It's a week old, but Cyrus Farivar's interview with Javier Sandes, Emeryville street vendor of Argentinian asado, is still fresh as, um, newly mixed chimichurri.
Mobile memories: Last month, Sandes debuted Primo's Parrilla ― he slow-grills tri-tip and chickens over a mix of mesquite and hardwood charcoal. Cue the backstory, direct from Sandes:
I missed a part of my culture which took place every Sunday in the backyard with friends and family -- an all day asado. We would start late morning with picadas of cheeses, salami's and olives washed down by Fernet & Coke, Cinzano & soda water -- all this while the fire was starting and the meat getting placed on the grill. While the meat was grilling we caught up on the week's events and kicked around the soccer ball. Early afternoon the asado was ready and we pushed together several tables, sometimes borrowing from the neighbors, and began our feast. This would include- blood sausage, kidney, tripes, sweet breads, short ribs and chicken. We'd wash it down with red wine and beer (Quilmes!) and finish it off with fruit salad or icecream.
Anyway, on May 11, Incanto will, in fact, host a celebratory dinner for the visiting Brits, reportedly passing through town to "share the news" of the new hotel and restaurant they're opening in Soho later this year. For this $65 four-course dinner featuring roast marrow and parsley salad, ox tongue with potatoes and green sauce, a braised goat shoulder with trotters, garlic, and broad beans, and strawberries in wine, there will be just one solitary seating. Details on reserving a place after the jump.
Yesterday in Brisbane, Pilz mounted a very quiet launch of Hapa SF, the Filipino mobile food company that, in a way, grew out of that dinner at Citizen Cake. By mid-May, Pilz plans to show up two to three lunchtimes a week in Brisbane (the same Walmart Connection Center lot that Curry Up Now and Sam's ChowderMobile roll into) in a used taco truck he scored in San Jose. Before long, he hopes to have an evening spot in San Francisco, with a second truck currently being pimped out with an all-new kitchen.
A talented chef, Pilz is starting out with five basics that, in their sourcing and execution, promise to be anything but. He'll have lumpia (ground Long and Bailey pork, fresh water chestnuts, spices he scores from Le Sanctuaire, and sweet-and-sour sauce made from seasonal fruit), organic chicken adobo, pancit with vegetables picked up at farmers' markets, a kind of banh mi filled with adobo-brined chicken breast, and sisig. Each item will ring up less than $10. Other dishes (kinilaw, sinigang) might come later.
One event that still appears to have space (for now) is the annual Farmers Market Cocktail Night on May 19. Admission buys two full cocktails, tastes of 10 others, and apps. Drinks will be created by bartenders from 15 Romolo, Bourbon & Branch, Cantina, Gitane, Hotsy Totsy Club, Rose Pistola, Sauce, Blackbird, and Wexler's, while the bites will come from Absinthe, Il Cane Rosso, the Plant Cafe, and chefs Chad Newton and Robbie Lewis. With that lineup, and with the obvious pre-planning prowess of CUESA's sizable groupie population, we wouldn't advise you to dawdle. Details after the jump.
Of the 4,000 breweries operating in America at the end of the 19th century, a little over 1,500 were back up and running again after the repeal of Prohibition. But within decades, American beer, on the whole, had been homogenized into a light-bodied, patently yellow product manufactured by just over 40 companies ― the rest having been cannibalized by competitors or simply run to the ground.
When Fritz Maytag purchased Anchor in 1965, that singular act ― the whim of a young man with an inheritance, who'd moved from Iowa, where his great-grandfather revolutionized home appliances with the introduction of the electric washing machine ― revolutionized beer.
Forget the business about it being a "San Francisco original since 1896." Anchor as we know it has been around since 1965, when, in its first decade, the brand not only cleaned up its trademarked steam beer (a lager brewed with ale yeast at warmer temperatures), but introduced the first modern porter, the first modern dry-hopped beer (Liberty Ale), the first modern barleywine (Old Foghorn), and first modern spiced seasonal offering (Our Special Ale, aka Anchor Christmas). All before any other microbrewery had even sprung up (The first would be Sonoma's short-lived New Albion Brewery, in 1976). The first modern wheat beer, Anchor's Summer Beer, debuted in 1983. Today, dry-hopping pale or India pale ales is commonplace, as are dark-roasted stouts and porters, but only because of the chain reaction Anchor ignited.
Now, after 45 years, news broke this week that Maytag, 72, sold the company he created to Griffin Group partners Keith Greggor, 55, and Tony Foglio, 64.
There's not much to say about Whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com that the site won't say very plainly for itself. We just rejected four straight suggestions (miso chicken, fettuccine with shrimp, chicken kebabs, soft scrambled eggs with ricotta and herbs), and the fifth idea (porcini chicken with wild rice and wheat berries) came couched in vaguely threatening rhetoric.
What's funny about this site though is that, while you're wasting time at work, it might actually give you an idea of what to cook for dinner.
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