Boxing Room Executive Chef Justin Simoneaux. Photo: Liza Gershman

The Cajun and Creole dishes of his native Louisiana influence Chef Justin Simoneaux’s cooking at the recently opened Boxing Room. Simoneaux’s affinity for coastal Louisiana cuisine stems from growing up going hunting, fishing and enjoying frequent family seafood boils, fish fries, barbecues, pig roasts, and pots of gumbo. He absorbed recipes from his mother and grandmother and began cooking in a New Orleans seafood restaurant at age 15, where he worked his way up to line cook and then became kitchen manager by age 18. To gain more training and experience, the young budding culinarian enrolled in the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco in 2005.

He worked and was promoted to the position of sous-chef under Chef Robert Cubberly at the now-closed Le Petit Robert in Russian Hill. Simoneaux says Chef Cubberly set his foundation for cooking and was a great mentor. In 2007, Simoneaux joined Coco500 as sous-chef, working with Chef-owner Loretta Keller. She hired him as her chef-de-cuisine to open The Moss Room at the California Academy of Sciences in 2008. The restaurant garnered three stars from Michael Bauer at the San Francisco Chronicle, and was a “Top 100 Restaurant” in 2009. Chef Simoneaux was also named a San Francisco Chronicle “Rising Star Chef” that same year. At the Boxing Room—named for the box factory that was once housed there years ago—many of Simoneaux’s personal favorites are highlighted on the menu: Cajun boiled peanuts; Louisiana seafood gumbo with brown rice and house-made Tasso; deep fried alligator; and New Orleans-Style stuffed artichoke. Michael Bauer said in his two and a half star August review of the restaurant that: “You'll get excellent fried oysters, fried alligator, fried chicken and fried seafood in the po' boy, but it's far from a greasy spoon because the kitchen takes a light, fresh approach.”

Simoneaux lives in the Haight and is dating Lynn Silva, who is a cook at Spruce. “We met while working at The Moss Room. Started out as friends and then realized we enjoyed a lot of the same things and fell in love.” The chef said that he would soon get some R&R via a New Orleans trip for Mardi Gras and his brother’s wedding.

On food
“This kind of food takes time. For example, to get the right color of roux to make our gumbo, you need about an hour… and that’s before anything else hits the pot.”

Where do you source ingredients?
“Most of my vegetables come from Mariquita Farm and Star Route Field to Family Farms. For seafood, I get oysters and a couple of items from the West Coast but most of it comes from Louisiana.”

Favorite 2-3 food & drink spots?
“Alembic: I love their cocktails. Even if I’m not hungry I always find myself ordering the duck hearts and a slider, no matter what kind they are serving.

Absinthe: I go there after work since it’s only a block away. For a perfect late night snack, I go for the soft garlic pretzel and spicy pork meatballs. The cocktails are always great.

Recently, I’ve found myself at Wing Wings on my days off. I love their wings and usually wash down the spice over a cold beer at The Gold Cane.”

Date night favorites?
“The lady and myself are suckers for sushi. Our favorite go-to spot would probably be Domo in Hayes Valley.”

What’s your guiltiest food pleasure?
“I’ve been known to whip up a packet of Top Ramen. I don’t know why, but it is good.”

What is your favorite meal to have with friends and family?
“It would have to be a classic crawfish boil with all the fixins’ -- potatoes, corn, mushrooms, sausage, artichokes and ice cold beer (which I have all of this tattooed on my arm). My friends are all in the business, so we mostly cook together at one of our houses or in the park.”

Justin's Tattoo

Author Daniel Handler (who often uses the pen name of Lemony Snicket) and his wife author/illustrator Lisa Brown live with their young son in the same upper Haight neighborhood as Mayor Gavin Newsom. The duo is active in the arts community, and Handler is on the Board of Advisors for LitPAC, which uses noteworthy authors and lit events to support Democratic causes and politicians. Handler is a San Francisco native who has penned the popular Lemony Snicket series of books, as well as Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth and Adverbs. Brown hails from Connecticut and is the bestselling author and/or illustrator of books including Vampire Boy's Good Night, The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming, Baby Mix Me a Drink and Picture the Dead, an illustrated Civil War ghost story for teens. She sporadically draws the (soon to be syndicated) Three Panel Book Review cartoon for the
 San Francisco Chronicle. The two met as undergrads at Wesleyan and have been married for twelve years. Here are the food favorites of the literary power couple.

FAVORITE RESTAURANTS
Life's not life without papaya salad, and the best papaya salad we've found is at Marnee Thai, at 9th and Irving. Have one with some Thai iced coffee and then go a few doors down to Le Video and, with the caffeine raging through your system, rent an old monster movie that you would never rent while in your right mind. Enjoy!

Crab season means it's time to head down to Anchor Oyster Bar and have oysters and crab and a bottle of white wine in the middle of the day. Why not? You're self-employed. (Note: only applies to self-employed people.)

Puerto Alegre on Valencia. Don't even ask.

FAVORITE FOOD MARKETS
Andronico's on Funston and Irving is the market we go to for just about everything. Bobby's behind the meat counter. Ask him about Prince, but pay attention while he's answering you or you will go home with three times as much skirt steak as you need.

The cheese section at Rainbow Grocery is an oasis of sophistication and delight. True, you have to push your way through hippies buying bulk foods to put in the Mason jars they brought from home. Life is not perfect.

LET'S DRINK
Alembic has the best cocktails, plus roasted shishito peppers and whatever form of deviled or pickled eggs they're trying out at any given time. We can be found there at a ridiculously early hour. If you see us, pick up the tab.

Tosca Café is another great bar, perfect for buying gimlets, stumbling across the street to City Lights Books to purchase poetry, and then stumbling back for another gimlet while reading poetry purchased at City Lights Books. Repeat and fade.

DATE NIGHT
Okazu Ya on Taraval has a special nigiri called Midnight Express that should not be eaten in the presence of someone with whom you are not sleeping. Halibut, black caviar and a raw quail egg is more erotic than the Castro and North Beach combined.

The Balboa Theater is the easiest movie theater to sneak food into. You should not sneak food into movie theaters. It is against the rules and rude. If you do it with hot and sour soup do not put it in a backpack.

TRAVEL NEEDS
A stovetop espresso maker is a necessary defense against the coffee of New England. We won't say whose coffee we stock it with, because we don't want Ritual, Four Barrel or Blue Bottle mad at us.

GUILTY FOOD PLEASURE?
Food guilt is for wimps and Gentiles.

When two longtime friends decided to come to San Francisco for the weekend, the first thing I did was plan our meals. I had approximately a day and a half with them, and I wanted their food experiences to be memorable. I had an added benefit of knowing my audience very well and being able to customize the trip to their taste.

When I first heard they were coming, I made back-up dinner reservations at A16 and The Slanted Door. In the end, however, I ended up scrapping both of those reservations (and calling to cancel!) a few days before my friends came. The weekend came together very nicely and we went to the following places:

SPQR. My love for this new restaurant has already been documented, and I've been back three times since that initial report. This trip was fun, as I got to watch Anna as she tasted beets with ricotta, chanterelles and sunchokes, and the panino dessert -- which was groan-causingly good.

The Alembic. After dinner, we cabbed it over to The Alembic so that Anna could share in my love of this wonderful bar. I've been talking up the emphasis on amazing mixology that has been happening in San Francisco, and the Alembic is the perfect example of this. My fellow bloggers agree -- the Alembic is a destination bar.

Saturday morning, Amanda arrived and it was off to ... where else?

The Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market. A must stop for any visitor staying at my house. When we were through, we met up with a couple friends for wine. The Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant was busy, so we lounged in the Slanted Bar lounge very comfortably for a couple of hours. On Saturday afternoons, there is not table service in the lounge until 2 pm (though you can eat at the bar). No bother, we ordered bottles of wine at the bar and by the time table service arrived, we ordered some delicious SD snacks. My friends had a good time wandering the Ferry Building afterward. Anna bought a lot of cheese to take home with the help of our favorite cheese expert.

Then it was home to rest before heading off ...

To Bodega Bistro. This was the dinner originally planned as The Slanted Door. But the girls were insistent that they wanted to experience San Francisco the way that I usually live it. And the truth is that you are much more apt to find me at Bodega Bistro than The Slanted Door. Bodega is known for some of the best Vietnamese food in the city, and the Cha Ca Hanoi there -- a dish of fish with dill and spices and peanuts -- is more to my taste than the Cha Ca Hanoi that I ate in the most famous place in Hanoi.

Happily, the Bodega Bistro dinner went over very well and we went home full and sated. The weekend was a great mix of different bites, tastes and meals and both Anna and Amanda are talking about the trip weeks later.

Last month, Catherine posted her recommendation list for visitors which I will likely refer to in the future. And a while back, Michael posted his visitor list.