Archive for March, 2010

Zuni Cafe

Monday, March 29th, 2010

You know how you post something on FB and people you forget that you were even friends with suddenly comment out of nowhere?  And you’re like, huh.

Before the ballet one night, R2 surprised me and took me to  Zuni Cafe.  I posted this as my status and TWO such people were like, “Oh em gee I love that place!”  It’s some sort of measure of something, I know it.

It’s known for its roasted chicken (other bloggers please note my correct usage of it’s/its for fuck’s sake), which famously takes one full hour to prepare.  Officially it’s (again) called Chicken for two, roasted in the brick oven with warm bread salad with red mustard greens, scallions, currants, and pine nuts ($48).  R2 did not know about said famous chicken, and the poor thing had to deal with my low-blood-sugared growchy whining (“But but but we’re not gonna have time for the chickiiiiiiiiiiiin what is the POINT of going to Zuni if we don’t have time for the chickiiiiiiiiin poooo.”)  He got over his bewilderment at the sudden all-importance of the chicken (when I don’t even normally like bird. Fowl foul yo.) and ordered it with the host the moment we walked through the door.

To pass the hour, I drank a lovely cocktail that had Prosecco and elderflower in it, and we got some oysters.  I wanted to stay local with our choices, and mostly we did.  Hog Island Kumamoto from Tomales Bay,  and Humboldt Kumamoto from Humboldt Bay – both Japanese-local hybrids, like me (^.^).  We also got Marin Miyagi from Tomales Bay for the same reason, and then went slightly farther north with Kusshi from British Columbia because R2 liked the sound of them.

Our platter of oysters came out and our server pointed out which were which.  We had two of every kind; one for each of us.  Ordering oysters one at a time felt very decadent to me; felt like I should be wearing long gloves and smoking a cigarette inserted into the end of a long, real-dead-elephant tusk ivory cigarette holder.

While I was having these musings I looked down to see that R2 had already eaten all of the Kumamotos.  I was like, WTF we were supposed to each eat one of each kind silly!  He was like, “Whaaa?  I thought I did!” which was hilarious because each of the four shells were extremely different in color, shape, and size and it was totally obv (at least to me).  So we ordered more.

And after these shenanigans it was chicken time!  The most recent review on Yelp was just the word “chicken” 83 times, so my expectations were high.  That long lost FB friend (actually just this random girl who was in another a cappella group at UCLA for a year and had hooked up with someone in my a cappella group one time) said “I love the bread salad!”  My other friend and SF native Venus told me “It’s not like it’s a revelation or anything, but it’s just chicken that you feel like you could eat forever and ever.”  I would say that all three were correct.  I shoveled in perfect bite after perfect bite comprised of greens, chunk of bread, currant bit, and a slice of the most tender protein spooned by a the crispiest wisp of brown roasty salty skin, golly.  Absolutely enticing.

Ballet?  What ballet?

Zuni Cafe
1658 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
415.552.2522

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Portland Report(land)

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

I heart it when conference organizers choose proper cities that (a) are walkable and (b) are a random foodie oasis.  I was recently in Portland for exactly such a conference, with my dearest friend and OG Foodie Sharisa, and found my new favorite restaurant…

Ping

Ping was named Rising Star Restaurant of the Year by the Oregonian’s Diner Guide.  I was excited about their Baby Octopus Skewer (marinated in lime, chiles, garlic, fish sauce, and cilantro).

Mostly I was enticed by the price – TWO BUCKAROOS for all you see above!  Loverly.

Our server was the cutest hapa girl, which Sharisa appreciated as she is a hapa herself.  She guided us to good cocktails and handled our frantic and impassioned ordering with style.

In addition to the octo-bebehs, we ordered a red potato skewer (salt roasted and grilled, served with spicy mayo sauce – $1!), a salapao (thai-style steamed bun stuffed with sweet shredded pork, fried shallots – $2.50!)…

…deep-fried tiny fish ($2!), chinese tea egg (steeped in black tea, soy sauce, ginger, star anise, & cinnamon – $2!)…

…house-made pork meatball skewer (Thai-style, dipped in sweet chili sauce – $2.50!), house-made fish ball skewer (same), yam yai (Thai-style green salad with lettuce, boiled egg, peanuts, onions, prawns, chicken, bean sprouts, pickled garlic, scallions, cilantro, cucumber and tofu topped with a peanut dressing)…

And THESE.  Quail egg skewer (wrapped in bacon, with spicy mayo sauce).  Every neuron in my noggin was trilling with joy.  We ordered another as soon as the first hit our respective mouths.  Think smooth plus crunchy, shot through with spicy cream.  Not that I chewed to register the crunch.  I gulped them down cartoon-style – a delicious Adam’s apple!

We should have stopped there, but the fucking curiosity killed the cat (‘s palate).  We spied chicken butt - brined with fish sauce, garlic and sugar, grilled and served with sweet chili dipping sauce and ordered it.  Two thoughts, both related to R2, popped into my head.  (1) R2 told me that the a bird’s butt-al area is called its “vent” which is gross and reminiscent of wormy farts; and (2) no one loves a slanted rhyme more than R2, so I promptly texted him “What’s up?” and he texted back, just as promptly, “Chicken butt.”

Excellent.

Chicken butt is fucking disgusting.  Think of the gristliest bit of chicken that you’ve ever accidentally eaten, then shoot it through with sickly-yellow chicken fat, and then genetically hybridize it with  bouncy ball and that’s what you get.

Thinking about the chicken butt is bad.  Thinking about chicken butt while watching the episode of Man vs. Wild where he…well actually, any episode will do, but this one is the one where  he drinks his piss (which he has deposited into the skin of a rattlesnake) and then he’s eating skunk that he’s recently beheaded and describes it as “steak rubbed in dog feces…” anyway yes blogging chicken butt plus Man vs Wild is making me green about the gills.

Despite the chicken vent, I was so happy to be full-up with good food and hanging out with Sharisa again.  In fact, it was this very conference, six years ago, where Sharisa earned her nickname from our ESL Chinese friend who could not pronounce her real name and called her Sharisa (“Sharisa I have your wine!” she said about the vodka and champagne we had purchased to pregame – every kind of alcohol is called “wine” to her apparently) and called me “Janeee.”

My happiness was shot to berserk levels of happy when our server set down our check and we discovered her name was Charissa.  ”HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE YOUR NAME!!” we shrieked at her, and she said “Sharisa.”  More shrieking!  What a perfect end to the night.

Except it didn’t end!  Because we next rolled ourselves over to…

Voodoo Doughnut

Voodoo Doughnut is a Portland mainstay.  The guy behind the counter was a burly, bearded, world-weary Portlandey dude who would periodically sigh “Can I get anyone anything.”  I had, natch, the bacon maple bar, which I thought I could handle being the sweet-savory queen.  No.

Others got the apple fritter, which was a triumph.  Crisp, light as air, and the size of a large frisbee.  Many grabby grabby hands tearing off shreds and nomming with gusto.

The next day we went to…

Navarre

Navarre also had glowing reviews, so we went.  I don’t know what to say about this place.  It does everything right (local, organic, la la la, small plates big plates etcetera).  Ambiance is cool, good wine list.  But none of the dishes sang.  Good, not great.  Not always due simply to underseasoning, per se, just…boring.

Save for this one dish, which was off-limits to cheese-hatin’ Sharisa.

Pardon the awfulness of the photo.  Did I even need to show it to you?  It’s basically a huge thing of fried cheese.  We manhandled this shit like there was no tomorrow.  Shattery, sticky cheese that squished out pleasing salty grease liquid, oh lord.

At more than twice the cost of Ping and with less than a tenth of the elation, NOT WORTH IT.

The following day I went for lunch with an old advisor to…

Veritable Quandary

VQ was a medium-schmancy joint where everyone from the conference ended up for lunch.  Sharisa showed up, too, with her advisor.  I could only take a couple quick pictures because I do NOT want any of my former advisors to know about this little blog overflowing with f-bombs.  Anyway, here it is:

Vegetarian biscuits and gravy with mushrooms and poached egg.  I am laughing to myself as I look at this photo, because I could not have (a) inhaled this faster; or (b) paid less attention to my advisor.  I hope I am still shiny in his eyes after this lunch.  I couldn’t help it!  The biscuit was perfectly crisp at the edges, and the yolk that yin-yanged into the extremely rich gravy was just so drop-dead fucking (see? f-bomb!) scrumptious. Lickety lickety.

Sharisa and I ditched the rest of the conference and went on a walk of Portland that moved me to exclaim, more than once, “This is like the fucking ODYSSEY!”

We started out walking along the river, where we happened on a huge fair.  Apparently this happens every week?  But it covered several blocks and I counted three different live bands!  Sharisa and I lamented that we were both full and couldn’t partake in any of the lovely fair food, fun stuff like bentos, gyros, curry!  Also, there was a cool artist who painted with numbers.  Not by numbers, but with numbers.  From far away it looks normal, but up close it’s like 1′s and 2′s and 3′s (well, you know what numbers are) that, like pointillism, from far away comprise a picture.  Pretty nerdy cool.

We kept walking and stumbled upon a city block that was crowded with loud people in wacky wacky costumes that walked that line between jolly and frightening.  A little too loud and drunk and homeless-looking.  Sharisa and I stood on the edge of the block, breathing hard and gathering courage to walk on.  We did, and encountered a guy dressed as the Last Supper (he was Jesus in the center with cutouts of the others, with a full-on table with bread and stuff on it slung around his neck.  Then a crusty looking guy ran up, grabbed a baguette from the table, and started wacking cardboard Judas with it, causing Jesus to get pissed and yell HEY HEY HEY HEY at increasingly menacing decibels.  Sharisa and I scampered right out of there.

Next, we passed Cupcake Jones.  Donuts are the new cupcakes and we had been there, done that, but we stopped nonetheless to pick up a baby cupcake each.  She: vanilla (flecked through with real vanilla bean and topped with a preshus edible pearl).  Me: red velvet (topped with a darling edible flower petal).

Blood sugar restored, we went to the world’s largest Anthropologie, which was a bit meaningless because I can never find anything that looks good on me there and Sharisa already owns all of it.  Next to Anthropologie was…

Powell’s City of Books

Goodness Gracious.  Truly a city.  I stepped in and I was shell-shocked.  I was on a hunt to find a used Edgar Rice Burroughs book for R2, who is collecting all the ones with Ace covers.

Usually he’s lucky if he can find any ERB books at a used bookstore.  Here, there was not only one book, not only one bookshelf, but three and a half bookshelves FULL of ERB books!  I breathed “Ohhhh he’s gonna die…” and whipped out my phone to call him and gloat.

I picked up two books to add to his collection, read through a Bon Appetit that said photographing one’s food was rude and should be outlawed (gulp!), texted Sharisa to find her, and left in search of a cocktail.

And I spied this thing!

EEEEEEEE!

Our final stop in Portland, recommended to me by a Portland native, was…

Clyde Common

The new home of noted mixologist Jeffrey Morgenthaler, we were excited to try some weird cocktails.  First we cooed at the impossibly cute dog outside, who looked like a pig and cow and puppy rolled into one.  No picture, sorry.  I suck at taking animal photos, remember?

We got one Copper Penny: Old Overholt rye, Clear Creek pear brandy, Punt e Mes, apricot, one B.M.O.C.: bourbon, raw ginger syrup, Angostura, soda water, one Tonga-Tonga: Smith and Cross Jamaican rum, lime, grapefruit, Trader, and one Beginning of the End: Boca Loca cachaca, lime, amaretto, egg whites, apple butter.  The latter was my favorite due to my intense love of egg whites which was further thickened with the apple butter – captivating!

And thus, we said goodbye to Portland in the best possible way – slightly-beyond-tipsy.

Posted in Books, Disappointment, Drink, Food, Travel, Vom, love | 1 Comment »

Segway Tour of San Francisco

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

Tinx and I decided at 11 pm last night to go on a Segway tour.  We snagged the last two spots on the 1:30 pm tour today, and took the good ol’ 30 Muni over to Fisherman’s Wharf.

Where we went to In-n-Out, which is a little silly because we were both in LA not 24 hours earlier, but when the grilled cheese animal style calls, you answer.

At $70 a person, the tour is a bit pricey, but absolutely worth it.  The people are so nice, and make the 45-minute training sesh relatively painless with their funny jokes.

Our tourguide was Sarah Silverman.  I’m not joking.  Well, I am.  But for serious.  She looked just like her, talked just like her, scrunched her nose up just like her whilst talking just like her, and dead-pan humored just like her!

Example: [going by a disgusting, padlocked porta-potty] Anyone need to pee.

Getting ahead of myself (as usual, but more so since I am eager to blog after a long time of bizziness).  Did you know that Segways were codenamed Ginger?  This was exciting to us because Tinx is a ginger.

So the training truly is 45 minutes long.  They do a one-on-one with you, AND you watch a video, AND you do training as a group, AND you do training in pairs, AND you do figure-8s through a mini cone obstacle course.  The actual ride on a Segway is actually very intuitive. The trainer dude joked that it works by reading your brain waves, but it really does feel like that.

They each had funny names, too.  I wish mine was Panda Socks but I had Special Sauce – very apropos given what was all over my fingers at the time.  Tinx’s was Misplaced, which was, if you will, lame sauce.

In our group was your requisite jackass who was trying to show off and being all crazy and dangerous on the tour (almost rear-ending me multiple times, fuckin assballs) and your requisite out-of-it-uncoordinated lady who did the falling-on-one’s-face thing for everyone else’s comic benefit. Oh, and the requisite scaredy-cat (who of course was in front of yours truly in the caravan) who was definitely doing some wishful thinking when she chose the helmet with speed flames painted on it.

On the tour, we learned:

  • There are more dogs than children in San Francisco
  • For the 60th anniversary of the boardgame Candyland (or “Xandyland” as it says in my iPhone notes) they turned Lombard (the crazy loop-de-loop street) into Candyland and lined the streets with marzipan and decorated it with lollipops.  SWEET!  [Tinx - "Literally sweet, get it?  Hahahaha that was funny joke put that in"]
  • The oldest Italian restaurant in America is in North Beach (not anywhere on the east coast), where they have a scale outside so you can weigh yourself before and after you eat.  I do not remember the name of the resto but a quick Googly search will surely getcha there.

Our path: Fisherman’s Wharf to North Beach & Washington Square to Pier 39 to the swimmy place to Ghirardelli Square to the outlooky pier on the other end of the swimmy place and back.

Near the Pier were the famous bathrooms SF imported from France – the completely automated ones where you pay to use them and the toilet folds back into the wall.  They cost $250,000 each and the city bought 25 of them.  Waste of monayyyy, especially when you hear, as we did, that since the toilet folds back into the wall you don’t have to flush it, but this confuses people, who end up pushing the emergency button instead, calling the fire department to the toilets time and time again.  Dumbasses.

Oh, also, the toilet doors open automatically after 20 minutes so you have to “make sure you get on with it” said Sarah S.

The outlooky pier, our final destination, was really fun because this is where our guide SS said that we could race each other, go really fast, pull fancy tricks, etc.  Tinx and I had fun zooming around and around the gun turret at the end, and then we posed for some pictures for the company’s FB page.

Our noms:

  • Pregame: In-n-Out (PS that In-n-Out is a clusterfuck – only one in the city)
  • Bread nom at Italian French Baking Co., which supplies basically the entire city with its bread (with the oldest ovens in the city; see above) – we got an Italian Stubby which we ate throughout the rest of the tour.
  • Pistachio gelato at Gelato Classico – not your usual neon green pistachio, folks (see below).  This was oozy, silky gelato with huge, whole and shattered, roasted, slightly salty pistachios throughout.
  • Postgame: Irish coffee at Buena Vista Cafe
  • Post-postgame: Hot fudge sundae at Ghirardelli Square

A note about Buena Vista – it is famous for its Irish coffees, which are made by placing two sugar cubes in the bottom of a glass, hot coffee on top with generous room for a huuuge splash/cascade of Bushmores (hee), topped with freshly whipped half and half.

Tinx and I were apparently not looking cheerful enough so the other bartender (with a crazy spiderweb of facial hair and an almost mullet, but all very Santa-esque) threw a sugar cube at Tinx, who promptly picked it up and ate it.

It was the most gorgeous, non-SFy day for a tour, but I can imagine on a shitty foggy drizzly day these things would be moan-inducing.  Good moan.  It’s warm on your tongue and warm in your belly; just a hint of sweet and  the foam was very pleasingly chilly yet rich.  And just one will do it – Tinx and I were weaving around Fisherman’s Wharf and hiccuping.

And we then stumbled into the sundae shop at Ghirardelli and had a hot fudge sundae with dark chocolate fudge.  The three spoonfuls I could stomach were quite thrillingly delicioso.  Continuing the hot/cold treat train, I enjoyed how the cup was almost too hot to hold from the fudge.

So.  I highly recommend this for SF inhabitants who want something touristy to do with their out of town guests but are sick of doing the same touristy shit over and over again.  Just riding the Segway around for three hours is fun enough, not to mention eating your weight in random foodstuffs.

Book your tour here!

    Posted in Drink, Food, Random, Travel | No Comments »

    California Academy of Sciences – NightLife

    Saturday, March 6th, 2010

    I only nom marshmallows, thus my coloring.

    So the California Academy of Sciences does these cool things on Thursday nights, where you go in and wander around with wine in your hands.  So, despite their frog exhibit (Ahem!  It REALLY SUCKS when you have a frog phobia and there are banners of poisonous frogs all over the city when you’re trying to drive!  Very inconsiderate.) I braved it with R2 a couple months ago.

    I have a love for aquariums.  So after we swam through the crowd of hipsters and purchased our $7 mini servings of wine, we headed to the aquarium portion.

    But first we passed by a…what’s the word?  Do-something.  Docent?  Who had a buncha these hideous dried fishies to show off.  She told us many fascinating facts about them, but  all of my cognitive abilities were going towards inhibiting my rather strong urge to poke at them.  I succeeded and was praising myself for my Asian obedience when the docent picked this one up and handed it to R2 to touch.  NO FAIR!

    In the aquarium portion were many beautiful fishies, sea mammals, jellies.  As you know, though, I suck at taking pictures of anything that’s moving so this is the sole photo you get – a vaguely labia-majora-looking thing.  I made this joke to R2 and he said, “I knew you were going to say that.”

    I’ve got to get new material.

    They also has foodz!  This was a carnitas taco.  It was exactly what I wish out of a taco – corn tortilla, various raw chopped up crunchy things, and pork that has gotten its shit stewed out of it, resulting in something almost creamy.  I would go back just for the food!

    Plan your  own NightLife trip!

    Posted in Pets, Science | 1 Comment »

    Pollan Documentary: Botany of Desire

    Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

    It’s an awful title, isn’t it?  That was about the only drawback with the film (and book on which it is based).  Well, also it was a teeny bit boring.

    Backtracking.  Choco, R2, U2, Peanut, Choco’s roommate who I will not give a pseudonym because I will likely never see her again and I went to the City Arts & Lectures screening last night of the PBS documentary Botany of Desire.  It’s made by Michael Schwarz and based on that inimitable demi-god of foodies Michael Pollan’s 2001 book of the same name.

    We were situated in a box (swank!) with Depression-era style concrete-feeling chairs (derelict!) and settled in to watch the doc.  I have not read the book, but the film’s message seemed to be similar to Omnivore’s Dilemma (which I cannot finish for the life of me but maybe I’ll try again now) – that monocultures are bad and please everyone stop eating McDonald’s.

    This was ironic because R2 and U2 were late to the movie because they were in the lobby finishing their McD’s.  They got it for good reason – the Star Wars Clone Wars toys are now out (and R2, indeed, proudly wore his eponymous toy on his belt loop the rest of the night).

    An additional message of the film was that just as nature shapes us, we shape nature.  Our desire for beauty has made flower evolution go wild.  Same with apples – they are under selection pressure to get ever sweeter.  Even the cannabis plant, in response to human desire, have evolved to have more and more THC in them.

    Other interesante things from the film:

    Wowow wee wah.  Apples originated in Kazahkstan.

    Johnny Appleseed was the original hipster.  Even though he was from a super wealthy family, he became in essence a homeless guy with unkempt hair who traveled around planting apple trees.  Also, it was curious that Johnny Appleseed created saplings from seeds, which when planted will have essentially zero similarity to the tree it came from.  The way to make a new tree with the old tree’s qualities (sweet apples, for example) is to use the technique of grafting, which was certainly available and known about back then.  But Johnny Appleseed was actually crazy religious, and believed that everything in nature was mirrored in heaven, so he thought grafting was unnatural and an affront to God.  So all these colonial towns (which, by the way, had to plant fruit trees BY LAW) had these crappy tasting apple trees thanks to him, which was OK because those were the apples that make the best alcoholic cider.

    The best marijuana plants have resin in them, which is where the THC is concentrated.  The resin is created by female plants that put out more sticky stuff to catch the male plants’ pollen.  Growers, therefore, keep male plants out of their greenhouses and fill them with females only.  So, in essence, a growhouse is a 120 degree space chock full of “sexually frustrated” female plants.  Sux for them.

    Why is it that protesters can only come up with the cheesiest chants?  I mean, “What do we want?” “______!”  ”When do we want it?”  ”NOW!” is already pretty bad.  In this film, in protest to genetically modified organisms (GMOs), they came up with “Hey hey.  Ho Ho.  We don’t want no GMOs!”  Awful.

    In the section on tulips, the guy kept saying “chulips” which I thought was very cute.

    After the screening, the man himself came out – Michael Pollan, IN THE FLESH!  He is one of those guys who is bald but still super handsome.  He has an non-defensive, exceedingly thoughtful, laid-back, and dryly funny persona.  Also you can tell he knows he’s the shit.  But he is, so.

    Interesting things from the Q&A portion:

    He started by asking Michael Schwarz why it took him ten years to make the film when he himself wrote the book in only two.  Ba-zing!  Schwarz said it was due to two reasons: (1) The marijuana section, which made all the potential funders uneasy, to the point where one of them suggested they focus on a different plant, like… grapes!  That’ll work, won’t it?  (2) No one knew who Michael Pollan was when the book came out so no one cared.  Boosh.

    Curiously, though the filmmakers didn’t get an interview with Monsanto (the company who does the genetically modified plants), Pollan did in his book.  It turns out that Pollan had represented himself, in his words, “incompletely” to Monsanto and told them that he was a “garden writer.” lol.

    Someone from the audience said “Thanks for this film.  I really enjoyed it, and it’s giving me motivation to actually finish the book.”  lol squared.  Didn’t I just get done telling you that I felt the same way, just about Omnivore’s Dilemma?

    Did you know that almonds (another monoculture, also California’s #1 agricultural export?!) are such a huge industry that they have to ship in massive quantities of bees to pollinate the trees?  And that’s not enough so they feed the bees high fructose corn syrup before they release them to pollinate?  Crazay.

    So it was a fun night that also made my brain grow.  On the way home, I asked R2 and U2 what they would write about if they were writing this post.  U2 said “the chairs.” I said, “…the chairs??” and U2 said, “They hurt my butt.”  To which R2 said “Buttony of Chairsire” and looked all proud of himself.  Sigh.

    Posted in Books, Film, Food | 1 Comment »

    Mini post for mini avocado

    Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

    With common household items for scale.

    I love my CSA box, but are you fucking serious me?  Lamest pit/meat ratio ever.  I eated it anyway.

    Posted in Disappointment, Food | No Comments »

    ChanChan, Beretta, Random Japaneezy Place

    Monday, March 1st, 2010

    So.  I look through my iPhoto and there are dozens and dozens of backlogged photographs from places I’ve eaten and ne’er blogged.  They are such sad photographs – I can just see their lil hearts swelling when I click on them (“My day has arrived!  I’m going to the show!”) and then deflating as I pass them over for juicier photos.

    It’s just that some places only inspire a couple paragraphs and not an entire post, so I wait for thoughts to percolate and then the entire post just…kinda dies.  Sadded.

    So I am going to lump three at a time and make them into full posts. Why three?  Because it rhymes with squee!

    1. Chan Chan

    Chan Chan Cubano Cafe is all the way up at the top of a random hill in Twin Peaks.  We tried to go twice and it was closed both times (“I’m sorry!  Come back again, PLEASE!” the owner shouted at us through the window, both times).  Third time’s the charm.

    They don’t have a menu; the guy just cooks what he feels like.  Superb!  Some sort of wilted spinach with berries (top), a fish dish (rhymes, hee!  above), and chicken with plantains.

    You bet I nommed that marigold.  The food was…OK.  Not as superb as the concept.  The more interesting part of the night was an altercation between the chef his…cousin?  Acquaintance?  The gist of it, as far as I could tell while trying to appear as if I wasn’t listening, was that the guy had eaten a lot of food at the restaurant over the past months, and was paying back the chef in labor, but he had only worked that one night and, further, actually had the balls to ASK!?  FOR?!  MONEEYYY!?  Shove!  Shove!  Shove!  Out into the street and yelling! (though I couldn’t turn to look but R2 got to see – lucky bitch)  I believe it was settled without violence, and the chef came back in, apologized, and charged us $20 for four courses.  Sweet.

    4690 18th Street, SF CA 94114  415.864.4199

    2. Beretta

    Beretta is a pretty hip joint, complete with Mission zipcode and strange cocktails.  My hipster cred went through the roof just walking into the place.

    I am a fan of their new place on Chestnut (Delarosa; post coming soon) and I must say that I was a fan of Beretta’s cocktails beyond the normal reason I like cocktails, which is that they make me feel warm and funny and lovable and loving.  My favorite was the Airmail – rum, honey, lime, prosecco.  R2 said, “I’ll have one of those too” and then “lamented” that it looked exceedingly girly, which made my eyes roll because he LOOVES girly drinks, are you kidding me?

    We had pate (above) which was passable but nothing like what we had had a week prior at the now shuttered Cote Sud (if I may go on a tangent, the food at Cote Sud was astonishingly good, but in the middle of our meal a cockroach ran across our table and our server smashed it with a napkin and said “That was not a cockroach!” and then only comped our desserts…so I can kind of see why they closed), prosciutto di parma, tomato, arugula & mozzarella pizza (top) – also passable.  And then the special of the day – braised oxtail!

    Not juicy enough, and I got a weird sticky cartilagey chunk in my mouth that I didn’t like.  Too salty, not quite worth it and definitely not finished and not taken home (burn!).

    This was a little bit disappointing given all the hype, but Delarosa is one of my favorites and redeems my Beretta experience several times over.

    1199 Valencia St SF CA 94110  415.695.1199

    3. Random Japaneezy Place

    I used Google Street View to figure it out, akshully.  It’s called Genki Crepes, and has all sorts of fun Japanese items (for example, several obscure flavors of Pocky – orange, caramel milk, “winter”).  It’s the obvious place to stop after eating a belly-full of My-yum-mar food at Burma Superstar (post forthcoming) across the street.

    Brings me back to my teen years in Tokyo – my go-to spot at the end of Takeshita Dori in Harajuku, you know?  This is the proper way to enjoy a crepe goddamnit.  San Francisco seems to think that crepe = an omelette, just with flour and not egg.  Jyerks.  A real Japaneezy crepe is thin as a playing card and filled with only my favorites – banana, nutella, whipped cream.

    330 Clement Street, SF CA 94118  415.379.6414

    So.  Did you like this format?  I feel exhausted like I wrote three separate posts anyway, but if you really liked it…



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