A short PSA: yesterday we (aka. SFist Sam) investigated the food of Provence. Since no one has done more for the PR of the Provence area than Peter Mayle --except maybe for those guys Cezanne and Van Gogh-- we have to mention he will be signing his new book, Confessions of a French Baker, Saturday at noon at the Ferry Building's Sur La Table. The French baker is the one prominently featured in A Year in Provence, of course. He also will be at a ticketed event tonight at the Clay, tomorrow in Danville, and Saturday at 6pm in Sebastopol (cf. info at the very bottom of this post). As it is about food in France, we will review the book, hopefully next week, as we only received it today. Last week, we started our epic "battle thai," with a lackluster visit to Osha Thai. We usually give at least two visits to a restaurant, but we were not particularly in the mood to go back there. We instead opted to visit Marnee Thai. We had checked out Thai Chef, a block away from the original Marnee, and at the time really felt we should see how the reference in the neighborhood fares against the new young guns. more ›

There are two categories of Thai restaurants, nowadays: the lounge-y kind, with black clad petite waiters and waitresses, ambient music with a techno beat, sleek furniture. The traditional kind, also known as kitschy, with wooden sculptures, convoluted gilded frames hanging on the walls, and waiters outfitted in bright pink or electric blue silks. In the first category, one could find the Castro Thai Chef, the Mission Baku. In the latter, Surya, Thep Phanom, or Manora. Such a chiasm, such a generational disrepancy calls for SFist's Food Face-Off #5: Battle Thai. more ›

Let's take a look behind the scenes at the Gastronomique production studio. The question that we get all the time (email us your questions, comments, or suggestions here, btw, we want your input) is: how do you pick the places that you review? Well, that's easy: we read the free weeklies, and if a restaurant advertises with "grand opening" and "take 10% off your meal with this coupon," we are in. more ›