Taking a cue from the East Bay's recent restaurant robberies, an armed gunman entered Valencia Street Italian eatery Beretta (formerly Last Supper Club/Radio Free Valencia) on Tuesday morning and robbed the joint. The restaurant was filled a with 10 patrons at the time....

Now that donuts have made a return to Bay Area coffee houses--minus its exhausting Homer Simpsonesque, white-trash irony--you can find the preferable pastries at places like Ritual Coffee Roasters (vegan! and actually good!), Seattle's Best at Border's Books & Music (double-glazed), and even Starbucks (plasticky). With the return of the donut comes the return of the brewed coffee. At least, according to today's New York Times, which profiles the Blue Bottle Cafe, scheduled to......

Two separate shootings in the city of Richmond took the lives of three men on Thursday night. Shooting number-one occurred around 9:15 p.m. at Sahib Indian Restaurant, "located at 12221 San Pablo Ave." According to CBS 5, via Bay City News, two men walked into the restaurant and began shooting the employees. "One victim was pronounced dead at the scene and the second victim was airlifted to an area hospital where he later died."......

Man, we can tell how long we've been doing this by the number of Zagat posts we've amassed! The 2008 edition is out: your nice alphabetical list of restaurants with a grade for food, decor and service, as rated by the users of Zagat. This year, it is going 2.0, with the introduction of such spiffy new things as colors, as in two of them, black and red! Post-it "love it" tags to customize your......

Berrylicious illustration from The Oakland Tribune. We gobble the various food sections up each Wednesday. Here are our favorite nibbles from today's offerings. SF Chronicle: Serious bock-bock time for those of you who may not give chickens their due. Our fave chicken recipes here and here. Many chefs feel local and smaller sized pollo may add up to a better tasting bird. Oh, and at one of the Mission's best spots, when the chicken's......

There aren't a lot of reviews out there for Lol Tun Restaurant, on Folsom betw. 19th & 20th streets. The folks participating on Yelp generally say the food is good and cheap, but the restaurant is loud and slow. The police, on the other hand, aren't so concerned with the restaurant's food, but the 3.8 pounds of heroin, 5 oz. of ice, and 1 ounce of cocaine hydrochloride they confiscated. ...

Many many years ago, when we were young and just beginning our journey into the land of holistic healing modalities, our massage therapist exhorted us to dine at the Macrobiotic Center and Organic Café on 40th Street, between Adeline and Market. We liked the food so much, or at least the idea of the food as a pathway to greater health, that we got a job there as a cashier for the Sunday Brunch......

The on-again-off-again proposal by the Wayans Brothers to build some sort of Wayans World at the site of the Oakland Army Base is back on as an Oakland City Council committee voted to allow negotiations to begin anew. A proposal was introduced awhile ago but fell through when the Wayans brothers were unable to come up with anything in the way of a plan....

We really enjoyed our sweet milk fritter! (above.) It was like a cream puff encased in sugar. Mmmwah! But we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. So hey, did you see they opened up a new restaurant in the old Anna's Cookies bakery on 18th Street and Guerrero? It's called Farina and it's Italian. Though not cheap ($15-22 entrees), it doesn't look like it's really trying to compete in the Delfina/Maverick/Range divisions of the......

SFist Julie's got the 2,4 dithiapentane and she's not afraid to tell you about it! So, we ourselves are as naïve as anyone else on this topic, having not-too-long-ago extolled the virtues of dishes containing the latest faux-food villain at B Restaurant in Oakland... Guess what? Truffle oil does not contain truffles. At all. Not even a trace, not a soaking, nothing. Thank you New York Times and local chef-owner Daniel Patterson of Coi who......

Alder at Vinography is in the process of reviewing every darned wine bar in town -- 14 of the 26 have been reviewed so far. What surprised us a little -- we hadn't realized that noted head-to-tail restaurant Incanto is also a wine bar. Well, duh, turns out it's in the proper name ("Incanto Restaurant and Wine Bar"). Our own SFist Mary's piece from a few months ago can give you an idea about the food. We really enjoyed Vinography's expert and entertaining take on the wine bar aspect....

Ah, the Aliotos -- they run this town! Patriarch Joseph Alioto was the mayor of San Francisco from 1968-1976, in office not only during the building of the Transamerica Pyramid but also through the Zodiac murders -- while daughter Angela Alioto is a former Board of Supervisors president (and chicken-suit renter), while granddaughter Michela Alioto-Pier is a current Board of Supes member (and Hottest Supervisor emerita -- hm, maybe it's time for us to do......

East Bay diner SFist Julie goes pirate! Okay, it's really NOT a soup kitchen, but if you have a boat docked in Oakland’s Embarcadero Cove Marina (down the highway from Jack London Square and across from Alameda's Coast Guard Island), have a pot belly and a brush mustache, and a propensity for telling jokes like: “What kind of fish likes to sing? A tune-y fish!” -- and bursting into laughter at your own brilliance,......

One of the biggest food blog stories fired up this weekend. SFist Jer's analysis is a must read. The Sourdough Monkey Wrangler has inspirational info on making ginger ale and quiche (pictured at right). Beware of hazards in the home kitchen. Read more funny and a little sad safety tips courtesy of Muffin Top. Pasta night at What Did You Eat's house gets a little more ooomph when it's Swordfish with Orzo, pistachios and......

Gavin Newsom was all raspy voice and bulletproof hair at last night at Cesar Chavez Elementary in the Mission. Despite somebody's command to "Go back to Nob Hill!" Gavin asserted "I'm not going away." He's used that phrase a couple times now. Is that your campaign slogan, homie? We hope not, because you're not exactly the underdog. It's almost April and you still don't have an opponent. ...

Remember how members of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association have been whining about increases in minimum wage and the newly mandated health care initiative? Well, they're talking about turning whining into action and the association is threatening to go on strike. ...

here's a little theater company doing some pretty big plays 9th Street in downtown Oakland, AND offering dinner discounts at neighboring restaurants to ticket holders....

We were searching for the perfect romantic spot for Valentine's Day, a restaurant where we could eat extravagantly without paying through the snout, a dinner where we could indulge our twin loves -- for our sweetheart, and for pork. Oakland's B Restaurant (or just "B," apparently), promised to be such a place. Since the establishment's doors opened across its refurbished 120-year-old mosaic tile floor in 2005, reviewers have unanimously noted the New American-style restaurant's inventiveness, use of fresh local organic ingredients, occasional odd substitutions on plates -- made without comment, and UNANIMOUSLY praised one dish: The Duroc Pork Chop....

YummySF makes us feel all warm and happy about the Chinese New Year. Check out some yummy (indeed!) dim sum pics from a Tai Wu Restaurant outing. Eating dim sum seems like a perfect way to celebrate. In other traditions -- mainly Lent -- World On A Plate has some drool worthy dets on buns, including items from Iceland, of all places. You've seen the photos, now do the reading. One intersting historical note:......

The Chron today has an interesting story about all the effects of recent laws being thrown on small business, mainly restaurants. The recent laws in question are the rise in the minimum wage, sick paid leave, and the new health care initiative. All these laws sound great, but restaurateurs are not quite thrilled about them and so they've been particularly aggressive in fighting the resolutions, even getting in Chris Daly's grill about it. Ha! We made a pun. Anyways, they've sued over the health care bill to keep it from taking effect. ...

We gobble the various food sections up each Wednesday. These are our favorite tidbits from today's offerings: SF Chronicle: Restaurant report: are there rats, cockroaches, and unclean hands at your favorite spots? Food safety scores allow customers to find out online (tho not widely used) and in person if restaurant workers are working safely with and around food.......

Speaking of august institutions delving into contemporary edginess, the SF Asian Art Museum (200 Larkin, Samsung Hall) presents a butoh & immersive video performance by blindsight Artistic Director/Choreographer Paige Starling Sorvillo in collaboration with Los Angeles-based media artist lucy h g and UK-based Australian composer duo imaginationandmymother.  Their integrated media performance presents a striking visual meditation on remote-access war and our daily complicity in the violence of globalism. (7pm) And over in the East Bay,......

It's January 1, and here are the best things from the last 365 days....

Friday night may have kicked off the 14th Annual Kung Pao Kosher Comedy soiree, but it was our first. Though we're clearly members of the target audience for a December night of comedy by, for and about Jews, we somehow managed never to attend. We were Kung Pao virgins. But no longer. ...

Tonight at Biscuits and Blues (401 Mason St.), legendary New Orleans pianist, Henry Butler performs solo piano, combining the classical and jazz elements he absorbed at Louisiana School for the Blind and Southern University with the gospel, blues and R&B sounds he heard growing up in New Orleans. (8pm & 10pm shows) Saturday Grab a boombox and head on over to Mission Dolores Park (18th and Dolores) for Unsilent Night 2006, composer Phil Kline’s annual......

Hark! The herald angels at Left in SF heeded our plea and forwarded along some pictures of last night's singalong Christmas carol protest of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association's holiday party. As you may remember, the protest was directed at the GGRA's filing of a lawsuit to invalidate Newsom and Ammiano's citywide health care plan. (The plan was discussed in today's NY Times too). The protestors sang jolly songs like "You ruined our Merry......

Careful readers of our daily news summary Day Around The Bay may have noticed that the Golden Gate Restaurant Association has filed a lawsuit against Gavin Newsom and Tom Ammiano's proposed citywide health insurance plan. How can people who support the health care plan show their outrage? Well, never let it be said that the progressives in town don't come up with some entertaining protest ideas! So get your top hat and/or velvet bonnet, warm......

-Shootout on 880 leads to one death, one injured and major traffic. -The search for the lost family continues on...

On Thursday morning, we bent our self imposed no-drinks-before-noon"guideline" and attended a fun food and wine event. What made this invite stand out was that the wine tasting, Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau 2006, was tied to an important cause, the San Francisco Food Bank. Had we known we would be able to witness and talk to a good natured young woman dressed in a gigantic Beaujolais Nouveau costume we would've RSVP'd even sooner. Oh, and did we mention we dig romantic French accordion music by Odile Lavault while we sip and nibble? ...

>Attending cheese school is a no-brainer. We sooooo easily ditched our apartment, books, and TV for that! Cheese ranks high on our list of favorite fermented (the word fermented makes us feel a little icky, too) foods of all time. But other food bloggers have good reason to let school change the concept of cheese from "the unthinkable to the delicious." ...