Category: Food & Drink

San Francisco is one of the best places to eat in the world and I have yet to find a place that doesn’t cover some country in the world.

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Chipotle Needs Mexican Coke!

Our family outing today ended with a trip to Chipotle. While fast food restaurants offer you food that you usually know what it’s going to taste like where ever you go, there’s the downside in that they usually offer unhealthy food.

Now lots of people have said that Chipotle’s Burritos and Burrito Bowls have a HUGE amount of calories and they do. I was into their burrito bowls for awhile until I discovered I had put on an extra 10lbs because I was eating close to a full days worth of calories in one sitting.

All that being said, you do have to give them kudos for trying to use as much organic food in the supply chain. My favorite is two carnitas tacos with black beans, sour cream and cheese with chips and guacamole on the side. Their pork here in SF comes from Niman Ranch so it’s locally raised and organic. 40% of their black beans are organic and all the the dairy used in the cheese and sour cream [crema agria which translates to “angry cream” a Mexican co-worker told me] is 100% organic.

Not too shabby, but the one thing any self respecting taqueria offers is “Mexican Coke“. What’s that? It’s Coke from Mexico where they use cane sugar instead of HFC [High Fructose Corn Syrup]. The taste is different and even Coke admits that. Cane sugar being more natural and Mexican Coke coming in bottles instead of cans or fountain syrups is, while being higher in calories, is better for you than American Coke. I thought Californians were the only ones to enjoy this luxury of a soda, but apparently there are several other states that have it as well. In San Francisco, it’s all over the place. You don’t have to go to a Taqueria to find it, Target has it, Costco has it. Major grocery stores usually don’t, but your corner liquor store probably does. If Chipotle is trying to show that it wants to show that it’s trying to be healthier then it should cut out the high fructose sodas and offer so real Mexican sodas like Mexican Coke or Peñafiel [go for the Guayaba if they have it].

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Learning how to shop again

Well I hate to say it, but my Mom died about 3 months ago. It was kind of weird because she died at home, but in the end it was a good thing because she had been suffering for along time and could barely get around and hadn’t left the house for months. This is all a side story that I can save for another time, but the oddest thing that struck me after this was how we shopped.

Since there were things my Mom would need we’d have to find a way to separate things into 2 carts or in the top and bottom of a cart depending on how much stuff we were buying. My Mom used to invite friends over and of course she’d have to feed them so we always had extras on hand. Now we didn’t have to do that anymore which left us with one less piece of confusion. The other thing we realized is that a dozen eggs will last us a month and there were things that were low on our list to eat that we didn’t need anymore.

One of the biggest things we noticed is that we don’t need an 18 cubic foot standalone freezer in the garage anymore. We don’t need to buy 10 lbs of ground meat at Costco because that would last us 6 months (but we still like Costco incase I get the go ahead for that new HD flatscreen in 3D. We also don’t make 10 gallons of minestrone soup or beans and hamhocks anymore so we don’t need a place to store 1/2 gallon empty milk containers  that have been refilled with that kind of stuff. We might get a 7 cubic foot freezer for downstairs just because a pizza won’t fit in our side by side fridge/freezer upstairs and it’s nice to have a few things on hand so we don’t have to shop all the time.

We still find ourselves reaching for the jumbo pack of something and then realize that it’s only going to go bad before we’ve finished it. We have a new learning curve to go through now because before it was just the two of us, then the three of us, then the four of us when our daughter was born. Now it’s just back to the two of us plus our daughter and we don’t have another mouth to feed that was the equivalent of an 800 pound gorilla.

I’m not going to miss the mini tacos or taquitos as they were pretty horrible anyway. I’m not going to miss having 50 rolls of paper towels in the garage which led me to impose an embargo. I’m not going to miss the 100+ jars of spices that I couldn’t remember what they were used for let alone the 30 year old jar of coconut on rack in the sun (no we didn’t bother to open that.) I am trying to find a way to deep fry the lumpia so that my wife doesn’t gag at the smell of the fryer afterwards (suggestions willingly accepted), but I think I will miss the scallops that I learned to like in the last few months.

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The California Burrito is not a California Burrito

As I woke up this morning bleary eyed and slightly incoherent I noticed an article on our local sfgate.com about the “California Burrito.” WTF?!?! I guess I’m getting old, but when the burrito came north from Mexico it was  beans and rice with a little mystery meat and maybe a little cheese. Californians and Californian-Mexicans wanted a little more since our state has an abundance of produce so they took beans, rice, cheese, guacamole, salsa, sour cream plus the meat of your choice and sometimes a few more veggies [El Toro Taqueria adds peas and carrots to their burrito which is just wrong to me, but I don’t want to get off track]. This became known as the California Burrito.

Now some foodie terrorists in San Diego have infiltrated San Francisco and introduced what they call the “California Burrito.” It got carne asada [steak for you gringos], guacamole, sour cream and FRENCH FRIES! French fries in a burrito?! I’m sorry, that’s just wrong. It’s like a Mexican version of Primante’s in Philadelphia that puts fries on their sandwiches for the truck drivers to eat on the go. In San Francisco, the burrito is like ambrosia any taqueria you go into sells more burritos than tacos first off and the clientele covers just about every race we have in the city. We know burritos. San Diego which probably has a larger hispanic population than SF apparently does not. What’s next? Hot dog burritos? The culprit here is a place called Taqueria Los Coyotes. I suspect it will start showing up in more places just like the baja fish taco did. Fish tacos I don’t have a problem with since they started in Baja and moved here pretty much unchanged. But fries in a burrito I’m not so sure about.

Now I’ll have to eat my words and try one before I condemn it fully. I still have to say though that the best burrito is found outside the Mission District. [Ducks and runs for cover]

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Aquaponics: The new gardening

I just read an article on sfgate.com about aquaponics that I thought was intriging. There is a company in Oakland called Kijiji Grows that has created a system that is a combination of hydroponics and aquaculture. Basically, you have a fish tank and the water from the fish tank is pumped up to trays filled with pebbles that have plants that feed off the fish waste and the water drips back down into the fish tank. These systems aren’t cheap, but are elegant in design. If you have $1500 for one they’ll even come out and install it for you.

What amazed me about this was that this sort of thing has been going on in the aquarium industry for years. Large coral reef aquariums needed to be specially filtered because coral is very sensitive. So they started pumping the water up to troughs with macro algae (think of it as a type of seaweed). The macroalgae would absorb the nutrients from the tanks waste and pump it back down to the fish tank. The problem with this is that you needed 1000 watt halogen lights above the algae to help it grow. Now here is a company doing it with sunlight. These are kind of expensive systems, but you could probably do one yourself with a little labor and some handiwork.

Get a fish tank and powerhead to pump the water up to a rubber container that you place plastic planter boxes filled with cheap aquarium gravel and holes poked into the bottom. Route a hole in the bottom of the rubber container and place it over the fish tank so that the water flows back. What you get out of this is clean water for your fish tank that is well aerated and you can grow your own food on top. You don’t need to space your plants out as much because the roots tend to grow downward rather than sideways. You also don’t need any soil which means no soil borne pathogens. I had a koi pond I built many years ago out of a half a plywood barrel. I painted the inside with marine epoxy paint to water seal it and then found out after a couple of days that it needed to be covered with chicken wire so the raccoons wouldn’t be eating the fish. I could see using this as a way to feed water up to the plants and then have edge of the rubber cut to create a waterfall back to the koi pond. By my estimation, I could do this for under $100 and you wouldn’t have to keep replacing the soil like you would in a normal garden. The set up picture to the right is from home depot and costs about $249, which while not bad if you’re lazy and have the cash you could do better and much cheaper. All you have to do is feed the fish. There have even been suggestions of raising food fish as well so you get a two fold return. This is making me think more about that Tilapia farm I was considering building.

What these systems are best for is places like Africa that don’t have good soil, but lots of light. They can raise fish for food and root vegetables as side dishes. This could eliminate famine in impoverished countries and you can run the pumps from small solar panels.

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Where have all the sea lions gone?

People are talking about the loss of a big tourist attraction from San Francisco, the Pier 39 sea lions which called Pier 39 home since 1989. Everyone is writing stories about why they left, but they don’t know why. Allow me to edify you as to why the sea lions left Pier 39. They used to live on the obviously named at the time, “Seal Rock” out by the old Sutro Baths ruins. Then because they ate up most of the herring out there they left to find more and find a nice feeding ground with lovely places to rest at Pier 39.

This year, there was a large influx of sea lions in the late fall which caused the amount of plentiful herring found near Pier 39 to disappear. When the food goes, so go the sea lions. They basically ate the place dry and needed to move on to find more food. Find the herring and you’ll find the sea lions.

It’s a bit sad that they’re gone from Pier 39, but there’s lots of other stuff there to attract people. Maybe they’ll move back to Seal Rock so that people will have another place to visit in the city, and while you’re out there You should visit the Seal Rock Inn for breakfast or lunch. Great food at great prices and their Greek food is to die for, not to mention their rooms if you’re looking for a place to stay are awesome. There I got a foodie reference in.

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Christmas traditions at Lucca’s Delicatessen

Being the Italian kind of guy I am we have an annual Christmas Eve traditions of having ravioli’s for dinner. I think this might have started just to make life easier so we could focus on the big meal the next day.

Our tradition begins usually a week or two in advance where you actually have to call in your order for ravioli’s at Lucca’s Delicatessen. If you don’t call it in there won’t be any when you get there. Now Lucca’s is probably one of the only shops left on Chestnut Street aside from the Horseshoe Bar that were still there when I was a kid.

I used to remember my dad getting off work and he bring me to the Horseshoe where they’d hide me in the corner with my Shirley Temple while he knocked back a few. But I digress.

Lucca’s is an outstanding delicatessen. The kind of place that you’re just happy standing out in front and smelling the air that wafts out of the place. Quite a lot of their meats and cheeses are imported directly from Italy and they receive shipments of fresh real mozzarella every week. Their prosciutto de parma is a meat that is absolutely to die for. But today we were here for the big meaty raviolis. They are the true traditional raviolis and they make them fresh daily there. If you don’t know what goes into true raviolis you might not want to eat them. I think they’re a way to get kids to eat animal parts they wouldn’t normally eat, but I still love them to this day. The trick is to call in your order and pay by phone then you won’t have to stand in line for so long. You just show up and give the girl in the front by the door your name and she’ll run back and give you your order. I get a kind of smug feeling when I get to do this because it’s like walking into the post office with an already labeled priority mail box at Christmas and getting to walk past the huddled and tired masses and just drop it on the front table and walk out.

Lucca’s is a gem that I hope never goes away like so much else on Chestnut Street. I’m really looking forward to dinner tonight. 🙂

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Tsar Nicoulai Caviar

cafe_aug09newOK, I’m getting a bit foodie again, but this place came to mind tonight after watching an episode of Chef Daniel Boloud’s After Hours. In the show he brought a chef he would be cooking with that night some of his own name brand caviar. Now for me growing up, fish eggs were something you used as bait when fishing, mainly salmon roe. Then one day a woman walked in to the printer I was working for who needed some folding done of some cards they were sending out. She was from the Tsar Nicoulai Caviar company that was next door. We did the job and when it was finished and I delivered it within an hour she was so happy she gave me some black truffled infused osetra caviar and smoked sturgeon. It was about a 2oz jar which for caviar is pretty sizeable and I had learned that this company which has farms up by Russian River uses sustainable farming techniques. This is due to a ban on importation of Caspian and Black Sea caviar due to the fact that the sturgeon are on the endangered species list from being over farmed.

Fish eggs? hmmmm. I wasn’t sure what to think about eating fish eggs, but I had just received something people who usually make about 3 times what I was making usually get to eat. So i figured I’d do it up right and bought a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka and went home and put it in the freezer. Aside from smoked salmon, I don’t tend to like smoked fish so I gave the smoked sturgeon to my mother who said it was really good. By now the vodka was properly chilled and we broke out the blinis and creme fraice. He both looked at each other with a “you go first” kind of look. We both threw them back and began to taste them. Suddenly, I understood the “nutty, briney earthiness of this caviar. The earthiness was most like from the black truffle infusion which usually means it tastes like dirt, but still it was pretty good. I was really surprised I would actually enjoy this, but it was really good.

Apparently, it’s so good that there are top named restaurants around the US who are purchasing their caviar from them. Thomas Keller, Charlie Trotter and Rick Moonen to name a few. What they’re doing they’re apparently doing right and getting lots of acclaim for it. They have a café at the Ferry Building where you can have tastings paired with sparkling wines that will run you from $42-$102. Not cheap, but it’s definitely worth a try. They also have a wide range of sandwiches and salads that incorporate their caviar and smoked fish as well. I have to tell you that their smoked salmon is incredible and they don’t focus just on sturgeon caviar, but have other less expensive versions from paddlefish and whitefish that  have a great taste as well. If you have the time and little extra money and want to feel a bit like James Bond, check these guys out.

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Anthony Bourdain finally gets San Francisco

bourdain_01While I really like Anthony Bourdain’s show No Reservations he has taken it upon himself to berate San Francisco as a bunch of vegan, tree humping, organically deranaged locavores. Well true, some of us are, but they’re usually transplants from somewhere else there’s very few people born and raised in San Francisco that remember or have been to some of the places Bourdain visited. He made a stop at House of Prime Rib, Tadich Grill, Red’s Java House and the Aum Zam Zam. These are all old school San Francisco places with lots of history. He added in a few newer cutting edge places as well as a quick trip to Oakland  to sample some taco truck fare, though what he was calling a taco was actually a pupusa.

I was please he brought up the irony of the owner of the Pirate Cat Cafe offering up vegan food, but also serving a maple bacon latte and calling that vegan because he had rendered 10 lbs of bacon to get 4oz of bacon fat that he adds to the coffee apparently to some vegans I guess bacon fat is a vegetable. There were many more places that would have better choices for him to try such as Than Long out at the foot of Judah Street that is owned by same people who own Crustacean, yet they serve the same food at half the price. The biggest problem is that San Francisco which is frequently referred to as the food capital of the country and sometimes the world led me to a curious thought. If we’re so great with food why are all the name brand big time chefs like Mario Batalli, Bobby Flay, Emeril Lagasse, etc. not opening up a restaurant here? Wolfgang Puck did have Postrio for a while back in the 80’s, but I haven’t heard that name mentioned in years. We do have Gary Danko, Pat Kuleto and Roy Yamaguchi, but you rarely see these guys on  the Food Network or Travel Channel. Are we just that good that we’re scaring them off? I don’t know the answer, but I do know that Tony got one thing wrong in his show. San Francisco is not the town of Alice Waters, that’s Berkeley. While she’s done a great influence to dining in the Bay Area she has gotten some people to go a little too far. The first time I ate at Chez Panisse was in the early 90’s and I didn’t have an idea who she was, but that was the day of the Oakland fire and her restaurant was busy making up sandwich boxes for the firefighters helping to put out the fire and I got to sit there right in the middle of it watching them work.

Tony, if you do another show on San Francisco, come talk to me. Please! I can show you were to get great food in the city at some better places than you chose, though I can’t discount the House of Prime Rib or Tadich Grill.

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Packaged food that doesn’t suck!

macaronigrill1Being a foodie type of guy I’m not supposed to like stuff that comes out of a package because it’s not artisanal, small farm, organicaly grown eats. Well I had a surprise last night. My lovely wife had been sent free samples of Romano’s Macaroni Grill Chicken Picatta and we just happened to have our noon argument about what we would have for dinner and in the end we decided to give it a try.

Now being Italian I know Italian food. I was figuring this might be passable and most likely better than hamburger helper which I refuse to allow in my house for a second. This really surprised me though. First off they thought about the ingredients and used good ingredients that you can taste the difference in. Plus, you have to add your own chicken and actually cook it on the stove first so not being a stick in the microwave and walk away wasn’t in the picture. It’s basically the pasta and sauce and coating for the chicken. I made it in about 20 minutes which also gave me some time to steam some fresh Italian green beans from the local farmers market (small farm, organicaly grown so there’s the snooty foodie part) while my wife made a salad.

When it was ready and we plated it up I did notice there was sauce in the pan that the box didn’t say anything about pouring over the pasta, so I took it upon myself to sauce up the pasta with it. It was great and it was easy to make and I didn’t have to act like Emeril Lagasse and make all of the ingredients by hand while raising the chickens. The box also suggests that you could use shrimp instead of chicken, but this would go well with just about any kind of meat you wanted to throw at it (venison picatta anyone?) For the ease and price ($4.99) this was a dish that you could tell people was homemade and they wouldn’t know the difference. It’s nice to have on hand and the four different flavors give you good variations to riff on when you’ve got some meat, but don’t know what to make with it.

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Flat Iron Steak…the ultimate piece of meat

grilled-flat-iron-steak-with-chimichurri-sauce
mmm mmm good!

I had tried this many years ago when an old acquaintance of mine Chef Bruce Hill was the head chef at Oritalia. It’s a funny piece of meat that butchers loved, but they didn’t sell it to the general public because of a fat line of gristle that runs lengthwise through the meat.

Now apparently it’s showing up in stores at around $2.99 a pound. This is a good thing in our current economy since it makes meat more affordable than most cheeses. The trick with this meat is to tenderize it and marinade it. I sprinkle on some Adolph’s meat tenderizer and use my little meat torture implement that has several spikes in it to cut in and loosen up the meat. Then I’ll choose a good marinade from the store to let it soak in for a few hours if not over night.

Keep in mind that this is an easy, inexpensive piece of meat to work with, yet it’s showing up at some of the top restaurants in Las Vegas with top dollar prices. I suppose this might be because restaurants are finding a good piece of meat no one knows about that costs less than flank or skirt steak.

Now this meat is well marbled so the fat will melt out when you drop it on the grill, and I highly recommend you do grill it. I usually do 5 minutes per side with about a 5 minute rest period after. Slice it on an angle (you might hear some people call this a bias cut) and you can serve 4 people for 2 days on a $5-6 piece of meat. I like to use my chimichuri sauce as a final dressing (note my picture), but you can just serve it plain and be happy. It’s very tender like a filet mignon, but meaty in flavor and it works great if you’re having a big grill party since it won’t drain your pocket.

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