With AT&T Park in the national spotlight Wednesday for Game One of the World Series, you'd think South Beach restaurants would be busting out specials oozing with Fear the Beard enthusiasm.
You'd be wrong.
Most restaurants SFoodie spoke with either aren't doing anything special tomorrow, or are actually doing less. Spire is promising a few special cocktails Wed. and Thu. ― orange ones (the Giants Cadillac margarita, $12; Giants cosmo, $10; and Giants melon ball, $10). American Grilled Cheese Kitchen is staying open two hours later, till 5 p.m. Wed. and Thur. (its Facebook page offers up excitement of a sort via a single "whoot!"). Nova Bar and Restaurant on Second Street: Nothing special. Nearby 21st Amendment: Nothing special ― unless, says Mike, today's manager, the chef feels like it. Pete's Tavern ― practically within peanut-shell spitting distance from the park, is actually closed to the public both Wed. and Thu. for private parties. No word about specials from sister establishments Pedro's Cantina and MoMo's.
Fans of bottarga may want to trek to the Mission for a taste of Sardinia and Sicily. Specchio chef Gino Assaf is dedicating Thursday nights to the silver mullet roe. It's a favorite of the chef, who began working with bottarga in Venice and has been testing and tweaking it on Specchio's menu since September. The press release for the Thursday events evoke saucy images of La Dolce Vita, teasing, "Whether it will make you spontaneously seek out fountains to traipse around in while Vespas suddenly appear out of nowhere remain unverified." We can verify that the bottarga items run through Nov. 11, and include spelt spaghetti with cherry tomato, olive oil, and bottarga; risotto with asparagus and bottarga; farfalle, zucchini, and bottarga; and cannellini beans with greens, celery, and bottarga. Dishes are $16, or a suite of four for $45.
Specchio: 2331 Mission (at 19th St.), 956-5528.
The Women's Building is holding it's own as a go-to spot for regular food events (note: self-identifying dudes are completely welcome to participate). This Thursday night, learn to make mead in a class presented by Urban Kitchen. Robert MacKimmie is a renowned apiarist from City Bees, and will teach this hands-on class about "mankind's first fermented beverage." Students will make a gallon of mead while discussing recipes for cyser, an apple-honey wine, and melomel, a fruit and honey fermented drink.
Makin' Mead
When: Thur., Oct. 28, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Where: The Women's Building, 3543 18th St. (at Guerrero), Audre Lorde Room
Cost: $49; sliding-scale tickets also available by e-mailing registration@urbankitchensf.org
Tickets available via Eventbrite
We love that there's an annual benefit for children that encourages adults to gorge on sweets. While you might ordinarily say that you'll "do this for the kids," at Sugar Rush you actually will, since the tasting event benefits Spark, a Bay Area-based nonprofit that sets up powerful mentors and apprenticeships for students. Quality places, too -- we actually had a shameful moment feeling jealous of the 12-year-old Spark participant who got to work at the Recchiuti chocolate factory last year, for example. Recchiuti will be joined at Sugar Rush by confectionery masters from Chez Panisse, Coi, Fifth Floor, Humphry Slocombe, Boulevard, Delfina, Millennium, and Range.
Although Spark doesn't say this on any of its official materials, it is not responsible for any crazy sugar comas that might ensue.
Sugar Rush
When: Thurs., Nov. 11, 7:30-9:30 p.m.
Where: 111 Minna (at Second St.)
Cost: $50-$150
Tickets: Order online via Eventbrite.
I admit it: I once lived through a bad Martha patch. For Halloween that year I decided that what trick-or-treaters wanted wasn't miniature Kit Kats or bags of M&M's, but tiny cups of warm cider and doughnuts I fried myself. I couldn't have been more wrong, of course. Turns out kids didn't give a shit about house-made doughnuts, and their parents didn't want them sipping the nice man's cider. They wanted factory-made candy. As much of it as they could grab.
How to make a kid smile before destroying his teeth with sugar? SFist's Brock Keeling is aiming to find out with a poll of Halloween candy preferences, broken down by type. Go. Vote. Then check the results before sacking up at Walgreens. And a word to my gay foodie brethren: While "baked goods" is an option, Martha's Shaker-inspired clabbered-milk cake doughnuts aren't. They're just not.
Follow us on Twitter: @sfoodie. Contact me at John.Birdsall@SFWeekly.com
Her cookies and olive-cocoa nib wafers are so good it seemed like it'd only be a matter of time before Goody Goodie's Remi Hayashi inhabited a retail space bigger than the Folsom Street window she cracked open in June. Four days ago, Hayashi and Blue Bottle kiosk magnate John Quintos (Cento, Vega, Special Xtra) quietly opened Star Stream, a weekday café across Harrison from Best Buy. Super thin-crust pizzas, sandwiches, Goody Goodie's cookie line. The hoped-for vibe, Hayashi told Jonathan Kauffman earlier this month, was Roman espresso bar.
Maybe, though by Roman standards the place is big enough to house a couple of families. There's an open cooking line dominated by a gas-fired deck oven, the dishwashing setup, and Quintos' espresso station and drip bar. Something you won't find in a Roman caffe:
Liège-style waffles ($3.50), browned and fat, glazed with sugar and seeded with clumps of semi-molten turbinado that pack your molars. The one pictured here, swaddled in a paper coffee drip-cone liner, was fantastic, a confluence of crisp and leathery, eggy and chewy. Three-quarters of it disappeared on our walk to the car. By the time we got back to the office it'd cooled, its sugar lumps turned semi-solid. We polished it off anyway.
Star Stream: 1830 Harrison (at 14th St.); open Mon.-Fri. 8 a.m.-4 p.m.
Follow us on Twitter: @sfoodie. Contact me at John.Birdsall@SFWeekly.com
Who needs a jam CSA anyway? Cat ladies living off English muffins and pots of Constant Comment, with jar-a-week habits? Hoarders stuffing their larders? The answer, for lovers of Blue Chair jam who happen to live in San Francisco, is anyone who wants to avoid bridge fare.
Blue Chair - Rachel Saunders' premium, high-end preserves made with organic, small-producer fruit ― shows up at two Oakland farmers' markets, Temescal and Grand Lake. Which means that if you're stuck in S.F., you're limited to buying retail.
Last night Blue Chair's Rachel Saunders announced the launch of a jam CSA ― er, CSJ. How it works: You sign up for three months, and each month you order three jars from a menu. The jars ship to Omnivore Books, where you have to shlep for the pickup. The cost: $96. Steep for jam, unless you're that cat lady or hoarder we mentioned. Of course, you could always just go to Bi-Rite, where a 6-ounce jar costs $10.99 (essentially the same price). But being a CSJ member, you get first crack at seasonal flavors ― something you can flaunt when you host your weekly knitting circle, and just casually drop a dish of new-release Black Mission Fig with your craggy, homemade scones. In. Your. Face.
The first CSJ pick-up is in November. Sign up at Blue Chair's website.
Follow us on Twitter: @sfoodie. Contact me at John.Birdsall@SFWeekly.com
The past 24 hours in gossip, innuendo, and cold hard facts about the
San Francisco restaurant scene.
We'd seriously consider cashing out our 401(K) to be able to pay for dinner at Quince, except, well, it's become something of a personal pastime to predict when our current vested balance might hit $1,000. But according to Grub Street's Jay B., we may not have to wait that long to taste the glories of Michael Tusk's cooking, at least in streamlined form. Cotogna (490 Pacific), Tusk's casual spinoff ― the Cane Rosso to Quince's Coi, if you will ― should be open Nov. 4. Menu reveal TK.
Eater's Carolyn A. gets the word on Crêperie Saint Germain's weeks-old soft-launched FiDi cafe (1 Sansome, creperiesaintgermain.com). That makes it one of the rare pavement-cuisine vendors to execute the move from street to brick and mortar. Way to go, CSG.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
A few months ago I was sitting at the counter of Antojitos Salvadoreños Aminta ― the open-air stall in the Mission Market Food Mall with the plastic hanging gardens and the big-screen televisions ― when the cook brought a gourd bowl of atol to the guy who'd just sat down next to me. In the time it took me to polish off one of my pupusas he downed the cornmeal porridge, alternating spoonfuls and sips, then gave a polite nod to the server and left. I looked over the menu to find it, and spotted a sign taped to the pillar next to my stool. I resolved to return some wet weekday for a liquid brunch.
