Third Annual Festival de Comida Peruana
Where: Civic Center Plaza
When: Sunday July 24, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.
Cost: Admission free; food costs vary by vendor
The rundown: Last year's Peruvian Food Festival was more popular than expected, and several booths ran out of food early. This year 24 Peruvian restaurants and caterers from all over the Bay Area will serve more than 40 traditional dishes, while Peruvian bands play live music to keep your hips moving.
Popular local restaurant Fresca will offer picarones (fried doughnuts similar to zeppole covered with honey) and anticuchos (beef heart skewers), while El Perol is making escabeche de pollo (a cold chicken stew appetizer) and papas a la huancaina (potatoes with spicy cheese sauce).
See if any of your favorites are among the other featured dishes: ceviche, aji de gallina (shredded chicken in yellow chile stew), seco de cordero (lamb stew), cabrito norteño (northern goat stew), pollo a la brasa (roasted chicken), sopa de mote (Andean soup), choros a la Chalaca (cold mussels dish from the city of Callao), lomo saltado, and tamales.
For the first time this year, in addition to imported beers and soft drinks, the beverage garden will also serve pisco, the Peruvian brandy. It's 60 to 80 percent proof, so consider taking BART.
Today's notes on national stories, local trends, random tastes, and other bycatch dredged up from the food media.
1. Kibbi. I finally got a chance to stop at Palmyra, the Syrian restaurant on the corner of Haight and Pierce that still looks an awful lot like the Burger Joint it replaced. Perhaps "marginally Syrian" would be a better name for the restaurant, which serves the standard Middle Eastern menu of falafel and shawarma, along with rotisserie chicken and a few pastries. The kibbi plate ($9.95) I ordered was quite good -- the bulgur wheat crust cracked and crumbled when I bit into the kibbi, revealing a simply spiced filling of ground beef and onions. I alternated bites dipped in a mild, creamy garlic sauce and a sweet roasted-chile purée. The tomato-cucumber salad, bright with lemon and parsley, was a good counterpoint.
2. This week in women-oriented marketing. The New York Times reports that the California Milk Processor Board's offensive PMS-themed ad campaign -- designed by SF agency Goodby, Silverstein, & Partners -- has been pulled. Visitors to the website, www.everythingidoiswrong.com, are being redirected to a more "serious" discussion site, gotdiscussion.org (love the .org), about milk and premenstrual symptoms. And the U.K. Guardian's Sophie Atherton rightfully mocks the latest spate of beers designed for women.
