San Francisco Food Blog

Broadway South of Raleigh, NC/Flickr

For $150, you'll probably be able to hit him with your underwear.

​No dives on this tour. Although Guy Fieri is the Joe the Plumber of the food world, tickets to his Roadshow are urban-elites steep. The only Bay Area appearance for the Guy Fieri Roadshow, produced by his company, Knuckle Sandwich, will be at the San Jose Civic Auditorium Dec. 16. We found tickets ranging in price from $28 to a whopping $718, depending on where you buy 'em.

Stubhub prices are higher, possibly because they're set by sellers, who can ask as much as they want. But Ticketmaster has two packages for those willing to pony up serious dough to see the Diners, Drive-ins and Dives star up close and personal. The "Off Da Hook" package includes a seat on stage, a book, squirt bottle, and preshow meet and greet, all for $253. For $150, the "Kulinary Krew" package gets you the same thing, minus the on-stage seat. But, hey, you'll probably still be close enough to hit Fieri with your bra.

Skanky Indian food did him in, even when douchey antics didn't.

​If anyone who cares doesn't know by now, former pizzaiolo laureate of San Francisco Nate Appleman will not be the next Iron Chef, following Luce chef Dominique Crenn who ended up on the chopping block last week. To be fair, he was bounced out of competition for falling short, not in a test of his butchery talents, dough-stretching, pasta-making, or on-the-spot facility with unique ingredients, but for his inability to devise and cook an authentic five-course Indian meal (his included paneer gnocchi with spinach sauce, aloo gobi, and coconut-marinated fried fish). To be further fair, however, he'd copped quite the swagger after winning the preceding mini-test despite having, in his bragadocious words, "never cooked Indian food in [his] life". Throughout the show's first half, Appleman behaved in a generally snotty and mildly villainous fashion -- seizing an entire basket of fish though he only needed one (just to tweak the other chefs), snickering constantly at the stove-top misfortunes of his fellow competitors, and making up cozy yarns about hallowed familial cooking traditions just to sway the judges. For this reason, we're sad to see him go. We're also confused about this show, which appears be testing contestants on skills the current Iron Chefs rarely employ -- and feels at times like a cross between an episode of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? and a long, long American Airlines commercial.

Food Network

Boitano: Grazing the curb.

​The answer to what would Brian Boitano make is about to get a whole lot streetier. A location scout for Food Network told SFoodie she plans to show up at street-food events over the next few days to find food-cart vendors to appear on-camera and "inspire" the ex-Olympic figure skater in an upcoming episode of his slightly campy cooking show, What Would Brian Boitano Make? The scout told SFoodie she's been talking to Jeff of PizzaHacker to find likely vendors for the show -- about 10 in all. The script calls for Boitano to sort of stumble on the street-food vendors, then rush back home to his S.F. kitchen to whip out, say, a bit of crème brulée. Adobo, maybe. Gobs? The show is scheduled for taping in late November or early December (no word when it'll air). WWBBM? premiered Aug. 29 - there've been a total of four episodes. Our suggestion to the Food Network producers? Since the street-food experience is so much about, well, the street, maybe the script should include Boitano becoming an unlicensed street-food vendor for a weekend, donning a chef's toque, Magic Curry-style, and hitting Mission Pool. Just an idea.

Bravo TV

Wickett: Not totally bummed about getting axed.

​Laurine Wickett of San Francisco's Left Coast Catering made it all the way to Episode Nine on Top Chef, last night's infamous Restaurant Wars competition, by pretty much flying below the radar. Things looked tense in Episode Three, when the notorious pasta salad she helped concoct at an air force base sent fellow San Franciscan Preeti Mistry home. But though Wickett never won a challenge in the ensuing weeks, she never lost one either -- until last night's show, when she worked front of the house, forgot to describe the courses, and undercooked her rack of lamb.

She didn't seem entirely unhappy about losing. During today's post-elimination phone conversation, when we reminded her that Tom Colicchio blogged that he thought she was ready to go home, Wickett replied, "I think I was. I wasn't hungry to win. Maybe eight or 10 years ago, I would have been more competitive. When I wanted to be famous like Wolfgang Puck and was working 90 hours a week."

She auditioned for Top Chef on a whim. "I hadn't ever watched it. I didn't even have any idea that there was a Quickfire challenge on every episode! I wanted to help my business -- the jury's still out on that. It's given me a better idea of who I am as a chef. Being on the show made me lose focus at first, but then I realized that I cook from the heart, for my clients, to make people happy. Not to feed my ego."

Since leaving the show, Wickett has done an unpaid stage at Michael Mina. "Top Chef opened my eyes. I felt out of touch with what was going on in the food world. At Mina, I did a lot of grunt work, but it made me see a different style of cooking. As wonderful as that style is, with a lot of steps involved, it doesn't always translate into a comfortable meal. The food really becomes too precious."

Fulk: He won't be inviting Padma over for snacks.

​In case you were glued to Glee last night, you missed Ash Fulk getting bounced from Top Chef. Fulk might be the nicest contestant ever. "I was outcooked," he said this morning by phone. And he wouldn't diss anybody on the show -- except for Padma. More on that later.

Born and bred in Pleasant Hill in the East Bay, Fulk worked as a prep cook at LMNO in Oakland (now defunct), did catering for the California Shakespeare Festival in Orinda, then crossed the continent to work as a chef on a farm in upstate New York for a summer. "Every chef wants to make it in New York," Fulk told SFoodie. He considers himself lucky to have landed at Trestle on Tenth, a Swiss-influenced New American restaurant in Chelsea.

The goateed chef, who never won a single challenge, thinks Top Chef's judging process is grueling. "It's very long and very nuanced. Even in a restaurant review, you don't get a dish broken down like that. Listening to people say 'you suck' 10 different ways." He even had something good to say about this season's bête noire, Robin. "Throw her some props, she's had a successful restaurant, which I haven't." But his courtliness vanished when it came to Padma: "I'm sure she's a lovely person, but I don't really want her at my dinner party."

Food Network

Chris (left), we love you, bro, but tell us there isn't going to be a Season Two.

​We bow to no one in our love for chef Chris Cosentino. Incanto is on the short list of S.F. restaurants that (a) we unfailingly recommend to others, and (b) gladly spend our own money at. We're still dreaming about a perfect Cucina Povera meal there earlier this year, with an add-on of calves' brains cooked with Douglas fir fronds and pine oil. Pure genius. And we can never enter the Ferry Building without leaving with a few packages from Boccalone.

We get that appearing on television is part of the deal for chefs who want to build a brand. We've enjoyed seeing the telegenic, dimpled, earringed and tatted assisted-blond on everything from Check, Please! Bay Area and Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations to Iron Chef America. What's more, we were sad Cosentino didn't become the next Iron Chef, though proud that he lasted almost to the end.

So when the premiere of Chefs vs. City was announced earlier this summer, we set our TiVo's Season Pass. The Food Network show pairs Cosentino with the equally telegenic Aarón Sanchez of N.Y.'s Centrico and Paladar. We don't know quite what we expected, but what we got was a fake-macho mashup of The Amazing Race, Survivor, Fear Factor, and Man v. Food, with no more than a grudging nod to actual culinary knowledge or craft along the way. In each episode, our boys go up against local chefs or foodies to complete five food-related challenges, ending in a foot race for the finish line. (Suspiciously, there's a near-photo finish almost every time.)

Pocket Edward/Flickr

Show up all Whitney and Bobby.

​You definitely want to have kitchen skills and a touch of drama to make it as a Top Chef Season Seven contestant. Think you have what it takes? As reported today at SFist, Bay Area kitchen fiends should head down to the just-opened saloon in Fisherman's Wharf known as The Parlor (2801 Leavenworth at Jefferson) on Sunday, October 18, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., for an open casting call. The judges are (of course) looking for folks with food and restaurant knowledge, "and oodles of charisma," according to the Bravo TV site. "We want talented, experienced chefs with that flare that puts you over the top." But it always helps to have an added touch of drama. Show your tats, go all crazy, unleash your arrogance, or drop other eccentric personality traits to really make you stand out. Download and fill out application, then get your video together. And hey, good luck with that.

dominiquecrenn.com

Dominique Crenn: One of 10 chefs competing for the top spot.

​If you like rooting for locals, get ready to cheer on Dominique Crenn, chef de cuisine of Luce in the Intercontinental Hotel. The glamorous, high-cheekboned San Franciscan is on the 10-competitor roster of The Next Iron Chef, which premieres Sunday, October 4, on Food Network. And there's a Bay Area bonus: joining crotchety Jeffrey Steingarten and feisty Donatella Arpaia on the judge's panel is Oakland resident Anya Fernald, director of last year's Slow Food Nation and currently director of Live Culture Co., which put on the recent Eat Real Fest in Jack London Square. (When the series was shot, Nate Appleman was still wearing an A16 apron, but the show's publicity now identifies him as a New Yorker, chef-partner of the upcoming Pulino's Bar and Pizzeria there.)

Crenn's biggest fan may be Esquire magazine's influential John Mariani, who named her a Chef to Watch in his Best Restaurants of 2007 and Chef of the Year in his Best Restaurants of 2008, as well as naming Luce the best new restaurant in San Francisco in Bloomberg News.

When she was 18 months old, Crenn was adopted by a French couple who raised her in Versailles, outside Paris. "I was accustomed to good food," she told SFoodie. "My mother was a great cook who took me to the farmers' markets. My father's best friend was a well known French food critic, and I hung out with them a lot, going to many restaurants. From the age of 8 I knew that I wanted to be a chef. I wanted to go to cooking school, but I ended up getting a bachelor in economics. But during the summers I cooked in little restaurants, and learned."

Sometimes, a kiss is just a kiss.

​Local party boy and Tintin look-alike Mattin Noblia strayed far from his roots last night, with uneven results. Top Chef's cowboy-themed episode was a roller coaster for the Iluna Basque chef and owner. He scored with his Quickfire (halibut with tequila-pickled cactus, breaded cactus, and red cactus purée), even though he'd never worked with the prickly stuff ("I wasn't even sure you could actually eat cactus," he said), even earning props from guest chef Tim Love. But what did Noblia prepare for cowboys in the hot desert? Ceviche three ways, plus a margarita to wash it all down. "I tried to spread myself too thin -- too many components -- to execute it right," he acknowledged. When we saw judge Tom Colicchio walk away from the table and throw a fishy piece of cod ceviche into the desert, we feared the worst. We were correct.

You have to envy Noblia's sunny disposition and equanimity, even after being bounced. This morning, Noblia told us he was ready to leave after winding up in the bottom three -- twice. "I was kind of happy Padma told me to go, because it's not comfortable to be on the bottom," he said. "I was so happy, actually, [that] she sen[t] me home."

Padma made Noblia happy in other ways, too. In his exit video (posted on the Bravo.com website), red scarf on, shoes off, he confessed that she's his type, and that he dreamt about going on a date with her. "I wake up in the morning and I'm like, where am I with her?" While making his farewells, Noblia sneaked around the judges' table to steal a kiss from her. But there was no love connection. "I don't think she was really excited or anything like that," he said. "A kiss for her is one more kiss, you know?"

ModelMayhem

Maybe he should've stuck with modeling. Or not.

​S.F.'s own Mattin Noblia, chef-proprietor of Iluna Basque, did not cover himself with glory (or even the tricoleur) in last night's French-themed episode of Top Chef.

The escargot Quickfire challenge pleased him: "I feel good," he said. "I'm from France, you know. Escargot is my whole youth!" Yet his dish, fava bean crostini with escargot sautéed in anise and the piment d'Espelette he told us reminds him of his mom, failed to elicit a single comment from judges Tom Colicchio and Daniel Boulud.

Maybe the birthday party hijinks took the edge off his focus. Noblia turned 29 during the French elimination challenge, and celebrated by getting drunk and having his head pushed into what looked like a sheet cake from Safeway. Quickfire winner Kevin (escargot fricassée with mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, and judge-wowing candied bacon jam) sagely observed, "He's turning 29 years old, and he's a little freaked out about it, because he knows that next year he's turning 30." When Ron draped a fatherly arm around Mattin's shoulders and advised him to go to bed, Frenchy's response was to jump into the hot tub without removing his shirt.

After tasting the dish he created with Ashley -- sautéed poussin and ravioli with a bacony sauce velouté, garnished with asparagus -- Hubert Keller of S.F.'s Fleur de Lys said it was not real velouté. ("More like gravy," Boulud observed.) "Everybody likes to say everything is better with bacon," Colicchio said. "This is the case when it's not so!" Snap!

ModelMayhem

The French-born chef isn't without cheesy model shots.

​An ooh-la-la, red-scarf-wearing dirty blond, 29-year-old Biarritz native Mattin Noblia is the Frenchy eye candy -- complete with model portfolio -- of Top Chef Season Six. He opened his own restaurant, Iluna Basque, in North Beach, at the tender age of 23, featuring the cooking of Southwestern France, replete with Spanish influences. Bonus: His tattoos (irises and butterflies) are among the sweetest we've ever seen -- check out photos 30 and 31 on the Bravo slide show.

With the dumping last week of Preeti Mistry, Noblia is half (with Laurine Wickett) of what's left of Team S.F. See how he fares with the judges on tonight's Top Chef episode, 10 p.m. on Bravo.

SFoodie: Why and how did you become a chef?
Noblia: I always wanted to be a chef since I was 5 years old. Mainly my Dad inspired my cooking while I was growing up.

What's your restaurant history?
We [Iluna Basque] have been open since February 2003. I was 23 years old when I opened it -- it was my dream to open a Basque restaurant to represent my country and culture of the Basque people. We all wear a red scarf to represent the Basque country, and you can now add $2 to your bill in exchange for a red scarf, and the proceeds will go to the charity Pathways for Kids.

Why San Francisco?
San Francisco is probably my favorite city in the U.S. It's probably one of the most European cities, and the weather is great all year round -- when it's not foggy!

What compelled you to be on Top Chef?
I really wanted to give myself the chance to open up to new horizons and projects. Also to bring my chef career to the next level.

Did you become close with any of your Top Chef colleagues?
Yes, of course I have. But you know, Top Chef contestants are spread out all over the United States, so it's harder to keep in touch as much as I wish I could.

Since the show ended, has competing on Top Chef influenced your cooking?
Yes, I've learned a few new tricks, and gotten more confidence as well.

Favorite things to cook? Ingredients? Styles?
I love to cook calamari, foie gras, truffles, duck -- a very French/Basque style of cooking. I use a lot of piment d'Espelette, as my Mom makes it in the Basque country.

Favorite places to eat in San Francisco?
I love Turtle Tower for pho. I go there a lot -- my friend Sonny Nguyen took me there the first time. But also I enjoy 5A5 Steak Lounge and Anchor & Hope.

How did you like living, shopping, and working in Las Vegas?
For me, living in Las Vegas was a first, especially for that long. It was definitely drying out my skin, and there were not many activities besides gambling and partying. Whole Foods in Las Vegas could have had more original proteins to cook with, but of course they have all kinds of good organic stuff. Vegas doesn't have any farmers' markets, and that's a problem for a chef like me. I'll go back to Vegas again to party!

Bravo TV

Planning to launch a taco truck?

​Watching last night's episode of Top Chef, we were nervous as soon as we saw our two S.F. homegirls --- teamed up for the big feed-the-troops challenge -- preparing pasta salad. With bowties and sundried tomatoes, no less! Oy. Meanwhile, the competition was braising slabs of bacon, roasting loins of beef, and barbecuing pork shoulder, while little Jen took command of the whole brigade like a four-star general. When we talked to Preeti Mistry last week, she told us, "When we first saw Jen, we thought, 'She's gonna be easy.' She's killer, she's a great chef." Little did we know that SFoodie would be talking to Preeti again so soon -- and that Jen's name would come up again, too.

This morning, Mistry said that, with 20-20 hindsight, she thinks that doing something other than the pasta salad might have been a good idea. "We had kinda divvied it up," she said. "Ash and Ashley were going to do a dessert, the proteins were taken. We knew we were going to do a vegetable side that might be more of a main course for a vegetarian. Part of that was the ingredients we were given. The Colonel had said that it was an industrial kitchen, but that the airmen were savvy in terms of their palate. What we got was sort of the bottom of the barrel. There was not one fresh herb in the place, not even garlic. We used a little garlic powder and Italian seasoning, we used a lot of lemon zest, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper -- I suppose I wish Laurine and I had made an Alfredo pasta, or roasted broccoli in soy, garlic, and ginger, and done something Asian. I don't remember for sure, but I'm sure there were sesame seeds there."

She said she's still not feeling Jesse and Ron's clam chowder. "The hot chili made sense, but not clam chowder with butter and cream on a 90-degree day, as opposed to making something fresh and light. Maybe there's so many crappy pasta salads out there that it gets a bad rap."

Left Coast Catering

Wickett: Not exactly in love with Vegas.

​The 38-year-old Rochester, New York, native has an earthy, tousled vibe that makes you think of a Montessori teacher sipping post-pilates soy chais in Cole Valley. When she arrived in S.F. in 1990, Wickett started cooking at long-defunct Ernie's. By 1999, she helped create the pastry department at Delfina, even as she was landing catering gigs of her own. In the two episodes of Top Chef Season Six that have aired so far, the chef and owner of Left Coast Catering in Dogpatch hasn't bagged a lot of screen time, which makes us think her moment -- full of glory or disgrace -- is coming. Tune in tonight on Bravo for episode three. --J. Birdsall

SFoodie:Why and how did you become a chef?
Wickett: I became interested in cooking when I was young, helping my mother and grandmother in the kitchen. My fondest childhood memories were in the kitchen or revolved around food. I had two second cousins who were chefs and graduates of CIA. That led me to pursue the idea of a career in food at an early age.

How did you end up in San Francisco?
I came to San Francisco for an externship from CIA. While considering San Francisco, Chicago, L.A., and New York for an apprenticeship, it was the Chez Panisse movement in the Bay Area that attracted me to San Francisco. Since then I have made San Francisco my home. It is the ethnic diversity, the great dining and music scene, and the proximity to the ocean and the mountains that has kept me here for 19 years

Why did you want to be on Top Chef?
Honestly it's not something that I went after, more it was an opportunity that fell in my lap. I am always open to new experiences -- you never know where they might lead you.

Did you become close to any of your Top Chef colleagues?
I had my San Francisco posse, Mattin and Preeti. But also really enjoyed the Ashes times two -- I guess being from San Francisco, I felt most comfortable hanging with the gays! I enjoyed Eve and have also stayed in touch with her. My boyfriend, Henry, ate at her restaurant in Ann Arbor last Thursday and said he had one of the best meals of his life. Just goes to show you that even if you are not cut out for the competition that transpires on Top Chef, you can still be a great cook and have a successful restaurant.

Did competing on Top Chef influence your cooking since the show ended?
It has made me steer away from going right to our recipe book, and to cook straight from the "hip".

What are your favorite things to cook? Ingredients? Styles?
I love Mediterranean and Italian fare. It's the food I was brought up on, it's my comfort food. But I love playing with the clean, bright flavors of Thai cuisine.

What are your favorite places to eat in the Bay Area?
Dopo in Oakland is hands down my favorite. Bar Tartine is another place I have gone to over and over again. For Chinese, it's San Tung in the Avenues, and Bar Bambino for a glass of wine and a bite to eat.

How did you like living, shopping, and working in Las Vegas?
I thanked the Great Spirit above that I live in San Francisco!

Food Network

Come on -- you've watched trashier TV before.

​We admit it. With so many food shows taping in these parts lately, we've relegated Chefs vs. City to the inner chip recesses of the DVR machine, back where Jamie at Home mingles with old eps of Breaking Bad.

Tonight's installment takes place in the city - like, our city. Incanto chef Chris Cosentino and New York chef Aaron Sanchez do their (never seen it, so we're flying without lessons here) Amazing-Race-meets-Smackdown-with-Bobby-Flay thing up and down the streets of S.F., competing with two locals in a series of food-themed battles. Here's Food Network's official, typo-scarred description:

Chefs Aaron Sanchez and Chris Cosentino explore Chris' hometown of San Franciso [sic] and take on two local chefs: Anna Wankel and Melissa Perello. In five Bay Area food challenges, the teams endure a bread fight at the famous Boudin Bakery, eat one of cities [sic] spiciest dishes and build a massive meat puzzle at the California Culinary Academy. All bets are off as the teams discover San Francisco dining in a new and unexpected way.

Set your DVRs -- we know you ain't rushing home from the beer gardens of Lucky 13 or the Pilsner Inn at 10 p.m. to watch this one live. Or, um, if you do? Don't tell.

photomato/Flickr

Watch Adam Richman stuff himself here.

It may not have foodies buzzing the way Anthony Bourdain's visit last spring did, but fellow Travel Channel glutton Adam Richman visits San Francisco tonight to overeat on Man v. Food. Richman feasts on gut-bomb sandwiches at Yelpers' fave Ike's Place (3506 16th St. at Valencia), loses himself in the Mission-Style Super Burrito at Taqueria la Cumbre (515 Valencia at 16th St.), and, for dessert, there's the $34.95 Kitchen Sink at the San Francisco Creamery -- which, hey, is in Walnut Creek (1370 Locust at Cypress). But even Bourdain crossed the bridge to try taco trucks in Oakland!

The show premieres tonight at 7 p.m., or, as they say, check your local listings, because on satellite services like ours, that's 4 p.m. And you can go online at 7:30 for a live video chat with Adam, the hardest working man in show business. Bonus video: Richman talks to tourists in the Haight.

Bravo TV

​We were worried when local girl Preeti Mistry turned to her three colleagues last week during the first Quickfire Challenge of Top Chef Las Vegas -- a mise-en-place battle for which she'd have to open 15 clams before others on her team could move on to other tasks, including trimming a rib eye. Mistry said, "It's the same as an oyster, right? Clams?"

Virgin clam-shucker Mistry, an executive chef at Bon Appétit Management Company who runs Charlie's Café at Google in Mountain View, fell so far behind that her team never recovered.

"I wanted to do the beef," Mistry told SFoodie. "After all, I was the sous chef at Acme Chophouse when I applied to be on Top Chef -- Traci des Jardins suggested it to me, and when Traci says something, you listen! I gave it a shot, and when I made it, Fedele Baccio, the CEO of Bon Appétit, was really supportive."

As for the clam debacle, Mistry said it really wasn't as bad as it seemed -- Bravo's edits made it look worse than it was. "I did get through them all," she said. Mistry's now back at work, overseeing more than 2,000 meals a day at Google. During our phone talk, she was interrupted by a cook with a bowl of posole for her to sample.

In addition to Charlie's Café, she supervises the pastry for the whole Google campus, the catering, and a vegan juice bar called Slice. The 30-year-old chef looks like a teenager and rocks a faux-hawk. She was born in London, has Indian heritage, and grew up in the Midwest. "I was pretty much totally ready to get out of the Midwest when I turned 18," she said. "I originally wanted to go to New York, but visited S.F. with some friends in the spring of 1996 and fell in love with the city. The food, the sunshine, the gays, the overall diversity and the feeling of living in a big city that still kinda felt like a small town. I moved to San Francisco that summer of 1996 with my new girlfriend, now my partner of over 13 years."

Mistry worked for Frameline, S.F.'s LGBT film festival, but loved to cook. After September 11, 2001, she decided to follow her heart. "I'd been working in film and everyone said I should be a chef. I'd thought about it, but was scared. But on that day, the only thing that felt right was to go into the kitchen and start cooking. So I did, and I haven't stopped since."

Ash Fulk/Facebook

Ash Fulk: Will the Bay Area native prove a local fave?

In case you've turned to reading and misanthropy lately, allow us to break the news that Season 6 of Top Chef begins on Bravo tonight (9 p.m., channel 48 on Comcast). It's based in Sin City this time around, so expect plenty of guest-judge star chefs with namesake Vegas eateries flogging Quick Fire prizes that include, oh, autographed books and signature cookware. (Could this be the moment the rather scary Bradley Ogden stages a comeback?). 

The field of contestants spans the usual Top Chef range: a jumble of the earnestly self-taught, stubby-fingered sous chefs from B restaurants, and guys seeping Euro swagger, with the odd wispy hottie to sex things up.

What about locals? There's 29-year-old Mattin Noblia of Iluna Basque (701 Union at Powell) -- we expect him to roll playerish, with a suave game we'll love to hate. Earlier today he composed a startingly existential tweet: A few hours before reallity [sic] starts. Watch me tonight on Bravo at 9 PM. Then there's earthy Cali-Med caterer Laurine Wickett, 38, of Left Coast Catering (2152 Third St. at 18th St.) in Dogpatch. And 33-year-old Preeti Mistry, exec chef at Google via Bon Appetit Management Company.

But we're all set to cheer on 29-year-old Ash Fulk, who -- despite having one of those names whose quirkiness ensures it'll roll around your brain long after you Just. Want. It. To. Stop., and a goateed superciliousness that's convincingly NYC (he cooks at Trestle on Tenth in Manhattan) -- is just a 'burban boy from Pleasant Hill in the Contra Costa. Plus he's one of three members of Team Gay (Mistry's another) and, well, apparently kind of a bear in the making. We're counting on you to represent, Ash! Grrr.

Tags: top chef

Eater NY/Flickr

Frank gets frank.

​Tomorrow night (that's August 19) ex-New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni will come out of several closets in his first network interview, airing on ABC's Nightline (channel 7, locally) at 11:35 p.m. He's flacking his new memoir, Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater, fully illustrated with no-longer-illicit photos of his heretofore embargoed visage. The shocking revelations of the book are, well, not so much that Bruni's gay, but that he's a recovered bulimic -- a tendency one might think would make the critic's job the proverbial double-edged knife-and-fork. And, as a good bulimic, he also exposes his druggy past (laxatives, legal; amphetamines, less so). Favorite quote from chapter one: "'So,' Jared asked, 'did it taste as good coming up as it did going down?'"

The longtime restaurant critic is slamming the door on his five years of sub rosa restaurant reviewing with a bang, showing his face not only on the cover of Born Round, but apparently everywhere else he can. His binge of media rounds includes a local appearance at Omnivore Books (3885 Cesar Chavez at Church)) on Saturday, September 12, from 5 to 6 p.m. The Bay Area's own Michael Pollan calls Born Round "a food memoir for our time ... by turns shocking and hilarious ... as addictive as Chinese sesame noodles and as satisfying as Grandma Bruni's lasagne."

Whet your appetite for the show (if we haven't yet eliminated it, so to speak) with Nightline clippage. And here. And again here.

Food Network

Boitano freestyles in the kitchen.

​"When Brian Boitano traveled through time to the year 3010/He fought the evil robot king and saved the human race again."

-- "What Would Brian Boitano Do?" from South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut

Olympic and World figure skating champion Brian Boitano can perform physically incredible and gravity-defying feats, from flying rescues of maidens in distress to building the pyramids of Kubla Khan. At least, he can according to South Park creators, who immortalized him in song in their 1999 feature film.

While Boitano might not have been one of the founders of Egyptian architecture, he can still rotate three times in the air with one arm sticking straight up. He's also apparently pretty nimble and versatile in the kitchen, as he plans to demonstrate on his new Food Network show, What Would Brian Boitano Make?

A Bay Area native and longtime San Francisco resident, Boitano's home and surroundings figure prominently into the program. He describes the series of on-the-fly cooking challenges based around a social event or group (whether randy bachelors or rowdy roller derby chicks) as a "reality docu-soap."

"I think the City is going to really like it because it truly is my house and where I live," Boitano told SFoodie. "It's all real. Food Network really wanted to have it be kept realistic, even though it is sort of a 'reality show.' They wanted it to be my real friends, where I really go shop and eat, that kind of thing."

Boitano is a hyper-local shopper who finds most of what he needs right near his house. He frequents Cheese Plus (2001 Polk at Pacific) for gourmet items, Real Foods for his everyday groceries (2140 Polk at Broadway), and rice pudding joint Loving Cup (2356 Polk at Pacific) for his usual treat of frozen yogurt mixed with berries. Beyond that, he tends to venture over to Marina Meats (2395 Chestnut at Divisadero) and stops for seafood at Bryan's Grocery (3445 California at Laurel) when he finds himself in Laurel Village.

M. Ladd

Bourdain (left), buddy Oscar Villalon, and a crew member outside That's It.

That's It Market (2699 Mission at 23rd St.) seemed to be the one spot in the San Francisco episode of No Reservations unknown to most local foodies. Until now, that is. Since the episode aired on Monday, more folks are making their way to That's It's than ever before. In a phone call with SFoodie today, That's It confirmed that torta-maker Alicia has begun serving food two hours earlier than usual -- she fired up her griddle at noon today instead of 2 p.m. At about 7:30 last night, nine customers were reportedly ordering the same torta Cubana that Anthony Bourdain scarfed in the show, roughly four more diners than seats. But how in the hell did Bourdain find his way to this obscure corner of the Mission in the first place?

We admit it -- this blogger is the one who suggested That's It to the No Reservations host. Yes, there are many other torta places in the Mission with great eats. So why That's It? Well, the food is good (both the tortas/quesadillas/tacos and Middle Eastern fare), it's open late, and you can get booze. We met with Tony's location scout, Rich, at That's It over a Cubana just days before the shoot in March. He dared us to eat the whole thing. We weren't up to the challenge.

Eater SF, Chowhound, and other sites (as well as countless tweets) have tagged That's It a surprise location for the show -- some commenters are even calling the Cubana "gross." While it is huge, we remain committed fans; and yes, if you're drunk, it'll sop things up real quick-like.

This blogger wrote about That's It's megasandwich on the Jalapeño Girl blog in 2006: "Turns out the torta cubana is at least two meals in one -- a huge monster, weighed down with a delicious mix of: pickled jalapeno, grilled onion, tomato, avocado slices, lettuce, two fried eggs, bacon, mayo, queso, sliced ham & chicken, Mexican chorizo, shredded chicken and pork, refried beans, and cubed ham." We have to say, even in the face of all the post-broadcast criticism: It's still a freakin' tasty monster. More pics after the jump.

Joseph Schell

Incanto's Chris Cosentino (left) and Sebo's Michael Black react to the broadcast.

A handful of chefs and others who appeared in the San Francisco episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations gathered at Bloodhound in SOMA last night to watch the broadcast. Incanto chef Chris Cosentino had organized the viewing party -- the show included a scene of Bourdain slurping an all-offal menu during one of Incanto's annual Head to Tail dinners, at a table with Boulevard chef de cuisine Ravi Kapur, author Harold McGee, editor Oscar Villalon and his wife, SFoodie blogger Mary Ladd, as well as Cosentino's wife, Tatiana Graf. 

Also at last night's Bloodhound party: Sebo chef-owners Michael Black and Daniel Dunham, and Shelly Garza, director of the Oakland taco-truck and pushcart-vendor organization La Placita. Oh, and the five winners of SFoodie's I Heart Tony essay contest.

There was palpable anxiety in the room before the broadcast. No one had seen the episode before it aired, and weren't quite sure what Bourdain would say about San Francisco, a city he's sneered at for its foodie political correctness and what he's blasted as its "crunchiness."

Turns out Bourdain really liked the food he slurped in S.F. and, briefly (at Tamales Mi Lupita taco truck on Foothill Boulevard in Fruitvale), in Oakland. "Despite the paradox about San Francisco," Bourdain's voiceover droned as he dined at Incanto, "I'm really beginning to appreciate how supportive this city is of some of the bloodiest cooking I've faced anywhere."

"I thought it was really well done," Cosentino told SFoodie this morning, acknowledging his anxiety before the broadcast. "You're always nervous going into a review, and this one was a review times a thousand," he said. Cosentino's favorite part of the show? " Seeing Sebo get its due," he said. "It was nice to see Tony validate what those guys are doing." After the show finished at 8 p.m., Cosentino stuck around Bloodhound to watch it a few more times, eventually joined by Incanto's entire kitchen crew.

"I'm glad they got to see it," he said. "Those guys work really hard, day in and day out."

Update: Click here for more photos from last night's viewing party.

Melanie Dunea, from "My Last Supper"

So disturbingly wrong.

​Behold the fifth and final winning entry in SFoodie's No Reservations viewing party contest. In case you shed brain cells over the weekend, a referesher: We asked groupies of Anthony Bourdain's Travel Channel food show to tell us why they love Tony. the five winners will meet us out tonight for the broadcast of the San Francisco episode, to mingle with a very inside group of S.F. foodies (we swore we wouldn't say more).

Winners fed us poetry, a story about turning from vegetarianism to the flesh-eating dark side, even a kind of OCD-fueled ramble. All very impressive.

The last is from Justin Lanz, a fan of the food-stoked group hug, a kind of We Are The World with edibles. Just remember to wash all traces of pho and tongue tacos from your hands before mingling, please.

Bourdain's love for both high end cuisine and the streetside bowl of pho
or greasy tongue tacos shows that great food brings the world together. His
book inspired me to enter into cooking and he's helped me understand that a
simple meal can transcend family and strangers, even cultures, to bring us
together and remind us of our humanity.

Thanks, Justin. See you tonight.

Rigged/Flickr

A fan shows Bourdain his Tony tattoo.

​Behold the fourth winning entry in our No Reservations viewing party contest, part of our daily wind-up to Monday's airing of the local episode of Anthony Bourdain's food-steeped travel show. As you recall, we begged would-be Tony groupies to expose their obsessions in mini essays.

Like a DVR whose contents never get erased, Blair Bodie's piece is clogged with references to actual episodes. (Blair: Please tell us you have a really good memory, and aren't watching old Tony shows over and over again, like that creepy stalker girl watching that dude in Swimfan.) Now, we know Blair's entry might stir controversy -- technically, she did slightly exceed the 60-word limit we asked for (okay, she exceeded it by a lot). But she's so passionate, so informed, so fascinatingly OCD, we couldn't resist. Forgive us? Please?

Anthony Bourdain is simply the Iggy Pop of the epicurean circuit. He is the anti-celebrity chef who shows sommeliers the superiority of brewmeisters, and elevates meat-on-a-stick to filet mignon status. He doesn't dilly dally with presentation but gets down to the sensuality of food, making Connecticut cheese into food porn and the suckling pig of New Orleans something to be missed in the exotica of Sri Lanka. [Okay, we have no idea what this means.] Tony wastes no time in the kitchen, instead he fulfills all of our wanderlusts by white-water rafting in the Cahama River of New Mexico, cooking food in the geysers of the Azores, and conjuring memories of Lawrence of Arabia while riding on a camel's back in Saudi. While other chefs keep their business on the stove, Bourdain is eating on the right side of the law with CIA agents in Chadwick's of DC, and then showing us the land of gangster chefs going to battle over goose liver, or foie gras if you will, in the Windy City. Basically, Bourdain's eccentric approach to food teaches all how life should be lived: on the cutting edge of simplicity, saturated in the spice of life, and satiated by our tastes. When it comes to this man, I have no reservations.

poopscope/Flickr

Yeah, it's like that.

​For his (winning) tribute to Anthony Bourdain, Charlie Chou went all Wordsworth on our asses, penning eight lines of verse crammed with majesty and pathos:

We are all but slaves of food and Bourdain
Digesting away between interludes
Without food and Bourdain the mind is wholly screwed
We are all but slaves of food
There is food for romance
There is food for the fools
Enjoy, eat fast, food never lasts, rewind and preview
Can't wait to be rescued by watching no reservations with you

Very classy, Charlie. See you Monday night for the airing of the local No Reservations episode.

mangoandtabasco/Flickr

Bourdain: Fan of violent cable programming?

​Here's another winning entry in our No Reservations viewing party contest, part of our shameless flogging of the San Francisco episode of the show, which airs Monday, August 10.

We asked rabid Anthony Bourdain fans to rip their souls open for us in mini essays. This one's from Marcie Chin, who, we're guessing, took a couple of sociology classes in college and likes to snuggle up with premium cable. Thanks, Marcie!

I love Anthony Bourdain because he uses food as a vehicle NOT for "learning
about other cultures" but for acknowledging the inherent diversity of the places he visits. Unlike other food shows, it doesn't exotify people's ordinary lives, but gives voice to communities that are often (even intentionally) overlooked. I also love that his favorite show is The Wire!

It's a day later than promised (we been busy with stuff, what can we say?), but behold the five winners in our No Reservations viewing party contest: Blair Bodie, Marcie Chin, Charlie Chou, Dabney Gough, and Justin Lanz.

To refresh: In advance of the broadcast next Monday of the S.F. episode of No Reservations on Travel Channel, we asked you all to write why you're a rabid Anthony Bourdain follower. Like geekily quoting Kitchen Confidential in the office, going out of your way to eat obscure pig parts while struggling not to grimace, maybe even saving up for a Tony tramp stamp. Whatever.

The 33 entries we received were all Tony-licious, believe us. The self-described "balls-out chick" who recalled losing it when she met him. The writer who yearned to throw back uni and gin and tonics with the man himself. Or the scribe (we're guessing English major) who called him "the reluctant anti-hero of adventure cuisine." All nice. Thanks to everyone who took the time and effort.

We'll be publishing the winning essays over the next few days, a kind of foreplay building to Monday's delicious release. First up: A story of deliverance from tempeh and fiber by Dabney Gough. Warning: Grab a tissue now -- we guarantee it'll make you all misty.

Thank you, Anthony Bourdain, for releasing me from nine years of vegetarianism. When you described slurping oysters on a boat in Brittany, and tasting the essence of the sea they came from, I realized how much I was missing out on. So I went to Zuni and slurped some oysters myself. I never looked back. Life is infinitely better.

Tags: events

mangoandtabasco/Flickr

The man.

​Hey, all you procrastinators: Midnight tonight is the deadline to enter SFoodie's No Reservations party contest. Tell us in 60 words or less why you heart Anthony Bourdain, and if you're sufficiently rabid or clever enough to be among the top five entries, you and a guest can come party with us at a special viewing event next Monday, August 10, at an undisclosed location in S.F. (totally being cagey so we don't scare away the night's special guests -- well, any more than we ordinarily would).

There'll be special drinks, a bit of food, and a chance to watch the San Francisco/Oakland episode in a room with other fans. Kind of like watching the Super Bowl in a sports bar, only without the nachos, and minus Beyonce at halftime.

Send your mini essay to John.Birdsall@SFWeekly.com, and type Bourdain Contest in the message line. Good luck.

You might be sick of hearing about it -- the San Francisco episode of the Anthony Bourdain food-caked travel show No Reservations airs Monday, August 10. If you're not sick of hearing about it, you might be the perfect candidate for an SFoodie contest that'll yield five Tony-crazed winners a spot at a special viewing party for the broadcast.

We can't give out too many details for fear of turning the whole thing into an unruly cluster-eff. What we can say is that it'll be at an easy-to-get-to venue in San Francisco, kicking off at 6 p.m.. There'll be special drinks, a bit of food (don't be surprised to see a taco truck), and culinary-star co-partiers that'll have you TwitPic-ing like a paparazzo.

What's the way in? Simple. Let us know why you love Tony Bourdain in 60 words or less. Tell us you think he's brilliant, tell us you think he's super hot and you want to carry his spawn (guys?), tell us what you'd like to eat with him and where. Authors of the five best entries (as determined by the team of SFoodie contributors) and their plus-ones will win places at the viewing bash, and score a couple of free drinks, too. We'll publish the winning entries. Maybe some inspiring non-winning submissions, too.

Deadline is midnight on Monday, August 3rd. We'll announce the winners next day. E-mail submissions to John.Birdsall@SFWeekly.com, and write "Bourdain Contest" in the subject line. Good luck.

Mary Ladd

The nasty bits: The Bender's Bloody Mary, crowned with a beef stick.

​Filming the San Francisco episode of No Reservations (the show airs on the Travel Channel network August 10) was similar to the other times I've hung out with Anthony Bourdain. It was all drinking and eating, only this time with cameras around. A little back story: Tony and my husband, Oscar Villalon (former books editor for the Chronicle), have been friends since Kitchen Confidential first came out in 2000.

In March, Tony's producer emailed Oscar to let him know the show was coming to town. Did he want to participate? I offered to help by jumping on the email and phone chain, and ended up eating a HUGE meal in San Francisco a week later with the show's scout, who insisted on having me ham it up for his digital camera. My food-nerdy emails to the crew continued, but they already had some locations and ideas in place. Oscar and I promised we'd keep all location discussions under wraps, as well as not leaking where Tony was staying. We're still not spilling the beans.

For one Sunday shoot (we were there for three shoots total), we were supposed to meet Tony and crew in the afternoon. Oscar and I were pacing, waiting for the call from the producer to say we were good to go. But typical of any TV production, the timeline changed: Rather than proceeding directly to the location, we'd need to stow away with Tony somewhere, preferably at a bar. I said, "Bender's" to Oscar after he hung up the phone, and sure enough, Bender's was the bar Tony's crew had picked, too.

mangoandtabasco/Flickr

Don't ask -- we won't tell.

​We're counting down to the August 10 broadcast of the San Francisco/Oakland episode of No Reservations, the Anthony Bourdain food-and-travel show with an avidly sweaty following. Tomorrow we'll launch details of a contest that will yield five committed readers access to a private viewing party with eats and a stellar guest list. In the meantime, we're spilling selective details about our taping with Tony.

When Bourdain and his production crew rolled into the bay last spring, they unleashed a frenzy of speculation in blog world: where was Tony likely to show up, what would he be eating, what color sweater would he be wearing? (Made that last one up -- of course it was gray.) Turns out SFoodie has been sitting on the real story all along. Both I and SFoodie blogger Mary Ladd were on hand for Tony's local taping: Mary in San Francisco, and I in Oakland. Today I'll tell what I can about Bourdain's East Bay appearance (Mary will drop select details about S.F. in a future post). I say what we can, since we feel bound not to spill details that'd spoil the broadcast. So here goes.

Before I became SFoodie editor in May, I was a freelance food writer. In February, the East Bay Express published my cover feature La Vida Taco, a month-long crawl around the taco trucks of Fruitvale. Then, in March, I got a sort of mysterious email from a guy in New York. I called him, and he dropped a pant-load of questions regarding my epic crawl: why I did it, why taco culture seemed to flourish in Oakland, and if I could hook him up with a local vendor organizer I mentioned in my piece.