Take a load off Fanny: After 28 years, Berkeley's Cafe Fanny will close tomorrow. According to Inside Scoop, the cafe, opened by Alice Waters and her brother-in-law Jim Maser, is closing due to the economy. General Manager Taylor Gregory expands on the official statement, shared in the Scoop article, by noting the restaurant had been struggling for quite awhile.
While Fanny's readies to shut, Eater SF reminds us Lucky Strike Lanes opens tomorrow, and shows a few snapshots of the place. We're still curious what the best bowling friendly food is (200 King at Fourth St.).
In January we mentioned that Grub Street had noticed a few changes were slated for the less-than-a-year-old restaurant Criolla Kitchen, notably new owners and a new menu. Now Tablehopper discovers a name change for the Southern restaurant: Parish Eleven. While the official relaunch is slated for April, diners can get a sneak peek of the menu at Criolla's Monday night prix fixe dinners.
There's a new place for the Financial District denizens to grab a bite. Tablehopper discovers Darn Good Food is open during the work week, offering nutritious options for the cubicle crowds (322 Kearny at Bush). If you'll remember, Eater SF mentioned the cafe back in January, and emphasized the focus on health -- there's a dietitian on staff.
SFoodie's countdown of our favorite 50 things to eat and drink, 2012 edition
If you couldn't tell from its name, Spices! has a penchant for hyperbole. The local chain of Taiwanese-Sichuan restaurants specializes in STiNKY! tofu, numbing-spicy pork intestine (actually a direct translation of the dish's Chinese name), and SFoodie's favorite, "gangsta casserole murder style," a hot pot served by the Oakland branch.
Few of the dishes can match the drama of their names in appearance quite like the Eighth Avenue Spices' "fish fillet with explosive chile pepper." A variant on a popular dish sometimes called Chongqing chicken, Spice's fish is lightly battered and deep-fried in oil containing a thousand dried red chiles and Sichuan peppercorns.
Angry Man Eats Pop-Up Dinner to Celebrate Greenburger's 1st Anniversary
Where: Greenburger's, 518 Haight St. San Francisco, CA 94117
When: Tuesday, March 13th, 2012 from 7:00pm - 9:00pm
The rundown: It is hard to believe that a year has gone by since Greenburger's opened in the Lower Haight. To celebrate the occasion, owners Matt and Stefanie Nudelman have invited Angry Man Eats over to sling his signature chicken and waffles. A word to the wise -- get there early, these waffles have been known to sell like hot cakes.
If you still have yet to try Chef Matt's menu (where have you been the last 12 months?), you owe it to yourself to get over there during regular business hours for a burger or some Buffalo Mac 'n Cheese. Both dishes won awards in our 2011 Reader's Poll.
Tuesday's Pop-Up Menu:
Fried Chicken and Waffle Platter with collard greens and hush puppies $9
Fried Chicken and Waffles $7
Fried Chicken $5.5
Waffle $2
Collard Greens $2.5
Hush Puppies $5
Friday brings the opening of Steep Brew, a destination beer bar tucked beneath the grocery store at 17th St. and Rhode Island.
This is a soft opening, but expect the space to be fully operational. All of the rotating 16 taps can be sampled in flights (four 4oz. pours for $7, three 8oz. pours for $14). Opening tap highlights include Ballast Point Victory at Sea coffee vanilla imperial porter, Almanac Winter Wit, and the inaugural brew from Anchor's new 'Zymaster' series.
In addition to draft options, the bottle list showcases a couple dozen domestic and imported beers, including three gluten-free options. Shoppers can purchase any bottle from the grocery store above and have it opened downstairs in the bar for a nominal corkage fee, which makes for a handy "try before you buy (more)" situation. Unfortunately, licensing forbids shoppers from taking their pints into the store itself. It's probably for the best; we don't want anybody blowing their culinary pleasure fuse.
Right before filing this week's review of State Bird Provisions, Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski's new restaurant in the Fillmore, I spoke to Brioza, the restaurant's savory chef (Krasinski is the pastry chef). The couple, both Bay Area natives, worked in Chicago (under David Burke) and northern Michigan before coming back to San Francisco and taking jobs at Rubicon, where they earned national recognition during their four-year tenure.
SFoodie: What have you been up to since Rubicon closed in 2008?
Brioza: We've been together for 14 years, and so we got married just after Rubicon closed. We traveled extensively, and then we found there was a huge demand for private dining. Since we had a pretty good customer base from our Rubicon days, we just kind of rode that for a while. And we had a baby! Two babies, really, with the restaurant.
We signed the lease on the space in September 2010, two weeks after our son was born. We had been looking for 10 months or so. It had been a pizzeria, and was closed down and gutted when we looked at it. It looked much, much different. There was ductwork going over the skylights, and where the big cement wall now is had 80 years and 8 inches of plaster over it. It was a really unattractive space. But you could see the potential. I came in one night with a hammer and started knocking at the wall, and I could tell there was something good in there.
How did you decide upon the dim sum format?
It's almost impossible to pass Washington Square Park without taking note of Park Tavern, the nascent brasserie-style restaurant from Marlowe team Anna Weinberg and Jennifer Puccio. Raw wooden tables and metal bistro chairs line the sidewalk, occupied by diners sipping craft cocktails and nibbling from small plates of Dungeness crab on sourdough. On a sunny day, there's something downright aspirational about the place -- who doesn't want to be them?
