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.
Saving Louis': We all say we love family-owned businesses right? Here's our chance to support one that seems in trouble of disappearing. Louis' restaurant ― the place on Point Lobos up the hill from the Cliff House, overlooking the ruins of Sutro Baths. It's been owned by the Hontalas family since the 1930s. And it's at risk of going under.
Turns out the owners need to make upgrades to reach code compliance, except the National Park Service, which owns the site, has only granted it one-year leases. Louis' wants to secure a long-term lease before coughing up cash for improvements (the last were done in 1975), but the Park Service says it has to bid out long-term leases, something the Hontalas family might not win.
roddh/Richmond District Blog of San Francisco
Louis' corner booth.
Here's the family's Facebook plea for help:
We want to show our landlord just how much support we have, just how much Louis' has played a part in your life, and just how much a San Francisco tradition should be allowed to remain. As a past employee or friend of Louis' we ask that you share your support of our family tradition. Let us know why you think Louis' should continue in its current location and why the restaurant just wouldn't be the same without the Hontalas family. Photos are definitely welcome.
PostedByTamara Palmer
on Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 5:04 PM
There sure was a whole lot of hullabaloo surrounding Alice Waters this week, but, as Eater SF reports, it ended with a fizzle. In other words, it won't be some great act of political defiance to go see Waters when she hits sweet little Noe Valley shop Omnivore Books on Food to sign copies of her new book In the Green Kitchen. You likely will not have to cross a picket line of, erm, three really upset people, and instead can probably look forward to taking a look at her tome of basic kitchen techniques and maybe exchange a smile with this oh-so-controversial culinarian.
Event details:
Alice Waters' In the Green Kitchen Book Signing
Date: Sat., Apr. 10, 3-4 p.m.
Location: Omnivore Books (3885A Cesar Chavez at Church), 282-4712
"A soup off would be fun!" tweeted the less demure one. "We should call Bobby Flay too for a Throwdown!"
We'd heard of another lady offering free soup in the Financial District back in February, but until now, the Soup Slut hasn't appeared to keep a regular schedule, and didn't have this saucy moniker. Now, as her new Web site explains, she is a relatively new addition to the Bay Area, having arrived here less than a year ago as part of a journey of self-discovery, with no initial plans to stay. Well, now she's settled, and she's slutty. Watch out!
The jam changes with the seasons. Right now, it's orange marmalade.
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.
Waiting for the other shoe: Horatius ended dinner service and weekend hours.
Continuing a trend, this week's Open/Shut news is strictly the former, and brief at that. Thursday's Giants preseason home open against the A's saw the preseason open of Acme Chophouse successors Mijita and Public House, the Traci Des Jardins double play at AT&T Park. Mijita mostly hewed to its older sister in the Ferry Building, while Public House finds ex-Acme chef Thom Fox at his most populist (pigs in a blanket, jalapeño poppers, cheesesteaks), with an Eric Cripe-curated selection of craft brews. Official grand opening for the eateries is April 9, the Giants' regular-season opener. Meanwhile at troubled Horatius, the sprawling café/event space/retail shop in Potrero, that noise you hear might be the tolling of the death knell. Dinner service and weekend hours were cut amid rumors of a chef defection. April might well prove to be the cruelest month.
Opened:
• Mijita, 24 Willie Mays Plaza at AT&T Park (at King and Fourth St.)
• Public House, address same as above
In Transition:
• Horatius, 350 Kansas (at 16th St.); new hours are Mon.-Fri. 8 a.m.-6p.m.; closed Sat.-Sun.
Ian Flores earned his pastry chops under Wolfgang Puck's Sherry Yard.
Ian Flores watches as a workman screws down a metal door threshold to the corner storefront in Dogpatch. "The ice cream machines arrive Wednesday," says Flores, who sounds relieved. Mr. and Mrs. Miscellaneous, the ice cream shop he and wife partner Annabelle Topacio expect to open on or about May 1, is suddenly taking shape. Flores and Topacio will make all the ice creams, confections, and even a few baked sweets in the boxy, loft-like space, a former deli across Third Street from Hard Knox Café.
Flores and Topacio are both pastry chefs. In Southern California, they worked for Wolfgang Puck ― Flores for Puck executive pastry chef Sherry Yard (he worked at Spago Beverly Hills, and was opening pastry chef at Spago Maui and at CUT). After moving north, Topacio was a baker for Brick Maiden Breads in Pt. Reyes Station and Firebrand in Oakland. And while the 10 to 12 ice cream flavors they plan to offer daily at Mr. and Mrs. Miscellaneous will surely reflect restaurant technique, they'll be as little-kid accessible as Flores can make them.
"We're going for traditional American flavors," Flores says. "All the flavors you loved as a kid but without the shit."
Feed a family of four on a quarter- acre plot! Earn thousands in half the time a normal job would require!
But wait ― there's more, as the late Billy Mays might have said. Never farmed before? Don't know an udder from a ukulele? Can't tell compost from a camera? Fear not! Just buy a copy of Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre, the brand-new book by Brett L. Markham, self-described advocate of a holistic approach to farming on a small, sustainable scale.
Pitchman tone aside, this book could be a brilliant resource for San Francisco's ever-swelling ranks of newbies hopping on the bale-strewn urban farming bandwagon. Even if your only prior experience is a field trip you took as an environmental science major at some leafy liberal arts institution back East, Markham's volume covers such key aspects of food production as starting seedlings, soil fertility practices, chicken-rearing, and canning.
PostedByTamara Palmer
on Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 10:43 AM
Tamara Palmer
The Hong Kong bubble tea and snack chain Quickly (various Bay Area locations, including 14 in San Francisco alone) has hundreds of menu items covering the gamut of sweet, salty, and umami. There's also a fair amount of customizable options for beverages, including additions of pudding, tapioca, and chunky aloe. The latter, reportedly good for immunity and healthy skin and gaining traction in the American beverage market, is a surprisingly harmonious pairing with watermelon juice, so much so that it's the only aloe-enhanced drink on the menu available only in a large size. Summer's come early ― at least in this cup.
On the house!: Gochujang-lavished seared squid and vegetables.
Wednesday night was Korean barbecue weather. That's what we decided as we stood on the corner of Fifth Ave. and Geary, Han-wide rivers of rain cascading over the sides of our umbrella. We'd considered North Vietnamese at Quan Bac; had pondered Five Happiness. Yet when the splashing became more frenzied, and we felt the soles of our shoes puff with water and our socks become damp, we had to turn to Brother's ― along with its sibling restaurant two doors down, the aptly named Brother's II ― the local, moderately priced Korean barbecue standard.
We eschewed the grill-it-yourself option (the two-order minimum would have proved excessive for a small party trying, for the first time, to get a sense of the menu's charcoal-free offerings) and dialed in a tidy spread: short ribs, or kalbi ($23.95), spicy crab soup with tofu and glass noodles ($11.95), and rice sizzled in a stone pot with beef, vegetables, and raw egg ($17.95). Between lettuce-wrapped morsels of grilled beef, alternately chewy and tender, we sucked down nibbles from the eagerly anticipated banchan array ― including kimchi of cucumbers, cabbage, and radish, miso paste, tiny dried fish, seaweed, and limp fried tofu.
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.'"
