Food: November 2009 Archives

Dessert isn't one of your editor's favorite courses -- especially at Thanksgiving time. Pumpkin pie is too gluey, pecan pie involves nuts, and apple pie is packed with vile warm, slimy fruit.

by Rachel Brodsky

Much to our delight, La Bauer didn't put truffles on his list of things he'd like to see banished from Bay Aera menus. Then again, truffles are a seasonal delight. And people who allege to be totally over of truffles are either damned liars or use $100 bills to wipe themselves after using the toilet.

In looking for good autumnal cocktails to feature, we came across this delicious ginger concoction from DOSA on Fillmore, which has been doing great stuff with pairing cocktails to their food. The Ginger Ante cocktail, created by bartender Usman Chaudhary, would be perfect as an opener for Thanksgiving dinner, particularly with some roasted pumpkin seeds to nibble on, or this stuffed snow pea appetizer that Brock likes so much.

In an city saturated with aggressively rustic food, these hors d'oeuvres are a refreshingly couture treat for any Thanksgiving spread. (We should point out that this is a dish SFist has praised in the past.) Plucked from Martha Stewart's Entertaining (also known as Entertaining: A Case Study in Hysteria and Paranoia), this recipe for snow peas stuffed with soft cheese is a simple and not-too-filling preface to a carb-heavy dinner.

The truth of the matter is, you can drink almost anything with turkey dinner -- most full-bodied, earthy, or well-balanced red wines, and many German, or Rhône-style whites will do the trick just fine. So many diverse flavors mean that many wines are bound to taste good with at least something you have on your plate.

Potrero Hill 9-to-5ers are in luck with this great new lunch place. Bento415, which offers cuisines from around the world packaged in cute, little bento boxes, will be making their official debut tomorrow morning. Breakfast bentos will be served, along with Blue Bottle Coffee, starting at 7:30 a.m. and lunch bentos will be served starting at 11:30 a.m. Both meals last until they run out.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner. (Can you feel the collective nervousness of the turkeys? That's the feeling of flavor!) And until next Thursday, SFist will post recipes we would love for you to use, if the mood should strike, for your Thanksgiving feast. What's more, some of the recipes will be brought to you by local chefs of note! Hopefully.

Do you hold your wine glass by the stem, shove your fat nose in the glass, and snort? Which is to say, do yo have a serious interest the the art of wine making? If so, head down to the Press Club, located at the bottom of the Four Seasons building, to meet the winemakers who craft the store's vino.

Maybe New York chef David "Fist Bump" Chang was right? Scroll down, folks.

Uh oh. Both Eater LA and the LA Times are reporting that an outbreak of McDonald's elusive McRib sandwich has ensued in the greater Southland. This naturally begs the question, when will the McRib spread to the Bay Area? According to the McRib Locator, the McRib has already been spotted in one of San Francisco's many McDo franchises. Could this be true?

The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) sounded the alarm today, warning "consumers not to eat Santa Cruz County sport-harvested shellfish because the clams, mussels, scallops or oysters may be contaminated with domoic acid, a dangerous toxin that is harmful to people."

We made mention earlier this week of the imminent opening of brand new Hayes Valley Tiki bar, Smuggler's Cove. Assuming you absolutely can not wait to try some of the rummy, tropical deliciousness that will be served up there beside the indoor water features, we went straight to the source, bar manager/owner Martin Cate, for a recipe. Here's what he gave us:

Now that autumn is in the air, the Mission is too clammy and cold, the Avenues are too foggy, and the Marina is too the Marina. So, why not spend your Thursday night in the lovely, twinkly, high-rise building-y downtown area. It simply crackles at night. And it's chic. And it has a good mix of San Francisco ilk. And there's no better venue than 111 Minna, who will be hosting some of the city's best gastronomic sweet treats.

As many San Franciscans know, getting food after midnight in this town is no easy feat. We still have our share of late-night diners though, like the Grub Steak, Sparky's, Lori's and Mel's. Only one made the cut in Playboy magazine's A-list of the Top 10 Late-Night Diners in the country that "truly embody the late-night experience," and that's Orphan Andy's on 17th Street in the Castro.

Not that long ago, the idea of respectable non-jug, non-box wines for under $10 -- the kind of wine you could bring to a foodie dinner party without feeling like a cheap asshole -- was pretty unthinkable. Enter Trader Joe's and BevMo and suddenly there's a lot of truly decent cheap wine out there, and we're not just talking about Two-Buck Chuck.

We want to prompt our new "Earth to Alice" feature by saying this: we love Waters. We love her hat. We love Chez Panisse. We love Waters as a revolutionary icon. We love the way she uses the tines of a fork to carefully mince garlic so as not to bruise the oil. We love her breathy voice. We love her as one of the most important philosophers of our time. We just love her for being her. (Anthony Bourdain, we should point out, is not a philosopher. He is a Wally George-like on-air personality who cooks things.)

Martin Cate, the man behind Smuggler's Cove, has announced that the long awaited grand opening of his Hayes Valley Tiki experience will be December 8. The bar's going to feature cocktail recipes from all the great Tiki bars, and will likely have more of an updated spin on things than the much beloved Tonga Room, which may or may not survive a developer's wrecking ball.

As we noted last week in the New School Cocktail Glossary, the bar program over at Camino in Oakland, just like the food, is focused entirely on local, seasonal, sustainable, organic ingredients and spirits -- so that means if there's a point in time when there are no local limes available, all the drinks will be made without limes, and all the drinks are made with local liquors. Camino was opened last year by Chez Panisse alum Russell Moore, and the bar manager Alex Phillips sent us this recipe for a Mezcal concoction that fits perfectly with the fall season. From Alex:

We'll try to write this through he tears of joy streaming down our face and pooling on our laptop. Eater has word that a store devoted solely to the fine art of grilled cheese sandwiches will be opening up in South Park this winter, located a block away from SFist HQ.

Over in the elite section of San Franciso's Historic Mission District, Pi Bar opened its doors last month. And it's garnering rave reviews. Well, SFGate's Janny Hu liked it, anyway.

A "polarizing" figure in the SF food community, Meredith Brody was a memorable one during her tenure at SF Weekly. Yesterday, Eater tell us, Brody parted ways with SF Weekly.

Billed as the best story of November thus far, SF Examiner brings you a true tale of jarring criminal mischief. Ahem: