San Francisco Food Blog

J. Birdsall

Ryan Farr dispatching a beast at Bloodhound.

​Yet another butcher-chef-fire event (this one called Primal) is happening Saturday in Napa -- observe the breakdown of a pig, a goat, a cow, and a lamb, and taste the results. Incanto's Chris Cosentino, Perbacco's Staffan Terje, Fatted Calf's Taylor Boetticher, 4505 Meats' Ryan Farr, and Ubuntu's Jeremy Fox will all celebrate the art of butchery and heritage breeds at an outdoor party at Chase Cellars at Hayne Vineyard (2252 Sulphur Springs at Crane, St. Helena). Butchers from Avedano's and Star Meats Berkeley will also be wielding their cleavers and manning the fires; heritage meats and produce from Hudson Ranch are under the knife. Boutique wines and craft beers. Tickets are $65 for general admission, $100 for VIPs. The higher ticket price gets you in an hour earlier, premium wines, cocktails from Daniel Hyatt of The Alembic, and special tasty nibbles. The event's from 3-7 p.m. Buy tix online.

kimo

Wear something splatter-proof.

​Another carving party led by meat superstars Ryan Farr and Taylor Boetticher will throw down when Petting Zoo hits at Bloodhound (1145 Folsom at Seventh St.) next Tuesday, Nov. 3. Forty large will get you all the (spit-roasted) food you can eat, demonstration viewing, and one free cocktail at the bar. The chefs will tag-team butcher a goat and a lamb, as well as spit-roast an entire hog over an open fire. Chicken beer sausages, pork-crack chicharrones, rabbit crepinettes, salami, and bacon brownies promise to round out the carno-riffic menu. Adding to the meaty fun is the rather mysterious bacon-flavored libation available for all takers at the bar. No need to bum rush the doors, which open at 6 p.m.: Plans call for trotting out the food in a steady fashion throughout the night. Advance tickets are required.

oomni/Flickr

Hell-oo, anybody there?

​According to recent blog hoopla, Drewes Brothers Meats in Noe Valley is floundering in the wake of a Whole Foods invasion, and the resulting commotion has swollen into a temporary Ground Zero for concerns about the health of local businesses. As reported at Grub Street, owner Josh Epple suspects he'll have to close by the middle of 2010 if the register doesn't start ringing more mighty soon. Drewes fans worry Whole Foods threatens a landmark dispenser of first-rate flesh; naysayers call bullshit on purportedly shoddy customer service and inflated prices caused by the store's long-standing lack of worthy competition, suggesting that, if it can't adjust in time, Drewes deserves whatever fate it faces.

A few months ago, this blogger participated in a market research study on food shopping. As expected, three-quarters of the folks trapped for two hours in an ominously mirrored room preferred supporting local businesses over outposts of large corporations. A slender vegan extolled the virtues of his neighborhood produce market. A fast-talking bro in a backwards cap championed his favorite small-time butcher. "Organic," "sustainable," "local," "green," and "natural" -- those buzzwords were hurled like confetti, which was, fairly obviously the point of the whole ordeal. Someone -- or something, we should say -- was very curious about which words had real effects on shoppers, which ones, if affixed to a product, could sway the choices of everyday people. Of course, San Francisco people aren't really everyday with respect to buying food -- which was probably also part of the point -- but "local," more than any other word discussed, resonated most profoundly with participants.

Yet should we support a business like Drewes just because it's local and storied, even if its meats may be no finer than those behind the case at Whole Foods, its prices perhaps higher, and its staff potentially grumpier and less accommodating?

Steve Rhodes/Flickr

Chalk stencil on the pavement in front of Whole Foods on 24th Street.

​If yesterday's SFist post about the financial woes of venerable Drewes Brothers Meats wasn't an attempt to yank our ham bone, it's clear that people -- particularly within the stroller-rich pastures of Noe Valley -- need to get serious about eating meat. Cast aside your smoked tempeh; lose the vegan lasagne. Unless you have an overwhelming religious conviction opposing the joyous scarfing of animal flesh, a hallowed San Francisco institution desperately needs your support, even if it means rolling off the wagon for a spell.

SFist pulled the following chilling plea from the Glen Park Parents Board mailing list, courtesy of a poster named "Spring":

For those of us who eat meat and live in Upper Noe Valley, I want to let you know about the plight of Drew's Bros Butchers [sic]. They have been decimated in the past three weeks by the opening of Whole Foods. They have had to cut back on staff hours and things are not looking good. While I am highly supportive of Whole Foods as a good addition to the neighborhood, (I really think we needed a grocery store in our neighborhood and...I am from Austin, although I am appalled at the founder's stance on healthcare), I hate to see that come at the expense of a SF institution like Drews [sic].

Misspelled name aside, the sentiment is noble. Yeah, Whole Foods is fine for handouts -- go on a Sunday morning and try making a meal of miniature soup samples and gratis cheese nibbles -- but when a local gem like Drewes starts looking a little dusty, it's time to give it a nice shine -- by walking a few extra blocks to buy a rack of ribs and a six-pack to go with it.

Clucker plucker: The MD Master D plucking machine has what it calls "Velvet Touch" fingers.

​Vacaville pastured chicken farmer Soul Food Farm hasn't known what to do with birds damaged in processing. That means chickens who emerged from plucking machines - tumbling, dryer-like gizmos lined with rubber fingers that take the feathers off - with a severed leg or broken wing, or pierced skin. Up until now, Soul Food co-owner Alexis Koefoed had little choice but to give away the damaged birds to friends, or turn them into stock. But now, Koefoed is turning the legs (with thighs attached) from these less-than-perfect chickens into confit. Starting Nov. 11 (the drop-off day for Mission/Bernal/Potrero), they'll be available to Soul Food Farm's CSA subscribers, and to customers at Prather Ranch and Avedano's Meats.

Grimaud Farms in Stockton is taking care of the confit-making (it's also where the birds are processed). Grimaud packages its own line of duck confit. Soul Food Farms' chicken confit is seasoned with salt and pepper, and cooked slowly in rendered duck fat. Though they should be available through November, there may be times when they're not around (Koefoed has to collect hundreds of pounds of legs before ordering up a batch of confit). What about the non-leg portion of the chickens? Koefoed is selling breast and carcass pieces to CSA subscribers, too. Learn about becoming a CSA subscriber here.

The only vegetarian offering: Peach cupcakes with gummy eggs and bacon.

​The usually businesslike lobby of the building on Second Street that houses CBS Interactive (yes, that CBS) looked like the lawn of a suburban elementary school this afternoon. Folding tables strewn with carefully labeled homemade baked goods were set up on the polished floors, not far from the modernish cube-shaped furniture. Behind the tables, a flat-screen TV showed, bizarrely, a rotating slide show of soothing images: kitties, flowers, etc. But the kitties and cube-couches were easily overpowered by the pervasive smell of bacon.

Every year a group of CBS Interactive employees hold a bake-off to raise funds for a nonprofit and to foster friendly competition between co-workers. This year's beneficiary was Habitat for Humanity. And for the first time ever, the bake sale had a theme. Everything up for grabs today was made with either bacon or faux-bacon.

​ Chocolate-bacon cupcakes with maple cream cheese frosting. The pig had no comment.
​These maple bacon bites oozed with creamy filling.
​Tiny apple-bacon crumble cakes were selling like, uh, hot cakes.
​ Not all the wares were traditional baked goods. One person brought bacon-caramel apples, while another had whipped up bacon brittle.
​
​This baker didn't shy away from the secret ingredient. On these cupcakes, sprigs of fried bacon adorned healthy dollops of frosting .
​There was a little something for everybody. Those who didn't have a sweet tooth could snap up these bacon cheesy poofs.
​What's a bake sale without chocolate chip cookies? Bits of bacon were bursting out of these gooey versions of the childhood favorite.

Kansas Sebastian/Flickr

Approved vendors in Golden Gate Park could begin selling in January.

​Late Friday, the Recreation and Park Department announced that its solicitation for proposals for pushcart food sales in the city's green spaces would apply to all city parks including Golden Gate Park, would cover taco trucks in certain cases, and extended by two weeks the deadline for vendor proposals.

In an e-mail that echoed a statement at Rec and Park's Website, Property Manager Nicholas Kinsey wrote: "The Department has amended the RFP [request for proposals] and will consider proposals to operate a pushcart concession in Golden Gate Park ... The Department has also clarified the RFP to indicate that proposals will be accepted for the operation of mobile food catering trucks and trailers in addition to pushcarts."

In July, when Rec and Park made its original call for proposals, it specifically excluded Golden Gate Park. The decision about whether or not to open up the city's most popular park to street food vendors was deferred till an unspecified date in the future. Friday's decision to include GGP in the proposal that would apply to the city's 200-plus other parks was the result of interior discussions, according to an unnamed Rec and Park source.

wallyg/Flickr

Barbecue's a reliably toasty topic, a hallowed strain of American Southern cookery known for endless regional variations and no shortage of strident expert-y opinions about them. Even here in San Francisco, debates rage on.

This week, Chronicle reviewer-in-chief Michael Bauer made no bones about championing Wexler's, a smoke-centric restaurant that opened in June in an old converted Financial District firehouse. He predicted purists would "cringe" at the buzzed newcomer's attempt to elevate barbecue to the realm of "oversized white plates" and fancy cocktails. He shouldn't worry; they won't, because Wexler's isn't purely, by construct, a barbecue restaurant, just what sounds like a very good one, inspired by a number of tweaked and twisted Southern signifiers -- like beans, bourbon, and buttermilk, as well as barbecue -- rendered into a cohesive, upscale whole.

Our own Meredith Brody kicked off her laudatory review of Wexler's with a little 'cue context: "It's easy to imagine the earliest form of cooking -- throwing meat onto a wood fire, from which it emerges smoky and charred -- evolving into what we now celebrate as barbecue, with all its attendant rituals."

Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham, the director of the Kibale Chimpanzee Project in Uganda, wants to take it a step further. To him, barbecue is not merely an ancient rite -- and, as we know it best, a Southern cultural treasure -- ripe for fusion-y fiddling; it is a key, perhaps the key, to understanding ourselves. In his book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, Wrangham comes to the finger-licking conclusion that humanity's greatest leap came, not from learning to farm, or make tools, but a little over two million years ago, when habilines ("the missing link" between apes and humans) first discovered the pleasures of flame-bathed meat -- barbecue in its earliest, least prissy incarnation.

Mary Ladd

The roasted skirt steak was beefy and tender.

​Before digging in to the Estancia grass-fed beef prix fixe at Jardiniere (300 Grove at Franklin) last night, SFoodie and überblogger Amy Sherman chatted with Traci Des Jardins, who admitted to nursing a 14-hours-ahead jet lag (she'd just returned from a trip to Outer Mongolia). Chef Des Jardins reported that the Mongolian town close to the Russian border where she and her companions stayed is by no means a tourist attraction. "The mayor from the next town over came over to check on us, make sure things were going well," she said. "Our guides would show up on horses. It was amazing."

Roasted Estancia skirt steak served with a corn empanada and smoky pimentón chimichurri sauce was beefy and tender, with a leaner, less fatty mouthfeel than conventional grain-fed beef. During the three-course dinner, Estancia CEO Bill Reed and business partner J.P. Thieriot fielded questions. Reed claimed that grass-fed beef sales make up perhaps one tenth of one percent of national beef sales. The challenge with beef is the amount of land needed to produce it, far higher than that for, say, pork or chicken.

Addressing the carbon footprint issue -- does it makes sense for San Franciscans to eat grass-fed beef from Uruguay, rather than cattle raised primarily on grain and only finished with grass? -- Reed pointed out that how a steer is raised affects meat's carbon footprint enormously. He said Estancia steer are "raised in a free-range manner, sustainable, and there are no pens or feed lots. Estancia is able to use solar energy instead of oil, and does not put the steer under taxing conditions." Somehow, knowing an animal has lived a contented life in a pasture somewhere -- even one in South America -- can make it taste a whole lot better.

Outside of a Church festival every October at St. John Etchmiadzin, San Francisco has been fairly deprived of Armenian food. No more: since last July, Royal Market & Bakery (5335 Geary between 17th & 18th) has been offering a wide variety of products imported from Armenia, plus items from countries with similar cuisines, such as Georgia and Turkey.

On the grocery front, Royal has dairy products including kefir and cheeses, herring and other pickled fish, fresh and smoked fish, fresh meat including veal tongue and lamb's tounge and testicles, and seasoned meat (shown above) ready to be skewered and grilled for kebabs. The deli offers a wide variety of salads, pickles, olives, sausages, smoked meats, and prepared foods made in-house.

Whether inspired by health-food notions, the "locavore" movement, Michael Pollan, or a simple desire to save money, these days lots of people are looking to buy their meat as whole animals, in bulk, and/or direct from the producers. If you're into bulk, here are some options:

Creston Valley Meats (3280 Calf Canyon Hwy, Creston, 805-286-7533): This plant processes beef, lamb, goat, rabbit, and llama (!) from ranchers in the Paso Robles area. They also have a large selection of bones, scraps, and innards they label as dog food. See the online store for current inventory or call for special requests or to arrange pickup in the Bay Area.

Nature's Bounty (5636 Weber Rd., Vacaville, 707-693-0908; no Web site): At this family-owned farm and halal processing facility you can pick your own naturally-fed, hormone-free lamb, goat, or cow, have it slaughtered and processed to your specifications, and take the meat home with you the same day. If you can't handle a whole beast, they'll match you up with other customers to share one. Nature's Bounty is open Friday-Sunday 8-5 or by appointment.

Inspired by health-food notions, the "locavore" movement, Michael Pollan, or a simple desire to save money, these days lots of people are looking to buy their meat as whole animals, in bulk, and/or direct from the producers. Buying networks and meat CSAs are two approaches:

Marin Sun Farms (Point Reyes Station, CA, 415-663-8997 x203): Following the same community-supported agriculture model used by many local farms, members of Marin Sun's Meat Club CSA pay in advance for monthly assortments of the farm's grass-fed, organic beef, lamb, mutton, goat, pork, veal, chicken, and duck. They offer ten different packages of from 5 to 24 pounds, and the cost varies from $30 to $198 a month, paid 6 or 12 monthes in advance. They say this saves members up to 20% compared with purchasing the same products at their shop or farmers market stands.

Here's a new alternative to takeout: Sneaky's BBQ, a delivery-only barbecue non-joint. The limited menu currently includes:

• 1 pint of "Carolina-style" pulled pork (which Carolina not specified), $9
  
• 1 rack of baby back pork ribs, $19 (1/2 rack $10)
• 1 pint macaroni and cheese, $5
• 1/2 pint cole slaw, $3
• 1/2 pint collard greens, $4

I ordered one of each, for a total of $40 delivered. The order also came with a small tub of sauce on the side and two supermarket-type burger buns, presumably for the pulled pork. With a good loaf of bread (I like Acme levain with my barbecue), this much food would easily feed four.

All the food comes cold, as shown above. If you're not going to eat it right away, it's probably best to take the ribs out of the foam clamshell and store them in plastic wrap or a zipper freezer bag. Sneaky's recommends reheating it in the microwave, which I did.

The $35 ticket covers porky eats such as fireplace-roasted pig, corn dogs, sausages, pig tails, chicharrones, and cold cuts by Camino chef Russell Moore and guests Sam White & Chris Kronner of OPENrestaurant, Ryan Farr of 4505 Meats, Leif Hedendal of Cooking with Leif, and Taylor Boetticher of Fatted Calf. An open bar will feature drinks from co-sponsors Trumer Pils, Oliver McCrum Wines, Pacific Edge Wine & Spirits, Leopold Bros., St. Barts Spirit Company, and Beaune Imports. Entertainment will include a whole-pig butchery demo.

You can take the boy out of Kansas City, but you can't take Kansas City out of the boy. In his blog today, the butcher's son mulls over a reader's question, why isn't SF a steakhouse town? and comes up with no good answer. "[T]his national trend has pretty much passed us by. Dare I say we're more interested in fish and produce than meat and potatoes? We may be more of a wheatgrass and granola culture. Blame it on Berkeley."

Dude, how can you have made your living covering the restaurant scene here for over 20 years and not know the answer to that question? It's not about what people are interested in. It's about what they won't eat.

SF's dining public, just like Berkeley's, includes a significant percentage of people who have banished red meat from their diets: vegans, vegetarians, "pescatarians," and people who eat fish and poultry but not mammals. Even the average party of two probably includes a member of one of those groups, and with a party of four it's a near certainly.

Bottom line, our local market just can't support too many meat-centric restaurants. In this, the Bay Area is probably in the vanguard of the real national trend: people eating less beef out of concern for their health, the environment, budgets, animal rights, and so on.

At this writing, Incanto (1550 Church) still has a few tables available throughout the evening for tonight's Head to Tail dinner, and a table or two after 9pm for Wednesday's. Phone the restaurant at 641-4500 to snag one. For a preview, check out the photos chef Chris Cosentino has posted on Twitter. Above: "Big brain, little brain" with asparagus.

Rolling with the economic punches and getting a little less epic, pricewise, Epic Roasthouse (369 Embarcadero at Folsom) has launched a new Holy Cow! happy hour at its upstairs Quiver Bar, featuring a bar menu packed with goodies costing $3 to $5 and a slew of $5 specialty cocktails. Highlights include the Farewell to Arms (Oronoco rum, grapefruit, vanilla, and lime) and the Sazerac (Old Overholt rye, Herbsaint, Peychaud's bitters, and a sugar cube), $7 martinis made with Russian Standard vodka, $5 wines by the glass, and a selection of $2 bottled beers. On the edible front, check out the soft homemade pretzels with smoked sea salt, served with grain mustard sauce ($3); and slow confit of chicken drummettes with molasses and blood orange barbecue sauce and celery root slaw ($5). The Holy Cow! happy hour is in effect Monday through Friday from 4 to 7 p.m. For info, call 369-9955.

Chef Chris Cosentino of Incanto (1550 Church) has published the tentative menu for the restaurant's sixth annual Head to Tail dinners, coming up on Monday and Wednesday, March 23 & 25 ($75, reservations advised):

• Venison heart tartare, foie gras and ciccioli brioche
• Goose intestines with fava beans and artichokes
• Big brain, little brain with asparagus
• Cordedda (Sardinian lamb intestine) with peas, mint, and sheep's milk polenta
• Coffee and Doughnuts: pork liver, blood, chocolate, espresso

Chef Cosentino held an essay contest to select two cooks who would stage (intern, more or less) for the dinners. Read the winning entries here.

Inspired by recent protests at Seattle's Lark against the restaurant serving Sonoma foie gras, Incanto owner Mark Pastore has published a long, thoughtful essay, Shock & Foie: The War Against Dietary Self-Determism. After placing the issue in the context of the current concern for "sustainability," the essential roles of death and destruction in food production, the relevant differences between duck and human physiology, and the tiny (0.04 oz.) portion of Americans' 220-pounds-per-year average meat consumption accounted for by foie gras, Pastore gets to his essential point, that foie gras is a cynical wedge issue:

"Working to ban something that 99% of people never eat is not an act requiring great moral or physical courage ... the anti-foie gras movement is - at best - founded upon a shrewd political calculation in which the professed indignation of a few is used to harness the indifference of the many to the inherent political cowardice of elected officials, in order to achieve a desired political outcome. In essence, it's a confidence game in which participating meat-eaters, by agreeing to condemn something that they don't care about, receive the equivalent of a get-out-of-jail card, i.e., the right to feel slightly less guilty as they bite into that factory-farmed McNugget."

Point Reyes National Seashore is one of our area's great natural treasures. The park offers a diverse range of coastal terrains, including beaches, dunes, wetlands, streams, and forests, providing great opportunities for picnicking, hiking, bicycling, and horseback riding. It's also home to a wide variety of wildlife, from birds to elk to elephant seals to passing whales.

This being the Bay Area, there's also good food to be found. A fine place to pick up a picnic is Cowgirl Creamery / Tomales Bay Foods (80 4th St, Point Reyes Station, open Wednesday through Sunday). This little food court houses a cheese shop and an upscale deli with seasonal salads, sandwiches, and local charcuterie.

Humphry Slocombe (2790 Harrison), as reported by Tamara Palmer in December, makes some very unusual ice creams. Undoubtedly the most eccentric flavor is foie gras, which the shop pairs with housemade ginger snaps to make ice cream sandwiches ($4).

Even tasting the ice cream by itself, I can't say I was able to detect any foie. If I hadn't known it was there, I probably would have guessed brown butter and salted caramel. It was a nice little tidbit, but for the price, next time I'd get ice cream instead.

Actually, I did get some ice cream, too, and was very impressed with the intense flavors, minimal sugar, and free hand with salt, particularly in the pineapple five spice and rhw balsamic caramel. To my taste, this is the best of the new wave of artisanal ice cream shops, which also include Bi-Rite Creamery in SF and Ici and Sketch in Berkeley. I was particularly pleased with the wide variation in texture among HS's ice creams, which ranged from sticky-dense to mousse-like (just like at my favorite gelateria in Rome), and with how they were served at just the right temperature for eating, neither icy nor melting too quickly.

Comments have been disabled on this post. If you have an opinion to share about foie gras, please see last week's Village Voice article, "Is Foie Gras Torture?" and post a comment there.

I heard about El Cachanilla's $1.50 tacos al vapor from Incanto chef and offal maven Chris Cosentino by way of a Chowhound post from a tourist visiting from New York. This funky little place's menu has all the odd bits you see in taquerias in Mexico but not so often here: head, tongue, brain, tripe, even eye.

It was raining, so we went into the restaurant (2948 21st St, corner of Treat) rather than ordering at the walk-up window, but when we tried to order tacos, the owner sent us back outside. While we were waiting for our tacos, he came by and told us we could eat our food inside. He then offered an incomprehensible explanation of why he organized things that way. I think the idea was that people got too confused about the numerous toppings available for the tacos, so he set up a bar at the takeout window, with a choice of several salsas, chopped onions, cilantro, lime wedges, and so on. The tacos come out with just meat (plus beans, if you want them), and you do the rest yourself.

When I visited Boccalone to try their new sandwiches, they also gave me a tub of their new-to-me pork butter, which I was too full to try at the time. This is a concoction chef Chris Cosentino came up with to use the renderings, tasty bits of meat, skin, and whatnot left over from making lard, that would otherwise be wasted.

The renderings are puréed with olive oil, garlic, and rosemary, resulting in a creamy spread that tastes a lot like rillettes (French potted pork), only lighter. It's delicious on crusty bread or crackers, even better on warm toast. At $5 for a one-pound tub, it's one of the few bargains in the Ferry Building.

Enthusiasm for local / sustainable / do-it-yourself meat seems to be hitting a new peak, with a slew of events over the next month and a half at which carnivores can study, taste, and feast on all things fleshy:

Saturday, 2/14, 8am-4pm: the Society for Agriculture and Food Ecology's Meet Your Meat series launches with visits to Devil's Gulch Ranch and Clark Summit Farm including a potluck lunch ($5 donation requested)

Thursday, 2/19, 7pm, UC Berkeley: Local Slaughterhouses, Local Meat, Meet Your Meat panel discussion with Sallie Calhoun (Cutting Edge Meat, Inc., Paicines Ranch), Sam Goldberger (North Coast Meats), Mac Magruder (Magruder Ranch), Mark Pasternak (Devil's Gulch Ranch), Paul Canales (Oliveto), Marsha McBride (Café Rouge), and journalist Heather Smith as moderator ($5 donation requested)