Highlights from the blog this week:
1. SFoodie contributor Albert Law, who has been spending six weeks in China, stumbled upon a cafe in Beijing that serves Ritual coffee. And it's no cheap knockoff -- it's the real stuff, imported from San Francisco. In fact, the brought over Eilenn Hassi to train his staff, and he's now giving workshops on how to make a cup of coffee.
2. In case you were hurting for Halloween costume suggestions: Bacon drag!
Headed to China soon? Worried about where you can get a decent caffeine fix while you're there? Contemplating ways to pack your favorite coffeehouse in your luggage?
Save your $50 luggage fee because Ritual Coffee Roasters has gotten to China before you have. FishEye Café, located in the Village, a luxury shopping center in the middle of Beijing's hot ex-pat area Sanlitun, sources their beans once a week from Ritual. The Chinese baristas make the cappuccinos and lattes with the same love, care, and craft as their American counterparts. And the complex flavor profile, texture, and sweetness are consistent to what is served at Ritual in San Francisco.
FishEye is the project of Fish Sun, a former Apple employee who decided to trade in the corporate life for the more casual hustle and bustle of running a café.
"I had realized my American dream by [age] 31," said Sun, who spent a decade working at Apple as a Sales Engineer. After a fulfilling career and a little soul-searching, the dots connected back to his passion for coffee.
"I didn't want to work anywhere else. But I'd hit a personal growth ceiling; and so, I will go work for myself," Sun said.
Rice Plate Journal is a yearlong project to canvas Chinatown, block by block, discovering the good, the bad, and the hopelessly mediocre. Maximum entrée price: $10.
I've been back to New Hollywood Bakery a couple of times since discovering its baked pineapple buns -- there's no pineapple in them, for those of you who don't know, but instead a crumbly golden crust of flour, egg, sugar, and butter or lard laid overtop a soft, white yeasted bun. (Some bakers crosshatch the top so the bun comes out of the oven looking like the skin of a pineapple.) The Hong Kong pastry is ubiquitous in San Francisco, but it's a rare bakery that produces a pineapple bun that's as good -- not too dense, not too squishy -- at room temperature as it is warm.
When Make Westing first opened up, the indoor bocce courts were the feature that everyone kept mentioning. While they are a nice element in the expansive and beautiful space, bartender Caroline Pagel's Garden Gimlet ($8, gin, cucumber, basil, lime, simple syrup) is what they really should have been talking about.
Make Westing, 1741 Telegraph (at 18th), Oakland, 510-251-1400
• So, you know how in Ohio, any idiot can own wild animals, but they're trying to ban pit bulls? Now, there's that. Then, a super stable dude who owned a bunch of African wild animals in Ohio, released them into the not-Africa wild of Ohio, and then killed himself? And then most of the animals were shot and killed? Yeah, that's all true, and also, super fucking sad. Well, Michael Markarian at the Humane Society of the United States wants us to help prevent that from happening again. So get on it, because the wild animals of Africa belong in the wilds of Africa, and pit bulls belong on my lap, because I gotta give them all the hugs and kisses!
• Mercy for Animals have some awesome fucked-up commercials airing on MTV. Hey, it's less disturbing than Jersey Shore so, kudos to them. Welcome to the Revolution, tweens!
You've read about them: The dudes who eat raw meat just like the cavemen, the women who claim their genes clamor only for turkey, kale chips, and sugar-free soda. There's even a magazine devoted to "modern day primal living." On NPR's food blog, anthropologist Barbara King says, uh, how much do the paleo dieters know about paleolithic diets?
Not only were many hunter-forager diets almost entirely vegetarian, she argues, the idea that our bodies are programmed to thrive on lean meat and no sugar is kind of silly:
...Ancient hunter-gatherer groups adapted to local environments that were regionally and seasonally variable -- for instance, coastal or inland, game-saturated or grain-abundant (eating grains was not necessarily incompatible with hunter-gatherer living). Second, genes were not in control. People learned what worked in local context for survival and reproduction, and surely, just as in other primates, cultural traditions began to play a role in who ate what.
Just as importantly, King writes, a high-meat diet in the age of factory farming and thinning resources doesn't bode well for the planet. You can look at the past for lessons, but you have to be thinking of the future, too.
