Gov. Jerry Brown today ended tension on the part of bartenders by signing Senate Bill 32, which makes it legal for bars to infuse vodkas and other liquors.
And the best news? The bill has an "urgency clause," which means it takes effect immediately -- and in the heart of Cocktail Week. Bartender! Is that melon-mint pisco ready yet?
Senator Mark Leno (D-SF), a bill sponsor, said: "In San Francisco and other cities where tourism is critical to the local economy, restaurant owners have been asked to stop serving infused cocktails in the name of an outdated law written decades ago. This Prohibition-era statute did nothing more than punish California restaurants and small businesses that are using culinary innovations to survive in this difficult economy."
Before the bill was signed, making sangria was a crime. Now that we've settled that issue ... how's that legalizing marijuana thing going?
The past 24 hours in gossip, innuendo, and cold hard facts about the San Francisco food scene.
A clairvoyant, match-making cafe owner? Maybe sitcom writers have run out ideas. Inside Scoop shares a Craigslist casting call for a local pilot in which a female café owner uses special powers to help singles find true love. Honestly, we think this idea sounds a little stale, but are curious if the set will resemble any real S.F. cafés.
Food truck news: Pizzas and "bombicles" are now roaming S.F. streets. Eater SF shares, via Urban Daddy, Casey's Pizza Truck is parking at Off the Grid starting this week. Meanwhile, via Daily Candy, the Bomb Truck is driving the streets of the Mission selling popsicles of original concoctions, such as limeade cucumber mint and horchata. Just look for the seafoam-green van.
We hear from vegans all the time at SFoodie, often at great length, not least because we run Laura Beck's delightfully profane Week in Vegan column. But we've always wondered how important they really are.
Not very, it turns out.
I was stunned by a poll last week that showed San Francisco, with just 3 percent vegans and vegetarians, has fewer per capita than Dallas, Tampa and Atlanta. So I decided to recreate the same poll on our site.
There was one inadvertent difference, for which I apologize. I tried to set up the third-party polling software to allow you to choose more than one of the eight categories, as LivingSocial's poll did, but apparently it didn't work. Our categories were the same, but you could choose only one.
Vegans and vegetarians told all their friends to vote; we saw some of the messages. And they did rock our vote -- to the still-unimpressive total of 6.96 percent.
When I first looked over Piccino's leftist-wine-geek wine list, I assumed it was compiled by a follower of the natural wine movement.
Only seven of the 42 wines on the list are from California, and most are from winemakers associated with natural wine: Lioco, Edmunds St. John, La Clarine Farm.
Wayne Garcia, whose wife Shery Rogat owns Piccino -- which our Jonathan Kauffman reviewed today -- says that's a coincidence.
Unlike the natural wine crowd, which cares deeply about not adding commercial yeast, relying on the yeast that occurs naturally on the grapes to do the fermenting, Garcia just wanted a certain flavor profile.
"I'm seeking wines that are balanced in fruit and acid and are not overly alcoholic," Garcia says. "It's a coincidence, maybe, that the natural winemakers are the ones making those."
I was a little surprised this morning when Erin Sherbert, the editor of SF Weekly's news blog the Snitch, messaged me at home asking for reasons why I might want to eat Schweddy Balls.
I mean, there are soooo many reasons I wouldn't want to, even though it is a new flavor of Ben & Jerry's ice cream.
But Erin the news editor had news: the gay-hating American Family Association is calling for a boycott. OK, that's reason No. 1 to try these balls.
I'll let you hop over to The Snitch to see what else we came up with. But before you go, if you want to know where the concept came from -- the concept that the AFA says "has turned something as innocent as ice cream into something repulsive" -- please enjoy the original Saturday Night Live sketch.
Divine Petites owner Terri Rivers knows how to market her apple pies-on-a-stick to the health-conscious crowd at Saturday Fillmore farmers' markets.
"You can eat the whole pie and not feel guilty," she says to a passing booth admirer.
How? The pie in question is about three inches in diameter.
At Divine Petites, a farmers' market stand that's just a few months old, Rivers hopes that her mini munches will make mouths water, especially when she adds that trendy phrase: "gluten free."
If you didn't manage to make it out to the cocktail pairing dinners last night, there are more coming up this Cocktail Week, along with a whole day's worth of drinking today. Lydia Reissmueller was killing it last night at Beretta with her Deep Roots cocktail (tequila, lemon, carrot syrup, cumin oil). She'll be at Delarosa tonight for a last chance to enjoy this drink.
Today we're not only going to list the events of the day, but give you a heads-up on upcoming Cocktail Week events that are about to sell out. Grab those last tickets!
Today
Shaker & Flask
Where: Big Daddy's Antiques, 1550 17th. (at Wisconsin)
When: 6 - 9 p.m.
Cost: $65 regular; $75 at the door
The rundown: The Cocktail Lab- produced event explores what happens when you apply modernist culinary techniques to cocktails. It also comes with a geeky chaser: an understanding of the chemistry and physics of making great cocktails. The hypotheses of the event: You + {Cocktails} = Fun. Proceeds benefit the Exploratorium.
Seminars and Other Events
Piccino shortly after the four-year-old restaurant's move to a giant Victorian-era stable in May, I waited four months to file this week's full-length restaurant review. Why the wait? Well, there was the matter of a self-imposed blackout.
If you're anything like us, you suffer through the 11 months of the year when it's inappropriate to wear a dirndl.
It's finally time to dust off those frilly garments and drink beer from an assortment of over-sized glassware. Since you've waited patiently all year, we're pleased to round up some choice Oktoberfest parties -- now conveniently located in September!
Oaktoberfest
Where: Beer Revolution, 464 3rd St.(at Broadway), Oakland, (510) 452-BEER
When: Wednesday, Sept. 21 (today) at noon
Cost: Pay per drink
What: Owners Rebecca and Fraggle are German beer aficionados, so expect a wide range of styles on tap. While the beer list was still under wraps yesterday, the folks at Beer Rev have a penchant for traditional German smoked beer and other hearty, rich styles. Expect a sun-drenched patio and a booze-soaked liver.
Not long ago, Eric Ehler, who'd been a cook and sous-chef at Serpentine for three years, took a break from cooking to hang out in Seoul. "I didn't just love the cuisine of Seoul," says Ehler, who was born in Korea but had spent his life in the States. "I also wondered: What is this crazy Americanization of everything? Because of the American influence on the country after the Korean War, I saw a lot of foods there like corn dogs wrapped in french fries. Real Korean American food."
Ehler came back inspired to start up his own Korean American restaurant: Seoul Patch. He started out with a popup dinner at Serpentine last week, and his weekday lunch popup -- serving out of Rocketfish in Potrero Hill from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. -- launches today.
