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!

At gala events you expect to see top chefs preparing bite-sized nibbles for guests. But at StarChefs events working chefs are not just preparing the food, they are the ones being celebrated. StarChefs is all about the chefs of today, and the rising star events are a great way to get a taste of what's hot at the moment.

If you're not a chef, it's possible you've never visited StarChefs. The web site offers recipes, community features, publications and articles that are geared for the restaurant professional. Roughly every other year, they also hold an event in our neck of the woods. For the first time, this year they held a Rising Stars Revue™ in Napa and toasted the up and coming chefs of Napa and Sonoma at the historic Charles Krug winery in St. Helena.

Fifteen chefs, sommeliers and a mixologist were honored with food, wine and prizes to boot. Interestingly there were several husband and wife teams, one of whom had to close their restaurant in order to attend. Some favorite dishes from the evening were:

Ubuntu Fregola in Caramelized Vegetable Juices with Salsa Maro from Jeremy Fox of Ubuntu

Poached Poussin with Summer Vegetables from Christopher Kostow of The Restaurant At Meadowood

Ricotta Gnocchi, Salsa di Pomodoro della Nonna and Pecorino from Nick Ritchie of Bottega

Chicken Fried Sweetbreads with Green Bean and Mushroom Casserole from Matt Spector of Jolē

Sauteed Maryland Wild Striped Bass, Ragout of Salsify, Black Trumpet Mushrooms, Bloomsdale Spinach and Spinach Vin Blanc from Restaurateur Award winner John Toulze the girl & the fig, fig café, Estate

Lemon Verbena Parfait with Summer Stone Fruit from Pastry Chef Deanie Hickox-Fox of Ubuntu

Long Ranch Goat Two Ways: Grilled and Braised with Rancho Gordo Beans and Salsa Verde from Host Chef Richard Haake of Winery Chefs

At the event guests got a chance to vote for their favorite dish. I had a hard time choosing between intensely herbal and fragrant fregola dish and the delicate yet crisp striped bass but in the end, the winner was Matt Spector and his decadent sweetbread dish. Looking at the recipes that were in the program, it's clear why we love eating out. With complicated techniques, multiple preparations and long ingredient lists, these were not dishes you would likely make at home!

One of the most beautiful dishes was this plated dessert from Deanie Hickox-Fox. Basically an unconstructed tart, it featured a bit of crunchy crust, sweet apricot with lemon verbena cream accented with a fruit puree, and garnished with edible flowers and a thin wafer cookie.

To make at home, I'd recommend the cocktail presented by Scott Beattie, the Bella Ruffina, a pretty rose colored cocktail perfect for warm Summer days or nights...

Bella Ruffina
4 ounces Braquetto di Aqui
1 ounce Carpano Antico Vermouth
1 dash orange bitters
1 Amarena cherry, for garnish

Combine the sparkling wine, vermouth and bitters in a champagne flute and stir gently. Drop the cherry in the bottom of the glass to serve.

Recipe reprinted from Artisanal Cocktails by Scott Beattie, published by Tenspeed.

Mostaccioli with pork shoulder ragu

I've been making meat sauces for years, but only now -- after two months as an apprentice at Oliveto -- have I learned some of the secrets behind a superlative ragu.

A ragu is a basic meat sauce for pasta. The first authentic version I tried was years ago, in Emilia-Romagna, the region of Italy that invented the classic Bolognese sauce.

That first ragu was bold and brooding -- much like a Pavarotti opera. The sauce was entangled in a nest of perfectly cooked tagliatelle, with the flavor infused into the noodle.

Numerous cookbooks offer suggestions on making a Bolognese sauce and other forms of ragu. Yet nearly all of these recipes, in my opinion, are flawed. Most suggest cooking a mixture of diced onion, carrots and celery before adding your meat to brown it. The sauce that results tends to be lifeless or, even worse, infused with chunks of burnt vegetables.

Vegetables sweating on top of meat as the meat brown

At Oliveto, the chefs have reversed the sequence. First they brown the meat and then allow the vegetables to steam, or "sweat," on top of the meat. This process produces a dark layer of caramelized meat solids at the bottom of the pan -- a foundation of flavor. This foundation, or "fond" as the chefs call it, is then deglazed by the natural juices of the vegetables when added on top. This is allowed to cook down so the fond is rebuilt and deglazed two or three times.

Paul Bertolli, the former head chef at Oliveto, describes the technique in his 2003 book, "Cooking By Hand." Bertolli's successor, Paul Canales, who had a role in developing this technique, has continued to refine and perfect it since becoming executive chef.

Cooking a ragu in this manner is not difficult, but it cannot be whipped out in an hour or two. A ragu is truly slow food -- time-tested and refined by Italian grandmothers over many centuries.

Ragu ready for a long simmer, after broth and tomato paste have been added

Ragu for pasta

Makes: 8-10 servings of sauce

Ingredients:
2 pounds ground meat (Beef, pork or equal amounts of both. For beef, try ground chuck or get adventurous with ground hanger steak, beef cheeks, etc. For the pig, try ground pork shoulder.)
4 medium yellow onions
5 stalks celery
5 carrots
4 tablespoons finely chopped fresh sage
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh oregano
6 cups dark chicken or veal stock
½ cup white wine
½ cup high-quality tomato paste
1 cup cream (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

1. Dice the onions, celery and carrots into a mirepoix -- cubes smaller than 1/4 inch in size. As you are dicing the vegetables and mincing the fresh herbs, start cooking your meat. Use a heavy bottomed Dutch oven or stew pot. This is essential. The bottom of the pan has to be thick and heavy enough to brown the meat, without scorching it.

2. Use high heat to start your browning process. But keep an eye on it, and adjust the flame accordingly. It’s okay for the meat to stick and brown, but you don't want it to blacken or burn.

3. After you have built an even layer of fond on the bottom, toss your vegetables on top of the meat. Leave them there for at least 15 minutes, allowing them to release their juices to the bottom of the pan.

4. Give your meat and vegetable a rigorous stir with a wooden spoon, and scrape up the fond layer that has now been deglazed by the vegetables.

5. Turn up heat slightly, and allow this to cook down and brown again, then add a shot of wine -- no more than a cup. Stir and scrape.

6. Allow this to cook down again. When browned, add a cup of stock. Repeat the process and add your tomato paste, diluted with a half cup of stock.

7. Watch your ragu carefully at this point. The addition of tomato paste could lead to scorching. Keep the heat up, but stir it regularly as the fond starts to reform. When it is nice and brown, but not scorched, add two or three cups of stock -- enough to make it slightly more soupy than you'd want for a sauce.

8. At this point, your ragu should have a lovely, brownish-red color. Bring it to a boil and then turn down to a simmer. Allow it to simmer for two to four hours, stirring occasionally and adding more stock, if necessary.

9. Before serving, you have the option of adding cream -- as much or as little as you want. Too much cream will dilute the intensity of the sauce, so be judicious at first.

10. You can take this basic sauce in many different directions. Add minced porcini mushrooms early in the cooking for an earthier flavor, or cinnamon or nutmeg to give it a spicy edge. Use different combinations of fresh herbs.

11. The final step, of course, is marrying the ragu with the pasta. Don't just ladle it on top. Cook your pasta just short of al dente, then mix it thoroughly in a skillet with an appropriate amount of sauce and then serve it immediately. Sprinkle some Parmesan cheese on top, and you will be ready to sing.

This is what ragu should look like when finished

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

Sunset magazine has long been the go-to source for "how to live in the West" especially when it comes to travel, gardening, home improvement and of course, food and wine. Since the centennial of the magazine in 1998, Sunset has been hosting an annual open house called the Sunset Celebration Weekend. The weekend takes place in June, and there is a schedule of chef demonstrations, garden and outdoor living events and live entertainment. The entrance fee is $15 and that gets you admission to all of the presentations although you'll need to sign up for the wine tasting events separately and they fill up quickly.

Many vendors offer tastes and nibbles, but for a meal, you'll have to pay. I was a bit disappointed that the food available was the typical street fair variety such as corn dogs, gyros and overpriced tostada salads. Not very inspiring! The exhibitors and vendors range from Hawaiian Airlines and speciality nurseries to the ShamWow! and everything in between.

Highlights of the experience include meandering through the gardens, including the team garden for the Our One-Block Diet, a tour of the test kitchen and the outdoor kitchen.

Test kitchen has a long counter where finished dishes are evaluated. Once the editorial and test kitchen team is finished with the dish, a green flag indicates the staff can eat it. A red flag means the dish is not yet finished, and a pirate flag means, the dish did not pass muster, eat at your own risk! In the tote bag you receive at the entrance are some coupons, a schedule and a great booklet with recipes from all the chefs so even if you only come one day, you'll have recipes from the whole weekend.

My favorite presentations were by chefs Burak Epir of the Pilita Mediterranean Turkish Grill in San Carlos and Cindy Pawlcyn of Mustard's Grill. Epir showed off his kebab technique with a huge knife, and shared tips such as using a small sieve to filter stems and seeds from dried herbs. He used my favorite pepper, maras, in his recipe for Kilis kebab which also included lots of fresh parsley, the most commonly used fresh herb in Turkey.

Cindy Pawlcyn emphasized the importance of using the ripest produce, explaining it is better to substitute an ingredient than to use something that is not deliciously ripe. She also showed a technique of smashing hazelnuts with the side of a chef knife rather than chopping them to create a better and more uniform texture. Great tips, no matter what recipe you try.

Kilis kebab
10 tomatoes
2 poblano peppers
1 medium white onion, preferably sweet
1 bunch Italian parsley, chopped
1 Tablespoon salt
1/2 Tablespoon fresh ground pepper
1 Tablespoon Maras red pepper, also called Marash pepper
1/2 medium white onion, grated
2 pounds ground lamb, shoulder cut

On a charcoal grill cook the tomatoes and pepper until well charred, remove the skins and finely dice.

Also finely dice the onion and mix it with the chopped parsley. Add to the charred tomato and peppers and set aside. Cover and keep warm.

Prepare the kebab by adding salt, pepper, Maras red pepper and the grated onions to the ground lamb. Mix well. Make the meatballs and place on a skewer. Grill indirectly over the heat, until nice and juicy. Place the charred tomato and peppers on a plate and set the meat kebabs over it.

Recipe reprinted courtesy of Sunset and chef Burak Epir

It's 4 p.m. on a typical afternoon at Oliveto, and chefs and interns are hurriedly chopping vegetables, stirring pots, de-boning fish and preparing for that night's dinner service, which starts in 90 minutes.
Service people are rushing through the kitchen, carrying glassware or trays of olives. Dishwashers are trying to return saucepans to overhead hooks, without dropping one on someone's head.

It's a frenetic dance that occurs daily at the Oakland restaurant, and to add to the frenzy, it comes with a soundtrack. Many afternoons, Chef Paul Canales blasts acid jazz from the boom box. Nothing like some mind-bending music to sharpen your focus.

For the last two months, I've been part of this dinner troupe, as a stagehand -- a chef apprentice. Starting in April, I took a leave from my job as an editorial writer and columnist for The Sacramento Bee to intern at Oliveto, an Italian restaurant in Rockridge.

It's been a humbling transition. Until April, I worked in a cushy office and shadowed the power players in California's capitol. Now I'm on my feet all day in a hot, windowless kitchen, taking orders from young sous chefs.

Yet in the realm of unpaid sabbaticals, this one can't be beat. Anyone with an interest in food and cooking needs to work in a restaurant, particularly one like Oliveto. Concepts that once seemed so exotic and unattainable -- curing salami, turning out trays of handmade ravioli -- now seem within my grasp.

In recent weeks, I've filleted fresh mackerel, prepared soft shell crabs, cut up and cured pork belly for pancetta and braised porcini mushrooms for cannelloni, which I later rolled by hand.

I've also improved my knife skills. Dicing dozens of onions and carrots, day after day, helps in that regard.
That said, my initial performance was far from stellar. In one of his first assignments -- a test, perhaps? -- Chef Canales asked me to "turn" a potato. This involved peeling a small spud with a sharp paring knife, turning the potato with my left hand.

Within a few minutes, I had managed to insert the knife tip into my left thumb. Blood was running out. As I moved to the sink to wash and bandage the wound, I noticed a faded photocopy on the wall that offered instructions on dealing with an amputated finger.

"Reattachment is always possible," the sheet said. "Stop the bleeding and place the lonely piece in a wet towel..."

Yes, it was one of those "What am I doing here?" moments. But I hung in there. Before starting my apprenticeship, I had read Bill Buford's book "Heat," and recalled that Buford had stabbed himself within days of starting at one of Mario Batali's restaurants.

Oliveto, founded more than 20 years ago, has a long history of training interns, even those who are initially inept. Like other high-end kitchens, the restaurant's menu is labor intensive, especially in the spring and summer months, when farmers and suppliers deliver boxes of artichokes, beans and other produce to the kitchen.

Interns provide this labor for free. In exchange, they pick up tips, training and contacts they'll never get at culinary school. And if they work hard and show promise, they may get a shot at a paying job in the kitchen, should one open up.

People ask me: Is this just a temporary gig? Are you contemplating a career change?

I don't know. My presumption is that I will return to my newspaper job when my six-month stint is over. But I have to admit, the life of a chef is alluring, even with the absurdly low pay. "It gets under your skin," says Canales, who started interning at Oliveto 15 years ago after leaving a corporate telecom job.

Since April, I've been keeping a personal blog, which is largely focused on my day-to-day experience as a kitchen apprentice. For "Bay Area Bites," my posts will be more focused on classic techniques of Italian cooking, and tips and recipes I’ve picked up from working at Oliveto.

Here is one thing I've learned: There is no "magic" to preparing superlative food. The artistry that arrives on your plate at the best restaurants is not prepared by Houdini.

What separates great chefs from good ones is training, practice, creativity, attention to detail and a passion for the food they are preparing. All of these are within reach of home chefs -- those who prefer to do their cooking in more sedate settings, without a soundtrack.

Photo of a mackerel, from the Monterey Bay, right before I filleted it for that night's dinner menu. Photo by Stuart Leavenworth

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

If eating is an agricultural act, as Wendell Berry so famously said, then what better way to celebrate the connection between food and farming than at Dirt to Dining?

Jesse Cool, the down-to-earth owner-cook (don't call her a chef!) of Menlo Park's Flea Street Cafe is hosting this benefit for the Ecological Farming Association right in her own backyard--which just happens to be a bountiful edible garden on the edge of the Stanford campus.

Cool, well known for her longtime dedication to seasonal, locally-sourced and sustainable cuisine, is opening up her address book, too. On hand to nosh and chat will be dozens of organic farmers and winemakers, including those from Full Belly Farm, Frog's Leap Winery, Green Gulch Farm, Live Earth Farm, Swanton Berry Farm, Robert Sinskey Vineyards, Frey Vineyards, and more.

And of course, going along with the garden tours will be plenty of delectable food and wine. That fava-bean canapé? Probably made from beans grown by the guy sipping sauvignon blanc right next you. Never seen a fava bean in its natural habitat? It's over there, hanging on vines right next to the carrots. Dining doesn't get any dirtier than that.

Dirt to Dining: A Day in Jesse Cool's Kitchen Garden
Sunday, June 7, 2009
2pm-5pm
2150 Amhearst Street
Palo Alto, CA
Tickets: $75

Weekend of May 22-24, 2009

Urban Food Foraging
Are you ready for the next food trend? First it was organic, then local. Now, a new food movement is sprouting in California: urban foraging. We scoured the local landscape around San Francisco to harvest this story.
Reporter:
• Kelly Wilkinson

Listen to the program and see a photo slideshow of Iso Rabins on the hunt for some of his wild edibles.

Crawfish Po' Boy with Remoulade Sauce (mind you, that's just a half order)

When I first visited New Orleans as a young and adventurous 21-year-old (with nine other young and adventurous 21-year-olds), it was under the incredible hospitality of the generous Miss Dawn. Like a good southern hostess, Miss Dawn kept us well-fed, full of hearty, delicious, filling sustenance that would provide the proper base for a night of revelry.

Two memorable meals from our time there was the epic crawfish boil she set up our first night in, and the constant supply of po' boy makings she kept on hand for 1 pm breakfasts...5 pm snacks...and 4 am nightcaps. Piles of roast beef, fresh French bread, and dressed to the nines.

As soon as I saw the menu at Yats, I was brought back to sultry nights of sucking crawfish out of the shell and feasting on the ubiquitous po' boy.

Yats, San Francisco

In case you're wondering about this order window with the sign "Yats" pointing to it, well, that's it. Yats is actually, brilliantly, located inside Jack's Club, an homage to the divey friendly bars of New Orleans.

NOLA Fries: thick-cut steak fries showered in parmesan cheese, salt and pepper

The humble establishment makes good use of its well-loved deep fryer. Cue specimen A: NOLA Fries. Thick, golden, wedges of starchy goodness, dusted in a snowfall of parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. These huge steak fries are crispy on the outside, nice and soft on the inside.

You may be overwhelmed when you see the lengthy selection of Famous Po' Boys on the menu. I don't mean to be bossy, but get the Crawfish with Remoulade, and ask for extra sauce! Succulent bits of crawfish meat, coated in a crunchy cornmeal crust, and stuffed inside a loaf of fresh French bread with a soft airy center, and crispy flaky crust. And, you should probably get the whole foot-long. Trust me.

Mac-n-Cheese

You will also want to complement your sandwich lovin' with a side of Mac-n-Cheese. Quite possibly the best in SF. Do I have any challengers? This mac-n-cheese is no joke. Creamy and rich with a little coarse-grained mustard thrown in. Pure comfort food.

Yats takes bar food to a whole new level. The only down side is that the hours are a little tricky for a weekday visit unless you work in the neighborhood. Otherwise, your Saturday afternoon may have just found a new best friend.

By the way, if it's an authentic crawfish boil you seek, Yats is celebrating its One Year Anniversary with a Crawfish Boil this Saturday, May 16th, noon - 5 pm.

Yats
(Inside Jack's Club)
2545 24th St
San Francisco, CA 94110
Map
415-282-8906
Open Mon-Thurs, 11 am - 4 pm; Fri, 11 am - 8 pm; Sat, 11 am - 6 pm