There's a bunch of activities around National Hunger Awareness Day, but we would like to mention one: a fund raiser organized by epicurious.com at Farallon tomorrow (Friday). Proceeds benefit the Second Harvest, a network of food banks dedicated to eradicating hunger. They provide food to nine million kids. Friend of SFist Sam even volunteered at the SF Food Bank, and if Sam does it, then that's good enough to recommend the organization to us.

So get yourself a ticket to the event, be there at 6:15pm for reception, then a dinner cooked by several top chefs, including Farallon's Mark Franz at 7pm. Diver scallop carpaccio, crispy maple pork belly, and roasted strawberry turnovers, yummy. It's $100/pop, but it's a good cause, and it's $50 less than the similar fundraiser in NY. And don't leave the party hungry!

Banner from the 2nd Harvest web site.

Wine was flowing freely, and Gavin was having his fair share. We mean, he had a lot to get over with. Which explains we could overhear him say such things as:

If I can’t have a 20yo girl friend, whom I haven’t seen in a month, this is f------ bull----.

It looks Brittanie is not out of the picture yet! And the other thing on Gavin’s mind:

If they want to be the Santa Clara 49ers, the Santa Clara 49ers, they can be the Santa Clara 49ers. This city does not need a football team.

Gavin, you only say this because they suck, you fair weather fan you. Just give Nolan a chance, would you? Matier and Ross say that Gavin got the phone call early in the evening. We saw the mayor around 8:30pm, and he was still seething.

Gavin’s input in the cookbook is only a foreword –well, that and he did start up the PlumpJack brand too--, where we learn that PlumpJack is named after Jack Falstaff, the Shakespearian character. We thought it was the Gordon Getty opera! Jeff Morgan is the one who did the heavy lifting of putting together the book, getting the recipes from the different chefs and trying them out, and writing the history of the venture. He was available to sign the book too, but was a bit eclipsed by the charisma of the mayor (we really mean he was not as good looking. Boy, Gavin is hot.)

The difference between Rouge and its predecessor was the addition of Nick's Crispy Taco, which quickly became a neighborhood phenomenon, with lines still out of the doors on most nights. We haven’t sampled the tacos, so we’re not in the converted category yet. The tacos’ namesake, Nick Fasanella, left the partnership after some not-too-pleasing moment (we heard about litigation) and moved next door, to open his pizzeria rustica.

Point taken, we will scrupulous a lot more, indeed.

Picture of former mayor Willie Brown with Bibendum, from SF environment, because where there's controversy, there's Willie

Every food critic is shocked, shocked!, to discover that a bunch of out-of-town restaurant reviewers disagree with their own taste. The Chron's Michael Bauer does not understand why the Michelin did not reprint his top 100 list in extenso, and goes looking for clues. He finds typos here and there, which means the whole book just cannot be trusted.

SF Weekly reviewer Robert Lauriston, wearing his chowhound hat, is convinced that it is a French conspiracy: even the Italian restaurants on the list are really French. The Michelin crew is just a bunch of chauvinistic pigs, since everyone know the best food is really Italian, and Incanto and Oliveto should be included. And that the truth, because French straw is only in the other person’s eye, and what Italian beam you talkin' about?

*post title by Gothamist Jen

We tried three, and we can safely say that Thomas Schnetz and Dona Savitsky's batting average with the clumsy home cook is a respectable .667. We had a decent success with the budín de elote, a recipe of which you can find here. It was a fluffy corn pudding with bits of zucchini, light and tasty as summer.

We scored a home run with the flan de rosas, a rose water flavored flan with a caramel topping. We made it twice, and twice it went poof and disappeared. The hardest part turned out to locate the rose water, which we now know you can find at Rainbow, Berkeley Bowl or, of all places, Golden Produce (and not across Church Street at the Market Safeway).

Some go boring: pick the address, and voila, Campton Place, Hawthorne Lane, etc. Some go eponymous, which rhymes with non-adventurous, pompous and presumptuous: Gary Danko, Michael Mina. Some think too much, and pick up names which mean goblet in Latin, or shut your mouth in French, leaving the hard work to the PR firm to clean up the mess and explain it really, really means tranquil. There's been a trend for the one syllable punchy food-related words (fork, spoon, sauce, home, chow, grub, lime, the now defunct dine or bite), ideal for the ADD afflicted MTV generation. Hopefully we're out of that trend, since this is paragraph two, and we haven't finished making our initial point. And then there is the placed named after the touristy landmarks for the corresponding cuisine: taj mahal, or Angkor Borei, or brisas de acapulco. Add to the mystique of the location by associating the exoticism of the cooking with that of remote locations.

We find the Palace Steakhouse fit in this last category: any palace evocation is very remote. Like, say Shalimar, the name here is only a door to an alternate universe of elegance and royalty. The place is thoroughly anchored in a reality which is definitely non-palatial. Versailles it is not, and no one will confuse the stairs to the ladies' bathroom with the marble stairs in the Great Gatsby's mansion.

Indeed, a young lady was reading one night, and we had to admit: with its mostly white walls, blonde hardwood floor and table tops, Cha-Ya is a clean, well-lighted place. The high organically shaped counter facing the window is ideal for solo dining with a good read.

A clean, well-lighted place brings us naturally to For Whom The Bell Tolls, as, like Maria after an intimate encounter with Robert Jordan, we felt the earth shake. Unfortunately, it wasn't due to the satisfaction of our carnal desires, can't be in a vegan place, could it? It just so happened that the earth literally shook, 4.4 on the Richter scale in Santa Rosa.

But it did spell out the question for us: is the food really this good, or was this just another quake? The answer is: pretty good, so that we even forget that no animal product was involved. You know, there are vegetarian restaurants which serve you meatless meatloafs made of tofurkey, and you think: this ain't right. Cha-Ya does not even pretend to replace meat, and just does its own thing, traditional Japanese way. For us, it's ideal: we are not conscious of eschewing meat, we're just enjoying a fine meal. Perchance he for whom this dishes is served is so satiated, as that he knows not it is meatless. We feel the same in South Indian restaurants (say, Udupi Palace) where the novelty (to us) of the cuisine hides the fact that it's vegetarian.

* Punch line of a Rhymes with Orange cartoon last week

The tasting took place in the awesome private dining room at Greens, in the corner of the Fort Mason building, with spectacular views through windows on the Bay from two sides. We'd be happy just taking the sunset there. We sampled four reds and two whites, all from different areas of Spain, all from the Greens list. We enjoyed Chaylee's knowledge, but wish she had been wearing a mike: with the breeze flowing in, the chatting of the other wine aficionados, the bustle of the restaurant on the other side of the wall, we could not hear her very well. She described more the history of the winery than the intrinsic characteristics of the bottles; she wasn't the kind of sommelier, trying to put a name an every whiff of aroma, but described the wines in broad strokes. Her style was very interactive, audience participation more than welcome. The attendees, a knowledgeable co-ed bunch of young professionals, were more than willing to interact, their tongues untied after a few samples. Chaylee had chosen wines with a strong earthy character, each with a distinct personality, none of the easy-drinking fruit-forward sugary sweet stuff. She mentioned she would organize other thematic sessions, so you can check it out too.

Picture from Greens' website

Having garlic infused drinks, garlic spread on your bread, garlic appetizer, garlic entree and garlic ice cream: we fancy all these once in a while. But stringing all these into a meal sounds to us more like fraternity hazing than gastronomy. If there was a Gimmicks Gone Overboard series, it would be episode one. They say "Follow your nose, to the stinking rose." We add: you'll have a garlic overdose. Man, you stink, turn on the hose. I see that you are bulbose, but it ain't me that you arose. That smell makes me comatose. Take that stench away, or I'll get bellicose.

So we were actually delighted to receive the Stinking Rose Restaurant Cookbook: we don't have to be a sourpuss raining on the garlic parade of patrons of the restaurant, we can now cook one garlicky dish as part of a meal, and put onions in our gibson instead of garlic cloves, and be perfectly happy. A clove a day to keep the doctor away, that's all we need.