I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Berkeley Bowl for years. I love it because it's usually the only place I can find escarole, the produce department has 20 different types of onions and more varieties of pears than I knew existed, and I've never seen more tomatoes loaded up in huge gorgeous piles of red, yellow, purple and green anywhere. It also has one of the best fish markets in the area, a plentiful butcher counter with diverse cuts of meat, and more bin-food items than you could ever hope to scoop.

Unfortunately, the negatives are so overwhelming that I rarely step foot in the place. The parking lot alone is reason enough to run for the hills. It's like demolition derby with aged Volvos trying to out-maneuver newer hybrids to stake their claims on the all too elusive parking spots. By the time I make it inside the actual store I need a valium, but am instead met with a melee of other crabby shoppers who are also irritated from their own parking lot experiences, sticky floors, and long lines. The whole place gives me a headache.

But after seven long years of planning, negotiating, and building, Berkeley Bowl has opened a new warehouse-style market just off Ashby in Berkeley near I-80. This is great news for anyone who loves what Berkeley Bowl has to offer but detests actually shopping there. With two large parking lots, a new and clean interior with pretty much everything the old store offers, plus a large café with ample seating, it’s the new go-to East Bay market.

Like the old store, Berkeley Bowl West has a vast produce section with plenty of beautifully ripe fruits and vegetables of all kinds abundantly laid out. The organic section, however, is a little different in that it is now set apart from the main fruits and vegetables area and shares a space with the bulk food aisles. This is somewhat convenient as it means you no longer have to discern which fruits and vegetables are organic while shopping. I must admit, however, that it’s sort of a pain to have to get your cucumbers weighed and the bag stickered with the price before you can leave the zone. Cemone, the woman who weighed my fruit, said they set up the organic section this way because the checkers had too many SKU numbers to memorize and this made the checkout area run more smoothly. She seemed very earnest and nice when telling me about their system, but I must say I'm skeptical about the merits of separately weighing and pricing everything only to have to get in line again later to check out. I will reserve judgment, however, until I'm there on a busy day.

As with the original Berkeley Bowl, the prices are great. When I was there last week, heirloom tomatoes were available for about $2.50 a pound and organic Rainer cherries for under $1.50 a pound. The fresh local halibut was just under $10 a pound, a dozen organic eggs were $2.99, and I bought the most delicious locally-made ricotta for under $4. Nothing makes me happier than buying beautiful fresh foods at low prices.

The new market also has an abundant beer and wine section full of interesting choices, including two large shelves of sake, which I thought was pretty impressive. And like the old store, they have an extensive cheese selection. The food counter and deli will be a highlight for anyone wishing to purchase take-away food and has a notable array of items: fresh sushi, sandwiches, soups, salads, cooked dinner items, and anything else you could want, including an enormous collection of olives.

Overall, my shopping expedition to Berkeley Bowl West was enjoyable. We parked right away, our cart didn't have a stuck wheel, and the store was clean. Best of all it wasn't crowded and people were actually pleasant. Finally I could enjoy that amazing selection of food without wanting to rip my hair out.

Berkeley Bowl West
920 Heinz Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94710
MAP
(510) 898-9555
Store Hours: Mon-Sat 9am-8pm, Sun 10am-6pm

Unsurprisingly, the best pie scene in 20th century literature belongs to Roald Dahl, who wrote as vividly about food as he wrote about crummy parents, child-eating giants, sadistic schoolmarms, and the bright, plucky kids who best them. In Danny, The Champion of the World, a kindly small-town doctor pays a house call on Danny's dad, leaving Danny, who hasn't eaten in 24 hours, with "something huge and round wrapped up in greaseproof paper":

"Very carefully, I now began to unwrap the greaseproof paper from around the doctor's present, and when I had finished, I saw before me the most enormous and beautiful pie in the world. It was covered all over, top, sides, and bottom, with a rich golden pastry. I took a knife from beside the sink and cut out a wedge. I started to eat it in my fingers, standing up. It was a cold meat pie. The meat was pink and tender with no fat or gristle in it, and there were hard-boiled eggs buried like treasures in several different places. The taste was absolutely fabulous. When I had finished the first slice, I cut another and ate that too. God bless Doctor Spencer, I thought. And God bless Mrs. Spencer as well."

For some reason, this description of the pie Danny eats, alone in the tiny caravan he shares with his wounded and temporarily immobile father, has stayed with me more than any of the book's many memorable passages. Dahl relished trafficking in warped food fantasies imaginative children might gleefully dream up and later, as adults, wiser and, by Dahl's subversive standards, probably much less fun, still enjoy: The BFG's flatulent frobscottle, the grotesque chocolate cake-scarfing sequence in Matilda, and pretty much all of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. Yet this pie, by Dahl's standards, a straightforward, entirely believable concoction, occupies a special corner of memory. The pie is a simple, hearty dish, prepared by the sympathetic doctor's wife for a hungry boy who has no one to make him pies. Danny's mother is dead, and his father broke his leg trying to steal pheasants from a villainous beer tycoon. The boy deserves a pie, and Dahl makes sure he gets one -- because pies are the sort of thing bright, plucky children shouldn't have to do without.

The scene is moving, sure -- especially when you're in 3rd grade -- but the pie in question also sounds pretty good: grand, nourishing, and fanciful -- the way a pie should.

When I contemplate "pie", my mind races back centuries, through whirlwinds of sweet, stewed fillings and pressed pastry, past a light-speed procession of empty window-sills, chanted nursery rhymes, and county fairs, all the way back to Medieval Europe. I imagine great, honking, burnished-brown mountains of pastry hugging undisclosed fillings in broad, round pans, steam spitting through slits carved into the surface. Outside the crusts, cheery plump pie-people in tunics sit around a long table in a great hall. Someone drags forth an over-sized knife to carve slices, to see what lurks within -- maybe spiced plums, an array of berries, or some assemblage of juicy meat parts trapped between layers of dough, suspended in sauce like succulent specimens in amber, with perhaps a slender bird leg or two poking cautiously from the top crust. Even if you know what kind of pie you're about to inhale, the pleasant prospect of unearthing delicious hidden mysteries -- like the hard-boiled eggs in Danny's pie -- inevitably accompanies the pie form. Only when you actually crack into a pie, can you truly solve the mystery within. Pies are also a little funny, and not only because they're the target of a South Park character's unwavering obsession. I didn't know how funny pie could be until, at the age of twelve, I went to England with my family and watched, from a window seat on a Dover-bound train, a hulking, squinty-eyed English lad flail at his pencil-thin younger brother in the aisle, braying again and again: "Edward, quit hogging all the pie!"

Yes, pie provokes passion, more so than most desserts, but it's not popular just because it's evocative of anything; it's popular because it's good. Aron Kay should have picked a lamer food to start hurling into the faces of famous people with offensive political platforms and/or excessively high opinions of themselves -- like runny porridge or gas station tamales. The formula for pie is deceptively uncomplicated and unassailable in its dazzling simplicity, really as close to perfect as it gets. Every great pie, regardless of provenance, hinges on interplay between its two components, crust and filling: in a classic American fruit pie, the salty, butter-rich crust balances and adds complexity to a sweet filling; in Tunisian brik, a brittle stack of crunchy phyllo-like pastry provides a bland, texturally interesting foil to the heady, moist mixture of tuna, egg, onions, and capers stuffed inside.

I'm not going to pretend I'm a pie expert, a true aficionado. I adore pie primarily in theory; I do not bake it myself, nor do I frequently purchase it from bakeries and diners. I like the much-litigated Derby pie, in no small part because we're pretty much from the same place. The Bay Area is obviously home to some good pie too. Even though I usually head there with other things in mind (namely, artichoke soup and great fish) I've always championed Pescadero's Duarte's Tavern for its sublime pie made with local olallieberries, the tart product of a berry soap opera.

You probably read about Pie Truck on Urban Daddy last week. With the latest local food renaissance happening on wheels, roving carts and underground delivery services get more tweets than Shaquille O' Neal, and blogs put new-comers on blast within days of their first sale. We may be approaching gastronomic Thunderdome, a new quasi-post-apocalyptic condition of eating through recession, where restaurants, having struggled, gradually shutter and practically disappear altogether, surrendering the pitted scene to scrappy, subsistence-level free-agents -- wagon-pushers and van vendors -- with no regard for increasingly irrelevant health code regulations, much less entrepreneurial convention.

Pie Truck is one of the latest freelance foodie endeavors to garner city-wide attention and, as it turns out, it's a lovely, deserving operation. I hollered at Pie Truck proprietor Chris Bauer on Wednesday of last week. Chris is a former architect, brother to Matt Bauer, the fantastic banjo-slinging singer-songwriter who once called San Francisco home. I asked Chris if he'd deliver to the Richmond, where I'd be house-and-dog-sitting for my dad all week. He said he could. To make my regular Saturday morning pick-up basketball game, I'd have to be away from the house during his normal delivery hours. I said I'd slip the money under the mat if he'd leave the pies. That would be fine, he said.

On Saturday, I made it back to the house -- sweaty, exhausted, and famished -- at around 11:15 a.m. No pie, I thought, staring at the steps leading up to the door. My little wad of bills still peeked out from under the mat. I watched the news and drank some juice. Noon approached. Did he forget, I wondered, checking the street through the window. I kept checking every few minutes. I chased the dog around the house to distract myself. He's totally not coming, I thought as another 30 minutes passed. I watched more television. I changed the channel several hundred times. I checked the street again. I looked at the clock and shook my head, despondent. The elusive pie-man was surely a no-show. He was a faker, not a baker. He was so underground, so sneaky, so profoundly and diabolically aligned with the inherent mystery of his chosen product that he did not deliver anything at all. That was, in fact, his whole deal, I thought, becoming a little angry as I contemplated cooking up a new blog topic on shortish notice. My oxygen-deprived brain throbbing from the effort such irrational pondering required, I hit the showers. As I emerged from the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of a man's head bobbing very briefly through the frame of the front window. I climbed into clothes as fast as I could and raced to the door. Two boxes, one small and white, the other large and pink, sat on the doorstep. The money was gone. My pies were here. I dashed down the stairs and scanned the street. There was not a truck or a pie-man in sight. He'd come after all -- and left as swiftly as he'd arrived.

Ten minutes later, I sat down to a lunch of oven-warmed pie. The 5" chicken pot pie was drier on the inside than I'd expected, intense and savory, not creamy, the slightly peppery, golden strings of chicken spun around celery, peas, and carrots beneath the puffy dome of crust.

I ate half and moved on. The 10" apple pie was truly excellent. I ate two wedges, just like Danny, and surrendered. The apple filling tasted like mulled cider, deep and warm, just sweet enough; the crust was thick, slightly doughy yet delicious -- a most happy ending to a short pie story I feared would never come full circle.

Photo Credit: Ali LaRaia, A Date With Flavor

About 50 miles north of SF, nestled away in Marshall, CA, is a treasure trove full of riches from the sea. "X" marks the spot at the Hog Island Oyster Farm. The jewels you'll find are the sweetest, most succulent oysters harvested from the pristine waters of Tomales Bay.

Hog Island Oyster Co., X-Small Sweetwaters

There is nothing like feasting on fresh, raw oysters. The satisfaction of prying them open. The sensuous delight of slurping the plump morsel straight off the shell, salty juices running down your arms. And that smooth, rich, burst of ocean that floods your mouth.

Hog Island Oyster Co. picnic view, Marshall, CA

The Goods at the Hog Shack

The best part of indulging in all of this at the farm? Other than getting them straight from the source, and enjoying the picturesque bay views, with prices ranging from $32-$52 for 50 oysters, you can truly indulge. Seriously, go nuts. Shuck and slurp to your heart's content.

Hog Island Farm Picnic

This trip up Route 1 has quickly topped my list of favorite day trips in the Bay Area. Tip for the motion-sick prone, bring your Dramamine -- this topsy turvy highway can be a doozy. But it is all worth it.

Tomales Bay Foods, Pt. Reyes Station

If you're driving up from SF, be sure to stop by the quaint town of Point Reyes Station. Stop for a cup of coffee, a stroll through town, and pick up the makings of a perfect picnic at Tomales Bay Foods, an old restored barn housing the original Cowgirl Creamery.

Cowgirls

Today we are making amazingness

We picked up some of Cowgirl's famous Red Hawk (a triple-cream cow's milk cheese, aged six weeks and washed with a brine solution that creates its signature sunset red-orange tinted rind), a big loaf of olive bread from Brickmaiden Breads, and a chilled bottle of sauvignon blanc to round out our stash of cherries, peaches, and spiced pecans in tow.

And then it was back on the oyster trail.

There are two Hog Island Oyster Co. picnic spots along Route 1 where you can shuck your own oysters, and either enjoy them in their naked gloriousness or grill them on one of the barbeques they have on site. The one further south is a bit larger and has more seating area, but had a fewer selection of oysters available. We drove on about another 5 minutes to the next location.

The Hog Shack

Shucking gloves on the line

As soon as we entered the premises we were hit with the intoxicating scent of salty sea air. Turned the corner and lo and behold, bushels and bushels of Kumas, Atlantics, Sweetwaters … good God, I was in heaven.

Fifty Atlantic Oysters

We learned from our shuck master the difference in flavor of each variety. The Kumamoto oysters, originally from the Kumamoto area of Kyushu, Japan, are the sweetest of the three varieties available. They have a mild, almost fruity flavor. The Atlantic oysters are a native East Coast species called the Blue Point oyster. They are the saltiest of the bunch and have a slightly more mineral taste. And then there are my personal favorite, the popular Sweetwater oysters, a native West Coast oyster whose flavor falls somewhere in between the Kuma and the Atlantic. They are slightly salty, with a rich smoky-sweet flavor.

Oyster orgy time

Shucking the oysters can be tricky at first. A shucking knife is long and pointed (like an envelope opener) with a dulled edge on both sides. The key to a successful shuck is in first getting the knife lodged into the point of the oyster where the two halves of the shell hinge, the apex if you will. As a beginner, I found it helpful to have a dish towel (remember to bring your own) under the oyster and my left hand (safely ensconced in a protective glove) holding it steady. With my right (dominant) hand, I went at the sweet spot at a slightly downward angle to get it in. You'll feel a give in pressure. Once it's in, rock your knife back and forth, making a motion with your wrist like you’re jiggling a doorknob. The shell should pop loose, allowing you to slide your knife around the edges to complete the process.

For a great visual demo from a pro, check out this video from SF Gate.

62 oysters later: happy and sated

We didn't have time this trip, but next time I'll take my oysters to go and picnic on the beach at the Point Reyes National Seashore, about 20 minutes south on Route 1.

If you can't make it out to Point Reyes anytime soon, take heart, you can still oyster orgy on the cheap in the city. Here is a list worth holding on to: SF Weekly's running list of $1 Oyster spots.

Happy oyster hunting!

Hog Island Oyster Company (farm)
20215, Highway 1
Marshall, CA 94940
(415) 663-9218, ext.255
Open 7 days a week, rain or shine! 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Tip: Picnic reservations tend to fill up on the weekends so call in advance ($8/person with reservation on weekend, or $10/person walk-in; $5 on weekdays). Fee includes picnic table, shucking tools, access to bbq, and fresh lemons.

Cowgirl Creamery
80 4th Street (at Tomales Bay Foods)
Point Reyes Station, California 94956
(415) 663-9335
Open Wednesday thru Sunday
Tip: Every Friday at 11:30 a.m. there is a tour consisting of a 25-minute presentation and tasting of Cowgirl Creamery cheeses ($5)

It was the season of sauce, it was the season of toppings. It was the spring of onions, it was the sausage of despair. We had pies before us, we had crusts before us.

No lesser authority than The New York Times says artisanal pizza is on the rise. Just last week, the Gray Lady blew the trend up, making a case for the elegantly appointed pizzeria as a cost-conscious diner's best bet amid rotten economic circumstances. In San Francisco, this sub-genre of the pizza form is currently encroaching on the Mission District's once-fior di latte-less expanse with great success. Pizzeria Delfina and Beretta are delicious examples of what's sizzling in Burritoland, though only the former would probably describe itself as a pizzeria first and foremost. Flour + Water just opened on Harrison in the last few months, serving pasta, salumi, and a familiar stripe of 'za: smallish, thin-crusted rounds decked out in classic and occasionally inventive combinations of toppings with a traditional bent and heavy, local-centric nods to seasonality. As if that weren't enough upscale crust and cheese to blanket a few square miles of coveted real estate, Pi Bar will soon start slinging (whole pies and cheese slices for, ha ha, $3.14) on Valencia near 25th, at a renovated space once home to Suriya Thai.

You might not have heard, but in Fall of 2008, Pizzeria opened its doors on a humming stretch of Valencia Street, not far from its intersection with 18th. As of press time, the establishment has garnered 45 reviews on Yelp, most of them quite positive. Yet, for all the times I've wandered past its wide windows, I've never seen a customer populating one of the dining room's handsome circular wooden tables. I've stared at the menu. I've contemplated the helpful photographs of Pizzeria's offerings pasted to the front window. I've watched cooks bustle, a waiter mop, and a manager meticulously refill and reposition jars of red pepper flakes on the long counter, but, never, not once, have I witnessed a person, sitting down, napkin on lap, actually tucking into a plate of anything.

And I've always wondered why. Location could not be the problem. Valencia is a major thoroughfare for night-time revelers and day-time shoppers. The product itself is not immediately suspect either. It's pizza, after all; everyone likes it. Unlike Beretta and Flour + Water, and to a lesser extent, Pizzeria Delfina, purveyors of an ostensibly fancier kind of pizza, the vibe is not glamorous. Apart from the wood oven used to bake them, the wares are not authentic but fairly pan-pizza in approach, though, in this age of hyper-fusion frenzy, that shouldn't deter the masses. You won't find habaneros, chicken tikka masala, or barbecue on pizza in Naples, but, these days, in the United States, thanks perhaps to the influence of California Pizza Kitchen, they're not exactly unusual toppings, and perfectly appropriate in the right context.

Pizzeria is also Halal. The pig is on a big muddy pedastal these days, and there's a chance the absence of house-cured prosciutto, guanciale, and an occasional trotter special throws potential customers off the scent. In addition, Pizzeria sells no alcohol. One Yelper reports brown-bagging some brew, but the restaurant doesn't specifically recommend doing so. Unless you're willing to ask and perhaps plead, the closest thing to a dinner buzz or a perfect pairing you'll get here will have to come in the form of a $2.50 soda. For many, this will prove a bigger sticking point than the pancetta non grata situation.

Could cost be the issue? Probably not, though, as far as pizza goes, Pizzeria's is not particularly inexpensive. In fact, its pizza margherita costs a dollar more than a similarly sized version made by Flour + Water, when the ingredients are obviously the same: tomatoes, fresh basil, mozzarella, and olive oil.

Generally speaking, when a restaurant's always empty, no passer-by wants to play guinea pig. Delivery customers write the majority of Pizzeria's Yelp reviews, and they tend to gush about speedy delivery and the endearing customer service, signs a few people have been curious enough to phone in orders, and the business owners are working hard to amass devotees, one at a time if necessary. Pizzeria is not open for lunch, which seems like a curious choice to make, especially if the owners want bodies in the dining room. Walk-in customers are more likely at lunch-time, especially on the weekends, when weary shoppers from other parts of town, quivering beneath the weight of new purchases, and stoned folks staggering in from Dolores Park make impulsive dining decisions based on whatever is in front of them.

Unlike Pizzeria, Flour + Water, the sort of sleek, self-styled "neighborhood" restaurant that employs a publicist, has been hot. A dozen local press mentions and reviews popped up within days of its opening, many before, and over 118 reviewers have since weighed in, many charmed by the food, a number irritated by the crowds and clientele, and more than a few disparaging of the hosts' demeanor. No one likes a line, and Flour + Water's perpetually snakes out the door like links of runaway sausages. In shaping their doughy vision, the heads behind Flour + Water actually followed a pizza principle not unlike what was outlined in the Times piece, figuring rustic fare in a lovely dark wood-enhanced setting might rake in diners trying to scale back on spending without sacrificing the level of ambience regular restaurant-goers tend to favor. According to Flour + Water's website, the restaurant's design and construction "are all about the mantra of the triple r: refurbished, repurposed and reclaimed," a triptych of buzzwords pretty much designed to make people feel as if they're sitting down to something real, hip, and happening, yet non-indulgent, and even -- gasp -- responsible.

Pizzeria and Flour + Water don't serve the same kind of pizza, so reviewing them in tandem wouldn't make sense. I'm interested in why one restaurant is full, and the other is empty. Does the press machine get behind whatever they're told to get behind by whomever gets to decide what should be gotten behind? Is herd mentality a lot of what's keeping Flour + Water packed tighter than a jar of oil-cured anchovies and Pizzeria as forlorn and lonely as a marinara-deprived breadstick? Does a Halal pizzeria without a pizzaiolo or a publicist stand a chance in this city?

On Saturday, I decided to seize the pizza by the box and give Pizzeria a real shot. At 5:15 p.m., I slowly and deliberately walked up to the door. I looked in through the smudged glass. I couldn't do it. The prospect of being the only person in the place stressed me out. A lopsided ratio of cooks to customers makes for awkward dining, a rigid, uncomfortable experience, like at a show, when a band dwarfs the crowd. I turned tail and scurried back to my apartment where, furious with my lack of courage, yet quite relieved, I immediately dialed in an order for delivery: a $12 small "Popeye" pizza (baby spinach, slow-roasted garlic, and red onion) to which I, for an extra buck, boldly added beef pepperoni. Minutes later, Pizzeria's pizza and I were face-to-face.

The mystery was over. The crust's bottom was black and blistery; the gnarled sides and top were beautiful, rutted in all the right places, tunnels of taste within, perfect pockets of air crunching, wafer-like, between teeth. The toppings were fine. I liked the cheese. The sauce was unmemorable. The thick slices of raw red onion didn't do much for me. I prefer them cooked, semi-pickled, or, if raw, very, very, very thinly slivered. The beef pepperoni didn't taste weird until I tried it cold on Sunday morning. Overall, Pizzeria makes a really good pizza in keeping with its intent: flavorful, timely, unpretentious, and very pizza-like. Everyone should go there ... or at least get something delivered.

Thank god for crappy hospital food.

Seriously, as much as I respect and liked my caretakers at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford, their food was not all they advertised.

Big surprise, right? Thankfully, my husband was ready and willing to bring back food from any place I wanted. He even would have driven up to San Francisco to bring me Piccino or Nopalito. Lucky for us and for our future stomachs that he didn't have to go nearly so far.

Just down the street from the hospital is Tootsie's. Tucked in the historic Stanford Barn, which served as the Stanford winery until 1893, Tootsie's is a little Italian jewel of an eatery that offers high-end coffees and espresso, sandwiches, fresh salads, and breakfasts. Jen Maiser alerted me to Tootsie's existence soon after we moved down here, and we'd been intending to go ever since.

In a bow to the location's history, Shannon and Rocco Scordella named their place for university namesake Leland Stanford Junior's dog (did you follow that?) and opened the red bricked restaurant six months ago. Both Scordellas have worked in fine dining in New York, and Chef Rocco, who originally hails from Puglia and Bologna, Italy, was brought to New York by Mario Batali to work at Del Posto.

Unfortunately, we kept wanting to go for dinner, which they don't serve -- though Shannon did tell us on a recent visit that they might move to small plates and an enoteca-type setting -- so most of our half-hearted efforts were thwarted until I was in the hospital with a days-old baby. Mathra called me from Tootsie's to read off their menu -- I had my laptop in the hospital (of course!) but their website doesn't seem to be operational -- and he didn't get past, "fried chicken sandwich."

Man. That sandwich. That SANDWICH! That sandwich isn't just a sandwich. It's a crispy-succulent soul reviver, topped with endive-caper slaw and snugged between two halves of a crusty bun. After getting only two hours of sleep in the 48 hours that followed Henry's birth, that sandwich saved my sanity and kept me from going all Yellow Wallpaper in the maternity ward.

I've been home from the hospital for two weeks, and I've had that sandwich -- along with the accompanying homemade oregano potato chips -- five times. If that sandwich was the only thing they served, I still would think Tootsie's was worth it. However, good thing for everyone else (who have enough sense to take me at my word and run, don't walk, to Tootsie's), they also have a brilliant agrumi salad with butter lettuce, radish, celery, grapefruit segments, and shaved fennel; and a white bean, fennel, and flaked tuna salad with the springiest, most pristine arugula outside of Chez Panisse's crisper.

A very recent trip had us trying a brand new menu item: octopus and farro salad with celery and carrots, a divine dish that Rocco told us was his mother's recipe from Puglia. On the same trip, we sampled an Italian sausage and roasted pepper sandwich on a thick bun that was slabbed over with broccoli pesto and light touches of mustard; both were delicious dishes I hope I see often on the menu.

For breakfast, I will clog my arteries as frequently as I can with their poached egg on thick toast. Sound prosaic? What if I tell you that the poached egg is topped with celery, olives, and a drizzle of olive oil?

Some day I plan to try their crêpe-esque ricotta pancakes with strawberries, but I'm having a hard time tearing myself away from that poached egg. I also had a bite of their veal-pork burger with olives and oregano ground right into the meat and slathered with caramelized onions and mozzarella cheese. I wonder if anyone will believe me when I say that the shoestring potatoes Tootsie's serves with that burger are better than those found at Zuni Cafe?

Tootsie's at the Stanford Barn
700 Quarry Road
Palo Alto, CA 94304
(650) 566-8445

One of my favorite culinary mash-ups of recent years is the Vietnamese-Chinese-Cajun crawfish boil served with rice or garlic noodles. Following the arc of families moving from Vietnam to New Orleans to Southern California to, finally, San Jose and San Francisco, mud bugs have taken a garlicky turn and shown up, of all places, in Little Saigon's across the country.

Red Crawfish in San Francisco's Tenderloin is the one closest and dearest to me, as I head over that way anytime I'm craving familiar, comforting flavors. Boiled crawfish is a new tradition among my peeps, but it's one that I'm very happy to adopt, too.

Eating here is a dress-down, messy affair that requires friends with absolutely no pretensions about food. The red, steaming, spicy crawfish come out from the kitchen in pails and are plopped down on the paper-topped table inside plastic bags, rather than piled right on the table, to hold in all that the thick, rich broth.

I love very spicy food and found that the medium was just fine for me. If you're hungry and a bit of a glutton, you could eat two pounds of crawfish with nothing else, but it's definitely hard to resist popular side orders like batter-fried sweet potatoes, buttery garlic noodles, buttery garlic toast, or just plain rice. You can also order potatoes and corn on the cob, and they'll throw them right in with the crawfish. If you don't suck the heads (and the purists among us would insist that you do), you should at least order some garlic noodles or a bowl of rice for soaking up all the juicy goodness that spurts out of each one.

There are other entrees on the Red Crawfish's menu -- the usual suspects of Vietnamese fare dominates over the Cajun influence -- but I haven't yet strayed far from the namesake of the restaurant. The huge bowl of spicy seafood soup is definitely worth sharing, while next on my list is one of my favorite dishes, bun rieu, seafood and tomato-tinged broth served over rice noodles.

For the DIY folks, there's also plenty of local crawfish harvested from the Sacramento Delta and from California's rice fields. Although the Isleton Crawdad Festival was canceled last month, another victim of the recession, you can still pick up live mud bugs (more for the rest of us!) from Bob's Bait Shop a.k.a. The Master Baiter. Located near the Sacramento Delta and the premier sources of live bait in the area, the shop also provides local crawfish for cooks picky about freshness. Be sure to call in advance, especially if you need more than 15 pounds. Check also with large Asian supermarkets near you, especially 99 Ranch Market, where crawfish can often be found crawling around live in the tanks.

Those of us who have no shame will even ask the server at Red Crawfish to leave all the shells on the table so that, at the end of the meal, we can bag them up, spices and all, to make a very tasty stock back at home. Add some Cajun trinity, some dark roux, stir in a little heavy cream and lots of dry sherry, pull out a blender and a mesh strainer -- and you have a pot of mighty tasty soup.

RED CRAWFISH
611 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
(415) 771-1388
Map

BOB'S BAIT SHOP
302 2nd Street
Isleton, CA 95641
(916) 777-6666 or (916) 777-6806
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Today's food-scape is a rich tapestry woven from a multitude of little ideas and small stories: tradition, history, science, art, and human ingenuity colliding on plates at the intersection of major political and social issues. The individual strands of this loom-y metaphor are people. They aren't always clearly visible until you look closely. People need food to survive, and in ancient times, communities were endlessly preoccupied with finding things to eat and figuring out how to cook them. Civilizations would form and thrive around the domestication of a single species of animal. Proud eating traditions have sprung from time-honed preparation techniques born of necessity. Great celebrations still honor the harvest and hunt. For evidence, look no further than Thanksgiving and the Gilroy Garlic Festival. There's a gulf between pounding poi in Polynesia and nudging a grocery cart through Whole Foods, but the parallels persist even amid changing times and circumstance: we have always been defined by how we eat -- as individuals, families, neighborhoods, cities, states, and countries. Food used to be seen as fuel; now, it's a mirror, and everything we stuff down our face-holes shows us more about ourselves and the way we live.

The view of Guerrero from inside 18 Reasons

18 Reasons, the Bi Rite-affiliated gallery space on Guerrero near 18th Street, has made such conscious, well-examined consumption its mission, offering exhibitions, lectures, tastings, and classes to draw clear bright lines between food, people, and place, existing essentially as the embodiment of its intention, as a local meeting spot for people who love food and want to talk about it, share what they know, and learn from others. The gallery has received some local press love but this summer's offerings deserve special mention.

Morgan Maki starting on the lamb

Last week, I attended the second part of a Lamb Butchery and Sausage Making class taught by Bi Rite butcher Morgan Maki, the same guy who schooled folks in Stock Theory and Knife Skills a few months ago. The first session saw a 5-foot-long 45 pound lamb broken down and whittled into chops, roasts, and other cuts for cookery. I missed that one due to illness but the pictures tell enough of the story for you to get the basic idea. It came in whole and left in chunks. Maki dropped some anatomy knowledge. Everyone ate cheese and drank wine. When I arrived at the second session, the students were chopping the trimmings from that depleted carcass, sleeves rolled up, ties tucked, and jewelry removed. It was a Tuesday night, and most had clearly come straight from work and were dutifully taxing the bottles of merlot making the rounds. The gallery's clean white walls were bare, awaiting the summer show (Julie Duffoo's semi-gristly Meatpaper photographs of local butchers). The only exhibit on display was the whirl of activity, something like a party happening around the sturdy wooden table in the center of the room: sausage as social sculpture.

Gathering around the grinder

As Maki spoke, some of the attendees frantically scribbled on yellow legal pads. A few people hung back against the walls, silent, literally watching others watch and talk. Most crowded around the table for a shot at slicing, or volunteered to help grind once the ingredients were assembled. "This is probably used in extreme interrogation techniques," quipped one dude as he eyed the sausage stuffing apparatus.

The sausage, ground

People capable of paying 60 dollars to learn how Bi Rite butchers make sausages using $2000 grinders can afford to buy sausage at Bi Rite any time they want. They don't need to learn how to make sausage at home in order to save money or make their lives easier. Prussian statesman Otto Von Bismarck (an abundantly mustached practitioner of Realpolitik who probably put away many many sausages in his day) famously compared the crafting of laws to the processing of sausages. There was once the idea that people wouldn't want to eat sausage if they saw how it was made. Now, people want to know where they can find fresh pork blood and a good deal on a professional grinder.

Those who show up at 18 Reasons for something like this aren't just amassing knowledge for themselves. They're making a personal investment in an enduring artisanal tradition and, by extension, a community. "The more people that use this space the healthier it will be," said Maki when I asked him what he wanted out of the gallery. The neighborhood has definitely taken notice. Every person walking past with laundry and grocery bags stops to peer in. Maybe they all won't shell out the ducats for a class but they'll maybe come to a free event, or at least read up on something they saw posted on the board outside.

If you want to get involved, now is a good time. Classes on the horizon promise to please. On Tuesday, July 7, Maki will teach the first section of a two-part course on Pig Butchery and Curing, in which participants will learn the basics of swine disassembly as well as several principles and techniques of curing in preparation for smoking or curing. The cost is $60 for non-members. Buy your tickets here.

Photos by Michael V. Chopko

Happy Pride! The Gay High Holy Days—or week, or month, depending on your stamina and affinity for dance music, tank tops, rainbow balloons, sign-waving, marches, guys in banana thongs, and standing in line, endlessly, for tickets, beer, and/or bathrooms—are coming to their sunny, sweaty close today. Time to get off the Blue Angel-martini-and-popcorn diet and put those silver latex shorts back in the closet, at least til the Folsom Street Fair.

Or that's how it might be in other cities, where Pride comes around but once a year. Here in our lovely fog-bound burg, though, we can be prideful every day, even if we still-still!-can't get married in City Hall.

But there is something particularly fabulous in seeing the typical straight-to-gay ratio of just about everything upended this month. I still remember walking into 2223 Market one night near the end of June last year, and feeling like everyone there was gay. Gay couples, gay friends, gay parents--it was just like being in the straight world, except this time it was all ours.

Naming all the LGBT chefs and business owners who have made the SF food scene what it is would turn this column into a faygelah version of Adam Sandler's Hannukah Song, but still, let's raise a glass to Traci des Jardins, for running a fancypants place in Hayes Valley and a taqueria with a conscience, and never turning down the chance to help out a good cause; to bad boy Jeremiah Tower, for making Stars sparkle; to Elizabeth Faulkner and her partner Sabrina Riddle, for giving the dyke food mafia an official clubhouse, first at Citizen Cake, now at Orson; and to food photographer Frankie Frankeny, because she shoots what we want to eat, and finds a way to sneak her daschunds into every shoot.

And let's not forget a toast to vinologist Pamela Busch, of the late Hayes and Vine and the current Cav Wine Bar, and to Absinthe's Jamie Lauren and her Top Chef Team Rainbow, for making "hot chef" replace "folk singer" as the default lesbian occupation. Also heating up the room is Gialina pizza diva Sharon Ardiana, turning Glen Park into Naples, and Celia Sack of Omnivore Books, for bringing us cookbook-browsing perfection with nary a 30-Minute-Meal or celebrity diet in sight, just up the street from the ever-charming Lovejoy's Teahouse, run by Muna Nash and Gillian Briley. Were we getting married, we might just drag pastry chef Yigit Pura of Taste Catering out to Iowa with us, just so we could show that corn-fed state just how divine his chocolate-hazelnut daquoise with passion fruit filling wedding cakes can be.

And thank you Rainbow Grocery, for letting us shop for veggie dogs on the 4th of July but closing for Pride Sunday, so your collective members can be out and proud rather than stuck restocking the spirulina. Even Food Not Bombs gets into the spirit now, serving up free eats (in tuxedo shirts and fake mustaches) at their mobile Chez Gay Cafe in Dolores Park before the Tranny March. We're here, we're queer, let's eat!

Barbecue is literally the slowest of slow foods, not a sauce, but a process, a ponderous and primitive one often measured in days as much as hours. It's much more than mere technique. Like a Bedouin goat roast or a Hawaiian luau, barbecue is a festive carnivorous rite, the sort of party humans all over the world have thrown ever since they could catch the beasts they wanted to eat. Barbecue is a distinctly American tradition, however, and it warrants esteem in our food culture, one that increasingly values authenticity, heritage, and, importantly, a bargain. Historically, barbecue began as poor food. Indirect smoking with hardwood chips and charcoal renders sumptuous feeds from large, inexpensive, uncompromising cuts of meat the non-wealthy can readily afford. Today, due to trend as well as economic circumstance, food writers and chefs champion sustainability, rhapsodize about nose-to-tail eating, and fetishize la cucina povera across cultures. Hip local foodies head to starred eateries to scarf humble ribollita and marrow, and food glossies aggressively explore the homey cooking traditions of everyday people in distant locales.

Even though food tied firmly to a place invariably tastes best in its native setting, barbecue should have a stronger presence here. Sadly, like real bagels and perfect pizza slices, there's something about it San Francisco doesn't quite get.

L.A. export Baby Blues BBQ sits in an old pharmacy storefront on Mission Street at the base of Bernal Hill in San Francisco. The restaurant headed up the S.F. Chronicle's flimsy "new-school" Bay Area barbecue round-up back in February. In the article, the proprietor described his establishment's style as a hybrid, with dry rub from Texas, greens from Kansas City, and grilled shrimp from New Orleans. While only one of those things necessarily has anything whatsoever to do with barbecue, I withheld preliminary judgement, assuming I'd look for proof in the pork. The same writer, Amanda Gold, penned a largely favorable review less than two months later, hailing Baby Blues' offerings as "spot-on," and singling out the brisket and ribs in particular for accolades.

The brisket was, in fact, good -- shredded, not sliced as is customary, slightly sweet, with a broad, warm flavor that belied the stringy appearance. On the other hand, the chicken was desert-dry and the pork shoulder shockingly tasteless. Sauce helped but it shouldn't have been necessary. Good barbecue doesn't truly need sauce, maybe just a splash of vinegary Crystal. The Baby Blues macaroni and cheese was pretty tasty but that came as no surprise. The tidy tureen of pasta, butter, cream, and cheese congregated in creamy, crust-topped ooze resembled a miniature version of one of the less flamboyant goofily greasy things you'd see on thisiswhyyourefat.com. Pork and beans: dreary canned ones of various stripes, topped with some of the same tasteless pork shoulder. Mashed sweet potatoes: one-dimensional and cloying. Great sides are not a prerequisite for even serviceable barbecue but they sure help, especially when a bunch of people are trying to eat until they can't walk.

Dodging categorization is no boon when it comes to barbecue. Homogenizing its varied nuances with the perceived intent of garnering broader appeal smacks of desperation or at least excessive compromise, not inclusivity. Barbecue pit-masters, are curators of sorts. They consciously nurture and carry on a tradition, just making something they really, really know exactly the way they think it should be made for anyone who happens to be interested. Diners prize authenticity when it comes to regional Italian fare; they should when it comes to barbecue as well.

Maybe we're barking up the wrong tree even hoping to find what we're looking for at a place like Baby Blues. Throughout the barbecue belt, you'll eat some of the best barbecue in the world at church benefit suppers, desolate country grocery stores on two-lane roads, and strange little delis straddling dusty cracks in the interstate, not just at grand 'cue emporiums with bright lights and long lines.

Fittingly, in keeping with another current trend, that of back alley catering and restaurant-esque entities sprouting up all over town, the d.i.y. barbecue operations churning away on the edges of the local food scene actually best the likes of Baby Blues, Memphis Minnie's, and Big Nate's. There's definitely something appealing about outlaw status, and barbecue wears it especially well, even here. While the best pork barbecue I've had in San Francisco had to fly 2,000 miles from a deli case in Allen County, Kentucky, there are a few local super-smokers doing it right under-the-radar:

Try ordering a spread from Oakland-based Sneaky's BBQ for your next business meeting. Since 2008, the smoker-in-chief, a native of South Carolina, has been faithfully recreating the barbecue he knew back home -- husky, succulent pork shoulder with pepper-flecked vinegar-laced red sauce and racks of chewy baby-back ribs -- and delivering it, quite sneakily, in an unmarked van (red like the sauce), to homes, offices, and even park parties. It's popping off on Yelp and Chowhound for a reason. It tastes like vigilance. When you're eating it, you easily imagine the whole ritual -- the meat hitting the grill just after rush hour, and coming off, sticky-black, hours and hours later, as well as the sleepless night vigil, the sense, perhaps, of beers drunk and cigarettes smoked, of bleary eyes peering down and smudged hands reaching to open and close flutes at the proper intervals while the rest of the neighborhood sleeps.

The Broken Record is a mildly Zeigeist-y bar in the Excelsior. Chef Ryan Ostler, an alum of Boulevard, doesn't own it but he cooks from behind a wooden, windowed counter buried in the back. He's a Mission Street Food veteran, no stranger to the underground eatery game. The bar's offerings run the gamut from frito pies and amazing 'kraut-topped boar and pheasant sausages (sweet, high-flying stoner-pub party fare, yes, but not barbecue) to pulled pork sandwiches (serious barbecue). Of course, it's a chef's whim kind of place at heart. Sometimes, you show up and the pork isn't done. Or it is done, but it hasn't been carved up yet. Or it was ready hours ago and now there's none left. According to Ostler, they smoke every day, but quantities are limited. If you miss out, eat a sausage. Barbecue is not, after all, on-demand.

Baby Blues BBQ
3149 Mission St. in San Francisco
415-896-4250

Sneaky's BBQ

The Broken Record
1166 Geneva Ave. in San Francisco
415-963-1713

Dim Sum at Asian Pearl, Richmond

Ever since I've relocated to this lovely city by the bay, I've been asking every local denizen that enjoys good food (and yes, there are quite a few of you) the hard question: Where can I find good dim sum?

I almost always hear the same reputable establishments -- Yank Sing, Ton Kiang, Mayflower.

In a perfect world, I would find the ultimate dim sum spot where the food is exceptional, the wait not frightening, and the prices so low they incur giggles of disbelief and delight at the end of the meal. I know, it's a tall order, but somewhere out there I know … it awaits me.

And, I must admit, the quest is not a painful one (usually). I have stumbled upon some tasty discoveries worth sharing, such as these star dishes at Asian Pearl in Richmond.

Steamed Egg Custard Bun (Lau Sah Bao)

Not your run of the mill dim sum dish, these Steamed Egg Custard Buns are hard to come by. It takes a master dim sum chef to create these treasures of molten, buttery, yolky sweetness, encased in fluffy white steamed buns. The golden lava filling is a shock to the senses, and utterly delicious.

Marinated Tofu (Lo Sui Dao Fu)

The silky fine texture of the tofu is unreal, and seems even more so highlighted by the contrasting crunchiness of the thin fried casing around it. Light as air, but tons more flavorful. This will turn any tofu-sneerer into a believer with one bite.

Crispy Stuffed Rice Noodle Roll (Ja Leung)

A common dim sum dish done exceptionally well, Asian Pearl's Crispy Stuffed Rice Noodle Rolls were executed perfectly. The fried dough inside was freshly fried and extra crispy, and the rice noodle wrapped around it was thin, smooth, and slippery. Mmm you just can't beat carb on carb.

Pan Fried Rice Rolls (See Yao Wong Cheung Fun)

These Pan Fried Rice Rolls were a crowd pleaser. The noodles had a nice chew to them, and were fried fragrant. Like an appetizer version of your typical chow fun, with an amped up seared crispy dimension.

Ranch 99, Asian Market

And with dishes priced from $2.60 - $6.50 (with a majority of them at $3.30 for "medium" plates), you can take all that money you've saved and head over to the Ranch 99 just a few doors down. Stock up on Asian delicacies and condiments before heading home with your satiated self.

All in all, Asian Pearl, thumbs up. But is it "the one"? Afraid not. True, the variety and specialty dishes wooed me, but 1) I was sorely disappointed by their BBQ Pork Bun, one of my old standbys, botched up by too much cooking wine in the mixture; and 2) it's in Richmond. And I'm in SF with only a ZipCar to my name.

Maybe my dream is a pipedream, but this girl's not ready to give it up.

So, my dear readers, where can I find some good dim sum around here?

Yours truly,
Desperately Seeking Dim Sum

Asian Pearl
3288 Pierce St., #A-118
Richmond, CA 94804
510-526-6800