​A regular feature in which SFoodie calls a local chef to ask what he or she is putting on the menu that night, and what inspired its creation.

Bix Restaurant's chef de cuisine Erik Lowe was the executive sous-chef at Ame before joining chef Bruce Hill at North Beach's longstanding supperclub, and he's been running the kitchen here for a little more than a year.

Lowe: We're going to be featuring Gulf shrimp for the next few days. There's a company out of Sausalito called Gulfish ― a guy named Jimmy Galle. A lot of the nice restaurants in town have been getting prawns from him. He's donating part of the proceeds from the shrimp to Gulf fishermen, to raise funds to help out with the oil spill.

Tonight we're going to do sort of a shrimp cocktail. But instead of cocktail sauce, we're having a chile and herb aioli served with four chilled gulf prawns, served with sea beans over crushed ice. (Price: $14.95.)

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Phil West of Range.

​A regular feature in which SFoodie calls a local chef to ask what he or she is putting on the menu that night, and what inspired its creation.

Phil West, chef-owner of the Mission bistro Range, sounds much like you'd imagine he would after reading over his menu: thoughtful and sincere, a man who rewards the person who stops to listen to what he has to say. We'd communicated over e-mail before reaching each other on the phone, and he'd been thinking about which of his new dishes was most appropriate to talk about.

His choice: Pork sausage, glazed rib, braised belly with carrot purée, pea shoots, and pickled shallots ($24). More specifically, one part of the dish.

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Premshree Pillai/Flickr

Dennis Leary.

​Every week, SFoodie calls a local chef to ask what he or she is putting on the menu that night, and what inspired its creation.

Dennis Leary is not a man to stand still. Not only did I have to catch the chef between shifts at The Sentinel, his FiDi sandwich shop, and Canteen, where he's working a full Friday-night shift, in the meantime he had to work off a little excess energy at the gym, too. I got in touch with Leary just after he arrived at Canteen and had two hours to prep before dinner service began. Before we got into specifics ― a spring-vegetable salad he's serving tonight ― we first talked about how he puts together nightly specials.

Leary: Specials? They're completely based on what's expedient: what do I have, what do I need to sell. I'm not selling leftovers, but business never goes quite the way you expect, and if it doesn't sell at dinner, it's on the brunch menu.... I'm not waltzing romantically through the farmer's market. I don't have time to do any of that shit.
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Dean Dupuis, mastering pork.

​Every week, SFoodie calls a local chef to ask what he or she is putting on the menu that night, and what inspired its creation.

Dean Dupuis moved from South City Kitchen in Atlanta to Oakland last year to take the executive chef position at Picán.

SFoodie: Anything new appearing on the menu this week?

Dupuis: Yeah, we're going to be serving Shiner Bock-braised Berkshire pork with buttered dumplings, Brussels sprouts, and a truffled ricotta cheese. I've been getting to sample some heritage pigs, playing around with the product, and found this great Berkshire shoulder It's just a tremendous product, fatty and tasty.

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A16

Liza Shaw.

​A new SFoodie feature: Every week, we call a local chef to ask what he or she is putting on the menu that night, and what inspired its creation.

Liza Shaw has been at A16 since 2004 and its executive chef since Nate Appleman's departure in 2009. All it took was a 15-second explanation of the blog post and she launched into the story of a dish she's adding to the menu tonight.

Shaw: So we have this good friend who used to work here as the opening bartender, and now he sometimes helps out as a sommelier. His brother's a chef in Monterey, and they go mushroom foraging. Andrew will call up sometimes and say, Hey, we've got some chanterelles or porcini.

So yesterday he came by with some chanterelles from the Big Sur area. (Foragers never tell you exactly where they find their mushrooms, you know.) We had a lot of leftover bread from the day before, as well as a couple of tubs more ricotta than we could use. So I came up with a dish of excess: bruschetta with chanterelles and ricotta.

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Alex Farnum/Spencer on the Go

​A new SFoodie feature: Every week, we call a local chef to ask what he or she is putting on the menu that night, and what inspired its creation.

Spencer on the Go is the side project of Laurent Katgely, that got a lot of press for taking cart food about as upscale as it could go. In general, you'll find the truck parked opposite Terroir Natural Wine Bar (1116 Folsom at Seventh St.) Wednesday through Saturday nights.

SFoodie: So what are you adding to the menu this weekend?

Katgely: I just introduced a sandwich with lamb cheeks braised with oranges. Lamb cheeks are an item that you don't see anywhere. They're a good thing, too, because you don't have to kill more lambs to get them ― we keep trying to find dishes where we can use every part of the animal, instead of killing the animal just for the rack.

I'm seasoning the cheeks with herbes de Provence and lavender, [searing the meat], then deglazing the pan with oranges, port wine, and red wine. I add stock and then braise the cheeks for two hours.

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Cory Obenour

​A new SFoodie feature: Every week, we call a local chef to ask what he or she is putting on the menu that night, and what inspired its creation.

On Thursday afternoon, I called Cory Obenour, owner and chef of Blue Plate on the edge of Bernal Heights, to see if there was anything new appearing on the menu this weekend. "Today, I was personally craving a lentil soup, because it was so cold and foggy," he said. "I wanted to make it smoky but didn't want to use smoked bacon, so I kept it vegetarian."

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Jessica Boncutter

​SFoodie's launching a new feature: Every week, we're calling a local chef to ask what they're putting on the specials menu that night, and what inspired its creation.

At Bar Jules in Hayes Valley, every dish is a special ― Jessica Boncutter changes both the lunch and dinner menu daily. So when I called her Thursday afternoon, she said, "Tonight, it's so rainy I'm just doing braised oxtails, but tomorrow night, ooh ― I've got a new appetizer."

Tonight's Special: California White Sea Bass Baked in Salt

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