The Waffle Mania Truck

I'll admit it. I rarely drive downtown. Now I'm probably going to sound about twice my age when I tell you why, but I'm OK with that. I like to stick to the neighborhoods in San Francisco where friends live, where you can occasionally find parking, where your quarter gets you more than five minutes in the meter. In the short time that I've lived in the city, I've quickly discovered the frustrations of MUNI and have concluded that, apparently, after crossing Market Street I lose all sense of direction I may have once had.

That being said, I wanted to check out Waffle Mania this week, and I'd heard that the truck was spending more time in the city on a little side street in SOMA. I knew what this meant. That's right, folks: I was going downtown. And I'm here to report that I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Tehama Street in SOMA: where you can find hot waffles on Tuesday and Friday mornings.

So what's the draw? For me, waffles are the ultimate comfort food. While some people would vote for macaroni and cheese or chicken potpie, waffles are it for me. They're warm and fluffy and a little bit sweet-- great with coffee and a good excuse to eat a little whipped cream in the morning. What more do you need?

The classic powdered sugar waffle at Waffle Mania

The "waffle man" that many people seek out is, more often than not, Alain Dupont (while there are a few other business partners, Dupont is frequently working the waffle irons). While he's a familiar face at many of the local markets, the Tehama Street routine is new. I asked Dupont why he decided to spend more time in San Francisco and how he chose the quiet, unassuming street. After doing a very successful catering event in mid-November at BarrelHouse (@barrelhousesf), friend and marketing guru Marcus Colombano encouraged Alain to come down to BarrelHouse on a more permanent basis, and the CBS folks across the street have welcomed him with open arms. The rest seems to be history.

If I had the clout the CBS employees do, I'd request something similar in my neighborhood. The waffles are pretty remarkable. They're different than the light, airy Belgian waffles I've had in the past. As I was watching Dupont make them inside the truck, I noticed the dough's actually a sturdy little ball rather than the batter that most of us are used to making at home.

Alain Dupont lining up a fresh round of waffles

According to the So Good website where Dupont orders the imported Belgian dough, these are Liege waffles with 300 years of culinary tradition behind them. I did a little research and the liege waffle is a type of Belgian waffle that's made with a dense dough and is baked with little bits of sugar inside which, when cooked, give the waffles an almost caramelized, buttery, slightly crispy top.

Keeping it simple: the menu choices at Waffle Mania

While I was tempted by the Nutella Waffle, I ultimately wanted to taste the real, unadulterated waffle I'd been hearing so much about. The meter was ticking. My quarters were about to run out. I had powdered sugar all over my camera bag and, sure enough, I got lost trying to get back to my 'hood. But it was all worth it in the end. In fact, you may find me right back there on Tuesday.

GET SOME!
Tues. and Fri.: Tehama St., between First and Second St, San Francisco. 8am-12pm (or until they run out which often happens around 10:30).

Wed. Civic Center Farmers Market: 1182 Market St. between Eighth and Grove St., San Francisco. 8am-12pm.

Thurs. and Sun. Marin Farmer's Market: 76 San Pablo Ave., San Rafael. 8am-1pm

Sat. Grand Lake Farmer's Market: Intersection of Grand Lake and Park Ave., Oakland. 9am-2 pm

Follow on Twitter: @wafflemaniaSF

Sshhh…don't tell!

When I started procrastinating about an hour ago, Facebook group Secret San Francisco was at 42,654 members. Now, it's at 43,736 members. A mere 10 days ago, it was just a glint in Jamie Quint's eye.

The 24-year-old entrepreneur started this group based on the model of Secret London, which went from zero to 180,000 members in under 20 days. The group is an open forum for people to spill San Francisco's best kept secrets, from restaurants and bars, to events, shows, and random cool things to do.

Discussion boards contain threads on topics like Best Sandwich, Best Brunch (for foodies not alchies), and Best Outdoor Workout…to burn off all those carbs and eggs benedicts. There is even a brief diatribe that ensues when an out-of-towner catastrophically requests some good tips on where to go when she visits "Frisco" this summer. Eeek. Poor thing won't be uttering that jaunty little nickname for a long time.

There is a lot of noise on the Wall, but search and you are bound to happen upon a hidden gem or two, and get inspired to plan an excursion the next time you have a free weekend.

Now, I know we all love the Internet and everything, but still…it is remarkable how popular this group has become in such a short time. Is it because we all love a juicy secret? Is it because we're bored? Or because Yelp reviews are too hiply cryptic to understand sometimes?

In a time and place where Twitter-roving street food carts are the new speakeasies, slinging Kung Fu Tacos and Sexy Soup to the masses willing to seek them out, "underground" is the new black, and "secret" is the new twenty.

SF Underground Farmers Market, 01.28.10

Just ask any one of the hundreds of kombucha-thirsty flavor-ravers who turned out for the Underground Farmers Market last month.

Mission Street Food, 01.28.10

Or walk by Lung Shan on a Thursday or Saturday night, when an unassuming Chinese restaurant turns into the packed, twinkle-lit, pop-up restaurant, Mission Street Food.

Perhaps we gravitate to these projects because they exude a sense of authenticity, of being "in the know", and part of something special and communal. Or, it could simply be...some things are just too good to keep to ourselves.

Flavor-ravers, SF Underground Farmers Market

Secret San Francisco Facebook Group
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An East Coaster gets his first taste of In-N-Out Burger. Photo by Michael V. Chopko

Growing up, my house was healthy. Bran stocked the cupboard, gallons of skim milk sat in the fridge. We didn't eat fast food except on rare occasions. On busy nights, my parents picked up sprout-laden sandwiches and baked potatoes from our nearest Fresher Cooker franchise. After multi-million dollar losses year after year, the locally-owned company (conceived as a healthy alternative to burger joints) filed for bankruptcy, folded, and the restaurant in the strip mall parking lot near my house fell apart and came back together as a Skyline Chili.

Fast food mainly happened on road trips then, when we'd drive from Louisville to New Orleans or Northern Florida for a vacation. I remember one drive down with my brother and dad. I must have been ten. We stopped for fries and Arch Deluxes. I had a fish sandwich. An hour later, not far from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, my brother started throwing up. He hadn't been poisoned; he was car-sick, a tendency worsened by his habit of doodling in notebooks as the Volvo heaved and pitched over I-65's pocked surface. We stopped at a gas station so my dad could clean him off and buy a styrofoam cooler. My brother was still throwing up, leaning out of the car, near the pump. A scraggly old yokel sauntered over. "What's wrong with 'im?" he asked, practically chuckling. My brother threw up into the cooler all the way to Hattiesburg. As soon as he was done, he wanted another burger. Vegetarianism dulled the allure of fast food for a while, but even in college, it permeated the culture. My senior year, I lived next to a Rax, a pitiful little lump of a franchise my friends and I always assumed was the last of its kind in the country -- so disconnected so under-patronized that perhaps -- like Edwina, the cookie-baking dinosaur -- it hadn't gotten wind of its own extinction. Then, for some people, going for fries at Rax was as palatably ironic an act as stacking toilet sculptures in the main quad or carefully growing a neat cop-style mustache to sport above a bemused smirk.

Today, I avoid fast food. I strive to eat healthily, responsibly, and well -- and I manage to get two out of three right most of the time. In other words, if I'm going to eat fried chicken, it's going to be good fried chicken -- featuring a bird whose life was reasonably pleasant prior to its sudden conclusion. However, this general rule isn't always easy to follow. Over the last five years, I have spent a lot of time touring around the country playing music -- and eating on the road in any way resembling that to which I am accustomed in San Francisco is tough if not impossible. If I were more of an urban homesteader, I'd make my own jerky, dry fruit, and roast nuts for snacks. Instead, ducking into parking lights, entranced by warm neon glows, I forage along the inter-states with wildly varying results. Thanks to a soggy half-rotten "veggie delight" foot-long somewhere in Michigan, I haven't eaten anything from Subway in three years, and I never will again. On the other hand, I have learned that Arby's makes a decent vegetable soup. Its coffee shakes are good too. I have also learned that Carl's Jr. has one healthy sandwich that doesn't make me feel sick after I eat it: the grilled chicken with barbecue sauce and crunchy lettuce on a whole wheat bun. The sauce tastes like low-cal ketchup dosed with liquid smoke, but I don't quibble. I'm always happy to see that yellow star rising up on a pole in the dark next to the highway. In general, grocery stores are better than restaurants. Whenever I stumble across a reasonably well-appointed one, I buy carrots, bananas, bread, and peanut butter, or some deli turkey and cheese. While these eats assault my body with less malice, something remains appealing about fast food on the road, particularly when it's eaten in the car, as music hums from the stereo, and the windows rattles as the wheels tumble along. Towns give way to cities, suburbs, and towns again. The windshield steams up from unwrapped burgers. A greasy smell oozes into the upholstery and hangs in the air between the front seats. Ketchup packets fall on the van floor. Someone steps on one, and he is cursed as red spits across the carpet.

On the West Coast, In-N-Out Burger -- every famous chef's favorite drive-through -- reigns supreme. My band was heading up from Los Angeles last weekend. As we approached the parking lot, the keyboardist, a Lebowski fan visiting from D.C., awoke from a two-hour nap and practically dived out of the rolling van to get his first taste. While little approaches a double-double animal-style, the Midwest and East Coast offer a few nice options you can't get out here. Wawa, a Mid-Atlantic chain of convenience stores, has excellent sandwiches you can customize via touch-screen. Frequently found in service plazas along East Coast turnpikes, the Falls Church, Virginia-based Roy Rogers has the "Gold Rush" chicken sandwich, fried breast on a roll with bacon, melted provolone, and honey barbecue sauce. The closest White Castle outpost may be 1 and 1/3 days away from us by car -- in Shakopee, Minnesota to be exact -- but you can buy frozen sliders from Walgreen's stores anywhere. I know because I have done so from the one on 24th and Potrero.

Some fast food restaurants have short menus focusing on a specific culinary theme -- fried chicken and little besides fried chicken, just burgers, or chili -- and others, like Jack in the Box, for example, try to be all things for all customers, offering tacos, egg rolls, and cheese-steaks as well as burgers and fries. In my experience, the former -- focused, quality-conscious enterprises in the vein of In-N-Out Burger -- tend to be more successful. To play with the idea, I've come up with a few unique fast food concepts -- inspired appropriately by San Francisco -- to diversify the field.

Offal promises to stay hot in the food world. Falafel is a fast food Americans outside of cities don't know or trust yet. I was thinking a restaurant serving both could be both excellent and successful. Chris Cosentino and the proprietors of Old Jerusalem would have to consult. I would call it Fal-off-All in honor of Chik-fil-A and serve lavash wraps stuffed with fried sweetbreads, kidneys, and liver.

Mini-cassoulets. Sounds a little precious for sure, but I think even road-trippers in far-flung bastions of rigidity would warm up -- especially in snowy weather. I know I would have loved to stumble across a franchise of Le Petit Confit zipping across Nebraska several Februarys ago.

This past fall, New York City Momofuku impresario David Chang ticked off a bunch of sensitive locals when he semi-drunkenly accused low-watt San Francisco chefs of "fuckin' just serving figs on a plate." He might have been taking a cue from an expat. Over the summer, former A16 and SPQR chef Nate Appleman abruptly abandoned local stardom to move to New York in search of a louder buzz. He popped up in a New York Times profile to lightly dis San Francisco diners: "In San Francisco the audience is easy. You put tripe in a bowl and tell them it's from a humanely raised cow and they're going to eat it." In honor of both famous chefs' opinions, someone should start a faux-Chez Panisse fast food restaurant serving austere mockeries of the perfect-simple-thing-in-a-bowl motif: shriveled radish slices with table salt, canned pears with a touch of low-grade honey, and gassed half-green tomatoes with "balsamic" drizzles -- all served with pseudo-artisan sourdough bread. Bowls and Rolls -- it'll be huge, I'm telling you.

Six o'clock on Friday night, and the line outside the door at 17th and Capp was snaking down past the motorcycle repair shop and around the corner. Clutching brown paper bags of Sam Adams and Tecate, the crowd was a typical Mission mix: young guys in goatees with bike locks slung through their messenger bags, cool dads with baby strapped to their chests in slings, women staying warm in hand-knitted scarves and stripey fingerless gloves, even a few used-bookstore-looking folks with wild gray hair and heavy glasses.

What was the scene? An iPad giveaway? Lifetime free coffee at Four Barrel? A Radiohead jam session?

No, no, and no...instead, it was the second Underground Farmers' Market, organized by ForageSF's Iso Rabins. Essentially, an extra-groovy bake sale, held for no reason except to showcase the fun stuff being made by your friends and neighbors. What was on the table? All kinds of delights: kombucha by the jug, bags of peanut brittle and beef jerky, bergamot marmalade, white-grapefruit vanilla jelly, onion-bacon relish, lemonade, butternut-squash lasagna, little bowls of rice and mung-bean stew scooped out of Mason jars, acorn fudge, made-while-you-wait Indian chaat, corned-beef sandwiches, pumpkin pie by the slice, raw chocolate truffles, cupcakes, cucumber marmalade, kale, fresh chanterelles, granola, chipotle popcorn.

Photos by Wendy Goodfriend

Well, awesome, you may say. But this is San Francisco, hardly a raw-chocolate truffle—deprived place. Between our dozens of farmers' markets, our thousands of restaurants, and our many, many gourmet stores, why would anyone need to stand in line on Capp Street to score good food?

Because walking into a store and handing over money is easy. Anyone can do it. To get to the Underground Farmers Market, you had to know about it—through Rabins' own 1000+ person email list, through a re-tweet from a street-food cart, or from one of the many blog or media mentions that had been buzzing around the concept since the first market, held last December. Just like at a show by a new band, though, a lot of the attendees seemed to have gotten there the old-fashioned way: they had a friend selling stuff, or knew somebody who knew somebody who told them to check out this cool scene.

So there was the buzz factor, and the undeniable urban urge to be in at the beginning of the next new thing. And, like a warehouse show, there was a little of the Permits? We don't need no stinkin' permits feeling, too. After all, this was outlaw food, made by artisans canning on the far side of the law—in other words, brewing the 'buch or popping the corn in their home kitchens, uninspected by the health department.

Few of the vendors make their product professionally in commercial kitchens; for most, it's a fun side gig, something they were doing anyway for friends and family, a way to make a little extra money from a particular passion for chocolate or kimchee. (Of course, the continued stream of layoffs have made more and more people seek profit in their passion; at a recent SPUR panel discussion on the economics of street food, Imelda Reyes from the Department of Public Health said she gets 12 to 16 calls a day now from would-be street-food entrepreneurs curious about the permitting process, up from 2 or 3 a week a year ago.)

Is this how twentysomethings are rebelling now? As outlaw onion-bacon relish-makers, flaunting the law with their organic flax-seed crackers or park-foraged miners' lettuce? Whatever the reasoning, the scene was amazingly cheerful. This was a church social of a different stripe, bringing together like-minded urbanites eager not just to shop and nibble (although shop they did) but to to put a face on their food, talking pickling, swapping project ideas, sharing chicken coop innovations and enthusing about the excellence of Fatted Calf's butchery classes. That bunch of mustard greens? Grown and bunched by Patricia on an eighth-of-an-acre vacant lot in Berkeley, thanks to a friendly landlord happy to see vegetables sprouting instead of weeds and trash. That lemonade? Made by Robin from lemons picked in her friend's backyard, and served up with peanut brittle "made from stuff I just had in my kitchen."

Selling my own hot-from-the-oven homemade bread, apricot jam and vanilla pear butter from a card table in the corner, it was easy to feel like instant friends with everyone to whom I handed a warm loaf. After all, I'd kneaded and shaped each bread just a few hours before, peeled every single pear after it was picked at an orchard I knew.

The recession may be fueling a renewed interest in home cooking and small-scale entrepreneurship, but money was definitely being spent. By 10pm, Becky of Urban Preserves estimated that she'd sold over half of the 150 jars she'd brought; Kitty of Kitty's Creations, who makes her products in her church's kitchen in the Sunset, had maybe 5 dozen left of the 14 dozen jars of jam, chutney, and relish she'd walked in with. Slow Jams, on the verge of going pro, charged $10 and up for their sleek jars of sweet and savory jams and relishes; by 9pm, they were sold out and packed up.

By 10:30pm, organizer Iso Rabins looked equally exhausted and thrilled, if a little stunned by the turnout. A lot of advance press and a savvy use of social media, combined with a particular young-urbanite quest for authenticity, had made the night's market popular beyond anything he'd imagined. For the next one, a bigger venue will clearly be necessary. How big can it go and still feel underground? How many of the novelty seekers will come back? How much jam and jerky does the city need? For the moment, it seems, that if you make it, they will come.

Watch This Week in Northern California tonight, Friday January 29 at 8pm to see Leslie Sbrocco, host of Check, Please! Bay Area in a new segment on local food and wine trends. This week, a conversation about restaurants and the recession and underground food markets with Bay Area Bites bloggers, Michael Procopio and Stephanie Rosenbaum.

Someone must close down the bar, but I am through volunteering for the position. This is not to say bourbon has lost its bloom, or that work days do not begin with brief foamy fantasies about the first cold beers to be cracked eight hours later. I can say (with a straight face) that serious carousing is an occupation for swollen wallets and spare time, and claim that, as of late, I have neither. I can rationalize moderation because I wake up very early and tire before last call the following morning. I can insist that going out is harder than staying in, especially when it's raining and there's work to do and Netflix in the mailbox. I can affect a jaded outlook, yawning that the sport of drinking doesn't hold the appeal it had ten years ago. I can label it a secondary activity, something I associate with games to watch, gigs to play, food to eat, and good conversations with friends. Big nights happen, yes, but usually on accident, I can say -- candidly, with no regrets.

Those are all parts of the problem (if embracing moderation can ever be considered one) but the real reason, the one that really has me avoiding bars and heading home early when I can't, is that these days, when I drink too much, my hangovers hit like Mike Tyson circa 1986. After a few too many, I wake up stuffy, morose, disoriented, ugly, and sore. I don't ever get sick, but I forget details about where I went and who I saw. I don't have the energy to do the things that the day ahead demands, and my mood plummets correspondingly. When I was 20, I could shake off boozy sweats, dehydration, and body aches, and spring out of bed after five hours of sleep to bound around the house, read, study, and socialize -- all miraculously on an empty stomach. Now, on those increasingly infrequent occasions where I over-indulge, I am discovering that I desperately require food -- breakfast maybe, or at least a snack of heroic proportions -- to piece myself together again.

Restorative noshing is welcome immediately after the party, or hours later, upon waking. The fact that I've only really realized this in the latter half of my twenties probably says something about my learning curve in general. If hunger pangs strike on the way home from the bar, possibilities are limited. Most restaurants aren't open. Chorizo tacos from El Farolito and Taqueria Vallarta hit the spot. I haven't been, but Nombe, the new-ish izakaya on Mission St., has a late-night take-out window selling ramen to revelers staggering home. Sometimes, an attack on the refrigerator is the best and cheapest recourse. I went out on Saturday night and stayed out -- gasp -- until 1 a.m. When I came home I realized nearly everything in the house that I felt like eating was being saved for a dinner with my dad the following night -- sausage for pizza, bread for croutons, and olives. Instead, I microwaved some leftover white rice and added salt and a few squirts of srirachi sauce. Something with srirachi sauce usually does the trick. Lately, I've also been especially enjoying plain corn tortillas roasted on a cast-iron skillet and then topped with srirachi and a few creamy squiggles of Kewpie mayonnaise. I do two at a time, folded over like miniature fusion-y quesadillas, and eat them fast, usually burning my mouth in the process.

For those disinclined to wallow in gastronomic gutters, there is also, of course, street food -- bacon dogs, tamales, and the ever-growing assortment of heavily Twittered carts that tend to pop up on corners outside the doors of drinking establishments. As good as some of this stuff is (I'm thinking about you, gumbo guy), such trendy offerings come with long lines, and waiting fifteen minutes for a grilled flatbread behind a bunch of ravenous drunk people is rarely an attractive option when you're ravenous and drunk yourself. Fifteen minutes? I could be home by then, putting the final drizzle of srirachi on a corn tortilla, wearing the sweats, watching a little Larry David before passing out with a smile on my face.

Tortilla with srirachi and Kewpie mayonnaise. You won't see this in Saveur.

Alcohol stirs the strangest cravings the morning after. Some people wake up and go for eggs, pancakes, waffles, sausage, and other conventional breakfast-y things. There is scientific logic to this. Eggs contain cysteine, a substance that breaks down the hangover-causing toxin acetaldehyde in the liver. Fruit juice actually hastens the rate at which a body gets ride of toxins like those generated by alcohol metabolism. Bananas, also common at breakfast, replace potassium lost to alcohol's diuretic tendencies. Fried or stupendously unhealthy foods appeal because sufferers suspect that grease will soothe their irritated stomach linings -- nevermind the fact that it's more likely to have the opposite effect. Psychology is powerful, however, especially the morning after losing brain cells, and I think that sometimes people condition themselves to crave the very things that will hurt them more. It's, in the long run, a fairly harmless sort of self-loathing -- sitting down to a plate of battered chicken, savoring the punishment disguised as a cure, letting your over-taxed body pay the tab your inconsiderate brain racked up. Some treat their morning afflictions like illness and self-medicate with more austere feasts -- steamed vegetables, spicy broths, and so on.

Every year, usually when New Year's Eve approaches, publications feel it necessary to run stories about hangovers and how to avoid them. Typically, these pieces involve interviews with bartenders, operating under the assumption that these callous dispensers of liquid poison know something about recovery too. On Christmas Eve, Grub Street consulted some mixologists on the subject, and the responses were fairly telegraphed, with most suggesting hair of the dog remedies. Likewise, a Dec. 31 Examiner article expanded the sample group and saw similar results, with respondents largely sticking to the guns articulated by their respective professions. The bartender recommended more booze. The personal trainer advocated drinking plenty of water and working out. The doctor condemned drinking too much in the first place. The acupuncturist suggested acupuncture. I'm not sure if I have a profession to stick to, but I have done both drinking and thinking in my day, and for that reason, I hesitate to press any so-called "cures" on others. Hangovers are, after all, very personal things. I will however share a few meals that I have managed to enjoy under the bleariest of circumstances:

Indian buffet. This goes back to a summer home from college. The morning after a long night, some friends and I went to an Indian restaurant attached to a worn motel. After three plates of chicken korma, saag paneer, and samosas, I felt well enough to spend the rest of the day at the zoo. I'm not sure if there's a San Francisco equivalent, but once I woke up in San Jose, went to New Indian Cuisine, and came away again convinced that naan is merely Advil slicked with ghee.

A breaded chicken torta with chipotles from La Torta Gorda. I'm always momentarily tempted to get a junior, but the full is the way to go. Go home, eat half, and put the remainder in the fridge. Get some covers and stretch out on the couch. Watch basketball or half a season of a television show you've already seen. Look up at the clock. It's nearly dinner-time. Good thing you have a brick-sized piece of torta to eat.

A pickle, dill.

Soup. I'm a soup person -- that could be a post in and of itself -- but it doesn't help my hangovers unless it's French onion from Ti Couz, with some seafood salad and maybe a mushroom crepe on the side.

Chicken fingers and waffle fries with ranch dressing from Phat Philly. This is actually my girlfriend's thing. She's yelling at me from the other room to include it.

John Campbell's Irish Bakery. Once, a few years ago, I was staying out at my dad's in the Richmond District -- dog-sitting, house sitting, and cable-watching -- and I woke up after a night out with a painkiller-resistant headache, a sour hollow stomach, and my dad's whippet dashing around the bed in frantic circles. I had hopped off the 38 at 1:30 a.m. and decided to grab one more at the Blarney Stone. Pulling on a coat, leashing the dog, and stepping out into the stabbing mist, I walked back to the scene of the crime and had a piece of pizza (it might have been called "focaccia") from John Campbell's, the fantastic bakery next door to the 'Stone. This was like nothing you'd see at A16, Flour + Water, or even Pizza Hut. There was turkey or ham in cubes, peppers and onions, maybe. A white sauce and cheese, I want to say. The dog was whimpering, begging for a taste. I can't recall the details, but the slice (a slab, really) was like a combination of stew and scone, or an upside-down pot pie even -- bread-y, bland, and bad, at least as far as pizza goes. Yet held to a different standard -- alcohol absorption -- it delivered -- nearly as well as a corn tortilla with hot sauce and mayo.

KQED Radio's Forum: The Decade in Food
In the past decade, the Bay Area's hippest food has changed from teetering geometric towers of raw tuna to a simple slab of pork with a side of potatoes. The dainty Apple-tini ordered in the early part of the decade has given way to the masculine Manhattan. Forum talks about the food and cocktail trends of the decade.

Host: Scott Shafer
Guest: Lessley Anderson, senior editor of Chow.com

Making amazing snails in District 1, Oc Huong Pho Mai

I've been eating myself silly the past 15 days -- I know, what's new. But no, this has been a really special kind of silly. The eating-my-way-through Vietnam kind of silly!

Well, to be more specific, not quite all of Vietnam, since an unexpected detour to Hong Kong for a roundtrip price of $150 proved too tempting to pass up, but for sure, through a majority of Ho Chi Minh City (a.k.a. Saigon).

There is a good reason why even hardened eaters like Anthony Bourdain have fallen so in love with the cuisine of Vietnam. It's fresh, vibrant, varied, and satisfying without feeling gluttonously heavy.

And, most often, it is cooked on the spot, right before your eyes, on the street, by someone who has been making that one particular dish over and over, for years, decades, quite possibly, generations.

Since Hua's father and uncles are locals, we had the benefit of zipping about on the back of their motorbikes (amongst the unimaginable number of other motorbikes on the road), being led by the nose to some of the most delicious food I have ever tasted.

That's a big statement, I know, but I stand by it. These local favorites are something special. Purveyors of food so good, so exciting, so complex in flavor yet simple in execution, I ate like I was starved (which is absurd because I don’t think I once felt the sensation of "hunger" the entire trip). I now pass this joy to you. Go seek these places/dishes out:

Cha Gue, Nen Nha Dat

Place: Nen Nha Dat
While I don't think this is the real "name" of this vendor, this is what the sign says above the storefront where this little set-up is situated.
Dish: Cha Gue (pronounced "chow gway")
Translation: Pan-fried Rice Flour Cake with Egg
Address: 91 Ha Ton Quyen (cross street: Tan Thanh) - P.15, Q.5

Awaiting Cha Gue

Located in District 5, sort of like the Chinatown of HCMC, Hua's dad took us here for a snack on Day 1. The bar was set high early.

The dish consisted of thick, rectangular pieces of pan-fried rice flour cake. The perfect golden crisp on the outside is beautifully offset by the smooth, supple texture on the inside.

When the rice cakes are nearing the end of their browning, an egg is cracked over them and the rich orange-hued yolk is broken. Throw a handful of minced green onion on the pan to warm through, and add bits of fried onion, fried pork skin (like little precious bits of chicharrones), and garlic. The dish is then served with a side of homemade pickled daikon and carrot slaw, and a savory dipping sauce of sweet soy sauce and a dollop of chili sauce.

Cha Gue, Nen Nha Dat

The Cha Gue, hot off the pan, had this corner bumpin', and even in the rain people were pulling up on their motorbikes and shouting their orders to-go from the street.

Apparently, business is so good that the owner doesn't want to grow his operations because he's afraid he wouldn't be able to handle the volume. Interesting how this kind of success would inspire a very different response back home, as I envisioned a fleet of Kogi taco trucks multiplying like rabbits in the streets of LA.

Wok-fried Snails, Oc Huong Pho Mai

Place: Oc Huong Pho Mai
Dish: Wok-fried Snails in a heavenly sauce
Translation: Bliss
Address: 37/3 Nguyen Cauh Chan - Q.1

After day of shopping in Saigon Square we were carted off to rejuvenate ourselves with a little pre-dinner feast of the most amazing snails I've ever had.
I was skeptical as we turned onto a tiny, dimly-lit, nondescript, side-street. It would have been a little sketchy if it wasn't for the insanely cute kindergarten class that was being held a few doors down.

Cute kids near snails

The set up of the shop was typical -- a kitchen (comprised of a few burners and a grill) that spilled out from the ground floor of someone's home onto the street, a few small tables and chairs along the street, and an extra bonus here, a lady squeezing fresh sugarcane juice right across the street! It couldn't have been better.

Making fresh sugarcane juice

We over-ordered of course, and out came dishes of small snails, large snails, clams, crab, even balut!

For those unfamiliar, balut is a fertilized duck egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside that is boiled and then eaten out of the shell with a spoon. You heard right, a partial chick (please don't hate me). Since it was my first time trying this delicacy, I was advised not to look directly at it (kind of like that adage of not staring into the sun). The texture can be challenging if you're squeamish, and you can't help but look too closely, but the flavor was good. As expected, a combo of an egg and chicken, but all in one bite. A little dish of salt and pepper mixed with lemon juice added a nice kick of flavor, and of course, some herbage, coriander leaves.

That was probably the most exotic thing I tried on this trip, but the snails! Those may have been the best. Boiled first to cook through, then finished off in a wok, seared until some magical sauce evaporated and coated the shells.

Bliss

The snails themselves were meaty and succulent, but the sauce, now that was truly extraordinary: a little creamy and cheesy, with a touch of sweetness, and a tinge of heat that played on our lips. It was caramelized into almost a crust on the shells. We unabashedly licked our fingers clean while still reaching for more. The flavor teased us as we chased after it, wanting to savor it, have more of it, freakin' bathe in it.

Hu Tiu Nam Vang, Tin Phuc

Place: Tin Phuc
Dish: Hu Tiu Nam Vang (pronounced "hoo tee-yoo nam vang")
Translation: Pork and Crab Noodle Soup
Address: 16 Duong Dinh Nghe (cross street: Cu Xa Binh Thoi) - P.8, Q.11

Tin Phuc

Tin Phuc is more of restaurant than actual street food, although, with its breezy architecture, you could technically drive right in if you really wanted to.

Regardless, it is delicious. Only one dish is served so you can't mess up the order: Hu Tiu Nam Vang. (In Cantonese we call it "gum been fun.") You can order it "dry" but the soup is so good that you probably won't want to.

Basically, hu tiu is a noodle soup similar to pho, but more seafood-based and with a light broth. Prior to this meal, I had never tasted it before, so I did some research on its origins. Vietnamese culinary expert Andrea Nguyen had much light to shed regarding this addictive dish. According to Andrea, "At its core, hu tieu signals a Chinese-Southeast Asian style noodle soup made with a pork bone broth and no fish sauce." But, there are many riffs on it, one of which is the Nam Vang style, "Nam Vang" being the Vietnamese word for Phnom Penh (the capital of Cambodia). Thus, Vietnam's proximity to Cambodia resulted in this Cambodian-Chinese concoction.

Herbage

Tin Phuc's rendition of Hu Tiu Nam Vang is divine. The soup is phenomenal, sweet and rich, made from the stock of pork bones and crab shells. The angel-hair-thin opaque rice noodles have just the right amount of springy chew to them. And the toppings are generous portions of pork meat, tendon and heart, crab meat, and shrimp. Tear up handfuls of leafy Romaine, Chinese celery and flat Chinese chives, add some crunchy bean sprouts, a touch of chili pepper, and you good to go.

The result is soul-satisfying. Warm, comforting, full of umami, fresh and healthy feeling. I bet a bowl of this could cure a cold like nobody's business.

The best part? Lunch for 5 people here rolled up to a mere $9.75 USD.

Street Scene

Back in September, Thy Tran wrote a great article on Street Food Beyond Festivals in which she compares the young street food culture in the U.S. to other places where it has been "long embedded into their daily rhythms." Witnessing the street food culture of Saigon brought that alive for me. Daily rhythm is right, it seemed like everyone eats out all the time whether it’s having your morning coffee delivered to your front door from the coffee lady down the street, getting some fruit to-go from the number of fruit vendors rolling around, or popping a squat on a little plastic chair at a tea-party-sized table for dinner. Sure, the convenience, affordability, and quality of product are all great. But it is the daily human interaction, the chit chat, the sense of community that comes with it, that makes this daily rhythm so soothing.

Nen Nha Dat (for Cha Gue)
91 Ha Ton Quyen (cross street: Tan Thanh) - P.15, Q.5
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Phone: 0903380574

Oc Huong Pho Mai (for Snails)
37/3 Nguyen Cauh Chan - Q.1
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Tin Phuc (for Hu Tiu Nam Vang)
16 Duong Dinh Nghe (cross street: Cu Xa Binh Thoi) - P.8, Q.11
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Phone: 3.9627977

Commonwealth Club's The Street Food Movement: SF Hearts the Cart panel

At the Commonwealth Club's Thursday night event, "The Street Food Movement: SF Hearts the Cart," a visibly upset Steven Gbdula (Gobba Gobba Hey) explained that Murat Celebi-Ariner of popular cart Amuse Bouche is being deported even though he's married to a U.S. citizen. ICE's holding him and he's not getting an appeal. At the post-event food tasting at 111 Minna St., Steven and Natalie (Bike Basket Pies) sported t-shirts that read "Free Murat" and other vendors had small signs expressing frustration with the situation.

Natalie of @bikebasketpies

The reaction to Murat's looming deportation highlights one of the major themes of the panel discussion: the importance of community and supporting one another. Murat actually encouraged Steven to start, tweeted about his delicious gobs (an East Coast treat reminiscent of the whoopie pie), and supported other vendors whole-heartedly. The affable Frenchman was a big presence at the 24th St. BART station and will be missed greatly by his customers, but also by the other vendors who have come to see him not just as a fellow business or even a competitor, but as a friend.

The panel discussion was moderated by Tamara Palmer, editor of Pavement Cuisine for SF Weekly and included Anthony Myint of Mission Street Food, Brian (aka the Magic Curry Cart), Steven Gbdula of Gobba Gobba Hey and Charles Phan from The Slanted Door (and Out The Door, Heaven's Dog, Academy Cafe). Questions were largely split into three categories: inspiration for starting the cart, challenges the vendors have faced, and what the future looks like for them.

Regarding getting started, Anthony Myint responded first (Tamara calling him the godfather of the street scene as he started in a taco truck and has since "graduated" to cooking meals twice a week in an actual kitchen). Anthony mentioned he was simply looking for something to do in his free time, and eventually he grew out of the taco truck. It was more about logistics than anything. Brian, the Magic Curry Man, originally opened to make a little extra cash and do something besides his day job as a psychotherapist. He'd traveled a great deal in Asia and noticed San Francisco was really missing street food, so he modeled his cart after one he'd seen in Bangkok. He practiced cooking for friends and scored an old cart from Burning Man. Once people started tweeting about it, the business grew exponentially.

Brian of @Magiccurrycart and Steven Gbdula of @GobbaGobbaHey

Steven moved to San Francisco exactly one year ago Friday and like Brian, noticed a lack of street food in the city, but more specifically, a lack of the beloved gob. He figured, "I can make these, but it's the Bay Area so I'm going to have to raise my game a little." And that he did, with gobs selling out frequently and admirers obsessively following his tweets. On the flip side, Charles Phan discussed how he originally wanted to open a street cart, but was so overwhelmed by the permit requirements and code restrictions that he was driven to open a "brick and mortar."

Charles Phan

Most vendors seemed to have a good sense of humor about the permit requirements and legal restrictions. Steven mentioned that he started with more of a tray than a cart and just walked around the Mission selling his gobs. When he'd see a police presence, he'd duck into doorways whistling inconspicuously. Since then, he's gone "more legitimate," baking in a commercial kitchen and wrapping and sealing his products before they hit the street. Brian mentioned that generally the cops are more concerned with noise or folks lined up blocking the streets.

Neither noise nor street obstructions were a factor at the post-panel street food gathering. The vendors set up in the modern art gallery with people packed in, trying to get their favorite street morsel before the next guy in line.

Post-event food tasting at 111 Minna

The vendors were borrowing kitchen tools and towels from one another and cracking jokes across the room. They all know one another and genuinely seem to care about their mutual success. One of Smitten Ice Cream's recent tweets reads: @@BikeBasketPies and @SmittenIceCream are teaming up today -- treat yourself to "a-la-mode" at Secret Alley (Capp btw 17th & 18th) 2 - 5 PM.. Robyn Sue, of newly formed Smitten Ice Cream explains how important collaboration is and how supportive and helpful the community has been in showing her the ropes.

Robyn Sue and "Kelvin" of @SmittenIceCream

My favorite sample was Robyn's ice cream. The salted caramel was churned out by her trusty (self-designed) machine, "Kelvin." Robyn spent a year constructing Kelvin, who debuted on the streets of San Francisco about a month ago. The bacon potato chips always make me happy, and the pumpkin pie with chocolate chips at Bike Basket Pies made me ponder switching up our family's Thanksgiving pie this year. The ginger cookies from Sweet Constructions were crispy and delightful--and of course, that crème brulee.

@BaconPotatoChip

@cremebruleecart

@sfcookies

So while the presence of carts may wane a bit in the coming rainy months, and while some vendors may eventually tweak their business model to become more "legit," one thing will remain the same: these folks are taking something they genuinely love doing and trying to make a go of it--together. But everything good must evolve, and when asked about their future plans, it was clear this would certainly be the case.

Brian mentioned that Friday is the last day at his "real job" as he's getting laid off. He said he'll definitely be focusing on the cart more and has some ideas for expansion. While making the curry to order in front of folks is undeniably part of the charm, he is thinking about how to be more legitimate (with permits and the like). He's also interested in focusing on nutrition for lower income families. Anthony wants to open a charitable business or a chain based on the Mission Street Food model. Steven has some plans regarding new products, selling gobs on the popular website Foodzie and possibly moving into a retail space. And Charles Phan smiled, stating "I still want to build a cart. I salvaged a 60 foot trailer home and it's sitting in my yard...waiting."

Find contributing Food Vendors via Twitter:
@Magiccurrycart
@GobbaGobbaHey
@SmittenIceCream
@bikebasketpies
@BaconPotatoChip
@soulcocina
@sfcookies
@cremebruleecart
@Missionstfood

Mediterranean Crepe (Feta Cheese, Olives, Avocado, Spinach, Green Onions)

For all its charms, San Francisco falls sadly short when it comes to late-night dining. Ten o'clock may be normal in New York City and a little on the early side in Barcelona, but here, you'll be lucky to find a burrito, much less a plate of pasta and an arugula salad.

OK, maybe we're exaggerating a little, but it's definitely true that noshing options drop dramatically after midnight, unless you're looking for a Mission Street bacon dog or fried eggs and French fries at Sparky's or the Bagdad Cafe. And if you're out clubbing, bar-hopping or catching a show South of Market, the chowing opportunities on those wide windswept streets are few and far between.

Nutella, Strawberries, Bananas with Whipped Cream Crepe

Enter Creperie Saint Germain. From this cute, custom-built wagon parked at the sidewalk edge of a private parking lot on Howard Street come sweet and savory crepes made to order. The daytime business is good, filling up the bellies of nearby office workers and loft dwellers with chicken-feta crepes at lunchtime or chocolate-banana ones later in the afternoon. But the real scene at Saint Germain comes late at night, when the brightly lit little stand beckons hungry clubbers from blocks away. Open from 7am-7pm Monday to Wednesday, the cart often serves until 3am on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights.

A little nightlife buzz is already building up around the place, since there's nothing like topping off a happy buzz with a warm crepe dripping with Nutella--or laying down some beer ballast with smoked salmon and cream cheese, ratatouille and spinach, or ham and pineapple all stuffed into a buckwheat wrapper. Along with the printed menu, there are usually a couple of daily specials, like a recent sweet crepe layering fig jam, almond butter, and sliced banana into deluxe spin on the PB&J.

Fresh Apple, Cinnamon, Brown Sugar with Vanilla Ice Cream Crepe

Why crepes? Although crepe stands are ubiquitous in Paris, San Francisco's burgeoning street-food scene was surprisingly bereft, given how many local chalkboard cafes treat them as a staple. Owners Ahmet Cagin and Zeynep Aynaci, friends from Istabul who jettisoned careers in finance to become micro-restauranteurs, felt that crepes would be easy to make on the spot, reasonably healthy and endlessly flexible.

Meet Lover's Maya Crepe

Unlike other Tweeting food carts, Creperie Saint Germain doesn't roam around. By parking in a parking lot, rather than on a street corner, the owners avoided the high sidewalk-permit fees charged by the city for legal food carts. Instead, they negotiate a monthly rent with the owners of the parking lot, pretty much as if their tidy blue-and-white wagon was a stretch Hummer in need of a double-wide space with a view. The only drawback right now is a complete lack of seating, making eating a crepe here strictly a stand-up affair. But isn't clutching a crepe in one hand and a napkin in the other a small price to pay for curbside Nutella at 3am?

Creperie Saint Germain
546 Howard St at 2nd Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
Map
(415) 706-9733
Twitter: @creperieSG

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.