San Francisco Food Blog

Joe Mud/Flickr

Beg the nice dude at Mission Pie for mercy.

​Remember on Sunday, how you told your partner not to be so wussy? That there was still plenty of time to pick up things for Thanksgiving? Well we've got news for you: The moment of absolute panic is upon us. Fortunately, there's still just about enough time to execute a Hail Mary move at a handful of S.F. food shops -- if you act, like, NOW!

Tartine Bakery 600 Guerrero (at 18th St.) Closes at: 3 p.m. The clock is seriously ticking (the place closes at 3 p.m. today). Chances are the pie are gone, but you still might be able to beg your way into a soft glazed gingerbread, maple glazed pecans, toffee, pralines, cornbread, or appetizer-sized gougères. Plus if you ask nice, you might be able to score the last of the off-the-menu cornbread stuffing.

Mission Pie 2901 Mission (at 25th St.) Closes at 7 p.m. Run, and double-park -- you can deal with the ticket later, when you'll have a memory of pie to soften the bite. Luckily, there are still a few pumpkin and apple pies here, as well as some pear-cranberry with crumb topping and vegan apple with brandied raisin.

Boccalone Salumeria One Ferry Building (at the Embarcadero) Closes at 6 p.m. Loose sausage for stuffing is gone, but you can still snag links of Italian, spicy Italian, and Easton's breakfast sausage -- you'll just have to squeeze the meat out of the casings. Also: seasonal black truffle mortadella has just dropped. It's available as individual one-pounders ($25 each), or as slices off a bigger sausage.

Humphry Slocombe 2790 Harrison (at 24th St.) Closes at 9 p.m. There's good availability of fall selection pints: pumpkin-five spice, brown sugar yogurt, balsamic caramel, cinnamon brittle, ancho chocolate, and Guinness gingerbread ($7.50 each). Plus co-owner Sean Vahey told us there still might be a super-special, as-yet unnamed Thanksgiving dessert available for sale later today (he's waiting for a crucial ingredient to arrive). Meaning that Humphry Slocombe might be an even bigger procrastinator than you are - which just might serve as necessary comfort.

Craigslist

Get 'em before dogs and hawks poach the best layers.

​K and F Chicken Farm's hard-charging Craigslist ads -- all capital letters, lots of exclamation points, and an overwhelmingly frantic tone -- are as funny as they are informative. Read one and you'll find out that the Oroville-based farm delivers nearly 75 dozen brown chicken eggs to Bay Area homes every Saturday. You'll also learn that the farmers' children have named each and every one of their 300 chickens and turkeys and that they know the name ("K & F CHICKEN FARM (KFC) HA! HA! HA!") is amazing.

The price -- $5 per dozen -- is fair, considering the quality and convenience. And collecting eggs from pastured chickens is work, which K and F likes to point out: "MAY COST A LITTLE MORE BUT WHY? WE HAVE TO HUNT FOR THE EGGS, WASH THE EGGS, CHANGE & CLEAN WATER EVERY DAY, CLEAN THE CHICKEN COOP THIS IS DONE EVERYDAY and lost chicken due to dogs, hawks etc."

Call or write soon if you're interested in getting a delivery on the 14th. After all, chickens, as we're reminded in the ad, only lay one egg per day -- and given the recent rise in business, supplies are accordingly limited.

Craigslist

Berkeley homegrown.

​Some foodie essentials recently offered up on Craigslist:

• A Craigslist angel must have read our mind yesterday morning. The air was colder than usual on the way to the BART station, the wind whipped a little faster, and we were happy to read an ad hawking the very thing our chill-zapped bodies craved: dumplings. Straight out of Berkeley, an enterprising crafter of jiaozi -- aka pot stickers, with homegrown chives, minced celery, and ground meat -- is selling 30 freshly made, very recently frozen dumplings for $7, or 50 for $10. Unfortunately, for pickup only.

• Lake County Yorkshire piglets are selling for $70 apiece. They're just weaned and "ready for homes," which seems like a nice way of saying they're all set for fattening to a sumptuous heft for slaughter.

TheBigWRanch12/Flickr

Tasty as she looks, don't you dare think about eating her.

​SFoodie's look at some urban essentials offered up on Craiglist this week.

• This de-horned 1-year-old Nigerian Dwarf doe up in Santa Rosa sounds like a goat to be reckoned with. The owner writes: "she is skittish and hard to catch but when caught she is fine she will become more people friendly with time." If goat-whispering is a serious hobby of yours -- and it sounds like this little bleater will need to hear quite a few tender nothings before warming up, especially to a new owner -- make an offer. Note the owner's last line: "she is for pet bredding [sic] or milk NOT for food."

• A swineherd in Sebastopol has pigs for sale, well-loved ones currently sloshing around a quarter-acre open-pasture pen. Reserve your share now with a $140 deposit and fork over another cool $130 right before slaughter. In March 2010, you'll receive 75 to 90 pounds of ready-to-inhale pork, cut and wrapped to your gluttonous specifications. Butchering and smoking cost a few extra cents per pound. Holler at Beverly.

• A lovesick college roommate used to lie on the floor of his dorm room listening to Sense Field on giant headphones. We, on the other hand, have always preferred the sonorous grunts of an emu to emo, that melodic, confessional sob-genre of hardcore first truly popular in the early '90s. Thankfully, a farmer in Watsonville is currently selling emu for $150 apiece. However, before you tear down 101, cash in hand, keep one thing in mind: an emu may be noble in visage, flightless, and hilarious to behold, but, look at her crossly, and, just like that beefy, bald dude with bright-red straight-edge tats huffing around the pits you avoided in high school, she will kick you in the face.

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.

SFoodie's weekly look at some urban essentials offered up on Craiglist.

Craigslist

Mighty good eatin'.

​• A farmer in Meridian has water-buffalo meat for sale. He's charging $8 a pound for vacuum-packed cuts. The animals' mozzarella di bufala-making days, apparently, were over.

• Six Cuckoo Maran cockerels in Sebastopol are as free as the birds they are. They grow into "large, mellow" roosters, according to the vendor -- "an excellent bird for the table."

• A Berkeley gardener's tomatoes are vigilant in the face of encroaching chills. Buy 10 pounds -- cherry, Roma, Champion, etc. -- pay a mere $5, and eat good tomato sauce all winter.

• DIY wine, or at least a curious conversation piece for a well-appointed SOMA loft, is only $900 away. A 75-year-old press is for sale, but you'll have to pick it up yourself.

• If you'd like Jack Frost nipping on your nose a few months early, invest in chestnuts now. There is a catch: You must buy at least five pounds' worth. Small ones are $3 a pound; heftier specimens run $4. They're in Los Gatos, though delivery is available upon request.

Craigslist

Terrorize the squash-phobic in your life.

​SFoodie's weekly look at some urban essentials offered up on Craiglist.

• Five little ducks went out one day, over the hill and far away. Mother Duck said, "Quack, quack, quack, quack," but only four little ducks came back. Why? Because you bought one for $5.

• If you regularly cook for squash-phobic youngsters (or oldsters), now's your chance to seriously terrify them. Go to Petaluma (is there anything up there besides farms and Tom Waits?) and buy acorn squashes for 50 cents each, banana squashes for $3 each, and pumpkins for $4 apiece. The vendor says they'll "go fast."

• There is a goat in Point Arena, Mendocino County, and you can have her for free. Yes, that's right. She's a 4-year-old Nubian milking doe. She gives about a liter of milk each day. She's apparently "very friendly ... and beautiful."

• If old Hades had tried to trick Persephone with a mealy Safeway apple, she'd have had no trouble fasting during her initial visit to his shadowy realm. Pomegranate seeds, of course, proved too tempting, and thanks to her waffling willpower, we have winter. Right now, large, locally grown pomegranates are 10 for $10 somewhere in Santa Cruz County. Make the call.

• Hay Area! Forget paper; take your scraper to Petaluma and load up on oat hay by the 125-pound bale.

Irish Typepad/Flickr

Looking for something like this? You might get more than you bargained for at Nature's Bounty.

​SFoodie's weekly look at some urban essentials offered up on Craiglist.

• Nature's Bounty, a family-owned, state-inspected farm facility in Vacaville -- aka Cow Town -- wants you to try its all natural, halal lamb, goat, chicken, and beef: "Nature's Bounty is set up for friendly and informative person to person transactions. Bring your friends and family to visit the farm, select your animal(s), and/or inquire into the process. Customers are also welcome to order their meat over the phone so that it is ready for pickup when they arrive. Same day cutting is available, so you only need to make one trip. We'll custom cut your meat into steaks, just the way you like it." Ooh, we like this. By asking a customer to come face-to-face with the fluff, fuzz, feathers, and sweet innocent doomed eyes of dinner (pre-"cutting"), they're taking the know-what-you're-eating-and-where-it-came-from mantra very literally. Time for a field trip.

• A Meyer lemon tree in Santa Rosa would like to leave its makeshift barrel for a proper home -- a sunny spot in the backyard of an avid squeezer and zester of citrus. Just $10 and it's yours.

• If you want these nuts, you'll have to pick them yourself. They're in Watsonville, skin on and unsprayed, selling for the generous price of $3/pound.

Craigslist

Creepy, right?

​SFoodie's weekly look at some urban essentials offered up on Craiglist.

• A keg of Anchor. A bottle of Jack. A bowl of chips to dip in fly-speckled guacamole. Fuck that. We're so over mediocre parties we're going to dial in a pig roast every time we get an invitation: "Lechon/Pig roasts done in the Philippine style. Insides of the pig are available upon request. Sauce is also available upon request. All You Have to DO is EnJoY It!!!" We suggest you request away -- and bring us to the occasion. This swine-master is in East San Jose.
• Take a deep breath. Somewhere in the East Bay, a symphony of feathers rustles. Behold this poster's magnificent menagerie: "I have a lot of eggs and young birds from Modern Game, Jungle Fowls, American Onagadori - True Japanese Longtails, Pheasants, Quails, Gamebirds, Serama or Jerry S's Seramas, etc. More than I can name in a short list. Haha." He has eggs and little babies available right now. Peruse the possibilities. Pricing starts at $1.50 each for hatching eggs, and $15 each for "rare and exotic" chicks. The man is willing to ship.
Continue reading " Another 24 Hours: Craigslist Farm"...
Tags: Criagslist

foodista.com/Flickr

Just let it go.

​Last week, we called attention to Lou Bendrick's stinging backhand to canned tuna -- that mercury-harboring, dolphin-slaughtering staple delis have been mashing with sweet green relish and mayo since the early 20th century. Bendrick suggests water-packed sardines as an alternative. Disgusto, we say. Sardines should be fresh, roasted and blanketed in oil-soaked bread-crumbs. Likewise, we'd rather switch food groups altogether than pick the bones from the squishy, stinky contents of a can of salmon. Bendrick's other solution to the health and environmental concerns canned tuna poses -- eat less of it, and when you do, stick to the good stuff -- is more palatable. She considers Wild Planet, Eco Fish, and Vital Choice -- companies with reliably sustainable fishing methods and a history of conducting independent tests for mercury and PCBs -- smarter options than the average aluminum-cased chicken of the sea.

On Sunday, the Chronicle ran its weekly Taster's Choice column. As luck would have it, the foodstuff of focus was olive oil-packed tuna. You''ll be happy to know the Trader Joe's entry (by a long, long, long, long shot the most modestly priced, at $1.99 a can) placed a respectable fourth, with several brands carrying tags nearly eight times as weighty.

Now, tuna stowed in water or insipid broth is truly barely edible. In her seminal tome Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, Marcella Hazan dubbed it "wholly tasteless." The oily sort, on the other hand, makes for quick, good pasta sauces, impromptu salads with chickpeas and lemon, and salade Niçoise sans fuss. Question: Do expensive, imported brands of oil-packed tuna suffer from the same ailments as Starkist and its water-logged ilk? We're guessing yes. We'd prefer not to turn into Mad Hatters on account of lunch. If we can stop doing hard drugs, smoking cigarettes, and drinking to excess with frequency, we can probably quit tuna cold turkey -- if we decide we really want to. We hear salami melts are pretty good.

SFoodie's weekly look at some urban essentials offered up on Craiglist.

Craigslist

Irresistible -- especially in a red-wine braise.

​• Hundreds of Southern African goats are for sale in Corning at the price of $125 apiece. According to the vendors, they're "good for grazing, pets, or whatever else." We're thinking "whatever else" means a nice braise.

• "Do you have a problem with pigs tearing up your yard?" asks this ad, sounding like a late-night infomercial host frothing at the mouth over the life-saving possibilities posed by some obscure kitchen gadget. If pigs are, in fact, your problem, or if you just want to buy a big cage -- you know, for whatever -- this might be your ticket to happiness. The cage can hold multiple hogs at a time. The asking price is $500. Just call Desiree in Oakdale.

• Our friend once wrote a nice song about Asian pears. We've always had mixed feelings about them. So frequently they're tasteless -- though it truly, as with most such things, likely depends on the variety and the grower. We don't really know; we're no professors of pear-ness. We've probably just had some particularly weak ones. Ditto for Golden Delicious. The so-called "delicious" apples populating our childhood grocery store's wane and waxed produce aisle -- both golden and red -- were usually mushier than a frozen margarita. Yet just last week, we accidentally ate a pale yellow specimen we actually really enjoyed. We thought we were tripping. We dug in the trash and double-checked the sticker repeatedly. Anyway, both Asian pears and Golden Delicious apples are $1/pound in Sebastopol.

Craigslist

Is this supposed to make us want him?

​SFoodie's weekly look at some urban essentials offered up on Craiglist.

• Self-satisfied, chin-stroking urban homesteaders with meticulous gardens and chicken coops are the city's version of suburbanite control freaks who mow their lawns six times a day. You probably have a few for neighbors. Go to Redwood City and get your own olive tree so you can smoke their weak Meyer lemon pickles with your very own extra-virgin olive oil. Invite them over for an innocent-seeming supper, drizzle some bruschetta with that business, and make them feel as low as compost. Trees are $200 each.

• Here's a good prank: Buy 20 quail chicks on Craigslist, break into your friend's apartment very early in the morning while he's still asleep, let them loose, and run. They're in Mendocino County and, at $3 apiece, a pretty pricey practical joke. They do, however, come with the feed thrown in.

• We're loving this one: "I have two white rabbits good pets just dont have time for them anymore." That's from someone in East San Jose, and to entice you, he's posted pictures of the most Satanic-looking bunnies you've seen since Donnie Darko. We don't know if you're supposed to eat them or what, but one thing is for sure: The ad wasn't posted in Pets.

• In Concord, while supplies last, you'll pay $5 for three pounds of vine-ripened pesticide-free tomatoes. We were at the Ferry Building today and Farm Fresh To You had similar varieties (Roma, cherry, beefsteak) for almost three times the price. They were blanketed in flies, too.

• Raw Mountain View honey, amber-yellow and slightly refined, is selling for $4.50 per one-pound cake. The vendor recommends it for snacks, baking, and the brewing of home-made mead.

Got $800? You can keep this bull from becoming hamburger.

​SFoodie's weekly look at some urban essentials offered up on Craiglist.

• Looking to improve your flock? Look to the city of Sebastopol, that charming namesake of a lackluster Jay Farrar solo record renowned for its apples, where one "long and tall" two-year-old black face ram can get the job done. He'll cost you $450 but, according to the current owner, his lambs turn out great.

• We know you're not going there, but bear with us for the sake of argument. Depending on your whereabouts, the Premium Crispy Chicken Classic Sandwich at McDonald's costs a little over $3. The five-week-old Black Silkie chickens for sale in South San Jose are going for just $5 apiece.

• But, you ask petulantly, where will I keep these fucking chickens of which you write? In the ark, of course, dear skeptic. In Brentwood, someone's selling a handsome, wooden A-frame chicken coop, or "ark", for $350. Your problems are solved.

• Up in Sonoma, $1,800 will get four tons of Carneros Pinot Noir. You'll have to stomp them yourself.

• An old Brangus bull from Mendocino County seeks new pastures. Basically, his owners don't want to see him off to slaughter themselves, but we don't know if they'll ask too many questions when you show up in a pickup filled with buns and ketchup. They describe him fondly: "very tame, peaceful, gentile, respects fences, no problems ... he's just getting old to be out on hillside range." We know gentile is a typo but we're tickled nonetheless. He'll cost you $800.

​In cooking school, it was easy to know whose food to stay clear of -- anyone unwilling to do upkeep in the personal hygiene department. If a cook had smelly and dirty hands, you could bet their food would be just as sloppy, and usually un-tasty, too.

How nice it would be to time-travel back and present those classmates with a bar of Marie's Chef's Soap. It's designed for some serious hand washing (pro chefs and down and dirty gourmets alike), and it's expensive ($28.95 a bar). But for those who appreciate cost analysis, Marie's offers this justification for the gold-plated price:

One bar ... is expected to last a year in the home kitchen. This is only ~$2.41/month for artisan quality soap that will not add synthetics to your hands and spoil what you're cooking. 86% of consumers currently spend more than that on cheap mass market soaps in the kitchen each month, plus the moisturizer they have to buy as a result of cheap soap and short-lived bar soaps cost much more than the $2.25/month of Marie's Chef's Soap.

So there. If you're ready to ante up and scrub down, visit Marie's Web site.

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.

correction 4/24: I was misinformed by the importer, tonight's tasting is $10

When A16, Incanto, La Ciccia, or some other restaurant with a long list of obscure Italian wines serves you something delicious you've never heard of and you want to buy some to drink at home, the first place to call or visit is Biondivino (1415 Green between Polk and Van Ness). This small shop is jammed to the ceiling with many of the best and hardest to find Italian wines. They also carry some equally esoteric wines from neighboring Austria, Croatia, and Slovenia.

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.

Toro E. via Yelp

Cooking up an authentic turkey mole is no easy task, especially when it comes to finding the two dozen elusive ingredients Mexico's national dish requires. Happily, everything you need is as close as La Palma Mexicatessen (2884 24th St., 647-1500, lapalmafoods.com), an invaluable resource for the gourmet chef with a hankering for Latin American cuisine. Not only does this friendly, well-stocked neighborhood mercado offer everything from ancho and mulato to pasilla and guajillo chilies, the shelves are abundant with hominy, yucca chips, hibiscus syrup, coconut candy, queso fresco, house-rendered lard, spices in bulk, peppery chorizo sausage and banana leaves for making tamales. Established in 1953, La Palma still grinds their own corn for the preservative-free masa that goes into their impeccably fresh tortillas, and there's also a full-service deli with delectable huaraches, gorditas, tortas and pupusas.

As I noted a couple of weeks ago in my post about Beltramo's in Menlo Park, most Bay Area retailers specializing in hard-to-find wines and liquors are located in SF. There's one other wine shop / liquor store on the Peninsula worth a detour: Weimax (1718 Broadway, Burlingame). If anything takes you down to SFO, you're almost there. It's just a five-minute drive from the terminal, a couple of exits down 101.

Like Beltramo's, Weimax has a lot of hard liquor you won't see elsewhere. I first visited the place after a trip to Southwest France, when I was looking for a local source for La Vielle Prune, a delicious oak-aged plum brandy ubiquitous in the Dordogne region, and they were the only store I called that had it.

For years, local French expatriates and lovers of French food have descended on the occasional open-warehouse sales held in Brisbane by importer Made in France, aka Village Imports, aka LeVillage.com. That company's founders sold it last year, and have opened a retail store, The Gourmet Corner (873 N San Mateo Dr, San Mateo).

If you're a Francophile foodie, this new shop is worth the schlep from SF. It offers the best selection in the area of hard-to-find preserved truffles and foie gras products, as well as a wide variety of less luxurious French essentials such as dried mushrooms, vinegars, and sausages.

Molinari Delicatessen dates back to 1896, when P. G. Molinari founded a salami factory at 433 Broadway. In 1913, he moved the business to 373 Columbus. In 1962, the factory moved to the Bayview District (where it's still in business), and the Columbus St. location became strictly a deli. For most of that time, Molinari was just one of many Italian delis in North Beach, but since its last competitors, Panelli Brothers and Florence Ravioli, closed in 2002 and 2003, it has been the last of its kind.

Molinari seems in no danger of closing: people line up for the old-school sandwiches ($6.50-9.75), house-made pasta, ravioli, and sauces, and Italian staples such as cheese, pasta, salt cod, canned tomatoes, coffee, wine, prosciutto, and of course salami, pancetta, mortadella, hot coppa, and other cold cuts from P. G. Molinari & Sons. There are a few tables outside if you want to devour your sandwich immediately. (Click the image below for a larger version.)

San Francisco is blessed with the lion's share of Bay Area retailers specializing in hard-to-find wines and liquors. For example, Arlequin Wine Merchant, Dee Vine Wines, D&M, Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant, John Walker, The Jug Shop, K&L, SF Wine Trading Co., and the Wine Club are all within the city limits.

Nevertheless, if you're in the Stanford / Palo Alto area, Beltramo's (1540 El Camino Real, Menlo Park) is worth a visit. The store has an exceptional array of hard liquor--six kinds of cachaca, four brands of Pisco, 20 grappas, 40 bourbons--and around 200 liqueurs, one of the broadest selections anywhere. There's also a big wine department with knowledgeable, friendly staff that can offer educated suggestions. The store's inventory is searchable on beltramos.com, so you can see if they've got what you're looking for before making a special trip. (Click the images for larger versions.)

Today, Greeks all over the world celebrate Greek Independence Day. The choice of March 25 is a bit odd, since none of the events central to the Greeks' successful revolution against the Ottoman Empire happened on that date. Rather, it was chosen to coincide with the Feast of the Annunciation.

The local Greek community will celebrate this Saturday, the 28th, with a parade sponsored by the Hellenic Federation of Northern California and the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of San Francisco. The parade starts at noon; the organizers recommend parking in the garage under Civic Center Park, east of City Hall. Spectators are invited to join the parade participants at a reception afterward in the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium.

Additional San Francisco options for getting your Greek on:

Appliance Sales and Service (840 Folsom) is three great stores in one. First, if you have a broken appliance and know how to repair it, they can sell you the necessary replacement parts. Second, if you don't DIY, they can fix it.

Third, if you're shopping for a new appliance, and aren't happy with the limited choices at the big-box stores, this is the place to go. AS&S has the largest selection of blenders, breadmakers, can openers, coffee grinders, coffee makers, crockpots, deep fryers, egg cookers, electric kettles, food processors, graters, grinders, ice cream makers, ice crushers, juicers, mixers, percolators, popcorn makers, slicers, steamers, toaster ovens, toasters, waffle makers, and yogurt makers around. (Kamei does have a bigger selection of rice cookers.)

AS&S is not just about kitchens. They sell parts for, fix, and sell all kinds of small appliances, from shavers to irons to vacuum cleaners. (Click the image below for a larger version.)

The best part of my most recent visit was reading the back of the packaging for Edison Chopsticks (shown at right). The copy includes quotes from famous fans such as the violinist Yehudi Menuhin, who said, "The discovery of the static and peaceful chopstick culture that does not hurt your hands gave a dramatic change to my music." Or, as French philospher Roland Barthes put it, "Chopstick are nutrition intake tool as free and adroit as a thinker's fingers that are not mechanical any more."

K Doving Food Equipment (1171 Folsom St) is the place in SF when you need to have professional kitchen equipment such as slicers and heavy-duty mixers (which you can buy at Forest or Economy) serviced or repaired. It also has a selection of used equipment, including the KitchenAid stand mixers popular among serious home cooks, and one of the best selections of cutlery in town. Now I finally know where to buy those meat hacksaws better butchers use. (Click the images for larger versions.)

Forest Restaurant Supply (2010 Cesar Chavez, near Evans), located in the desolate industrial district at the foot of Potrero Hill between Hwy 101 and Third Street, probably has the best prices of SF's four restaurant supply shops. For example, a five-foot steel whisk similar to the one Economy sells for over $100 was only $40. The quality might not have been quite as high, but it looked sturdy and just as functional.

Everything appears to come from China, and the relatively limited selection (compared with Economy's) seems to focus primarily on the needs of Asian restaurants. For example, Forest has rice-milk makers, but a very limited selection of baking equipment. Since my kitchen is pretty fully stocked, I didn't find anything I wanted to buy except this cheesecloth bag goofily labeled "Separating Sack of Sack." (Click the images for larger versions.)

The local season's first strawberries (above, Lucero's; below, Swanton's) arrived at farmers markets this week. To my taste, these are still unripe. I'll hold off on buying until they develop their full flavor, which might not happen until mid-May. (Ripe strawberries from Southern California and Mexico will show up in supermarkets much sooner.)

On the other hand, if you want local fruit, there's not much else going right now. Apples have been in cold storage for months, and navel oranges are at the tail end of the season. You can perk up under-ripe strawberries by macerating them in a little balsamic vinegar, acidic white wine, or lemon juice with sugar to taste.

If you were fitting out a restaurant or bar, Economy Restaurant Fixtures (1200 7th St), part of the national Trimark chain, could sell you everything you'd need, from industrial-sized mixers to pizza ovens to china, wine glasses, and flatware. Even if you're not, it's still fun to browse through the Costco-sized warehouse and check out the vast array of random hardware: real mandolines; industrial french-fry slicers; triangular, rectangular, and diamond-shaped ice cream scoops; steel and wooden mixing bowls three feet across; a five-foot-long steel whisk.

There are some bargains: I bought a knockoff or gray-market version of a Shrimp Master shelling and deveining tool, which sell for more than $20 online, for $3.89. Generally, though, the prices are higher than at competitors such as Forest and Kamei, though there isn't as broad a selection, or always the same quality -- so you might want to shop around before making a big purchase. (Click the images for a larger version.)

After the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government responded in many ways that bore no rational relation to terrorist threats: invading Iraq, making it harder for Chinese nationals to get or renew student visas, X-raying our shoes at airport security checks. Perhaps the most absurdly tangential of these was the Bioterrorism Act of 2002, which did zip to prevent terrorists from smuggling in bioweapons, but effectively removed raw-milk cheeses aged less than 60 days from the American market.

Such cheeses had technically been banned for years, but, since the rules were laxly enforced, determined shoppers could sometimes track them down. Raw-milk Camembert de Normandie, Reblochon, and Crème Fraiche d'Isigny, for example, were often available in the Bay Area's better cheese shops. After the Bioterrorism Act went into effect in 2003, they disappeared. If you're familiar with the raw-milk versions of those cheeses, their pasteurized counterparts (which can't legally be sold in France, at least not under those AOC-controlled names) are a poor substitute.

Last fall, I read in Janet Fletcher's SF Chronicle cheese column that Hervé Mons of Mons Fromager Affineur (Saint-Haon-le-Châtel, France), a company that buys, ages, and distributes artisanal French cheese, spent more than a year working on an importable Camembert with a flavor closer to the real thing. Whole Foods' cheese buyers were so impressed that they contracted to buy Mons' entire production.