San Francisco Music Blog

DJ Pam the Funkstress: Cajun food queen

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The Bay Area's devotion to its homegrown music and food is steadfast. The culinary creativity here is as infectious as our sonic imagination, so it should come as little surprise that there is a crossover between the two local scenes. But did you know that DJs are whipping up cupcakes and burritos, and guitarists are serving up their personal brands of margaritas and champagne?

Behold our picks for eight local artists who rock kitchens and vineyards as easily as they do concert stages and DJ booths:

8. Boz Scaggs
Along with his legendary singing and songwriting career (that includes six Top 20 hits), Scaggs is well known for supporting live music in San Francisco: He owns Slim's and the Great American Music Hall. He's also the former owner of Marina bar/restaurant Blue Light Cafe and is now cultivating a new passion with his Scaggs Vineyard in Napa.

7. Sammy Hagar
The loud rocker runs a quiet food and spirits empire from his home base in Mill Valley. He sold 80 percent of his Cabo Wabo tequila company to Italy's Gruppo Campari for $80 million, and partnered with Gruppo subsidiary Skyy Vodka (of S.F.) for marketing. He is also the former owner of S.F.'s Tres Agaves restaurant and tequila lounge--he bowed out of that one in 2007. Thankfully, his more lowbrow and touristy Cabo Wabo Cantinas are nowhere near here.

6. DJ Hubert Keller
While Keller is principally a chef and restaurateur (Fleur de Lys and the newly opened Burger Bar in Macy's Union Square), it seems that his heart is truly found on the dance floor as DJ Hubert Keller, pumping out tunes that fuel the European tropics. The Top Chef Masters contestant drops the Balearic beats of Ibiza by way of one-off parties at night spots such as San Francisco's Bambuddha Lounge and at the occasional culinary event.

5. DJ Rajah
Chef, culinary instructor, and DJ Roger Feely of Soul Cocina deftly blends the musical and edible diaspora, sourcing beats and ingredients from all continents. Find him on the streets of San Francisco, as part of the current wave of gourmet food carts.

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Eat @ 111 Minna

Galleries are known for serving Trader Joe's buckets of minibrownies, not sliders with heirloom pepper relish and aioli, wild boar sausages on potato rolls, flatbread with foraged mushrooms, and cupcakes by Kingdom Cake. There: We just told you most of the menu at tonight's EAT at 111 Minna. Every Monday, chef Tommy Halvorson of underground Phoenix Supper Club thinks up a special tapas-style menu, doesn't go to Phoenix Supper Club, goes instead to the gallery, and fixes up special dishes for those who want to dine alongside art and a changing lineup of DJs: tonight, that's Señor Oz from Afrolicious. For those who think Halvorson's dinner-in-a-gallery sounds like something from a Top Chef challenge, consider this: Phoenix Supper Club is a roaming restaurant with no fixed kitchen. Chef Tommy knows exactly what he's doing.

Entrancing: Cheb i Sabah

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On the heels of such global groove projects promoting humanitarian causes as NextAid and Project Ahimsa comes San Francisco to Uganda. SFtU is a silent auction fundraiser whose proceeds support three organizations involved with on-the-ground eco-sustainable, health, and education work in Uganda: Building Tomorrow, ShantiUganda, and YouthAIDS.
The event boasts a nice selection of musical talent: Sila and the Afrofunk Experience, Cheb I Sabbah, DJ Amir, master African drummers, and more.
For $25 admission, you get all that, plus food courtesy of Radio Africa Kitchen.
It all goes down next Thursday (Sept. 24), at 111 Minna. More information is here and here.

Erin O'Neil

Mighty Slim Pickins

​ Looking for some Labor Day fun? Get your little doggies along to El Rio this afternoon for the seventh annual CowgirlPalzooza. In addition to free BBQ (while it lasts), this affordable event ($10 at the door) features musical performances by 77 El Deora, Wicked Mercies, Bootcuts , and Mighty Slim Pickins  The show begins at 4 pm and continues until the cows come home.

Niko Villamor

If the idea of getting crunk organically tickles your fancy, come on down to 330 Ritch tonight, when the Southern Music and Food Festival jumps off.

The food portion of the event offers such tasty treats as free-range chicken & waffles, BBQ Ribs, and sweet tea - all organic, so never mind the cholesterol. The music portion features live performances by ATL/SF emcee Niko Villamor  and Rob Roy (a French/ Filipino emcee from Jacksonville, FL) plus DJ Smiles, "fresh from ATL." The Fest costs just $5 to get in and starts at 8 pm sharp. Sounds like a good way to get over hump day. Details are here and you can peep an interview with Rob Roy here.

Emancipator: Howard Wiley

For the past nine years, Oakland culture-keepers Eastside Arts Alliance have presented the Malcolm X Jazz Arts Festival , an annual, free event in San Antonio park. This year's event, which happens Saturday from 11 a.m.-7 p.m., features jazz legend David Murray, soon-to-be jazz legend Howard Wiley (performing with the Freedom Now band), Chicano funkster Fuga, and the Abraham Burton Trio, from NYC.

The MXJF is a fun, family- and kid-friendly, community-oriented, afternoon of music and art which gets better every year. In addition to the main stage acts, the park's basketball courts will be overflowing with dancers, poets, MCs, and vocalists, and there's also a graffiti battle for the visually-artistically-inclined. Other activities include arts & crafts for kids, and a food court so you can get your grub on. If you're coming from outside of Oakland, bring your bike, hop on BART, get off at Lake Merritt or Fruitvale, and enjoy a nice ride (and hopefully a nice day).

Ukranian illusionist Eugeniy Voronin in Teatro Zinzanni's "Sultry Summer Magic"

As Teatro Zinzanni's new show, "Sultry Summer Magic," came to a close beneath the giant spiegeltent (that's the fancy Belgian word meaning "mirror tent") at Pier 29 Wednesday night, I only had one question. Why had I lived in San Francisco for more than a year and never been given a proper explanation - via friends, newspapers, or even marketing - of this show?

 

As I sat down to write about it, though, I quickly figured out the answer. Beyond the fact that tickets range from $117 to $167, which means that the attendants are mostly tourists and filthy rich people with whom I don't normally associate, there are two barriers to learning about Zinzanni. The first is that the broad words that likely come to mind to describe it - mysterious! surprising! wondrous! - are practically meaningless. If someone told me that performance was full of mystery and surprise, I probably smiled, ignored that person, and forgot about it.

 

But the other option - to tell somebody about the specifics - seems an even greater disservice. It would taint the best part of Zinzanni, which is, aside from the incredible talent of its performers, its sheer unpredictability. What is given away and not given away needs careful balancing, perhaps as careful as a performance of, say, the tango on a trapeze (which is, in fact, part of the show).

EKAphotography

Soul Recipe: Bryant Terry

There was a packed house last night for eco-chef Bryant Terry's official book launch for Vegan Soul Kitchen (Da Capo) at the Museum of the African Diaspora. The book, which contains over 150 recipes for "fresh, healthy, and creative African-American cuisine" (example: Roasted Red Potato Salad with Parsley-Pine Nut Pesto -yum!), may be the first of its kind, and has garnered endorsements from filmmaker Mario Van Peebles, healthy food guru John Robbins, and green jobs advocate Van Jones. It also comes with a soundtrack for every dish, an eclectic selection which ranges from Roy Hargrove to Bob Marley to Baaba Maal to Massive Attack to The Good, The Bad & the Queen--an innovative idea, and one that we wish more cookbooks had thought of.

Terry basked in the adulation of Vegans and non-Vegans alike, hinting at the crossover potential of his book, which comes at a perfect time, what with Obama in the white house and the Green movement on the rise. Musical accompaniment was provided by a jazz band (featuring the ubiquitous Kev Choice on keyboards) and DJ Joe Quixx; KPFA's Weyland Southon hosted. Overall, it was a good look for MoAD, whose programming has begun to tap into the rich, flavorful local community; and for Terry, who plans to take his book on the road to spread the gospel of Vegan soul. We just love it when food and music come together. For more info, click here.

Alex Pardee's Letters From Digested Children opens tomorrow at Fifty24SF, so celebrity Chef Chris Cosentino decided to mark the occassion by inviting Pardee to cook up a few pig's head dishes at Cosentino's swanky SF restaurant, Incanto. I'm guessing that pig's head is a reference to either Lord of the Flies, or to Pardee's affinity for gore and horror flicks. You may also remember Cosentino cooking with Jeremy Fish before his art show last month, so look out for more team-ups with Cosentino and other Fifty24SF artists in the near future. Check for more pig's head recipes with Cosentino and Pardee over at Upper Playground's Walrus TV. --Oscar Pascual

French-born and -trained chef Hubert Keller — mastermind behind the fancypants S.F. restaurant Fleur de Lys, star of the PBS cooking series Secrets of a Chef, and the first guest chef to work in the White House kitchen — is helping to celebrate his home country's Independence Day a little differently this year.

No, he's not whipping up a special prix fixe menu or creating a French rebuke to the abominable concept of "Freedom Fries." He's actually going to try his hand at DJing: on Saturday, July 12, Hubert "Da Mixmasta" Keller joins house DJ Frenchy Le Freak at Ruby Skye for Monsieur Le Freak's event titled "Bastille Day." (Okay, so Bastille Day is actually July 14. . .but Mondays just aren't the best nights for a big Frenchy fête, I guess.)

What will Keller spin? If he were about 20 years younger — and that beard were more spotty and ironic — we could probably assume he'd groove to some Franco-electro bangers by Justice or maybe chill out with some rarified Air. He could also go retro with Serge Gainsbourg or Françoise Hardy. Or what about some old chansons by Yves Montand and classical gems by Fauré, Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Poulenc, et Boulez? You'll have to show up to find out. I'm personally betting on a heaping helping of Sir Mix-A-Lot hits. — J. Graham

Join Gridskipper on their San Francisco Yuppie's Ghetto Tour of up-and-coming establishments in neighborhoods you've only driven your Prius through with the windows rolled up and the doors locked.

Bayview, Hunters Point, the crackalicious Tenderloin and Western Addition are all represented. So get out there and earn some street cred, but don't worry too much Yuppies, most of the places have been pre-screened by your cooler hipster brethren already. Also, do yourself and favor and don't ask about drink specials.

Yuppy Scum! by Magillicuddy on Flickr

-- Brian Bernbaum

Oh boy, I don't even know where to start with the flood of reaction over last week's Chronicle front pager about the lack of good line cooks in San Francisco and the shitty pay they receive. There were so many responses, in fact, that the Chronicle today devoted an entire article just to reprinting them. One thing is for sure, San Francisco restaurants are in one helluva tough spot. A small sample:

"Thank you for your informative article about poorly paid restaurant chefs/cooks. The compensation to these hard-working people is deplorable. I have a son who graduated at the top of his class at cooking school, has 20 years solid experience and doesn't make $15/hr ... He has never called in sick or missed a day of work. He is always early and opens up the restaurant every morning ... For all of his loyalty and hard work, my son has not even had a raise in over two years. So thank you for beating the drum for these hard-working, underappreciated, underpaid chefs/cooks."

-- Brian Bernbaum

The New York Times ran roughshod over the vegetarian scene in San Francisco in their weekend Travel section, setting the tone for the article with an opening shot by VegNews magazine editor Aurelia d'Andrea: "We don't have enough veg restaurants that are really good and exciting. I'm bored by what's offered here."

Just a thought here: could that have something to do with the absence of meat?

The writer then set out to prove Ms. d'Andrea wrong, and seems to succeed. Green restaurant, run by the San Francisco Zen Center, Millennium, Herbivore, Golden Era, Bok Choy Garden, Cha-Ya and Cafe Gratitude all get the star treatment, with Cha-Ya receiving perhaps the most sterling going-over in the food department, with caveats about the decor ("at night the place is lit like a Laundromat") and the "brusque" service.

pic from the New York Times

-- Brian Bernbaum

Gary Danko's farewell feast fantasy just keeps getting freakier. Not only does it involve a terribly awkward photo featuring two laughing medusas feeding one another "like at a Roman or Greek banquet," now the New Yorker reveals more of Danko's Last Supper vision, from the newly-released book My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals:

"Gary Danko envisions a "delicious and awesome festival" set on the banks of a lake in Udaipur, and featuring eunuchs, platform beds, and fifteen wines, including a Nebuchadnezzar of Krug champagne from 1947."

As SF Covers remarks, "we all should thank Gary, the sole San Francisco chef in the book, for representing our gloriously and freakishly hedonistic city so very, very well!"

-- Brian Bernbaum

Over at Bay Area Bites, Chef Shuna Lydon has had enough of people bitching about terrible service at restaurants, and she's got an admittedly radical idea about how to give diners a taste of their own medicine:

"Many say that the only way to end America's wars in the Middle East would be to have a mandatory draft. If everyone could feel how war presses down on us all, then maybe we would be a little less clueless and apathetic. My radical idea is this: I say we should have a mandatory service industry draft."

-- Brian Bernbaum

While the Dungeness crab season may be on hold after that pesky 58,000-gallon oil spill in the Bay, it doesn't mean you can't at least get ready to eat some crabs: mark your targets, map your routes, and, as Gridskipper notes, don't forget to call ahead and make sure the crab is available.

Dungeness crabs by st_catherine on Flickr

-- Brian Bernbaum

A study of Boston-area coffee chops conducted by economist Caitlin Knowles finds that:

Men get their coffee 20 seconds earlier than women;

The delays women face are longer when the baristas are all male;

Those delays "almost vanished" when the baristas were all female;

It's not clear if women end up waiting longer for male staff because the dude's are flirting with them or because the dude's feel contempt for them.

The Slate article also notes evidence showing that "blacks wait longer than whites, the young wait longer than the old, and the ugly wait longer than the beautiful. But there effects are statistically not as persuasive."

Damn, male baristas, I always knew you were a fickle bunch of disgruntled sub-bartenders, but this is ridiculous. (via The Grinder)

pic from dcbachelor.com

-- Brian Bernbaum

Tags: Baristas, Boston, Coffee Shops, Discrimination, Sexism, Slate, Women

Well, the oil spill may have put the kibosh on all area fishing and dungeness crab season until at least December 1st -- oh God, no Cioppino! No Crab Louie Salad! -- but in its place have risen some interesting new local recipes for cleaning up the gunk -- and they're totally organic!

Doormat-sized mats of tightly woven human hair "that feel somewhat like an S.O.S. pad" are being used to soak up the oil. Next comes oyster mushrooms -- to be grown on the oil-soaked hair mats -- which will absorb the oil, turning the whole delicious gunky mess into nontoxic compost. From Lisa Gautier of San Francisco, who provided 1,000 hair mats:

"You make it like a lasagna ... You layer the oily hair mats with mushrooms and straw, turn it in six weeks, and by 12 weeks you have good soil."

pic from the Chronicle

-- Brian Bernbaum

Restaurant reservation scalping: Can there be a more perfect expression of the free market? Tablepronto is the go-to place if you absolutely want a reservation and are absolutely too lazy to stand outside the place and wait for half an hour. For the price of a classy appetizer ($15) you can snag a table for two at Foreign Cinema on Friday night. But in the eternal words of Eater SF: "is it really that hard to get a reservation in San Francisco?" (via sf.eater)

-- Brian Bernbaum

It had been too long since I'd been to the Naz 8 (www.naz8.com), the multiplex in Fremont that features the best in Asian film. (It had been too long since I'd been anywhere, but that's a different issue). It was Veteran's Day. Tom called at ten and asked if I'd like to go see On Shanti Om at 3 p.m. at the Naz. I had no immediate plans, but I would have thrown them out the window, anyway, so delighted was I. I said yes.

It's the kind of story that makes you want to pay cash only at restaurants: ABC 7's intrepid rabble rouser Dan Noyes tracked down San Francisco restaurant owner Phau Lam, accused of racking up more than $50,000 in bogus credit card charges from about 100 victims who ate at his restaurants Home Menu, which could be this place, and Asia Taste, neither of which appear on Yelp. Anybody out there eaten at either of these places?

Gotta love Noyes' incredulous interview style:

Dan Noyes: "What's going on here? What happened?"

Phau Lam: "I don't know."

Dan Noyes: "Why did you bill her ATM card?"

Phau Lam: "I don't bill that."

Dan Noyes: "You didn't bill that? Well, who did?"

Phau Lam: "No, I don't know."

Dan Noyes: "Oh, come on."

Oh, come on indeed. Don't take no shit offa nobody, Noyes!

-- Brian Bernbaum

Whatever. The 2007 Oxford word of the year is "locavore," defined as people who only eat "food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius," who "also shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly measure ..." Back in the 90's we also had a word for people like this: incorrigible yuppie scum. Locavore (note the alternate spelling: "localvore") was coined by a group of women in San Francisco. We're taking over the world people, one word at a time. (via sf.eater.com)

Tomatoes Squared Plus Cherries from pumpkinoodle on Flickr

-- Brian Bernbaum

The shoe is on the other foot for Dilbert creator Scott Adams, since his second restaurant, Stacey's at Waterford in Dublin, has hopped the crazy train to financial ruin. Now the man who made unbearably out of touch, rule-crazy bosses into a national obsession is faced with the ultimate cruel irony: he has become the unbearably out of touch, rule-crazy boss.

Thankfully, Adams seems aware of just how close to becoming an asshole he actually is, and has taken steps to avoid resentment among his employees. Here's what Adams' head chef has to say about his bosses leadership:

"I've been in this business 23 years, and I've seen a lot of things. He truly has no idea what he's doing."

I just know there's a Stacey's waiter out there somewhere working on his own comic strip. Dilberts within Dilberts, man. Trippy.

-- Brian Bernbaum

John Mayer, what can I say? I never liked your music very much, but I always admired your abilities as a guitarist, especially after those awesome cameos on Chappelle's Show. You also reportedly bagged Jessica Simpson, which is sort of cool and sort of lame at the same time. There's so much ambivalence there.

What I'm saying is, until I saw your lame food blog, you were right there at the precipice of lame/cool. Besides the high-falutin' announcement about your "mlog," which comes off like some ridiculous attempt at celebrity obsession satire (seriously, we're interested in Jessica Simpson's Ta-Tas, not your food), you put these gigantic fucking watermarks on all the pictures. So now, even the random freak who might be remotely interested in seeing the waffle you ate for breakfast won't have the satisfaction. Is this part of the satire too?

-- Brian Bernbaum

SF Covers brings word that the decadent, oft-embattled French duck liver foie gras has slipped back onto the menu at Jardiniere after chef Traci Des Jardins vowed to stop using it in 2003. Many Bay Area chefs began to rethink use of the controversial delicacy after a series of attacks on Aqua chef Laurent Manrique, blamed on radical animal rights activists who say force-feeding ducks to produce foie gras is cruel. Cruel or not, foie gras is a key ingredient in French cuisine, and remains a high demand luxury item among fine diners.

-- Brian Bernbaum

That donuts taste really good is a fact beyond dispute, but everything else is up for grabs. This is especially true in San Francisco, a city packed full of both indistinct donut shops and culinary claim-stakers. Bob's Donuts on Polk is oft-cited as the granddaddy of San Francisco donuts, but Gridskipper leads us to a handful of other out-of-the-way donut houses acclaimed for their particular renditions of the classics.

But let's not complicate things too much: we're still talking about dough fried in animal fat and submerged in liquid sugar, and really, what doesn't sound good about that? As Gridskipper points out, though, do yourself a favor and get coffee somewhere else.

do-nutter pic by golly molly on flickr

-- Brian Bernbaum

"How can we all enjoy local, affordable, and sustainably produced food?" Join local Slow Food pioneer Alice Waters and author Michael Pollan this May at the Moscone Center for four full days of discussion, workshops, films and of course lots and lots of eating, very slowly. Over 200 farmers and artisans will set up shop to show you the most beautiful food you can't afford and make you feel terrible about all the McDonald's you've been feeding your obese children.

-- Brian Bernbaum

While it's not really surprising that Halloween has finally come to this, it's still sad: Trick or treating has become just another opportunity for advertising. San Francisco cartoonist Chris Onstad uses his brilliant online comic strip Achewood to expose the practice of hustling business cards along to children via Halloween candy. Is nothing sacred? What's next? Razor blades? Best line: "Holy Jesus Christ Is there a business card taped to this fucking candy?"

-- Brian Bernbaum

Hoping that spikes in falafel and tahini purchases in the Bay Area would blaze a trail to Iranian secret agents, in 2005 and 2006, the FBI mined grocery store records for Middle Eastern food sales in the South San Francisco-San Jose area. According to Congressional Quarterly, the project didn't last long and didn't lead to any falafel-related prosecutions.

"It was torpedoed by the head of the FBI’s criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, who argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous — and possibly illegal ... As ridiculous as it sounds, the groceries counting scheme is a measure of how desperate the FBI is to disrupt domestic terrorism plots."

pic from vegeteria.co.uk

-- Brian Bernbaum

Calling all serious carnivores: Flex your canines this week at the Huntington Hotel's Wild Game Week. Through Saturday your exotic bloodlust will be richly rewarded with everything from Buttermilk Brined "Southern Fried" Rabbit and Lightly Smoked Coffee-Spice & Cacao Rubbed Caribou Medallions (appetizers) to Pancetta Crusted Tenderloin of Himalayan Yak "Rossini" and Chive Crusted Pan Seared Local Organic Ostrich Fillet (entrees). Can't you just feel that inner yak-hunter awakening? (via thrillist.com)

Hotel Huntington pic from Ansel Olson on Flickr

-- Brian Bernbaum