Tipped off to its existence by this Tuesday's edition of Tablehopper, I raced down to Dogpatch this afternoon to try the new creative lunchtime sensation Kitchenette SF (958 Illinois), which debuted last week.
Weekdays from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., you can now stop by what's essentially the loading dock for LRE Catering to pick up lunch, with a different menu every day reflecting the best local, organic take on street food that they can whip up from scratch. Chefs Douglas Monsalud and Brian Leitner have a collective resume that includes stints at Chez Panisse, Fog City Diner, Betelnut, and Gordon's House of Fine Eats, and work with chefs who have cooked for Foreign Cinema, Eccolo, and Incanto, among others. But the Kitchenette SF project places a focus on more affordable food, with most items priced under $8.
So what does one do with all this sustainably farmed opulence? Start things off with a couple of avocados that give just a little when you press into their skins. Mash them up with a seeded, chopped up tomato, half a chopped onion, two canned green chilies (also chopped up), the juice of half a lime, some minced cilantro and salt to your taste for the best guacamole around. Serve with chips and cerveza on the fire escape just about the time the sun disappears behind the treetops.
El Raigon, the Argentine steak house in North Beach, serves the tastiest asparagus in town. The kitchen procures the greenest, slenderest A. officianalis available, bastes the stalks with a subtly tangy marinade and grills them over the same glowing wood and charcoal that enhances their bife de chorizo. The result is a glistening pyramid of crisp, lightly charred flora sweet and fragrant with woodsmoke and its own uniquely pungent essence. Prepare them yourself on the barbecue with a simple olive oil-based marinade that won't detract from the vegetable's fresh, pure flavor.
potatoes? We may be more of a wheatgrass and granola culture. Blame it
on Berkeley."
Dude, how can you have made your living covering the restaurant scene here for over 20 years and not know the answer to that question? It's not about what people are interested in. It's about what they won't eat.
SF's dining public, just like Berkeley's, includes a significant percentage of people who have banished red meat from their diets: vegans, vegetarians, "pescatarians," and people who eat fish and poultry but not mammals. Even the average party of two probably includes a member of one of those groups, and with a party of four it's a near certainly.
Bottom line, our local market just can't support too many meat-centric restaurants. In this, the Bay Area is probably in the vanguard of the real national trend: people eating less beef out of concern for their health, the environment, budgets, animal rights, and so on.
