Meat and Greet Self-described as a print magazine of meat culture, Meatpaper celebrates the launch of Issue Zero at Sugarlump coffee lounge tonight in the Mission. Tastings and demonstrations by local restaurants and meat companies like Incanto and Prather Ranch serve up festivities (non-carne nosh will be available for the veggie crowd); drinks will be provided by Trumer Pilsner , Sonnema VodkaHerb and others, along with a gallery of meat-inspired art to feast your eyes......

We have a passion for Duroc pork, one of the new heritage breeds that are becoming part of the fine dining (food snob) rhetoric. You may not yet be familiar with the concept of "heritage" animals (a.k.a.: Why does my pork have a name?). Let us enlighten you: It's the same as "heirloom" but for meat. And as much as our plates and palates benefited in recent years from the arrival of beautifully marbled heirloom varieties of beefsteak tomatoes in a rainbow of colors, so we are now lucky to enjoy beautifully marbled heritage pork. ...

SFist Mary goes whole hog with our newest food column, Hot Stuff! We can't think of a better way to spend a birthday (our husband's) than eating an entire animal with seventeen fellow carnivores at Incanto Restaurant's private room, in Noe Valley. This is a bit of Laura Ingalls Wilder in the City, for sure. Not only are the food and wine superb at Incanto, it's where we ate offal (Prather Ranch veal testicles,......

I rely on a number of high-quality producers for the Kitchen column. Some I've written about in depth, some make frequent cameo appearances. Here are the unsung (at least at this site) producers I relied on in 2005. Fatted Calf Great charcuterie is hard to find. No wonder, then, that Fatted Calf has a cult following among cured meat connoisseurs. Taylor and Toponia, who started the business with their own savings, use top-notch ingredients to......