Throw Down with the Food Network!

I read an article today that has been on my mind for a long time. Every since the Food Network came to the Bay Area we have yet to see one of the star chef’s open up a restaurant here. Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay, Anthony Bourdain [who dislikes San Francisco because of Alice Waters in Berkeley] Mario Batali and the several others don’t want to even bother opening a restaurant here because the competition is too stiff.

Now we do have Wolfgang Puck who opened up Postrio and Roy’s Hawaii Cuisine, but not a single Food Network star has bother with San Francisco. Well I suppose I could include Martin Yan, but he’s no longer a part of the network. I haven’t seen Tyler Florence much lately, but he’s busy with his restaurant here at the moment. Now to me, if you’re going to talk like you’re a world renowned chef you should at least be able to thrown down in Baghdad by the Bay and pull it off. We’ve got some really hefty chefs here already like Michael Mina and Jeremiah Tower who have changed the restaurant industry, but for some reason we scare off the big guns of the media. Had I the money I would travel to one of Bobby Flay’s restaurants with a small camera crew and pull his throw down move with him to get him to come to SF and try his hand in the restaurant business here.

San Francisco, while being seven by seven miles has the largest number of restaurants than any other city in the United States. I was walking around the Embarcadero yesterday and found that there were more places to eat than I remembered. One block alone had six restaurants on one side of the street and these were Subways or McDonalds, but real white linen, sit down restaurants [I’ll still count the Tadich Grill since it’s so good, but no white linen table clothes.]

I like the Food Network and consider myself a bit of a foodie, but not a food blogger. I’ve got more to write about than Mom’s great recipes or the great dishes you can get around town. I watch it at least a couple of nights a week and do have a fondness for Guy Fieri’s Diner’s Drive-in’s and Dives, probably because he’s not afraid of San Francisco. I would love to see some of those Iron Chefs give it a shot in San Francisco, but apparently we scare them off. Could they even handle going up against one of our great food trucks at Off the Grid on a Friday night at Fort Mason? I don’t think so. Could they stand up against the falafel at Sunrise Deli or a shawarma at Yumma’s? I don’t think so.

Bobby Flay, I challenge you and your East Coast Food Network crew to a throw down to open restaurants in San Francisco and see how you fare in our Kitchen Stadium.

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Tempura Guy™ Strikes Back!

A long time ago in a Trader’s Joe’s far away…wait, nope scratch that, I mean the Trader Joe’s at Stonestown. I went in the other day because we had run out of…tempura shrimp. Alas there was nothing in the freezer case and I walked to the back to ask an employee if they had any in stock in the back. She rushes out to verify that I had just told her there is no tempura shrimp in the house. She then runs off to find a manager or someone to ask about when it will be coming in. I wait…

About five minutes later she comes back and informs me, Oh, we don’t have it because we’ve discontinued stocking it. WHAT?!?! Now if you remember back a few days you’ll remember that they had discontinued it, but at my request restocked it only to find out that it was selling and that they had sold out when I went back only to have the staff running around frantically to calm down Tempura Guy™ so that he would not level the store.

Well apparently I wasn’t scary enough the first time since this impish little waif did not fear The Wrath of Tempura Guy™. Tempura Guy™ goes into stealth mode and upon returning home visits the Trader Joe’s website and using the contact form sent a noted regarding the Stonestown Trader Joe’s that they had discontinued, then restocked, then discontinued again a produce in less than a month! Add major sabre rattling and huffing and puffing to the electronic correspondence and click submit.

Tempura Guy™ loves his keyboard lycanthropy and the power it brings him. Tempura Guy™ feels good about himself and his love of the holy tempura shrimp, hallowed be thy panko encrusted name. Then, it happens. The Darth Vader theme ringing from his iPhone alerts him to a phone call from Trader Joe’s. Tempura Guy™ answers and hears the voice of a stammering store manager apologizing profusely, something akin to…Lord Vader, we, I a mean…uhm, well…I am terribly sorry Tempura Guy™, I don’t know who told our crew member that, but they were terribly misinformed and we have two cases in the back to fulfill your needs and desires for tempura shrimp and we are stocking our freezer cases right now. Ok, that sounds a little creepy to me. I mean it’s not like I’m buying it for sexual gratification, I just like the taste of it. He really did use the words needs and desires.

So now I am off to Trader Joe’s where I will hear whispered conversations as I pass the crew members of, it’s Tempura Guy™ as the crew members step out of my way. I think I will add to the frivolity by asking to speak with the manager and shake his hand for coming through for me. If I had the time I would make some sort of stupid plaque that says something like, Tempura Guy™ blesses this Trader Joe’s.

Tempura Guy™ is happy now. Apologies to Lord Vader and Khan.

 

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Lefty O’Doul’s

Francis “Lefty” O’Doul was born here in San Francisco. He is considered one of the New York Giants most colorful and popular personalities. He played in the Pacific Coast League as well as the Major League, where in 1929 he had a .398 batting average. It was the highest average of any National League outfielder in the 20th century.

Lefty was a highly respected coach and manager for the San Francisco Seals baseball team. He was a friend and team mate to the great players of our time, such as; Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth, and Ty Cobb to name a few. Lefty was the man who brought two countries together after World War II. Lefty was credited for bringing America’s favorite past-time to Japan.

In 1958 Lefty O’Doul had an inspiration to open a restaurant bar in San Francisco where friends and family could come to eat and meet with sports stars, creating a unique environment where everyone was family. Over the years Lefty O’Doul’s restaurant has seen the likes of some of baseball and Hollywood’s greatest entertainers. We strive for quality food and quality service with the Old World Charm of baseball’s past. We feel that this is the way Francis “Lefty” O’Doul would have wanted it.

OK, enough with the by the book story. That’s off of their website. Lefty never got the chance to open the restaurant and his friends the Bovis family made his dream come true. Lefty’s has a wall that is a sort of mini museum to all the people who have ventured into this sort of Irish, sort of sports bar, definitely San Francisco establishment. This is the closest to an Irish pub that I’ve encountered in San Francisco and Lefty’s is definitely old school San Francisco.

When you go there expect a hof brau atmosphere. Lost of good food at a cheap price that’ll have you filled up for at least the next day or two. It’s the only place downtown where you can get dinner with a beer for $10. The food is good here and plentiful. The menu is a working man’s fare of roast beef, corned beef, turkey legs, ham or lamb shanks served up with potatoes and vegetables or sauerkraut. Of course being a San Francisco establishment named after an Irish baseball player it’s not unusual to find turkey enchiladas on the menu.

While it only got started in 1958, it still became a San Francisco classic fast. They cater to families having a special kids menu and when you go in expect to get your food quick. This is a good thing if you work downtown and only have a half hour for lunch. Lefty’s opens at 7am sharp and stays open until 2am. It’s one of the few places left downtown where an under paid working man [or woman] can get a good meal cheap. Make sure you try their signature Bloody Mary when you go in.

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I Am Tempura Guy™!

I’d love to me known for the many things I’ve done. I wanted to be known as a great musician, but I was remembered for being the President of the San Francisco Aquarium Society. That wasn’t too bad because I got to be on television a few times, but what has happened over the passed two days is beyond me. I am now Tempura Guy™.

My wife and I visit the Trader Joe’s at Stonestown frequently. They have a tempura shrimp that is frozen and when you heat it up in the oven comes pretty close to beating Japanese restaurant tempura shrimp. One day we went to pick some up and they were out. I asked about it and was told that it wasn’t very popular so they discontinued it.

WHAT! In one of the largest Asian communities of San Francisco tempura shrimp wasn’t selling?!?! I immediately went to the Trader Joe’s website and sent them an email adding in a bit of saber rattling of how I would no longer be able to shop at Trader Joe’s in Stonestown and would have to move my business to the Westlake Trader Joe’s because they carry the tempura shrimp.

The next day I received an email from the manager of the Stonestown Trader Joe’s telling me how they welcome my business and that they would agree to stock tempura shrimp and it would be delivered on Tuesday. Well, I got held up a bit and didn’t get there until the Monday after the Tuesday only to find out that they were out of stock. I asked a girl about it and she said that it was probably discontinued because it wasn’t selling well. This was an Asian girl and I asked her if she ever tried it. She said, yeah, it was pretty good. Let me check with someone. She runs away and in a few minutes a manager comes out and hastily points to me and stammers out, you’re Tempura guy™.

Great, I’m Tempura Guy™. He then apologizes and tells me that he checked and there was an order arriving tonight that would be available on Tuesday. So Tuesday comes around and my wife says, hey Tempura Guy™ you want to run to Trader Joe’s and get dinner for tonight? Sure. I’m Tempura Guy™.

So off I go to Trader Joe’s and I check the case where they always have it and…it isn’t there. Trader Joe’s has angered Tempura Guy™ and he is displeased. I walk up to a worker in a Hawaiian shirt and tell my story. Half way into it he says, Tempura Guy™ and runs off to the back. He comes out sweating and stammering and says that they don’t have it in the back but wait, gimme a second and I’ll find it for you. He starts a frantic chase down the aisle and another worker says, can I help you find something and the other co-worker says tempura shrimp! The co-worker’s jaw drops and his finger points at me and he says, Tempura Guy™! It was right out of a Godzilla movie with the Japanese pointing to sky yelling GOJIRA! luckily they had moved it to a different location and I purchased two leaving only one left.

Tempura Guy™ is not pleased that they only ordered three tempura shrimp. Do not anger Tempura Guy™. You won’t like it when he’s angry.

Shrimp is good.

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Baghdad By The Bay Meetup in the works

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile and I finally broached the topic on Twitter yesterday and was surprised by the response. I’m getting a large amount of people in San Francisco and beyond who read this website and I’ve finally decided to get out of the house and meet up with some of my “foreign corespondents” in San Francisco. That is the other bloggers, citizens, fans, readers and even the haters of this website.

Since I’m a Sunset redneck, it only made sense that I have the meet up in a suitable Sunset establishment. Also since I want to give some of the people from out of town a chance to prepare I’m going to not try a flash mob type of thing with a meet up tonight @ Uncle Fucker’s Chuckle Hut! but actually give you a few months warning. I like to plan ahead and I want to find a place that can handle the people who will come. Judging from last night’s twitter replies of over thirty people I suspect I will get a good amount of people to show up so I’ll actually have to approach a place and tell them what I’m doing. First stop will be the Blackthorn Tavern @ 9th and Irving because not only do they serve Boddington’s beer, Magner’s Cider, and have a DJ, but on Sunday’s they also have a BBQ going.

I’m thinking sometime during the San Francisco summer which falls right after the rest of the world’s summer meaning September. We should have good weather then and that’s the month of my birthday so what better excuse to stage a party. So I’ll be visiting the venerable Blackthorn Tavern in the next few days to discuss with them having a meet up there and see what they say. I want to see all the local blogger’s, politicians, scoutmobbers, miscreants and hipsters from all over the city to come to this event so make sure to mark your calendars for sometime in September for this get together.

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Darla’s Burgers Is Gone

Friday was sad for me. I was watching a TV show and my phone buzzed at me. Not unusual with all the crap I’ve got installed on my phone. Then I looked down. One of my friends on Twitter just sent the message NOOOOO! Darla’s is out of business.

WHAT! Darla’s while not being an old San Francisco tradition kind of a place has been around long enough to have developed a loyal following. I think she opened up 9 1/2 years ago and my wife and I used to go there a lot back in the day. The burger’s and fries where always juicy and the service was quick. Darla herself could usually be found being the waitress and it was always kind of funny to me watch this Asian woman speaking Spanish to her cooks.

I have a fond memory of one day after eating a burger that she would always make for me [a bacon cheese burger with sliced avocado] I walked up to her and politely whispered into her ear, That was the best motherf*cking burger I’ve ever had. To which she turned around and said, Why thank you! in a rather sugary sweet tone.

Darla Kubala was a smart cookie. She even had an iPhone app called Diner Dash that was based upon her. If you got to see her work you’d see how the game idea came about. She would take all the orders, deliver the food and be the bus boy all the while checking on the customer’s needs. Somedays she had her off days, but the majority of the time she was always on it. The thing that you always remembered was how she ended your meal. You got your check with a brownie for every one at your table. I liked that because after a lunch or dinner there you really didn’t have enough room for desert, but the little brownie was intense and did the job.

Darla was also good with faces. It had been over a year since we had gone in there and she came over to our table and the first words out of her mouth were, you cut your hair?!?!? Then she sat down and talked with my wife about whether or not she like me with short hair or not. She even thanked me once for always bringing my friends in. She had a lot more than just burgers and I tried a few other things she offered, but I always came back to the burgers. Those were her signature along with the fries topped with season-all. When she let that one slip to me I can’t eat fries without them anymore. Now I’m sad that I don’t have Darla’s Burgers to take my friends to for the best motherf*cking burger anymore. I tried to give them a call today to make sure and yep, the number is disconnected. I suppose it was the economy that put her out, but she always seemed to have customers in there. Hopefully she’ll resurface again. I miss her already.

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Mobile Foods/Mobile Phones

I stopped working downtown too soon. It wasn’t my choice, but I missed the first rush of the new sensation that’s sweeping San Francisco and everyone’s smartphone — food trucks. I’m not talking the old beat up taco trucks that you used to see in Oakland, but these are upscale trucks serving upscale food and the best way to find out about where they are in on you smartphone.

Here’s how it works. You pull out your mobile phone and download a Twitter app. Then you find and follow all the trucks around San Francisco. They really are more SF and the peninsula than just SF, but they seem to be focused around San Francisco at least a couple of days a week.

If you want to be an über-cool techie hipster geek you’ll get Eat Street which gives you a map that’s based on their GPS so you can see where they are when you want to get food. I use both because I like to talk back to the people to try and get them out to the Sunset and Richmond on sunny weekends [WHICH WE DO HAVE!!!!]

You can find more than just tacos and burritos now. We’ve got BBQ places that are cooking up some smoky goodness. Curry Up Now that  does burritos with an Indian twist [aweeesome!], Vietnamese Banh Mi sandwiches left and right. Pretty much if you can think of a food there’s someone out there in a truck that will sell it to you.

One of the best places to try and fill your food truck craving is Off The Grid that’s held in many places around San Francisco, but Fort Mason [5pm-10pm Fridays] seems to be what everyone is talking about because that hosts the most trucks [up to 30] and tents. I was down at Fort Mason one night and happened to see a huge amount of trucks out there with an even huger amount of people wandering around. The smell of all the different trucks wafting up through the open window just pulled me towards the trucks during a break. I think I ended up spending a little over $20 getting the small sampler plates as I call them from several of the trucks.

This was definitely some good food and I wish that we could get more of them to try coming out to Ocean Beach because on a sunny day there isn’t anything going on there to feed people. The biggest problem is that we usually know about a sunny day out here with about 15 minutes in advance. Most of the trucks have websites where you can check where they’re going to be that week if you don’t have a smartphone.

Food trucks are gaining more ground in San Francisco now that the city has made it easier for them to do business. Because they don’t have to pay rent it’s cheaper for them to operate which is bad for brick and mortar businesses, but good for you and me because they can produce the food cheaper. Check them out NOW!

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The Trans-Continental Burrito Express

Following yesterday’s review of El Burrito Express I found this article about a supposed trans-continental burrito shipment tunnel that would deliver a California style burrito to those in Weehauken, NJ in 42 minutes. I had to share this.

Who can imagine New York City without the Mission burrito? Like the Yankees, the Brooklyn Bridge or the bagel, the oversize burritos have become a New York institution. And yet it wasn’t long ago that it was impossible to find a good burrito of any kind in the city. As the 30th anniversary of the Alameda-Weehawken burrito tunnel approaches, it’s worth taking a look at the remarkable sequence of events that takes place between the time we click “deliver” on the burrito.nyc.us.gov website and the moment that our hot El Farolito burrito arrives in the lunchroom with its satisfying pneumatic hiss.

The story begins in any of the three dozen taquerias supplying the Bay Area Feeder Network, an expansive spiderweb of tubes running through San Francisco’s Mission district as far south as the “Burrito Bordeaux” region of Palo Alto and Mountain View. Electronic displays in each taqueria light up in real time with orders placed on the East Coast, and within minutes a fresh burrito has been assembled, rolled in foil, marked and dropped down one of the small vertical tubes that rise like organ pipes in restaurant kitchens throughout the city.

Once in the tubes, it’s a quick dash for the burritos across San Francisco Bay. Propelled by powerful bursts of compressed air, the burritos speed along the same tunnel as the BART commuter train, whose passengers remain oblivious to the hundreds of delicious cylinders whizzing along overhead. Within twelve minutes, even the remotest burrito has arrived at its final destination, the Alameda Transfer Station, where it will be prepared for its transcontinental journey.

Ever since Isaac Newton first described the laws of gravity in 1687, scientists have known that the quickest route between two points is along a straight line through the Earth’s interior. Through the magic of gravity, any object dropped into such a “chord tunnel” at one end will emerge exactly 42 minutes later at the other end, no matter the distance. But for hundreds of years, the technical challenges of building such a tunnel were so daunting that it remained a theoretical curiosity. Only at the start of the 20th century did the idea become technically feasible, and to this day the tunnel linking the East Bay with New Jersey remains the only structure of its kind in the world.

From the outside, the Alameda facility looks like any other industrial building. Behind a chain link razor wire fence sits a windowless white hangar some three stories tall, surrounded by a strip of green lawn. If you could see underground, however, you’d see that the building sits at the center of a converging nexus of burrito pipes. High pressure pneumatic tubes from all over the Bay Area emerge in the center of the facility, spilling silvery burritos onto a high-speed sorting line. The metal-jacketed burritos look like oversize bullets, and the conveyor belts that move them through the facility resemble giant belts of delicious ammunition. Within a few seconds of arrival the burritos have been bar coded, checked for balance and round on a precision lathe, and then flash-frozen with liquid nitrogen.

The mouth of the tunnel is a small concrete arch in the side of a nearby hill, about as glamorous as an abandoned railway tunnel. Yet if you could open the airlocks and stare down its length with a telescope, you would see airplanes on final approach to Newark Airport, three thousand miles away! To reduce drag on the burritos to a minimum, the tunnel must be kept in near-vacuum with powerful pumps. At the tunnel’s deepest point the burritos will be traveling nearly two kilometers a second – even the faintest whiff of air would quickly drag them to a stop.

The launch tube for the burritos lies just under the tunnel mouth and looks like what it is: an enormous gun. Every four seconds a ‘slug’ of ten burritos, white with frost, ratchets into the breech. A moment later it flies into the tunnel with a loud hiss of compressed gas, and the lights dim briefly as banks of powerful electromagnets accelerate the burritos to over two hundred miles an hour. By the time they pass Stockton three minutes later the burritos will be traveling faster than the Concorde, floating on an invisible magnetic cushion as they plunge into the lithosphere.

No one who built the Alameda-Weehawken tunnel had quite this future in mind for it. The tunnel had its origins in the early 1900’s as an ambitious project for speeding mail delivery between New York City and the booming Pacific port of San Francisco. The telegraph and railroad had linked the city to the East Coast, but transferring documents, currency, securities and diplomatic correspondence across the country was still a slow affair fraught with danger. In 1911, the celebrated British civil engineer Basil Mott approached the plutocrat Andrew W. Mellon with an audacious plan to build a straight-line tunnel 2500 miles long connecting New York City with San Francisco, allowing packages to be sent between the two cities using only compressed air and gravity. The tunnel would resemble the pneumatic tube systems that had served New York City and Paris so well for mail delivery, but on an incomparably vaster scale. Cylinders containing up to sixteen pounds of mail would be able to make the continental transit in less than an hour.

Construction on the tunnel began in 1913, and it quickly grew into the largest public works project in the young nation’s history. Not until the Eisenhower Interstate system in the 1950’s would there be a bigger or more costly civil engineering project. Drilling the tunnel required over 19 years of continuous effort by thousands of miners, often working in conditions of intolerable confinement and heat. Over 22 million tons of rock had to be removed, much of it from unprecedented depths, all while keeping the tunnel perfectly straight over thousands of miles. Just keeping the tunnels cool required more water each day than flows over Niagara Falls.

The tunnel opened to great fanfare in 1933, with a congratulatory message in Morse Code flashed by powerful searchlight from the San Francisco end to waiting dignitaries on the New Jersey side. It was already obsolete. The first regular mail shipments sent from San Francisco in the spring of 1934 had to compete with the sophisticated air mail system that had grown up during the tunnel’s long construction. To make matters worse, breakdowns in the tunnel were frequent, especially in the central “hot zone” where temperatures could exceed 900 degrees Centigrade. Mail would frequently arrive singed or deformed from the intense heat and pressure. While they could never beat the speed of the tunnel, airplanes could deliver documents at far lower price and risk in just a few dozen hours more. In 1936, at the height of the Depression, the tunnel ceased operation less than three years after it had opened.

In the years to come all kinds of schemes would be floated for how to put the tunnel to use. For a brief time after Pearl Harbor there was serious thought given to using it as an enormous gun barrel that could fire artillery shells across the Pacific at Japan (the risk to life in San Francisco if a charge went off prematurely was deemed too great). In the early days of the Cold War, both ends of the tunnel, along with the Chicago and Cedar Rapids access shafts, were considered as enormous fallout shelters. The low point in the tunnel’s fortunes came with a 1971 proposal (mercifully never enacted) to use the Weehawken side of the tunnel as the world’s deepest garbage chute. On the San Francisco end, meanwhile, squatters from the thriving San Francisco countercultural scene had begun using the tunnel as an easy place to take shelter.

By the early 1970’s the tunnel was a derelict, a mostly forgotten relic of a more adventurous time. The turning point came when Robert Cavanaugh, a New York financier with a serious taste for Mexican food, happened to come across a mention of the tunnel in a zoning proposal. The globetrotting Cavanaugh was a fanatic of the recently-invented Mission burrito but bemoaned being unable to get it anywhere outside of San Francisco. Examining blueprints of the defunct mail tunnel on a flight home to New York, Cavanaugh became intrigued by the coincidence in size between a foil-wrapped burrito and the diameter of the old transcontinental mail tubes. By the time the plane landed, he had come up with an audacious plan.

Cavanaugh realized that the intense heat of the transit that had so beleaguered mail service would actually work to his advantage in a burrito tunnel. The burritos could be stored frozen on the Western end and arrive fully heated through in New Jersey. Furthermore, advances in electrical engineering meant that containers would no longer have to be propelled by compressed gas. The burritos already came conveniently wrapped in aluminum foil – it would be trivial to accelerate them with powerful magnets.

Encouraged by his back-of-the-envelope calculations, Cavanaugh formed a consortium and, in a stroke of genius, convinced the Carter Administration to subsidize the tunnel’s operation in exchange for access to the geothermal heat it would produce. Convincing skeptical businessmen to buy into the plan proved more of a challenge – it took six months to persuade suspicious taqueria owners to switch to a salsa with lower magnetic permittivity. Finally, in July of 1979, all the pieces were in place. After a successful July 2 dry run with a sawdust mock burrito, the tunnel ceremoniously opened on Independence Day. The inaugural burrito (carnitas with lettuce, salsa and avocado, no beans) was loaded into the breech at the Alameda terminus at 10:05 AM and was served to a beaming Cavanaugh, Vice President Walter Mondale and New York mayor Ed Koch in Weehawken 64 minutes later. Two hundred burritos followed that same day; by the end of the decade the tunnel would be delivering over two thousand burritos an hour.

In the early days of the burrito tunnel workers on the Alameda side would sometimes use it to send small packages or letters, inking the code words sin carne on the wrapper to alert those on the other end that the ’burrito’ required special handling. This changed after September 11, when strict security measures went into force. Homeland Security officials have been quick to recognize the unique threat of a tunnel that could give terrorists unimpeded access to the entire underside of the nation. They’ve also been alert to the danger a “dirty burrito” could pose if it made it into the New York food supply. Director of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff would not comment on specific measures his department has taken to protect the tunnel, but he said his office does take the potential threat very seriously. “We’ve known since the first World Trade Center bombing that New York is a top target. We’re taking appropriate measures to make sure the tunnel and the burritos that pass through it remain safe and secure.”

The greatest risks to the tunnel, however, are likely to come from Mother Nature herself. During the 1989 Loma Prieta quake the tube misaligned by over four inches, requiring extensive redrilling, and experts estimate that an earthquake of magnitude 6 or greater on the Hayward Fault could put it out of commission for months. An ambitious expansion plan to begin next year will address some of the seismic hazards while also widening it enough to allow super burritos to make the transit for the first time ever.

Burritos speeding through the tunnel fight a constant battle against friction. At the start and end of their journey they hover in a powerful magnetic field, seldom touching the sides of the tunnel. Past the Colorado border, however, the temperature of the surrounding rock exceeds the Curie point of iron and the burritos must slide on their bellies in their nearly frictionless Teflon sleeve, kept from charring by pork fat that slowly seeps out of the burritos as they thaw. By the time the burritos reach Cedar Rapids (traveling well over a mile a second) they are heated through, and anyone who managed to penetrate into the tunnel through the Cleveland access shafts would find them ready to eat.

Remarkably, people do descend into even the deepest sections of the tunnel, though with a far more serious goal in mind than lunch. Geologists from around the globe have been flocking to the tunnel for five decades. “People in our profession get excited about new road cuts,” says Adam Rifkin, Dean of the Geology Department at the University of Nebraska. “You can imagine what it’s been like for us to explore the world’s deepest tunnel.” Indeed, the Alameda tunnel is the only place in the world where scientists can directly study the aesthenosphere, the boundary layer separating the earth’s crust from the hot mantle. The trip down through the access shafts is harrowing – the descent takes the better part of a day, and temperatures can rise to nearly a thousand degrees Centigrade. Most of the work at the depth of the tunnel is done by robots, but geologists must occasionally descend in person to make repairs or to do work that is too difficult to automate. “It’s a lot like standing in an oven,” Rifkin says. “At the lowest point we’re nearly as far from the surface as the Space Shuttle, and in many ways it’s a less forgiving environment.” Still, he adds, “I wouldn’t give it up for the world. This is probably one of the dullest places, geologically speaking, in the whole country. Under our feet are five miles of silt from the Rockies before you even get to the first rock. Thanks to the tunnel, though, we can punch right through that. It’s like a time machine through the planet’s history.”

“Are you ever tempted to sneak a burrito while down there?” I ask Dr. Rifkin, and he laughs. “At the speed those things are going it would probably take your hand off. But really for us this is serious business – we’re fine not having access to great Mexican food as long as we can do the geology. The tunnel has been an absolute godsend.”

Not everyone is as delighted with the tunnel as the geologists. Old-time San Franciscans will be quick to point out that the comestibles in the tunnel flow strictly one way. “In the old days you’d go to a place like Pancho Villa and get yourself a steak burrito in five minutes, maybe ten if it was near lunchtime,” says lifelong Mission resident Howard Washington. “Now the line is out the door even in the morning. And some of those places down in the South Bay won’t even take customers anymore. If you want a burrito in the daytime you have to get it first thing, or else you go to one of the places that isn’t hooked up to the tunnel.”

Taqueria owners have tried hard to cope with the additional demand, but even they admit that it can get hectic. “The New York metro area has fifteen million people,” explains Javier Corrientes, manager of Cancun Burrito on Valencia Street. “San Francisco is barely a tenth of that size. You got all those people out drinking on a Friday night who want a burrito at ten o’clock, just when the dinner rush is starting here, there’s no way we can keep up.” The secret, he says, is to order tacos. “It’s the same fillings, except it’s quicker to put together and you can’t put it through the tunnel.”

The raw economics of the burrito trade suggest San Franciscans won’t be getting quicker service any time soon. Even before tolls and taxes, a burrito sold in New York brings in ten times the profit of one sold over the counter. John Laplace chairs the Northern California Burrito and Burro Council, an industry group representing Bay Area taquerias. “The tunnel is an incredible economic engine for the region,” he says. “Every burrito that goes through the tunnel represents over two dollars in direct tax revenue and over four dollars in indirect revenue through job creation, research stimulus and geothermal energy. I can understand why people get frustrated, but that tunnel has given us far more than it’s taken.”

Of course, it would be best if the tunnel could give back in a more tangible way. Over the years there have been numerous attempts to send New York staples in the reverse direction – operators have tried sending knishes, bagels, pickles and even Brooklyn-style pizza. None have proven as resilient as the humble burrito, and in the end the two cities have bowed to the inevitable. Both tunnel tubes now carry only burritos.

By the time they reach Cleveland the burritos are fully heated through and traveling uphill at about twice the speed of sound. A series of induction coils spaced through central Pennsylvania repeats the magnetic process in reverse, draining momentum from the burritos and turning it into electrical power (though Weehawken residents still recall the great blackout of 2002, when computers running the braking coils shut down and for four hours burritos traced graceful arcs into the East River, glowing like faint red sparks in the night).

At the tunnel exit, a final puff of air slows the burritos to a stop and they are placed in insulated bags. These are whisked to a fleet of waiting trucks, which pass through the Holland Tunnel (this time at a more stately thirty-five miles per hour) and then onward to restaurants and cafeterias throughout the five boroughs.

Is it worth it? Enrique Alnazar, burrito sommelier for Nobu Fifty-Seven, smiles at the very question. The restaurant recently installed a dedicated high-speed pneumatic line to the Weehawken facility, shortening the arrival time for its prize Los Charros burritos from just over two hours to under fifty minutes. Alnazar won’t say how much the new line cost (estimates run into the millions of dollars), but he insists it was worth every penny. “We’ve had people come in and order a magnum of 1978 Château Margaux on the strength of our burritos. They know that we’re phoning in their order to Mountain View the moment they walk in the door, and they know we’ve done everything in our power to keep them from waiting. A lot of restaurants are happy racking up a few days’ supply in the burrito cellar, but that’s not the same as getting a fresh burrito straight from the tunnel – you can taste the difference. The only way to get a fresher burrito than at Nobu is to fly to California, and our customers appreciate that.”

The success of the burrito tunnel has encouraged no end of imitators – whether the Reagan-era attempt to construct an intracoastal barbeque pipeline, the perennial political deadlock over allowing tomatoes in the Northeastern Chowder Viaduct, or the recent fiasco of high-speed BagelRail. But as Chairman Laplace argues, it’s unlikely such a project could succeed anywhere else. “We really have a unique situation here – a population of fifteen million people without access to high-quality Mexican food. There’s no place else in the country like it, and that makes the economics of a transport tunnel from the country’s finest burrito region workable. On top of this you have the burrito itself, which is a really marvelous food — resilient to overheating, isotropic, compact, able to tolerate high G forces.” Here Laplace smiles. “And delicious. Who would want to live in a New York City without it?”

The following is from idlewords.com. I cannot verify the authenticity of this article, nor who the author was, but it was just so damn funny I had to repost it.

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El Burrito Express: A San Francisco Secret

Thirty years ago when they opened, El Burrito Express was a god send to me. I was a broke college kid with a girlfriend who had a daughter and EBX was half a block away from her house. We would walk down and get a bean and cheese burrito for $3.65 and it would feed the three of us. And oh what a burrito it was. I’ve had burrito’s all over the city and yes, I will sound a bit sacralegious to folks out in El Mission, but I have never had a better burrito than here.

I had to laugh when they said a few years ago that due to the rising cost of supplies they would have to raise their price. The same burrito thirty years later is now $3.95. I can’t knock them for that. What changes they’ve undergone in that time period. Most places will usually trim down their menu to only what is essential. EBX, they’ve expanded it to the point they don’t have room to put up anymore signs and have to use paper attached to the front of their case to advertise their new El Gigante burrito in honor of  the Giants winning the World Series [note, the picture was from last night and they’ve re-arranged things and have done away with the paper signs]. Apparently they’ve also learned a lot about our new technologies and finally have their own website set up, will deliver, they are present on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. That’s pretty impressive for a little burrito shop in the Sunset. I’ve found that calling in my orders works best here as they always seem to be crowded.

Enough about technology. Let’s talk about their food! As you can tell burritos are their main focus, but they have tacos, enchiladas, tamales, tortas as well. They’ve just added something called asada fries that’s kind of like their nachos except using french fries instead of their hand made tortilla chips. That’s more California than the place in the mission that makes a “California Burrito” I’ve spoken about before that’s a burrito with fries added into the mix. I’m going to start with the burritos because they are the best deal you’ll get. You’ve got a choice between the Regular and Bronco to start. The difference is that the regular has guacamole as an extra and the bronco has no rice and sliced avocado [my choice]. If you want a bigger version you ask for the Super burrito or Super Bronco. If you want even bigger than that you have to move up to the Expresso Burrito. This is one HUGE burrito. Two tortillas filled with cheese, beans, rice, meat rolled up and then covered in guacamole, their “special sauce”, more salsa and more cheese. This is the wet style [burrito mojado] and they seem to sell a lot of them.

Now I have at times been a big eater, but lately not so much so I’ve found I can cut one in half and get two days out of it. There was a time that I believe I was able to eat an entire burrito by myself, but I’m not sure. I’ve had their nachos, enchiladas, tostadas & tamales and they’re all good, but it’s the burrito’s that really shine. A personal tip if you’re someone that’s low on cash and needs a quick snack you can get their corn quesadilla’s for 90¢. They also have homemade aqua fresca’s and they also seem to be moving towards a more healthy way of serving their food with in store tips like, “hold the sour creme and add a whole wheat tortilla.” I like the fact that they are being socially responsible and not filling their customers up with tons of lard. They also have advertisements they’ve put on their Burrito TV youtube site that shows they have an interest in giving back to their community and taking care of it as well. See the video below. Note they also have a card you can get where you buy nine burrito’s and the tenth is free.

All in all, there’s little bad I can say against this place. Actually, there’s nothing bad I can say about this place except the front door that is a little hard to open, but that’s nothing. If you want a good burrito, go to the Sunset district. 🙂

 

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Tommy’s Restaurant: Tommy has Died

As you probably know from my writings I have a thing for Mexican food. There was a place I used to like to frequent that was an old school Mexican restaurant and it  wasn’t in the Mission District, it was in the Richmond District. It was Tommy’s. A working man’s type of place where the food was good and the cocktails would knock you on your ass. I suppose it was because they were not too far from Trader Sam’s where professional’s go to drink.

Tommy Bermejo who started the place in 1965 has died and it’s a sad day in Tequila history. While Tommy’s didn’t invent the Margarita, they sure perfected it. In margarita history there are several people making the claim to being the inventor and I think it was a guy who owned a joint called Tommy’s Place that got the origination transferred over to Tommy’s.

Tommy’s was all about tequila. They had more types on their wall than you could probably find in one place in Mexico. They serve only 100% agave tequila, that means no mixing “neutral spirits” with it. This is the real Mexico hombre. Their website has a list of the over 100 tequila’s they have on hand from blanco, to reposado to añejo to extra añejo. They even have a page to educate you on the finer points of tequila intake. I always hated tequila until I got a chance to try an añejo which is aged like a fine brandy. You don’t make tequila jello shots with this or margaritas. These are fine sipping tequilas that you enjoy slowly.

Tommy and his wife Elmy where from the Yucatan and the food they served showed that. Sure, they had the guacamole and nachos or “white people mexican food” as I call it, but they had other dishes that were pure Yucatan such as the camarones al mojo de ajo and the pork culetas, but they had kind of California-ized over the years mixing in some of the more Americanized tastes in Mexican food. Still, it was a great place to eat and it was inexpensive to eat there. Always good when you dropping a deuce on some fine aged blue agave.

I never got to meet Tommy himself, or if I did I never knew it was him, but I’m glad to see that the place will live on after him. I think this weekend will be a good day to drop in and have a few shots of  Alcatraz Añejo. Diga a dios que dije hola, Tommy!

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