Books Inc., Cafe Rouge, and the Pasta Shop, all located on Fourth Street in Berkeley, have joined forces to create the Cooks' Book Club, a monthly event combining book readings with food and wine. Participating merchants will also make it easy to buy the ingredients for recipes mentioned in the readings.
The club meets on the fourth Tuesday of each month, 6 p.m., at one of the three locations. It kicks off Jan. 25 at Cafe Rouge with Rosetta Costantino's My Calabria, Rustic Family Cooking From Italy's Undiscovered South. Gordon Edgar will present his Cheesemonger: My Life on the Wedge on Feb. 22 at the Pasta Shop. Alice Medrich speaks on her Chewy, Gooey, Crispy, Crunchy, Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies on Mar. 22 at Cafe Rouge, and Harold McGee appears in support of his Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes.
Napa is no slouch when it comes to dining, so we were excited to explore the food truck scene at Friday's once-a-month Napa Valley food truck rally.
Staged in a dirt lot right next to Oxbow Public Market (it's used for construction during the day), which houses the semipermanent Dim Sum Charlie's Airstream trailer most evenings and weekends, Friday night's event was picturesque and festive. The young crowd, fire pit, live music, BYOB ― it felt more like a backyard party than a food pod. The trucks circled a heater-lined picnic area (a second picnic area was situated above, where bands played throughout the night). With 10 food vendors in attendance there were plenty of choices, and seating for all.
SFoodie's countdown of the 92 best things to eat and drink in San Francisco, 2011 edition.
SFoodie's countdown of the 92 best things to eat and drink in San Francisco, 2011 edition.
And yet, if there is one taco that compels us to circle the block over and over again, hunting for a legal spot to ditch the car for a few minutes, it's the übertraditional goat taco at El Norteño, the taco truck parked across the street from the Hall of Justice. Each taco is only three bites' worth if we're feeling dainty; the tortillas are mass-market ones, and we'd rather not know the provenance of the meat. But the seemingly paltry bits of tender goat on top are saturated in a braising liquid that concentrates and crisps as the meat is reheated on the griddle. Their swaggering potency is heightened with a spoonful of salsa verde ― slashing acidity followed by an eight-beat burn ― and the crunch and flash of chopped onions and cilantro. To eat El Norteño's ur-taco is to remember why we got obsessed with hunting down roving taco trucks in the pre-Twitter era. Oh, and the truck's carnitas tacos? They're just as good.
El Norteño: Bryant Street (between Sixth St. and Harriet), 756-1220.
Other dishes in this series:
91: Faux shark's fin soup at Benu
Coming up with SFoodie's annual list of San Francisco's best things to eat and drink is like packing for a yearlong sabbatical to Antarctica. You start by laying out on the bed all the clothes you think you need, then abandon stuff when you find you can't cram it into your duffel. The roast chicken at Zuni? Delicious, but not if it means we can't fit the dry-fried vegetables from Ruchi.
Over the next 18 weeks ― till May 18, when we publish our Best of San Francisco 2011,exactly 92 publishing days from now ― we'll shake out our duffel bag of the best things to eat and drink in San Francisco. It's a list that reflects how we live now, a mix of things from fine-dining places, food trucks, bars, coffee kiosks, pastry shops, and neighborhood dives. Along the way, let us know how we're doing: Did we nail it, or somehow pull of the equivalent of hauling a load of skorts and tank tops to McMurdo Station?
Dishes in our series so far:
Chef Hoss Zaré at Studio Gourmet
Where: Horatius, 350 Kansas (at 16th St.)
When: Sun., Jan. 16, 2:30 p.m.
Cost: $65 ― $50 if you you friend Studio Gourmet on Facebook before purchasing
The rundown: Check out Zaré at Fly Trap's Hoss Zaré's cooking prowess and listen to his stories with bubbly and small bites as part of a cooking demo/interview produce dby Studio Gourmet. Zaré will demonstrate how to cook Italian eggplant with sundried yogurt, with a tasting menu that includes pistachio meatballs with harissa-honey-pomegranate glaze, smoked trout on cucumber linguine with dill crème fraiche, and Mediterranean chickpea salad. The sweet ending: Champagne sabayon with fresh berries.
Tickets: Online via Studio Gourmet's website
Check out other upcoming events on SFoodie
The owners of Straw in Hayes Valley have wrapped up their contest to let members of the public guess the restaurant's opening date. Ari Feingold tells SFoodie the carny-themed eatery received about 700 entries, most of them stuffed through the mail slot in Straw's front door. The correct answer: Mon., Jan. 24, when Straw plans to open the doors at 11 a.m. for lunch and dinner. So who's the winner? "It's actually funny," Feingold tells SFoodie. "Two people guessed the date ― they're gonna hear from us tomorrow." A game of rock-paper-scissors will decide the ultimate winner, who gets a free entrée every day for Straw's first month in business.
Meanwhile, Straw chef Naomi Beck has a preliminary opening menu, including apps (corn dog hush puppies, cinnamon sriracha buffalo wings) and sandwiches (Boxcar Children ― peanut butter satay with jalapeño jam and pork belly ― and the fried-chicken-n-waffle Monte Cristo). Any changes to the vintage carnival theme Feingold told SFoodie about early last month? Nope. "We're staying true to the concept," Feingold says. "We're not trying to take ourselves too seriously here."
Opening Mon., Jan. 24, at 11 a.m.:
Straw: 203 Octavia (at Page).
Follow us on Twitter: @sfoodie. Contact me at John.Birdsall@SFWeekly.com
Like bells to Pavlov's dogs, the sight of a capital "Z" this time of year starts us thinking of (if not quite drooling over) red wines native to the Golden State, punctuated by notes of pepper and raspberry. That's because on the last weekend of January, the Zinfandel Advocates and Producers Festival returns to San Francisco.
Now in its 20th year, the ZAP festival ― oh, that "Z"! ― is often touted as the largest single-variety wine-tasting celebration anywhere. Spanning three days and featuring four events, the wine starts flowing at Fort Mason's Herbst Pavilion on Thu., Jan. 27, with perhaps the most indulgent and exciting tasting of them all: the Good Eats and Zinfandel Pairing. That's when 50 wineries will pair up with 50 restaurants and, situated side-by-side, each culinary couple will offer food-wine combos designed to complement the virtues of both.
This arrives at your table still sizzling and shimmying. Can you name this dish and the San Francisco restaurant where this picture was taken? Offer your answers in the comments below.
We salute SFoodie reader Steph_in_SF for correctly pegging the potato pesto pizza from last week's Mystery Spot as being served at Tony's Coal-Fired Pizza and Slice House.
A new barbecue truck is expected to roll out in San Francisco this week when truck startup The Rib Whip makes its debut at Off the Grid: UN Plaza. Owner and St. Louis native Ryan Gessel was passing his last inspections in S.F. on Friday. After The Rib Whip's OTG rollout, Gessel plans to park his truck daily in a SOMA parking lot on Ritch Street between Bryant and Brannan (near Darwin), not far from the spot recently carved out by Le Truc. In fact, Gessel plans to collaborate on future dinner events with Le Truc's Hugh Schick.
Gessel ― who's worked tells SFoodie he thinks The Rib Whip will be the nation's only truck with an onboard smoker ― he's installed a small Southern Pride smoker with digital controls, meaning he'll have the ability to smoke beef brisket, say, the drop the temperature down to 150˚ and keep it warm, slicing slabs to order.
A self-avowed audio/video guy, Gessel's installing a multi-amp, 2,300-watt custom sound system with DJ plug-ins he plans to use for dinner-and-a-movie nights (with films projected onto a building on Ritch) and other events. And he'll turn the parking lot into a mini outdoor food court, with lighting, shrubbery, and picnic tables.
And the name? "My buddy and I were brainstorming, and he mentioned 'The Rib Whip,'" Gessel says. "The second he said it, I said, 'That's it!'" He immediately had visions of a pimped-out BBQ truck painted with graffiti, says Gessel, who grew up in a family of caterers. "I'm just chasing a dream," he says.
Follow along with The Rib Whip's launch on Twitter @TheRibWhip.
Follow us on Twitter: @sfoodie. Contact me at John.Birdsall@SFWeekly.com
