Kauffman's Five: This Week in Food Bloggery

By Jonathan Kauffman Fri., May 7 2010 at 4:20 PM

Categories: Kauffman, The Week in SFoodie

This week's favorite bits from SFoodie and beyond.

1. A celebrity panel assembled by Brian Yaeger to do a blind tasting of pale ales found that, oh yeah, our Sierra Nevada still shows well against the competition. If you've been avoiding Sierra Nevada because it's ol' familiar, reread Roxanne Webber's great Chow piece from last year about the brewery's struggle to stay relevant in the era of saffron-spiced Belgian double IPAs.

2. Tim Luym's recipe for kinilaw ceviche with mackerel, coconut vinegar, and pork belly sounds amazing. Now why does the former Poleng chef want to open a nuevo-Filipino restaurant in San Mateo instead of the Mission? That's harder to take than losing Nate Appleman to New York.

3. Bite o' the week: Speaking of pork belly, the first time I ate The Alembic's was after drinking two of their Vasco de Gamas, so I didn't trust my memory of how good it was. And then I ate it again last week. Damn. Now accompanied by escarole and spring's tiniest baby turnips, the pork is a reminder that seasonal/local and experimental aren't antithetical.

4. No, oh God, no. Yes.

5. Tamara Palmer, resident kombucha expert, posts a comprehensive guide to Bay Area kombucha taps, SCOBY sources, happy hours, and local bottlers. It all makes me miss my old SCOBY, which is thriving in its new dads' home in Seattle, unable to make the move to San Francisco with me. Perhaps it's time to bring home a new one.

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