Top-tier employment: NBC Bay Area's Sajid Farooq files a depressing story about a couple of recent assaults on street-food vendors in Salinas. On Monday, two pushcart ice cream hawkers --- a 36-year-old and a 64-year-old - were pepper-sprayed in separate incidents. Police are looking for two men suspected of carrying out both attacks. Sad. But we did a double-take over Farooq's lead, which suggests that street food vendors have it pretty damn sweet these days: Life may seem great for street food vendors with all their Twitter followers and the endless love they get from foodies who hang on their every tweet. Really, Farooq? Seriously?
| The classic Ballpark Dog ($5.75): A bun like moist foam peanuts, but still lovable. |
After a sickening display of gluttony at AT&T last night, we can report that, well, ballpark dogs are what they always were: comfortingly mediocre. No buns from Acme or Josh, no house-made blend of heritage pork and pastured beef, no clever takes on condiments. Just faintly mushy wieners in cottony buns, twisted up into foil paper and left to mellow under heat lamps. The way we grew up with them. The way god -- and Oscar Mayer -- intended them. Additional fan pics after the jump.
Festivities begin at Jack London Square this Friday afternoon at 4 p.m. with music, beer, movies after dusk, an Edible Pursuit trivia contest, and an ice cream social. Eat Real's Susan Coss said she's especially excited about Friday's canning exchange -- bring your own home-canned goodies for trade or to enter in the Yes I Canned contest -- featuring canning demos with Happy Girl Kitchen and cookbook author Vanessa Barrington on Friday at 6 p.m.
You can get your serious food freak on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., when more than 50 vendors will be offering treats ranging from Vietnamese sandwiches and seafood chowder to cupcakes and ice cream, at prices ranging between $1 and $5. If you've never found the Crème Brulee Man or Sexy Soup Lady from their tweets, now's your chance to access them easily (and legally). The all-encompassing list ranges from high-end Asian street food from award-winning chef Tim Luym of S.F.'s Poleng Lounge, to down-home cooking from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul of Alameda County.
"I love Jim N Nick's BBQ from Birmingham, Alabama," Fernald said. "They're driving their rig up from down South and using it to barbecue gorgeous local pork and turkey from California ranches." She called it a new twist on local.
If you missed out on something at last Saturday's popular S.F. Street Food Festival, a number of the same purveyors will be here, including Chaac Mool, Estrellita's Snacks, and Zella's Soulful Kitchen. "Because Eat Real is free, except for entry to the Beer Shed," Coss said, "we have no way of estimating how many people will show up." So, caveat emptor: The lines may be just as long as the ones on Folsom last week. "But," Coss added, "we have so many other events going on that not everybody will be standing in line at the same time -- we hope!"
(Beer Shed alert: today is the last day to purchase discounted Beer Shed tickets online.)
"First, I limp to the side like my leg was broken/Shakin' and twitchin', kinda like I was smokin'/Crazy wack funky/People say, 'You look like MC Hammer on crack, Humpty . . .'"
For more pointers, check out the "Humpty Dance" performed live on The Arsenio Hall Show (featuring a young Tupac Shakur) after the jump.
• Monday's soft opening went great, according to one insider.
• Though the menu is similar to that of the pre-blaze Limón, the revamped place features a raw bar with ceviches, shellfish (oysters, clams, mussels, etc.), and other seafood.
• There's no full bar, just sojutinis and saketinis, wine, sangria, and beer; the sangria is said to be similar (not identical?) to the version at sister place Limón Rotisserie (1001 S. Van Ness at 21st St.).
Tonight's gala is for industry, press, and anyone else able to sweet-talk a PR flack. Limón's official public opening (with full menu) is tomorrow. Dinner only; Sat. and Sun. brunch are expected to start in about two weeks.
Limón 524 Valencia (at 16th St.), 252-0918
It may not have foodies buzzing the way Anthony Bourdain's visit last spring did, but fellow Travel Channel glutton Adam Richman visits San Francisco tonight to overeat on Man v. Food. Richman feasts on gut-bomb sandwiches at Yelpers' fave Ike's Place (3506 16th St. at Valencia), loses himself in the Mission-Style Super Burrito at Taqueria la Cumbre (515 Valencia at 16th St.), and, for dessert, there's the $34.95 Kitchen Sink at the San Francisco Creamery -- which, hey, is in Walnut Creek (1370 Locust at Cypress). But even Bourdain crossed the bridge to try taco trucks in Oakland!
photomato/Flickr
Watch Adam Richman stuff himself here.
To conccot a Delilah, simply pour one part freshly squeezed lemon juice, one part orange liqueur (Cointreau, Curaçao, or Triple Sec) and two parts gin into a pitcher packed with ice, stir until nice and frosty, and strain into chilled martini glasses. Garnish with spirals of lemon peel. The result is brisk yet soothing, sweet, strong, and snarky all at once, the orange and lemon making beautiful music with the herbs, roots, and botanicals of the gin. (We tried making a Delilah with vodka and were exceptionally unimpressed.) Mix up a batch the next time friends drop by before dinner or a show ... this is a most convivial libation.
Virgin clam-shucker Mistry, an executive chef at Bon Appétit Management Company who runs Charlie's Café at Google in Mountain View, fell so far behind that her team never recovered.
"I wanted to do the beef," Mistry told SFoodie. "After all, I was the sous chef at Acme Chophouse when I applied to be on Top Chef -- Traci des Jardins suggested it to me, and when Traci says something, you listen! I gave it a shot, and when I made it, Fedele Baccio, the CEO of Bon Appétit, was really supportive."
As for the clam debacle, Mistry said it really wasn't as bad as it seemed -- Bravo's edits made it look worse than it was. "I did get through them all," she said. Mistry's now back at work, overseeing more than 2,000 meals a day at Google. During our phone talk, she was interrupted by a cook with a bowl of posole for her to sample.
In addition to Charlie's Café, she supervises the pastry for the whole Google campus, the catering, and a vegan juice bar called Slice. The 30-year-old chef looks like a teenager and rocks a faux-hawk. She was born in London, has Indian heritage, and grew up in the Midwest. "I was pretty much totally ready to get out of the Midwest when I turned 18," she said. "I originally wanted to go to New York, but visited S.F. with some friends in the spring of 1996 and fell in love with the city. The food, the sunshine, the gays, the overall diversity and the feeling of living in a big city that still kinda felt like a small town. I moved to San Francisco that summer of 1996 with my new girlfriend, now my partner of over 13 years."
Mistry worked for Frameline, S.F.'s LGBT film festival, but loved to cook. After September 11, 2001, she decided to follow her heart. "I'd been working in film and everyone said I should be a chef. I'd thought about it, but was scared. But on that day, the only thing that felt right was to go into the kitchen and start cooking. So I did, and I haven't stopped since."
| A. Simmons |
| These used to be pretty. Really. |
You're better off eating these in the store, sitting on a cardboard box, hunched over your crumb-strewn lap, trying to avoid raining splashes of condiments down onto your shoes. The meat burger ($8), with its Blumenthal-inspired patty, a granulated dream team of brisket, short ribs, and chuck, is a squishy little leviathan of flavor. The silky, salty strands of beef clump fairly loosely together, their deep richness accentuated, sort of to the point of absurdity, by caramelized onions, a slice of Monterey Jack, and a generous slick of caper aïoli, all pinioned above and under halves of a perfect toasted Acme bun. Sandwiched in the same kind of roll, the vegan burger ($7) oddly feels just as sumptuous, a fried square, hard, dark-brown, and crunchy on the outside, and delicate and flaky within, like some unholy cross between falafel and fish. The crust shatters with the first bite, revealing beads of edamame, shreds of roasted kale, and sliced shiitake and maitake mushrooms, the earthy, mineral-y bits suspended in a fava-chickpea cloud, tumbling out to mingle with miso mayonnaise, bright, clean fennel slaw, and avocado.
Duc Loi kind of exemplifies the waves of change this neighborhood has seen in the past six years. In 2003, this corner housed a run-down, supercheap market with an awning and unspectacular produce laid out in bins on the sidewalk outside. Then, it disappeared and became a dirt lot. Then, it became condominiums with empty commercial space filling the first floor. Many expected a Whole Foods to settle in, but Duc Loi re-emerged, with windows, lights, a meat counter, and somewhat better produce. Now, it's the setting for Mission Street Food's latest expansion, and that, if taste counts for anything, is a really good thing.
Duc Loi is donating $1 from the sale of each burger to the San Francisco Food Bank. Lunch service begins at noon and continues until the ingredients disappear. At this point, Mission Burger is open every day except Thursday.
