SFoodie's looking for a blogger to join our stable of regular contributors: Someone who's adept at turning out previews, and who can attend and report on the occasional food events in San Francisco. Sorry ― the monetary compensation for a single post is just about enough to buy lunch at a taco truck, but the exposure's good, and it's pretty much the perfect gig for portfolio-building. What we're looking for: someone who can commit to filing up to six short preview or reported posts (100-250 words each) per week, a writer with an easy style guided by a sense of humor. Interested? Send a brief pitch about yourself and links to clips (no attachments, please!) to me: John.Birdsall@SFWeekly.com.
SF Vegan Bakesale
Where: SpeeSees, 1415 Valencia (at 25th St.), 552-5808
When: Sat., Jan. 15; 11 a.m.-3 p.m.
Cost: Free
The rundown: A recurring event that sells animal-free baked goodies to benefit causes for critters; this time it's Mickaboo Bird Rescue and Muttville Senior Dog Rescue. Noted vegan bakers Cinnaholic and A Fire Inside are participating, as are contributors to VegNews magazine and Vegansaurus.com, and organizers are also looking for more prospective bakers; e-mail laura@vegansaurus.com if you're interested.
Check out other upcoming events on SFoodie
As the first installation of the Proxy development in Hayes Valley draws near, the principal of Envelope A+D ― Proxy's designer ― tells SFoodie that the development will include a space for guest chefs to mount a constantly changing series of pop-up eateries.
Envelope principal Douglas Burnham says the Oakland firm plans to directly fund and operate Proxy's pop-up kitchen. "We would essentially invite or curate a series of different chefs ― visiting chefs ― and use one container for it." By "container," Burnham's referring to the modified shipping containers (the kind stacked up on ships at the Port of Oakland) that'll make up the Proxy structures, stretching along Octavia between Fell and Hayes in two lots. "It could be for a week, a month, or even just a night or two," Burnham says about the guest chefs. Pop-ups could feature chefs visiting from other cities, Burnham says, "or young, up-and-coming chefs now working in other people's kitchens." Envelope has also been in conversation with La Cocina about featuring its client businesses in steady rotation.
Blue Crow Media, aka Derek Lamberton, lives in London. When he worked for Current TV, he used to travel frequently to San Francisco. He spent so much time in both cities searching out new cafes and independent roasters that when he became unemployed, he decided to turn his info spreadsheets into a series of iPhone apps. Right before Christmas, Blue Crow Media launched "San Francisco's Best Coffee," a 99-cent app that provides a curated directory to small, independent coffee shops and local roasters.
Lamberton and a San Francisco associate have identified more than 50 cafes they think qualify for the app. "If they're serving independently roasted coffee and they use non-automatic machinery [to brew it]," he says, "that's the simple criteria. And then there's how much the baristas care about what they're doing." The two started by asking roasters like De La Paz, Four Barrel, and Barefoot which cafes they supplied, and then visited all of them to write up short descriptions, including the name of the coffee roaster that supplies them and the espresso machine they use.
Yesterday, SFoodie pondered a mystery ― a sidewalk sign in Potrero Hill with an advance tease about new Peruvian food truck Sanguchon, including a link to an inactive website. Today, thanks to hints from a pair of tipsters, the mystery is solved. Chef/owner Carlos Altamirano (Mochica, Piqueo's, La Costanera) tells SFoodie he hopes to roll out the truck in 6 to 8 weeks, same spot (17th Street and Carolina) we spotted the sign. The concept: the sanguchon, a modern Peruvian sandwich Altamirano calls "the new thing" in the land of his birth.
"Peru culture is about love," Altamirano says, and right now Peruvians are loving on the sanguchon. Once it's up and revving, the Sanguchon truck will serve up several variations on the sanguchon, though Altamirano warns he hasn't nailed down the final menu. But expect beef, chicken, pork (i.e., adobo de cerdo), tuna, also crispy chicharron of both chicken and pork. For vegetarians, a portobello variation called el campesino ("the farmer"). Altamirano's Peruvian fusion place in Bernal, Piqueo's, already has a sanguchon on the menu (pulled pork with salsa criolla). Expect salsa criolla (onions, cilantro, lime juice, chiles) to show up on Sanguchon's sandwiches, too; also aїoli with rocoto and aji amarillo chiles.
Altamirano says he's narrowed down the bread (crusty French rolls) to two vendors, Acme and Panorama. And there'll be a fryer on the truck to do yuca, platano, and potato fries.
The chef already has a street permit for the spot in Potrero, where he plans to park the Sanguchon truck 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily, though he'd like to find an additional spot downtown, too. Food prep will happen in the Mochica kitchen in SOMA.
Follow us on Twitter: @sfoodie. Contact me at John.Birdsall@SFWeekly.com
Our favorite morsel from the blogs.
Starbucks today unveiled its new logo, one that keeps the chesty, tiara'd mermaid grasping the double fins of her tail (the company calls her "the Siren") but dumps the company name along with the word "coffee." From Seattle Weekly's Curtis Cartier:
The un-bordered, crowned siren logo stands alone, free from the bonds of reminding anyone what it means ― an undeniable icon like the Nike "Swoosh" or the Target "Target."In a statement on the company's website, CEO Howard Schultz described jettisoning the word "coffee" this way:
Starbucks will continue to offer the highest-quality coffee, but we will offer other products as well ― and while the integrity, quality and consistency of these products must remain true to who we are, our new brand identity will give us the freedom and flexibility to explore innovations and new channels of distribution.Translation: Would you like a salumi plate to go with that venti Syrah?
Follow us on Twitter: @sfoodie. Contact me at John.Birdsall@SFWeekly.com
Night Market
Where: Public Works, 161 Erie (at Mission)
When: Sat., Jan. 15, 11 a.m.-2 a.m.
Cost: 11 a.m.-11 p.m., $5; after 11 p.m., $10
The rundown: This month's SF Underground Market skews clubby, as it takes over Public Works and stretches on till 2 a.m.: two floors, the same bifurcated "take-homeable" daytime market and hot-food night market, all-day bar, workshops, and a dance floor. Warning: Do not attempt the Dougie without first putting down shopping bags packed with pickles and jars of kraut.
Vendor highlights: PizzaHacker,
Angry Man Eats, Saucy Dumplings, Chinobe Kitchen ― complete list at forageSF
Reservations: Not necessary, but you'll need to sign up for a free membership with forageSF
Check out other upcoming events on SFoodie
For this week's review, I wrote about Cotogna, Michael and Lindsay Tusk's casual offshoot of Quince. Like the best spinoffs, it's not Quince Lite but has its own MO ― a hearth for roasting meats, scaled-back dishes, and a fixed-price wine list.
As I was writing up the piece, I wondered a little over how much I enjoyed Cotogna's straight-up California-Italian food, seeing as how I'd just spent the last two weeks cheerleading the experimental, idiosyncratic spirit that has flourished in San Francisco this year. But I found myself thinking over and over again about Cotogna's spit-roast pork, tiny carrots caramelized in the oven with honey, pappardelle with lamb braised in the wood-fired oven.
More importantly, there was no disconnect between the slatted-wood ceilings, the chocolate-colored Heath plates, the Raetia Lagrein I ate with a bowl of rabbit garganelli ― the restaurant has figured out exactly what it's doing and does it right.
Kombucha had a rocky ride in 2010, but SOMA's House of Kombucha is starting off 2011 with a kegger giveaway to help build excitement around the café it's helping to open this summer on Sixth Street.
First, the contest, which involves Facebooking: "Like" both House Kombucha and Kombucha Kamp (its info and community user site) on Facebook today or tomorrow, then go back to the primary Facebook page and answer a question about what you'd like to see served at House's Kombucha Café, slated to open this summer. The winner of the five-gallon kombucha keg will be chosen randomly (you'll get to choose from House's five flavors: rose black, jasmine green, lavender green, sun blossom, or vanilla orchid root).
As for Kombucha Café, that'll be a 750-square-foot space at Sixth Street and Natoma, adjacent to House's brewery (it moved there in October from a corner it was renting from Live Sushi Bistro at Gilbert and Bryant). House brewmaster and director of operations Ben Graff tells SFoodie the café was part of a deal it made for scoring a space in the Sixth Street Recovery Zone. Graff and House founder Rana Chang have turned to holistic health students from S.F. State to put together a nonprofit cooperative.
Our favorite morsel from the blogs.
First it was banking ads, now it's porn. Blogs from HuffPo to L.A. Times' Daily Dish were all over yesterday's news about food trucks reaching an important cultural threshold: becoming a setting for adult films. Cal Vista and Cheeky Monkey's The Flying Pink Pig features Sunny Lane as the operator of an L.A. food truck who ― according to Squid Ink ― "must face the harsh realities of the food truck business." Presumably, there's more involved than Health Department inspections ― at least the kind we're familiar with. The film, due for release Jan. 25, was partly shot on an actual truck, L.A.'s Hello Kitty-pink Flying Pig. Director Erica McLean tells porn blogger Gram Ponante (NSFW, unless you work at Good Vibrations) there are already a couple of sequels in the works.
Of course, the collective mind of SFoodie staffers can't resist pitching a few titles for producers who might be looking northward for inspiration. Maybe an Off the Grid-like setting for Off the Pole? (Stripper pole, naturally.) How about 51st Stud? JapaHottie? Spencer on the Grow? And just think: Twirl and Dip, 3-Sum Eats, and the WOW Truck wouldn't even need name tweaks.
