Sunday's Chefs United benefit dinner at Prospect raised $42,000 for Japanese earthquake and tsunami relief, Prospect chef Ravi Kapur tells SFoodie. Some 120 guests paid $300 each for the six-course dinner with wine and sake, organized loosely around Japan's Sendai region, the quake's epicenter. Most of the chefs who cooked a course yesterday's fundraiser toured the area two years ago, visiting agricultural areas, artisanal sake brewers, and miso makers. That includes Bruce Hill (Bix, Zero Zero), Paul Canales (formerly of Oliveto), Staffan Terje (Perbacco/Barbacco), Sho Kamio (Yoshi's), and Kapur. Also cooking yesterday: Hiro Sone and Lissa Doumani (Ame, Terra).
Kapur says the proceeds from yesterday's event are being kept in a fund, to be donated to a recipient the participants all agree to, after they can assess the situation in Japan. Most likely that means an agricultural group, says Kapur ― something like helping rebuild the region's oyster beds ― though it's not clear what any results of things like radiation fallout will be. "We all want to use this money to help some individuals rebuild their livelihoods," Kapur says. "Maybe that's a donation route that's not the popular one, but the last thing we want is for it to get diluted through bureaucratic channels."
Next up for the chefs: Saturday's sold-out benefit for Japan at Yoshi's in S.F., featuring a core of chefs from the Prospect fundraiser, with additions including Chris Cosentino, Hoss Zare, and Joseph Manzare.
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Robert Lemon's ¿Tacos or Tacos? isn't the only food-filled short slated to debut at this week's Sonoma International Film Festival. Also premiering this Thursday: The 32-minute pilot for Food Forward, which emphasizes positive changes swirling around America's soul-sucking food system.
Last July, Greg Roden ― Food Forward's co-creator, producer, and director ― was in mid-scrabble, trying to raise enough cash to finish the pilot. He and his partners did, and in January they showed it to KQED's 10-person new-programming committee. They loved it. Now, Roden tells SFoodie, KQED wants a dozen episodes to air and distribute nationally. All Roden and his partners need to do: Raise even more cash, which, thanks to a growing list of corporate sponsors that includes Annie's Homegrown, Lagunitas Brewing Co., and Purity Organic, is looking more and more likely.
You bring certain expectations to an evening that promises all-robot bartenders. You expect the crowd to be bro heavy, with a half-techie, half-frat demographic. You expect sassy bots to be juggling glasses, mincing around, and making the bar erupt with predictable laughter. You even expect a little abject terror, because you know what robots are capable of (see this, and this). Sadly, Friday's BarBot 2011 in SOMA inspired very little fear, or mirth, or even much of a buzz.
The problem rested largely on the definition of "robot." Yes technically, a robot only has to be "a device that automatically performs complicated often repetitive tasks" but at an event like BarBot we were hoping for the zippier definition: "a machine that looks like a human being and performs various complex acts (as walking or talking) of a human being." After all, these robots were supposed to replace bartenders. Was it too much to ask that they gave some banter? That they performed a bit of fancy drink dancing, a la Cocktail ? That they had something that resembled a face, or arms?
For the most part, BarBot's robots seemed like they were replacing the blender, rather than the bartender. There were pumps and cooling systems and state-of-the-art hydraulics. There were overwrought systems of pouring and mixing that would have made Rube Goldberg proud. Most strove for a bit of whimsy, with dry ice and rocket ships and colored lights. But despite the gloss, the entries felt crude and flat, with lots of whirring and buzzing and waiting around. There wasn't nearly enough fun in these lifeless machines to make it worth a half hour-plus per drink.
Last week's Online Bake Sale for Japan yielded over $8,200 for Second Harvest Japan's relief efforts, says organizer and blogger Sabrina Modelle (The Tomato Tart). Some 90 food bloggers from seven countries put up sweets and other foods for auction on Mar. 30. "Not bad," Modelle says via e-mail, "considering my web host was up and down half the day, my database crashed, and I couldn't use the auction software I'd painstakingly put all the entries into." Modelle had set $2,500 as a goal; the $8,269 final included a $500 match from Oakland blogger Andrew Sigal. Want to help make it $10K. Modelle's set up a donations page on GiveForward.
"I'm so touched that all the bloggers got together and concentrated their energy on this," a spokesperson for Second Harvest Japan wrote. "I think this inspires other people to participate in support for people in the affected areas." Those affected areas might be closer to home than you think. Modelle says she plans to organize a bake sale for the homeless this fall.
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Registered dietitian Katie Sullivan Morford is a food and nutrition writer with more than 20 years of professional writing experience. She's been published in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Cooking Light, Bon Appétit, Self, and Parenting, to name only a few. With her brother Mark Sullivan, chef/partner at Spruce in San Francisco, and partner at the Village Pub in Woodside, Morford co-wrote a regular recipe feature for the San Jose Mercury News. Her new blog, Mom's Kitchen Handbook, focuses on quick and healthy recipes busy parents can make for their kids. SFoodie sat down with Morford recently to find out more about the blog, microwaved sponges, and why birthdays mean Cheetos time for her three daughters.
SFoodie: How did you come up with the name Mom's Kitchen Handbook? In a city like San Francisco, where lots of dads are interested in cooking, was there a concern that you were shutting them out?
Morford: Let's start with the "handbook" part. I like the idea of a handbook because it cover lots of non-recipe-related things, like how to best sterilize a kitchen sponge. It's not purely a cooking blog. As for the "mom's" part, I wondered if I was essentially shutting out 50 percent of potential readers, but honestly, I find that it's mostly moms who ask me questions about nutrition and cooking. Moms are mostly who I hang out with so I felt that was my natural audience.
What's been your biggest surprise so far? A post that got a big response?
Well, going back to the sponge thing, it was a silly little post about microwaving sponges to keep them clean. Unsexy, uninteresting, right? But people loved it, I think because it was functional. I did a simple piece on do-it-yourself microwave popcorn, just a brown paper bag, popcorn and olive oil, and people talked about it like it was Zen. A lot of moms I know were doing cleanse diets and I wrote something about the potential pitfalls of that. I was actually surprised that most of my response was positive. Nothing too angry.
Do your kids ever just want a bucket of Popeyes?
Absolutely. My girls give me eye rolls and say, "I wish mom wasn't a nutritionist," but overall, I think they like that I can cook well.
We can't have this ball on a Monday morning, but we can have a ball trying to figure out exactly what it is. Can you name this dish and the San Francisco restaurant where SFoodie snapped this picture? Offer a guess in the comments below.
High-five to Schielenyc, who correctly identified the red velvet cupcakes in last week's Mystery Spot as the ones baked up at Cups and Cakes. Congratulations!
Organized by local chef Samin Nosrat, Saturday's Bakesale for Japan popped up in moe than 40 locations across the country, including Bi-Rite Market on 18th Street, shown here. Nosrat rounded up food donations from scores of professional and amateur bakers and cooks, with all proceeds going to Tokyo-based Peace Winds Japan's emergency relief fund. For more from Saturday's event, check out this food porn-y slideshow of images by photographer Albert Law.
Follow us on Twitter: @sfoodie, and like us on Facebook. Contact me at John.Birdsall@SFWeekly.com
Today's notes on national stories, local trends, random tastes, and other bycatch dredged up from the food media.
1. Urban farming in Oakland, part 2. On Friday, the Chron followed up on Novella Carpenter's report that her farmstand was shut down by the City of Oakland for not having a conditional use permit to grow and sell vegetables from her lot ($2,500). As she writes on her own blog, the story inspired a city planner to visit Ghost Town Farms and explain the city's slowly changing urban-farming regulations, why it's still going to cost her $2,540 (which is her estimated annual income from the farm) to keep livestock, and what she ― and everyone else ― can do. Frankly, I'm surprised no angel donor has swooped in yet to help Carpenter out. Carpenter also gives more instructions for Oaklanders who want to help shape the changing city regs.
