Jonathan Kauffman

903's tsukune sandwich, $8.

​When SFoodie called Mutsumi Takehara, owner of Sandbox Bakery, last week to find out more about 903, the cafe she opened on January 21, we got a funny little message in response. "Well, it just got a little crazy, so we closed for a week to make sure it's perfect," she told our voicemail, laughing.

It seems Bernal Heights residents who have been going to Sandbox for rice burgers and bento boxes were a little too eager to follow the dishes when they moved to the old Maggie Mudd's space, which Takehara took over a few months ago. The opening of 903 has all been a bit of a whirlwind, really. When asked to define the food, Takehara laughed, saying, "Basically anything we want to eat." She laughed again when SFoodie asked whether she had a website. It'll be eat903.com ... someday.

But anyone who's tasted Sandbox Bakery's immaculate pastries knows that Takehara is far more careful a cook than she makes the project sound. After a week-long "tune-up," Takehara re-opened 903 on Saturday night for its first dinner service. As of today, the 15-seat cafe will be be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., with a short break between 2 and 4 p.m.

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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 >>

Radius/Yelp

Radius Restaurant, participating in Dine About Town.

​This past Sunday, Dine About Town -- San Francisco's annual dining promotion -- reappeared, with participating restaurants offering $17.95 lunches and $34.95 three-course dinners from now through January 31.

Along with the usual restaurants barely staving off senescence (hello, Tommy Toy's) and Union Square places that most locals have never set foot in, a few new-ish restaurants -- Bisou, Bottle Cap, Claudine, Cupola, Jasper's Corner Tap, Trace, Txoko -- are participating.

And there are a number of interesting meals to be had among the more established restaurants. This morning, SFoodie reviewed all the menus posted on the Dine About Town website this morning.  Here are the seven that looked the most appealing:


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Jonathan Kauffman

This cheese ball comes with multiple cheeses, sour cream, and chives.

​Every fall, SFoodie's mother used to stock up on pecan-and-parsley-covered cheese balls from a local fundraising drive, which would then emerge from the freezer to appear at card parties and Easter buffets over the course of the year. SFoodie loved them.

When we were speaking to Gordon Edgar, Rainbow Grocery's head cheese buyer, about his favorite new cheeses, he made an offhanded crack about the cheeseballs his counter had introduced last week. The staff have begun mixing cream cheese, herbs, and a few of the cheeses that he'd ordered a little too eagerly -- "They're good cheeses," he insisted, "but they're not selling as quickly we thought." The first batch had already sold out, and he was scoping out the shelves of his coolers to see what else to throw in. A sweep through the bulk bins suddenly seemed like pressing business.

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Bunrab

Just another reason to go to Plow.

​​Maxine Siu and Joel Bleskacek's Plow is deservedly considered one of the best breakfast/brunch spots in the city. Immaculately conceived and executed home fries, lemon-ricotta pancakes worth scuffling over, and dish after dish of homey American breakfast standards fine-tuned to a delectable degree put Plow in the must-eats category in terms of morning meals. More >>

Noah Sanders

Mouth watering, seriously.

​Admittedly, walking in to the new Mission-based branch of Joe Hargrave's Tacolicious feels like stepping through a teleportational nexus into a polished Marina restaurant. Someone on the design team clearly had the grit and grime of the neighborhood taqueria in mind, but married the concept -- and the obviously expansive budget -- with the modern sheen of an IKEA store. More >>

edibleoffice/Flickr

The beehives at Hayes Valley Farm.

​The bees of Hayes Valley Farm have had it rough. In 2010, the first colonies to settle in at the urban farm were slaughtered by a malicious neighbor. Early this year, Karen Peteros of SF Bee-Cause and her crew installed new hives -- triple the number of the last bunch -- and began teaching some of the only hands-on beekeeping classes in the city. But the parcel of land that houses the hives is now going to be developed, so the bees must move again -- this time, off the farm.

Before being evicted, the bees have given SF Bee-Cause a good harvest of honey, Peteros reports. On Sunday, December 18, from noon to 4 p.m., the nonprofit will be at the farm (Laguna beween Oak and Fell), selling its first and last batch of Hayes Valley honey. The price is $10 for a half-pound jar -- a little pricier than at a farmers market, perhaps, but the sale is a fundraiser for the organization's future plans. Those of you who live in Hayes Valley should know: It's also some of the only ultra-local honey you'll be able to buy.

And those plans? "We are currently seeking a new site, on private or public land, where we can have approx 10 colonies and give classes," Peteros writes. If you have a more permanent spot where the hives can park, contact her through the SF Bee-Case website.

Andrew Nilsen

Baia Pasta's durum spinners.

Since this spring, Baia Pasta has been producing thick-walled, golden "spinners" with thick walls and sandpaper-rough ridges and curled spelt ringlets that look as if they've been molded out of fresh clay. But sales have been limited to the Pop-Up General Store events in Bekeley, San Francisco's New Taste Marketplace, and Eat Real Festival. This month, however, owners Renato Sardo and Dario Barbone are finally going legit with a new Oakland production facility and a series of popup dinners at Coffee Bar.

Before moving to the United States six years ago, Sardo was executive director of Slow Food International in Bra, Italy, an organization committed to preserving artisanal foods. Now he's decided to make them. "Three years ago I noticed it was peculiar that among the whole local-food movement no one was making dried pasta artisanally," he says. "If you go to Whole Foods or a specialty grocer they have shelves filled with imported Italian pastas made with wheat from the United States or Canada."

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Jonathan Kauffman

Le Bonta Italiane's Lucca-style cannoli.

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Carina Ost

Trippy eggs, man!

​For those of us unfortunate enough to miss the Haight in its heyday, we feel nostalgia we can't explain every time we're in the neighborhood. In the swinging '60s, we were nothing more than an egg in our mother's ovary waiting to meet our father's sperm. We're glad they made love, not war.

A recent trip to the Alembic reconnected us with that special time. While we were cocktail drinking after a full brunch, we wanted a bit more eggy stuff so we ordered the Pickled Quail Eggs ($2).

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