and 23rd streets. And they both — being graphically designfully inclined — work at home!

There’s a playground on that corner, and on my way to see them, finally, one lunchtime last week, a soccer ball came sailing over the fence and bouncing across the street right in front of me. Immediately, six or 20 little boys with 60 or 200 little fingers were latched onto the chain linkage, pudging through it (in some cases) and looking at me imploringly.

It was interesting to find myself, for a change, on the street side of this most basic of human interactions. They didn’t even have to say, "Little help?" I was off my bike and onto the ball.

For kicks I threw it back to them, only I threw it like a girl. Meaning: it barely even made it to the opposite sidewalk, let alone the fence, but, while their various groans were still caught in their little boy throats, I hitched my skirt, stopped traffic, crossed the street, caught the fourth bounce on the top of my left foot, flicked it up to my left knee, transferred to the right, popped it high off my head and behind my back, and no-look right-heeled it back over my head, and the fence — except it hit one of those damn power lines and plopped back down to the sidewalk.

They were like, "Little help?"

I just stood there. "Didn’t you see what I just did?"

"Ball," they said.

I picked it up and underhanded it over the fence to them, then, while play resumed, went around that intersection collecting my scattered sandals, shattered showmanpersonship, jewelry, bike, etc.

Jo Jo Hoot was happy to see me. We used to play in some bands together, for 15 or 20 minutes, so we have a lot to talk about too. Mostly taco trucks. Ha Ha and me and him walked back down the block to this one, El Gallo Giro, or, the round bad wine, and ordered our tacos and burritos. Which we ate in the little park there.

Where the kids were playing soccer. We sat on a small wall, side-by-side-by- side, with Jo Jo in the middle, and watched them fall down at the slightest little jostle, writhing on the ground in overdramatized and underbelievable agony, emulating their recent World Cup heroes. I didn’t see one single attempted bicycle kick.

The Gallo Giro truck, I’m just guessing, is associated with El Gallo Giro Taqueria in San Jose and various even southerner California locations such as L.A.

Their tacos are $1.25 apiece, $1.50 if you want carnitas, and let me just explain: you do. They’re the best, except for one other place in maybe South City or Daly City or Pacifica, I forget, according to Jo Jo Hoot.

Who is, as I said, the expert on the subject. He also told me where the best carne asada was, and the best al pastor, but I forgot and forgot those two already too — which, don’t worry, only makes life more interesting for you and me, or at least me.

Something about an owl, or gold, or something, on 24th Street? Anyone? Little help! *

EL GALLO GIRO TACO TRUCK

Treat and 23rd St., SF

Cash only

No alcohol

Jumping jack flash

David Talbot
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0
Jumping jack flash

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Rode my bike to my second favorite neighborhood, the Tenderloin. I was hoping to find the place where me and Sal the Porkchop ate crawfish and garlic noodles one night after watching dance, or something somewhat cultural, at any rate. I remember I was dressed a little dressier than usual and worried about squirting crawfish juice on my skirt.

After that my memory was erased — there’s a slight chance by space aliens. But it’s also possible that the crawfish were that spicy. That’s why I wanted to find the place. And will, another time.

This time I got distracted. Three lanes of oncoming traffic when you’re riding a bicycle the wrong way down a one-way street, such as Gough Street, will do that to you. I wish that didn’t seem like a metaphor for my life, but it does.

Because I do, ultimately, want to continue living it, I zipped over to the sidewalk and there was a bike rack. I started to lock up without even looking around first. I was on the other side of Market Street. Nothing else mattered.

Then, yes, I looked around.

With every intention of still going in search of crawfish afterward, I ducked into a place called Go Getters Deli, only the "o" was a green olive with a pimento in it. Plain block letters on the window advertised burgers and burritos, but that wasn’t why I chose the place.

I chose it because all six or seven of the people inside were sitting on the same side of their tables, facing the same direction, and looking upward. So I took that to mean there was a TV, with a soccer game on it.

And there was and there was, and so crawfish would have to wait.

But I couldn’t decide which idea I liked better: eating a burrito in a burger joint, or a burger in a taqueria. Since it was already almost half-time, I wouldn’t be able to do both. So, being predictable, I went with Plan C. Which, in this case, was a chicken sandwich with "flaming sauce," red onions, and tomatoes.

Flaming sauce = chipotle, and the sandwich was damn good. The bread tasted homemade, which seemed strange, unless they are in cahoots with Go Getters Pizza across the street and down a block. And, come to think of it, why wouldn’t they be? With a name like Go Getters Deli.

Well, the chipotle sauce wasn’t exactly "flaming." But that’s why I keep a bottle of hot sauce in my purse. With which … yum, yes, hot hot hot. And a lime Jarritos.

And an exciting half of World Cup soccer, and I forgot all about the crawfish place I had already forgotten about.

While the players were still hugging each other or else lying in the grass crying, taking off their shirts, and so on, I polished off my Jarritos, put on my sunglasses, smiled at my fellow sports fans, thanked the owners and kitchen and counter people (who had all come out to watch the end of the game), and walked into the doorjamb because I had my sunglasses on.

It was one of those days: on the edge between foggy and sunny. I buttoned up my jacket halfway, saddled my Schwinn, and huffed back to the Mission. Where some guy was doing jumping jacks on the sidewalk.

Normally I would have stopped and talked to such a someone, but he didn’t look quite crazy enough for me. He looked like a really fucking normal person, in fact, dressed in a regular way. Just happened to be doing jumping jacks on the sidewalk is all. Valencia Street. Facing a telephone pole.

And who am I to argue with that? I had a big scratch on my face. It looked like I’d been in a fight with a cat, or a catfight, but in fact (and as usual) the story was much less interesting. It starred a two-year-old, with a cracker. These things happen. Crackers are sharper than you think.

I mean, it was an accident.

I mean, physical fitness is important. *

GO GETTERS DELI

Mon.–Sat. 9 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sun. 9 a.m.–6 p.m.

100 Gough., S.F.

(415) 863-4149

D/MC/V

No alcohol

To barflys

David Talbot
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1
To barflys

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS I went into the liquor store and bought a bottle of Extra Strength Excedrin, that was all.

“Bag?” the guy behind the counter said. Like the rest of the store, he was aflicker with fluorescence.

I was afraid to shake my head. “No thank you,” I said, very very softly.

He gave me a bag. I decided to look at it like this: I had a bag! I could fold it up and keep it in my purse, I could recycle it, write a poem on it, make a funny hand-puppet for the kids, pack a lunch … a small brown paper bag has many uses. I remembered my mother leaning forward in a soft chair in a darkened room, her eyes rimmed in red, breathing into just such a bag.

The rest of the family had found better things to do — playing outside, getting married — but I sat cross-legged on the living room carpet, a discreet distance away, watching my broken-down mother breathe into a paper bag, and learning loneliness.

Outside the fluorescent liquor store 30 years later was a bright, lovely day, and I knew I had to get out of it. I unhitched my bike, then rehitched it, walked five or six parking meters down the street, and ducked into a dark bar with two old guys and a bartender.

I sat between the two old guys. One was reading a newspaper, the other was just blinking.

“What can I get you, young lady?” the bartender asked, though my guess is I’m older than him.

“A Coke and a glass of water.” I smiled at the old man who wasn’t reading the newspaper, and he blinked. Maybe he was trying to focus. If so, we had that in common.

I opened my new bottle of pills, popped two, drank some water, drank half my Coke, and the bartender said, and I quote, “Headache?”

I nodded. I love bars. I wish I loved to drink, too. I would spend more time in bars, and then my life would be different. I met Crawdad de la Cooter in a bar, and a lot of great people in bars. People I didn’t meet in bars include: the German asshole, an Argentinean asshole, that Canadian one, and a whole lot of home-grown crap.

“I have a date for dinner,” I said, after we had discussed print media vs. electronics, children, the neighborhood, Proposition 8, and sports. I’m talking about me and the bartender. The newspaperman was only interested in his newspaper, and the man who blinked had left, his mood no doubt ruined by young women and Cokes and such.

“Oh yeah, where are you going?” the bartender said.

So then we got to talk about neighborhood restaurants. The neighborhood was Rockridge, but where we ended up eating was in Temescal, at the tapas place across the street from Pizzaiolo, which was closed.

And, no offense to the tapas, but I wish I had cancelled that date instead of curing my headache with a Coke and Excedrin beforehand. My mom, for example, doesn’t believe in Western medicine, not even aspirin. She thinks your body can take care of itself, and now I have to wonder if sometimes my headaches are trying to tell me something: “Stay in this bar, with these friendly and harmless people, and with at least 15 TVs to look at,” my headache was saying. “Eventually it will be tomorrow morning and soccer will come on.” Or: “Go home and go to sleep.”

Also, I remember now what I love about sports — fandom, I mean, in this case. It brings people together. In sports bars and stadiums and living rooms, where there are things to eat and drink.

At the Phoenix, where I managed to watch a lot of the soccer that I watched during this World Cup, I sometimes ran into people I knew, and sometimes sat and twitched or stood and cheered with people I didn’t. It was crowded in there, always. And people stood on the sidewalk on Valencia Street, looking in.

More important, bangers and mash: two big smoke-tinged sausages that were soft like butter inside, baked beans, smasheds, and a great Guinness gravy drenching everything. New favorite bar:

THE PHOENIX

Mon.–Fri. 11 a.m.–2 a.m.; Sat.–Sun. 10 a.m.–2 a.m.

811 Valencia, SF

(415) 695-1811

D/MC/V

Full bar

 

The sporting life

David Talbot
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0
The sporting life

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS In defense of Emeryville, there’s the Emery Bay Public Market, where you can get duck noodle soup for $6, or almost anything else in the world. There’s a Caribbean booth, Indian, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Afghani, Cajun, Mexican, pizza, Peets … You can sit outside, if you want, and watch the trains go by.

There are train tracks in Emeryville.

Today I had a gyro. On a big screen near the main entrance to the market, South Korea was playing Nigeria, and on a small TV up over the Caribbean food, Greece was playing Argentina. I took my gyro to Jamaica. Tonight I have a date with an Argentinean with at least four names in his name, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have something to say on the subject in case he’s a soccer fan.

As you know, I’m not. But I am.

What in the world I’m doing in Emeryville — hanging out at the Emery Bay Public Market, drinking Peets, watching trains, and dating Argentineans who may or may not have anything to say about soccer — has everything in the world to do with my friend Kiz.

This may sound somewhat time-lapsed, but Kiz found her man, and they moved in together and got engaged and now they’re in Hawaii! He’s great, but he has a dog, is where I come in.

At first I didn’t want to do it. Why would anyone choose to be in Emeryville. For a week! With a dog. I’m more of a cat person. I love where I live and don’t like being more than one building away from Earl Butter (who lives upstairs) for hours and hours, let alone days at a time. But then I started thinking about it: Kiz and her man have a TV. Cable. DVR. And their apartment complex has a swimming pool and hot tub. I could record and watch soccer and soccer and soccer. I could throw my drool-soaked soccer-watching shirts in the dryer (which they have), jump in the pool, soak in the tub, and check out yet another international delicacy at the Public Market across the street.

So far, my favorite is Sergio Ramos of Spain. Although, damn, there’s this one guy on the Greek team … But I’m rooting for Argentina. Today. Tonight.

To boot, I became a basketball fan (also by accident) just in time to see the Celtics lose to the Lakers in game seven of the NBA Championship. Really and truly I was looking for fried chicken, of course; but I’d heard that it could be had in fine fashion at a bar in Emeryville called Scends.

My informant being a literary editor who has published and paid but never perked me, I accepted his invitation to dine there together. I use the word dine loosely. We sat on a bench by the backroom exit, eating off of paper plates in our laps and jostled by drunken sports fans hooting and hollering at a big screen TV behind our heads.

In other words, my kind of place!

The fried was perfect. They have wings, oysters, catfish, snapper, and prawns. But my favorite was the lug nut in the porkpie hat who kept yelling above all the rest of the din: "Fumble!!!" And "Touchdown!!!"

Christ, I love people. Especially ones who can fry fried stuff the way Scends does, with lots of crispy crunch and — same time — enough succulence to float the sinkingest of ships, like me. Christ, I love juicy meat, and oysters. And mac ‘n’ cheese with lots of hot sauce on it.

So here’s to Scends, and here’s to Ponzo the Dog, whose shit I almost actually sort of don’t mind bagging, and Sloop the Non-Slacking Editor, whose shit I have not until this very sentence had any occasion to even think about — damn my convolutedness!

But it was Sloop’s idea to go there, also not realizing it was game seven of the NBA finals, and his tenacity and elbowing skills found us a little corner to imbibe in. Not to mention his hard-earned dollars that paid for our fried and beers.

So, yeah, so … Emeryville. Who knew? All this, and choo-choo trains. And all I have to do is walk Ponzo three times a day and find funny ways to cover up all the bridal magazines.

SCENDS

Hours: Mon. 2–8:30 p.m.; Tue.–Thu. 2–10 p.m.;

Fri. 2–11 p.m.; Sat. 3–11 p.m.; Sun. 3–8:30 p.m.

3627 San Pablo Ave., Emeryville

(510) 547-9238

D/MC/V

Full bar

Go … Germany?

David Talbot
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0
Go … Germany?

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Everyone assumes that because I love to play soccer, I’m interested in the World Cup. Rather than contradict them, I have become interested in the World Cup. How is that for flexing one’s codependency?

At first I merely feigned interest, but then the feigning turned into affectation, then adoption, and now I find myself legitimately, actually, gut-wrenchingly interested — albeit by accident.

Unlike a lot of people, I don’t care who the hell wins. I could probably root for Brazil, since that’s who most of my soccer buds back (I play on a team of Brazilians). I could get away with rooting for Italy, the defending World Cup champions, because that’s the flavor of the blood that I have, and, on the third hand, never in my life have I felt more patriotically-inclined, God bless America, given my recent failed attempt at expatriation. Plus I love an underdog.

But my capacity for love is temporarily out of service, thanks to a certain German person who absolutely, positively, and very very stroppishly hates soccer — not the sport so much as the hoopla. Or, in other words, go Germany!!!

May the streets of that fine, fucked country be filled with whooping fans, national songs, shouts, bells, whistles, shenaniganism, hooliganism, and general mayhem. May the peace be disturbed! May it be impossible for writers to write there, and for lovers to love, and may the spirit of lowbrow, sports-related celebration annoy the living crap out of every stodgy old lady and artsy fartsy middle-aged loser couple in all of Bavaria, in particular, the old-town district of Regensburg. Mwa-ha-ha-ha.

You thought I was going to go against the Germans, didn’t you? I thought I was too. I still do feel, or at least hope, that passion will win out over discipline on at least some playing fields, such as soccer ones. That’s why, while German national teams tend to do well, Brazil and Italy win more World Cups.

Nevertheless: Go Germany!

I tried to watch their first game at the closest Irish pub to my house, the Phoenix, but it was way too crowded so I walked to Mission Street. All my many friends who had asked me about my interest in the World Cup, inciting my interest … I called all of them but nobody could join me, and this was on a weekend.

So my only friend was my appetite.

Perfect! I wound up at La Oaxaqueña, the little corner hole-in-the-wall at Mission and Clarion, near 17th Street. I’d eaten there once before. It’s good. But more to the point, they had a fuzzy little TV going up in the corner, and in sharp contrast to the Phoenix, there was nobody in the place.

Nobody at all, eating.

So I stayed and ate and tried to put up with the TV. The picture kept locking up and making temporarily cubist photography out of live sports, and the audio sounded like bees. I have since come to realize that all World Cup soccer matches sound like bees, but at the time I didn’t know this.

Anyway, I didn’t let it ruin my meal, which was fish cooked in coconut milk with ginger. Points for them for taking forever to cook it, even though I was, as I said, the only one there. They must have sensed I was in it for the television, and kindly made it easy for me to nurse my way through as much of the second half as it was possible to watch.

The fish was great, the rice and the beans were fine, and the Australians played like chickens with their heads cut off. It started to look like Germany had one extra player out there. Which they did, one of the headless chickens having gone and gotten hisself red-carded.

Come to think of it, I don’t remember Germany ever even committing a foul, which reminds me of how nobody ever even jaywalks there. Not even in the middle of the night.

Christ, it’s going to be hard to root for a team like that.

LA OAXAQUEÑA BAKERY AND RESTAURANT

Daily: 6 a.m.–2 a.m.

2128 Mission, SF

(415) 621-5446

D/MC/V

Beer and wine

 

All is bacon

David Talbot
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0
All is bacon

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS I had lunch with my agent, and then we talked all afternoon and wound up going to a party together. One interesting thing is that I don’t have an agent. I haven’t had an agent since the early ’90s.

"Write a novel. Write a novel. Write a novel," my old ex-agent used to say, because of course she couldn’t sell my short story collection.

So I wrote a novel, and she couldn’t sell it. In fact, she didn’t try. She read my manuscript and very efficiently dropped me, I think because my main character, who was pole-vaulting over a prison wall at the time, lost her nerve and, as a result, wound up suspended in the air for days — up over the barbed wire there, like a flag. As I recall, she was attempting to break into the prison. So that might have had something to do with it.

Anyway, I have never had an agent since then. Nor have I exactly needed one, thanks to my friend who isn’t my agent, but did help me get two of my books published in exchange for steak dinners. Which … I’m not sure, come to think of it, that I wouldn’t have gotten off easier at 15 percent.

Anyanyway, in a heroic effort to remind me to write another book, she came over. She brought me four books and a really pretty bra that doesn’t fit, but looks nice hanging from a hook in my closet. And then, as if that all wasn’t inspirational enough, she took me to lunch at Limon Rotisserie.

Where, though it is by no means a downscale establishment, you can eat half of an amazing chicken with two awesome sides for under $10!! Until they see themselves in Cheap Eats and raise the prices, that is.

In the interim, this will be my new favorite restaurant.

And my secret agent lady (slash) literary yenta Sally, or Sal the Pork Chop (as I call her for short) is my new favorite person — not only for bringing me book ideas that come with an editor already attached, and bras. This chick loves pork so much she dates a cop! With a pet pig! I mean, a cop with a pet pig!

Oh, but it ain’t so simple as it sounds. Get this. Um. Well, hmm, so the pig itself is technically the police officer’s ex‘s pet. He has custody. So let me see if I can say this without scrapping my last little shred of journalistic integrity …

Yes! You know how I sometimes substitute the word bacon for anything else in life that is divine and wonderful, such as good news, an amazing time, or love itself? In which case, one’s lover might also be described (by me) as their bacon. Right? Okay then. So one way of describing the situation would be that the pig’s ex-bacon’s pig is coming between the pig and the pork chop.

Necessitating couples therapy and so forth.

So I got to hear all about that, and she got to hear all about the other thing. But before I forget about this …

The rotisseried chicken at Limon, in addition to being the best bargain on the menu, is marinated in something heavenly, rubbed by pure herbal bliss, and spin-roasted to perfection. In other words, it’s bacon.

We also had the ceviche mixto, which was shrimp, calamari, and halibut, and delicious — but, to warn you, it’s a small plate for the same price as half a chicken.

For our sides we chose vegetales salteados and yuca frita — that’s the fried cassava root, and I’ve had it before elsewhere, but never as good as this. Perfectly seasoned, crunchy outside, and soft-centered. And the other one was just different-colored string beans, but it tasted like, like, different-colored bacon, or something.

I love it when something simple, like beans, makes you want to sing or write poetry and books. We were walking. There was a special police car with a big white star on it — Special Task Something Something — blocking the crosswalk.

"You don’t look special," Sal the Pork Chop sassed into the passenger cop’s open window. I just stared at the star itself, and made me a little wish. *

LIMON ROTISSERIE

Sun.–Thu.: noon–10 p.m.; Fri.–Sat.: noon –10:30 p.m.

1001 South Van Ness, SF

(415) 821-2134

D/MC/V

Beer and wine

Lock and load

David Talbot
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0
Lock and load

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Speaking of pickup trucks, I borrowed the Pod’s for the weekend because Hollywood was coming to San Francisco. It was my turn to drive. As you may know, 20-year-old Toyota pickup trucks aren’t sports cars, but I figured this was a step in the right direction, especially since it’s lesbian-owned.

My brother’s 25-year-old Toyota van, which I babysit, was bought off of lesbians. Still, it’s got very little mystique at this point: just a badly cracked windshield, a badly battered body, one working low-beam, and no brights whatsoever. I feel lucky not to be pulled over by the police every time I move it for street cleaning.

My brother hauls boards and tools and garbage in this van. To pick up a date in it, I feel, would be the end of the date. Once I drove it to a probably-already-doomed-anyway first meeting at a Peet’s in a North Bay shopping center, thinking: shopping center … I could park anonymously! But the damn dude was waiting outside, watching for me, and saw.

So that date was over before it started. I’m not sure what it says about this one that Hollywood wound up taking a cab to the airport. I don’t know, is it a wild weekend, or a wonky one, when by Monday morning you have entirely lost the keys to your friend’s Toyota?

While Hollywood was taking an airplane to L.A., and even for a couple hours afterward, I was still running around like a chicken with its head still on, turning my purses inside out, emptying laundry baskets, unmaking and remaking the bed. I even looked in the refrigerator. I called or went to everywhere we’d been the night before.

After a tow-trucker let me in, I turned Pod’s pickup inside out.

The Club was locked onto the steering wheel, and no, no one had a spare key. There wasn’t one. I’d called her. In Oregon.

Finally I started going into places we hadn’t been the night before, and one of them, a restaurant that was closed (I’d thought) when we’d parked in front of it, had me my keys, praise the lard. And praise the person who picked them up and put them there, whoever you are. I love you.

Loving you, loving life, living lunch, I unlocked the door, unlocked the Club, turned the key in the ignition, and drove to West Oakland to feed Pod’s cats and swap out her truck for my brother’s van. In the act of which — no lie — I lost her house key.

Chickens and waffles is not brain food. It’s soul food. This week they happened at the Hard Knox Café in Dogpatch, and were particularly hard to order because the restaurant was crowded with people eating smothered pork chops, jambalaya, po’boys, mac and cheese, and other good-lookingly soulful woowoo that made me wonder why I only ever eat chicken and waffles.

It’s the perfect time for such wonderings, since I am officially out of ideas, chicken and wafflewise, as well as brain cells in general. If anyone else here does the duo … you tell me.

Hard Knox’s fried chickens were not as good as expected. The drumstick was perfectish, but both thighs were a little overdone and undermeaty. The waffle was great. Nevertheless, if I ever again crave chickens with them (and I might not for a pretty long time), you will find me up the road at Auntie April’s, or down it at Little Skillet.

Oh, but Hard Knox rocks, in many ways, one of which is collard greens with a few squirts of Crystal hot sauce, and then a few more. And then a few more. The Maze made some real nice noises when he bit into his fried catfish po’boy. Which in fact I tasted, and yeah, it was damn good.

And the sweet tea, too. And, like I said, all the smothered stuff sure looked good and smothered. Plus I just love the place! With its corrugated tin walls and old funky signs, you really do feel like you’re somewhere else. Like, say, the South. I love being transported by meals and atmosphere. In fact — trucks and trains be damned — food might be my new favorite method of transportation. *

HARD KNOX CAFE

Mon.–Sat. 11 a.m.–9 p.m.; Sun. 11 a.m.–5 p.m.

2526Third St., S.F.

(415) 648-3770

MC/V

Beer and wine

Older ‘n’ wider

David Talbot
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0
Older ‘n’ wider

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS One night the Maze came over because that’s what he does. He comes over. Sometimes he brings his dinner with him.

This time he brought his dinner with him.

He started pulling things out of his backpack as if they were rabbits: part of a loaf of cranberry bread! Hummus! Broccoli! Rabbits! In the water bottle holder on his bike was a half-empty bottle of semi-important wine. Me, I’d already eaten.

Another thing the Maze does is worry. He hedges his bets, shakes his head, and assigns point values to things that most people just try to put into words. I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes language doesn’t cut it, but given a choice between it and math … I mean, in matters of the heart, come on: poetry vs. calculus?

The Maze is, for example, lonely. He wants to write; he wants to edit; he wants to sing, soar, shred on the guitar, or at least be in a band. These are just examples.

I like to dance. I get the two-step. I look the Maze in the eye, run the numbers with him, shake my head, want and wonder what he wants and wonders, and just generally try to be useful.

Sometimes I even threaten to throttle or kick him.

"I don’t know, Dani," he said. "I just don’t know."

"Me neither," I said, having a sip of his half-full bottle of bike-rack red. We were standing in my kitchen. As opposed to sitting. I forget why. Maybe he was fixing to leave.

"I mean, I just don’t get it. What am I supposed to do?"

If I knew, I would have said. I’m a good friend. If he would have cried, I would have cried. Existential dilemma loves company.

"Is there something I’m doing wrong?" he asked, sincere pain in his voice, his forehead all wrinkled and labyrinthine (which is how he got his name). And he said it again: "Am I doing something wrong?"

"I don’t think so," I said, because I honestly didn’t. But then a possibility occurred to me. "When you make pasta," I asked, "you’re not rinsing it after you strain it, are you?"

He looked more confused than before. "No," he said.

"Good, then, no, you’re not doing anything wrong."

I wasn’t exactly joking. As far as I know, this is the only real, unequivocally always wrong mistake one can make in life. And even then, it could be argued that if you’re cooking noodles for soup, a cold rinse might not be a bad idea. You know, so they don’t overcook in the broth.

But how did I get here? Speaking of existential dilemmas.

It was my birthday, and for my birthday I listened to Abba without guilt. I ate at Boogaloos. I got older. Had late-night hot wings with Earl Butter. Lunch: a smashed sandwich at Tartine. For my birthday the Pod bought my ticket and we all watched a baseball game at the Coliseum. I had a hot dog and a beer. For dinner I ate grilled salmon with a squeeze of lemon over quinoa and swirled kale with tamari sauce.

Kidding!!! I had chicken and waffles, of course. This time at Frisco Fried, which is cheaper than anything I have come across, chicken-and-wafflewise. Six bucks for two thighs and a waffle! You can barely get a burrito for that price anymore.

But before you move to Bayview, this is not the cheapest chicken and waffles in the Bay Area. A bird named Jay just told me: Oakland’s Home of Chicken ‘n Waffles, or Home O’ as I call it for short because chicken and waffles now goes without saying (as does the letter ‘f’), has a weekday happy hour special. Between 4 and 7.

But I have to go back to Frisco Fried first and find out what a burger dog is. I can’t speak for their Rice-a-Roni, but the mac ‘n’ cheese was really wonderful. The waffle was okay. The chicken, fried to order, was super-hot and crazy juicy — not quite as flavorfully battered as Auntie April’s or Farmerbrown’s Little Skillet if you’re keeping score, Maze, but definitely up there. *

FRISCO FRIED

Tue.–Thu. 11 a.m.–7 p.m.; Fri. 11 a.m.–9 p.m.

Sat. noon–9 p.m.; Sun. noon–7 p.m.; closed Mon.

5176 Third St., SF

(415) 822-1517

D/MC/V

No alcohol

The chicken ‘n diet

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
The chicken ‘n diet

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS We went down there, the Mountain and me, way down South of Market, and we found the little alley, placed our little order at the window, and sat on the loading dock, our feet dangling in the street. We sipped sweet tea and ate our breakfast out of boxes, with our hands. All my other friends, even Earl Butter, are fasting, doing cleanses, or otherwise flirting with vegetarianism by way of getting healthy — in response to which I have been eating nothing but chicken and waffles.

There’s good news out there. I’ll tell you what it is, and then I’m going on strike. But I wonder if I can trust the Guardian to print a blank page with just the words "Cheap Eats is on strike" in the middle of it. So maybe I’ll hold the spot with dada and gobbledygook … but wait, but that would be pretty much business-as-usual.

Hmm. It has also occurred to me of course to write restaurant reviews until my demands are met — to review the most boring restaurant(s) I can find, in the most boringly straightforward language I can mustard.

Think: completely unbuttered sentences without any grill marks whatsoever, stacked one on top of the other until you feel bricked in by important information, yet entirely unentertained.

Scary, innit?

Well, certainly flavorless, but I can do this, I think. The problem is it would be way more work than I am accustomed to, and I’m not sure that when you go on strike you’re supposed to work harder. Help me, labor organizers. It’s a topsy-turvy world, my world, and I am essentially (don’t forget) a chicken farmer. I don’t know anything about getting anything — except maybe eggs.

So …

Waffles. Chicken. Here’s what I know.

Farmerbrown’s Little Skillet is a good place to get greased, goo’d, and sweetened. And I mean all over your clothes, too, because there aren’t any tables to eat at. That’s OK, we’re human. This is why we have Laundromats. Not to mention napkins, but I don’t always remember about those.

You place your order at the window, then you eat across the alley on a loading dock or little wooden bench. And if you think that sounds just wonderful, wait’ll you crunch your teeth into that juicy fried chicken. It was the best I’d had since Auntie April’s, which was the best I’d had since Gravy’s. And suddenly we’re saying something.

Suddenly, chicken and waffles are alive and well — maybe even trendy — and not in Oakland this time, or even L.A., but right here in the city known as "The City." Where I live.

Auntie April’s Chicken ‘n’ Waffles is on Third Street in Bayview, and it’s an actual sit-down restaurant. Their Belgian-style waffles are about as satisfying as Gussie’s, but the chicken (fried to order, of course) is way, way better. And the combo is cheaper.

Even Farmerbrown’s Little Skillet, which is associated with Farmerbrown’s fancy-pants Tenderloin soul food restaurant, is cheaper than Gussie’s. Two pieces and a waffle for $8. Pick your pieces.

Not bad, considering one piece and a waffle at Gussie’s is $7.79, $9-something if you want a breast. (You don’t.)

Farmerbrown’s waffles, also Belgian style, were perfect: crispy outside with a soft middle. And their sweet tea was spectacularly sweet. Probably goes better with the pulled pork sandwich — which I think was the only other thing on the menu.

So I don’t know what to say. Slight edge to Auntie April for the fried. But Farmerbrown’s got her beat on the iron. Guess I’ve got two new favorite restaurants. Maybe more. There’s Frisco Fried, also in the Bayview, and Sockywonk says Hard Knox is doing chicken and waffles now too.

It’s an exciting time to be a restaurant reviewer. On a chicken-and-waffle fast. Send money. Someone. *

AUNTIE APRIL’S CHICKEN ‘N’ WAFFLES

Daily: 8 a.m.–3 p.m.

4618 Third St., S.F.

(415) 643-4983

Cash only

No alcohol

FARMERBROWN’S LITTLE SKILLET

Mon.-Sat. 9 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

360 Ritch, S.F.

(415) 777-2777

Cash only

No alcohol

No-fry zone

David Talbot
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0
No-fry zone

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS A loud sound peeled my skin off, strip by strip, top to bottom, like a banana. We had just walked into the restaurant, just walked past the fire alarm, headed toward a cozy corner booth, and … I mean, I know I’m hot, but this was ridiculous. I grabbed the Maze’s arm, turned him around, and slipped back out to the sidewalk, aswirl in electronically piercing shrieks, potassium, instant headache, flashes of white light, and other symptoms of stroke.

Having played three games of soccer earlier that day, running was out of the question. So was eating anything in the world other than chicken and waffles. I had to get the taste of Roscoe’s out of my mouth. So we waited for the fire trucks.

Some people stayed in the restaurant, having dinner, as if it weren’t the end of the world all around them. I took this as an endorsement. Gussie’s was going to be good. It was just going to be impossible to be in there.

Although … the fire alarm had nothing to do with me, or the restaurant. Apparently this happens — I think because the whole block is all one building, so if someone in apartment 937 burns their toast, the poor people minding their own waffles all the way down Eddy Street at Gussie’s have to hear about it. And the clear winner is Excederin.

Luckily we hadn’t sat down yet, let alone ordered, so none of our food was getting cold while we milled about on the sidewalk with one-tenth of the Western Addition, waiting for the fire trucks to come squirt some toast somewhere at the other end of the block. We looked at the menu in the window, wondered what we would order, and talked about love and shin guards.

The Maze doesn’t play soccer. On the other hand, I’ve been threatening for some time now to kick him real hard.

"My mom said to tell you hi," he said. "She asked how you were doing."

Aargh, it was Mother’s Day, and I’d forgotten to call the Maze’s mom! Whom I’ve never met, by the way, or talked to — but we do have this mysterious mutual solicitousness for each other, the Maze’s mom and me. I don’t know why this is, but for many many years — in fact for much longer than I have known the Maze — I have been tempted to go to San Diego and have Thanksgiving dinner with his mom. And dad. Once I did eat peanuts with his brother, and I guess that makes me something like family.

I don’t know.

But I do know about love. I just do. I wish I knew how to write about it, or talk about it, but I don’t, and that’s why I’m going to focus on chicken and waffles for the next couple years.

Gussie’s chickens are about as bad as Roscoe’s, but her waffles are better. But her greens are worse. But if you pour a lot of hot sauce and a little bit of maple syrup into them …

Speaking of which, Gussie’s does have real maple syrup, for only $1 more. Plus they have their own homemade brown sugar syrup concoction, which is also pretty good.

What I don’t understand is how places that specialize in fried chicken can possibly not bother to fry their chickens … you know, to order. This seems like a no-brainer. It doesn’t take that long to fry a piece of chicken. I’m sure they don’t pull the waffle off of a pile of waffles, because waffles are only good if they come hot off a waffle iron. Right?

Well, fried chicken is only good if it comes hot out of the oil. Any amount of time in a basket or bin or bucket, it’s just not going to work. It isn’t. Not if you’ve ever had real fried chicken like at Gravy’s, or Grandma’s, or at Wayway’s, or Rube Roy’s, for that matter.

I have high hopes for next week’s chicken and waffles, but then, I always have high hopes. What I need is a good pair of cowboy boots. Pointy, with a steel toe.

GUSSIE’S CHICKEN AND WAFFLES

Tue.–Thu. and Sun.: 8 a.m.–10 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat.: 8 a.m.–midnight; closed Mon.

1521 Eddy, S.F.

(415) 409-2529

MC/V

Beer & wine

Original’s sin

David Talbot
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0
Original’s sin

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS This Cheap Eats column is going to be the most carefully researched and least relevant Cheap Eats column I ever wrote, just to warn you.

I woke up early.

I threw some clothes into a bag. I threw a half a stick of salami, a chunk of cheese, a knife, and a couple of leftover bagels into another bag, and put it into the same bag with my clothes.

I walked to BART, took BART downtown, a bus to Oakland, a train to Bakersfield, and another bus to Los Angeles, where I have spent the last 24 hours flicking poppy seeds off of my arms and legs, picking them out of my belly button, brushing them out of my hair, and grinding them out of my butt crack.

For the latter I did have help. Ladies and gentlemen, of all the straight men and German posers I have ever befriended and/or bebonked, never have I ever once been treated with more sweetness and chivalry, or fucked harder, than I was by this L.A. lesbian chick I was trying to tell you about.

Problem: I like it soft, and slow.

And there was some of that too, but I knew from the moment she picked me up at the train station with a big colorful bouquet of flowers, then raced me real fast around town in her cool, dark green sports car, talking beautifully with me and laughing and gesticulating, meanwhile receiving and responding to text messages with her other hand … I knew. I was in for a ride, a wild one, and would not be sorry I came.

Her cozy, cool Hollywood apartment was filled with tulips, my favorite — she’d asked! In fact, she’d gotten me more flowers than all my previous lovers (in this millennium) ever got me, combined. In the bathroom there was a towel and washcloth, a fresh bar of soap, toothbrush and toothpaste, all piled neatly under a cute card with my name on it, and three more tulips.

Hollywood drew me a bubble bath, and I washed all those trains and busses off of me, dried, and dressed in my favorite new brown skirt and cool lacy brown print shirt, plus 2 million, 500,000 poppy seeds.

Then, as promised, she took me to Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles.

But I forgot to mention that when I came out of the bathroom, she greeted me with a file folder full of information about Roscoe’s in particular, and chicken & waffles in general. Which was not only unnecessary but impressive, considering she’d never been to Roscoe’s, or had chicken and waffles together on the same plate, and would clearly have preferred to take me to Animal, or any of about a hundred other shall-we-say higher-brow L.A. eateries she’d mentioned in her e-mails and in conversation.

No, but I had to know about the legend, the original, the Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles, which — I am sad, sorry, and chagrinned to report — sucks.

The waffle was mush and the fried chicken was dead-dry — and I’m talking about the juiciest of jucies, the thigh. The worst chicken and waffles I’ve ever had in the whole history of the San Francisco Bay Area was 10 times better than the legendary original Roscoe’s in Hollywood, proving yet again that authenticity is overrated, or that we do everything pretty much better than pretty much everyone else in the world, give or take pizza.

As if she needs another workout, my new friend and new favorite lover is with her personal trainer and I am sitting at her desk in my underwear, writing real fast so when she comes back we can go eat at five or six better L.A. restaurants.

Which I promise not to write about.

Tomorrow early I will wake up before it’s light out, make her bacon and coffee, make her French toast, make her drive me back to Union Station, then bus, train, bus, BART, and walk back home. And next week, I promise, you will read about at least one of San Francisco’s recent rash of chicken-and-waffle spin-offs. *

ROSCOE’S HOUSE OF CHICKEN’N WAFFLES

Daily: 8 a.m.–12 midnight

1514 N. Gower St., L.A.

(323) 466-7453

MC/V

Beer and wine

Wiped clean

David Talbot
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0
Wiped clean

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS You never know where in the world you’re going to be when the time comes to regroup. Or in my case re-re-re-re-re-re-re-regroup. I keep having to have these little sit-downs with myself. Or lie-downs, if I happen to be at home alone or in the woods, where one can assume a fetal position and howl without attracting too much comment. Is it possible she knows what I’m going through?

For example: Greenbrae.

Must stop wondering. But is it a state of mind, or a suburb of San Rafael? Or Larkspur? Or is it Larkspur? Whatever the fuck, a river runs through it, or at least a creek. And there is also the Bon Air Shopping Center.

The best way to forget Angela Kreuz, according to Forgetting Sarah Marshall, is to meet, make, and fall in love with new people. Since Rachel (Mila Kunis) is a fictional character, I decided to focus my attention on men again. Why not? They are reliable and brave, and, if one day Angela Kreuz changes her beautiful mind, I could just tell my future ex-husband, "Oops, I’m a lesbian."

And what could he say? He would just have to sit there and be brave and reliable — while I explained who Angela Kreuz was: some woman who doesn’t respond to my e-mails but does Google herself; someone I’d known many, many years ago who pretended to be a man but wasn’t, but it didn’t matter because I loved her beyond gender, beyond fear, who tore my heart out one New Year’s Day morning in Germany, before coffee. Then wrote to France to tell me, in some of the most poorly worded English I had ever seen in any language, that I was mentally unstable, she’d been afraid to eat with me in the end because she thought I might poison her —

"Wait!" My future ex-husband, having been handpicked by me from all the world’s really top-shelf men for precisely this purpose, would bravely, reliably interrupt me. "Before coffee?"

So, yeah, so that was pretty much "the plan" as I drove my brother’s shitty van to the Bon Air Shopping Center in Greenbrae. To meet a man I’d met online who must, I don’t know, live in Greenbrae or some such something, because why else would you drink your coffee in a shopping center?

Not to mention meeting your future ex-wife there.

But the really depressing thing is — and after this sentence it’s going to be all sunshine not only to the bottom of the page but sideways into next week, I promise — that I find myself willing to overlook all these crap shortcomings (e.g., drinking coffee in shopping centers) to potentially meet the potential doofus-of-my-dreams, because — hey — who knows? Right?

They know. Immediately. She drives … that? Wait, did she just spit getting out of her car? Is that a sunflower seed shell between her teeth? Hay in her hair? And what’s that smell?

My soccer scrapes and bruises don’t show up on photographs. I do let my adoring male public know, before they behold me in actual person, that I am essentially a chicken farmer, but what’s charming in words, and missing from pictures, breaks deals in person. Or in other words: dudes ain’t buyin’ it. Still. And I had to wonder, sitting by myself at the fake fire pit outside on the sidewalk, Bon Air Shopping Center, beautiful Marin County evening, how much longer … Who? … What? … I just had to wonder.

Which you can only do for so long, in my experience, before you need a hamburger. Or better yet a pulled-pork sandwich with fried onions on it. Besides Peet’s, the Bon Air Shopping Center has a goofy surfer restaurant called Wipeout.

Like a good faux cowgirl chicken farmer, I ate at the faux fire, dripping real pork juice and hot sauce all over my favorite jeans, and I swear, just when I started to think, Fuck Angela Kreuz, I’m going to become a man-hating old-school lesbian … my cell phone shook. An accidental poem from a beautiful woman in Hollywood: "I love your punctuation. Your sentence structure turns me on. Especially your use of colons: like this."

WIPEOUT BAR AND GRILL

Mon.–Thurs. and Sun 11 a.m.– 10 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat. 11 a.m.–11 p.m.

302 Bon Air Center, Greenbrae

(415) 461-7400

MC/V

Full bar

Glum and glummer

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Glum and glummer

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Standing in my funny little yellow kitchen, 10 at night, pressing a package of frozen peas to my swollen jaw and looking glumly at a plate on the table, leftover from dinner three hours earlier. It was a half-ravished pork steak, long gone cold and congealy. Which is one of my two favorite ways to eat pork — the other being warm and nice. The frozen peas?

The frozen peas had to do with a friendly, casual pickup soccer game from which I had just returned and during which — in a friendly, casual way — I had been elbowed in the jaw so hard that my ears clogged and my head hurt. There was a loose lump of something in my chin, which was, in spite of the ice-pack peas, witching ever outward and rapidly turning as purple as a purple Popsicle.

Worst of all though, as I was just finding out the hard way, it hurt like hell to chew. This is like when piano players get their fingers mangled in a mining disaster. Everyone goes: Oh, how tragic! Except some people go: What were piano players doing in the mine?

See? So, similarly, while I have your sympathy (I feel certain) I have also raised the question: What was I doing leaving half a pork steak on my plate in the first place? It’s not like me, I know, I know, to not finish my dinner. Me!

Not to mention: pork!

Well, but I was running late for the stupid soccer game, you see, and so I thought, innocently enough, that I would leave this warm, nice meat on my table and come back in three hours to take care of it, cold and congealy.

Oh, the tragedy! Am I right?

Yes, but I wasn’t alone, either. Misery does love company, and my co-miserable comrade, the Maze, was looking even glummer than me, albeit less clobbered. He showed up at Garfield Park toward the end of the game just to walk me home. Plus he gave me his last two ibuprofens. How romantic, huh?

You wish! He doesn’t like me like that, which wouldn’t normally stop me from going after someone, true, except that he doesn’t like pork, either. And that is the deal breaker.

The Maze’s misery was less physical than my own. Poor cat, he doesn’t play competitive team sports, and so his wounds tend to be less responsive to ibuprofen, or peas. Like a lot of people, he just vaguely sort of hurts. Feels unfulfilled artistically, lonely in general, and doesn’t know what to do. What he needed was someone to talk to, whereas what I needed was a bath. A bath, a good night’s sleep, and some heavy duty makeup or I was going to have to cancel dates.

“Maze,” I said, mustering up all my compassion, empathy, and social skills. “Get the fuck out of here. Go home.” And I held the door open.

Well, but all kidding aside, I doubt he went home feeling any less lonely. While my bath was running, I tried to chew pork again, and couldn’t. And the next morning my jaw felt better but looked even worse.

I had pork and oatmeal for breakfast.

For brunch I went to Chilango, with Sockywonk and her badass hockey playing cross-dresser boyfriend. Me and her talked about heartache and hair, and me and him talked about sports and hair, and heels, and everyone was happy. Plus the duck flautas were fantastic, so …

Duck flautas? This is going to cost a fortune, isn’t it? Nah. It ain’t no taqueria, true, but even though you can get $12 filet mignon tacos at the Castro District’s new(ish) fancy pants Mex joint, you can also get huevos rancheros for $6. Which is right in line with Chavas and other cheapo joints.

The duck flautas were $9.

Tortilla soup, excellent. Guacamole, good. The chips were warm and homemade and the salsas were delicious. But best of all, at 11 a.m. on a weekend morning, there was nobody there but us. Of course, they don’t open until 11 a.m. 

CHILANGO

Daily: 11 a.m.–10 p.m.

235 Church, SF

(415) 552-5700

MC/V

Beer and wine

 

That po’ boy

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
That po’ boy

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS There is something pretty exquisite about being stood up by a date. When I find out what it is, I’ll be sure to let you know. Meanwhile, you’ll just have to take my word for it. Words.

The stander-upper was someone I’d bonked back before I accidentally fell in love with whatsername. We’d had a long coffee date that turned into a long walk in the park that turned into making out for a long time on a park bench, which of course turned into going to the grocery store to buy pork.

And a bottle of wine.

Now, I had a very strict policy back then of never having sex with someone on a first date. I have since added an amendment forbidding me to have more than one date with a person in a single day. Because somewhere between the pork and the wine we determined that since we’d driven separate cars from the grocery store to my house, this dinnery business was technically our second date.

So, yes, sex happened. Then, like a lot of guys who sleep with me once, he became obsessed with two seemingly contradictory thoughts: how to sleep with me again, and how to never ever, under any circumstances, sleep with me again. Thus he would e-mail me every other night: He had to see me immediately or else, as I read it, his hair would catch on fire and his penis would rocket away from his body, through the roof of his house, into outer space, and then back down into the atmosphere where of course it too would be consumed in flames and therefore ruined.

Not wanting that, I would cancel whatever plans were cluttering my calendar and we’d make a date — which he would cancel at the last minute because his mom had a tumor, or his car blew up, or his son or sister (or in many cases both) had been taken aboard an alien spacecraft and needed everyone’s prayers for a while.

I’m a trusting sort, and pretty patient, I think, but after 60 times I told this cat to get lost. Instead, he went into therapy. So I got lost. In Germans and Germany and so forth. Well, around the time things were busting apart for me there, I got another e-mail from him here saying he can’t stop thinking about me, he can’t believe he blew it with me, he’s gotten his shit together finally and wondered if I would give him another chance.

The man is tall. Very tall. So tall that I can wear four-inch heels and still only come up to his chin. For the first time in nine months, I wrote back. I said I was a broken woman, that I was coming home, and that eventually I would have coffee with him. That that was all we would have this time. No pork.

So we did, eventually, have our second first date — just coffee — and then, even more eventually, a very nice and only slightly less platonic dinner date, which ended with a soft, sweet kiss in his car.

It was our third (or in other words, fifth) date when he stood me up. And as I sat there waiting at my for-real favorite restaurant, Just For You, listening to live violin music, I decided that being stood up was pretty exquisite, maybe because it implies just dating, which implies uncertainty — and then when you finally give up and place your order, and the waitressperson as-discreetly-as-possible clears away that other place setting … then you do know. It’s decided, done, or over before it started, and sad, yes — but it’s a delicious sadness, because you still get to eat.

As I drenched my fried oyster po’boy in Crystal hot sauce, which somehow seemed even more romantic than violins, I decided that even if he was in the hospital having heart attacks, I would not give this tall man another “another chance.”

Three days later I finally heard from him. By e-mail. He’d been in the hospital, having heart attacks. Hopes I’ll still see him.

That same day eating with Last Straw’s childerns at Sunflower, Larkstraw, age 10, who aspires to be a writer, asked how long I’d been writing about restaurants, how much I get paid, do I ever write about the same place more than once, and if so, why?

“Any excuse I can find,” I said. Happy 20-Year Anniversary to: 

JUST FOR YOU

Mon.–Fri. 7:30 a.m.– 9 p.m.; Sat.–Sun. 8 a.m. – 3 p.m.

732 22nd St., S.F.

(510) 647-3033

MC/V

Beer and wine

 

Hugs and kisses

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Hugs and kisses

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS We left space for The Attack at our table. She wasn’t dead or anything, just at work. Some people are dead. And some are only faking it. Still others of course are in line at Walgreens, or otherwise alive and well and just generally off doing something. So they can’t have breakfast with you at Rico’s Diner, damn!

My mind is boggled and my knees are buckled and rug-burned, but apparently I have a little prettiness left, according to an old-school pimpishly attired dude in a cape and fedora, downtown Oakland.

"You are beautiful ladies," he said to me and Pod, in passing. "You keep that up now!"

You keep that up now. Keep it up. Keep up the beauty.

Pod has a curling-iron burn on one of her cheeks.

When we saw the guy again he smiled even bigger, pumped his fist instead of tipping the fedora, and said pretty much the same things: "Beautiful" and "you keep that up now." I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, a few flakes of last night’s mascara, and chicken-fried steak flavored lip gloss.

You keep that up now.

Beauty is hard to define. Like wet soap, life, and a live fish, beauty — once defined — is also hard to hold on to. It requires concentration. Sometimes you need a coach. Sometimes you need a lover, and sometimes your lover sucks, strains, and presses the beauty right out of you and then you need coaches and cheerleaders again to get it back.

Thank you, pimpishly attired fedora-tipping and fist-pumping dude. Thank you Pod. Thank you The Attack. And thank you Rico’s, for supplying the chicken-fried steak flavored lip gloss.

And, oh, so many other kinds of hot sauce. It gave Pod and me the idea to have a "hot sauce tasting" instead of a "wine tasting" party. And this gives me the idea to have a "lip gloss tasting" party after that.

Which reminds me of a rainy day in La Rochelle, a beautiful port town on the west coast of France where, as a recent romantic refugee, I participated materially in this January’s humidity levels.

I was with my chicken farming comrade on her one day off, shopping for All Things Brown, when we saw a tall, cute man standing in a crowded square with a small sign saying, in English, "Free Hugs." And he didn’t seem to be collecting money or selling anything. And he didn’t look like he smelled bad. And I have never been more in need of hugs so I walked right up to him and hugged him. If nothing else, this gave my chicken farmer’s daughter, who is 11, something to giggle about for the rest of this year. Plus I got to learn my first French phrase, Lâchez moi, or "Let go of me."

Now I don’t need hugs anymore. I need kisses, and to learn how to say ne lâchez pas de moi, s’il vous plaît in English.

"Mmm," says the dreamy dreamboat of my dreams, "What’s that hot sauce you’re wearing?"

El Yucateca. Extra extra hot. Which goes very good with chicken-fried steak and gravy, by the way. Not that Rico’s needs the boost. It was one of my favorite chicken frieds that I can remember. And the over-easies were good, and the omelet I had the first time I went there was great.

I love this place. It’s simple, delicious, and cheap. They do standard American breakfast stuff, plus burgers (which I haven’t tried yet), and veggie and vegan things (which I never will). And it feels like you’re eating on a train, I think because the kitchen’s in the middle of the room, and you have to place your order at a counter there. Plus all the windows. Although, I have to admit that the corner of 15th and Franklin streets does tend to stay a little still.

One of the most beautiful things I ever saw: my curling-iron burnt pal Pod — who is a dot artist, after all — carefully dispensing drops of I-forget-which hot sauce around the breakfast sandwich on her plate. I don’t know exactly what she was going for, but it was a Goldsworthy worthy masterpiece.

You keep that up, now, Pod.

RICO’S DINER

Mon.–Sat.: 10 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

400 15th St., Oakl.

(510) 444-8424

Cash only

Beer

Duck me

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Duck me

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS My cowboy hat had mold in it. My chicken farmer coat had mold in it. Even the buttons were fuzzy. My brother doesn’t take baths, he takes showers, and so the outdoor tub was full of insect skeletons, spiders, spider webs, and junk mail. There is a rumor that a guest of his hid some weed in the chicken coop. Not that I’m interested, but I took a look anyway and only saw straw.

I am tempted to get chickens again. There is no buried treasure that chickens will not eventually uncover, and I’ve always kind of wanted stoner chickens. I’ve always wondered what it would be like if they, as a species, were a little more chill and slept longer. Not that it would matter much to me at this point. Ten years of chicken farming has permanently programmed me to snap awake at first-light. In the year or so since I last farmed actual chickens, nothing has changed on this front.

Anyway, I don’t know if I can keep this place. My brother, who had been subletting it, went bust and lit out for Ohio, leaving me, for the moment, his van. Which burns oil, has a badly cracked windshield, no horn or high-beams, electrical problems, and a slow leak in at least one tire. What this all reminds me of, naturally, is every other car I’ve ever had except for that last little one, the new one, which I sold last year when I sold my soul to the devil, and my heart to someone even meaner.

So wheels being wheels, I am able at will to visit my old, now-haunted shack in the woods, at least until the brother comes back.

Should I get chickens?

Can anyone help me pay the rent? Surely I must have me some friends in town who like to sneak away and be haunted for a weekend by the ghost of broken water heaters, all-night face-touching in the dark, and the squawks of long-ago stewed chickens, scratching and pecking from dusk to dawn in search of rumored grass.

The editor of the paper I write for, if not the world, wrote to me while I was still in Europe and said, “If you come back, I will buy you duck soup.”

Technically he said when you come back, but for fun I want to think of this — this duck soup business — as just that: business. Like a contract extension. Or a contract renegotiation. Or a contract.

So correct me if I’m wrong, my lawyerly readers, but I interpret it like this: If I come back (which I did), what’s in it for me is one bowl of my favorite thing to eat in the whole wide world, duck noodle soup, and — as a kind of a signing bonus — an unwritten, nonverbal, body-languageless, and in-no-way-even-hinted commitment to continue to publish this column for as long as I am alive and can make a sentence — whichever comes first.

Well.

That’s a no-brainer, innit? No brain, no heart, no soul, but I’ve still got me my stomach, don’t I? And a healthy appetite and this shit van for a month, and two places to live and at least two bikes …

So I wrote back just as soon as I was in the country, give or take exactly 13 days, and agreed in spirit to the editor of the paper I write for’s proposal. Then I donned my best business skirt and matchingest sneakers, hopped on one of my at-least-two bikes, and pumped it to the Tenderloin to iron out the details.

The details: wide egg noodles, one whole, delicious, fall-apart tender duck leg quarter, and wontons in a wonderfully businesslike broth. Times two. As a show of support and solidarity, Mr. Redmond ordered the same exact thing!

So I told him my story, like I tell all my friends, only instead of making him cry or puke or curse or have to walk around the block a few times to clear his head, he came back with an even better story. And by better I mean worse. Which makes me feel kind of actually, I don’t know, good — knowing that shit happens to everyone, even editors.

It’s no frills, not undiscovered, cheap-even-if-you-have-to-pay-for-it, and by far my new favorite restaurant.

HAI KY MI GIA

Thu.–Tue.: 8 a.m.–6 p.m.

707 Ellis, SF

(415) 771-2577

Cash only

No alcohol

 

Blink

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Blink

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS He was tapping a red-tipped cane, staying close to the buildings, and sometimes bumping into them. We greeted each other in passing. And the second person I saw that morning, walking to BART in the dark, was using a red-tipped cane too, but also holding onto her man’s arm. Her hat was tall and adorned with either fruit, flowers, or both. I took off my glasses and wiped them on my shirt.

The children have been wonderful. Boink, who started reading books to his little sister while I was away, says "I love you" about a million times a day now. One of the first things we did was make gnocchi, and now Popeye the Sailor Baby is old enough to help roll them too.

The Chunks de la Cooter remember all our songs and games, and Chunk II hardly ever lets go of me when I’m there. As if, more than even me, she can’t believe I’m back and ain’t lettin’ go this time.

I feel like I’ve just woken up from a really, really bad dream, rolled over in my sweat-soaked life, and blinked into the also-blinking eyes of my four True Loves, age two, two, three, and four. These four, they give my heart right back to me.

Boink thinks we should open a restaurant together. Inclined to believe him, I picture the boy 14 years from now, standing on a step-stool next to me, lightly dusted in flour from his fuzzy blond head to his pink tennis shoes — only I guess by then he’ll have flour in his beard too.

Maybe in the meantime — his parents and child labor laws willing — I can practice him in my imaginary guerilla Guerrero Street pastry war against Tartine. He can sell lemonade to the liner-uppers across the street while I learn to cook. Or better yet: limeade.

The burritos I have eaten have tended to be from Cancun, of course, with Earl Butter, and of course El Farolito with Dan-Dan the Fireman and Phenomenon. With one exception. That was El Buen Sabor, with Last Straw Sullenger, who is helping me to curtain and depression-proof my new hovel.

And she bought me a burrito for lunch.

Now I was never very fond of Good Taste during my previous stomps through the Mission, I forget why. But Earl Butter told me El Buen Sabor got better, and I trust him, as you know.

As you also know, if you’ve been reading Cheap Eats while I was out there getting my ass kicked, the buttery one just doesn’t venture beyond a two-block radius of his house at lunchtime or dinnertime. Or breakfast time, for that matter.

So what I think he likes about El Buen Sabor is that it’s the closest beans to home for him, and now me. Well, their two table-top squeezy-thingie salsas are excellent — both the red and the green. They both have some seriousness to them, and are good not only on chips and burritos, but back home poured over slightly stale and heavily buttered drop biscuits. I speak from first-hand leftover experience. But personally, I don’t think the place is any better than I think I used to think it was. That is: nothing special.

They do have brown rice and spinach tortillas, as Last Straw proved by asking for, and getting, both. With her vegetarian burrito.

Whereas I got my vegetarian burrito with as much unhealthiness as possible: white rice, refried beans, and carnitas. It was good, but honestly, unless you live one block away and are Earl Butter, or have recently eaten Mexican food in Regensburg, Germany … it’s nothing to write home about.

Let alone a restaurant review.

So now, if you’ll excuse me, I would like to go back outside again, before it gets dark again, and look into one of those stenciled sidewalk gems again, for a while longer.

This one:

I WOULD STEAL THE STARS FOR YOUR and then I can’t quite make out the last word but I believe it to be HAT.

There is more than one way to read this.

EL BUEN SABOR

Daily: 10 a.m.–10:30 p.m.

697 Valencia, SF

(415) 552-8816

D/MC/V

Beer & wine

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Neighborliness

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Neighborliness

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS My soccer team is good. They win without me by gaudy scores like 18-1. When I’m there we still win, mostly, but with better manners. And sometimes we tie or even lose, but only when I’m there. This makes me feel needed.

After games the guys drink beer out of Dixie cups then go grocery shopping, because they’re married, and the girls, being single, go out for brunch or lunch or breakfast and talk about the guys. We wonder what they said, since they speak Portuguese and we don’t. My assumption has always been that they are yelling at me.

They play hard, but then they seem so nice, with their Dixie cups and shopping lists. Of course I am in love with my city right now, and all the people, grocery stores, and restaurants in it.

Even Tartine, which is the view from my new window, and on weekends especially is loused with line-loving wahoos. I love Tartine because I ate a sandwich from there once, a few years ago, and as I recall it was pretty fucking great. But also I love them because they represent a very special challenge to me, and you all know how I appreciate a good challenge.

So: my long-term goal in my new go-round at 18th and Guerrero streets is to annoy Tartine out of business. Just for fun! And not by saying mean things about them either. Obviously some talented folks are putting out some cool beans over there, to line ’em up like they do. No, I have in mind a more neighborly way to undo them.

First, let me fire up my tiny shitty old studio-size gas oven, then I will have to learn how to make morning buns better than theirs. Check that, then I will have to learn what a morning bun is. Hold on a second.

(Insert sound of idle whistling here)

I’m back. OK, mmm, hold on a second, my fingers are pretty sticky. OK, don’t worry, this is not a review of Tartine. I’m not going to say a word about their morning buns, only that it might take me a long time to put them out of business. But that’s fine, because time is a thing I have. Time, a tiny oven, and the means to make a cup or two of coffee.

My plan, then: to swing my gated window open and play my steel drum so enticingly that everyone standing in Tartine’s line will cross the street to see what gives. Then … I will give. I will offer them morning buns, mugs of coffee, and semi-intelligent conversation, for free of course, and so dazzled will they be by my neighborliness that they will eventually forget all about why they came to the Mission in the first place.

It’s a dream, and a distant and misty one at that, I know.

Meanwhile, for the last couple Sundays while all of Chestnut Street has been lined up outside my Mission District window, I have been on Chestnut Street having brunch, lunch, and breakfast at the wonderful and empty Chestnut Diner.

My new favorite restaurant! It was turned on to me by Alice Shaw the Person, who, having a car, carts us to and from our soccer games, which have been conducted lately in the Marina.

The omelets are great. The hash browns are fine. The décor is fantastic: light-blue-topped chrome stools around a J-shaped counter, with booths on either side.

I just can’t recommend the burgers, because they don’t understand rare there. Listen:

Me: Can I have that rare please?

Waitressperson: Half?

Me: (thinking, half?) Huh? No, Rare.

She: Oh, well.

Me: No, rare.

She: Half?

And so on until I gave up and ordered an omelet. But she looked sad about this, so I explained what rare meant and ordered a bacon burger. That way, when it came overcooked (which of course it did), it would still taste good. Which of course it did. *

CHESTNUT DINER

Daily: 7 a.m.–3 p.m.

1312 Chestnut, SF

(415) 441-1168

MC/V

No alcohol

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Homecoming

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1
Homecoming

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Dear Earl Butter,

Thank you for putting real flowers and tiny plastic battery-operated candles in your closet for me. I slept like an angel that snores like a truck driver. Speaking of which, thank you for the chili and cornbread too. It made my homecoming that much sweeter and spicier, in addition to giving me gas. Which I am happy to have, and allowed to have, praise God, now that I’m back in a Free Country.

Plus the Maze of course, being beautiful, was waiting for me at the airport with a huge colorfully hand-painted sign that read, “Welcome home, Dani. We love you.” Signed: “The Bay Area.”

He admits having had help with the wording from at least one person, and with the painting from a couple more, so maybe there is some truth to this. If so, the feeling is very very mutual.

I will never leave the Bay Area ever again, not even to go camping. Just think, while my ex and my ex’s ex-ex are holed up together in their dark, cold, provincial town in southern Germany, clinging to each other’s small corner of obscurity, writing and editing their mediocre novel that is set in San Francisco, I get to live here. And love and be loved, and play and work and eat here.

I can’t speak for working, exactly, but it’s the greatest playing and eating place in the world that I know of. Here.

There, do you know what they eat, Earl? Well, the ex’s ex-ex doesn’t cook, and my ex’s specialty is ramen noodles. That’s what they call cooking. When they go out, it’s for sushi. Really really bad landlocked German sushi. Imagine!

Meanwhile, I have been shucking fresh-picked oysters and scallops on the west coast of France, inventing home-raised cherry chicken-heart stew, eating up Paris and Rome, hobnobbing with extraterrestrials, crunching into crack conch in the Caribbean, and passing the guitar with a couple Haitian boys outside their single-family chicken-coop shack.

And now … now I get to go get a burrito. Whenever. The fuck. I want. Because that’s what San Francisco is. It’s “what kind of beans,” the best of all-things-edible, and raw onions and garlic no matter who you might breathe on afterward. No problem. We live here.

Anyway, I do. You do. And I do again. I can’t think of a more appropriate way to celebrate my 20-year anniversary of moving to San Francisco than moving back to San Francisco.

St. Patrick’s Day 1990 was the day. I still remember my amazement, the air and the sky. Thank you for getting me back in, Earl — albeit on the ground floor, literally, with an option on your upstairs apartment’s closet. But I breathe better in closets than I did in small-town Germany, and I see more sky in one heartbeat here, through my dirty, barred sidewalk window, than I saw all this winter there. The Winter of My Discombobulation.

And now, if you will excuse me, m’dear, I have to go recombobulate.

Peace and pickles,

Your L.E.

Dear Lady of SF,

That is great. We went to Urbun Burger because the Mission has a lot of places to eat. You wanted to walk around because you have returned. I know the area and fear I will never be able to leave, except, perhaps for my parents’ funerals. We went to the Community Thrift where 15 or so years ago, you found that really neat 49ers glass, and that made me jealous because I never, ever found a glass I really liked. Years later, when I read in your column that it had broken, I was happy. Karma, sigh, is on me.

But Urbun Burger. Lotta money, lotta meat. These burgers are 1/2 pounders. It was not $10 for my California Sensation burger, it was $9.50, and naturally I did not pay. There are a couple of burgers over $10, but they come with good fries. Super selection of condiments and a real nice, lively atmosphere. I enjoyed the colors in there. So did you.

And so it ends, my fit of usefulness to the good people of San Francisco. Yours begins anew. Welcome back. I hear it is a very good town.

Earl Butter

URBUN BURGER

Mon.-Thu. 11 a.m.–10 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat. 11 a.m.–3 a.m.; Sun. 11 a.m.–10 p.m.

581 Valencia, SF

(415) 551-2483

MC/V

Beer & Wine

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

 

Cooled and pickled

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Cooled and pickled

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS  

Dear Earl Butter,

I think I know what the essential-oil-wielding hippies meant when they talked to me about personal growth and evolution. For example, I now believe in marriage. State-sanctified, and with as much paperwork as possible. I know it’s still only a 50-50 proposition, but at least it might weed out complete posers and the temporarily sane.

Stormy weather. The sea is choppy. We made it about halfway to the shipwreck then had to turn back, on account of motion sickness. That was a couple days ago and it’s been blowing ever since.

This morning I woke up in a state of disrepair and utter existential itchiness. Sitting on my air mattress, I leaned back against the bare wall, looked around the bare room in the empty guest house I occupy, and listened to the wind. I scratched my many insect bites and various rashes and wondered what I’ve wondered since I got here: how much will it cost me to change my return flight to tomorrow?

Instead of going over to the main house to wake up Jean-Gene and borrow his cell phone, I got out of bed and put my clothes in the refrigerator. I’m not sure how I knew this would help, but it did! Refolding my shirts and skirts, I felt finally soothed by the knowledge that thenceforth when I looked in the fridge I would be deciding what to wear. On the door, where ketchup goes, I put my socks, bras, and panties, and my bikini went nicely into the butter drawer.

When I finally went to get my brother it wasn’t to plan my escape, but to report that all my clothes were in the refrigerator.

“Right on,” he said.

I spent the rest of the morning in an artistic frenzy that was way more healing than arnica. I dragged our blow-up kayak into the dining room, turned its little yellow seats to face each other, set a cooler in the middle, and put a flower in an empty spinach can on top.

My three dildos I hung where wine glasses would go, upside down over the bar, and in lieu of liquor I staged all my lotions and sunscreens, some work gloves of Jean-Gene’s, a dust mask, and rolls of toilet paper and duct tape. Don’t tell Phenomenon, but I prayed all day a prospective buyer would drop in.

Thank you for finding a way to get a message to me here on this Web-forsaken island. The bottle washed up at sunset, and the words in it were just what I needed to hear. Food!

Indeed, since you’ve already given up, and I really ought to, I’m thinking we should probably get married. In church. Joel’s younger than us, right? He can be our kid. Between me and you, I think that boy could use some fucked-up parenting for a change, and I know I’d kill for a crack at eventual grandmotherhood. Think about it. It would make great copy, and anyway we might all be living in the same building.

Dearest Lady, Dearest-Dearest Lady,

Hello, I love Mr. Pickles! First, let me say — how could you not? Second, let me say they are great! And third, I love sandwiches! It’s hard to decide at Mr. Pickles because everything looks and sounds great. Joel got the Tony Soprano, which is salami and ham and mortadella and provolone cheese and Italian dressing ($6.99), and I got the Bear, which is hot roast beef and BBQ sauce and melted cheddar cheese ($6.99), and Joel paid. Imagine, way back when, Joel could have picked a different friend, and they could be enjoying Mr. Pickles on this guy’s yacht instead of Joel having to pay all the time.

— Sigh — nothing can get me out of the funk I just put myself in.

Except Mr. Pickles!

And Mr. Pickles himself stands outside the place like a pickle bandito with a mustache made out of hair. Imagine a pickle like that in the jar! A mustache made of hair! In his holster, mustard and mayo! I once had a goal to have more sandwiches in my life, but you know how things work out. Mr. Pickles makes you want to yell Mr. Pickles a bunch of times. I bet kids love to yell Mr. Pickles. I do too. Mr. Pickles! Mr. Pickles! Try it. Mr. Pickles! Hoorah!

MR. PICKLES SANDWICH SHOP

Mon.–Fri. 9 a.m.– 6 p.m.;

Sat.-Sun. 10 a.m.– 5 p.m.

3380 20th St., No. 103, SF

(415) 826-0143

Cash only

No alcohol

 

Shipwrecked

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1
Shipwrecked

 le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS

Dear Earl Butter,

As you go through life, never underestimate the importance of somewhere to sit. In fact, stand up right now and kiss your chair. Kiss one for me, too — the comfy cat-hair chair that I like — and use your tongue please, Earl. For me. I dream of that chair, and hope to be sitting in it two weeks from today.

Let’s not ever, ever again take furniture for granted, OK? Everyone talks about a roof over your head, clean water, something to eat, honest work, etc. Those things are important, sure, but my message is this: so are chairs.

Probably you are wondering about the process of soul-searching and/or method of meditation that led me to such a discovery. Well, welcome to the less sisterly aspect of my loopy family. I know you know what I’m talking about.

This time: As a favor to and from our brother and your friend Phenomenon, Jean-Gene the Frenchman and me occupy two multimillion dollar houses on North Caicos, which is an undeveloped island in the Caribbean. It’s not only not Ohio, it is also the furthest thing from Germany I could ever imagine — if not geographically, at least in tone. Think: 80 degrees, fluffy white clouds, a continuous breeze, palm trees, the sound of surf, powdery beaches, and swimmably soft blue water. For free!

Can I complain? Well, since I am drawn to impossible challenges, let me try: There’s nowhere to sit. Our spectacular beachfront houses, which Phenomenon helped build and lost more than his shirt on, are of course unsellable, and, for our purposes, unfurnitured. We eat lunch on the beach, which is nice, but breakfast is a stand-up affair, and for dinner we sit on coolers and eat off of luggage.

My brothers are, like me, undiluted (and therefore deluded) optimists. As such, we are susceptible to posers, and prayer. We are here to work. Well, anyway, Jean-Gene is always hammering, sawing, landscaping, and just generally trying to nicen up for the banks that will likely soon own these doomed homes. I’m washing windows, sweeping, mopping, and pruning. But let’s face it, most of the meaningful work I’ve been doing is on my tan. Not only because I hope to attract some emergency rebound loving upon my untriumphant return to San Fran. It also happens that the only place I can breathe is the beach.

A couple miles out there, where the reefer is, where the waves break, where the water gets deep and darker blue, is a very visible and highly metaphorish, to me, shipwreck. At night we sing Belafonte songs to it. I brought my steel drum.

By day, I can’t stop looking. I dream. I think I probably might be pretty beautiful. I know my steel drum is. The front half of the ship juts proudly out of the water, and then, after a gap, there’s the back half, cracked and tilted, a complete mess.

Like a crosswired siren, drawn fatally to shipwrecks, I am tempted to swim it. But Jean-Gene, always the peach, has an inflatable kayak. I’ve never been in a kayak, canoe, or raft that didn’t spill, but I can swim forever. I can float. I’m strong, right?

Same time, I know that I’m also in many respects myself a shipwreck. For example: this longing to be explored.

Dear Lady,

That is great. Me and Joel, we went to the NYBuffalo Wings, in which Joel got the BBQ steak sandwich ($6.49) and Earl got himself the chili cheese hot link ($4.98). Joel said, “This is hitting the spot” and later described the sandwich as very tasty. And with lettuce that really helped it along, Joel did say, crispy, and very fresh. Earl will say that when you get a chili dog, it’s one thing, but when it’s a chili hot link dog, and there’s cheese (sauce, I think), it is not out of line to expect a lot of flavor.

But Earl was left out in the bland cold a little bit. If your chili and your link don’t cut it, you can hit up a meal like this in all sorts of ways, condiments for example, like raw onions, relishes, jalapeños … there are literally a million of them, but none were offered. Also, Joel paid because Earl is broke.

NYBUFFALO WINGS

Mon-Thurs., 10 a.m.–11:30 p.m.;

Fri-Sat., 10:00 a.m.–2:30 a.m.;

Sun., 10 a.m.– 11:30 p.m.

665 Valencia, SF

(415) 863-7755

AE/MC/V

No alcohol

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

 

War and pensi

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
War and pensi

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Dear Earl Butter,

I’m not mad at you for writing to me about German food. Nothing, not even the shit that I am in, can change the way I feel about sausage. In fact, I ate at Schmidt’s before I left, for practice, and ordered the same thing you did, and felt similarly, which is to say: happy.

Those were the days!

These are something else. I changed my return ticket to leave from Rome so as not to have to set foot on German soil, or even fly through German air space, ever again. Of course, it’s not their air or soil, per se, that I object to. I have no problem with German things, or even the things that German people do.

It’s the people themselves I hate — although, technically, I suppose, I don’t hate all of them. Or even most of them. I hate less than 10 German people. I hate two. Well, really, one.

But Earl, I have enough hatred for that one German person to probably qualify as a racist, or at any rate go to war. In Paris — did I tell you? — I stayed a half a block away from the Palais de l’Élysée. Baked Nicolas Sarkozy some cookies, just to let him know I was in the ‘hood, in case if he ever needed to borrow anything.

“I love your butter,” I said. I said if the Germans ever invaded his country again, not to bother with the White House — contact me directly. I would defend his cows with the passion and recklessness of a heart-broked chicken farmer from hell, which equals about 40,000 troops.

In Rome my cousin Stefano said, over homemade carbonara, “Non pensi, mia cugina. Non pensi. Ti voglio bene. No go into depression. You get strong, like me. Very important, no depression. No pensi.”

I’ll tell you a secret, Earl: Pensi means “think,” but I accidentally typed “penis” that last time, which made me laugh. Out loud. On the airplane. I’m on an airplane, trying not to penis. Cousin Stefano spent two months in a mental hospital after his wife cheated on him.

His mom, my Zia Carmella, is in the hospital dying. I stood by her bedside and watched her move her lips. Sometimes she was trying to eat, and sometimes she was trying to talk. My Italian’s not great. Her voice is almost gone. Her body too.

Italy’s a little warmer than France, and a lot warmer, in both senses of the word, than Germany. The people here actually want to talk to you, even if your Italian’s not so good. They are open-hearted, expressive, humorfully passionate people, and eaters, and they don’t care if you use your hands. An elegant, classy waitress in a nice restaurant laughed at me for eating the way they taught me to in Germany.

I hate to hate, Earl, but I have to at least try. I loved so much, it would be the end of me not to something. I would blow away. A German psychologist whose ex-ex never in eight years said “I love you” mistakes my passion for mental instability. I’ll take it.

“Ti voglio bene.”

My mentally unstable cousin, who met me twice, can say it. With tears in her eyes, my aunt, who can’t of course remember me, moves her lips.

Dearest Daniest,

That is great. I went to Pakwan in the Mission on 16th Street, between Valencia and Guerrero with Joel and Chris, who is your brother, and Mike, who is your cousin-in-law. Joel was getting used to being 42 that very day. And Mike, well, you know Mike, he lives in a house in Glen Park.

We enjoyed the saag gosht ($7.99), which is the delicious, spicy lamb with the spinach, the saag daal ($5.50), which is the lentils and spinach, the saag paneer ($6.99), which is the cheese balls and the spinach, the chicken tikka masala ($6.99), which is Joel’s favorite, and the fish curry ($6.99) which is the special, and very, very spicy. And by that I mean great. Plus the naan, Daani, the naan. We also enjoyed each other, very much.

yers,

Earl Butter

PAKWAN

Mon.-Sun., 11:30 a.m.–11 p.m.

3180 16th St, SF

(415) 255-2440

Cash only

BYOB

 

Souls and stars

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Souls and stars

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Dear Earl Butter,

I have accidentally fallen into the hands of hippies. They come from Pleiades, which is not a planet but a star cluster. How cool is that?

I used to love to be able to say, "I come from San Francisco." Suddenly it seems boring. Still, I bet we have better Mexican food than they do on Pleiades. Or in the Pleiades. (Not sure how to say this. I’ll have to ask.)

Other important points to remember are the number seven, some thing (or place or person or pizza joint) called "the Source," and that the universe is pure love. Like every other believer in reincarnation I have met, these ones claim to be "old souls."

I asked what I always ask: if time doesn’t really exist, as they also claim, how can one soul be any older than another?

They look at me like I’m a very young soul — which I would rather be, between me and you, because your face isn’t wrinkly yet and you sleep better. But technically I haven’t figured out yet about soul, meaning I don’t believe I exactly have one.

As for the universe being pure love … all I can say is I miss the smell of chicken shit and the feel of cold, dead, free-range chicken hearts in my small white hands. Not to mention the livers, and the taste of liver. And the fresh scallops we cut still pulsing from their shells and fried in butter with garlic. I miss these things, and love.

It was hard to be in Paris, too, without a heart. My brother-in-law’s brother and his girlfriend were immediate sympaticos, but they had to go to work, and so I wandered the streets and museums in almost utter amazement and disbelief — mostly that I was alone, but also the architecture and art.

I should have never left Paris, like I should have never left the chicken farm before that. But here I am in the South of France, which reminds me of Northern California, except substitute olive trees for vineyards. Jean Gene the Frenchman, who met me here, is traveling with a German disaster of his own. She’s more depressed than I am, in spite of being an old soul from the Pleiades, and her German accent is not good for me.

Back at the car after a day of hiking and sitting on cliffs high over the Mediterranean Sea, she offered me her hand and said, "Let’s make a pact. We each give it six more months, and then kill ourselves."

I just looked at her like she was from some other planet, or star cluster. "I only have one life," I said, finally. "For me, suicide is not an option."

She seemed surprised. Nevertheless, she’s a very good driver. Today we went to visit an obscure half-ruined chapel in the mountains called Notre Dame de Oeufs, or Our Lady of Eggs. No lie. People light candles and leave eggs there. The hippies said some prayers. I looked at the eggs.

Dearest Dani,

That is great. I should stop saying so much great stuff about Joel, but here is one thing. He will eat lunch with you if you are in a pinch. We went to Schmidt’s. It is right near Joel’s office. It is a little pricey for me for lunch, but I enjoyed myself nevertheless. We had lunch for $10 each.

We each got the grilled sausage. Joel got the kielbasa, which I am familiar with from my childhood and from Timmy Binko. And I got the smoked wild boar.

Modest size plates with a good-sized sausage, delicious potato salad, and sauerkraut, sweet and hot mustards, absolutely great! We both picked the wrong day to go, because neither of us could have a beer, but they’ve got a beer list longer than the menu. We were both dying to have one. Plenty of other stuff on the menu, and chalkboards of specials. This place is dark and elegant, but simple. And what I enjoyed most was that it was quiet. If there was music playing, I didn’t hear any, and I found this very refreshing.

SCHMIDT’S

Daily: 11 a.m.–3 p.m., 5:30 p.m.–11 p.m.

2400 Folsom, SF

(415) 401-0200

Beer and wine

Cash only

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