The past 24 hours in gossip, innuendo, and cold hard facts about the San Francisco food scene.
BBQ and burgers in the Marina: Urban Daddy rounds up the news of a brisket and ribs place, Cedar Hill, soft opening this Thursday. The Texas-styled joint even shipped its smoker in from the Lone Star state (3242 Scott at Chestnut). Around the corner, Inside Scoop confirms Super Duper will indeed start flipping burgers tomorrow at their new location (2201 Chestnut at Pierce).
La Cocina contacted us to share that a food business is making the jump to a brick-and-mortar. Veronica Salazar joined La Cocina five years ago with limited business skills. Now, the chef and owner of El Huarache Loco, a food cart staple in S.F., is heading to Larkspur's Marin Country Mart (aka Larkspur Landing). She'll start serving her dishes inspired by the traditional street food of her youth in Mexico City later this year.
Also, another La Cocina startup, Onigilly, is selling their Japanese rice balls at at the Cinema Cafe inside Japantown's New People.
Over at the Winemakers Speakeasy, Joanna Karlinsky (of the shuttered Meetinghouse) is hosting the aptly titled Meeting House in Exile popup dinners this month (Tue.-Sun.). It was just last week Jonathan Kauffman mentioned she had signed on to oversee the popups at the new venue. And yes, the Meetinghouse biscuits are on the menu.
Spot Bagel fans will have to smear cream cheese and lox on a new brand. Chowhounds first discovered Spot Bagel was no longer at Bi-Rite, and then their Facebook was gone. Now it's official, no more orange-poppy seed bagels.
It's been two years since Matthew Accarrino moved to San Francisco and took over the kitchen at Fillmore's SQPR, boosting an already popular eatery into one of the city's defining Italian restaurants. It seems that Accarrino - both as a chef and as a deliberate, thinking man - is constantly pushing himself to reexamine how the influence of his Italian heritage relates to the bounty of seasonal ingredients around him here in San Francisco. These two factors guide his modern, technique-driven cooking, but a career in the kitchen was not his original plan.
"I wanted to be a bicycle racer," Accarrino recalls. "Actually, I got into cooking because I had a tumor in my right leg that I didn't know was a birth defect. As I got older and taller, that tumor got longer and eventually was unstable enough to break my leg while I was playing Frisbee." Laid up in the hospital for three months, it was a full year before Accarrino could walk without crutches, and two years before he got back on the bike.
"I was never really able to get back into racing," says Accarrino. "Suddenly I was 18 and wondering what I was going to do to do with my life." He began cooking in restaurants around New Jersey and New York, and with enough encouragement from those he worked for, applied to the CIA in Hyde Park. Since graduating, Accarrino has worked in a slew of high profile restaurants, most notably Thomas Keller's Per Se in New York and several of Tom Collichio's Craft restaurants in Los Angeles. Now running his own kitchen for the first time as executive chef, Accarrino reflects on stepping out from under American chefs and realizing his own "Italian sort of perspective."
SFoodie recently spoke to Accarrino. Here were just the highlights of a one-hour conversation:
It wasn't like its fragility was any secret: Wicked Grounds, the SoMa cafe by and for the BDSM community, has been struggling financially since its opening two years ago. In April, owners Rose White and Ryan Galiotto held a fundraiser that brought in $50,000, but that wasn't enough to save the cafe, which closed in early October.
The existence of a kink cafe may have sparked titters in some circles, but over on Exhibitionist, SFoodie's sister arts blog, Chris Hall has written a heartfelt eulogy to the closed cafe that's well worth reading. He explains that it's a huge loss for the kink community, coming on the heels of the closures of places like Stormy Leather and the Eagle.
With each closing, it feels like San Francisco is becoming less and less of a place to be queer or kinky, unless you want to keep it in your apartment. Wicked Grounds was unusual in that it was primarily a social space where everyone just happened to be kinky. People came in as a normal part of their everyday lives, not to get laid or to buy stuff for a special night out. On any given afternoon or evening, you might see Scrabble at one table and bondage at the next. The casual nature of the space broke down the careful segregation between "normal" life and sex.
It's a reminder, in the era of single-estate Rwandan siphon-dripped coffees, that cafes have long played other important roles in the community, whether fomenting revolution or simply providing safe spaces for people of the same stripe to gather.
Halloween is just around the corner, and if you're not looking to spook kids with Type 2 Diabetes, or even worse, boxes of raisins, we've tracked down treats that aren't complete garbage, but at least masquerade as it. After all, if you're passing out individually wrapped prunes, you totally deserve to have demons rain toilet paper upon your house of terror!
5. Yummy Earth's Blood Orange Organic Lollipops
Now, these just look delicious. Blood orange lollipops? Break me off a piece of that! The classiest and yummiest lollipop on the block! Which, we know, isn't saying much but still, you could totally serve these to adults. Semi-proudly, even.
This gum is g-d adorable, and a fantastic treat for kids of every age! It's different than the normal trick-or-treat crap, but not in a "choose your favorite penny from grandma's creepy bowl of pennies" way. The bright colors, cute packaging, and kid-friendly flavors make it a natural fit for All Hallow's Eve.
Sometimes weed just isn't enough. Sometimes, daddy wants to get fucked up. Just like the first two sentences of this post, you alienate people. Your kids are buckwild and rude. Your boss won't go to bat for your paycheck. The pigs stuck you trying to hop a free ride on MUNI again. Can I get a witness?
For the medical marijuana consumer who is more Psycho Dad than skinny jean, here's some cannabis-flavored alcoholic beverages specifically designed to help you relax your chest hairs after another long week of OMJesus...
We West Coasters have a reputation for a certain kind of persnickitiness when it comes to our menu choices, all of it earned. Who farmed these turnips? we want to know. Can I feel good about eating this scallop? This week, A.G. asks: How much can I quiz the waitstaff?
How much questioning is okay -- encouraged, even -- and how much is too much? Someone's new husband thinks she wants to know too much.Midwesterners are free to mock us as much as they want. But the fact is, West Coast waiters should be responsible for knowing a certain level of detail about the dishes they're serving. Here's what I think you should expect your waiter to know offhand or quickly find out:
1. The basic ingredients in the dish -- especially the ones with rare or non-English names -- and some idea of what the dish tastes like other than "everything chef makes is fantastic."
2. The broad strokes of how a dish is cooked: roasted, steamed, cooked sous-vide. Waiters at device-happy restaurants should be able to explain less-common techniques involved in the dish, like making herb soils or slow-cooking meat in a Combi-Oven.
Even no sign of the virus has ever been found in salmon farms in British Columbia, where the diseased fish were found, according to the New York Times the virus has somehow jumped the continent -- possibly via the eggs that Pacific Coast salmon farmers import from Scandinavia -- and has been found in sockeye salmon 60 miles away from the nearest fish farm. It's deadly, untreatable, and quickly becomes endemic. Now scientists are rushing to figure out just where it has spread.
What: Pickle Picnic!
Where: The Cultured Organic Pickle Shop
When: Wed., October 21, 6-8 p.m.
Cost: $15
The rundown: Remember how I said Food of the Americas was the most Berkeley event in the world? You don't? Well, anyway, boy were we wrong because this is pickle picnic is way more Berkeley. There will be live music (banjo?? Just a guess!), pickle pairings (??), kombucha cocktails (???), cheese, charcuterie, breads, and "other picnic foods". Oooh and maybe you'll even see Michael Pollan. COULD YOU BELIEVE!?
Tickets available at Berkeley's Tuesday and Saturday farmers' markets or at the Cultured Organic Pickle Shop.
