She's Everywhere! We Talk To TWOP's Keckler, aka Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic

And what irons do you have in the fire right now?

I currently write for CHOW, where I blog daily and write feature pieces, and I'm in the middle of my eighth year of working for Television Without Pity. I'm also a weekly contributor to KQED's Bay Area Bites, and the web editor for the KQED restaurant review show, Check, Please! Bay Area, which I do believe you're familiar with, Jeremy (author's Quasimodo's note: right! That show I was on where nobody told me I was hunching over the whole time! Thanks KQED!).

When I have the time, which sadly hasn't been that often, I get to cheesemonger at Cowgirl Creamery at the Ferry Building. I love it there. I mean, I love cheese, I love the folks I get to work with, and it gets my eyes away from the computer. Lately, I've been writing for Cowgirl Creamery as well -- updating their online Library of Cheese, writing mail order copy, etc.

What's the story behind the "keckler" name?

Oh, dear. Well, it's a family inside joke that my Dad once advised me against ever explaining in print. He's a lawyer and I think he's afraid I'd get sued.

Where are you from? How'd you end up in the Bay Area?

Well, I grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, went to school in Michigan, lived in England, and then moved to Boston, where I lived for six years. We came out here in 2003 because, after finishing his Ph.D. in math at Harvard, my husband scored his first post-doc appointment at Stanford.

It worked out amazingly well, actually, because Mark had long dreamed about living in the Bay Area, and I had just started to really get into food the last few years we were in Boston. In fact, I was reading Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Vegetables and boggling over all the different kinds of tomatoes there were. Tomatoes we couldn't get in Boston. And forget mushrooms, man, because you were lucky to find a stray chantarelle or morel in Whole Foods -- it was mostly a button and cremini world. I know things have gotten much better in the grocery world since we left the East Coast, but I am still reveling in the year-round growing season out here with wide, disbelieving eyes.

Okay, so you're a food writer, so you can't squirrel out of this classic "damned if you do, damned if you don't" question: Best Burrito in SF? How about best Pizza?

So easy for me. Best Burrito: El Faralito's Al Pastore. I dream about them. I have to admit, though, that El Farolito occupies a special place in my heart that no other burrito place could ever hope to annex. Back when we were living in Boston, my husband kept telling me about these AWESOME burritos he ate at this AWESOME burrito place when he was visiting friends in San Francisco. The same AWESOME burrito place let my husband pump a styrofoam cup -- the ones they use for their agua frescas -- full of their spicy green salsa. He carried that cup all the way back to Boston and then to Washington, D.C. where we enjoyed it -- among much heraldic trumpeting -- with some very fine tortilla chips. Now that is one awesome burrito joint. Also, their burritos are -- as Gail Simmons would say -- "craveable."

For pizza, I'm definitely of the "the thinner the crust, the better the pizza" mind. I adore Pizzetta 211 and Pizzeria Delfina with a hot, hot passion. Not only does their crust not sit like a lump of percolating dough in my stomach, but their topping combinations are intoxicating. It goes back to me losing my pizza mind over Todd English's Figs Pizza in Boston. He was doing things like, fig jam with prosciutto and arugula, and rock shrimp with scallions and avocado ailoi, and I had never had pizzas like that before.

So, you reviewed Top Chef Season Two for TWOP -- have you heard anything as to the future prospects/plans of the show? Will you write about it again? And what are a few things from a production standpoint that you'd fix about the show, were it in your power to do so?

Well, what I've heard is that Bravo is already working on a third season and they are currently filming it in Miami, so that's definitely happening.

As for me covering it, yes, I will be doing it for Television Without Pity again. In fact, I'm already deeply interested in what sort of influence Miami will wreak on Colicchio's feet. I mean, what with his penchant for flip flops last season and the sockless loafer look on his Top Design guest stint, can huarache sandals or white espadrilles a la Miami Vice's Crockett be far behind?

Oh, but what would I do to "fix" the show? That is truly a vexed question. It's rather pointless for me to beg reality show production teams to stop with the creative editing that doesn't always seem to portray events as accurately or truthfully as one would hope. However, I would just be happy if Bravo stopped with the relentless product whoring in the challenges and also managed to get their graphics team not to get food stuff wrong, like labeling lotus root as taro root. Because, come on, Bravo you're a food show, can't you please get the food right?

The kind of coverage you do for TWOP is pretty extensive and exhaustive. Can you even enjoy a show when analyzing it as you have to? Or does it increase enjoyment?

It's hard, actually. I mean, there are times when you start to form a deep-seated antipathy with the show and the characters on it. In my experience, this can happen when the show is just so boring that you can't even really poke fun at it any more However, then there are the shows like Jericho -- which I'm currently covering for Television Without Pity -- that continue to be such a rich mine of absurdity that you never get bored.

The thing about Jericho is that when I wasn't recapping it (my friend and fellow recapper Strega had that honor for the first eleven episodes), I was totally dying to recap it. It was so dumb, yet at the same time, it was so awesome. In one of my first recaps, I likened my insane love for the show to having a crush on a big, dumb jock. It's so pretty, but so, so dumb!

I should be honest here, though, and admit that while this post-nuclear-disaster-as-seen-through-the-eyes-of-a-small-Kansas-town show started off pretty lame with people drinking poisonous iodine tinctures to ward of radiation poisoning and intentionally blowing up mines with people inside, it's sort of gotten better. Darker. And when Skeet Ulrich cries, you really can't help but cry along with him.

So...yeah, I guess the real answer is that sometimes such a close analysis of the show can make you truly hate it, but other times it just makes you crush on it even harder.

What are the shows you currently review for TWOP?

Aside from the aforementioned CBS show Jericho, which I have a huge crush on, by the way, I -- along with a few other recappers -- also have an assigned segment of Farscape episodes to do during less busy times on the site.

How often do you eat out vs cook at home?

This is a sensitive point with me. I really love to cook at home but I so frequently don't have the time because I am generally working from 10 AM until 3 AM with a few breaks in between. However, when I'm trying, I'd say I cook three times a week at home and the other days/nights are eat out or carry-in.

Best bargain in the city (food related or otherwise)?:

Driving across the Golden Gate to the Muir Woods area and hiking on all the free trails and picnicking with a bottle of Bonny Doon wine and thick, meaty sandwiches from Freddy's Oceanview Deli.

What do you tend to read? What are you reading now?

Since I have so many food magazines and papers and sites to read, I finally got full of food-related books, so these days I'm reading a mixture of Murial Spark, Nancy Mitford, and I've just started Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, EvanDaniel Handler's Basic Eight, and Jennifer Weiner's Good In Bed.

What sites do you visit regularly (aside from the many you contribute to)?

Oh, man -- that's a really, really long list: Go Fug Yourself, Tomato Nation, Extended Cake Mix, Tv Tattle, Gawker, Defamer, and then I have a Google Reader for all the Bay Area food bloggers I've met, as well as Slashfood. Of course, I can't forget SFist, which I check in with regularly! (author's note: thanks!)

What neighborhood are you in? What's the appeal (or would you rather be elsewhere?)

We live on the corner of Alamo Square Park, which has been described as Western Addition, NOPA, or Hayes Valley, depending on who you ask. We're centrally located and near to about four or five Muni lines that can take us all over the city -- including downtown -- so that's pretty nice. However, I think I'd like to move out to the Sunset or the Richmond District one of these days -- I like the neighborhood feel, the trees, the closeness of the beach, where I like to run at Land's End. I don't know, maybe it's a nesting instinct.

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Well, there it is folks -- some interesting tidbits about one our favorite San Francisco-based blog/Web writers. While we're pretty sure you'll run into Stephanie's writing sooner or later at random (like we said, "she's everywhere!"), that shouldn't stop you from clicking through to one of her many enterprises.