Lara Hata

Methinks El Delfin's caldo de res put on lipstick and had its hair done before this photo shoot, but you get the idea.

​I had a whole seasonal angle in mind for this week's full-length restaurant review of Mexican, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan soups in the Mission. And then, well ... just look out the window. You'll just have to eat soup for the love of it, not its chill-dispelling effects. 

Jonathan Kauffman

Roostertail's rotisserie chicken with salsa verde.

If roast chicken were a newspaper story, it's what we'd call an "evergreen" -- a dish that you can run anytime to fill a hole in the schedule, one that's guaranteed to get a good response. Which is why it was hard to see Roostertail rotisserie, the subject of the Weekly's full-length restaurant review this week, as anything but a smart restaurant. 

Lara Hata

The braised pork belly from Izakaya Yuzuki.

​We are in the era of chocolate makers who import their cacao beans via sailing ship, bartenders making tonic water from cinchona bark, and brewers using leftover bread yeast to make beer. The closer you take your cooking back to the root, the more heartfelt it comes across.

That's the approach taken by Takashi Saito, chef of the new Izakaya Yuzuki -- the subject of the Weekly's full-length review this week. Saito's lovely, thoughtful dishes include pickles fermented in a bed of cultured rice bran, salt flavored with koji (a mold he's culturing in house), and freshly curdled tofu. Dude's even making his own miso. For all the traditions Saito is adhering to, his cooking comes across as of this moment.

When it comes to the dining experience, the restaurant, located in a cursed space on 18th and Guerrero, still has some things to work out. Though service is wonderful, it's not really a proper izakaya, either in its mood or its prices, and the attempt to retain some of the characteristics of a Japanese pub contrasts with the intimate, homey-refined food. But Saito's making food few restaurants in town are capable of, and it's worth waiting out the quirks and inconsistencies to see how his food will keep evolving.

XuRa / Shutterstock

No, it doesn't come in a pill form.

​According to an article this morning in the Bay Citizen, a group of pediatricians at Oakland's Highland Hospital have begun testing out a new tactic for reducing the risk of obesity and diabetes in children: writing prescriptions for fruits and vegetables. It's just one of a number of pilot programs around the country that are using the authority medical doctors have over patients to get people to eat more nutritious food.

Ordering an apple 2x daily isn't the extent of Highland Hospital's prescriptions, reporter Rosa Ramirez writes. Families participating in the program were given produce boxes and required to attend cooking classes to learn how to prepare their medicine.

"There isn't one program that is going to solve the entire dilemma of the diabetes crisis," said Juliette Storch, the chief operating officer at Wholesome Wave [a Connecticut organization promoting produce prescriptions]. For veggie prescription programs to work there must be "interaction and constant communication between the participants and the clinic. It's not enough to write a prescription and say, 'go exercise,'" she said.

Will the program be successful? Why not? It's a more sensible strategy than simply marketing good nutrition or waiting until people get diagnosed with diabetes to prescribe medical treatments. Too bad there's not enough money in the budget of these vegetable prescription programs to buy an endorsement from diabetic Paula Deen.

Kimberly Sandie

Lers Ros's quail with fried garlic and black pepper: Goes with ganache.

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Melissa Barnes

AQ's scallops with parsnips.

​There are restaurant reviews a critic finishes feeling content to have said all that he wants to say about a place. And then there are places like Matt Semmelhack and Mark Liberman's AQ -- the subject of the Weekly's full-length review this week -- where 950 words seems like the roughest sketch, a blurry picture of of a subject whose intricate details are the thing you most want to concentrate on.

Kimberly Sandie

Wo Hing General Store's steamed catfish with black bean sauce.

​It took me a few weeks to sort through my feelings about Charles Phan's new Wo Hing General Store, the subject of this week's full-length restaurant review in the paper. The Slanted Door owner is nationally known for Vietnamese food, but here he's finally applying the Phan treatment -- simple food made with high-quality ingredients, plus great cocktails, wines, and teas -- to homestyle Cantonese cuisine. And by homey we're not just talking about steamed fish with black bean sauce, we're talking scrambled eggs and steamed pork patty.More >>

Lara Hata

Bar Tartine's cured mullet roe on toast.

​If 2010 belonged to Benu, Mission Chinese Food/Commonwealth, and Sons + Daughters, 2011 was all about burgers, barbecue, and ramen. A buzzy group of new-generation food trucks turned into a fleet, and more of us subscribed to the mailing lists of popup restaurants than ever before. After last year's improbable optimism -- how many crazy-ambitious restaurants opened up last year? -- in 2011, the reality of the recession's staying power sunk in.

This year, however, was no slump, food wise. It's just that the pleasures were quieter, more haunting than spectacular. As I was compiling my annual list of my five favorite dishes of the year, I realized how many of my finalists came from places that had been in business for eons, or established restaurants with new chefs. That's not a slam on the many good restaurants that opened this year: It's a reminder of how deep the city's food scene is, and how full of surprises it remains.

In addition to the five dishes listed in the article, here are 10 runners-up, many of which made it onto the 2011 SFoodie's 92:

More >>

Miguel Arias

​In place of a full-length restaurant review, the food lead in this week's edition of the Weekly covers a disturbing battle that's emerging in the Financial District. Food trucks granted permits through the city's new street-food legislation have come up against organized, lawyered-up opposition from nearby restaurants and commercial-real estate owners.

In a San Francisco Board of Appeals hearing last week, the board struck down permits the Department of Public Works had granted to Kasa Indian Truck and Doc's of the Bay, though the two businesses had followed the application guidelines to the letter. This ruling could have significant consequences for every food truck in the city -- especially any of the trucks with street-parking permits in the business district.

The city's new legislation, passed unanimously by the Board of Supervisors in December 2010, was meant to facilitate the expansion of the city's growing food truck scene. Instead, the process is taking three times as long, costs almost as much, and leaves food-truck owners with easily nullified permits. Just as worrisome, the FiDi restaurateurs, who pay extremely high rents and do the bulk of their business during only a few hours a day, see the city's new legislation as privileging one type of small business over another.

Troubling all around.

Lara Hata

Barbecuing kalbi at Jang Soo.

​A couple of months ago, Jang Soo BBQ -- the subject of this week's full-length restaurant review in the paper -- closed for a short spell to change owners and make a few radical changes, which are only visible to those who pass through the front door. Now it's decorated in slate-bricked walls and sparkling chandeliers, and the tables are set with slim-stemmed wooden spoons and chopsticks in place of the standard metal silverware.

New owner Ashley Lee, of Ashley's Cafe in the Inner Richmond, has re-envisioned the Korean restaurant as a San Francisco bistro, slimming down the menu and rotating dishes on and off (and knocking the prices up 25-30 percent, to boot). Her mom's in the kitchen, making all the sauces and pickles herself and preparing some of the most traditional dishes according to Ashley's grandmother's recipes. The cooks haven't yet settled into their new space, and quality can vary widely, but between the house special kalbi, the kimchi stew, and grandmother's pork bossam, it's not hard to feast.