San Francisco Food Blog

Scanwiches

Prettier than the rose window at Chartres. Tastier, too.

​Since 2008, John Chonko's blog Scanwiches has been making us laugh. His beautiful scans of sandwich cross-sections against black backgrounds sometimes look like edible cathedral windows, but in his singular, unwavering focus -- just sandwiches, run through a scanner, with no commentary aside from brief captions -- we've always sensed a mild, straight-faced rebellion in the face of office drudgery. We can imagine ourselves, five years ago, cautiously walking down a 30th floor hallway in a tall building in the Financial District to an isolated scanner, paper-wrapped Toaster Oven smoked turkey in hand, eager to glean a small chuckle. The blog's design is clean and austere; it mirrors the scanner's honest, simple mission: to offer "scans of sandwiches for education and delight".

In September, a few months removed from some biting accusations of fraud, Scanwiches reported it had been invited to ROFLCon II, a major Internet culture conference set to take place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in April 2010. We think Chonko should come west and scan some San Francisco specials -- a wet torta from Los Picudos, a shawarma from Old Jerusalem, maybe the drippy pork belly bocadillo at Contigo. Any other ideas?

An 800-pound roasted steer was butchered in the museum's atrium. It was a first for SFMOMA, as well as for the excited crowd assembled for Saturday night's Futurist banquet: blood dripping on the floor as an 800-pound roasted steer was butchered on a huge wooden table in the middle of the atrium.

Knives, cleavers, and hacksaws were flying, all called into play by the all-woman brigade as onlookers stood within inches -- risking spilling their own blood, as they had minutes before when an enormous iron spit was pulled from the beast, after it had been bicycled in from the street. Clumps of the rare beef were plopped on a conveyor belt that ran through the room.

A female cadre of butchers hacked up the beast.​It was the central spectacle of a rather spectacular event, part of a showcase devoted to Futurism entitled Metal + Machine + Manifesto = Futurism's First 100 Years. The carved beef eventually reached its audience in decorous slices, served on Tartine bread with mole sauce, bean foam, and arugula salad.

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OPENrestaurant, an art collective of restaurant professionals, greeted attendees with an array of unusual cocktails -- including, besides the inevitable absinthe-based one, an alcoholic gazpacho (this blogger's favorite), and one made with avocado and topped with candied orange rind that ate like a mousse. Edibles -- some more edible than others -- featured bruschetta topped with porcini foraged (illegally) in the Presidio, beet gelée and goat cheese molded into a (beeting) heart, hollowed-out tomatoes stuffed with halibut, taco cones stuffed with more beef, and (the most delicious dish of the evening), a stew made from city vegetables topped with pesto.

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All this was consumed with a backdrop of projected found images (interspersed with video footage of the butchers and cooks at work), industrial noise, Italian speeches, and music. Attendees included filmmaker Les "Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers" Blank, Davia Nelson of PBS' The Kitchen Sisters, Jonathan Marlow of San Francisco Cinematheque, and Hannah Eaves of Link TV.

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squash/Flickr

A scene at an OPENrestaurant event from last year.

​How do you celebrate a movement that glorified war, violence, and contempt for women? If you're in San Francisco, you subvert it.

Next week, when the banquet for SFMOMA's commemoration of the 100-year anniversary of Futurism drops, the approximately 400 attendees will be treated to a spectacle that, in part, will be a repudiation of the very thing it's supposed to honor. As reported in the Chronicle yesterday, the banquet, from the arty food collective OPENrestaurant, will be shower guests with panforte drifting to the floor via parachute, and pass nibbles with wry names designed to take the piss out of America's food industry. The event is called OPENfuture: Spinning Marinetti's Wheels, and promises to be a "clamorous" night of "sounds, smells, and constant motion."

Though the original Futurist Manifesto appeared in 1909, F.T. Marinetti's 1932 Futurist Cookbook is one of the movement's best-known documents. The problem for moma organizers? It glorifies Fascism.

SFMOMA assocuiate curator of public programs Frank Smigiel approached OPENrestaurant's Sam White, Jerome Waag, and Stacie Pierce to engineer the banquet. "At first we were a bit hesitant," White told SFoodie. "The Futurist Cookbook is weirdly pro-war and kind of fascist, a big turn off from what were into. At first we were like, we're not sure. Then we did the research, and saw that a lot of its ideas are fundamental ideas about art and life. It gave us a lot of room to come up with something that's a response." In his day, Marinetti rejected Italian food traditions (he wanted to ban pasta, for instance), anything that smacked of a Romantic, pastoral idyll of food.

Looking for some online food entertainment? The Carnivore Reflux animated video (embedded below) recently caught our attention on Twitter, but it's been in circulation for a good three months. If you're at work, get your headphones ready: The flatulence and smacking noises throughout this cautionary tale might disturb your fellow cube dwellers.

It's a self-described barbaric fable by Eddie White and James Calvert, a seven-minute ode to overeating, with creepy images of a slew of living and dead animals, coupled with excellent voice talent. The chefs are a pack of culinary barbarians, who hunt down and kill their ingredients on a daily basis. Dark, at times brutal, and just plain gross, it's like being in a slaughterhouse, complete with giant grinding tubes for meat. On Twitter, local pro chef and blogger linecook described the kitchen portrayal as "pretty accurate," which makes us crave a sensible vegan soup or salad for lunch.

4505 Meats

Guaranteed to make any room feel more porcine.

​Gotta get that pork poster! For those who can't afford to bid for the chance to have 4505 Meats' chef Ryan Farr conduct an in-house butchery demo (an S.F. Street Food Festival auction item), consider shelling out a little over $35 for a limited-edition letterpress porcine piggy poster that can find a permanent place in your home. For swine fans, the images could be a natural addition to a kitchen, office, or other wall space. Farr worked with Hatch Print -- one of the oldest working letterpress shops in the country -- to come up with the series of three prints.

Peruse the posters at the 4505 Web site, but keep in mind that it can be tough to choose. For this blogger, there was something about "Crispity Clouds of Porkaliciousness" that caused it to barely edge out "Frisco Pig Was a Friend of Mine." though "Pork, The Noun" wasn't without its charms. Each poster measures about 14" by 22", and is signed and fingerprinted (in lard) by Farr. Once you place an order, expect a Pay Pal invoice from 4505. The price includes the cost of shipping in a secure mailing tube.

That lard fingerprint is a cool concept. No telling if a picture framer will feel the same way.

This Is Why You're Fat

Strangely appealing: The Lord of The Rings.

Chuck that snack of organic local strawberries and settle in for the ride. The Web site This Is Why You're Fat (tagline: Where Dreams Become Heart Attacks) is scary, icky, and funny, all at once. What is it? A reader-submitted catalog (launched by Jessica Amason and Richard Blakeley) of the most mouthwatering, calorie-packed, and LDL cholesterol-laden eats ever cooked up. Sure, Time was all over the site earlier this year. But as biotch diva Christina Aguilera likes to say, it keeps gettin' better -- including a submission by local food blog Yumsugar for The Pursuit of Awesomeness Ice Cream Sandwich (brownies filled with berry-studded ice cream). And in March, publisher HarperStudio announced a book deal for the site, with hints of a possible TV adaptation.

We're guessing that all thoughts of dieting -- or even moderate consumption -- go right out the window of that double-wide when eaters scroll through entries like The Pink Panther, a brioche bun with cotton candy filling. Chili cheese fries are, if anything, a once-a-year treat, yet the sight of The DUI -- French fries covered with chili, cheese, carne asada, and pastrami -- make you wonder how many drinks it would take to soak up so much fatally fatty goodness. Same with The Luther Rory, a ground sirloin patty topped with American cheese, bacon, peanut butter, with a couple of Krispy Kremes as a bun.

Thanks to Time magazine and its infernal time-wasting "50 Top 10 Lists of 2008," I've discovered a genius filmmaker called Adam Pesapane, a digital artist who calls himself PES.

Time featured, as its #2 Viral Video of 2008, a lovely bit of magic called Western Spaghetti, less than two minutes of stop-motion animation in which aluminum foil becomes olive oil, Rubik's cubes are sliced into a hot pan, pin cushions are tomatoes, and Pickup Sticks and rubber bands are pasta uncooked and al dente. It never gets old for me! (And, stop the presses, it's just been announced as an Official Selection for the 2009 Sundance Festival.)

At the PES website, there's a whole world of the 35-year-old Pesapane's work to discover. Recommended for foodies: the colorful, brisk Cake Countdown, the mesmerizing My Pepper Heart, and Rogue Peanut.

For foodies and non-foodies alike, Roof Sex will bring a blush to your cheeks. Even his commercial work (for Bacardi, Nike, many others) demands many viewings. --Meredith Brody

This weekend, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts plays host to Tango Ceviche, an exploration of Argentine tango and Peruvian ceviche. The afternoon will combine instruction in both in order to, in the organizers' words, "discover the sublime truth that raw fish and a close embrace share a common settlement."

Co-presenter the Red Poppy Art House Annex has explored the intersection of food and dance before with previous installments of Tango Ceviche as well as the equally intriguing sounding Sushi Soukous. The next Tango Ceviche takes place this Saturday, September 6 from 1-4 p.m. at YBCA's Room for Big Ideas. Admission is $20 ($15 for YBCA members), and participants are encouraged to bring their own wine and beer, not to mention dancing shoes. Visit the YBCA's events page for more info. —Tamara Palmer

By Tamara Palmer

Tasty writer Melissa Price plans to dish up food poems on-demand at the crafty Frankenart Mart in the Richmond District on Sunday from 4-6 p.m.

She’ll ask some questions in order to create verse just for you, timed via egg timer to 10 minutes. I told her some of my favorites (color, food, number), as well as my birth date and decided which animal I’d like to be, if I ever get the chance. The following poem emerged in return, poppin’ fresh out the kitchen.

Direct from the Slow Food on Film Festival 2008 in Bologna, Italy, Slow Food San Francisco invites you to the U.S. film premiere of Strawberry Fields at the Delancey Street Theater (600 Embarcadero) this Friday, July 25. In the film -- which snagged the Special Mention of Honor for Best Documentary -- Israeli filmmaker Ayelet Heller chronicles a day in the life of Palestinian farmers in Gaza. More from the Slow Food folks:

"When we think of Gaza on the Mediterranean Sea we remember the news reports about Israel's decision in 2005 to disengage from the strip and withdraw its settlers....and all the drama that that entailed. But how often do we, so far away, get a real sense of life on the ground, for ordinary people? What is life like for the more than one million Palestinians in that fertile but troubled strip?"

The screening starts at 6:30 p.m., to be followed by a reception at 9:00 p.m. where some gourmet goodies will be served: Fra'Mani Salumi, Harley Farms Cheese, dessert, and wine by the glass. It'll cost you $15. Buy advance tickets online here.

-- Brian Bernbaum

(Click the image for a full slideshow.)

By Catherine McCulloch

“Milk and cereal, milk and cereal, milk and cereal, milk and cereal...” Artist Ryan Alexiev’s allegory of consumerism gets a little soggy at his new exhibit at the gallery Mission 17. On the other hand, I left the exhibit with cheerios on the brain.

Alexiev, a San Francisco local, explores the history and social implications of cereal consumption through his art. The didactic nature of his work makes this exhibit feel like a lesson on mass consumerism with an emphasis on advertising. Alexiev creatively uses different forms of media to get his message across, and some of his work is borderline genius. It’s one of those exhibits you walk through and wonder if the artist might be just a tad insane.