San Francisco Blog

Meredith Brody

Why stop at one?

 • We ate like 15-year-olds with a thyroid condition this week -- call it consolation for the relentlessly shitty weather, the kind that drizzles just enough moisture onto the filthy hood of your Sentra to make it seem permanently flocked with grime. Meredith Brody kicked things off at the Ferry Building with a mouthful of rotisserie.

• Tamara Palmer made herself feel better for missing this weekend's Gilroy Garlic Festival by acquiring some seriously reeky breath.

• Brody got a double-dog taste of upscale link love in the Tenderloin, even if she left feeling a tad ambivalent.

• We crunched the numbers and ran a high-low comparison of burgers topped with a certain tropical fruit. Our conclusion? Burgers are good. Really good.

• The Thursday street-food market at Ferry Plaza offered another excuse to gorge -- this time on Korean seaweed "tacos." We weren't alone.

• And what do you need after a week of dogs and burgers, Korean rib niblets and garlic fries? Something to help get rid of it all. Mary Ladd cracked a book designed to help us do just that. Thanks, Mary: It was the perfect way to make ourselves feel good after a week spent, um, making ourselves feel good.

shunafish/Flickr

Appleman: armed with new challenges.

• It was a week all about moving on, starting with Meredith Brody's Hot Meal report on Five, the luxe-y Berkeley hotel eatery that marks the re-appearance of beloved S.F. chef Scott Howard. She's dreaming about a return.

• Mary Ladd tracked another re-appearance: After breaking hearts for departing the Mission, Suriya Thai surfaced in SOMA. Hey Valencia Street: see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya.

• Tamara Palmer took a late-night stroll through Lower Haight wiener culture in Hot Dog Alley. A Tenderloin never tasted so good.

• Matthew Stafford pondered changes to the gimlet, a cocktail loved by a certain literary dick. Sure, the classic formula is too sweet for modern tastes, but that shouldn't be license to crazy it up with stuff like elderflower syrup. You know?

• Tamara Palmer reported on changes that just might make Dolores Park a tad less trashy. Literally.

• And finally, Meredith Brody described the imminent departure from A16 and SPQR by a certain ink-sleeved chef with a shiny head and a national following. It was fun while it lasted, right? Kind of like the week in SFoodie.

• It was a week devoted to plush, unabashedly drippy eats, the kind that glaze your chin and call for extra stacks of paper napkins. SFoodie's Tamara Palmer kicked it off with five dishes spawned in the nation's double-wides.

• Mary Ladd hoisted a double-meat charmer at a place beloved by the hammered of Valencia, though the details might be fuzzy next morning.

• Soaring, sprawling Horatius busted out the Portuguese home-style in a space packed with glittery gourmet swag.

• SF Weekly food critic Meredith Brody rocked an anorak to brave the Outer Sunset fog; good thing Outerlands was there to revive her with soup and an open-face.

• We lined up behind Town Hall for a take-away cluster of lush baby backs and an even lusher hot link from its summer BBQ concept. Our cuticles are still orange from the experience.

• And finally, Ryan Farr set us up with a Dogzilla, a wiener heaped with kimchi and pork rinds in a twisted take on the chili dog -- fitting topper for a week in SFoodie that left us fishing out our fat jeans from back of the closet. We're not complaining.

Grundlepuck/Flickr

Chillax, brainiac, and enjoy the show.

• Yes, it was all about elevating this week. With Blue Bottle drips from Cento in our system, we shook our lingering hangover from Pride and turned our remaining brain cells to summer reading. Made us feel smarter, anyway.


• Contributor Tamara Palmer broke down the city's most beloved food mascots, past and present. Oh, Samurai Chef, how we love you.


• With salsa stains on her sweater, food critic Meredith Brody told us all about the new Thursday street-food market at Ferry Plaza.


• SFoodie's Mary Ladd schooled us on bagelheads. No, not the diehards who camp out at Katz's, jonesing for a schmear - these guys are way creepier than that.


• No, we haven't yet cycled through all the stages of grief over M.J.'s passing -- we're still on hunger. Thankfully, local eateries fed our need with special Jacko tributes. Tamara Palmer broke 'em down for us.


• And finally, just in time for Independence Day, Senior Herb Correspondent Steve Elliott shared his stash of party pot recipes. Go on, eat that second Fire Cracker -- it's a holiday. Kick back and enjoy the indoor fireworks. After all that learning you did on SFoodie this week, you've earned it!

• Call it skittishness before the weekend's roiling Pride festivities, or some freaky premonition (the way your cockapoo gets all quivery pre-earthquake) that Farrah and MJ were about to step the hell off. Whatever the reasons, it was a bare-knuckles week in food, starting with a barrage of sucker punches over a SFoodie column name. Can we get a ref up in here?

• Resident food critic Meredith Brody documented her two-fisted lust affair with something called a Lasker. Here's a hint: It's juicy.

• On the penultimate day of our Queer Food Capital coverage before Pride, we speculated on the lesbian origins of modern food writing. Grab a tissue, it's kind of tear-jerker.

• The producer of this month's jacked-up Great American Food and Music Fest is setting himself up for more, only next time he swears it'll be different. Can you believe him?

• Guest blogger Mando Rayo, aka El Mundo de Mando of Austin-based TacoJournalism, took a salsa-doused bite of the Mission and declared it pretty good.

• And finally, perhaps to shake the week's sketchy mojo, Tamara Palmer thought of her favorite things. Cheer up, everybody: It may have been a sharp-elbowed week in local food, but celebration is damn near upon us.

• It was an unapologetic week of eating, with a tear or two thrown in for good measure. New SFoodie blogger Mary Ladd was busted gorging on the tasty but little-known savory foods at Mission Pie. Meanwhile, Matthew Stafford downed a mai tai (or two) in anticipation of summer.

• We dropped our bag lunch in the bin and checked out two places still too new to have scuff marks on the baseboards or gum under the seats: Marino in Hayes Valley and Wexler's in the FiDi.

• SFoodie blogger Tamara Palmer rocked a hairnet to take an insider's tour of the See's Candies factory in South San Francisco. Her hair has looked a little compacted ever since, but, well, somebody had to do it.

• The organizers of last Saturday's great clusterf**k (otherwise known as the Great American Food and Music Fest) issued mea culpas -- one, literally, with tears in his eyes. Peed-off commenters didn't exactly hand him a tissue.

• Not everyone was quite so weepy. The city's gearing up for next Sunday's massive Pride celebration, and SFoodie offered its own guides for navigating local LGBT food culture. Go ahead, order that third gimlet: Even before the big bash begins, it's been a week of celebration.

• It was a trying week for lovers of the new-school street-food scene: Sexy Soup Lady got shut down last weekend, prompting all kinds of Twitter-gazing. Were public tweets too indiscrete? Or have Linda Street residents just turned all grampa-cranky?

• Local news took notice, enlisting SFoodie's own Tamara Palmer on a fruitless search for mobile eats. Film at 11.

• And with even the Wall Street Journal drooling over street food, we corralled some national stars of cart and truck cuisine.

• Robert Kenner, director of the new shock-doc Food, Inc., talked with SFoodie about Big Ag: They largely refused to talk for his film, but now that's it out, they won't shut up.

• Meanwhile, Tyler Florence, the handsomely doughy TV food star holed up in Marin, was super pissed about the disappearance of a certain ginormous utensil. Have an extra mojito during cocktail hour tonight, TyFlo -- like the rest of us, you survived a janky week in local food.

Kevin.The.Great/Flickr

Veritcal eating: All street food, all the time. We caught a whiff of Bike Basket Pies, a taste of fiercely homey Pennsylavania-style gobs, and, at last week's Maker Faire geekapalooza, copped a preview of Ritual Roasters' iced coffee bike. And not to be a big old buzzkill or anything, but we checked in with Part One of a report on how authorities could shut down the new wave of unpermitted Mission vendors.

Fried: The very thought of bacon desserts we have loved left us schwitzing pork fat, as did the instantly addictive po'boy filled with bacon-studded eggs Little Skillet served on Day One of breakfast service. We weren't done. We ID'd a spot in Alameda where, if you ask nice, you can get a slug of bacon bourbon, and even took a chaw on bacon jerky.

Keepin' it classy: To show we could still clean up nice, we stopped in on breathtaking Cavallo Point in Marin, experienced the unnerving quiet that was opening day of massive new Berkeley Bowl West, and, at Schmidt's Deli on Folsom, nibbled some of the most refined German cuisine you could ever shake a brat at. All in all, a week packed with delicious.

Our kind of shrooming involves ice cream

•Our first lady of lunching Meredith Brody found tasty delights at an inconspicuous new Mission District eatery named simply the Corner. It's on an actual corner, go figure.

•Chocolate-maker Michael Recchiuti launched his new Taste Project, serving such unlikely treats as mushroom ice cream sandwiches.

•Once again, our attentions turned to foie gras as bulk retail giant Costco pondered a ban.

•Plus: City walking on carbs 'n caffeine, meditational tea, salame cycling, sidewalk gardening, sexy soup, and organic ice cream.

• After last week's false start, We caught Spencer on the Go dishing out escargot lollipops and curried frog legs out of a taco truck parked in SOMA. How did it stack up against the usual fare? Comme ci, comme ca . . .

• Street food is on and poppin' in San Francisco, and nowhere more so right now than in the Mission, where a weekly block party is breathing new life and love into the area.

• While new high-profile eatery RN74 has been catching a lot of complaints about food prices, the 80-page wine list and Last Bottle Board are drawing raves.

• Plus: Urban goats, lard soap, free bagels, fried pickles, award-winning pizza, and the 10 coolest specialty food/drink magazines.