When the ancient Polynesians invented surfing, they often used a paddle to help them navigate. Fast-forward a few millennia, and Stand-Up Paddleboarding, or SUP, finds itself trendy again. Part of its increasing popularity is that standing upright allows surfers to spot waves more easily and thus catch more of them, multiplying the fun factor. Paddling back to the wave becomes less of a strain as well. The ability to cruise along on flat inland water, surveying the sights, is another advantage. Finally, it’s a good core workout. If you’re sold on the idea, schedule an intro SUP lesson, free with board and paddle rental, and you may find yourself riding the waves like a Polynesian king.More
Many of us remember coming home from our elementary schools with freshly glazed pinchpots, cups, or whatever else our young imaginations could conjure up. Saturday mornings at the Randall Museum can bring that memory back, or create a new one for the youngsters. Ceramics make great gifts — especially on Mothers' and Fathers' Day. Hop on board for the Randall's once-weekly class, and for $6 and two weeks to have your work fired and glazed, you'll have all the materials you need.More
December is almost over - the New Year is coming up and everyone is busy drying off from the rain or holiday shopping. Let's take a look at what's happened this month.
We will dispense with the double entendres: Carol Doda, who we lost in November, was a San Francisco hero who will be rightly celebrated and remembered as long as the town she helped create still stands, the torch held aloft along Broadway and kept alight in neon.
Growing the green: Heather Smith, who wrote briefly for SFoodie last year, picked up on Little City Gardens, the backyard farm near Dolores Park whose efforts to expand Andrew Simmons has blog-chronicled here. Yesterday at Mission Loc@l, Smith went in-depth with Little City urban ag-anistas Brooke Budner and Caitlyn Galloway, describing their efforts to harvest growth capital:
Getting a bank loan to expand would be impossible, but a week ago Budner and Galloway posted a business plan on a Kickstarter, a Brooklyn-based fundraising website. They asked for $15,000 to buy the shadecloth, irrigation equipment, tools, and time needed to seek out a new site and nearly quadruple their turf.... In seven days, the project has already raised more than $10,000. The garden, so close to the bustle of 18th street, feels secret, but it's linked to an informal quasi-subterranean network of chefs and other farming enthusiasts that turns out to have a surprisingly wide reach.
We'd like to think our post helped nurture some of that green growth ― urban ag projects like Little City are scarce as wild hops. Check out Smith's piece here. And next time you're at the corner of 18th and Guerrero, pause to consider that serious food production is as close as a Tartine morning bun. And maybe easier to access.
2. Thanks one last time to Ed Chui for helping me out on a project I've wanted to do for years now: translating Chinese New Year menus. Bonus: a list of more than a dozen Cantonese seafood restaurants that I need to visit.
3. Making fauxstory, cocky New York chef attempts to best San Franciscans at burrito making, fails, earns derisive Tweet of the week, inspires John Birdsall to sum up, "San Francisco abhors a vacuousness."
Brunch ruts can set in without warning, till all of a sudden you're seated on a bolt-down at Just For You, scanning a menu you've studied dozens of times, thinking: WTF. Fortunately, like a fresh pot of coffee at the Bunn station, a new crop of local options is brewing. Among the more promising:
• Tomorrow marks the Saturday breakfast debut of 4505 Meats at Ferry Plaza. Tweet activity in the past hour from 4505's Ryan Farr lays it down: "It's on tomorrow morning at the Ferry Plaza Farmers market! If you like Biscuits & Gravy or Maple Breakfast Sausage baked in Brioche..."; and "...or add an egg to any or all of our plump sausages, cheeseburger or biscuits and gravy... mmmm I will see tomorrow morning, come hungry!"
PostedByTamara Palmer
on Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 4:20 PM
Who knew? National Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day is Feb. 23.
Just about every day brings a different national food holiday, and next week is especially packed with weirdness. A small sampling:
Mon., Feb. 22: It's National Cherry Pie Day; grab a juicy slice to go at Mission Pie (2901 Mission at 25th St.).
Tues., Feb. 23: Coincidentally, it's National Banana Bread Day and National Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day. Believe it or not, both are available for purchase at Lotta's Bakery (1720 Polk at Washington).
This week, SOMA saw the opening of Marlowe, complete with a mildly successful Window Quote Vote stunt. The 18th Street gourmet corridor said buh-bye to Craig's Place, which will eventually become Ebb & Flow under the same owners. Spanish tapas are out (and Latin American small plates in) at César Latino in Oakland, with a head-scratcher likely to confuse callers: Staff still answer the phone "César." ¡Ay!
Opened:
• Behold the arrival of Marlowe, 330 Townsend (at Fourth St.), 974-5599 ― while technically a redo of South Food + Wine Bar, the new concept is so different we're scoring it a new opening
chef to ask what he or she is putting on the menu that night, and
what inspired its creation.
Liza Shaw has been at A16 since 2004 and its executive chef since Nate Appleman's departure in 2009. All it took was a 15-second explanation of the blog post and she launched into the story of a dish she's adding to the menu tonight.
Shaw: So we have this good friend who used to work here as the opening bartender, and now he sometimes helps out as a sommelier. His brother's a chef in Monterey, and they go mushroom foraging. Andrew will call up sometimes and say, Hey, we've got some chanterelles or porcini.
So yesterday he came by with some chanterelles from the Big Sur area. (Foragers never tell you exactly where they find their mushrooms, you know.) We had a lot of leftover bread from the day before, as well as a couple of tubs more ricotta than we could use. So I came up with a dish of excess: bruschetta with chanterelles and ricotta.
Peggy Smith (far left) and Sue Conley (far right).
Sue Conley confirmed that Cowgirl Creamery will in fact expand into the Ferry Building space vacated late last month by LuLu Petite (7x7 tweeted the scoop late yesterday), but she declined to reveal more about the new stall. "We are in the early planning stages and do not have details on the new operation," Conley, who founded Cowgirl with Peggy Smith, told us via e-mail. "Next week, Peggy and I are going to a cheese event in Paris and will work on our Ferry Building plans while we are there," she revealed. Which is altogether sweeter than ironing out business details over lattes at some Peet's, but makes us wonder: Will any future Cowgirl café be heavy with croque monsiuers and tartines au fromage?
As a daily windup to the Weekly's Best of S.F. 2010 on May 19, we've teased out 92 of our favorite local dishes that taste like here. All the tasty details after the jump.
PostedByTamara Palmer
on Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 11:15 AM
antiqueroadshowinsider.com
This week's debut of 18 Reasons' new cookbook club is completely sold out (get in on the March madness now), but its popular cookbook swap returns next week. Take as many cookbooks as you bring, or simply pay the top admission price ($10) and walk away with the stained jacket of your choice. SFoodie has totally scored at previous installments, and we suspect there might be more than a few gems to uncover at the next one.
Event details: 18 Reasons Cookbook Swap Date: Thurs., Feb. 25, 7-9 p.m. Location: 18 Reasons, 593 Guerrero (at 18th St.), 241-9760 Cost: $5 (members and those bringing at least one book)/$10
The year of the iron tiger officially arrived last weekend, but Chinese restaurants around the Bay Area are offering special New Year's banquet menus over the course of the next few weeks.
Soundtrack for 2010.
SFoodie drove around the city collecting some of them, which Adobo Hobo's Ed Chui and his parents then translated for us (thanks, Ed!).
Today's menu ― the last in our series ― comes from Outer Richmond's new Hakka Restaurant. Perhaps because the place is so new, Hakka's two dinners are a real bargain: $198 or $168 for eight to ten people. Call to reserve a table, though, before you show up with nine of your hungriest friends.
Click on the banquet menu above to enlarge (English translations are embedded in the image). Or scroll through the English text version (after the jump).
Sub Pop recording artists 'clipping.' brought their brand of noise-driven experimental hip hop to the closing night of 2016's San Francisco Electronic Music Fest this past Sunday. The packed Brava Theater hosted an initially seated crowd that ended the night jumping and dancing against the front of the stage. The trio performed a set focused on their recently released Sci-Fi Horror concept album, 'Splendor & Misery', then delved into their dancier and more aggressive back catalogue, and recent single 'Wriggle'.
Opening performances included local experimental electronic duo 'Tujurikkuja' and computer music artist 'Madalyn Merkey.'"
