CT Young/SF Weekly Flickr Pool

The Saloon on Grant.

​Highlights from the blog this week:

1. In his review of Bobby Deen's new television show, Not My Momma's Cooking, food TV reviewer Michael Leaverton keeps calling Paula Deen's cooking death-food. Not three days later, Paula Deen is finally going public with the fact that she has diabetes 2, having signed a contract to become the spokesperson for a pharmaceutical company.

2. Roving cocktail correspondent Lou Bustamante visits new Emeryville cocktail bar Honor and discovers the bar's Queen Anne's Revenge. SFoodie was going to make a quip about Montezuma's Revenge, then realized it sounded like a bad dad joke.

3. Not only does Tamara Palmer discover Apiece Desserts, a side project from Mifune Bistro pastry chef Yoko Fujii, she discovers that she enjoys cookies made with beets.

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Generik11/SF Weekly Flickr pool

Highlights from the blog this week:​ 1. SFoodie's late-night cooking-channel scout, Michael Leaverton, discovers Bama Glama, whose dethgoth, party-planning host wears spiked sunglasses (yes, photographic evidence is provided). Leaverton's reaction to the show: coining the word "hatewatch." Bonus read: the comments.

2. Noah Sanders chats up James Freeman about Blue Bottle's brand-new bottled cold-brew coffees, now on sale at the Ferry Plaza kiosk, and perhaps soon in a supermarket in your neighborhood.

3. SFoodie comes up with our list of San Francisco 10 best burritos, a subject on which 50 percent of all San Franciscans consider themselves expert.
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Generik11/SF Weekly Flickr pool

​Highlights from the blog this week:

1. Some of you are spending your afternoons ignoring your work in favor of stressing over what you're going to be sending to the folks back home for the holidays. Laura Beck has done some of the work for you, IDing seven local chocolate companies that ship.

2. If you happen to be awake at 4 a.m. and you happen to be craving cake and you happen to be watching the Food Network and a show called Have Cake, Will Travel comes on, should you watch it? Food TV critic Michael Leaverton says no. Emphatically.

3. The shelves of upscale markets and beer stores are once again stocked with holiday beers. Jason Henry convened a tasting panel to evaluate a number of the spiced beers out there. Anchor scored well, once again, but the Belgians made a strong showing. Apparently, a millennium or two of practice has resulted in some fine beers.

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Jeremy Brooks/SF Weekly Flickr pool

​Highlights from the blog this week:

1. Laura Beck lays out a few strategies for surviving a trip to the Berkeley Bowl. It involves caffeine, bicycle helmets, and not being afraid to tackle women four times your age. Note: She does not guarantee that your groceries will be intact by the time you exit.

2. Marla Simon scouts out Hil's Cooking Mobile Trailer, a new sandwich truck in a silver capsule-shaped Airstream from a woman who's been appearing at Oakland's First Fridays.

3. SFoodie lists its five favorite restaurants for beer geeks -- restaurants where the food and the booze are equal, and sometimes complimentary, draws. Naturally, a few of the city's beer geeks have taken offense. Feel free to join the fray in the comments.

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Jonathan Percy/SF Weekly Flickr pool

Highlights from the blog this week: More >>

Jonathan Kauffman

Halloween brownie bites from Baked, three for $7.50.

​Highlights from the blog this week:

1. SFoodie contributor Albert Law, who has been spending six weeks in China, stumbled upon a cafe in Beijing that serves Ritual coffee. And it's no cheap knockoff -- it's the real stuff, imported from San Francisco. In fact, the brought over Eilenn Hassi to train his staff, and he's now giving workshops on how to make a cup of coffee.

2. In case you were hurting for Halloween costume suggestions: Bacon drag!

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Jeremy Brooks/SF Weekly's Flickr pool

​ Highlights from the blog this week:

1. Ben Narasin writes about the sheep's milk cheeses produced by Barinaga Ranch. The Marin-based cheesemaker lets her ewes graze outdoors all year, and only makes cheeses from the milk they produce in spring and summer. What they do all winter: Watch America's Next Top Model, like the rest of us.

2. Alanna Hale spent a few hours with Matthew Accarrino at SPQR, talking to the chef about his blend of Italian and American traditions and coaxing the recipe for his farro pasta with salumi, buttermilk, and poppy seeds out of him. Find part 1 of the interview here and part 2 here.

3. On SFoodie, Peter Jamison introduces this week's cover story, a profile of the insect-eaters behind Don Bugito and girlmeetsbug.com, which required him to sample larva and figure out how to describe the particular crunch of a cricket exoskeleton.

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Jeremy Brooks/SF Weekly Flickr pool

​Five highlights from SFoodie this week:

1. Marla Simon put in a crazy amount of research to come up with a comprehensive guide to CSAs that deliver to San Franciscans. Part 1 covered fruits and vegetables; part 2 compiled eggs, meat, and dairy. Both are worth bookmarking.

2. SFoodie picked 25 of our favorite burgers in the city, and then had Albert Law photograph them all. If you thought burgers weren't photogenic, Albert will prove you wrong.

3. Did you know that all that sangria and house-made bitters you've been drinking have actually been illegal? This week, Scott Baird and Josh Harris led a push to get Governor Brown to sign a bill into law allowing bartenders to create infusions, a statewide ban that dates back to the end of Prohibition. Just in time for SF Cocktail Week, the governor did.

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CT Young/SF Weekly's Flickr stream

​ Highlights from SFoodie this week:

1. Alanna Hale interviews Bar Bambino's Lizzie Binder (here's part 1 and part 2) about the Mission restaurant's switch from all-around-the-boot to Northeast Italian food, how she California-izes heavy traditional recipes, and the new cafe coming this fall.

2. Luis Chong discovers Ramen Underground, a new noodle shop in FiDi run by a former Katana-ya cook.

3. W. Blake Gray walks into a dive bar ... and ends up eating a beefy French onion sandwich. Despite feeling like a pinky-waver for trying to order white wine at Clooney's, Gray ends up chatting with the chef of the Galley, its new-ish restaurant, and eating a little ahi-watermelon crudo.

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Albert Law/porkbellystudio

From Albert Law's Rice Paper Scissors slideshow

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2. Two things SFoodie learned from Caroline Chen's article about beekeeping in San Francisco: 1. This regulation-giddy city doesn't have any rules about how and where you can set up a beehive. 2. City honey is cleaner than country honey. Why? Fewer pesticides.

3. In a city dominated by OpenTable, the Microsoft of online reservations companies, how come none of the high-end Chinese restaurants use the site? No answers, only questions.

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