Places I've Eaten: March 2014

Sunday, March 30, 2014

YOUR WEEKLY DIGESTION OF FOOD NEWS TO CONSUME

Coqueta along the Embarcadero. If you are luck you might catch a glimpse of Michael Chiarello chopping up some octopus there.

There's a new fried chicken place in North Beach. It pairs will with beer and strippers?
Drug cartels are driving up lime prices, so says Tacolicious thus up go margaritas.
SFist re-ranks the Bay Areas best restaurants based on some new formula.
If, like me, you can't afford $398 here's Saisons full tasting menu in pictures.
There's a Guamanian food restaurant in San Francisco, who knew?
Glamour shots of chickens?! Why not, it's kind of funny.
A whiskey primer from 7x7 so you can look smart when you hit up Hard Water.
Yes there are places that still deliver at 2am in San Francisco...drunk dialing time!!
That cat cafe has met it's funding goal..looks like it's a go..your move dogs.

Friday, March 28, 2014

FOOD TRUCK QUICK BITE: LOBSTA TRUCK IS ALL BUTTERED UP

Food trucks come and go in San Francisco on a regular basis making it difficult to get out there an try everyone of them, though I do try. I'm always on the lookout for new ones to the area and sometimes they pop up with lots of fanfare, such is the case with the Lobsta Truck. Hailing originally from down Southern California way I'd seen several online food news outlets highlight its arrival to town and it was because of this that I grabbed my friend Elena and we made the arduous cross town journey to the Friday night Off the Grid at Fort Mason to give this hot new truck a try. We got there right when the event was starting but the Lobsta wasn't quite ready yet so we wandered around till they started serving. During that time a line had formed at the truck, it seems we weren't the only ones who wanted to give them a try.

TAPAS PLUS MICHAEL CHIARELLO EQUALS COQUETA

Restaurant life along the Embarcadero has been a hit or miss affair over the years, though recently it seems places have been able to make more of a foothold and garner both good reviews and paying clientele. See Epic Roasthouse, Waterbar, La Mar and the latest addition Coqueta a mostly tapas style place utilizing local ingredients to create Spanish style dishes. They've taken over the old Lafitte space after Chef Russell Jackson decided he wanted to be more celebrity than chef and headed to New York and the Food Network. And in a strange quirk the person who heads up Coqueta is Michael Chiarello, who's already done the celebrity thing and is now throwing himself back into the actual food. It's always been a small space but they've managed to make it feel bigger even with all the dark wood, the high ceilings really help.

YOUR WEEKLY DIGESTION OF FOOD NEW TO CONSUME

If you ever need a princess cake, Schubert's Bakery in the Richmond is the place to get it.

Western Addition gets its own brew pub. Hipsters really are everywhere now.
The Local's Corner guys keep adding more Local's, now a wine cellar.
James Beard Awards has locals galore up for finalists.
Outerlands will get a new chef to go with it's new larger/renovated look.
PizzatheApp wants to be the Uber of getting a pizza when you want/need it.
With Off The Grid in full swing now here are 8 new things to try there.
Fries, fries and more carbs--here's SFist best french fries in town list.
Don't stand in line 3 hours for day old bagels try one of these local joints instead.
For the gluten intolerant here are places to still get that pizza fix in the Bay Area.
It's just around the corner, here's a list of CUESA greens for spring.

Friday, March 21, 2014

AND THE KNOCK-OFFS KEEP COMING..MORE CROUGHNUTS AND CRONUTS FROM UNLIKELY PLACES

Like the seven heads of Hydra the specter of the fad that is the cronut (and several other spellings) continues unabated with new places releasing their knock-off versions to an unsuspecting world. I mean even the originator of the fad is moving on to other new and interesting dessert creations--milk and cookie shot glass anyone? While we await the arrival of our version of that, I continue to run across the variations of the cronut in unexpected places around town and elsewhere. On a recent jaunt to the Bayview District to hit up a soul food festival me and the SO stumbled across a corner restaurant called CDXX that I vaguely remember hearing about somewhere. We wandered in to just peruse the menu and on this weekend day they were only serving brunch which looked interesting but what caught my eye was the listing for a croughnut. Well, we weren't planning to eat here but we did decide to get a couple of the croughnuts to go to snack on while we walked around. Here it is......

HUMPHRY SLOCOMBE ICE CREAM FOR HIPSTERS IN THE MISSION

I've never been a total fan of ice cream as a dessert, the SO loves it, it's one of his 4 food groups. For me I can usually take it or most often leave it. I like my desserts to have heft to them, like cake or pie or donuts--they are both filling and satisfying when good. Ice cream can often feel like Chinese food to me, after eating it I'm still a little hungry and my sweet tooth doesn't feel totally satisfied. Still I was willing to give Humphry Slocombe a try as I'd heard many good things about over the few years it's been around. Plus we were only a few blocks away strolling through the Mission, it was hot and something different to do. It's a small place tuck on a side street off the 24th Street corridor, which has become a new hotbed of trendy hipster foodie places that draw people there specifically to eat.

YOUR WEEKLY DIGESTION OF FOOD NEWS TO CONSUME

When eating at The Ramp beware the seagulls..they will steal your food.

SFist shares what to do while waiting in line for Tosca. Again..why are we waiting?
Bacon Bacon did a Reddit AMA...because why not?
Thrillists 8 best diners in SF. This list needs to be way bigger and more greasy.
Girl Scout Cookie cocktails? Alembic jumps the restaurant shark so to speak.
Is Dirty Habit a good name for a new restaurant? Guess we'll find out.
SF Chefs festival renamed Eat Drink SF, moving to Fort Mason (brrr...)
SFist likes them but are these your favorite coffee shops?
American Grilled Cheese Kitchen menu gets a revamp--and non cheesy things.
Project Open Hand has in Indiegogo fundraiser going for good things.

Friday, March 14, 2014

MISSION MINIS TINY BITES OF SUGAR IN COZY CONFINES

The Mission, it's an eclectic not so little neighborhood that while it has a distinctly Hispanic vibe to a majority of the area, it still has off-beat and sometimes unexpected places tucked away of it's main drags. Occasionally I'll stroll through the hood and see what new things have popped up since my last visit. One recent place I came across was Mission Minis. A tiny blink and you'll miss it on a side street cupcake shop that primarily serves up--mini cupcakes.

BUN MEE A TALE OF TWO LOCATIONS

San Francisco is rife with food trucks, food pop-ups and food incubators. All with great ideas for food looking to build an audience and following in hopes of one day turning their dream into a full fledged brick and mortar business. One such success story is Bun Mee. They seem to have made the progression up the foodie ladder to become a pretty popular sandwich shop with not one but two locations. I'd had their takes on a banh mi during their food pop-up/food market days but had yet to try their fully established location on Fillmore. When I saw they opened a second store on Market Street I thought now was a good time to give both of them a try and see how they were holding up. Here's a shot of the inside of both places.

YOUR WEEKLY DIGESTION OF FOOD NEWS TO CONSUME

Blue Bottle Coffee's indoor stall at the Ferry Plaza actually has TWO ordering windows and the one around to the side is usually shorter. Since they both serve the same thing--shorter is always better.

Parts of Oakland join the food truck pod craze and get their own "off the grid-ish" event.
ForageSF has a new underground dinner Wild Kitchen coming up in March. Get tix now.
SFGate--should cocktails have separate ratings from food? Does it matter after third one?
7x7's list of "casual" spin-offs of high end restaurants. Spin-off doesn't mean cheaper.
Don't schlepp to outer Mission for ice cream, Humphry Slocombe opens in Ferry Plaza.
Chris Cosentino will close Incanto, reopens more casual--with a retail section. Seriously.
Ryan Farr of 4505 Meats shows us how to make a hot dog--to go with that burger.
Donut Shops both new and old are still the thing in San Francisco.
Can a Thai restaurant really be exciting? Serious Eats seems to think Kin Khao is.

Friday, March 7, 2014

FOOD TRUCK QUICK BITE: SABOR DE SAN MIGUEL GUATEMALAN CUISINE

I hadn't been to SOMA StrEat Food Park in a while and with the recent spate of mostly sunny, semi-warm days I decided to hit the place up a few times to see if there was anything new and tasty going on. There's a pretty decent lunch crowd on this workday and perusing through I see a few new trucks and hone in on Sabor de San Miguel--a Guatemalan cuisine purveyor.

BURGERMEISTER....MEISTERBURGER...STILL A BURGER NO MATTER HOW YOU SAY IT

What's a burger anyway? A piece of meat between two pieces of bread with a varying array of toppings. In essence it's a glorified sandwich that usually comes with fries. Burgers are a dime a dozen in this town and pretty much on every menu from high to low end. Like pizza it has followers who find themselves on endless quests to find the perfect/best/most awesome burger either here in town or wherever their search takes them. There are innumerable blogs devoted to this sole activity of finding "the one" as if it's a mythical journey of epic proportions. I like them as much as the next person, but seriously folks, in the end it's just a burger, not El Dorado. While I guess for some folks eating them can be transcendent, for me I just want them to taste good. I guess that's what brought me to BurgerMeister in the Castro one day as I had a hankering for a hunk of grilled meat on a bun.