The confetti and fanfare that is Teatro ZinZanni is readying to relocate at the end of the year, but its menu will see changes in October. Grub Street reports chef Yigit Pura is readying to create a new five-course menu for the dinner-and-show spectacle. Earlier this year we experienced Teatro ZinZanni, and while the show was over the top, the food was bit of a snooze, so we're excited to see what Pura has in store.
The month-old Reed & Greenough has imposed a dress code. Eater SF shares, via PopSugar, that bar-goers need to leave the flip-flops and baseball hats at home. We're guessing the Marina bar is trying to avoid some of the clientele that frequented the old haunt Gravity.
No more buns, just dip: The Tender shares Tenderloin's What's Up Dog? has been replaced with Prime Dip; yes, it serves sandwiches with hot au jus (518 Larkin at Turk).
Eighty-three years Alfred's Steakhouse has been in business. That certainly qualifies as venerable. The restaurant has broiled more steaks than you've written emails, and poured more single-malt scotch than Sean Connery has ever put away.
This Sunday, as just one of the 40 restaurants participating at SF Weekly's
annual dining event -- whose proceeds benefit La Cocina -- Alfred's will be tastes of its Zinfandel-braised tenderloin stew and chocolate chip croissant bread pudding.
The final lineup at SF Weekly's dining event includes La Mar Cebicheria, Schmidt's, Turtle Tower, and Good Foods Catering, not to mention plenty of wine, beer, and spirits. And as an
SFoodie reader, you get $10 off the ticket price just by typing "sfoodie" in the space for the discount code.
DISH 2011
When: Sunday, Oct. 2, 1 to 4 p.m.
Where: San Francisco Design Center, 2 Henry Adams St. (at Townsend)
Cost: $40 regular, $75 VIP.
A new weekly series on what to do with your farmers' market impulse buys and CSA box surprises.
Kabocha (pronounced kah-BOH-cha) squash is a hard-skinned winter squash, sometimes called "Japanese pumpkin," with a distinctive striated dark green appearance. It is traditionally available during the fall and winter months, but can be found throughout the year in California. The flesh has a sweet, rich flavor that resembles a cross between a sweet potato and a pumpkin.
How do I know I have a good one? When buying kabocha squash, look for dull, hard skin and a dried-out stem. It should feel heavy. Rough, dry knots on the outside of the skin are okay, as long as the skin isn't pierced or bruised.
How do I cook it? Kabocha squash can be served roasted, steamed, pureed in a soup, tempura fried, or simmered in a Thai red curry. To roast a kabocha, cut the squash in half and scoop out the seeds. Slice crosswise into 1-inch-thick slices, toss with oil, and cook, uncovered, at 375 degrees for 30 minutes, flipping the slices halfway through. The skin is edible. The seeds can be removed from the pulp, cleaned, dried overnight and toasted like pumpkin seeds. Roasted kobacha is delicious side dish to serve alongside pork tenderloin with an arugula salad. Hint: garnish the salad with the toasted seeds.
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Bernal Supper Club -- which morphed from a neighborhood experiment in camaraderie and food into a once-a-week pop-up -- is bringing its fresh market focus to Coffee Bar for Friday night dinner.
Bernalwood documented a recent pop-up dinner in photos, and the menu for Friday's Coffee Bar dinner features chicken leg confit and pasta aglio olio as main course options, with meatballs or kabocha squash soup to start and peach cobbler with black pepper crème fraîche to wrap things up. Two seating times -- 6:15 and 8:30 p.m. -- are already up for grabs at $40 for a three-course meal with intermezzo and $15 extra for wine pairing by Coffee Bar.
Ferrari says that Supper Club will be collaborating with Coffee Bar again in the future, "sometime in November." Mm!
I've been a barista for almost a decade and I've seen the best and worst customers have to offer. Caffeine can be nasty: Deprived people do crazy stuff.
Here's a list of activities that draw the ire of the person behind the espresso machine. Print it out, keep it in your pocket, learn it and be secure in the knowledge that you haven't made yourself an enemy you'll see every morning.
1. "Not having your coffee yet" isn't a good excuse for anything.
It's early, you are tired and you haven't had your first hit of caffeine yet. Poor child. This does not make it okay to have forgotten your money, or what drink you were supposed to get for your hungover boyfriend, or to spill an entire 12-ounce cup of coffee on the ground. If you can't function without a cup of overpriced coffee roiling about in your belly, sequester yourself until you have had it.
Fielding your questions about dining out in 21st-century Bay Area restaurants. Have one? Email me.
San Francisco diners are expected to become practiced at a variety of eating implements in a seemingly infinite variety of combinations. So I wasn't surprised to get asked this question:
C.R.: So what do I do when I'm in a Chinese restaurant and the waiter brings me chopsticks and a fork and knife?
Well, C.R., a decade ago I would have answered something like "Use the chopsticks, duh, and ask for them if the waiter doesn't bring them to you." But that all changed a few years back, after some friends and I got into an argument at a Thai restaurant.
One person had asked the server for chopsticks, and I mentioned that in Thailand, you'd only use chopsticks for noodles; for curries and stir-fries, you'd use a fork and a spoon (yeah, a little obnoxious, but these were good friends). A third member of our party said, "But why does it matter? It's not like we're in Thailand."
The argument heated up from there, but it changed my entire approach to culturally sensitive utensil use. After all, Chinese restaurants don't do non-chopstick-users a favor by giving them chopsticks and a dinner plate -- rice is far, far easier to eat Chinese style, from a small bowl that you hold up close to your mouth. As I've been eating my way around Chinatown, I've noticed half of the customers -- of all ethnicities -- use forks to demolish their lunchtime rice plates.
Given the increasing popularity of craft beer, you'd think there would be specialty brew shops in every neighborhood by now. But, despite years of booming industry growth, City Beer Store and Healthy Spirits have held their footing as the city's notable destinations for craft beer shopping outside of Whole Foods and Bevmo.
Pacific Heights dwellers will be happy to know that there's a newcomer in the mix. Welcome Ales Unlimited, a corner store with big aspirations. From the outside, there isn't much to alert passersby to the nearly 700 beers tucked inside the small space. Luckily, our beer-radar registered the Chimay sign hanging from the awning.
Earlier this week, Fast Company published an interesting -- and alarming, in that now ol' familiar way -- story about changing fish populations in European waters. The gist of the story is that the North Sea is warming much faster than other major bodies of water, and important cold-water species like cod are shrinking fast while populations of warmer-water, faster-growing fish like red mullet and John Dory are growing.
Now, I have no problem with the reporting itself. But the magazine titled the story "The End of Fish and Chips," and threw in a closing line that just flipped the angry switch in my brain: "Fish and chips, get ready to meet your maker."
With all apologies to the reporter who was just looking for a quick frame for his story, really? You think that fish and chips is going to disappear because we won't be able, on a commercial scale, to pull cod out of the waters? Substitute "bluefin tuna" and "sushi" for "cod" and "fish and chips," or "beluga sturgeon/blinis," or a hundred different dishes that humans are currently grieving over because we've fished one critical ingredient to near extinction, and perhaps you can see how bored I'm getting with this "poor us" take on seafood sustainability stories.
Maybe it's because I grew up on hippie Midwestern food and moved to one of the most cosmopolitan dining cities on the planet, but I don't see much reason to miss bluefin, cod, beluga, or shark fin. That's because, when I look at the ingredients available for me to eat, I'm bowled over. When it comes to cooking, we Americans live in the most awesome moment in the history of human civilization.
