SFoodie's countdown of our 92 favorite things to eat and drink in San Francisco, 2011 edition.
Mussels are tricky. Overwhelm them with strong flavors and you strangle them. Leave them alone ― steam them open simply with a little chicken stock or white wine ― and they can seem too slack and fleshy, with a softly funky smell like a tidepool left to evaporate once the surf recedes.
The cooks at Nopa walk a chalk line when it comes to the little bivalves, often tossing them with a surprisingly assertive flavoring: the Tunisian hot sauce harissa. It's house-made, says Nopa's Laurence Jossel, a blend of New Mexican and flaked red chiles, garlic, cumin, coriander, olive oil, and a measure of tomato the chef calls "a smidge." The presence of harissa makes the sauce at the bottom of the bowl potentially incendiary, but here it blends with the mussels' juices, a squeeze of lime, and enough butter to emulsify into a quick pan sauce so smooth it seems enriched with cream, but more fluid, silkier than that. The muffled bite of chile, the scorched-straw taste of cumin: They make the mussels (Tomales Bays or Penn Coves, usually) seem unbelievably sweet.
Oyster Bliss XX
Where: Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, 1605 San Pablo (at Cedar), Berkeley, 510-524-1524
When: Sat., April 16, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.
Cost: Prices vary for individual items
The rundown: Okay so it's already a big weekend for chocolate and tamales, but how about a little bivalve love? Saturday marks the 20th year that import wine hero Kermit Lynch will gussy up the parking lot outside his shop for a good old-fashioned oyster feast. Kermit and his staff have carefully curated a selection of wines for the occasion, and the oysters all come from Monterey Fish. Chez Panisse/Eccolo alum Chris Lee will also be grilling up sausages, so if the weather gods are smiling, this event should be worth crossing the bay for.
Eating fried chicken wings, rice cakes, and fish-egg soup at Red Wings ― all with beer and soju cocktails ― made me wonder about how these foods would be eaten in Korea. Were they drinking snacks? Street foods? Were they meant to be a full meal? So I conducted an e-mail interview with my pal Jennifer Flinn, who runs the bilingual food blog FatMan Seoul (there's a long story behind the name) and is about to appear in PBS's upcoming Kimchi Chronicles. Jennifer, whose devotion to Korean food is exuberant and encyclopedic in its scope, took me out on a number of eating and drinking tours of the Korean capital when I was there a few years ago.
SFoodie: Is Korean fried chicken usually served by itself, or as an anju, with drinks?
Flinn: Fried chicken is served usually on its own ... but as an anju. Part of the
reason for this is that most chicken hof are specialized, and either
only serve chicken or serve it as part of a limited menu (these places
usually serve stuff like snail and noodle salad, fruit platters, and
French fries ― but just chicken is pretty normal). Families and young
people order the chicken as a takeout or delivery meal, but most of the people
who go to the chicken restaurant are looking to drink beer as well as
eat.
Carlos Altamirano's delayed Sanguchon project isn't the only San Francisco restaurant spinning off a food truck these days. The An family, owners of Crustacean and Thanh Long, rolled out a truck of their own at last week's Off the Grid Upper Haight ― their An the Go truck makes its second appearance Saturday night at Off the Grid McCoppin Hub. Ken Lew ― he runs the Ans' two S.F. restaurants with his wife, Monique An ― tells SFoodie he'd eventually like to secure regular spots for An the Go in S.F. and the South Bay, but for now they're planning the occasional OtG. The truck's available for catered events, too.
The truck's been in the works for about a year now. "So many of our clients were asking, 'How come you don't open for lunch?": Lew tells SFoodie. "This is our way of answering them." The menu's organized around the restaurants' signature garlic noodles; there are also beef satay and other skewers, Dungeness crab puffs, plus two or three specials that'll change often. "A lot of small finger foods," Lew says. And the roasted crab with butter and garlic that made Thanh Long a destination in the Outer Sunset decades ago? Lew laughs. "I think we'd need a special truck just for that."
An the Go will be at Off the Grid McCoppin Hub (corner of McCoppin and Valencia Streets), from 4:30-9 p.m. this Saturday, April 16. Follow future movements on Twitter at @AnTheGoSF.
After yesterday's unanimous vote by the Board of Supervisors, San Francisco now has the most progressive laws on urban agriculture in the nation. The new rules ― introduced by Mayor Ed Lee and Supervisor David Chiu ― make it easier and cheaper to grow and sell produce on private land in the city, wiping out the need to obtain a conditional-use permit and opening up every city neighborhood to urban ag.
"There's nothing quite like this anywhere else," Dana Perls, co-coordinator for the San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance, tells SFoodie. "This really puts San Francisco at the forefront." The new rules allow urban farms like Little City Gardens, Brooke Budner and Caitlyn Galloway's 3/4-acre farm in a residential neighborhood in the Outer Mission, not only to sell to restaurants and at farmers' markets, but to set up a farmstand on their property. And in an amendment approved last month by the Land Use Committee, farmers are allowed to sell value-added products, jam or pickles, say, made from the things they harvest.
So, apologies to Kezar Pub and The Pizza Place on Noriega ― someday, I do plan on trying your Buffalo wings. Sorry, SO, I'll get there soon. I now have more incentive now to watch movies at the Bridge Theatre ― the prospect of walking across the street for a post-screening platter of sweet, chile-coated chicken wings and a plastic tub of Korean beer.
Vesta Flatbread's Traci Prendergrast has spent the past year selling sandwiches and other fare at various local farmers' markets, fruitlessly searching for the perfect brick-and-mortar space in Oakland. She's now switched directions an decided to take her show on the road. Prendergrast has purchased a food truck to turn into the Vestamobile, and she's soliciting public support via Kickstarter to build a gas-fired hearth oven on board.
Prendergrast has added incentives in her bid to raise $5,000 in the next 29 days. If you were thinking about hiring a food truck for an event, say, and were willing to donate $500 or more, Prendergrast will drive the Vestamobile over to feed a party of 50 (as long as you're within a 25-mile radius of Oakland). Just sayin': Prendergrast's coffee-braised short-rib sandwich was one of our most memorable street-food bites of last year.
The past 24 hours in gossip, innuendo, and cold hard facts about the San Francisco food scene.
Everybody always asserts that food trucks are a threshold endeavor toward brick-and-mortar, and it's finally coming true. Tablehopper catches a whiff of Curry Up Now, the restaurant, opening this weekend, perhaps, at 129 South B St. (at First St.) in San Mateo. The pitch, to quote Tablehopper: "tikka masala burritos, a kathi roll, and deconstructed samosas and aloo tikki, with some additions, like sandwiches, their spin on a quesadilla, and their 'un-burger' made with lamb."
Tablehopper also gets word that Coffee Bar is expanding to downtown to 101 Montgomery (at Sutter) in approximately three months. Same Coffee Bar you've logged countless laptop hours in, only with what Tablehopper asserts is "San Francisco's first Strada espresso machine from La Marzocco." Well.
And as multiple banh mi watchers report, the pâté is once again being laid on thick in the Tenderloin. Wrap it up in paper and bind it with a rubber band, it's another edition of Buzz Machine.
Follow us on Twitter: @sfoodie, and like us on Facebook. Contact me at John.Birdsall@SFWeekly.com
The pair designed the Sipping Seder website as a way to revive the holiday for people who might not feel terribly connected to a strict observance, or who might want to get more festive than the traditional seder's four glasses of Manischewitz can leave you. "We've been working on it for about two years," Corwin tells SFoodie. "The nature of the project is rather irreverent, but we put a lot of serious thought into the cocktail recipes. It's really a labor of love and a bit of an obsession. It required extensive research, planning ― and numerous taste tests ― to develop. We're really proud of the results."
The site includes notes for keeping cocktails kosher, along with downloadable menus and recipe cards. And yes, Corwin and Jacobs have managed to include all the elements of the seder plate, each imagined as a cocktail:• Maror (vodka, golden beet, horseradish, red beet garnish), representing the harsh conditions the Jews endured as slaves.
• The second bitter herb, Chazeret (gin, sweet vermouth, Cynar artichoke liqueur, lemon) includes an orange garnish that on some seder plates is a symbol of protest for the exclusion from the bimah in many congregations of women and members of the LGBT community.
Brandon Belt isn't the only Giants rookie getting off to a slow start this season. The gluten-free hot dog ($7.75), one of many new food offerings at AT&T Park, is the single worst thing SFoodie has shoved into our mouth at a sporting event, and that includes an unfortunate pizza we had the misfortune of tasting at the Pontiac Silverdome in 1991. The blame lay entirely with the roll, pasty in both mouthfeel and flavor and an insult to the gluten-averse. We waited until the kiss camera had the crowd's attention, then spat out the bun and buried it under a mound of peanut shells. Wisely, Centerplate, the Giants' generally reliable food service operator, has hidden the gluten-free dog where no one can find it ― at the upscale beer stand behind section 112. Shame of it is the sausage itself, a smoky quarter-pounder from Saag's, was half decent, even cold. We wish it had been served on a stick instead.
Much better was the Baby Bull ($12.50), a huge, carved tri-tip sandwich we found at a stand behind the bleachers next to Orlando's BBQ. Though a tad dry and bland on its own, the tri-tip lit up like Aaron Rowand did on the Dodgers' pitchers last night, after additions of pickled vegetables (included) and a few squirts of Orlando's chipotle sauce. Paired with an order of crisp sweet potato fries ($6), it made for a filling pregame snack.
