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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:

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.

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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