San Francisco is My Home

18
Dec

Ike’s Place

Author: kris, Category: Food

I’ve lived in the Castro for five years, and I feel the neighborhood is almost perfect. The only thing it’s been missing is a really outstanding sandwich shop, and a few weeks ago we finally got one.

Ike’s Place is a new cafe on 16th Street near Market that offers top-notch hot sandwiches, freshly made ice cream and coffee. It’s small but there are a few tables inside and outside, and the food is perfect. I highly recommend checking them out.

21
Nov

Sushi Zone

Author: kris, Category: Food

I’m going to talk about Sushi Zone for a moment. Understand, I’m doing this with great reluctance, and I’m going to need you all to promise never to actually go there.

You see, Sushi Zone, which lives in what is essentially a cubby-hole at 1815 Market, is always crowded.  And I mean crowded. When they open for dinner at 5:00, you need to have been in line for half an hour if you want to be seated. There are two or three tables and several counter stools and, folks, that’s it. Fools who show up at a reasonable hour for dinner can expect to wait two hours for a table. And they do it, too. I’ve done it myself more than once.

Why such a wait? The answer is obvious, right? Topless waitresses.

Okay, no. Obviously, the food is outstanding. When you go (because I know you will go; nobody ever listens to me when I ask for favors), you’ll want to begin your meal with several orders of the baked mango sea bass. Make sure you get at least one order per person; you will not be sorry, even if you don’t like mango or sea bass. Baked in mussel shells, the mango sea bass is a hot, creamy concoction of goodness, a Fred Astaire song and dance on your tongue. It is, literally, the best thing I’ve ever tasted.

After that, you’ll want to check out the Hawaiian numbers 1 and 2, and, well, anything else on the menu. After the mango sea bass it won’t matter so much what you get or don’t get, because you’ll be floating around in a glowing golden bubble of delight. But everything there is excellent, so you’ll be fine.

The best part is that you can order way too much food and still come away with a reasonable bill, especially for a sushi restaurant. Just make sure you wear pants with an elastic waistband.

Some people, of course, think that Sushi Zone is not all that. Those people are, as William Goldman once put it, “enemies of art and I pity their ignorance.” In other words, more for me.

14
Nov

Tartine

Author: kris, Category: Food

I had a minor professional setback this morning and spent a couple of hours scrambling around in fix-it mode. By the time I left the house to meet a friend at Tartine, I was walking under a little cloud of self-absorbed gloom, which the brilliant blue November sky, the flowers bursting out everywhere and the balmy weather did nothing to dispel.

Then I got to Tartine, and remembered why I love being a freelance writer so much. It’s because weekdays are the only time you can possibly get a seat at this toothsome little bakery, which is always full of people and often has a line reaching out the door.

Today I got there before my friend and ordered coffee for me, a cappuccino for her, a pain au chocolat and a slice of almond lemon pound cake, fortunately scoring two seats at a communal table by the door. I draped my sweater over one seat and put the drink and pastry in front of it, then sat down in the other. After about ten minutes I realized that I looked like a little girl giving a tea party to my imaginary friend.

My imaginary Harvey and I sat watching the room, which, being shy, I don’t often do. But there’s something about Tartine that relaxes me. Probably it’s the steamy bakery smell that wanders around crawling up people’s noses, and is so sweet that you don’t even mind how many other noses it was in before it got to yours.

And speaking of sweet…not everyone understands the art of making pain au choclat (or chocolate croissants, if you are not all pretentious like I am), but Tartine understands. The croissant is huge and flat and flaky, and filled all the way through — not just in one tiny strip — with gooey, perfect chocolate. And Tartine is the kind of place where you can turn to your neighbor and ask if you’ve got chocolate on your face, even if he’s eyeing your imaginary friend and, increasingly, you, with a raised eyebrow and a kind of worried expression, wondering whether you’re so crazy he’ll have to change seats.

This is not a place where you can kick back for a couple of hours and advance your novel or read the paper, but if you want to sit for 40 minutes or so — and you come during the day on a weekday — it’s perfect. On a weekend, come for the food, by all means, and since you won’t get a seat, take your bakery bag and your coffee one block to Dolores Park, where you can watch the golden retrievers bounding around and cheerfully get chocolate all over your face.

05
Nov

Mexican food, dead bagels and Wes Anderson

Author: kris, Category: Food, Seen, Shopping

I went to West Portal last night because sometimes I get such a  hankering for it. West Portal is a cute little neighborhood in the city that reminds me of Walnut Creek in the East Bay. Walnut Creek, while it maintains its suburban vibe, also has non-strip-mall shopping and independent bookstores and some decent non-chain restaurants, or at least non-fast-food-chain. West Portal, with its two-story buildings and in-bed-before-10 family vibe, likewise gives me a pleasant Walnut Creek feeling.

My fella and I visit now and then to eat at El Toreador, which is my favorite Mexican restaurant that’s not actually in the Mission. The walls, floor and ceiling are covered in bright-painted toys and figurines, and everything is painted in blues and reds and pinks and greens and you feel like you’ve walked into a big, cheesy Mexican rainbow. The food is not as stellar as the decor but they do have a lot of good beers, which my fella appreciates.

On our way from the MUNI stop to the restaurant (about two blocks), we passed Noah’s Bagels, now closed for the night. The four trashcans outside were overflowing, and I glanced at one and noticed a huge garbage bag full of nothing but bagels.

I am sure that, like me, you’re remembering The Little Princess right now, specifically the scene where saintly Sara Crewe gives her bun to a girl starving even worse than herself, and as a result the bakery winds up giving bread to all starving kids at the end of every day.

In a city full of homeless, I wonder what restaurants’ policies are on leftovers. It seems like it would be good to hand it out the door to whoever was waiting there at the end of the day. Although maybe the employees at this branch know that people will be along to dumpster dive and so this metric ton of bagels is not actually going to waste. Still, it seems more human to actually hand it to someone rather than throwing it in the trash for them to find.

But then, who am I to talk? Did I reach into the trash and haul out the bag and bring it to the homeless folks in my neighborhood? I did not. Did I instead go see the new Wes Anderson movie at the West Portal cinema that is so tiny after the mega-theaters downtown that it seems like one of the figurines glued to the ceiling at El Toreador? Yes, yes I did.

02
Nov

Samovar

Author: kris, Category: Food, Shopping

I go through phases where I love tea. I’m fascinated by the ritual of it (which I learned from a bona fide English friend, so it must be correct): swishing out the pot with boiling water before you add the tea, knowing the proper amount of time to steep, adding the milk before the water, not after. (Wait, is that right? Well who cares, really.)

And this is why I love Samovar, the tea house on 18th and Sanchez that elevates the ritual into a mystic art. The cafe, lined with windows and pillowed wooden benches, is decorated in early White Man’s Buddism, a cornucopia of bamboo screens, statues, and wordy menus that warn you in advance not to complain about the exorbitant prices.

I scanned the menu, with its poetic “it tastes like snow…falling on cedars…” descriptions of each tea, and settled on one that was flavored with espresso and chocolate. Because, to be quite honest, I am not in a tea drinking phase right now and all I really wanted was a cup of coffee and a big, gooey cookie.

“This one sounds like it could be either really great or really awful,” I told my waitress. “What do you think?”

“Oh, it’s really great,” she said convincingly. “It has kind of a woodsy taste, almost an oakish quality. It can be a little bittersweet, but very rich.”

I don’t typically like woodchips in my drinks but I thought I would take a chance and ordered the $8.50 pot.

When it arrived, my waitress — who was really sweet and personable, by the way; the service at this place is top-notch — went through the whole enjoyable ritual of steeping my tea for the proper length of time (in this case, she told me, five seconds) and then pouring it into the tiny cup and then she went away and it tasted…like tea. Which is to say, like slightly flavored bitter water. Not worth $8.50 to my mind, but it’s possible my palate has been destroyed by the three spoons of sugar I stir into my terrible Safeway-brand coffee every morning.

In any case, the tea house is a really enjoyable place to hang out and write for an hour. There are plugs for your laptop under the seats (but no wireless, which is fine by me; who needs the distraction?), the benches are surprisingly comfortable, and despite the Buddhist monastery decor it’s not so quiet you’re afraid to clink your cup around. I did find the music a little distracting: it’s an agreeable mix of French rap, St. Germaine-style funk, Enya, and Tori Amos when she is at her Enya-ist, none of which I have a quarrel with except it’s hard for me to write near music. But it’s a cafe, not a library, so whatever.

I suspect you’d have a better time gastronomically-speaking if you came for a meal; the food looked interesting and is probably made from organic ingredients, whatever that means. It’s a great place to sit for an hour in any case. I give it four stars and a thumbs up.

30
Sep

Zadin

Author: kris, Category: Food, Shopping

Nestled into the Castro’s slew of high-end stationary stores and wonderfully greasy pizza places is a new Vietnamese restaurant called Zadin. And, good lord, it is a mouth-party.

Start your meal off with one of their famous rolls. We tried the summer rolls, which were excellent, but next time I think I’d go with the imperial rolls. After that, order something beef. Even if you’re vegetarian. (Well, ok, no.) Zadin knows how to cook beef. My favorite was the Bo Hanh Huong (grilled beef with aromatic shallots), which comes arranged in a delicate beef flower around a center of skinny onion rings. However, the Pho Bo (beef noodle soup) is also an excellent choice, with a subtle cinnamon flavor to it.

Zadin is open 6-10 pm, Tuesday through Sunday, and it’s like a pedicure for your tongue. Don’t miss it.

19
Sep

Smile

Author: kris, Category: Food, Seen, Shopping

Sometimes in the middle of the day you dash down to Cafe Flore for a quick cup of coffee in the sun. Once you’re there, the cute barrista might say, with evident sincerity, “Do you know that you have a fantastic smile?”

“Thanks,” you say. And then what other option do you have but to toss your fifty cents of change into the tip jar? Even though all he did was fill a cup from the coffee urn and hand it to you, you can’t not tip after such a nice compliment. Right?

Those quarters would have been useful for laundry, but I guess sometimes social niceties have to trump clean clothes.

11
Sep

Five things to do in a San Francisco summer

Author: kris, Category: Food, Landmarks, Nature, Seen, Shopping

San Francisco has its summery moments, but spends a lot of its time wrapped in a blanket of fog and overcast skies. True San Franciscans know better than to defer their summer pleasures just because the weather is sulking. Here are five great activities to enjoy on a freezing summer day:

1. Get a double ginger ice cream cone from the new Bi-Rite Creamery. Walk around Dolores Park with it, wiping your forehead and loudly saying “Whew, this cold ice cream really hits the spot on a day like today!”

2. Go clamber around on the rocks at Ocean Beach. PLEASE NOTE: When the rocks are wet it is possible to slip and fall and hit your head. Don’t do that.

3. Order a pitcher of beer at Zeitgeist’s outdoor patio. You might get a whole table to yourself. If you get bored, start a beer fight with any bikers sitting near you. If they object, tell them you thought they would appreciate being doused, considering the temperature.

4. Two words: pedal boats! You can rent these at Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park. If you pedal hard, you won’t shiver. As much.

5. Drive to the top of Twin Peaks and check out the famous view of the city. Be sure to take lots of pictures, no matter what the wind chill factor is.