At Los Jarritos, the Reyes Padilla family's sit-down eatery on the corner of South Van Ness and 20th, components of the restaurant's fantastic chilaquiles remo are reminiscent of canonized comfort foods from other cultures.

Like noodles in a day-old lasagne, the quarters of fried corn tortilla are pasta-like, smothered in tomato sauce, congealed, pinioned under an oozing crown of cheese.  Nestled amongst the bits of tortilla, the long-simmered strands of chicken taste as if they have been lifted from a huffing stockpot of soup.  Scrambled eggs are there too, slippery and elusive, binding everything into a velvety mass further enriched and enlivened by a pour of crema.  As the crema melts and disappears, the effect is smooth:  none of the comforting elements stand out unless they're deliberately eaten apart from the others; taken together, the flavors are big and familiar, yet invigorating and, to the uninitiated, new.

Sometimes, the homiest dishes -- foods without pretense or artifice -- are most revealing about the cultures from which they spring, and inspire the most debate amongst their devotees.  However, from countless regional Mexican renditions -- like white sauces in Sinaloa and Guadalajara's polenta-like cazuela cook-downs -- to American adaptations that echo Tex-Mex migas, all chilaquiles aim to soothe -- regardless of a particular variation's provenance and claims to authenticity.

The other weekend, hungover and exhausted from a morning of pick-up basketball, I was looking for comfort in sustenance.  I found it easily, several thousand calories' worth:  two distinct and excellent versions of chilaquiles served up at two very different Mission District establishments.

The chilaquiles at Los Jarritos aren't particularly spicy, merely salty and luxurious.  Cranberry-colored and riddled with ice, a pitcher-sized glass column of agua fresca de jamaica -- a refreshing tea-like infusion of dried hibiscus flowers -- compliments the richness with tart notes as well as sweetness.

Furthermore, you need not make a breakfast of chilaquiles alone.  The "Mexicano" side of the divided desayunos menu -- the one from which you should be ordering -- is rife with other enticing offerings, like machaca, a melange of flank steak, scrambled eggs, onions, tomatoes, and peppers, and huevos divorciados.  The latter boasts tender pork cubes in two sauces -- a red, oily chile colorado and a spicy, slightly sour chile verde -- kept separate and served atop two runny fried egg rounds.  The basket of pillowy, sweating tortillas comes in handy here. Strips of the thick discs are good for sopping sauce and scooping up errant morsels, but, nibbled unadorned, they also offer a welcome respite from the heavy assault of pig and eggs.

Interestingly, there are huevos con amor as well, but they are not as delicious and, surprisingly, no less expensive.

Inside, Los Jarritos looks as bold as its food tastes, like a typically kitschy roadside diner wonderfully lost in translation.  A chalkboard announces specials like birria and menudo.  The tabletops are a lively turquoise; sombreros swing from hooks high up on the walls alongside toy guitars in pastel hues and large black-and-white photographs.  A miniature plastic marlin peers down blankly from a lower perch.  Tiny painted drinking mugs -- the restaurant's namesake -- hang in bunches between the windows.
 
By comparison, the interior of the four-year-old Los Pastores is demure:  a floor tiled in matte brown squares, a beige back counter, and peach walls dotted with a few faded reviews in simple frames.  If the inside of the restaurant is austere, the outside is barely visible at all, even from just across the street -- a narrow storefront at the foot of Bernal Hill, right where Cortland runs into Mission.

Chilaquiles con huevos from Los Pastores. Photo by Bucko W.

Here, the chilaquiles con huevos barely resemble their chicken-laden counterparts at Los Jarritos. Tortilla triangles are fried until they are brittle and brown around the edges, and arranged over a shallow pool of thin green sauce shot through with citrus and chile heat.  Cojita-studded crema tops the chips, darting out in little rivulets from under a trio of overlapping fried eggs that leak yolk at the slightest twist of a fork.  When the big plate arrives, the individual parts are distinct, uncombined, but their sum emerges gradually over the course of eating.  The first few bites contain crisp tortilla, a little sauce, and a sliver or two of egg.  Pour the bowlful of extra sauce over the eggs, and let it soak in.  Once the sauce has done its work, and the broken yolks from the eggs have been swirled in, the tortilla chips will be soft, with just a pleasurable hint of the old crunch remaining.  You can order chilaquiles with steak in lieu of eggs but either way, skip coffee, and instead slurp a pineapple agua fresca -- ultra-sweet, extremely cold, and topped with pale froth like a soda jerk's quaffable confection.

Because chef, owner, and server Irma Calderon does all the work herself, service at Los Pastores is fastest when the room is empty -- early on a weekend morning.  Bustling Los Jarritos is a more polished operation, but a server still sidles up and cracks, "time's up!" five minutes after the menus have been opened -- not that you really care.

Visit either restaurant on a Saturday at any time, order up some chilaquiles, and indulge in a self-satisfied smirk as you contemplate the mornings many neighborhood brunchers are putting themselves through:  forty-five minute waits on crammed sidewalks for mediocore food they'll end up scarfing in a 20-minute frenzy.  

Oh, you might be waiting too, but at least you'll be at a table, comforted by the chilaquiles in your near future, sipping an agua fresca, and enjoying good fellowship -- ingredients of which great morning meals are made.

San Francisco is a brunch town through and through. And I'm always down for a nice eggs benedict or a stack of blueberry pancakes. But everyday can't be Sunday. Most of us have day jobs and can't lounge around cafes late into the afternoon hours. So here are a few of my favorite spots for quick, creative, inspiring breakfasts around the city. One is a bit gluttonous, the other earnestly healthy, and the last sloppy but satisfying. So while dining trends will always come and go, breakfast is staying put. Sometimes mom knew what she was talking about: it is the most important meal of the day.

The Good: Fraîche
I first stumbled across Fraîche while wandering around downtown Palo Alto. This was around the same time when frozen yogurt shops were opening on (seemingly) every street corner in San Francisco, and I’ll admit, I was one of the people in those long lines. But if you're like me, you're a little burned out on the tart treat and the neon décor. Fraîche is different. Trust me. The frozen yogurt has more of a creamy, subtly tart flavor than other competitors, they use organic Clover milk, and owner Patama Gur spent a long time perfecting her special blend of probiotic cultures--and it shows.

In addition to frozen yogurt, Fraîche also does a thick, housemade unfrozen 2% yogurt. When I first visited the shop on Fillmore recently, I ordered the frozen yogurt with pureed apricots and my friend opted for the unfrozen version with raspberries and peaches. I have to say, I had entrée envy. While mine was delicious, the unfrozen yogurt is unlike anything I've ever had. Think Greek yogurt on steroids. As we were leaving, I noticed the breakfast menu and their early morning hours, and vowed to come back for a quick and healthy breakfast before work.

You can get breakfast to eat-in or take-out. The menu is simple and centered around the unfrozen yogurt, fresh fruits, housemade granola, and steel-cut oats. I tried the Toasted Nut and Berry Sundae: yogurt with fresh berries, housemade granola, toasted almonds, and local wildflower honey ($5.50). The nice guy constructing my lovely "sundae" mentioned that the SF Chronicle Special has been the most popular, with steel-cut oatmeal and a choice of fresh yogurt and fruit and nut toppings ($5.95). And these aren't your average toppings. From bright pureed fruits and local honeys to shaved Callebaut chocolate to-order, the toppings are as conscious as the yogurt itself.

So after finishing the Nike Marathon recently and being told by many friends that I’d have to try and taper my ravenous appetite to account for the decrease in physical activity, I've tried to opt for breakfasts that don't include numerous pieces of toast or stacks of pancakes. And for that, Fraîche is here for me. With a cup of Blue Bottle coffee (they start serving the premium coffee next week) and a seat at one of the sleek wooden tables, experience morning the way it should be experienced: simple and thoughtful.

Fraîche
1910 Fillmore Street
San Francisco, CA 94115
(415) 674-6876
Hours: Mon.-Thurs. 7am-11 pm; Fri. 7am-12am;
Sat. 8:30am-12am; Sun. 8:30am-11pm

The "Bad": Dynamo Donuts
Nestled amongst the Mexican grocery stores and panaderia's on 24th St., sits Sara Spearin’s sweet little donut shop. It’s "bad" in the best possible way. There are a few critics who scoff at charging $3 for one donut. But the truth is, I'd pay $3 over and over for what Spearin and crew are doing in the Dynamo kitchen. It’s something that San Francisco has yet to see--an artisan, organic, awesome donut.

Before getting to the donuts, a quick aside: I was a vegetarian for almost fifteen years. About a year ago now, I started eating meat again. Once I decided to go for the gusto, something strange happened: I couldn't get enough bacon. And this was certainly fine timing, as bacon has become rather trendy in the last year or so. From bacon potato chips to bacon chocolate confections, it seems like the much-loved pork product is everywhere these days. So while I understand many folks are over the bacon-in-everything trend, I'm still on a bacon high.

I had my first bacon maple donut at Voodoo Doughnut in Portland, Or. I thought they were pretty good: the donut was light and airy (albeit quite large), the maple glaze rocked, and they put strips of real bacon on top. The bacon itself was a little weird and greasy, but I figured all bacon donuts were that way. Then, a few weeks ago, I went to Dynamo for the first time. Now I know: all bacon maple donuts are not created equal.

While it looks like a simple donut window from the street, there is an entrance leading to a huge open kitchen and a quaint seating area where couples sit with steaming cups of Four Barrel coffee and a donut or two. The buzz from the open kitchen is infectious: five women with cute vintage aprons are busily pumping out donuts while laughing and telling stories. They seem genuinely psyched to be there--and it shows in the product. The donuts themselves are special. For the most part, they’re cakey and have a bit of heft (think old-fashioned donuts of your childhood). I tried the chocolate saffron, which has a very light hint of citrus and a subtle warmth from the saffron. Next I moved on to the caramel del sel, flavored with nutmeg and topped with a caramel glaze and fleur de sel. Then I picked up a few of the apple bacon maple donuts to bring in to work. Unlike the one at Voodoo, the bacon was in small bits sprinkled on top of the donut and wasn’t at all greasy. And the little bits of apple are actually sautéed in bacon fat, resulting in a fabulous salty and sweet flavor. It really is the perfect donut. So with a motto of "EVERYDAY is bacon donut day!" there's not a place I'd rather frequent more at the moment. And even if you’re not a recovering vegetarian with a constant hankering for salty meats, there are many other well-crafted donuts to choose from.

Dynamo Donut
Twitter: @dynamodonut
2760 24th Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 920-1978
Hours: Tues.-Sat. 7am-5pm; Sun. 9am-4pm; closed Mon.

The Ugly: Hazel's Kitchen
Hazel's Kitchen is very Potrero Hill. For those of you familiar with the neighborhood, I know you feel me. For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, they do a lot of things right, but one of them isn’t necessarily speedy or efficient customer service. It's laid back, it’s independent, and they scoff a little if you try to pay with a credit card. Much like Farley's Coffee next door, I often get blank stares or confused looks when I ask a simple question.

But Hazel's is much loved as a little neighborhood lunch counter with great sandwiches and soups. And that they are. While they’re generally booming at lunch, not as many folks know that they do a really great breakfast burrito. Now I know some of you may be ready to stop reading right about now. I know--I get it. I have a strained relationship with the breakfast burrito as well. Sometimes they're not hot all the way through; sometimes they're soggy. There's nothing like cold, watery eggs to get you going in the morning. But Hazel's burritos are none of those things.

What Hazel's burritos are--the thing that places them in the ugly category--is deliciously messy. It's not a good choice for eating while walking to work or chowing down in the car. You must sit down with a stack of napkins (and a fork would be preferable) to enjoy a Hazels' breakfast burrito. Messiness aside, the nice thing about Hazel’s is the simplicity. The breakfast burrito has eggs, cheese, avocado, salsa and a choice of chorizo, ham, bacon or tofu ($6.95). The ratio of ingredients is perfect: not too much cheese or salsa--where many breakfast burritos fail. And I'm not sure how they get the burrito so delightfully hot without losing the integrity of the avocado, but after seventeen years in business, they obviously know what they’re doing.

Can you find a cheaper breakfast burrito over in the Mission? Sure. Can you find a more authentic, Mexican breakfast burrito? Absolutely. But I can't guarantee that it won’t be soggy, hot all the way through, or busting with fresh ingredients. You just can't help but fall a little bit in love with Hazel's pastel, vintage kitsch and the messy morning madness of the breakfast burrito. Dig in.

Hazel's Kitchen
1319 18th Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
(415) 647-7941
Hours: Mon.-Sat. 8 am-4 pm; Sun. 8:30 am-4 pm

Featured Recipe: Fraîche's Spiced Yogurt Muffin
Owner Patama Gur says they bake these muffins each morning as they really typify what Fraîche does: provide customers healthy, delicious that don't sacrifice on taste. These muffins were developed for Fraîche by Batter Bakery, and use Fraîche's low-fat unfrozen yogurt and applesauce instead of a lot of butter and oils to create an amazing treat that is less than 100 calories.

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. allspice
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. cloves
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 ½ cups. yogurt, room temperature
4 Tbsp. melted butter
1/4 cups unsweetened applesauce
1 tsp. vanilla
(For the topping: 2 Tbsp. sugar + ¼ tsp. nutmeg)

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Line 8 large or 14 to 16 standard muffin pans with paper muffin cups.
3. Whisk together dry ingredients in a large bowl until well combined.
4. In another small bowl, whisk eggs, yogurt, butter, applesauce, and vanilla. Add to flour mixture and mix together until just combined.
5. Scoop evenly into muffin cups and sprinkle with sugar nutmeg mixture.
6. Bake 18-20 minutes or until tester comes out clean.
Serve warm.

Makes: 8 large or 14 standard-sized muffins

Men's Journal recently dubbed it one of America's best neighborhoods. The San Francisco Chapter of the Hells Angels is still there, and it may not be in your tourist guidebook. Nonetheless, the Dogpatch neighborhood is getting a lot of buzz lately. Where the heavy industry used to be, a burgeoning arts district and dining scene has popped up--particularly around the intersection of 22nd and 3rd. In 2003, the neighborhood was voted an official historic district of San Francisco--helped by the fact that it was relatively untouched by the 1906 earthquake and fire.

The Dogpatch is a nine square-block area below and to the East of Potrero Hill. More specifically, it's bounded by Mariposa Street to the North, Tubbs Street (23rd) to the South, Highway 280 to the West, and Illinois Street to the East. Part of its growth and popularity can certainly be attributed to its proximity to Potrero Hill, SOMA and downtown--and to the lightrail constructed a few years ago. Currently there is a lively debate regarding land-use issues, and worker's cottages and historic homes are being overshadowed by loft-style condos and the looming biotech industry. But never fear: its gritty, urban veneer is alive and well. So before you try to predict what will become of one of the last authentic neighborhoods in San Francisco, cruise around the Dogpatch for a handcrafted latte, a quaint Sunday brunch, or a sandwich at a pop-up lunch venue.

Piccino Coffee Bar: My favorite city is Paris. And on the rare San Francisco afternoon, strolling along a quiet side street, discovering a sweet little bakery or street-side flower shop, I’ll have a "Paris" moment. I had such a moment recently while aimlessly walking around the Dogpatch listening to the new "Where the Wild Things Are" soundtrack (amazing) and marveling at the unusually hot temperature (like close neighbor Potrero Hill, the Dogpatch is often the sunniest, warmest spot in the city). The first thing to notice about Piccino Coffee Bar is its minimalism: it's essentially a coffee counter with a small but lovely selection of crumbly scones, biscotti, muffins, housemade yogurt, hardboiled farm-fresh eggs, and grab-and-go sandwiches. And of course, coffee--and Blue Bottle coffee, at that. There isn't any seating and they have a big front window that opens in the afternoons, releasing wafts of richly roasted coffee.

It's always really nice when you fall in love with a spot only to learn later that they're committed to using sustainable products and sourcing from local artisans whenever possible--and that they deeply care about their impact on the community. Such is the case with Piccino Coffee Bar. A few of the local vendors they use include Fatted Calf, Andante Diary, Prather Ranch, and Star Route Farms. The standout beverage? The mocha. And let me just say I'm really not a mocha kind of girl. As I enter my (gasp) 30's, I need the strong punch of black coffee in the morning--or sometimes I'll opt for the occasional Americano or latte. But a mocha always seems more like dessert, more frivolous than utilitarian. However, Piccino's isn't cloyingly sweet and still tastes of strong, bold espresso. So many other coffeehouses rely on chocolate made with added sugars and thickeners, but Piccino Coffee Bar uses a special Recchiuti chocolate blend specially designed for them. They actually hand melt it in your cup. Last time I checked, Starbucks wasn't providing that service. And I love that they're not messing around with the caffeine: a small 8 oz. latte automatically comes with two shots. That's what I’m talking about first thing Monday morning.

To remember what a neighborhood coffee shop is really like, stroll into Piccino Coffee Bar. It's not fast, the whole ordering process is a little disorganized, you may wonder why they don’t have more than one person making drinks. But quaint, legitimate neighborhood coffee shops that focus on the quality and the craft of the drink are a dying breed. Do yourself a favor: remind yourself what they're like.

Piccino Coffee Bar
801 22nd St., SF
(415) 824-4224
Hours: Mon.-Fri. 7am-5pm; Sat.-Sun. 8am-5pm

Kitchenette SF
Lunch is having its day in the sun right now. Whether you prefer the carts, counters, bike delivery salumi dudes--it's all out there. But you also get the sense that, while unique and undeniably cool, many of these trends are fleeting. However, Douglas Monsalud and crew at Kitchenette SF serve beautifully constructed sandwiches, a few side salads, a "cookie of the moment," and a housemade beverage from a menu that changes daily--and I can guarantee you, they're here to stay. While the location is unassuming (a loading dock in an industrial strip in the Dogpatch), the food is anything but.

I invited my dad to come along and get a bite to eat recently. He appreciates new neighborhoods, thoughtful food, and innovative design--and I'd heard that Kitchenette SF had all three. Now, first things first: it's tucked away and not easy to find. But sometimes the things you have to really search for taste all the sweeter. We ended up parking before we spotted it, opting to find it on foot rather than driving around the block...again. You'll know you're getting warmer when you see a chalkboard sign out on the sidewalk. Cruise into the loading dock where smells of warm cookies commingle with the noises of businesses unloading goods and trucks backing in to make a delivery. There are some stairs leading into Kitchenette SF's loading dock and a little counter displaying the daily specials. After you order, linger and wait for your name to be called or head down the steps to snag a coveted bench, scattered haphazardly amongst the concrete below. It's all very urban. It's a little hipster. If the food weren’t good, I might think it was a little too cool for school.

I ordered the Marin Sun Farms' pork schnitzel sandwich with braised cabbage and pink lady apples, a peanut butter/butterscotch cookie, and organic strawberry soda with local seltzer. We shared a bag of 4505 chicharrones (ah, after being a vegetarian for twelve years, nothing makes up for lost time like a bag of salty pig skin). The sandwich had a perfect balance of flavors: a crunch and sweetness from the apple, a little kick from the braised cabbage, a light and chewy Acme roll. Although I write about food often, I can't say that sandwiches often bowl me over. That being said, I talked about this sandwich for days afterwards.

More recently, I snuck away from work and ordered the "Warehouse Picnic," consisting of fried Rocky Jr. chicken, a deviled egg, potato salad, corn-jalapeno salad, pasta salad with tomato vinaigrette, farmstead cheese, and Acme bread. Summer perfectly encapsulated in a box. Kitchenette SF has seriously redefined fast food. It's all organic, and most of the ingredients are sourced from local farms--Monsalud says he actually hits up the farms on his days off and, in addition to knowing where the food comes from, he often even knows which row! There's a very deep connection to the origin and meaning of the food they serve--and it shows. Check their website or twitter feed to get information on the daily menu.

Kitchenette SF
958 Illinois, SF.
Twitter: @kitchenettesf
Hours: Mon.-Fri., 11:30am-1:30pm

Serpentine
My friend Anthony was visiting from New York about a month ago, and I was trying to show him a very authentic San Francisco beyond the obvious tourist attractions. Anthony's a little hipster. You know the type: tight jeans, spectacles, deliberately messy hair, and a faux-leather satchel bag. So I was trying to introduce him to spots that were a little edgy, a little grungy, a little off the radar. Enter: the Dogpatch and Serpentine.

Owned by Erin Rooney (of Slow Club fame), Serpentine is located in the former warehouse of a tin-can factory boiler's room. Because of its high ceilings, large windows, and sea glass fixtures, it almost feels more like a large artist's loft rather than a bustling place of business. Adding to that whimsical feeling: much of the normal din of a restaurant is missing. Mid-day on a sunny Sunday and it was crowded but strangely quiet. It's got to have something to do with the acoustics of the building--regardless, I have to say, with constant refills of coffee and good conversation, we could've sat there all day enjoying the peaceful morning.

Now, for the food. I am often prone to hyperbole. I'm not sure where I got this trait, but for those that know me, it's a very real fact. But believe me when I tell you that the dish I had at Serpentine was the most perfect brunch dish I've ever had. Although their menu is seasonal, the "Red Flannel Hash" seems to be a staple. It consists of chunks of beautifully roasted beets, potatoes, Prather Ranch beef brisket, two poached eggs, and spinach. It's filling but not in a 'stack of pancakes' kind of way. More in a fresh, balanced, satiated kind of way.

We also tried the Alaskan sockeye salmon benedict with fried green tomatoes, pickled red onion, and lemon cucumber. We were definitely bummed that the fried green tomatoes were noticeably absent, but the salmon was cooked perfectly and the hollandaise sauce was surprisingly light and creamy. We also tried the buckwheat strawberry pancakes. Now I'm one of those people that doesn't like to order something at a restaurants that I can make well at home. Pancakes fall into that category. But something is different about Serpentine's flapjacks: they actually have large pieces of strawberry cooked into them, and are served with lots of butter and incredibly rich syrup.

All in all, the food was seasonal, conscious, and well executed. This may be my new favorite brunch spot as it seems the usual see-and-be-seen weekend crowd hasn't yet descended, so there isn't an obscenely long wait and you don't feel guilty lingering over numerous cups of coffee. Which is exactly what we did. Anthony went back to Brooklyn satiated--and hungry to return.

Serpentine
2495 3rd St., SF.
(415) 252-2000
Hours:
Brunch: Sat and Sun: 10:00am-2:30pm
Lunch: Mon - Fri: 11:30am-2:30pm
Dinner: Tues - Sat: 6:00pm-10:00pm

Just For You Cafe
I've been on a bit of a beignet binge lately. Blame it on the cooler mornings and evenings, the fact I'm training for a marathon and feel entitled to eat whatever (and whenever I'd like), or the depressing economy--whatever the reason, I've been turning to little fried pillows of dough for comfort.

And Just For You Cafe is coming through for me. This neighborhood spot used to be located on 18th St. in Potrero Hill, but in 2002 they moved to their current location in the Dogpatch. Their tagline: "We served slow food before it was popular." And they're not kidding: they use local charcuterie and Zoe's all natural meats, eggs from Petaluma farms, the bread they don't make on-site they buy from Acme, and the seafood and produce is mostly all local. Their emphasis is on Southern and American style cooking, with specialties like Hatch green chili huevos rancheros, creamy grits, and Creole crab cakes.

A few weeks ago, I was over that way visiting a friend and we decided to pop in after seeing the prominent "Beignets" sign in the window. It was pretty darn crowded--people bring their dogs, toddlers, the Sunday paper, out-of-town parents...and all gather waiting for a table indoors. Thankfully they provide a free coffee cart outside so you can fill up a cup and hang out on the curb. Life could be much worse.

We waited about a half hour, and were eventually seated at this little booth table all the way to the back of the restaurant. Right by the kitchen--on an unusually hot day. Nothing like a little sweat on the brow to inspire heavy beignet consumption. But we managed. Just For You Cafe serves a plate of three beignets, self-proclaimed "fresh, fluffy pillows of perfection." I would have to agree. While their beignets definitely have a little more heft than others served throughout the city, they are worth the trip. After years and years in business, they've perfected the perfect dusting of powdered sugar and the light brown, buttery exterior. Eat them right when they arrive warm: our table noticed once they cooled down, they became a bit chewy (not really what you want in your "fluffy pillow of perfection").

In addition to our little pockets of fried dough, we tried the "Crabby Bennie," Louisiana sausage, and biscuits. The Creole crabcake atop the traditional eggs benedict rocked. I love a good crabcake--and they're surprisingly tough to find. But here it's all about the crab (versus all about the breadcrumbs, leaving you wondering if there's even any crab present). And the biscuits, while we both felt they could've been lighter and flakier, had a nice crumb and traditional baking soda flavor. So while it looks like a typical greasy spoon from the outside (and inside, really), this little diner's got class. Owner Arienne Landry's proving that, with quality ingredients and local products, Southern comfort food can be mastered right here in the Bay Area.

Just For You Cafe
732 22nd, SF.
(415) 647-3033
Hours: Mon.-Tue. 7:30 a.m.-3:00 p.m.
Wed.-Fri. 7:30 a.m.-9:00 p.m. (now serving dinner)
Sat.-Sun. 8:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.
Cash only

Featured Recipe:

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies w/Butterscotch Chips
From Kitchenette SF
Ingredients:
7.5 oz butter
6 7/8 oz organic sugar
6 7/8 oz brown sugar
6 2/3 oz. peanut butter
2/3 oz. vanilla extract
2 large eggs
4 2/3 oz. oats
10 oz. organic flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp salt
10 oz butterscotch chips

Directions
Cream together the butter, sugars, peanut butter, and vanilla extract. Beat in eggs one at a time. Stir in the remaining ingredients, mixing completely. Use an ice cream scoop to make portion cookies onto a lined cookie sheet.

Small Cookies: Bake in a still oven (375 degrees) for 6-8 minutes, rotating the pan for even cooking.
Larger Cookies: bake at 350 degrees for 9-12 minutes.

Other Spots to Pop Into:
Hard Knox Cafe: 2526 3rd St., SF. (415) 648-3770
Sundance Coffee: 2293 3rd St., SF. (415) 503-1446
The New Spot: 632 20th St., SF. (415) 558-0556
Yield Wine Bar: 2490 3rd St., SF. (415) 401-8984

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Last year, the night after Christmas, or more specifically, the very early morning of the day after the night after Christmas, I left the house where still nothing was stirring -- save for ripped ribbons and scraps of tissue paper skittering across the wood floors from gusts of central heat. I found myself drinking beers and small glasses of Jim Beam on ice with a friend on the damp, cold patio of my favorite bar in my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. The Back Door hugs the side-alley edge of a depressing strip mall in an otherwise lovely neighborhood. Despite a few relatively recent attempts at renovation, Mid-City Mall remains a wan collection of establishments: a husk of a supermarket, a huge basement thrift store, a small gym, a wizened bakery, and a movie theater -- all save the latter permeated through and through by the distinct, inescapable odor of old cigarettes mingling with doughnut glaze. I sat in my uncomfortable plastic chair, letting crushed ice suffused with liquor melt in the back of my throat, compulsively checking the time on my cell phone again and again. I was listening to a friend of my friend I'd just met -- an aging, chain-smoking rocker lady who claimed to have once managed The Jesus Lizard. Curly-haired, shifty, and fast-talking, like a nervous auctioneer, she chattered on through the chill -- upbraiding her absent housemates, flirting, guffawing weirdly, talking about drugs, touching repeatedly on a failed attempt to bed Chris Cornell in the early 90s. The party is over, I thought. My flight was in seven hours. I hopped up to order another whiskey, my last.

When I returned, a man wearing blue overalls was hunched over our table. His hair was gray, but he could have been any age. It was hard to tell. An amazing Witness-style beard jutted out from his chin like a grass-tipped rock formation. He may have been wearing a hat. I'm not sure. I was intoxicated, and staring at what he was holding in his gnarled hands: a broad wicker basket filled with plastic baggies marked with indecipherable paper stickers containing what looked, in the dark, like shards of dried seaweed or the worst weed in the world. My friend had already bought a bag. He was stuffing bits of the stuff into his mouth and chewing deliberately, somehow grinning at the same time. "Jerky," he said. "Get some." I don't actually remember if that's what he said -- I was in my cups, after all -- but he informed me in some verbal form of expression what he was so intent on devouring. I got some -- two bags worth -- and started tearing away, balancing the sharp jolts of bourbon with salty strips. This jerky was the first beef I'd eaten since elementary school. I'd get a full-blown inauguration in Kyoto several months later, but this was an ideal re-introduction: consorting drunkenly with a rich, ancient-seeming flavor, as if my vaguest recollection of steak had been realized, condensed, and boiled down, and then -- in some dazzling Wonka-esque process -- rendered slim, portable, and hard as sheet-rock.

I don't actually remember that the vendor's hands were gnarled, but the adjective suits the smoke-cured paws of a bearded Kentucky jerky-man. He didn't give a name; he just left -- trudging down the steps, disappearing into the shadowy reaches of the bar's tree-covered parking lot with what I'd like to imagine was an affected hill-country whoop. My friend's friend seemed to know him, but unlike us, she didn't want to talk about jerky, much less the man who made it. "It's low in calories!" she'd bellowed, sort of throwing up her hands in exasperation at our lack of interest in her preferred topics of conversation. "It's a great source of protein!"

I brought most of one bag back to San Francisco. I ate it all the following morning, while sitting at the kitchen table in my Mission District apartment, surfing the Internet. When it was empty, I stared at the bag, a little forlorn. "I've got to get some more of this shit," I said to myself. The jerky salesman was the real deal, I thought, a Kentucky classic, an intrepid street food hustler in a lean and largely cart-less land. I wanted to meet him again, to interview him perhaps, to most importantly get my hands on some more of his delicious wares.

I told my friend back in Louisville that I wanted to re-up. He had his own agenda. In exchange for sniffing out the traveling jerky-man, he wanted me to send him a large quantity of marijuana -- some good medicinal stuff with a fantastic name. From my perspective, no amount of jerky joy was worth the potential consequences of stinking up Fed-Ex with a sativa-spiked Folgers can. Imagining how hard a judge would laugh at me, I declined, putting down the phone and casting aside my longing -- temporarily.

Today is Friday, October 2nd. I arrived in Louisville yesterday afternoon. I came here to see my mother and my brother, to get some work done, to read a little, and to watch football on a big television. I also came to look for jerky.

While San Francisco, my city of residence for the past seven years, remains in the grips of a giddy street food obsession, Louisville, an over-achieving restaurant town boasting the likes of 610 Magnolia and Proof on Main, has little in the way of pavement cuisine -- although my Saturday morning trip to the neighborhood farmer's market revealed a lively scene. In a June 2009 article published in Velocity, one of Louisville's local weeklies, Marty Rosen assailed the perceived deficiency as one of several standing in the city's path to gastronomic greatness:

"We live in a temperate zone...We have sidewalks. We have sidewalk dining. We have folks who walk on sidewalks. What we don't have -- except for a few downtown exceptions and a few taco trucks -- is an entrepreneurial crew of sidewalk vendors hawking falafel, chaat, shawarama and sausages..."

I haven't really lived in Louisville since I was in high school. My sense of the changes time has wrought on its physical and cultural landscape arrives in swells and swoops, when I'm back for pockets of time, around holidays mostly. On every ride from the airport to the house where I grew up, my mom rattles off a reel of news -- which shops have closed, major construction projects of note, the revitalized waterfront, the new basketball arena, the growing art scene -- as if I'd been gone for a decade. Then I realize, when you're used to looking closely at a smaller place, such shifts are more palpable, and they can seem so major. Me, I don't even remember how to get around town anymore. Most of my friends have left. Hunting for jerky, I had no leads beyond knowing where I'd first had it.

I started my search on the computer. Googling is an unromanticizable form of sleuthing -- no stake-outs, no disguises -- but it often works. First, I uncovered a 2006 night-on-the-town chronicled in LEO, Louisville's other, more venerable alt-weekly. A drinking party wound up at The Back Door, where a bag of beef jerky made the rounds as closing time approached. Next, I came across a 2004 piece in The Courier-Journal running down the 50 coolest things about Louisville with, at #39, a likely reference to the man I had encountered: "Rusty Sturgeon's homemade varieties [of beef jerky]...are a well-kept secret among meat-o-philes."

After that, a Courier-Journal article from two weeks ago popped up, a short list of favorite local foodstuffs offering more details to corroborate my fleeting experience with what I'd already read:

"Rusty Sturgeon is a Louisville food artist. The overall-wearing gentleman wanders the Highlands selling homemade beef jerky to Louisvillians after a night at the city's myriad clubs and drinking holes. Sturgeon is a friendly guy, but some folks might be (understandably) concerned about buying food off a guy on the street. Don't be. Sturgeon's jerky is way better than anything you'll get at the convenience store. May we suggest the flaming ass, a particularly spicy jerky strong enough to shake you out of a bourbon stupor."

I knew the trail was flaming ass-hot when I tracked down Sturgeon on Facebook, or at least a page someone had created in his honor. A benevolent face sprouting tendrils from the chin grinned out at me, frozen in a streetlight's unflattering glow. I immediately became his "fan."

Of course, I still wanted to find the dude in the flesh. His Facebook page didn't link to Twitter -- or otherwise suggest he ever announced his intended schedule prior to hitting the streets, basket in hand. Later in the afternoon, I called The Back Door to ask when he usually came through. "Speak slower, please," a deflated female voice yawned on the other end. I repeated the question. "Oh yes," she said, perking up just the slightest bit. "Sometimes he's here during the day, sometimes at night, sometimes during the day and at night as well. He's everywhere."

That didn't help. At 10:00 p.m., I walked out the front door of my mom's house and hoofed it over to the bar. I had a drink. I waited for an hour. I saw a guy who'd taught me history in middle school, but no one selling jerky. When you're hunting for something, I wondered, as I drained my whiskey -- are you more likely to find it if you keep moving, or stay in one place? The problem with Sturgeon being everywhere, of course, is that, while he may cover a lot of ground, he's nowhere until you actually see him. Street food vendors tend to show up when you don't expect them, or when you need them most -- when you're, say, one tamale away from fainting. Maybe I shouldn't have eaten that pizza for dinner, I thought -- then I'd have needed him more. I got up, and left. I'd be back in December for another try.

Poggio: dining al fresco

The last rays of sun warmed my shoulders as I drank in the waterfront views, sailboats bobbing happily beneath a hillside of pretty pastel homes, and made my way to a charming trattoria spilling out onto the sidewalk. A leisurely seafood supper awaited me, complete with crisp white wine, homemade pasta, and hospitality as warm as the balmy breezes floating in from the wide-flung doors. Was I in Capri? Positano? Close. Sausalito.

Located below Sausalito's landmark Casa Madrona, Italian trattoria Poggio seems like the perfect place to milk the remnants of an Indian summer.

Marinated Monterey Sardines with soft cooked egg, pancetta and lovage (an herb with a flavor similar to celery)

I was invited to do just that at last week's Festa del Pesce, a celebration of local seafood during the last days of summer. On the menu was a selection of mostly local and sustainable fish served raw, cured, marinated, oak grilled, wood fire roasted and fried.

Fritto of local Surf Smelt with lemon aioli (aka "Fries with Eyes")

I appreciate the tip of the hat that Poggio gives to each season. For example, coming up in November (11/10-11/15) will be their annual Festa del Tartuffo, celebrating the white truffle harvest (yes, Chef Peter McNee travels to Italy to hunt for truffles himself; and yes, this is one party not to miss). The Bollito Misto Festa takes its turn in the early winter with an abundance of simmered meats and sauces served tableside. The Spiedo Misto della Pasqua celebrates the arrival of spring and highlights meats cooked on the spit. And then before you know it, it will be time for seafood and long summer nights again.

Speaking of which, the pesce at hand.

The evening's special menu consisted of five Crudo (raw/marinated/cured) and five Cotto (grilled/braised/fried) seafood antipasti, along with two whole-fish preparations -- oak grilled Branzino with cherry tomato confit and broccoli rabe; Snapper baked in sea salt, with lemon, arugula and young green beans -- and a Risotto ai Frutti di Mare with scallop, shrimp, mussels, clams, saffron and tomato.

Stuffed Monterey Calamari braised in its own ink with local butter beans

For me, the most special dish was the stuffed Monterey Calamari braised in its own ink. The flavor was so unique -- rich and earthy (in a sea-faring kind of way). There was something...visceral about eating this dish. But, don't disturb yourself by getting too psychoanalytic here. Just dig in and enjoy the utter deliciousness.

Also of note was the wood-grilled local Swordfish Spiedini (skewers) served over slightly charred, tender radicchio. The swordfish was screamingly fresh, tender, almost buttery, and the accompanying bagna cauda was perfectly garlicky and anchovy-y.

Cozze al cartoccio mussels cooked in paper with white wine, tomato and chili

The Mussels cooked in paper were like a magic trick, as the translucent package was cut open tableside. Inside, we were rewarded with succulent gem-like mussels, sweet as could be.

Bruschetta with pickled Monterey Anchovies, avocado and heirloom tomato gazpacho

On the crudo end, Chef Peter did a phenomenal job highlighting two very under-appreciated fish: sardines and anchovies. Our table decided the poor things just needed some good PR, because oooh they are tasty! Anyone have a new sexy name we can instate?

Spaghetti alla Carbonara, made with house-made guanciale, egg, pecorino romano, and pepper

We veered off our pescetarian diet to indulge in some of the prized house-made guanciale (cured pork cheeks). The perfect vehicle to highlight that deeply porcine flavor? Spaghetti alla Carbonara, naturally. Not for the faint of heart, this dish is a serious calorie bomb. It left a little too much lard flavor and mouthfeel for my taste, but I could appreciate the craftsmanship that went into making it. I was also pleasantly surprised by how much the aroma reminded me of Chinese lap cheung (cured sausage) when the dish was set in front of me.

Prosecco Moscato, Carpene Malvolti

Just the thing to refresh my taste buds before dessert, a sparkling glass of this delightful Prosecco Moscato from Carpene Malvolti. Our sommelier was jazzed about sharing this beauty, and at the first sip, I understood why. A perfect harmony is struck here between the light fruitiness of the Prosecco and the flowery notes of the Moscato. Flavors of apricot and orange blossom danced in my mouth as I savored each bubble.

Lemon Mousse topped with Meringues and Pistachios

You'd think we'd be stuffed to the brim after such a feast, but there is always room for dessert. This Lemon Mousse was just what I wanted after this big meal, with its citrus punch and light-as-air texture. And the homemade meringues and toasted pistachios on top were the perfect touch. I love the flavor combination of lemon and pistachios. It is pure Italian sunshine to me.

Lucky us, Chef Peter McNee was kind enough to share his recipe! Perfect for dinner parties too because you can make all the components ahead of time. Buon appetito!

Lemon Mousse with Meringues and Pistachios
Recipe courtesy of Peter McNee, Executive Chef of Poggio

Serves: 4

Lemon Curd
7 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
Zest of 1-2 lemons
3 oz. fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 oz. lime juice
3 eggs
2 egg yolks
5 tablespoons butter

Combine all the ingredients, except the butter, in a mixing bowl. Place over a pot of boiling water (making sure the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch the water) and whisk until curd sets up thick. Whip constantly so that your eggs don't curdle. Remove from heat.

Add butter, continue mixing. Pass through a fine mesh strainer or sieve. Pour into a container, placing a sheet of plastic wrap over the curd to prevent a skin from forming. Chill overnight. The lemon curd will stay fresh refrigerated for up to 5 days.

Meringue
1/4 cup egg whites
1/4 cup granulated white sugar
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

Preheat oven to 100 degrees F. Whip egg whites with a mixer. Before soft peaks form, add the sugar and cream of tartar. Continue to whip until stiff peaks form. Using a pastry bag, pipe the meringue into .5 inch diameter lines, onto a wax paper-lined cookie sheet. Bake the meringues for 3 hours, or until they are crispy and without any color.

Can be made a few days ahead of time, but must be wrapped airtight once cooled to prevent them from being soggy.

Lemon Mousse (assembly)
Chilled lemon curd
1 cup whipping cream
1/4 cup pistachios
4 serving glasses, approximately 6 oz each

Lightly toast and chop pistachios. Whip cream to stiff peaks. Combine the lemon curd and whipped cream, folding the two together until homogeneous. Place one half tablespoon of pistachios into each of the glasses. Using a star tipped pastry bag, pipe the lemon mousse into each of the glasses. At this point the mousse may be refrigerated up to 3 days once covered. Before serving, garnish each with the remaining pistachios and broken pieces of crispy meringue.

Poggio Trattoria
777 Bridgeway
Sausalito, CA 94965
Map
(415) 332-7771

This swine diagram in the Oliveto back office pretty much sums it up.

Next to his desk in the Oliveto back office, Chef Paul Canales has taped a diagram that captures the restaurant's reverence for pork.

The diagram shows a hog divided into sections, such as the shoulder and the leg. All of these sections are labeled "Good," except for the belly. It is labeled "Real Good."

Pork is a constant at Oliveto. The menu revolves around it. On any given day, prep chefs can be seen breaking down a hog into various cuts -- shoulder, loin, leg -- and then processing them into porchetta, pancetta, scallopine, sausage or salumi.

For an uninitiated guest to the kitchen, it can be startling to see a pig's head simmering in a stock pot or a chef hefting a hand saw on one half of a 200-pound carcass.

Oliveto Chef Paul Canales seasons pork cutlets while Sous Chef Kelsey Bergstrom cuts into a pork leg with a hand saw.

Yet if you want restaurants to be respectful of the meat they serve, extracting every ounce of flavor and using all parts of the animal, then these scenes shouldn't shock you. Many chefs run a far tidier kitchen by relying on industrial meat processors to do their butchery, delivering meat cuts that are shrink-wrapped and ready to cook.

Oliveto's experiments with whole-hog cookery started more than a decade ago, when the restaurant, under owner Bob Klein and former Executive Chef Paul Bertolli, developed a relationship with Paul Willis and Bill Niman, founders of the Niman Ranch meat company.

Willis, a hog farmer from Iowa, met Niman in the mid-1990s, as industrial hog farming was transforming the landscape of the Midwest and North Carolina. Farmers such as Willis were trying to stay in business by marketing the quality and benefits of the pork that was raised without hormones and antibiotics, with the pigs allowed to range freely. That led to a partnership with Niman and the birth of Niman Ranch.

Paul Watson, seen left, heads a network of 500 small farmers who supply pork to Niman Ranch.

Today, Willis supervises a network of 500 farmers who produce pork for more than 1,200 restaurants, ranging from chains such as Chipotle Mexican Grill to high-end restaurants such as Oliveto. His success has inspired many other farmers, including some here in California, to grow their own pigs and market them directly to restaurants.

Every Tuesday at Oliveto, a truck pulls up in the garage of the building, delivering a split carcass pig, usually from Willis. For the last several months it has been my job, along with Oliveto butcher Pablo "Tigre" Mendoza Gavito, to heft and these split carcasses (100 pounds) into the basement meat locker.

Hanging meat from hooks can be dangerous, as former Oliveto Sous Chef Curtis Di Fede demonstrates.

This can be a dangerous job. Pigs are slippery and tricky to hoist. Usually Tigre would lift from the bottom, using a small meat hook to grab hold of the carcass. My job was to grab the hind leg, attach a meat hook to the trotter, and hang the hooked carcass on the meat locker rod while Tigre hefted it from the bottom.

The first time we attempted this together, I inadvertently left my pinkie finger in between the hook and rod. My finger was nearly crushed as the full weight of the carcass came down on the rod. Luckily, I pulled my pinkie out at the last split second.

Once the pigs are in the locker, the chefs assemble a game plan for breaking them down and preparing dishes. That plan changes weekly, depending on the whims of the chefs and what dishes they haven't recently prepared.

"Technically, you want to use the loins and legs first, since those are most subject to spoilage," says Canales, who replaced Bertolli as executive chef in 2004. "The shoulders will last the longest."

Why do the shoulders last longer? As Canales notes, shoulders and other heavily used muscles tend to have high levels of myoglobin, a protein that causes the red color in meat. Birds such as ducks and pigeons have high levels of myoglobin, because they fly such long distances. As a result, ducks and pigeons resist spoilage in a refrigerator longer than chickens do.

After a hog is delivered, Tigre tends to get the assignment of breaking down the hog into its component pieces. He also can be regularly seen trimming up the loin for one of the restaurant's prized dishes, the spit-roasted porchetta.

Oliveto butcher Pablo "Tigre" Mendoza Gavito prepares sausage in the back kitchen.

Porchetta is pork rolled with spices and salt into a log and then set on a rotisserie. As it roasts over hot coals, the fat renders out of the meat and keeps it juicy and savory. Slices of this log are then served with an accompaniment, such as a diavolo sauce made with chili peppers.

By contrast, Oliveto generally takes cuts from the leg and turns them into scallopine or salami. Scraps from the leg are ground in a meat grinder and used in a ragu, a pasta sauce. The shoulders, meanwhile, are generally reserved for sausage.

As you can imagine, all this cutting and trimming results in numerous scraps that some butchers might be tempted to throw away. At Oliveto, all these scraps are further trimmed to separate meat from fat. The meat pieces are cooked down into sugo, a heavily reduced pork stock, similar to a demi-glace. The rest might be used for a ciccioli, an intensely rich concoction that is made by cooking down fatty pieces of pork, compressing them and drying them.

Outside of the pigs it breaks down, Oliveto also receives special orders of pork, particularly pork bellies for pancetta. These bellies arrive every other week from Heritage Foods USA, which originated as the online marketing arm for the Slow Food movement. Now a private company, it sells meat from small farmers who are raising and preserving heritage breeds of pigs, turkeys and other animals.

"I try to support them, because they are trying to do the right thing, by these animal and the small farmers," says Canales. "These guys have no outlet. Either they find a niche market, or they get forced out by Tyson or the big outfits."

The author trims fat off of a pork belly for pancetta.

While apprenticing at Oliveto, I had a privilege to trim and cure pancetta a few times. It is not terribly hard, as Michael Ruhlman demonstrates in this post. The slabs of pork are seasoned with salt, curing salt and peppercorns, and then hung in cold storage for a week or so.

By the time it is dried, thin sliced and then served, it is belly, belly good. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

For Oliveto, the true test of its pork obsession comes in February, with the annual Whole Hog dinners. The menu offers nearly every part of the animal, from the brains down to the trotters. Last year's menu(pdf) featured a wild boar scaloppine alla Milanese, a spaghetti with pork cracklings and a spit-roasted pork belly with Sicilian chestnut honey.

A basic summer dish at Oliveto - cured coppa and melon.

Preparations for these dinners are an all-year affair, since some types of meats - such as prosciutto and coppa - take many months to cure and dry.

I missed this year's Whole Hog Dinner, but plan to be there in February. After six months of trimming, slicing, browning, simmering and curing pork, I feel a closer connection to this noble animal, along with an awareness of how much more there is to learn.

Stuart Leavenworth has concluded his apprenticeship at Oliveto, and this is his final post for Bay Area Bites. On Monday, he starts a new job as The Sacramento Bee's editorial page editor. You can contact him at sleavenworth@sacbee.com.

When it came to food, my grandfather prized quantity. Maybe it was something about being a kid during the Depression and then an adult during World War II rationing, but he relished, like little else, walking into the dining room of a second-rate hotel restaurant, and seeing brunch laid out: a legion of steaming metal tubs on tables in rows, like shining shields, their handles swathed in white cloth napkins. There'd be a d.i.y waffle station to the left, a man shaking omelets to the right. Cascades of silly, under-ripe fruit would pile on circular tables here and there. There'd be a roast beef carving counter, little sausage links, pancakes, scrambled eggs, and lunch-like dishes -- baked chicken-y things, bad salads, mysterious gratins -- no one ever seemed to actually eat. He loved brunch, specifically buffets, because he could eat anything he wanted, in whatever sequence and amounts he desired. Brunch was freedom in the form of phony opulence. It reminded him of the cruises he adored, I think, an earthly manifestation of those magical floating worlds where dedicated gluttons could dine four times a day and hop freely from one bastardized culinary tradition to another.

In San Francisco, buffets are more luxurious than those I knew in Kentucky as a kid. On Sunday mornings, from 10:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m., you can enjoy $68 worth of omelets made to order, sushi and sashimi, pasta, dim sum, crepes, breads, pastries, and desserts -- along with posh digs and about 800 tourists -- at the Court Garden of the Palace Hotel on the corner of Market and New Mongomery. The most trumpeted neighborhood brunch spots, typically buffet-less, are usually no less packed with locals. Brunch isn't breakfast. Breakfast happens on a walk from BART to work, right after a stop at Specialty's, or at a diner in the middle of Wyoming at 5 a.m. You eat breakfast because you're hungry. More than sustenance, brunch is a time to linger, a special occasion you get used to, even if you're having it around the corner from your apartment.

The ultimate slow feed originated in Britain, close to the end of the 1800s. Since the dawn of civilization, the privileged and wealthy had enjoyed leisurely, pleasurable meals at an expense of money and time unsustainable for poorer people. Brunch was a trendy expression of this long-running culinary tradition. While the meal itself would gain great popularity in the United States well after the turn-of-the-century, the name was coined in 1895 by Hunter's Weekly contributor Guy Beringer. In an article entitled "Brunch: A Plea", Beringer advocated the adoption of a new meal, offered around noon, to replace early Sunday dinner, that daunting afternoon ritual of gravy-sauced roasts and meat pastries Beringer found unduly rough on a booze-imbued stomach. "Brunch is cheerful, sociable and inciting," Beringer wrote, thinking of good toast, fine jams, and languorous mugs of coffee to precede heartier indulgences. "It is talk-compelling. It puts you in a good temper, it makes you satisfied with yourself and your fellow beings, it sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week."

Over a hundred years later, in his career-making 2001 book "Kitchen Confidential", celebrity face-stuffer Anthony Bourdain (I'd like to leave him be but he keeps popping up like a Whac-A-Mole at the county fair) notoriously took brunch's modern, evolved form to task:

"Brunch menus are an open invitation to the cost-conscious chef, a dumping ground for the odd bits left over from Friday and Saturday nights. How about hollandaise sauce? Not for me. Bacteria love hollandaise. And nobody I know has ever made hollandaise to order. And how long has that Canadian bacon been festering in the walk-in? Remember, brunch is only served once a week -- on the weekends. Cooks hate brunch. Brunch is punishment block for the B-Team cooks, or where the farm team of recent dishwashers learn their chops."

From outside the kitchen, the view is still a little bleak, or significantly brighter -- depending on where you stand. Stale bread breakfast casseroles, hash, and whatever-with-eggs may be unabashed second chances for unpopular dinner specials, leftovers slopped together by the bored, hung-over chefs inhabiting Bourdain's tableau. Yet the brunching masses greet them with enthusiasm all the same, dropping dinner-sized wads on scrambles, stacks, and the odd strata. For some urban professionals, a Sunday morning wouldn't be quite right without lingering al fresco at some cafe over granola, crumbly biscuits, vegan gravy, and a bottomless mimosa. For others, weekend mornings and early afternoons are times for errands and exercise. On their paths to such less idle pursuits, they worm their ways through throngs of shades-wearing folks holding out for coveted tables, seemingly with nothing better to do save wait. Brunch isn't just a meal, an enduring dining convention white people like -- along with modern furniture, Apple products, and other stuff. Today, it's a state of mind, and a polarizing one at that. Brunch-positive people work hard and play hard. They see brunch as a soothing extension of the partying they did the night before, a necessary putting back together of things that were dislodged -- a ritual well worth the inflated price of pancakes and a lengthy wait. Brunch-negative people think waiting for food they could make at home for a fraction of the cost is a waste of a day's best hours. There are two sides, and San Francisco's boutique-lined streets -- Haight, Church, Valencia -- are divided between them.

The blogger (Andrew on right) captured in a rare moment of brunch-positivity. Photo by Rich Good.

Last Tuesday, S.F. Chronicle writer Trey Bundy tackled brunch-positivity in his People Meter column, opening with the following salvo:

"San Franciscans are a vocal lot when it comes to waiting on Muni, but apparently don't mind waiting half the morning to order breakfast."

He'd sidled up to crowds of hopeful patrons at Boogaloos and Dottie's True Blue Cafe two days prior, and peppered them with the sorts of questions brunch-negative people often contemplate posing: How long are you willing to wait for this brunch? What makes waiting for so long worthwhile? What would you do with more free time, assuming you spent less of it waiting for brunch?

Reading the responses, I was surprised to find that the waits were even longer than I'd imagined, and the reasons for doing so seriously non-compelling. The great Millie Jackson once sang that "anything worth having is worth waiting on." She wasn't talking about the green gravy with carrot chunks at Boogaloos. This substance is not one of Sam-I-Am's less successful forays into the culinary world; to a few of the quoted, it's a real treat deserving of an hour-long dally on the sidewalk. I've had it, and though it is reasonably palatable, it is, unlike a pig roast, a trip to Hog Island, or a mammoth fish fry, not a food around which to plan a day.

Thankfully, brunch-positives are not waiting for food at all. The soft, crunchy, creamy, salty, and sweet kinds of food enjoyed at brunch are signifiers of the desired experience, not the whole of it. At such a time, when Beringer's cobwebs droop low, whether from a hangover as wicked as the cook's or the queasy dregs of a tough week at work, the waiting to eat is probably as valued as the eating itself, not to mention the obvious habit-shaped act of sitting down, ordering, getting coffee, passing the paper, observing other tables, and conversing with your companions. You're supposed to wait. Brunch is satisfying because you know what you're waiting for and what to expect. There are no surprises. The cafe is loud, swollen with chatter and the clatter of a hundred plates. Water is slow to arrive, and when it does, you finish it quickly and want more. Your head throbs, but help is on the way. Godot is a criminally-overpriced mess of eggs, nothing more, but if you order him, he really will come, and everything else will fall into place -- while the rest of the world whizzes by.

Oliveto Chef Paul Canales directs the nightly "testing" of dishes prior to service at the restaurant. Photo by Carl Costas, Sacramento Bee

Like Hollywood actors, some chefs will claim that they don't pay attention to the critics. The reality, of course, is that they do.

A good review, in a prominent publication or media outlet, can help launch an upstart restaurant or attract new customers to an old one. A bad one can sink the newcomer or spell trouble for a venerated establishment.

Oliveto, the Italian restaurant in Oakland where I've been interning since April, has enjoyed its share of published praise. In her latest edition of the "Food Lover's Pocket Guide" to San Francisco and the Bay Area, food critic Patricia Unterman writes that Oliveto "sets the standard for Italian cooking in America."

Last month, the restaurant staff was buoyed by a glowing endorsement by Marcella Hazan, an author of several award winning Italian cookbooks. Writing in The Daily Beast, Hazan said she "would eat at Oliveto in Oakland every day" if she lived in the Bay Area.

Yet those appraisals were quickly overshadowed last week when Michael Bauer, the food critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, published his first major review of the restaurant since 1996.

In a nine-paragraph column, Bauer said that his last two visits to the restaurant were disappointing. He criticized the service, the atmosphere and the food, and knocked the restaurant down from 3 1/2 stars to two.

"It could be that others have caught up and that Oliveto has slipped," wrote Bauer, noting the restaurant's legacy in inspiring other chefs and restaurants across the region.

When I arrived at Oliveto on Friday, the day after the review appeared, I expected the kitchen to be buzzing about the review. Instead, it seemed just like a normal day -- busy.

The restaurant's annual tomato dinners were less than a week away, and so chefs and cooks were scurrying about, making preparations for those elaborate suppers.

Yet as the morning wore on, it became clear that the review was the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Nobody wanted to touch it, but it was pretty hard to ignore.

Server Eric Schwier puts a shine on one of the "workmanlike" wine glasses at Oliveto. Photo by Carl Costas, Sacramento Bee

One server volunteered that customers were asking about it in the cafe on the morning it appeared. Another made a joke about the "workmanlike glasses" he was handling, a reference to one of the swipes in Bauer's review.

When Chef Paul Canales arrived in the kitchen, he seemed to be as chipper as normal. But then he spent some time with a business manager looking over past reservation lists. Both were trying to determine which night Bauer might have dined (based on the menu items he ordered) and who was cooking on various stations.

"I think I might have been cooking pasta that night," said Canales. "It might have been me!"

To be sure, it wasn't a complete surprise that the Chronicle was preparing a negative review. Bauer was a huge fan of former Oliveto Chef Paul Bertolli, who trained Canales and helped establish the restaurant's reputation. In 1996, Bauer gave Oliveto four stars for food and 3 1/2 stars overall, claiming that Bertolli was "producing the best Italian food in the Bay Area."

In 2005, however, Bertolli left Oliveto in a fallout with the owners and Canales was promoted to executive chef. As the Chronicle reported that year, Canales had actually been acting chef for some time, as Bertolli grew more interested in starting his own salumi business.

The trouble signs started in January. After eating cheap food in Texas and Oklahoma, Bauer filed a blog post questioning if Oliveto was overpriced.

A few months later, he dropped Oliveto from his Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants list, a choice that baffled at least one other food writer.

In his current review, Bauer clearly was disappointed with the restaurant's appearance and service.

"If you look around the room, you see the workmanlike glasses on the tables, worn and scarred chairs, and a service staff that on my visits seemed too small for the number of seats. The waiters are good but couldn't cover the room; we waited 15 minutes for wine and practically that long before anyone had enough time to check to see if we wanted dessert."

He also had little good to say about the food.

The treviso radicchio salad with lonza (cured pork tenderloin) was "sodden." The meatballs on one of the pastas were "mushy," as were the sand dabs on another plate, he wrote.

A "lukewarm" plate of pancetta-wrapped rabbit cost Oliveto some stars from food critic Michael Bauer. Photo by Carl Costas, Sacramento Bee

"The pancetta-wrapped rabbit was lukewarm, and the braised butter lettuce underneath was cool in some spots and warm in others, arranged on the plate with a loose, red, juicy sauce. The spit-roasted pork loin ($28) is redolent of the farm and the fire, but the sour cherry and black currant compote stripped it of its natural flavor and the firm, freshly milled polenta and salty greens were a disserve to the succulent meat."

I can't argue with Bauer about the service and atmospherics. Oliveto's servers are terrifically knowledgeable about food, but sometimes they are so undermanned they must scramble to get plates out to the dining room. That's one reason the restaurant's carpets are frayed, one detail that escaped Bauer's eye.

I also don't doubt that Bauer was served some disappointing dishes on his last visit. I just question if those miscues were representative of what other customers experience.

Over the last five months, I've heard from dozens of readers, friends and acquaintances who've eaten at Oliveto. All have raved about the food and the service.

Any review of Oliveto needs to at least acknowledge the restaurant's innovations, such as its special dinners and use of old-world techniques. After years of eating in the Bay Area, I have yet to find a restaurant that offers Oliveto's variety of handmade pastas. If anything, Canales has improved the restaurant's pasta by working to procure the finest flours and eggs with the richest yolks.

It's also curious the bulk of Bauer's critique was based on a single visit to Oliveto, and that only one other guest accompanied him. At most big-city newspapers, restaurant reviewers invite at least two or three other people to join them, so they can sample the widest array of dishes. By not doing so, Bauer didn't give his readers a full sense of the Oliveto menu.

Among some at the restaurant, there's a suspicion that Bauer has a personal bias against Oliveto, and thus didn't invest much energy in reviewing it. "Ever since Bertolli left, he's had it in for us," said one of the cooks. "There is no way we can win."

Yet that sentiment is hardly universal. When I brought it up, one long-time server, Molly Surbridge, said it would be a mistake for the chefs and staff to get defensive.

"Some of his criticisms are valid," she said. "Instead of focusing on him, we should use his critique to figure out how to make this a better restaurant, not for him, but for us."

I found Molly's comment to be wise beyond her years. It's a reflection of why Oliveto is a special place to work.

The owners, chefs and servers take a lot of pride in what they do, but not to the point of avoiding introspection. Bauer's review, while off the mark in many ways, will undoubtedly spur Oliveto to engage in some healthy reflection.

After all, if you run a restaurant, you constantly have to ask yourself: How can I make it better?

For five years now, Manivanh, a smallish place on 24th Street near Hampshire, has been one of my very favorite neighborhood restaurants in town. It's a completely unremarkable-looking Thai joint unceremoniously dumped at the grimiest edge of the Mission District, out of step with the strip's bevy of taquerias, hair salons, and, more recently, art galleries and hipster donut stands. For three years, I lived two blocks away, not far from 24th and Utah, where Jack's Club cheerfully presides over the corner. Manivanh holds just over a dozen tables, half of them empty most nights. The servers frequently look as fried as Krispy Kremes, their eyes distant and glazed. Between orders, they crane their necks to stare up at the television hovering above the counter. One afternoon, when all the area liquor stores were closed for a holiday, the host sold me a few beers to-go without so much as a blink. Manivanh is not a hole-in-the-wall, some Bourdanian treasure where fears of gastrointestinal trauma accompany each tasty bite. The interior is clean and warm, even pleasant. The neighborhood is fine, even though the 24th Street drunks' hacking coughs rattle through the window panes and swaying grocery cart barges skitter along the sidewalk outside. Satay and pad thai don't spark the excitement food-obsessed city residents work up over tacos. Everyone has a favorite Thai lunch place socked away somewhere -- the stuff of cheap lunch specials and coconut-creamed ice teas in tall plastic cups. Manivanh is a true find, unusual precisely because it's so good yet so relentlessly unexceptional in its design and scope, a regular, everyday restaurant without a whiff of marketing mojo and no rugged street food cred. Few would think to sniff it out and even fewer would bother writing about it, but I beseech you all the same to discover it, to walk down 24th Street until you can clearly hear the hum and screech of 101. Look to your left, see the sign, sit down, and order the larb-ped.

Isn't it larb-ly?

Larb is not a sludge-metal band from Florida or a faintly embarrassing medical condition. Larb may actually be those things as well, but the larbs I know first-hand are meat salads: fish sauce-y melanges in innumerable lovely variations, popular throughout Laos as well as Thailand. Refreshing and bold, Manivanh's larb-ped -- minced duck, lettuce, mint, and red onion laced with a chili-flecked lemon dressing -- is heady, almost druggy in its deliciousness, unsettlingly, crazily flavorful -- a sweet, benevolent Klaus Kinski on the palette. In the past four months, I've taken three different groups of people to Manivanh, and every single neophyte has gone batty for this minor miracle of taste and texture. I wandered down with a friend on the eve of his flight back to Philadelphia and he, upon spooning up the last bit, wondered out-loud if he could pack a few orders to bring back to the city of brotherly love. "The duck -- it's like bacon, except somehow better," another friend remarked on the night of his conversion, reaching for a third helping, unsubtly trying to snag more than his fair share of the chewy, crispy bits. Manivanh's menu beckons with many very good things, like grilled pork, chicken with chiles, onion, and fresh basil, and fried bean cake with cashews and roasted curry paste. Yet this one dish -- the transcendent larb-ped -- sends the restaurant over the top, searing it into heart and memory. Again and again, I recommend Manivanh to anyone interested -- because I want others to know it and cherish it as well.

Still, a few weeks ago, in bed, watching the long-awaited "No Reservations: San Francisco" on my laptop, I was happy not to see forkfuls of that fine ducky goodness disappearing into Anthony Bourdain's gaping maw.

Over the course of that episode, he painted a broad strokes portrait of the San Francisco he wanted to hate, a city where the good stuff has to be pried out from beneath sheet-rock layers of weak Chez Panisse-y silliness. It's a pretty cool town, he seemed to say, so long as you keep it real among the hordes of smug, self-righteous yoga mat people telling you how to eat -- in his mind, villains more onerous than greedy landlords, creeps, loud-talking Muni lunatics, and fickle fault-lines.

His pal Zamir's meltdown in Romania, however bizarre and mortifying, was, as Bourdain might intone on a clips show voice-over, good television. Making fun of vegetarians in San Francisco is not. The tall, gray host is usually much more insightful than he was here, using food as a trusty lens through which to respectfully experience the ways people live around the world. He likes delving into the preposterous, the campy, and the down-and-dirty. When it comes to eating on camera, fried squeazel, pig's eyes, chicken asses, and seven-pound tortas are his ripe texts, ideal, semi-shocking stuff he can stretch into funny, alcohol-soaked, highly watchable lessons of cultural interest.

A pedestrian pleasure such as Manivanh wouldn't interest Bourdain, at least for the sake of his show. For that, I am thankful. I like my larb line-less, my beloved local gems broadcasted via whispers, not ear-splitting bellows from some perch on Foodie Mountain where he sits every Monday, leather-jacketed, hung-over, racked with indigestion, clutching his megaphone. That's It, the deli with the seven-pound torta, sits a block away from where I currently live. One day, it was my corner store, and, the next, I had to squeeze through a mob just to get a tall can from the cooler in the back.

It may not make for good television, but you can learn a lot about the way we live from something so mundane as a neighborhood restaurant and its way with one dish -- maybe not from Manivanh specifically, but from establishments like it. In my reality, of which I am, of course, captain, Manivanh serves the best Thai food in the city. The rest of the world doesn't have to agree. Manivanh's Yelp reviews are high, four stars, on average, with some disgruntled customers, as usual, chirping up to soil the spread. Interestingly, the gripes people air about Manivanh are often very specific and personal, super-subjective criticisms unbound by universally persuasive criteria. One reviewer complains about too many onions. Another bemoans the absence of white-meat chicken. A vegetarian whines about fish sauce in the silver noodles she'd thought were meatless, claiming that the waitress rolled her eyes when she shared her grievance, which Bourdain, had he been there, hovering in the corner like a spectral watchdog, would have done too. People are inclined to be inflexible about what they eat at cheap neighborhood restaurants, particular to the point of weird, preschool-y pickiness. We want what we want, when we want it, how we think it should be made -- usually the way we've learned to like it somewhere else. Eggplant is not my favorite vegetable, but I wouldn't tell Thomas Keller that if he prepared it for me. Yet if I ordered larb-ped at another Thai restaurant, and for some stupid reason, it arrived topped with a heaping portion of soggy eggplant, I might not go back to try anything else. In such restaurants, perhaps we're really seeking personal chefs challenged to solve the mysteries of our individual tastes without clues, or an unwavering Applebee's from the block, consistently supplying whatever specific eating experience it is we desire, wherever we go. For those who've learned to love it somewhere else, it takes a lot to go out of your way to try larb like this, to begin a new relationship with a familiar food rendered foreign all over again. But, if you do, as Rick said at the end of "Casablanca," as he strode off into the mist with Captain Louis, it might be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Manivanh
map
2732 24th Street
(between Hampshire and Potrero)
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 552-3534

Here is a photo slideshow from the San Francisco Street Food Festival 2009 that took place Saturday Aug 22, 2009 in the Mission District. The event was a benefit for the non-profit La Cocina.

photos by Wendy Goodfriend

Recap of the Event: SF Street Food Fanatics Unite
Lick My Spoon recaps the Street Food Scavenger Hunt
Listen to KQED's Forum program on Street Food and find out about pavement cuisine resources and events.