The past 24 hours in gossip, innuendo, and cold hard facts about the San Francisco food scene.
It appears that everyone is jumping on the reality show bandwagon, and former Mayor Willie Brown is no exception. Grub Street reports, via Inside Scoop, that he was in L.A. pitching a series that (on some level) involves food, specifically celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck. Curious, no?
Also from Grub Street, Dalva and its Hideout are temporarily closed for renovations; they'll be back to serving cocktails this Friday.
Restaurant chains are going through some major changes. San Francisco Business Times reports the latest chain news: Roark Capital Group recently closed a deal for an unspecified sum to buy Il Fornaio (American) Corp., which owned 119 of its namesake restaurants, including the one near Embarcadero (1265 Battery at Grennwich). This marks Roark's 10th restaurant group purchase. Others include food court favorites Cinnabon, Auntie Anne's Pretzels, and Arby's.
It's clear that the folks at Monk's Kettle care about beer. A cellar beneath the ground holds a treasure trove of unique and vintage beers. A staggering array of goblets and chalices makes us want to run away and pursue a career in glassblowing. The biblically proportioned beer list leaves us misty-eyed. With all the focus on beer, however, you might get distracted from the thoughtful menu of artfully prepared dishes meant to accompany your favorite beverage. Monk's Kettle's monthly beer dinner series is a strong reminder of the restaurant's dedication to sustainable, delicious food and the joys of beer and food pairing. The Monk's crew is also getting ready to open its second Mission eatery, the Abbot's Cellar.
The beer dinner series began under the able hand of chef Kevin Kroger, who has moved on to sell his wares under the Urban Chef moniker. His beer-infused savory dishes and sweet treats can be found at venues such as the New Taste Marketplace. The tradition has been carried on by Chef Adam Dulye, who got his start at the Food Pavilion of the Great American Beer Festival and at Savor, the country's premier beer and food pairing event.
This month, diners were treated to a five-course meal highlighting the beers of Great Divide Brewing, an award-winning Denver brewery whose beers are finally trickling into Bay Area distribution. At 40-some-odd seats, the dinner was intimate and educational. Dulye met guests between courses, detailing his inspirations for dishes and his methods of beer infusion. Certified Cicerone Sayre Piotrkowski also meandered through the crowd, describing how the beers were designed to work with the food and sharing knowledge of the brews that would satisfy any beer geek.
Yesterday, Kevin Montgomery at Uptown Almanac reported on a neighborhood dispute over Grub (758 Valencia) escalating to the point of pure hatred. The restaurant opened in October 2010, and residents living above and around the place claim that a compression refrigeration unit installed on the roof of the building is a severe nuisance.
They are now circulating a petition (available to read online) to the Department of Public Health demanding that the agency enforce the San Francisco Noise Ordinance and their other, associated complaints. "Grub's machinery is literally eroding our homes and health," the petition states. "We are suffering from chronic sleep loss, weight loss, and living under extreme stress. Our homes are battle zones complete with the constant drone of machinery."
Muscat may be the most sensible, down-to-earth grape there is. Unlike so many other varieties, it doesn't play around: Ferment it into wine, age it for a time, and pour it into the glass, and it still smells and tastes like the grapes from which it was made. Muscat, in fact, is said to be the only wine in which the esters and aromatic compounds of the grape transfer detectably and unchanged to the wine.
And about those esters and aromatic compounds: They are fantastic. The wine (and the grape) is known for its fragrance; it often smells of orange, melon, and spices. Winemakers thousands of years ago surely enjoyed the same aromas when they first began using Muscat, whose origins are uncertain but may lie in Greece. Records show that the Romans introduced the variety to northern Europe. The grape also went east to Russia and southward into the African continent. It arrived in Australia in the 1830s, and European immigrants to the United States eventually brought Muscat to our shores.
In California, several types of Muscat amount to about 5,000 acres of grapes, just 1 percent of the industry. Indeed, the wine is not prevalent and can be hard to find. A recent browsing through BevMo! found just a half-dozen California Muscats, several of which go by the name Moscato. The Muscat grape, in fact, constitutes a family of grapes that includes some 200 varieties with names like Muscat of Alexandria, Black Muscat, Orange Muscat, Moscatel de Setubal (from Portugal), and Muscat Blanc a Petits Grains.
We drew from the shelf the cheap one -- but by a respectable winery, Fetzer Vineyards, from Hopland in Mendocino County. Fetzer's 2010 California Moscato was, like many Muscats, low in alcohol (just 8 percent ABV) and a bit sweet yet balanced by a zesty acid character. It smelled of melon and orange juice, and its pleasant fruit taste was notably of pineapple, tangerine, apricot, and, well, grapes, of course.
Fetzer Winery 2010 California Moscato: $7.99 at Beverages and More, 3445 Geary (at Stanyan), 933-8494
57th Annual North Beach Festival
Where: North Beach, between Filbert, Stockton, Columbus and Grant
When: June 18-19, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.
Cost: Free
The Rundown: Long gone are the days of North Beach's Barbary Coast, Joe DiMaggio, and the Beat Generation, but their influences live on in the culture of the city's Little Italy. And every summer (since 1955!) the North Beach Festival descends into the heart of San Francisco, amplifying its Italian history through a plenitude of art, culture, and food.
This weekend, munch on a cannoli, a piece of focaccia, or scoop of gelato from one of the nearby shops or grab something from the over 20 gourmet food vendors, including Tony's Pizza Napoletana. While gorging on Italian favorites, see the streets come alive in chalk art or observe the blessing of the animals at The National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi, that's right -- prayers for four-legged friends.
This week, guest critic Jesse Hirsch reviews Mission Cheese, the tiny Valencia-street store devoted to the artisanal and the whiffy:
It ranges from stinky to mild, chèvre to raw cow, burrata to aged cheddar. [Sarah] Dvorak, a self-styled cheese advocate with garde manger experience, knows how to keep a well-stocked larder. Her cheese comes melted over potatoes and cornichons, oozing out of French bread bearing tomatoes and basil, and served straight-up on cheeseboard triptychs.Hirsch finds the restaurant isn't as finely tuned as Dvorak's sensibilities, but the awkwardness doesn't ruin his hopes for Mission Cheese. While you're ruminating over burratas and clothbound cheddars, check out Lara Hata's slideshow from her visit to the place. Pure cheese porn.
"The food we cook at home is a lot different from our parents' Ethiopian food," says Faiza Farah, who has begun organizing AfroUrbanites pop-up dinners with Tsedey Seisu. "We stay true to a lot of the techniques and the slow cooking, but we fool around with ingredients. A lot of our stuff is very Californian."
Farah and Seisu's second AfroUrbanites dinner takes place this Saturday at Berkeley's Guerrilla Cafe. The centerpiece of the three-course dinner will be a choice of wots -- tomato-based stews -- with either oxtail or sweet potato. For dessert, the two will perform the Ethiopian coffee ceremony, pregnant with the smells of roasting coffee and incense, and serve vanilla berbere ice cream or tiramisu.
If you miss this dinner, you'll have to wait until late August for the next, when Farah returns from vacation in Ethiopia and France. This fall the two plan to hold monthly AfroUrbanite dinners at either Guerrilla Cafe or San Francisco's Coffee Bar.
AfroUrbanites
When: Saturday, June 18, 6-10 p.m.
Where: Guerrilla Cafe, 1620 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley.
Price: $25; make reservations at afrourbanites@gmail.com
Go to any breakfast chain out there and you'll probably find a meal with more fat in it than you're supposed to eat all day. You can't just order eggs anymore; your meal also comes with pancakes, hash browns, ham, sausage, bacon, and is topped off with cheese and gravy.
Before each chain can invent their next bacon-covered monstrosity, we're counting down the top 10 artery-clogging breakfast options that America has to offer. It's based purely on fat (not calories) and we tried to include a meal from each one of the nation's most popular breakfast chains. Get your nitroglycerin capsules out -- it's time to eat.
Fruit forward. Jon Bonné has a great profile of Floyd Zaiger, a Modesto-area plant breeder who may be the most influential man in the global fruit industry today. Not only did he develop the pluot, but Spain loves his early-ripening nectarines and Australia, his low-acid paches.All of it bred, by the way, the old-fashioned way.
