fresh herring

​Ever wonder where the many tons of fish landed by San Francisco Bay's commercial herring fleet throughout the winter go?

There's a growing market for local and sustainable seafood, but the bay's herring -- an inexpensive fish that lends itself to a variety of preparations -- doesn't end up at the wholesalers that line the piers along Fisherman's Wharf. Instead, the fish are processed for their roe, which is consumed as a delicacy in Japan.

That's about to change. Over the summer, local herring fisherman Ernie Koepf was instrumental in getting California Department of Fish and Game regulations revised to allow for a market from November through March for fresh herring. (The prior regulations, geared to the roe fishery, allowed only a token quota: fresh herring could be landed for only two weeks early in the season, before the fish are abundant.) The department will issue up to 10 permits, each allowing a boat to land up to 1,000 pounds of herring per day for the fresh-fish market.

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takver / flickr

​Last month, SFoodie discovered that if you're vegan and you go to jail in S.F., you can get vegan meals. Eileen Hirst, chief of staff at the Sheriff's Department, told us that vegan food in S.F. county jails came about because of vegan PETA protesters who were arrested in antifur protests in the '90s.

We're sure that news prompted celebrations all over the Bay Area, but at least one person was infuriated: activist Anita Carswell, who called up SFoodie to set the record straight. PETA had nothing to do with getting vegan food in jails, she says; the credit belongs to her and her organization, In Defense of Animals.

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Rosencruz Sumera

​Louis' Restaurant on Point Lobos Ave. reopened today with some menu changes that were more or less mandated by the U.S. government.

The restaurant on federal land, run by the Hontalas family since 1937, was closed by the feds for eight months while the family had to rebid for the contract.

SF Weekly covered the news of the reopening on the Snitch. Here on SFoodie, we thought we'd give you a peek at what menu items the government's demand for locally sourced produce would translate into.

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Photos by W. Blake Gray

Number 4: half a roast five-spice chicken, country salad, and meat sauce on rice

​When we're feeling very poor and very hungry, we sometimes drop in to Cordon Bleu on Nob Hill to quietly scarf down a mountain of food at the counter. On our most recent visit, we got to talking with Katie Yu, the proprietor.

Yu is from Hong Kong and has never been to Vietnam. In 1995, she bought the restaurant from its founders, who claimed to have opened San Francisco's first Vietnamese restaurant in 1968. Think about the timing of that: People probably marched right in from antiwar protests to chow down on the country meat sauce.

"I bought it just because it was a small restaurant," Yu said. "I didn't know how popular it is. It's really an institution. The customers said, 'Don't change anything'."

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my_southborough

​If you're vegan and you go to jail, do you get vegan meals? In a city with a substantial vegan population, this is no trivial question. It turns out that, while the law does not require jails to provide vegan options, San Francisco County jails do serve vegan meals on request, and we have PETA activists to thank for it.

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Cooking Channel

Emeril Lagasse chats with Buena Vista Cafe's Robert Freeman.

​The original bam!-tastic O.G. Food Network veteran, Emeril, just debuted a new show, The Originals with Emeril, on its sister Cooking Channel network. Last night's show may have been a premiere, but there was nothing new-school about it. While everyone else on TV is looking for the new hot restaurant, Emeril is traveling from city to city, focusing on what is still standing and still slinging. The first episode took him to our beautiful city by the bay so, of course, SFoodie was watching.

The episode begins just as you'd expect: bridge shots, Emeril on a cable car, words and phrases like "progressive" and "one of the oldest cities." Within the first few seconds it becomes clear that we're about more than just sourdough (duh!), leading to the inevitable "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." Cue Emeril: "If you wanna be taken seriously in this town, you gotta be in business for at least a century." Good to know.

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dead redhead/Flickr

​Irish California: An Evening with the California Historical Society Collection

Where: California Historical Society, 678 Mission (at Annie), 357-1848

When: Tonight, Mar. 16, 5:30-7:30 p.m.

Cost: $4 suggested donation

The rundown: You're over St. Patrick's Day, we get it. It's a phony, white-bread tradition, probably invented by Jameson or Guinness, that leaves the streets littered with plastic hats and green puke. Cheer up, ya cynics: Tonight the California Historical Society hosts a St. Patty's event for the NPR set, with a minifeast and a chance to learn about the Irish immigrant experience in California. They'll be serving small portions of shepherd's pie, mini roast potatoes, soda bread, bangers, corned beef, Irish cheeses, and cookies. Just don't get your grubby mitts all over the historical stuff ― the CHS will be breaking out its collection of Irish "ephemera," with rare artifacts like advertisements, catalogs, menus, theater programs, travel guides, and more. There will also be beer and wine, but probably no keg stands.

Arrive early for the snacks; Kathy Jacobson of the CHS fears there may not be enough for all.

New York refugee Jesse Hirsch tweets at @Jesse_Hirsch. Follow SFoodie at @sfoodie, and like us on Facebook.

The peanut wagon that evolved into the Cliff House.

​
I recently toured the San Francisco Eats exhibit at the San Francisco Public Library, which opened on Saturday and will be up until March 20. The exhibit occupies two of the library's gallery spaces ― one on the ground floor, a second on the sixth ― and spreads to an online photo gallery and a series of food-related presentations and events.

Curator Sheila Himmel ― check out SFoodie's interview with her  ― is a longtime restaurant critic who spent seven months going through the library's collection of menus, photos, historic cookbooks, and objects such as restaurant matchbooks and a peanut wagon operated by the Hountalas family, whose descendants now manage the Cliff House. Himmel's goal was to identify the links between these objects and draw out explanations for how San Francisco became a city whose food culture is intense, varied, and often exquisite.

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Farrell's

​We miss the dearly departed Farrell's, an ice cream parlor which boasted of 130 locations in the '70s and '80s. We don't pine for the turn of the last century costumes (though that facial hair in the pic above is definitely cool again) or the pomp and circumstance of songs, bells, whistles, and assorted other quirks that used to accompany a Farrell's birthday treat, but we do long for the Zoo, a pig trough's worth of decadent ice cream sundae that left the ickiest, messiest aftermath. The Zoo, now that we think of it, might have been the dish that kickstarted a lifetime of gluttony for many in the Bay Area.

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Steve Greenberg/San Francisco Examiner, 1999

​Doggie Diner (1949-1986) is arguably the most dearly departed restaurant chain in the city with the best afterlife. We were young when it closed, but we remember that it was cute enough to form a lifelong attachment.

Three of Doggie Diner's iconic Harold Bachman-designed dachsund heads took a road trip to New York in 2003, courtesy of Laughing Squid and SF Cyclecide Bike Rodeo. The experience was immortalized in a documentary called Head Trip.

Scott Beale/laughingsquid.com

​It sounds like founder Al Ross had a pretty full and exciting life as well. SFGate's obituary of Ross, who passed away earlier this year at age 93, reveals fascinating facts about his life even beyond his significant achievement of owning 30 eateries citywide. He started in the food business in his early 20s, creating an ice cream company called White Castle with his mother. He might have been one of the city's first mobile street-food peddlers, pushing a cart up and down the Embarcadero. Later in life, Ross trained in martial arts; his son says he trained with Bruce Lee for three years.

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