More like ClogHer: Bay Area Bites' Stephanie Im was all starstruck at Saturday's BlogHer Food '09. Im's excitement to be in the same ballroom with the bloggers that inspired her is, well, inspiring: Then she focuses on this year's Chocolate Adventure Contest, a co-promo by TuttiFoodie and Scharffen Berger. The challenge? Use one or more of 16 ingredients, paired with chocolate, to devise a winning recipe. Here's the nasty bit: At the conference, contest judge Elizabeth Falkner packed 11 of them into a big chocolate box: "homemade pandan-flavored marshmallow, peanut butter, cumin, and corn nuts, among other things," observes Im. Then, attendees donned latex gloves -- a single one, MJ-style -- and literally dug in, pulling out filthy-looking handfuls of brown, goodie-studded goo to gnaw off a cocktail napkin. See Im's photos and ponder the grossness. Besides being so, so wrong, it suggests yet another food rule of thumb, something to stand alongside Never order sushi on a Monday. Ready? It's this: Never eat anything you have to don a disposable glove to consume. Write it down; remember it.
Yancy's Saloon 734 Irving (at Eighth Ave.), 665-6551
You can see tortillas and pupusas being made by hand near the griddle, day and night. There is more to be had, but you won't find it if you don't ask -- off-the-menu fried chicken may be the true star at Elsy's. Each deep-fried piece ($1.25) is a perfect combination of juicy, tender, tasty and crisp. A to-go order of 16 pieces will feed a crowd of eight. Although, on second thought, we dare you to try and eat just one piece without crying for more.
Holland-Toll learned seasonal cooking at her mother's knee, helping with the chores at their huge garden in Arnold, California ("a beautiful, tiny, blink-and-you-missed-it mountain town in the Sierra Nevada"), and peeling peaches and prepping vegetables for canning. Culinary school in Seattle followed. She worked with Jan Birnbaum (currently cheffing at Epic Roasthouse) at Sazerac in Seattle. "He's really my mentor," she said "He introduced me to farmers' markets and how to build a menu around seasonally available foods."
After a stint in Chicago at Savarin, a French bistro, Holland-Toll returned to the Bay Area to cook with Birnbaum at Catahoula, worked with Laurent Gras at Fifth Floor, and Traci Des Jardins at Acme Chophouse. She helped to open the Americano at the Hotel Vitale. "I went to Italy for the first time, and really fell in love with Italian food," she said. She was the last executive chef at the Lark Creek Inn (which closed in April to re-open with a new name -- the Tavern at Lark Creek Inn -- and more casual menu).
In July 2006, Happy Belly began selling food from four carts in the park under a three-year contract. In June of this year, Happy Belly packed up its two remaining carts and quietly folded. Today, Happy Belly owner Dennis Lee is now chef and co-partner of Namu, the Inner Richmond restaurant that offers Asian street food at the Thursday Ferry Plaza market under the name Namu Street Food. His advice to hopeful food vendors in Golden Gate Park?
"I would say just realize this is not a normal landlord," Lee told SFoodie, referring to Rec and Park. "It's like going into business with the DMV." The chef described a litany of frustrations he experienced with the city department, from limiting the kind of signage the Happy Belly carts could display to reluctance to intervene when hostile groundskeepers turned the sprinklers on in what Lee called acts of harassment. "They were extremely unresponsive and inflexible, and just generally unreasonable."
In an e-mail that echoed a statement at Rec and Park's Website, Property Manager Nicholas Kinsey wrote: "The Department has amended the RFP [request for proposals] and will consider proposals to operate a pushcart concession in Golden Gate Park ... The Department has also clarified the RFP to indicate that proposals will be accepted for the operation of mobile food catering trucks and trailers in addition to pushcarts."
In July, when Rec and Park made its original call for proposals, it specifically excluded Golden Gate Park. The decision about whether or not to open up the city's most popular park to street food vendors was deferred till an unspecified date in the future. Friday's decision to include GGP in the proposal that would apply to the city's 200-plus other parks was the result of interior discussions, according to an unnamed Rec and Park source.
Sylvan Mishima Brackett's Peko-Peko bento boxes were recently included in Gourmet as one of Fanny Singer's (yes, daughter of Alice Waters) picks of great street food vendors in the Bay Area (Brackett once worked as Alice's assistant). On October 1, he'll be cooking Japanese at Guerilla Café, 1620 Shattuck (at Cedar). The pop-up opens at 5 p.m. and continues late, with an individually priced menu whose details are still being worked out. Brackett thinks it'll include local edamame, buta no kakuni (pork belly from Marin Sun Frams, braised with shoyu and sake, with mustard greens), dashimaki tamago with grated daikon, gyoza with handmade wrappers ("like my mother makes," Brackett said), and some kind of local sashimi (kombu-cured halibut maybe, or albacore) with locally grown myoga (ginger flower buds).
Guerilla is fairly tiny, so small parties work best. You can call Peko-Peko at 710-3926.
