For Bay Area shoppers, staring eye-to-eye into Christopher Columbus' homely visage is a nostalgic experience. Columbus Salame, like Mother's Cookies or even the It's-It, is a company that deserves the title "local institution." Ice cream and cookie companies may hold a more special place in the heart, however, than processed meat facilities.
They say you are what you eat. Since February is Strong Beer Month, you're going to get pretty buff over the next few weeks. Buff and tipsy, most likely. For the tenth year, the Magnolia and 21st Amendment brewpubs are serving up a dozen special brews over 8% abv. For the second year, Social Kitchen and Brewery is jumping into the ring with five bold beers of their own. The brews represent a wide range of styles for every palate, assuming that you're pretty tough.
With SF Beer Week just over a week down the road, this is a good opportunity to perk up your liver and start training. Per tradition, if you sample all of the Magnolia and 21A beers over the course of the month, you can keep the commemorative tasting glass. Just throw it on the shelf with the rest of your bodybuilding trophies.
Put on your gameface and meet your worthy adversaries, below:
Each week we take a quick, cautious look at what's going on with televised cooking. This week: Fat Chef, a one-hour show about steamed vegetables, Thursdays at 10 p.m. on the Food Network.
In another effort to put even more distance between itself and food preparation so skilled it demands to be put on television, the Food Network rolls out Fat Chef, which is not about, as I had hoped, a shirtless and oiled Mario Batali storming across France with a Henckels, murdering geese for their livers and throwing virgin cheflings into pits of simmering madeira. Nor is it a show about the greatness of fat chefs. It's a show about the fatness of regular chefs, and how they jog to get rid of the fatness. A fucking weight-loss show. Called Fat Chef
Of course, having a weight-loss show ready to go in the pipe is a stroke of luck for the Food Network, because Paula Deen finally told the everyone she has diabetes, or the diabeetus, and the network can point triumphantly to this new weight-loss thing and say, "See? Fucking RIGHT. We got this HANDLED." And as much as I can slow clap this late-January crisis-management miracle, a fact remains: It's a weight-loss show. Weight-loss shows make me want to kill myself.
What: Valentine's Sweet Making and Dinner Eating
Where: La Cocina
When: Weds., February 8, 6:30-9 p.m.
Cost: $65, including dinner and drinks
The rundown: If you're looking to bake up some sweet love with your amour this very sexy holiday season, look no further than La Cocina's Valentine's Day Sweets class. You'll sit down with La Luna Cupcakes, Neo Cocoa, and Kika's Treat to make truffles, caramels, and cupcakes -- and then afterwards, you'll enjoy a provided dinner, wine, and the fruits of your sexy labor. You'll leave so bloated on sexiness, who knows what'll happen next? Probably television, but that's just us.
Tickets available at Eventbrite. Of course, all proceeds benefit La Cocina's non-profit incubator program.
This class is part of La Cocina's series of cooking classes. Upcoming classes include Vegan Ethiopian and Latin Specialties, Streets of Malaysia, and Pickle Party!
SFoodie received a sad email yesterday afternoon from Dominic Ainza, chef of Mercury Lounge. The SoMa restaurant and lounge is going to close, he wrote, at the end of the month. "It was definitely the economy," he explained, and also speculated the explosion of food trucks contributed to the restaurant's decline, since so many of them specialize in Asian food.
Mercury Lounge describes itself as "global Asian cuisine," but its soul is Filipino, and Ainza became known for cooking innovative modern-Filipino dinners and selling late-night Filipino street food on weekends.
Ainza will stop serving dinners after February 18; Mercury Lounge continue to serve bar bites and drinks until March 1. Check the restaurant's website for a statement tomorrow. And Ainza says he's currently looking around to see what comes next.
Farrell himself sold the business to Allied Domecq, who sold it to Beam Wine Estates, which sold it to Ascentia Wine Estates which more recently sold it to Bill Price's Vincraft. Price and Vincraft take the long view, so we expect a steady future for the brand from here out and wanted to take a return look at what was once one of our favorite wines.
The Gary Farrell approach is a "Burgundian" one. In simple terms that means they focus on the wines of Burgundy, pinot noir and chardonnay.
