Walking and Eating and Walking and Drinking with Bon Appetit's Grubcrawl

Five places to eat and drink. Five hours. Lots of walking between each location. That’s the concept of Bon Appetit’s Grub Crawl, a semi-annual event that has been “crawling” around the country a few times a year the past two years in major food cities like New York and Charleston, South Carolina, and non-traditional restaurant destinations like Park City, Utah.

The debut San Francisco edition spent an afternoon exploring Hayes Valley (and NOPA) while the evening strolled around the Mission with Valencia as the main thoroughfare (this writer attended the Mission event as a complimentary guest, regular tickets were all inclusive $149). Both events featured about four groups of 40 diners each. The average age was probably 35 with a few older outliers along for the decidedly tasty ride but regretting the distances covered. It was at time times more of a Grub Workout in terms of distances. And as you’d guess, the plaid shirt factor was decidedly high as was the picture-taking/social networking. One stop even had its own Instagram station set up. 

The biggest takeaway from the event easily was that the magazine's insiders in our city knew some great restaurants to choose and, not that we don’t know this already, we flat out rock when it comes to being a major dining city, sorry New York. Just look at the lineups. The first crawl sported The Boxing Room, Nojo, Souvla, La Urbana, and Two Sisters. The evening included St. Vincent, Tartine/Four Barrel, Craftsman & Wolves, Tacolicious, and Central Kitchen/ Flour + Water (and Ne Timeas friends). Not bad selections anywhere.

Not surprisingly, Tartine co-existing with Four Barrel baristas at Four Barrel’s hog head-filled and Wi-Fi-free roastery/café was a runaway hit. The renowned bakery even baked its own malted grain-coffee bean bread for the event with a Four Barrel theme. In spirit of Bar Tarine's weekend brunch smørrebrod, slices of a sprouted rye bread came slathered with fromage blanc and topped with persimmon slivers, while typical special Tartine sweets like a chocolate salted rye cookie and sticky buns perfectly complimented the complimentary Four Barrel coffee drinks but not the  uninspired selection of Spanish wines from “Wines of Spain.” William Werner of Craftsman & Wolves gave the most impressive individual effort of the evening, killing it with several savory bites like a chevre winter galette with just picked Buddha’s Hand as a garnish and a one bite chocolate, coconut, and almond praline tart. It was all capped off with small cups of the café’s signature Valrhona dark drinking chocolate.

Ne Timeas Group's executive chef Thomas McNaughton showcased Central Kitchen, Flour + Water, and their two upcoming concepts at Café du Nord and adjacent Aatxe (a Basque spot) at Central Kitchen’s private dining loft with a dish from each place. Flour + Water’s orecchiette with kale and sausage was a classic example of how the ever popular pasta and pizza restaurant takes a subtle pasta dish and gives it a real jolt. Here the pasta was made of farro and garnished generously with shavings of horseradish that lit everything up. The single best dish of the night was Central Kitchen’s knockout alluring sweet meets savory amuse-bouche of matsuktake mushroom eaten together in a spoon with apple and celery root purée.

The event couldn’t escape a forced corporate feel on a few occasions. Those aforementioned lackluster Wines of Spain sponsoring big brand Rioja and Freixenet Moscato at Four Barrel were a joke for a proud wine growing country and the initial meeting spot host Tacolicious too clearly wanted everyone to know about new sister establishment Chino by peddling fortune cookies attached to diagrams telling how to eat xiao long bao dumplings correctly…instead of pedestrian beef tacos, why couldn’t we try a xiao long bao with the margaritas instead? Most unnecessary was Ben and Jerry’s as a key sponsor, from nearby Vermont. Come on, you have a Mission Grub Crawl and Ben and Jerry’s is used in the ice cream float at St. Vincent instead of, oh that creamery at 18th and Dolores or the funky flavors place at 24th and Harrison? At least the beer float was 50 percent anti-big business with Moonlight’s Death & Taxes as the beer.

If you connect the dots of places, there were some absolutely too-long walks, too. Since we’re San Francisco, Uber gave some discount codes and those were actually used between Central Kitchen and Valencia by guests instead of to and from the event like they were meant for. With four different groups and four different orders of the restaurants, my group suffered by starting with Tartine’s goods then ending with chicken wings and a restaurant with no excitement while others were fortunate to have the opposite arrangement. Four Barrel had the sweets, caffeine, and a festive jazz band to jumpstart our night while the finale St. Vincent was awkward with half the restaurant full of regular diners (it was the only non-exclusive to the event spot and David Lynch, the owner of St. Vincent, is Bon Appetit’s wine writer so you see the connection. But he wasn’t even in the building…). It wasn’t a perfect grub crawl but San Francisco diners know it’s a special night when your dinner consists mostly of Flour + Water, Tartine, and Craftsman and Wolves together, even when crawling miles are required.