Growler: Beer & Nosh whips out predictably gorge photos from Saturday's street-food fest, with a harsh chaser: It was crowded, expensive, and with long lines for food that wasn't exactly street food. Ouch.
Yupset: An extra helping of Street Food Fest harshness, via Noe Valley, SF: Overheard: "...an hour and a half wait for a taco..." When Noe Valley gets bitchy, you know you've got a problem.
Totally granulated: Yeah, we know: Mission Burger.
Future of food: Grub Street goes all Criss Angel (except, you know, without the creepy, goth-sucking-down-Muscle-Milk look), going psychic on the hottest S.F. restaurant openings for fall and winter. Bracina, Bluestem, Frances. Look for straightforward meat and vegetables and a less foam on the menu -- unless it comes atop a craft beer.
Saturday may have seen an urban clusterfreak at the San Francisco Street Food Festival in the Mission, but Friday night's street food happy hour in SOMA served up a big old slice of chill.
J. Birdsall
Ritch Street offered a chill venue for hanging out and munching on cart foods.
Nearly a dozen vendors lined the alleylike stretch in front of Little Skillet (360 Ritch at Townsend), which organized the event and promoted it via tweets. There were the usual suspects (Gobba Gobba Hey, Who's Your Daddy bacon potato chips, the Gumbo Man, and Cookiewag, among others). But the evening marked the official launch of Toasty Melts, offering three grilled cheese sandwiches, and one of the first appearances of Boozely's Pickles and Preserves (more about them tomorrow).
J. Birdsall
Quindim: Dense, sticky, and sweet.
Friday also marked a kind of second debut for Brazilian Bites, composed of Sao Paolo natives Ana Carolina and Lalita (last names withheld for licensing reasons). Both recently laid off from corporate gigs, they decided to hit the streets with a handful of traditional Brazilian sweets, some based on old family recipes, priced $2-$3.
On Friday, the pair were offering quindim, a dense and sticky coconut custard with a toasted coconut crust -- her grandmother's recipe, Ana Carolina told SFoodie, intensely sweet and rich with yolks in colonial Portuguese fashion. Brigadeiro was a kind of molten fudge of chocolate and condensed milk, served up in cups not much bigger than thimbles. And arroz doce (sweet rice pudding) was cool and creamy, dusted with cinnamon, and with a flowery whiff of jasmine rice (Lalita told us she's thinking of using basmati next time).
J. Birdsall
Arroz doce: Dusted with cinnamon.
Ana Carolina said she and Lalita might offer some savory dish next time -- the Rio Saturday meal feijoada, maybe, or the coconut-milk and seafood stew called mocequa. What's the appeal of selling on the street? It's the money Brazilian Bites might make, sure, but it's also the connection they feel to other vendors.
"It's so fun to be part of this," Ana Carolina said, "the city, the community. I was just talking to somebody, and I said it's like falling in love with the city again," she said. "It's like the city is reinventing itself."
You can follow Brazilian Bites and find out about upcoming appearances via its Twitter feed.
| M. Brody |
| The communal table: Long waits at prime time? |
House-made chicken liver paté ($9) spread like velvet on grilled toast. It came with a ripe fig and a crisp assortment of pickled vegetables that included radishes and carrots. Rancho Gordo split pea soup ($5) was freighted with chunks of house-smoked ham hock. Irresistible tiny padron peppers from Mariquita Farms ($5) were roasted with a bit of sea salt and olive oil; only a few were spicy-hot, but anticipating which ones was part of the pleasure. But the star among our starters was an amazing heirloom tomato gazpacho ($5), on whose sweet broth floated glistening dots of basil oil and cleverly spiced chunks of ripe avocado, every bit as velvety as the paté.
Sandwiches reflected the chef's stint at Boccalone. The Starbelly salumi "submarine" ($9 -- picture after the jump) boasted pistachio-studded mortadella, prosciutto, salami, and roasted red peppers on a crisp, floury roll (we added thin, skin-on fries for $2; they came with a ramekin of tomato sauce). Thinly sliced porchetta ($8) came topped with spicy salsa verde and cooling arugula, sided with a deeply flavored pork jus. A Diablito ($5) -- a spicy drink combining house-made tomato juice and beer, a variation on a Michelada -- cooled us. The wine-and-beer-only license seems to have inspired some intriguing cocktails, including a Madeira cobbler and a champagne cocktail with vermouth.
We shared one sweet (reality had to set in some time): ripe peaches and vanilla ice cream dusted with crunchy brioche crumbs and drizzled with olive oil ($7), the perfect late-summer dessert.
Starbelly 3583 16th St. (at Market), 252-7500
Open Mon.-Fri. 11 a.m.-midnight, and 10 a.m.-midnight Sat.-Sun. A policy of no reservations for parties under six has reportedly led to long waits during prime time, even at the big communal table.
M. Brody
House-made pate: Velvety.
Check out additional pics of the blaze at SFist.
"On my last visit, 20 years ago, I was joined by guest bartenders Herb Caen, Joe Montana, and Huey Lewis. This year it was Joe and me and a crowd that looked as if its next stop would be Laguna Honda." Gee, thanks, Willie.
First-time vendor Don't Forget Your Lunch wasn't one of the fest's approved sellers, according to co-proprietor Luke (we've changed his name to protect his identity), but showed up anyway. Luke and his sister set up at the festival entrance at 25th Street and Folsom at about 1:45 p.m. Luke described the concept of Don't Forget Your Lunch as an offering of a multi-dish meal made with local, organic, and foraged ingredients centered around a particular theme. On Saturday, Don't Forget was offering Indian breads with a choice of fillings, along with tomato chutney and chai. Luke, 28, is a student and works a couple of part-time jobs. He hoped to make additional money from street food, and said he couldn't afford what he identified as the "$1,000 permit" required to become a licensed seller in San Francisco.
Luke showed up Saturday with about 30 meals, priced at $5 each. "We put stuff on display and had a sign on a fence," he said, "but within 10 minutes a police officer approached me and asked if I had a permit. When I said no she told me that I couldn't sell my food there unless I was a registered vendor and asked me to leave the area." Luke and his sister then entered the festival grounds on Folsom, making a few sales to attendees lined up at booths or milling around. Eventually they settled on the front steps of a house opposite the Delfina booth.
Within minutes, the four police officers who'd confronted them before were surrounding them. "'Remember me?' the officer said," Luke recalled. "She said that since she had already warned me once, this time she was going to charge me with a misdemeanor and that I would have to pay a fine. She said I was hurting the event, since it was a benefit for a nonprofit trying to legitimize street foods, that I was hurting the cause. I said there were plenty of people here, that I wasn't really making any money, and that I wasn't really hurting the event. Most of the official people selling food there were high-end restaurants, people like Absinthe," he said. "I thought it was supposed to be more about street vendors."
| J. Birdsall |
| Lines stretched across Folsom and onto the sidewalk. |
The S.F. Street Food Festival was the sister event to this weekend's Eat Real Festival in Oakland. Check out our slideshow of the day's highlights.
J. Birdsall
Aziza's Mourad Lahlou oversees the ingredients for Moroccan "taco" flatbreads.
Let's do lunch:
Sure, the new-school places Pal's and Kitchenette pay homage -- overt or not --to this North Beach sandwich prototype. Show some respect to the original, says SF Weekly food critic Meredith Brody, with a grilled meatball sandwich with Swiss cheese, onions, and marinara at Mario's Bohemian Cigar Store Café, 566 Columbus (at Union), 362-0536.
Drink therapy:
Yeah, it's a Victorian punch house -- got a problem with that? Load up on $2.50 happy hour beer and cocktail specials (5-7 p.m.), and you won't care what the hell Hobson's Choice calls itself: 1601 Haight (at Clayton), 621-5859.
That isn't just the smell of broiled unagi you're catching: Breathe in the whole izakaya bar vibe -- and at happy hour prices (5:30-7 p.m.), no less -- at Tokyo Go Go, 3174 16th St. (at Albion), 864-2288.
