San Francisco Food Blog

J. Birdsall

By noon, fire crews had taped off the entrance.

​A grease fire broke out in the kitchen at hallowed Financial District restaurant Tadich Grill (240 California at Front) late this morning. By noon, fire crews were on the scene and the blaze was deemed under control, but the restaurant was closed. No word on when it will reopen. Nextdoor neighbor Perbacco was still open for business and apparently unaffected.

Check out additional pics of the blaze at SFist.

Guess who might get axed?

After its grilled-chicken promo with Oprah got burned, KFC has decided to try out a new recipe: direct outreach to fans. In a campaign that launched yesterday, the fast-food chicken maker is searching for what it called the new face of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Sorry, Colonel: Your beaming, slightly irascible visage might just be scrapped for that of a real, live person.

From now till July 7, you can upload a video of yourself to a KFC MySpace page. Describe why you're the company's ultimate fan, and you win fast-food chicken for life - more than $13,000 in gift checks. (Of course, start cashing those checks for daily buckets of Extra Crispy, and you might be forced to recalculate your expected life span. Just sayin'.) You'll also have the chance to, according to a company press release, "represent KFC as the next American icon, potentially even appearing in future KFC advertising." Watch out, Jared: Your fat-pants shtick for Subway might soon be eclipsed by some new talent just itching to break out the chicken dance in a future campaign.

Three finalists will be announced July 25. Beginning August 1, the public votes for its favorite. Meanwhile, catch the would-be Colonel killers at MySpace.

Our first reaction when we saw that Alan Richman anointed three local restaurants as serving one of America's 25 best pizzas in GQ -- Pizzeria Delfina, Gialina Pizzeria, and A16 -- was pride in our hometown: Cool! That's 12 percent of the best pies around!

Richman boasted of visiting 10 different cities -- and going deep into their outlying areas -- ultimately racking up, he said, 20,000 miles. (Hometown New York got 5 out of 25. Big surprise.)

Like his earlier pieces on the best burgers and best sandwiches, he anointed a specific pie for each place: at Pizzeria Delfina, it's the panna pie, "priced at a remarkable $10". We talked to Laura at Delfina, who said "Awesome!" when we told her about Richman's article. She hadn't seen or heard anybody mentioning the piece, but she did notice a lot of panna pies being ordered. "If you eat meat," she told us, "and you get sausage or pepperoni on the panna pie, it's just magical."

A new take-out and eat-in shop called Beautifull (3401 California at Laurel, 728-9080) opened last Thursday in Laurel Village. The space recently housed a Cuban coffeehouse (Cafe Lo Cubano), and before that a beloved neighborhood greasy spoon called Miz Brown's Feed Bag.

Seeking foodie glamour

With plans to roll out a daily farmers' market, the struggling Westfield Metreon may be counting on catching a glint of the Ferry Building 1:PlaceType>'s foodie glamour to stir up buzz. A kickoff event planned for next Friday, May 15, is set to launch the Island Earth Farmers Market, a collection of some 50 vendors who'll be peddling produce, wines, baked goods, and prepared foods like organic dim sum, empanadas, and pastries. Free curbside service will let office workers shop during lunch, then have their swag loaded into their cars on the way home

Organizer Mark Brett told SFoodie the market will sprawl over two rooms on the ground floor along the Metreon's Mission side, once home to the Discovery Channel store. Vendors include Catalan Family Farm, Alive! raw foods, Panorama Baking, Phoenix Pasticceria, and biodynamic Frey Vineyards. There'll be crafts, too, including glass and jewelry

In fact, Brett may feel more at home with nonfood vendors - he's never actually run a farmers' market, but has managed mall kiosks as well as road and trade shows. We get the feeling the folks at CUESA (organizers of the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market), aren't exactly worried about the looming competition.

De Lung: Cramped no more

Love the Dirt Bombs from Jasmine Rae? If all goes well, you'll be able to devour 'em later this year in the brand-new bakery and retail café owner Jasmine de Lung is planning, near the yet-to-be-unveiled Southern Exposure complex at 20th Street and Florida. For three years, Jasmine Rae has been operating out of a 600-square-foot space behind Coffee Bar on Bryant. The new bakery promises to be almost three times bigger, with a retail shop and outdoor courtyard where hipsters can hang with their laptops. Expansion will allow the 27-year-old, self-taught de Lung to add new baked goods. "We'll be doing some pretty unusual things," she hinted. "Chances are you won't see these things anywhere else," she said, including what she described as "challenging some concepts." The wholesale biz (de Lung sells to places like Ritual and Harvest & Rowe) won't change. We can't wait to try the new stuff - as long as we can still start the day with one of those deliciously clammy, donut-like Dirt Bombs. Mmmm, donut-like.

Animal Protection & Rescue League

Jardiniere diners brush past protestors

Did an anti-foie gras demonstration at Jardiniere backfire on protestors? A handful of animal-rights activists picketed the plush Hayes Valley restaurant Saturday night, demanding it permanently 86 foie gras from the menu. But according to Jardiniere general manager Greg Rowen, the demo actually spurred some diners to order the enlarged fatty duck livers in apparent sympathy with the restaurant.

Erin Evans, spokesperson for San Rafael-based In Defense of Animals (IDA), said 10 to 15 protestors showed up at Jardiniere, armed with signs and a roving video monitor showing secret footage of alleged abuse at a California foie gras facility. According to Evans, IDA targeted Jardiniere because chef-owner Traci des Jardins once expressed sympathy for the plight of foie gras ducks, and even temporarily removed the luxe item from the restaurant's menu. "She was actually an outspoken person and she kind of turned around," Evans said. In March, SF supervisors passed a symbolic resolution commending city eateries that pass on foie gras. A statewide ban takes effect in 2012.

Des Jardins was unavailable for comment. But Jardiniere manager Rowen told SFoodie that IDA and an affiliate group - San Diego-based Animal Protection & Rescue League - had been in contact with him for weeks, threatening to stage a protest unless he nixed foie gras. Rowen said he counted nine protestors at Saturday's demo. "They were all very nice," he said, though their efforts were apparently kind of a flop. "We sold more foie gras that night," he said, describing a party of eight who made their way through the protestors, sat down, and ordered eight foie gras terrines as appetizers.

Take a good look

Plans for a revamped Emporio Rulli Gran Caffe in the Marina have gotten more extensive than first planned. The cavernous space at Chestnut and Steiner was already due for a makeover that'd take the lush (and frankly dated) Edwardian-ish space with its grand pastry case into the post-salumi age, reborn as Rulli Risto-Bar. The concept pays homage to Italy's casual wine-and-snack joints, with a whiff of upscale Marina. Now, even more structural changes promise to radically change the place. Owner and pastry maestro Gary Rulli -- with input from Italian-born exec chef Angelo Auriana -- has decided to remove the pastry case entirely, replacing it with a wall of wine bottles. Plans call for an antique Berkel meat slicer -- the restaurant world's fetish du jour -- to be on full display. Auriana and chef de cuisine Massimo Covello are already trying out sophisticated new small plates (word is the lobster and roasted beet salad with burrata is killer). Rulli Risto-Bar's full unveiling is slated for July, after a late-June closing.

America's most hated?

Activist icon Alice Waters has come in for harsh criticism in recent weeks in both bloggerdom and the national press -- Eater SF documents the vitriol here, and here -- including an apparently erroneous incident that had Waters throwing a hissy fit at Thomas Keller's Per Se. Criticism of the Chez Panisse founder is hardly new, but we're sensing something novel: highly personal attacks aimed like sucker punches.

What's going on? Vanity Fair contributor David Kamp, who wrote critically about Waters in The United States of Arugula, told SFoodie he thinks the attacks are over the top and unfair. "She deserves critique but not vitriol," Kamp said, giving likely reasons for the hate. First, Waters was upfront about lobbying -- unsuccessfully as it turns out -- the Obamas to name an activist chef, a slow foodie who'd thoroughly green the White House kitchens. Then there was the comment in January by the predictably mouthy Anthony Bourdain, describing something very "Khmer Rouge" about Alice. "He blew open the doors" to the current hate spate, Kamp said.

Kamp hasn't spoken personally with Waters since his book came out, but calls her a trooper when it comes to unflattering press. "She's able to take criticism but is not oblivious to it," he said, suggesting that the Khmer Rouge dig was a particularly inaccurate blow. "She's more Le Creuset pot than Pol Pot."

peter_r

Jeremy Fox: Worked It

Confine seriously kickass chefs in a tight space, add cocktails and the superheated buzz around the James Beard Awards and what do you get? Two words: Stripper pole. Ubuntu chef and Beard nominee Jeremy Fox admitted to SFoodie this morning that things got so off the chain last night in Manhattan superchef David Chang's party bus on the way to the awards ceremony, that Fox found himself doing a couple of turns on the stripper pole. "Something compelled me," Fox said in a tone that seemed to combine sheepishness and the effects of a hangover. The party began at Chang's Momofuku Ssam Bar in the East Village and stopped at down-homey bbq joint Daisy May's before dropping the chef-nominees off at the awards ceremony. Along the way, Fox admitted, drinks were consumed. The bearded and adorable Fox (nominated for the Pacific region's best chef) told SFoodie he didn't really mind losing out to Cyrus's Doug Keane--sort of. "It's a weird combination of relief and disappointment," he said. "If you win you gotta go up and talk in front of a lot of people." Which is much scarier than, say, shaking your ass in front of a lot of drunk chefs on a party bus.

Jeremy Fox called to protest what he suggested were inaccurate characterizations in this post. The quotes are accurate, he said, and he admitted to busting moves on the stripper pole, but he objected to the insinuations that he -- or anyone else on Chang's party bus -- was drunk. Or hungover, for that matter: Fox said his phone voice next morning was the result of getting up early for phone meetings. He said he's worked hard to build his reputation as a serious, hard-working chef and resented what he called an attempt to be funny at his expense. --J. Birdsall

Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan sounded nonchalant this morning when describing last night's Beard Award win. The Berkeley author and J-School prof snagged the writing award for In Defense of Food, which disses twentieth-century food science while getting all passionate about real food. "Look, it's wonderful to be recognized by that community," Pollan (who previously scored a Beard win for 2006's The Omnivore's Dilemma) told SFoodie, in a voice that sounded either humble or, well, a tad unimpressed. "It's not one of those awards that changes your life or comes with a cash prize, but it's very nice to receive it." Unable to attend the awards ceremony in New York City last night, Pollan learned of his win by text message from a friend. So how does a celebrated author celebrate a Beard award? The prix fixe at Chez Panisse? Maybe. "I think that's a great idea," Pollan said, but don't count on seeing him slurping the Tuscan fish soup on tonight's menu: He's too busy working.

Douglas Keane

Douglas Keane of Cyrus Surprise Winner for Best Chef, Pacific, and Nate Appleman's Third Time is Charm as He Wins Best Rising Star Chef

At last night's James Beard Awards, in something of an upset, Douglas Keane of Cyrus in Healdsburg won Best Chef, Pacific, over fellow nominees Jeremy Fox (Ubuntu, Napa), Loretta Keller (Coco 500, San Francisco), David Kinch (Manresa, Los Gatos), and Daniel Patterson (Coi, San Francisco). Most of the nominees, all of whom we spoke to last week, thought that Kinch would win -- Keane himself said "I think David may be the best chef in the country." 

The highest-profile closing announced this month was that of Jack Falstaff (598 2nd Street at Brannan), which shuts after service on May 9th. The restaurant is home to well-regarded chef Jonnatan Leiva, who may be moving over to currently-closed-for-renovations Plumpjack Café - or not. We had a wonderful dinner there once, seated next to Willie Brown, who was eating fried chicken (as we were) and talking about securing stem cell research funds with his companions. Gavin Newsom (whose family co-owns the Plumpjack group of restaurants and related businesses) swept in with a group of attractive young people - he was between marriages at the time. He came over to Brown's table, and we were the inadvertent witnesses to a fascinating exhibition of Good-Old-and-New-Boy mayoral joshing.

Brick, 1085 Sutter (at Larkin) - re-opening as a branch of Fly Bar
Café Majestic, 1500 Sutter (at Gough)
Ginger's Trois, 256 Kearny (at Sutter)
Terrace at the Ritz-Carlton, 600 Stockton (at Pine) - now available for private party rental only
Tortas El Primo, 3242 22nd Street (at Mission)

Jennifer Sauer

Chef Jeremy Fox

The James Beard Awards (popularly known as the Oscars of the food world) will be awarded Monday, May 4. This year all five chefs nominated for the category of Best Chef: Pacific - an area that covers California and Hawaii -- come from the Bay Area: Jeremy Fox of Ubuntu in Napa, Douglas Keane of Cyrus in Healdsburg, Loretta Keller of Coco500 in San Francisco, David Kinch of Manresa in Los Gatos, and Daniel Patterson of Coi in San Francisco.

Conversations with all five of them this week revealed them to be a remarkably collegial and generous bunch. When these chefs say that it's an honor to be nominated alongside each other, and they'd be happy if any of them won, you believe them. They're also looking forward to eating in NYC - one hot place, Corton, nominated this year for Best New Restaurant, is hosting three of them.

David Kinch said, regarding his chances, "I'm not holding my breath. Everyone who's nominated this year I can call my friend - it's a really cool group to be included in. Jeremy Fox is one of my old guys - I'm very proud, like a father to him." He's leaving for New York "after service on Saturday, taking the red-eye. We get off the plane and go straight to brunch at Prune - I've never been there. I'll be going with Jeremy. And we're having dinner at Corton - partnered with Drew Nieporent, Paul Liebrandt is just doing solid, delicious food. I'm also looking forward to a couple of off-the radar Japanese places that I'm going to try. One on-the-radar one that I'm also going to is Yakitori Totto."

Kinch is the name that comes up most often when the chefs prognosticate the winner. Douglas Keane is nominated for the third year in a row. He lost to Traci des Jardins of Jardiniere in 2007 and Craig Stoll of Delfina in 2008 - San Francisco is on a roll. He laughs "Always a bridesmaid!," and says "I think David Kinch may be the best chef in the country." He adds "I know Loretta, I know David very well, Daniel I've done events with, and Jeremy - it's a great honor to be included. I try not to read too much into the awards. All the accolades are great - they're fun, icing on the cake, and help bring in business - but we do no more than 85 covers every night, and we're only as good as the last meal." He'll be away from Napa only 48 hours, and looks forward to "trying some dim sum in Chinatown."

In his blog today, Bauer ponders a reader's question as to why, at a restaurant that focused on "very local, farm friendly, organic and sustainable" food, "the wines were predominantly French and Italian." Let's take his responses point by point.

First, Bauer opines that "wines from Chile, Spain or Australia may offer more value per dollar than the California counterparts." True enough, but the wines at the restaurant in question are, as at many of our market-driven, otherwise locavore places, French and Italian.

Next, he suggests that, since "many of these wines are unfamiliar to the average consumer," restaurants can, for example, mark up a Michele Chiarlo Arneis higher than they could a bottle of California Chardonnay. Sounds good in theory, but I don't believe I've ever seen a wine list where local and imported wines had different markups. Most restaurants around here sell bottles for three times the wholesale price, which is double the undiscounted retail list price. (As far as I'm concerned, anything higher is a ripoff.)

This year, as usual, restaurants are offering all sorts of special meals for Mother's Day.

Thanks to an article by Roxanne Webber on Chow, I discovered Veggie Trader, a site that helps people swap or sell their home-grown fruits and vegetables. Since the plants in our yard produce more Meyer lemons, figs, and rosemary than we could ever consume ourselves, I thought it would be a great way to get some other fruit for free.

SARDI - Greg Baker

Well, think again. A few minutes after I posted a listing looking to swap some of our Meyer lemons for whatever people might have to offer, I got a message from a moderator saying, "it looks like you are in the Bay Area apple moth quarantine zone. You probably aren't aware of this, but unfortunately this comprehensive quarantine is in effect for many parts of the Bay Area and prohibits people from removing most homegrown produce from their property. Nuts and seeds are probably fine, but lemons are definitely under quarantine."

There'll be plenty for both foodies and music lovers to enjoy at the Great American Food and Music Fest, a one-day event running from noon to 10 p.m. on June 13 at the Shoreline Ampitheatre in Mountain View.

Mission Beach Cafe

Fans of Mission Beach Cafe's pastry chef Alan Carter's pie crust now have another reason besides dessert to visit the restaurant on Tuesday nights. In addition to the enticing, frequently-changing seasonal New American menu from chef Tom Martinez, Mission Beach is offering three savory pot pies.

Photo by Rui Ornelas

Gather ye fattened duck or goose livers while ye may.

The thrice-weekly Berkeley Farmers' Markets are now the first in the nation to completely eliminate all plastic bags and packaging. This is part of their "Zero Waste" campaign, recycling and composting all materials generated at the markets.

Coming up with a list of exactly 100 top restaurants out of the over 1700 in the Chronicle's review database must necessarily involve some tough choices, probably even some arbitrary ones. The first steps, however, seem simple. You'd start the list with the eight four-star places, and then add the 21 that have three-and-a-half stars. The hard part would be choosing among the remaining restaurants to fill out the list.

Which raises the question, why is this year's list missing five of the Chron's three-and-a-half-star restaurants?

Leaving out Erna's Elderberry House makes sense, since it's not in the Bay Area. Since Chez Panisse is on the list, maybe Chez Panisse Cafe doesn't need to be on there, too. Silks and Dry Creek Kitchen (Healdsburg) got new chefs de cuisine late last year, and Bauer hasn't published updates since.

updated 4/5 at 3pm with a few corrections

The SF Chronicle's annual Top 100 Restaurants list appears in this Sunday's edition. The paper's Web staff is in the course of updating the site, but here's a provisional list of which restaurants have been dropped, and which have taken their place:

OUT
A Cote (Oakland)
Bar Crudo
Bistro Jeanty (Yountville)
Bo's Barbecue (Lafayette)
Cafe Majestic (closed)
Cav
Cucina (San Anselmo)
Ducca
Jai Yun
Junnoon (Palo Alto)
Laiola
O Izakaya
Oliveto (Oakland)
Plumed Horse (Saratoga)
Poleng Lounge
Rubicon (closed)
Shanghai 1930
Silks
Slow Club
Tartine Bakery
Terzo

A mixed bag of San Francisco restaurant closures for March: two neighborhood Thai spots, a vodka bar offering over a hundred different vodkas on Belden Place, a relatively short-lived Hawaiian place in a Japantown mall, and Bong Su, a glamorous upscale Vietnamese restaurant, pictured at right, whose excellent cocktails graced our Best of SF issue in 2007. (Bong Su's sibling, Tamarine, lives on in Palo Alto.) 

When San Francisco supervisors passed an entirely symbolic resolution last Tuesday commending city restaurants that don't serve foie gras, they were ahead of the state law -- SB 1520, passed in 2004, which essentially bans foie gras production or sale in California, as of July 1, 2012.

Bay Area Takes All Five Nominations for Best Chef in Pacific Region; Boulevard and A 16's Nate Appleman Among Locals Competing For Top Prizes

The prestigious James Beard Awards, given by the James Beard Foundation and often referred to as the Oscars of the restaurant and food media industries, announced their 2009 nominees.

media.newsobserver.com

Where do you go for entrails, chiles, and bacony goodness after you've been to Vietnam, Uzbekistan, and Colombia? Why, San Francisco, of course!

European countries have been complaining for generations about the use of their place names, such as Burgundy and Champagne, for American wines. In Europe, only wines from a specific place can use its name, and even then often often only if the winemaker follows various other rules for the appellation.

Pursuant to a 2006 agreement between the U.S. and the E.U., the U.S. was to take steps to restrict use of the terms Burgundy, Chablis, Champagne, Chianti, Claret, Haut Sauterne, Hock, Madeira, Malaga, Marsala, Moselle, Port, Rhine, Sauterne, Sherry, Tokay, and retsina on American wine labels. However, the proposal had a gaping loophole: All labels approved prior to March 10, 2006, would be grandfathered in.

The E.U. recently chose not to extend a provision of that agreement allowing the use of the terms chateau, classic, clos, cream, crusted, crusting, fine, late bottled vintage, noble, ruby, superior, sur lie, tawny, vintage, and vintage character on labels of American wines, so those terms will not be permitted on wines imported to Europe after March 9, 2009. It's anyone's guess what percentage of the approximately $500 million worth of wines the U.S. exports to the E.U. annually will be affected, but most of that wine comes from California, so whatever pain ensues will be felt mostly here.

You might have noticed that lots of people in San Francisco think they know all about wine. But very few can claim the title of master sommelier, as can Emily Wines (yes, that is her real last name) of Fifth Floor Restaurant and Lounge (12 Fourth St. at Mission). In fact, Wines made history last year by becoming only the second woman to pass the rigorous Master Sommelier examination and win the prestigious Remi Krug Cup. So it's lucky for wine enthusiasts that Wines on Wine, her biweekly series of classes, is under way once again. At "Wine and Cheese from Cowgirl Creamery" on Wednesday, Feb. 25, students will explore a variety of wines alongside delicious cheese pairings from a local artisan cheesemaker too. Classes cost $40 per person (half off if guests stay for dinner) or $325 per person for the entire 10-course series. The class begins at 6 p.m. Sign up by calling 348-1555. For details and the entire spring schedule, visit www.fifthfloorrestaurant.com.

Via: Obama-Biden Transition Project

The Obama Family

Alice Waters, who has been trying for years to get Presidents from Clinton to Obama to get on board with her vision of fresh, local, seasonal, organic food for all (read her letters to Clinton and Obama here), should be happy: it seems like her efforts are finally bearing fruit. (Pun intended.)