Tweet police: Bits + Bites' Sara Deseran busts Bauer's BF today, or so she thinks. You see, interior designer Michael Murphy is Bauer's ball-and-chain, and Deseran pounces on what she reckons an indiscreet tweet of Murphy's (his tag: @curiousmikie) as an invitation to sling a cocktail at Bauer himself. Here's the tweet: Underwhelmed by latest food church in Oakland.Entire meal in 70 min. Left Broke ($100 person)+Hungry (sm portions)+Sober (VERY sm pours). Deseran assumes that Bauer shares Murphy's take on Commis in Oakland -- if, in fact, Murphy's tweet is even about Commis in the first place.
But so what if Murphy revealed Bauer's hand? Can't somebody's hubby be ass-y on Twitter? Believe us, it can suck to be the spouse of a restaurant reviewer. Hell, it can suck to be a restaurant reviewer, when it's a Tuesday night and all you really want to do is stay home with a dried-out rotisserie chicken from Whole Foods and watch Glee. And anyway, Twitter's an informal medium -- it's the one place where we should allow each other to be all slouchy and bitch-diva. Shouldn't we?
• Self-satisfied, chin-stroking urban homesteaders with meticulous gardens and chicken coops are the city's version of suburbanite control freaks who mow their lawns six times a day. You probably have a few for neighbors. Go to Redwood City and get your own olive tree so you can smoke their weak Meyer lemon pickles with your very own extra-virgin olive oil. Invite them over for an innocent-seeming supper, drizzle some bruschetta with that business, and make them feel as low as compost. Trees are $200 each.
• Here's a good prank: Buy 20 quail chicks on Craigslist, break into your friend's apartment very early in the morning while he's still asleep, let them loose, and run. They're in Mendocino County and, at $3 apiece, a pretty pricey practical joke. They do, however, come with the feed thrown in.
• We're loving this one: "I have two white rabbits good pets just dont have time for them anymore." That's from someone in East San Jose, and to entice you, he's posted pictures of the most Satanic-looking bunnies you've seen since Donnie Darko. We don't know if you're supposed to eat them or what, but one thing is for sure: The ad wasn't posted in Pets.
• In Concord, while supplies last, you'll pay $5 for three pounds of vine-ripened pesticide-free tomatoes. We were at the Ferry Building today and Farm Fresh To You had similar varieties (Roma, cherry, beefsteak) for almost three times the price. They were blanketed in flies, too.
• Raw Mountain View honey, amber-yellow and slightly refined, is selling for $4.50 per one-pound cake. The vendor recommends it for snacks, baking, and the brewing of home-made mead.
Dianda's Italian-American Pastry 2883 Mission (at 24th St.), 647-5469
The old fashioned deserves such skill and attention, if only because of its heritage (the basic recipe dates back to the early 19th century) and the way its cool, sweet, potent flavors can soothe the most savaged superego. Place a sugar cube, a splash of water, and a slice of orange or a maraschino cherry in the bottom of (yes) an old fashioned glass. Muddle until the sugar's dissolved and the fruit has rendered its juices. Add an ice cube or two. Put more ice cubes in a mixing glass, add enough bourbon for your purposes plus two dashes of bitters, and stir briskly until everything's nice and cold. Pour into the prepared glasses and imbibe.
Not into DIY? Daniel Hyatt at The Alembic (1725 Haight at Shrader) and Neyah White at Nopa (560 Divisadero at Hayes) are bringing new brilliance to an old classic. Rye or even brandy can be substituted for the bourbon, but don't fool around with the basic alchemy otherwise. Eight generations of the thirsty and bedeviled can't be wrong.
"Right now we're doing it just to see how things go," Farr said. He confirmed that 4505 will offer the same foods it's brought to the Ferry Plaza Thursday market - grilled dogs, sausages, and a weekly special. For next Fridays Blū kickoff, Farr said he'll be roasting a whole pig -- "a small one," he said.
Doug Cefali, president of Malcolm Properties, the building's developer, told SFoodie he'd like to see Crème Brûlée Cart be the fourth vendor at the Friday events. Cefali said he's made inquiries through Tacolicious to see if Curtis Crème Brûlée might be interested in hitting the Blū market.
Blū concierge Mark Malaspina told SFoodie that vendors to set up on the 25-foot sidewalk directly in front of the two empty retail spaces in the upscale condo building. Customers will be able to eat and hang out in the plaza of the AT&T building to Blū's left.
The idea for the market may be its potential to attract leasees to the vacant retail spaces. "Especially food-oriented businesses," Malaspina said, though not actual restaurants. Why street food? Simple: It's sexy at the moment. "It fills in our street level with the hippest kind of services the demographic that's here is already drawn to," Malaspina said.
You have to envy Noblia's sunny disposition and equanimity, even after being bounced. This morning, Noblia told us he was ready to leave after winding up in the bottom three -- twice. "I was kind of happy Padma told me to go, because it's not comfortable to be on the bottom," he said. "I was so happy, actually, [that] she sen[t] me home."
Padma made Noblia happy in other ways, too. In his exit video (posted on the Bravo.com website), red scarf on, shoes off, he confessed that she's his type, and that he dreamt about going on a date with her. "I wake up in the morning and I'm like, where am I with her?" While making his farewells, Noblia sneaked around the judges' table to steal a kiss from her. But there was no love connection. "I don't think she was really excited or anything like that," he said. "A kiss for her is one more kiss, you know?"
Perhaps the popularity of Caleb Crain's September 7 New Yorker review of Peter T. Leeson's "The Invisible Hook" guarantees that this year's International Talk Like a Pirate Day will prove the very best yet. The article paints a less frightening picture of those swashbuckling seafarers from the 18th century than we've absorbed through recent current events and movies apart from Pirates of the Caribbean. The saga sung short, courtesy of the article's pithy cartoon caption: "Pirates had strict but unconventional codes of behavior, and some historians claim them as early progressives--with democracy, economic fairness, racial tolerance, and even health care." Leeson goes on to describe how merchant sailors frequently welcomed pirate takeovers and often begged their captors to take them on as new recruits -- because pirate life was lucrative, more fun than theirs, and romantic, even then.
Our take: Little boys and girls never get over pirates. We know because we've seen 4-year-olds fence, walk the plank, and curse (in Piratese) better than Johnny Depp. They grow up, become academics, and study the very things that compelled them back when they still threw tantrums at the grocery store. Or they just toss on an eye patch, gird a plastic cutlass, and shiver their timbers all over town every 19th of September.
