Doggy Bag: Today's Odds and Ends

Cantina revelation: We missed it last Saturday, and, well, it was first published last October (an editor's note explains that, since Mission Loc@l didn't have many readers back then, they decided to re-publish). Still, Wes Enzinna's peek inside El Tin Tan bar on 16th Street is as fresh as anything we've read about the Mission. Nah, it's not remotely about eating. But Enzinna's brief report on this first stop of immigrants from Yucatan is as engaging as our favorite pieces of food and travel writing, illuminating a part of the city that might've existed forever for us as nothing more than a blank façade. Nice job.

Nope: Mission Mission's Allan Hough hearts the chocolate babka at Pal's Take Away. Yep, it's imported from New York, where they know from babka. Gotta say we didn't love the hunk we tried -- the chocolate filling is excessively sweet, Hershey's-bar sweet, and what should be a textural interplay (can't believe we just pulled that out) of shaggy skin and tender crumb was merely doughy. Though Hough suggests that importing it from Brooklyn might not make a difference, we're guessing the journey west pretty much turns the texture to crap. Fail.