Gastronomique Shoe-Shines The Birkenstocks.
We just received last week the Slow Food Guide to San Francisco and the bay area, third guide in the series after New York and Chicago. The Bay Area is in smaller font in the actual title, but the guide actually makes a great job at not discriminating against the South and East Bays. We love Slow Food. Our s.o.'s roommate, Valerie, used to head the Berkeley chapter and many times we would step into a chapter meeting in the living room, which really was a yummy potluck of all-organic, all-sustainable delicious recipes. And they would let us take a bite, thank you very much, they won our heart the old fashioned way, through the belly. We were out when Alice Waters visited, but we knew the house had been touched by the Slow Food equivalent of a divinity, it had a halo from that day on. Both our s.o. and Valerie have moved out of the holy shrine by now, but Slow Food is still thriving.
The purpose of the organization is to "protect the pleasures of the table from the homogenization of modern fast food and life," and we cannot agree more. However, in its fight against fast food Slow Food looks like Ghandi, as opposed to the I'm-gonna-tear-down-a-Mickey-D-with-my-tractor approach of Jose Bove: promoting education and awareness programs, participating with local, sustainable producers, and publishing books, of course. The guide is a good idea, but to be honest, it confused us a bit. First, it lacks an introduction as to what Slow Food is. There is a charter printed inside the cover, and a little introductory essay, but there is no explanation as to what makes a place a Slow place. The guide is basically a list of restaurants, shops and markets, with a little paragraph for each written by an array of 80 contributors. How those places were selected, what criteria were used, we don't really know. We won't really complain, as most of the places in the guide deserve to be highlighted.
Free Chocolate after the Break
Some of the places are awarded a snail for going "above and beyond in their support of the concepts of sustainability and biodiversity," but from reading the book, this really means for "serving French, Californian or Italian food." Thirteen out of fourteen restaurants in the Californian section get the mark (even though Canteen, the missing snail, is the picture-perfect portrait of a restaurant dedicated to staying small in scale, sourcing nice local ingredients, with a dedicated chef actually cooking for you in the tiny space, not supervising a soul-less kitchen crew from afar; how more Slow can you be?) But only one in ten Indian places, one in seven Japanese and no Chinese restaurant, get the high five.
The founder of Slow Food, Carlo Petrini, being Italian, we'll chalk this to some inadvertent home court bias, and hope they'll open up to other cultures in the next editions. Due to the wide number of contributors, there is some unevenness in the prose: some snippets have a professional, neutral tone, others have a show-and-tell feel about visits with the whole family. This is part of the charm of the book: it is told by the Slow Food members, unfiltered. Of course, this leads to some funny qui pro quo. Is Shalimar overrated, as hinted in the review of its neighbor, or is it as great as its own review states? Those yummy pastries at the Bay Bread boulange and at Chez Nous: those are canelés, not canales. And one's attempt to use onomatopeic should be left to a professional, as Balompie is not the sound of hitting a ball, but rather a litteral translation of football. If you take the Guide for what it is, a peek into the collective restaurant consciousness of the Slow Food proteiform membership, then it is an interesting read and full of nice tips.
If you are into Slow Food, then you'll be interested in a fair trade chocolate tasting. And it's FREE! It is hosted by the Bay Area Fair Trade Coalition at Coffee to the People, in an effort to increase awareness and support for Fair Trade. We don't know the BAFTC, cannot vouch for the organization, but free chocolate, anyone? Guys, you're always asking us where to meet chicks: chocolate is as good a bait as any, coffee to the people, tonight at 6:30pm, 1206 Masonic @ Haight.
And you can always go all organic, all sustainable, all tree hugging from the comfort of your home, as organic valley farm encourages you to celebrate Earth Day with their set of Earth Dinner Card to "spark conversation about food topics, memories and experience." The press release actually does not say when Earth Day is, we had to google it (April 22nd), so we might have still been playing the Earth card game come Christmas, it sounds like so much fun. You can buy the cards here, but this is so lifted from the Cafe Gratitude game, you should just visit one of Gratitude's three locations (Mission, Sunset and Berkeley), get you a "I am Hott'n'Sexxy" and play the game for free in the friendly positive vibe there. Talking about Gratitude and their dish nomenclature: "I am Happy" or whatnot is wishfull thinking, but wouldn't the most accurate, the most descriptive name for a product there be the Quaker Oats-like "I am ordering an I am ordering an I am ordering an…"?