If a craving for Filipino food strikes early, Jollibee and its sister shop Red Ribbon Bakery (200 Fourth St. at Howard) will be waiting for you. Irish pub the Chieftain (198 Fifth St. at Howard) opens at 6:30 a.m. for pre- or mid-race Bloody Marys, while the cafe at Harvest Urban Market (191 Eighth St. at Howard) will open at 7:30 a.m. for breakfast and the usual grab 'n' go stuff. It wouldn't be our first choice, but you could walk another block and surrender all pretense of health at Burger King or Starbucks.
Call it irony: Epic offers one of the priciest burgers in town, and engineers it out of trash. Okay: Not trash as most of us understand it, but rather the scraggly bits left from the kitchen's daily butchering, ground and seasoned. It's prime trash, different every day (the one pictured contains skirt steak, prime rib, and beef tenderloin), and it yields a primo burger, with a fine-ground texture that registers as creamy. It's the heart of Quiver's $20 Burger, Beer, and Brownie special, available daily from 11 a.m to 5 p.m. Even at that price, it has to be one of the most expensive sammies in town, but worth the odd, irrational splurge if only for the soaring bridge view, which becomes even more soaring at the other end of your ginormous pilsner glass of Anchor Steam or Trumer (your pick). As for the stiff, craggy brownie -- well, what do you expect for 20 bucks?
Today, Erin Katgely explained the hold-up: licensing red tape. "They wanted us to get one more thing before we started," she said. Plus their logo has yet to be applied to the truck, a used taco wagon her husband Laurent scored in Stockton. "He looked at a lot of them," she said. "In the end he bought a taco and then he bought the truck!" Katgely said the truck should be open for business across from Terroir starting next Thursday, May 21, 6 p.m.-midnight. The couple is also working to get Spencer on the Go into the Tuesday and Thursday markets at the Ferry Building (the Thursday market is scheduled to begin July 2). Don't want to be disappointed? Chart the truck's status on Twitter at chezspencergo.
You know the Pussycat: Tiger-stripe wall-to-wall, Vegas-y Lucite chandeliers, and those dual stripper poles. But it was cucina, not cootchie, that drew a packed house of gastro thrill-seekers to Bruno's last night. And judging by the dishes SFoodie tasted, everybody left with something like the, um, glow that follows a happy ending.
The dozen-item menu paid homage to the ingredient-idolizing style of classic Cali cooking, with a purveyor list that read like the vendor roster at the Ferry Plaza market: Full Belly, Knoll, Cowgirl, Hog Island. But Kronner's skill in the kitchen made for dishes that were anything but cliché.
Even we got entangled in the hot mess. We don't have a printer (don't ask), but we enlisted friends to help us. One refused to download the software needed to print it on his (aging) office computer, another -- after reporting long delays in connecting -- printed us out a limp black-and-white number that even looked like a forbidden photocopy to us, and a third mailed us four crisp, full-color beauties.
We knew in our bones that the line-ups in the first few days would be horrendous, so we planned to go in the second week of the promotion (the coupons read Valid from May 5 to May 19). Why hurry? We don't like KFC fried, so what were the chances we'd like the grilled? Apparently, neither Oprah nor the geniuses at KFC were as prescient as we were, because, well, chaos ensued. "Millions" of coupons were downloaded (big surprise -- Oprah's daily audience is over ten million), and people got in line immediately, if not sooner.
The biggest, gooiest sundae at MaggieMudd (903 Cortland at Gates, 641-5291) is the glorious Messy Marcy ($8.25). This dirty girl consists of three scoops of your choice of traditional or dairy-free ice cream (made with coconut or soy milk) served over a warm brownie and topped with cookie pieces, waffle cone, whipped cream, sprinkles, your choice of sauce, nuts, and cherries. Banana slices optional,in case you're disturbingly hungry.
The entire pile -- not just the ice cream -- can go vegan. That's what we did with this Marcy of dairy-free vanilla, Coconut Road, and Tar-Mack (chocolate with peanut butter and Oreos) ice cream with peanut butter sauce. You could totally fool someone into thinking a cow was involved. A major bonus when you order your Marcy V-style? With no dairy bomb to detonate in your tummy later, this potentially lethal concoction is pain-free, definitive proof that meat eaters needn't feel sorry for supposedly deprived vegans. Ever.
