The summer months are a great time for thinking about and eating all those lovely fruits and vegetables that are ripe and in season. But what if you couldn’t afford to buy cherries, peaches or watermelon, let alone milk or peanut butter? What if the rising costs of fuel and food made is so that you could no longer adequately feed your family? This scenario is increasingly becoming a reality for many people in the Bay Area (as well as nationwide), which is why our community food banks are now, more than ever, so important.

I spoke with Suzan Bateson, the Executive Director of the Alameda County Community Food Bank, so I could learn more about food banks and hunger in the Bay Area. I focused on Alameda County as it’s where I live, but also because it covers such a large area. Here’s what I learned:

• 1 in 3 children in Alameda County faces the threat of hunger each day
• 38% of food bank recipients have at least one working member in their family
• Calls to the Alameda County Community Food Bank are up 34% from last year
• The number of people calling in April of 2008 was 1,890, compared to 1,059 in April of 2006
• The average number of calls has been steadily increasing since last July, with each month establishing a new record
• Since the beginning of 2008, the Alameda County Community Food Bank has received 1,188 calls from people who have never called before

These statistics are disheartening, to say the least, particularly when you consider that as more and more people sign up to receive aid, less and less food is being donated by the federal government to food banks nationwide. As we’ve all been hearing, the crop surpluses of years past are over. Excess grains are now being used to create fuels and are also being exported to other countries. Food banks now receive 34% less donations from the USDA than in 2003 because of these changes. People are also donating less money individually to food banks as they struggle to feed their own families. The outcome is that our food banks are increasingly in need of help.

But wait, there’s also some good news. Local food banks are increasingly trying to find fresh and local produce for families to eat. It’s not just canned beef and creamed corn anymore. Because of people like Suzan Bateson, there is an emphasis on providing fresh produce to recipients. I was surprised and excited to hear that 50% of the foods provided by the Alameda County Community Food Bank are fresh fruits and vegetables. This is possible because of a network of local growers and distributors who provide year-round greens, sweet potatoes, and citrus to the food bank for literally pennies per item. The food bank then distributes this food to over 300 agencies, who then get it to the people who need it most. Ms. Bateson also has two nutritional experts on staff to provide information and training to help people cook and eat more healthfully.

But as great as this is, local food banks really do need your help to keep their operations running. Luckily, they are staffed with dedicated and very organized people who have come up with many different ways for you to help make your local food community a stronger and healthier place. Following is a list of some things you can do:

How to Help

• Volunteer: If you have some extra time and are looking for an opportunity to make a real difference in people’s lives, give your local food bank a call. Most rely on volunteers to staff food help lines; sort food in warehouses; provide help in their administrative offices; and help plan special events.
  Volunteer in Alameda.
  Volunteer in San Francisco
• Donate: If you have some extra cash to spare, a cash donation can really make a difference. Food banks are usually able to provide around $7 worth of food for every $1 donated because of their low operating costs and agreements with local growers and distributors, so even the smallest donation can really help out.
  Donate to the Alameda County Community Food Bank.
  Donate to the San Francisco Food Bank.
• Start Your Own Food Drive: Donated nonperishable food items are an essential part of keeping any food bank going. You can help provide these materials to your food bank by collecting these goods. This is actually easier than it sounds. Just call your local food bank and ask them to deliver a bin to your office, school, church, or any place you’d like and then ask people to pick up an extra item or two while grocery shopping so they can add it to the bin. This could be a great summer project for kids.
  Start your own food drive in Alameda.
  Start your own food drive in San Francisco.
• Advocate for Change: Write or call your representative, senator, or governor about food issues that concern the poor. Too often these programs are an afterthought, but if enough people call, they will become a priority.
  Learn more about advocacy for the Alameda County Community Food Bank.
  Learn more about advocacy for the San Francisco Food Bank.

You can also support your local food banks through the following upcoming events:

Upcoming Events

Empty Bowls
Alameda County Community Food Bank
7900 Edgewater Drive, Oakland
Thursday June 5 at 5:30 – $40 for a family of four to attend or $20 a person
A great way to get your kids involved, this event allows you to select a bowl that was hand-painted by the children at Redwood Day School, enjoy a delicious soup and bread dinner, and take part in a family art project with your children. There is also a silent auction. You can register online or contact Pam Gidwani at 510-635-3663, ext. 328.

A Rockin’ Night of Music
Brava Theatre
2781 24th Street (at York), San Francisco
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Rockfeeds is a group of dedicated musicians who volunteer their time and effort every year to produce a grassroots benefit for the San Francisco Food Bank. Amateur singers are challenged by their friends by way of donations to get up on stage and sing a song in front of an audience, backed up by professional musicians. To participate, donate, or to find out more information about the event, please visit the rockfeeds.org.

Family to Family Volunteer Day
Alameda County Community Food Bank
7900 Edgewater Drive, Oakland
Saturday, August 23, 9 -11 am
With an age-appropriate lesson on hunger for children 5-10 years old, an art project, and a food sorting activity, this event is a great way to inform your kids and also get your entire family involved in your local food bank Space is limited and registration required. Just call 510-635-3663 ext. 308 or email volunteer@accfb.org.

Go to Bat Against Hunger
Oakland A’s Home Games
The Oakland A’s have set up food bins for each Wednesday’s home games. Bring two nonperishable food items to these games from June to September, and you’ll receive a free ticket to a future game. Drop off your food donation before each game at food drive barrels located at the Coliseum BART Plaza and at gates C and D.

To find information on the many local food banks in the Bay Area, go to Bay Area Hunger.

A couple of weeks ago, I met up with my oldest friend in the world to mind her three-year-old while she had her hair cut and dyed. As a reward, she said, she would buy me chocolate. Fine, I thought. I’m not a chocolate freak, so she’d be getting off rather cheaply, in terms of childcare.

Of course, I had no idea what I was in for, chocolate-wise. She took me to Christopher Elbow Artisanal Chocolates, at 401 Hayes Street. This woman has always out-cooled me. Even living in Redwood City with three small children pulling her in as many directions, she manages to know what’s going on right under my nose before I can sniff it out. Damn her and bless her, too.

To me, Christopher Elbow sounds like the title character of a children’s book. He is either a misunderstood little boy in possession of either highly specialized super powers or, at the very least, a rich and imaginative inner life. As a chocolatier, I have tasted evidence of the latter, but will not entirely rule out the former. I selected only one chocolate to taste, since I wasn’t really in the mood for sweets. Port Wine Caramel. I took one bite and a remarkable sensation overtook me for a moment. Talk about a rich inner life…

There is a scene in the the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in which Violet Beauregarde, the shapeless, gum-chewing champ, starts in on an Everlasting Gobstopper and says, describing her experience, “It’s tomato soup! It’s hot and creamy– I can actually feel it running down my throat!”

That is very much what happened to me when I bit into the caramel. Except I could feel port wine running down my throat instead of tomato soup. And, of course, there was no dramatic change to my organic composition which necessitated my immediate juicing. But I tumesced, just a little.

Squid bought herself a box of nine chocolates ($20.00), which would last her nine nights. One before bedtime, like some sort of luxury sugar pill. I knew I’d be back to do the same. I hope she’s not placing them on her pillow in this heat.

Upon my return, I chatted a bit with a nice young woman behind the counter and asked her to pick out some of her favorite chocolates. I added a couple of my own to the mix and had them wrapped to take home so that I might taste them in private, since my prior experience and reaction suggested I proceed with caution.

Before leaving, I needed to sample a bit of drinking chocolate. The young lady suggested her favorite– the Ginger Caramel Milk Chocolate. I obeyed.

I took my chocolate into the drinking lounge and contemplated my impending sugar coma.

Though I was the sole human in the lounge at the time, it certainly didn’t feel, well, loungy. The upright seatbacks and hard surfaces of the armrest/places to put one’s beverage seemed to underscore the necessity of bracing myself for the sugar rush that was about to overtake me. The glowing tables unsettled me, reminding me as they did of the Milk Bar in A Clockwork Orange. I find the fact that this place has brought to mind two classic films from 1971 fascinating. Had a high-priced call girl in hot pants and a terrible shag cut sat down to join me, I might have drunk my chocolate faster.

As it happened, I did drink my chocolate too quickly. I ended up inhaling a bit of ground ginger, which provoked an unfortunate little coughing fit. I knew the ginger was there, but I thought it looked pretty and therefore refused to stir it in. It was my fault entirely. I snapped some more photos and left, following someone I can only describe as a crazy, even more childlike Butterfly McQueen down Gough Street. She was exceedingly friendly, stopping to say hello not only to every person she met along the way, but a pair of shutters, and, finally, a hibiscus bush. Selfishly, I did not offer her any chocolate.

When I arrived home with my chocolates, I realized I had neither the time nor the appetite to consume them then and there as I had planned. These were special chocolates– the kind one might savor while bathing in asses’ milk or worry over in a monkey fur bed jacket while digesting the latest gossip from one’s maid. They are luxurious and complex. They cry out for a momentary focus of one’s attention. They are an expensive mouthful, to be sure, but they are worth every penny, I promise.

Cross my heart and kiss my elbow. Go check it out.

Here are some tasting notes on the one’s I’ve sampled:

Bourbon Pecan– one might never know there is marzipan lurking inside if one isn’t paying attention. Made with Maker’s Mark bourbon.

Passion Fruit — I don’t naturally gravitate towards white chocolate, but it serves as a subtle carrier for a caramel so tangy with passion fruit that, if I were slightly more obsessive, I would become obese and diabetic from doing nothing all day but collecting hundreds of these confections, scooping out the caramel, and licking it off a giant antique wooden spoon.

Cabernet– Chocolate, caramel, and Cabernet Sauvignon. I am not certain which winery supplies the wine for this confection, but I was assured it is a California Cabernet. As with the (sadly missing today) Port Wine chocolate I sampled a couple of weeks ago, I experienced another Miss Beauregarde moment. Happy-making.

Bananas Foster– Enjoyable, but didn’t exactly scream Bananas Foster to me. Perhaps I should have set it on fire.

Banana Curry– Hot damn. This one is really excellent. Refreshing trickle of heat.

Rosemary– For some reason, sweets flavored with rosemary often have a subtle and mildly disturbing moldy flavor. This narrowly manages to avoid that sort of unpleasantness. Nice little salt kick at the end.

Strawberry Balsamic– Fun. And interesting– the balsamic acidity of the piece is an interesting contrast to the chocolate but, rather than accentuate the strawberry, it obscures it.

Orange Blossom Honey– Oh my Blossom Dearie. This one totally delivers. Salty caramel that allows the subtle orange blossom notes of the honey to peek through and say hello. I like you, you’re nice.

Persian– Get over any loathing you might have of marzipan. This is a wonderfully complex piece of chocolate. Cardamom? Is that sumac? Do you even have any idea what sumac tastes like? Wonderfully nutty– blame the marzipan.

Christopher Elbow Artisanal Chocolates
Location: 401 Hayes Street (at Gough) in San Francisco
Telephone: 415-355-1105
Store Hours:

Visit the website for more information:
www.elbowchocolates.com

I couldn’t have been more pleased when STUDIO Gallery opened up on Polk street a few years ago. The gallery is unlike any other I know. First of all, it’s not airy and industrial, it’s a tiny and cozy storefront, and it showcases the work of only Bay Area artists. Art shows are accessible, sometimes provocative and more often than not, fun. Most of the artwork is very affordable and there is just about something for everyone and every budget. In addition to folk art you will also find fine art, but I’ve yet to see anything stuffy or terribly intimidating.

One of the more enjoyable shows they have held every year is Delicious, art inspired by food and drink. The show opens today and runs through April 13th, and there will be a reception this Saturday from 4 until 8 pm. This year there are over 70 artists participating and on display are oil paintings, pastels, prints, photographs, drawings, mixed media and even a paper sculpture from one of my favorite local artisans, Toshiko Kamiyama who makes the most amazing realistic pieces like this one, all made out of paper.

You can see photos from Delicious here. STUDIO Gallery has also recently launched another web site called Really SF that has plenty of local art, from photographs to painting to maps to prints and it is all San Francisco or Bay Area themed. Online is fine, but do check out the Delicious show in person if you are in the area. And don’t worry, there are plenty of places to eat in the neighborhood if the show stimulates your appetite.

STUDIO Gallery
718A Polk Street (between Clay & Washington)
San Francisco, CA 94109
415.931.3130

Gallery Hours
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday 11am - 8 pm
Saturday + Sunday 11 am - 6 pm
Monday + Tuesday by appointment

Sometimes it seems if you’re not up on the latest, newest restaurant, or are lagging behind while chasing San Francisco’s food wordsmiths about what’s happening right now, you might miss what’s incredible. In the Bay Area you could miss The Dish everyone’s talking about if you’re not in 30 places on one night. So many restaurants here change their menus daily, and seasonally– more than any city/ region I’ve ever cooked in, that it can take years to taste it all, plus there’s always another eatery opening– it makes our heads spin trying to keep them all straight.

Whew! All the head-spinning can blur what’s right in front of us: a neighborhood joint, a down-to-earth 50 seat house, or the corner place you pass by every day on your way to work. In these Off-Broadway or Off-Off Broadway stages there are great plates going out every day, every night, year after year. The food is good or great, or it’s consistent. The chef is famous or not, and the cooks on the line want to be chefs one day or they continue to collect the paycheck that keeps their family fed.

As a professional cook it’s important for me to read and eat and meet new restaurants. But the dishes I crave, the dining rooms I want to have a good conversation in, are rarely those I’ve eaten at once. Anything can be amazing once. But how does that dish taste month after month, year after year?

Samovar Tea Lounge was going strong at 18th and Sanchez at the edge of The Castro District when I “discovered it” a few years ago. It didn’t need me to talk about it’s specialness. It’s busy morning, noon and evening. People inside are studying, knitting, reading, sipping, recovering, dating, scoping, listening and imbibing. Samovar’s food menu is straightforward and small, changing slightly with the seasons. There are breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner and high tea offerings. Tea service menus include food and tea in a theme and they are always gracious about letting you order one of the components from these packages with another dish.

My absolute favorite dish is what Samovar calls their egg bowl. Two delicately poached eggs lay next to mounds of flavorful rice and are garnished with the protein of your choice; smoked duck, salmon and tofu are often in rotation, and there’s a little ramekin of fresh ginger grated in soy sauce. I’m also a big fan of their house-made scones (some of the best in the Bay Area as far as I’m concerned!), not just because the little bowl of clotted cream for spreading is the real deal.

Of course tea is Samovar’s main attraction. From their website,

“Our goal is to create a company that is good for this world. We partner with tea experts and suppliers from small family farms and estates, and local businesses and organizations. Through our service and environment we aim to embody the tea lifestyle and provide a place for our customers to escape, relax, and be healthy.”

I know little about tea intellectually. But on a recent visit I drank a Keemun that silenced me. Not being a tea sophisticate I like my black tea with milk. Samovar’s staff are well trained, thoroughly knowledgeable and never judgmental. The woman who brought me this tea for which I am not worthy poured hot water into a tiny clear glass dollhouse teapot filled with twiggy leaves and immediately upon filling it poured the barely steeped liquid into a small, handle-less tea cup. She explained that this Keemun was so strong, even a 5 second steep would render the flavor too strong!

I sit here before you to report that this Keemun was not made better by milk. Brew of the gods. Hot liquid like no other. I didn’t want to tell you because then there would be less for me. But then I thought you might not believe that Samovar, the place you barely see, the place producing no beeps on your radar screen, was as special as I said, if I did not tell you about this hot elixir, this liquid manna.

At Samovar I have been introduced to two other favorite teas I drink weekly. I go for flavor profiles which list pine, dark, rich, earth, chocolaty, peat, smoky and velvet as possible evocations. If you and I have anything in common, I suggest Pu-erh or Black Velvet.

There’s now a second location of Samovar Tea Lounge in the Yerba Buena Gardens. It’s located on top of the Martin Luther King Jr. fountain and although encased in glass, this location is as warm an environment as their original. You can buy some of the teas they offer, although when I made an inquiry about the Keemun they said it was too new to the menu to have packaged it yet, and there was no promise that it would be. Samovar’s commitment to freshness is amazing and some of the more rare teas will only ever be available if you are drinking them there.

Sometimes I want to go where it’s quiet. I enjoy the trust I feel in these places and feel grateful that they continue to survive in San Francisco– a city not known for it’s ease when it comes to owning and operating food businesses. I desire familiar food that’s consistently good and sometimes blows my mind. I have a hankering for a little sameness and a dash of surprise.

And when it’s time to take a break of trying the latest thing, I hope you’ll take cover from the hustle and bustle, or just the fog, and give Samovar a try, even if it’s a pot of tea. I can {almost} guarantee your pleasure at doing so.

You have until tomorrow, Friday December 21st, to donate to Menu for Hope, and bid on any number of priceless prizes donated by food bloggers all over the world. As you already know, Ms. Pim of Chez Pim has organized this impressive fund raising event for the past four years. This year she’s picked The United Nations’ World Food Programme, as she did last year, but for 2007 she’s made a special request,

“With a special permission from the WFP, the funds raised by Menu for Hope 4 will be earmarked for the school lunch program in Lesotho, Africa. We chose to support the school lunch program because providing food for the children not only keeps them alive, but keeps them in school so that they learn the skills to feed themselves in the future. We chose to support the program in Lesotho because it is a model program in local procurement - buying food locally to support local farmers and the local economy. Instead of shipping surplus corn across the ocean, the WFP is buying directly from local subsistent farmers who practice conservation farming methods in Lesotho to feed the children there.”

In the spirit of supporting local food economy, one of the USA West Coast prizes has been amended as of the afternoon of Wednesday December 19.

(UW17) Dinner for 8 prepared by Brett Emerson
Brett Emerson, owner of the soon to be opened Contigo, is offering dinner made for 8 people in his new Noe Valley home. Wines to be paired and picked by none other than our very own wine blogging superstar, Alder Yarrow of Vinography. And desserts will be made by yours truly, Shuna fish Lydon of Eggbeater. Triple threat, no doubt.

This all-star dinner could be yours for a mere $10!

More USA West Coast prizes can be found here at Rasa Malaysia. But if you’re a jet-setting world traveler you may want to bid on a personal tour of the El Bulli kitchen {EU31}, or have lunch with your not-so-secret lover at Alain Passard’s 3 Michelin star L’Arpege in Paris one lovely afternoon {EU40}, to name just 2 insanely amazing possibilities!

The prizes are varied and beyond your wildest imagination. Delicious in every regard. Please take a few minutes to head over to First Giving and help us raise a record amount this year. (Last year we raised $60,925.12)

How To?

- To donate, go to First Giving. To specify a specific prize, follow the instructions on the Chez Pim website (scroll down to the instructions and screenshots).

Bay Area

Grab your bottles of California white Burgundy, we might be back on the crab in time for Christmas.

San Francisco City Planning Commissioners want to ban drunk pizza munching on Broadway.

Get a free gingerbread house kit when you sign your family up for a membership to the Bay Area Discovery Museum, then enter your edible edifice in the 12th Annual Gingerbread Architecture Extravaganza.

Elsewhere

Are you ready for another new season of Top Chef? Yeah, me neither. How about just a Holiday special, featuring some of your favorite and loudest cheftestants?

It’s long past Halloween, but those crazy Canadians are still scaring their fellow Canucks silly with a slew of workplace PSAs. The one below concerns kitchen safety. WARNING: This video is graphic, intensely disturbing, which, of course, makes it highly effective.

If you love produce as much as I do you know that living in the East Bay is better than living in San Francisco. I realize I could start a riot here, but I’ve lived in 3 out of four directions of the peninsula, in various neighborhoods and cities, and no matter where I was, no matter if I was in possession of a drivers license or not, I made it to Berkeley Bowl and Monterey Market, and/ or the Berkeley Farmers’ Markets, because there was more to see, smell, taste, touch and procure in these markets.

And until I moved to North Berkeley myself, I was a tried and true Berkeley Bowl Trooper, from the old school– back when it started in the old bowling alley. I still love to get there when I have my list in Excel spreadsheet form and the time is early enough before rush hour clogs the insane parking lot and creates lines worse than LA traffic.

But now I have been seduced by Monterey Market. I used to laugh at its size, comparable to Rainbow Grocery but tiny compared to Berkeley Bowl. But then. But then I found its buried treasure. One day two summers ago I stopped by for a few things and bought an entire flat of the best boysenberries I have ever seen, smelled or tasted! I went home and ate about four baskets, made pie with a few more and froze the rest. Returning just a day or two later I found that I had bought something which would not be back again until the following year… Sad…but also something to look forward to.

You can go to the same place day after day, year after year, and find everything ok, get what you need for the price you like and shrug shoulders at the prospect of change.

Until. Until one day you pick the best looking toad you can find for toad soup and when you get through checkout you realize your bag is exploding with a Prince and your car has been moved closer to the horizon, where a pretty sunset awaits you.

A few days ago is a perfect example. I needed some citrus and butter and cranberries. I like to stock up on cranberries before they disappear so I can whip up a batch of my favorite walnut-cranberry-orange bread, which I love to toast and smother with butter. (It really can be whipped up– it’s a one bowl and wooden spoon recipe!)

I’m in love with citrus and I always look at what’s going on. Scratch and sniff is the best way to learn about new citrus. Both blossom and skin will tell you what unique flavor and perfume are awaiting you. While scanning high bins of yellow and green and orange globes my eyes did a double-take on a gnarly looking fruit.

YUZU! Fresh, California grown Yuzu were staring at me. Like a collector at a yard sale discovering a priceless chair, I monitored my breathing and tried not to look around frantically. I bit my tongue when I wanted to jump up and down and yell, “Hey?! Do you see what I see?! Look! It’s fresh Yuzu, here, in Berkeley, California, yours for the having!! Can you believe such a thing? It’s so wonderful!!!!!”

But instead I kept walking and went back nonchalantly, looking puzzled on the outside and then hunkered in and bought at least 5 pounds.

Yuzu is a fruit I only saw one of once, while living in Napa. A famous chef I knew had smuggled one in from a recent trip to Japan. Like Bergamot, it’s an ugly mottled fruit, but it’s exquisite perfume and flavor lives in every molecule of its being.

Monterey Market is a cold market, mostly outside and seemingly unkempt. But it’s a facade, truly, because you never know what you will find there. Bill Fujimoto buys small and large shipments directly from farmers single and corporate. The back room, unseen by the average consumer, is a carefully organized chaos of fruit and vegetable back-stock/ cases, available to restaurants, chefs and caterers who want to buy direct and avoid (or amend as the case may be) produce companies or farmers’ markets.

And if I haven’t sold you yet, I beg of you to rent or buy Eat At Bill’s, a lovingly made documentary about Monterey Market and its beloved workers. Watch it just to see the massive pumpkins, which get brought in on elephant transport trucks and the joy so many people share about cherry season, and one particular cherry in particular.

When we talk about shopping and eating local we often overlook our markets with rooftops. But Monterey Market, Berkeley Bowl, The Food Mill, Rainbow Grocery, Bi Rite market, Farmer Joe’s and so many more in the Bay Area are all about shopping locally. These businesses are still independent, many of them family and/or co-operatively owned. If you can’t get to the farmers’ market, find your CSA box lacking this week or next month, or just want to see that there are a dozen kinds of sweet potatoes, countless citrus varietals, far out and funky shaped mushrooms, head over to a new market for countless fruit and veggie adventures. They await you in one corner of the bay or the other…

Opening a restaurant in San Francisco is not easy, especially right now, but not for the reasons why it was so difficult in the 90’s or five years ago. It can be said, opening a restaurant at all, in any city, is difficult. But because I have cooked professionally in other American cities, have seen a number of my colleagues open restaurants, and have recently begun working for a soon-to-open San Francisco restaurant, I can say that opening a restaurant here is a difficult proposition, even if you have a lot of factors on your side.

Labor: In SF Magazine last month, food editor Jan Newberry spoke to new local labor laws San Francisco is imposing, in an inciting article titled, Is San Francisco Killing Its Restaurants? Although the new labor laws sounds fantastic on paper, they have the capacity to hurt many restaurant employees, mainly back of house employees. For full transparency I will state here that I am, and have maintained, a pro-union status for most of my adult life. The issues are confusing, in part because restaurants are not a necessary establishment the way, let’s say, hospitals are. And because I worked for minimum wage for much of my career, I do agree that it should be a living wage.

Culture: It could be said that although restaurants are a luxury business, they do play a major part in distinguishing the landscape of one city from another. As a person who loves to eat out, I can easily name five restaurants in each city I love and they make visiting there far more appealing.

A16 Restaurant. The Line.

Risks: The restaurant business, and the business of opening a restaurant is only for the crazy and the passionate. Who else would open an establishment considered to have the highest risk factor by banks? Who else would pour their life savings into a business that may or may not be liked by the public, or be sunk by one review in the local newspaper? Who else would open a business even if the glass ceiling on profits is less that 7% yearly? {The margins are extremely slim in the restaurant business.}

It can be said that a restaurant owner is a rebel with a cause; opening a business against all odds. Attempting the impossible, confident in the face of harsh realities. A dreamer, in short. Like many other gambles, a restaurant’s statistics change city to city, and after New York City, San Francisco has the highest fail-rate in the shortest span of time, than any other city in the United States. What makes a restaurant stick is as much about the fickle public, concerned with hipness above all else, as it is about the actual food being served and by whom, or what neighborhood it’s located in and what month of the year it swung open its doors.

Press: In July I spoke on a panel of food bloggers in Chicago as part of BlogHer 07. As the sole professional cook-blogger I had the difficult honor of answering a question from the audience concerning Mario Batali’s latest vitrolic comments concerning food bloggers. The funny thing was that, as yet, I had not read his comments on our kind. As Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic has recently pointed out in her site Grub Report, food bloggers are made out to be the villians by my profession.

What, or who, Mario Batali is railing against, is those writing for the Internet with no concern for the business they are admiring or panning. Many food bloggers want to have their slice of the famous pie without taking responsibility for the power of their words– or taking the first slice. And, something many web-savvy people know, their power to have their words found first is all to often used to threaten and destroy restaurants, chefs and owners. Google is an interesting animal indeed, and being a blogger means catching a ride on its gigantic sweeping monster tail, if even for 15 minutes of fame.

In Chicago I asked everyone to please know and remember that their words were far more powerful than many food and restaurant bloggers have been willing to take responsibility for until recently. I reminded the audience that there are few professions skewered by non-colleague critics publicly.

Chefs and chef-owners pour everything they have into new businesses. They know dozens, if not hundreds, of people’s lives are being supported, or not, based on the thousands of decisions they make about opening a restaurant. So when a food blogger, whose credentials they know nothing of, representing an individually promoted news source, like a single-authored blog (as opposed to a newspaper or magazine), comes in on the very first night, or within the first few weeks (a time period we know that newspaper critics are going to, yes, visit, but not base their official review on that sole meal) and reports on the experience, good or awful, the restaurant owner is cornered. She/he knows that, (or maybe they don’t because few restaurant people are Internet-smart), those blogger’s words are going to be the ones their other prospective diners are going to find first.

Issues: Why is this relevant and/or important to why opening a restaurant in San Francisco is so difficult? Because blogging and the Internet’s speed, as an opinion gatherer and reporter, has leveled and expanded a press playing-field, giving chefs and owners one more thing to reckon with in an already seemingly futile battle of pushing a boulder uphill.

I realize I straddle a fence now, and my perspective as a chef and also a blogger has been inexorably altered by having five toes in each grassy knoll. I have made, as I’ve dubbed it, my Sinead O’Connor mistakes concerning words and quotes and media, self made and not. I know that now I am an easier target for both good and awful press as a pastry chef, becuase I am a presence on the web.

I, like many people before me, am learning the hard way how to open a restaurant in San Francisco, and I am far from being the owner. This piece, as well as the series I’m doing on Eggbeater, is an attempt at reporting the process from the inside. The issues are multi-faceted, dichotomous and oftentimes confusing. While writing I am attempting to sort some of them out, and also speak from and to a perspective rarely found in major press sources.

And, as this is a blog, where comments are welcome and part of creating a place for discussion and public opinion, what are your thoughts on these matters?

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Other pertinent links speaking to these political and personal issues on the subject of opening and operating restaurants in San Francisco:

Brett Emerson, local chef and food blogger, whose site is the much loved In Praise of Sardines, has been extremely candid in reporting the process of opening his own restaurant, Ollalie.

Michael Bauer, restaurant critic for the SF Chronicle, on his blog, Between Meals, reported on the cost of doing business in San Francisco called, Is San Francisco Killing Restaurants?
{And Brett’s commentary on this important article.}

At the end of the year in, “Is The Public Ready For A Transparent Restaurant Industry?” here on Bay Area Bites, I asked difficult questions after a horrific accident took the life of a young waiter and put the sous chef of Bar Crudo in the hospital.

Last November SF Business Times reported on an enigmatic lawsuit the Golden Gate Restaurant Association filed against San Francisco about the newly imposed labor laws.

Last week Tutti Foodie, Scharffen Berger, and Marcia Gagliardi of Tablehopper joined forces and unveiled The Chocolate Adventure Recipe Contest with a number of events at local restaurants featuring pastry chefs and chocolate. On Monday August 13 I went to Campton Place to see what Boris Portnoy {pastry chef of Campton Place, the restaurant) might make and talk about. An innovative and forward thinking chef, Boris’s desserts guarantee a challenge to the palate as well as mind.

Much to my delight there was more in store than the same old chocolate thang I, and other pastry chefs, often find ourselves at. The afternoon at Campton Place was spent in a small private room on the second floor with some of California’s most dynamic food writers, bloggers, bakers and movers and shakers in the local chocolate scene.

Before we set about eating the arranged chocolate on our plates, John Scharffenberger gave a short but thorough history of cacao and chocolate. If you work for a school, or just love chocolate, give this semi-retired chocolate maker a call! His talk was engaging, funny, compassionate and delicious in every sense of the word. While leading us through the earth’s best rain forests for cacao growing, harvesting and fermenting, he directed us to eat the disparate chocolate shapes on our plates, in the order his lesson informed.

Much to the surprise of many of our virgin mouths, we tasted a number of chocolate examples which were not chocolate in the truest sense of the word. We learned that when tasting chocolate in its pure form, tongues met with acidity and tannins most commonly found in wine and bitter edges associated with dark-roasted coffees.

After eating 8-9 versions of cacao and chocolate we listened to Boris talk excitedly about his love for cacao nibs; their texture, flavor and versatility tantalized his sweet imagination. And discovering how to make his own chocolate in a food processor appeared to have changed his life! Yes, he encouraged, go and try this at home. After a short demonstration he motioned with a regal flourish, and quiet waiters appeared with a three component cacao nib-themed plated dessert.

You’d think after three hours of smelling, tasting, eating, talking, inquiring, and listening to chocolate I would have left the hotel without a desire to ponder the chocolate contest… But the truth is that my friend and I discussed what we would do if we could enter the contest. {I cannot, but he can.}

I thought I would share a bit of our conversation. Think of these word formations the way you would poetry, a game, an interpretive dance or maybe like you were sitting near us on BART, overhearing our chocolate-meal fueled crazytalk.

Theme: Bacon & Chocolate

Render bacon fat brunoise or dice, caramelize crispy pork fat cubes and make chocolate with this in food processor with cacao nibs.
Pork cracklins (like the snack food found at gas stations) enrobed in bittersweet chocolate.
Bacon lardons half dipped in chocolate.
Fatback chocolate with quince paste.
Pork belly & rosemary infused chocolate pot de creme, quince paste (?) & sea salt garnish.

Don’t worry, these ideas won’t end up on a dessert of mine…..

The Chocolate Adventure Recipe Contest website. “You. Dark Chocolate. And A Special Ingredient.”

The Rules are simple: pair a list of innovative/ aromatic spices and flavors with any of Scharffen Berger’s exquisite dark chocolates. The prizes include both money and fame. If you don’t want the Bacon & Chocolate dessert to win, enter soon.

And, as Jen Maiser said aptly, “What could be better than the opportunity to create an interesting recipe using chocolate?”

Related Links:
The Art of Tasting Chocolate
Jalapeno Girl
Ladle and Whisk

This past weekend many of my favorite activities came together under one roof for one night only in San Francisco. On Saturday August 12, from 7 - 9 PM Slideluckpotshow brought handmade food, art, artists, friendliness, beautiful thought-provoking images, eating new things, seeing old friends and making new ones, giddy excitement at the spontaneousness of it all, and deeply inspiring ideas about creating community together. It met me when I left the just cooling breeze of San Francisco’s dusk and entered the vast white space that is Sandbox Studios on Minnesota Street. Slideluckpotshow met all my expectations and then far exceeded them in a few minutes, when, after arriving too early with my carpool, put me to “work” being a 20 minute volunteer.

The first time I read about Slideluckpotshow was in Time Out NY on a trip there. I kicked myself for not thinking of the brilliant idea myself. And then I wished I still lived in New York City. Well, for a minute, at any rate.

Recently, via Marcia of Tablehopper and through an odd series of random emails, all mere days before the event, I heard that Slideluckpotshow was coming to my fine, fair city. I could barely contain myself long enough to think about what dish I might create to welcome Slideluckpotshow’s founder Casey Kelbaugh and his crew. How could I convince them to come to SF again? How could I gather all the troops possibly interested in coming to an event displaying such an incredible amalgamation of ideas?

It’s true, Slideluckpotshow had little advertising. Until I posted the information on eggbeater no one I knew had heard of it or realized they were coming SF at all. Which is really unfortunate, because it was right up our alley!

The requirements for attending for Slideluckpotshow were easy. Make food (I made enough for 30 people but most people made enough for about 12, depending on the portion size), or bring really good dishes from a reputable prepared-food vending source. Make or bring great beverages. If the first two are not possible, give a good donation at the door. {My friend DB gave $10.} Come hungry at least a few minutes, or up to 2 hours, before the slide-show. Be prepared to sit on the ground if you don’t get there early enough to nab a seat in a chair or on a comfy couch. Wear the eye glasses you do for watching a movie, if needed. Enter a small body of images for the show and make the deadline. Or don’t submit “slides” but be prepared for seeing/ experiencing a wide range of aesthetics and mediums projected on a 20 foot screen via an Apple computer. There were two sections of the slide show, each running at about an hour, with an intermission in the middle.

My favorite artists from Saturday night’s SF showing are the following:

Jessica Rosen’s powerful images of transsexual women in Brazil, high contrast, slightly ironic (fashion or not?) portraits by Olivier Laude, Jonathan Solo’s graphite pencil work wherein he, “collages the drawings… to create meta-feminine/masculine figures from a fantastical assemblage of physical characteristics.” There were two artists whose photographic documentation of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan reached into my core, but Heidi Schumann’s images and astute interplay between sound (all the slide-sets were accompanied by music of the artist’s choice) rendered me speechless. Although it’s difficult to pick a favorite set and artist, I will. Tim Gasperak contributed a series of photographs stark, detailed, evocative, lovely and textured from two series, Mystery of Iceland and Isolated Landscapes. Even his bio is well written.

What did I make for the pot-luck? A fruit salad composed of the juiciest, most absolute ripe beyond ripe farmers’ market fruit. Something similar to Shuna & Athen’s Famous Gazpacho. A quick photo of the finished bowl can be found by clicking on this link. From my assembled posse there was also a beautiful pecan-peach cake made by Marc, and a clean squid and broad bean salad made by none other than Brett.

Slideluckpotshow could not be a better event for me: a chef with over 10 years of fine art training and a BFA in photography. If you’re a person who appreciates Open Studios or museums, Flickr or JPG, or just the occasional food porn photograph, this is an event I beg of you to attend if it comes to a wide open room near you.