Bay Blogger Thursday

First of all, SFist loves the blog. When and why did you decide to start keeping it?

Thank you, I think SFist is quite fun too. I started the blog in 2001 as a way to keep in touch with friends in faraway places. Knowing my obsession with food, they sometimes asked for recipes and restaurant recommendations. I eventually obliged and that was the beginning of the transformation, resulting in this mostly-about-food blog Chez Pim.

It has been a very entertaining hobby and a great creative outlet for my love of food and storytelling. It is absolutely wonderful to have a forum to have my say, and even more so to have an audience that responds so well. And, frankly, it is also rather good for my ego, which –mind you- really doesn't need help.

So you're quite the traveler -- we have to admit, we're a bit jealous of your jet-set status! That said, you're in a unique position to compare and contrast our foodie scene with that in other big cities around the world. What does San Francisco do better than anyone else? What can't you find here that's hard to live without?

I am hardly a jet-setter really, but yes I do travel a lot both for work and play. Our food scene is as vibrant as many cities, though we go to bed earlier than most! If you haven't had dinner by ten you are pretty much out of luck. Frisson had a late night menu that got me all excited for a while, but they don't do that anymore, and now that the chef (Daniel Patterson) has left I'm not even sure it's worth going anyway. So I am once again left with Yuet Lee and Hing Lung in Chinatown.

Because I am away often, while in town I go to places that are uniquely Bay Area. What we have better than so many other places in the world is our exemplary produce, and so the best places in my opinion are the ones that celebrate that bounty and focus on the purity of taste rather than mucking things up with fanciful, fussy sauces. I am much less excited by an expensive menu with Périgord Truffles than a simple one with Little Gem lettuce or whatever is in season. In the winter, give me an earthy cauliflower soup over a pretentious lobster salad any day.

Zuni, Delfina, 1550 Hyde, the upstairs café at Chez Panisse, are among the mid-range places that I adore. For the higher end, I keep going back to The French Laundry and Manresa because each offers a unique experience that is unlike anything I get in France or elsewhere.

Unfortunately, unlike our wonderful produce, the quality of our seafood and meat leaves something to be desired, except Dungeness Crab of course. We have Bryan's which is the best butcher in town, and lots of Chinese fish markets with some good fish, but in terms of variety, quality and freshness we don't compare to the other big cities. I dream of Ginger Pig, a butcher at Borough market in London, or practically any charcuterie in Paris.

We don't have the same quality lamb or game meats because around here we prefer our meat completely benign. It is apparently a compliment in these parts if a piece of lamb doesn't taste "lamb-y". I just don't get that. Why don't they just eat a piece of chicken breast and be done with it!

I look forward to Europe in late fall for Game season, Grouse, Woodcock, and other game meats that are not available here. I also love cured meats, sausages, and dried ham, which are far superior in Europe. Oh what I wouldn't do for a leg of Jamón Ibérico in my kitchen!

You've gotten a lot of press coverage thanks to your blog. We talked about the 7x7 issue that featured you, Sam of Becks & Posh and Hillel of Tastingmenu on the site before, but you've also appeared in a bunch of other articles. Do you see foodie bloggers as peers of food writers in commercial publications, or do you think bloggers should stick to thinking of it as a hobby?

It is difficult to speak of food bloggers as a homogenous group, as we are all so different. The democratizing effect of the Internet is such that anyone really could have a blog and write about the chicken soup they made last night. After all, Blogspot is free, and Typepad costs less then $10 a month. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Diversity is wonderful and makes for a very interesting blogosphere.

But if we are to focus on a small group of bloggers: Heidi of 101 Cookbooks who has a book out, Derrick of Obsession with Food who writes for The Art of Eating, Clotilde of Chocolate & Zucchini with a book deal in the works, and Louisa of Movable Feast who works in the two-star kitchen at the Crillon, among others, then yes, absolutely. It is obvious that these bloggers compare favorably in knowledge and experience to some of our peers in commercial publications.

What Michael Mina said in the 7x7 article, something to the effect that reviews on the internet were unreliable because any Average Joe could write it, well, he was both right and wrong. What he really didn't understand was that, with blogs, you could judge for yourself how knowledgeable that particular Average Joe was. It's easy to calibrate your taste with Joe's by just looking at what else he has said about food, where else he has eaten, etc. Knowledge, experience, and even points of view are all transparent on the blogs, laid out for all to see.

Just because some of us chose not to do this as a profession didn't necessarily mean that we were any less knowledgeable. Copernicus was an amateur, so was Ramanujan. Seriously, if I reviewed restaurants for a living I'm not sure I would be able to afford to eat the way I do.

And, really, who wants to ruin a perfectly good hobby?

One of the things we love about The City is being so close to all the agriculture here in California, while at the same time living in a city urban enough we can walk to small butchers, grocers, specialty shops and fishmongers, they all have great, fresh stuff and it's pretty easy to find exotic oddities. Who are some of your favorite grocers and specialty food shops around the Bay?

You hit the nail right on the head. Our produce is extraordinary, simply extraordinary. Frog Hollow, Dirty Girls, Mariquita, Rancho Gordo and other local farms have far superior produce than what I find in most cities in the world. My friends from London and New York wept when they saw what we've got available even in the middle of winter!

I go to the farmers market at the Ferry building every Saturday that I am in town. It is expensive than most, but I appreciate buying directly from farmers and supporting sustainable agriculture instead of buying cheap produce from god-knows-where at Safeway. I realize that it is a luxury to even have that principle -plenty of people are more concerned with keeping their families adequately clothed and fed- so I won't get all sanctimonious about it. It is a choice that I can afford to make so I do, as simple as that.

Besides the produce, I am addicted June Taylor's Candied Seville Peel in Rose Geranium Syrup for my yogurt in the morning, also Della Fattoria's Pain Campagne, which is as intense as any European country bread I know.

I get my cheese from Cowgirl Creamery, they not only carry fantastic American artisanal cheeses but amazing British farmhouse cheeses from Neals Yard and delicious French ones from Jean d'Alos in Bordeaux.

I go to Bryan's on California St. for meats, they always have rabbit and pretty good lamb –as good as it gets around here. I also buy from Niman Ranch at the farmers market. I like May Wah on Clement St. for fresh fish and Asian ingredients for my Thai food.

We're still dreaming about eating at Michael Mina, and are currently working on our tax returns so that we can make a reservation for after the check comes. Being frugal, we'd like to know if you had any suggestions on where we could get some high-class food on our low-class budget?

If you could easily drop $200 and got a hot date to impress, by all means, go to Michael Mina, but frankly, there are better things to spend your tight budget on. Even if you had to wait for two years worth of tax returns, a French Laundry meal –an absolutely world class dining experience- would be a much better value.

And perhaps an irreverent suggestion, give up soda! You'll probably save a few bucks a day, and your body really doesn't need all that evil High Fructose Corn Syrup anyhow. In a month or two you should have a couple hundred dollars to splurge.

But then again, great food doesn't have to be expensive. Some of the best choices in the city are cheap. Shalimar in the Tenderloin is my version of comfort food, they are as cheap as it gets. Go there on Thursday and try their yummy Goat Curry that will hardly put a dent in your pocketbook.

And of course we just have to ask this of everyone, because they're always so good: Tell us an "Only in San Francisco" story: (Note: It doesn't have to be food related) Thanks again!

Of course it is food related, I am a food blogger after all. A homeless guy asked me for money in front of Whole Foods one day, I had a policy never to give money, so I asked if I could get him a sandwich or something to eat instead. He said a sandwich would be nice, and please be sure to bring some mustard as well. Even our bum was a foodie. Only in San Francisco, certainly!