Naked chefs can be Top Chefs too.

​Calling all food truck, nudist, and mini-pastry chefs, it's time to serve a slice of San Francisco to "reality" television.
Top Chef is casting for its 10th season of babelicious host Padma Lakshmi entertaining 2 million viewers by cutting her small sample servings into miniscule ones. Then chewing ... and chewing.

 What will be different on the show this season? Maybe your debut. Open calls for Top Chef contestants in San Francisco are Monday, Feb. 27, in SOMA's Kitchit at 848 Folsom from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

 For the Top Chef application, additional casting dates and more information, visit Bravo's website. Millionaire bachelors for Patti Stanger's matchmaking show are also in high demand. Although her horrible dating advice is not.

Millionaires shouldn't be lonely on Valentine's Day.

After the backlash from her last gay candidate, we're not sure why her application still encourages candidates of every sexuality. Maybe Stanger will advise another gay man to "put his pickle back in his pants."

If you are a single, millionaire chef who is miraculously eligible for both casting calls, forget Bravo and let us hook you up with someone more appealing -- you must be a very spectacular catch.

​ • You've probably all seen this video of Kristen "I'm a vegetarian because I'm half-rad" Bell sobbing over a sloth on your Facebook feed but now, take the time to watch it! Because it's pretty fucking adorable! She has a panic attack from happiness, which I guess is the best kind of panic attack? it's definitely the most adorable kind -- I want to keep her as a pet! And the sloth, too! Can you imagine a better life? Just you, Kristen Bell, and a sloth hanging out on a jungle gym, drinking juice and doing rolls. Hell yeah. Well, since there are many laws that prevent that from happening, you could always visit the Sloth Orphanage in Costa Rica. YES, I said SLOTH ORPHANAGE.

• San Francisco got its own vegan general store! I knew it would happen, that it could happen. Now, we're just as twee and goofy as Brooklyn or Portland. I plan on shopping there all the time and I'll hate myself every second I'm in doing it. I have no choice! I MUST buy $50 organic fair-trade chia seed açai berry dual-action face mask/dip. I NEED it!

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​Super Bowl Sunday also doubles as National Corn Chip Day, National Cheap Beer Day, and National Sloppy Joe Day. But if you, or your partner, aren't an expert in Super Bowl Day cooking, head to a bar instead. These bars will give you guaranteed viewing of Super Bowl 2012, and perhaps food slightly better than the average:
 
Tres, 130 Townsend: San Francisco's biggest tequila bar still has a private room available for tequila tasting and screening of the Super Bowl. If you are a Patriots fan, book this room so you can hide your after-party from the rest of us.

Ace's is a sanctuary for New York Giants fans.

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Ace's, 998 Sutter: A Giants fan's haven, the "only Giants bar in San Francisco," is offering free BBQ and five flat-screen TVs with surround sound.

Jasper's Corner Tap & Kitchen, 401 Taylor: The first 20 guests get automatic entrance to win "big" prizes. Serving $2 fries, $2 sliders, and $2 High Lifes, plus pulled pork slider, hummus, chicken wings, and mini corn dogs foir $3 to $6.

Public House, 24 Willie Mays: From 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., this TV-laden AT&T Park bar will be selling $5 Bloody Marys and Mimosas. A post-game happy hour goes from 4 to 6 p.m., serving half-price bar bites and $3 cask ales, as well as well cocktails and select draft beers and wines for $5.

Giordano Brothers, 303 Columbus and 3108 16th St.: Pittsburgh-style meat-bomb sandwiches for $7 and six TVs. Opens at 11:30 a.m.More >>

Lou Bustamante

The Rock & Rye Old Fashioned with the Rock & Rye Hot Toddy in back

​When Greg Lindgren and Jon Gasparini first opened up Rye Bar, the pair researched all the possible ways to use rye whiskey in cocktails, but it was the lost classic American liqueur "rock and rye" that really piqued their interest. This combination of cinnamon, clove, fresh and dried citrus peels, and the medicinal herb horehound, steeped in rye and sweetened with rock candy, was a popular remedy for colds in the early 1900s.

After some experimentation -- and some unpleasantly astringent and powerful batches due to the oversteeping of the horehound -- Lindgren perfected the recipe by using horehound candy in place of the herb and to sweeten the mix. Originally designed to go into a Rock & Rye Hot Toddy ($10, rock and rye liqueur, hot water, cinnamon stick, citrus), the spiced liqueur also works cold in the Rock & Rye Old Fashioned ($10), which is simply the liqueur, chilled with bitters.

The mix isn't always the same, as Lindgren and Gasparini encourage the bar staff to add their own flourishes when replenishing the infusion at the end of the night, meaning that it can get more spice in the winter and fruit in the summer.

On a recent cold and foggy night, I wasn't sure I could feel the purported curative effects of the horehound in the toddy, but the warmth certainly clung all the way home.

Rye Bar, 688 Geary (at Leavenworth), 474-4448

Jonathan Kauffman

Kay Cheung's taro puffs, pretty much the best thing I ate there.

​Rice Plate Journal is a yearlong project to canvass Chinatown, block by block, discovering the good, the bad, and the hopelessly mediocre. Maximum entrée price: $10.

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Chris Arentz

Avedano's porchetta di testa: don't think about its creation, only about its consumption.

​A tip: Veer away from graphic photo essays involving the step-by-step recounting of the porchetta di testa creation process. Typical porchetta is the body of a pig, boned and gutted and then rolled with stuffing and carefully orchestrated layers of fat, skin, salt, and seasoning until it's a tightly bound log of porky flavor. Its sibling porchetta di testa is the pig's head (testa being Italian for head) similarly deboned, with the nose, ears, skin, and accompanying bits, getting the rolled, bound, and slowly cooked treatment.More >>

Jemima Packington, asparamancer.

​Some days, standing on the shores of the Internet and peering into that great gray horizon of information, as SFoodie does every morning, yields nothing. A few tired rants about school lunches bob on the waves. A flock of juice-cleanse recipes flies overhead, their cawing acute and grotesque. 
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mhaithaca/Flickr

A foie gras terrine with toasted brioche and figs from Jardinière.

​Counting down the days before July 1, when California's foie gras ban takes effect.

Here are two more excuses to eat foie gras this week:

On its à la carte dinner menu, Jardinière is offering a terrine of foie gras with blood orange, Riesling gelée, and hazelnuts ($23). The $120 chef's tasting menu currently posted online also includes loin of venison with chanterelles, wild nettles, and a foie gras crêpe. Or grab a cocktail in the Hayes Valley restaurant's lounge and order a terrine of foie gras with quince conserva and marcona almonds ($24) alongside.

Baker Street Bistro is expressing its Gallitude with an appetizer of pan-seared foie gras with apple compote and figs ($19.50); a salad topped with smoked duck breast, duck gizzard confit, pine nuts, and seared foie gras ($16.50); and a proper Tournedos Rossini ($29), a 19th-century classic from Antoine Careme that places a fat coin of seared foie gras atop pan-roasted beef tenderloin, and rings the beef with red-wine reduction sauce.More >>

Tamara Palmer

Edna's Pecan Crisps.

​Edna's Success of Mountain View bakes from recipes that have been in the family for three generations, all the way back from when company muse Edna Hickman baked for her own Montana eatery. (With its single table, Hickman's Success Cafe was once listed as the Smallest Operating Cafe in the Guinness Book of World Records.)

Hickman's great-granddaughter Mary is behind the immortalizing of her inspiring relative, but Mary's mother Joyce is the one who contributed the recipe for Pecan Crisps. These rectangular bars start their teasing with a buttery, crackly sheen on top. Then there's the cookie base, which tastes mainly of high-quality cinnamon, with some shards of pecans.  It's so memorable that these could have been called Cinnamon Crisps instead.

Edna's are sold in San Francisco at Andronico's and Whole Foods' California Street location, with a wider variety of cookies as well as macaroons and cupcakes available at their many South Bay farmers market appearances. The company bestseller, a frosted cake-like cashew cookie, is also worth a good look, but the texture and subtle flavor of these cinnamon sweets are what will ultimately haunt you.

​Unfortunately, San Franciscans don't have much to look forward to this Superbowl Sunday. We'll have to suffer through deep depression, uncontrollable fits of sobbing, and endless commercials for bland beer. Thankfully, there are two East Bay beer events this Saturday that should restore your faith in humanity. Or lead to a Sunday Superhangover. The details for Saturday's big beer game, below:

Drake's Hopocalypse Day
Where: Drake's Barrel House,1933 Davis (at Timothy), San Leandro
When: Saturday, Feb. 4, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Cost: Pay per drink
What: Sample Hopocalypse Double IPA (9.3 percent abv, three-bottle limit) on cask, draft, and in bottles to-go. Also try the limited, brewery-only release of the new Hopocalypse "Black Label" Triple IPA (12.5 percent abv, two bottle limit). There will be live music, brewery tours, wood-fired pizza from Firetrail, and smoked meats from Bourbon Bros. BBQ. Drake's has warned us ..."'the end is beer."

Beer Revolution Second Anniversary Party
Where: Beer Revolution, 464 3rd St. (at Broadway), Oakland, (510) 452-2337
When: Saturday, Feb. 4, noon to 11 p.m.
Cost: Pay per drink
What: In their first year, Beer Revolution came out of the gate as a fully-formed beer destination. At the 2-year mark, they have firmly solidified themselves as a premiere craft beer destination. Expect 47 taps of special brews and bottle specials. Numerous breweries have crafted one-off beers for the event, including:

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