Food Gal Carolyn Jung takes the PR call and schedules interview time with Laurent Katgely, the chef and owner of Chez Spencer and Spencer on the Go. The mobile bistro is a contestant in the Tyler Florence-fronted Food Network show that rolls out Sunday, The Great Food Truck Race. Seven trucks face off for what Jung calls all manner of zany food challenges. Frankly, we're still suffering from PCSD (post-Cosentino stress disorder) after having watched two episodes of Chef vs. City, two hours we'll never get back. So we can't promise we'll TiVo TyFlo. Of course, reading Jung's Q&A, we're less inclined to watch, since Katgely suggests the series' casting was ― who could've guessed? ― lame.
Of the seven trucks, five are from Southern California, one's from Austin, Tex., and then there's Spencer. Go, Jung:
Q: What surprised you most about doing this show?Sort of all we needed to hear.A: The selection of the trucks. Five out of seven came from Los Angeles. I expected a truck from every single corner of the country. Like Chicago and Seattle have amazing trucks. I think there were better trucks around to be chosen. I found the selection kind of strange.
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In a summer rife with so many notable openings, both large and small, we don't totally understand why Jonathan Kauffman is still reviewing things like La Torta Gorda (see also his reviews of two lackluster Vietnamese crawfish joints and his roundup of food trucks that may be better left to Birdsall on the blog). We get that he wants to give attention to the little guys, but we need him out there using his one weekly review to give us a second opinion on all the stuff Bauer's covering, and then some, and saving the call-outs for tiny ethnic joints for the truly marvelous, off-the-grid places, or posts on SFoodie.
SF Street Food Festival (and conference), Outside Lands, Eat Real, Bar Agricole ― the Big Gay Ice Cream party, for chrissake ― it's hard to think of fitting in anything else. So we won't yet add Natural Wine Week (Aug. 23-28) to your crammed calendar, except to mention a benefit dinner with kind of a quietly spectacular lineup.
Baker and Banker will host the Aug. 23 five-course benefit for La Cocina. Chef/owner Jeff Banker is doing the first course ― a scallop duo, seared and crudo ― followed by La Ciccia's Massimo Conti, doing his famous stewed baby octopus. Farina's Paolo Laboa will bust out a duo of pasta, right before Perbacco's Staffan Terje's veal with tuna sauce. To finish off, peach crostata with verbena ice cream from B and B's Lori Baker. One seating, $150, all inclusive. Details after the jump.
Today at All Shook Down, our sister music blog, Emily Savage recaps the food offerings assembled by festival producer Another Planet Entertainment, for the fest, Aug. 14-15. No BBQ turkey legs, no funnel cakes. "Instead of hiring traditional street-food vendors, the organizers have gone to (or been approached by) actual brick-and-mortar restaurants, imploring chefs to truncate their menu into a smaller, less expensive hand-friendly meal," Savage writes.
The meal leaps across continents, in a triple-course matchup that probably hasn't been attempted before. Purple Hibiscus is offering a Nigerian appetizer, El Buen Comer is doing a Mexican main course, and dessert is from Azalina's Malaysian. Whole Foods is selecting wines for pairing, though no bottles ― or countries of origin, for that matter ― have been specified yet.
Joining the neighborhood's gourmet gang is wine and vermouth producer Sutton Cellars, a one-man show owned and operated by Carl Sutton since 1996. Sutton recently moved from Sonoma to make San Francisco his home.
"Yes it's a winery, but it's not a winery in the sense of Sonoma County or Napa style," Sutton says of his new digs in Dogpatch. "I'd love to eventually have a tasting room because I see that Oakland is letting their urban wineries have tasting rooms. It not only brings people to the neighborhood, but it improves the profile of the neighborhood."
That's right, $5. The 12 choices include minced beef with egg and curry chicken. However, our go-to is the Mandarin pork spareribs plate, loaded with fried pieces of pounded, on-the-bone rib meat completely drenched in gleaming sweet and sour sauce. It's easy to pick up the addictive ribs with chopsticks, thus avoiding sticky hand syndrome for the rest of the workday. A pile of rice sits alongside, patiently waiting to be moshed with the sauce to create an impromptu dessert.
Maybe it's the relentlessly gray weather, but Town Hall BBQ ― the summer-long lunchtime cookout behind the Rosenthal brothers' kitchen ― seems drained of some of the tasty it had back in April, when the season began.
Yesterday a straggle of mostly guys lined up at the grill, as the cowboy-hatted counter dude hollered out orders to the line cooks standing literally feet away from him, as if he were Keith Urban doing shout-outs to a stadium mob. "SAUSage!" "TRItip!" Annoying, I observed to my lunchmate.
