The relationship between a restaurant and residents of the street on which it sits can easily be cracked -- not unlike the fragile shell of a mishandled farm egg. The issue surfaces most when the establishment becomes popular. As crowds come to consume, locals are forced to adjust to accommodate (or combat) the inevitable changes that arrive. I occasionally wonder how my life is shaped by the eateries around me. I enter and exit BART most days with the sweaty, steak-y scent of El Farolito's morning meats burrowing into my nostrils. Discarded McDonald's wrappers from the franchise on the corner float like pastel tumbleweeds past the front door of my apartment. Beyond food, the same Latin rock band plays every Sunday all day at the 24th St. BART station. They do largely the same set every week. I have the guitar player's solos memorized, so if he's ever sick, I can fill in. The dance studio across the street, above the coffee shop, thumps and stomps most evenings. When I look out my window, I can sometimes see the tops of the dancers' heads bobbing into view. Last week, I recorded an interview over speaker-phone, and when I listened back to it yesterday, the rhythmic hums and drums from a block party happening just 50 yards away were etched on to the recordings like vuvuzela horns droning beneath ESPN's World Cup game broadcasts. Through smells, sounds, and sights, the city has its way with your senses -- and you either deal with it or you leave.

The problem gets especially thorny when the offended parties -- the light sleepers, neat freaks, and territorial denizens of the block -- feel as if they're a more intrinsic part of the city than the offender, particularly when the offender is a trendy, much-blogged, money-making food-service operation with a clientele neither reflective of nor rooted in the neighborhood -- and the offended happen to be long-time residents.

Recently, two local situations -- one major and one seemingly minor and more than a little absurd -- have drawn attention to a reoccurring scenario fraught with peril.

Last month, Mission Loc@l reported on a showdown at Schmidt's involving, not a dish of leathery braised rabbit or an ill-seasoned terrine, but an upstairs tenant with a bone to pick. Since May 2009, Patricia Kerman, a 14-year resident of the building, has complained about a noisy kitchen fan (which the restaurant's owner replaced), called a restaurant inspector, allegedly told customers she'd become ill after a meal there, posted a sign ("Bad Neighbors") in her window overlooking the front door, and retaliated with daily thumps and bumps that rattle the ceiling. Whew. The landlord doesn't want to be involved; the police can do little, even though Schmidt's has potentially lost business. Other neighbors don't support Kerman's claim, but until both parties (meaning Kerman as well as the Schmidt's crew) agree to mediation, the standoff continues.

The Castro District sandwich emporium Ike's Place has faced a stiffer assault on the part of close neighbors reportedly ticked about the loud, snaking lines, the debris collecting outside, and, of course, noise. The parties have tried mediation and failed to reach agreement. On June 29th, Ike's (already expanding and in no position to abruptly lose business) was facing possible eviction at a hearing for summary judgment. Devotee of the deli's $8.98 Fat Bastard sandwich were happy to learn that Ike's won and won't, at least any time soon, be folding up shop. The landlord will have to decide whether to take the case on to trial or to work towards a settlement. Either way, with Ike's successfully digging in its heels, and landlord Denman Drobisch reportedly doing the same, the climate can't help but be permanently sour -- fairly pickled, if you will.

These situations really get to the heart of living in a city. The city doesn't stay put. It changes around you. Pristine, quiet blocks become loud and grubby. Sleepy strips heat up. Buildings rise and fall. Suburbs get swallowed, and new ones pop up. To be content living in a city, you have to embrace the idea that the city is organic, that the smells and sounds are going to change, that not only are your surroundings beyond your control, they are really beyond any control -- apart from that dictated by the law, of course. Seeing the individuals making your life harder as the primary problem misses the point. If Ike's leaves, another restaurant will come along. Instead of being pebbles fighting a fast-moving current, city residents have to adapt and be fluid themselves. The city can be hard and unfair, but it's undeniably here -- at least until an earthquake tosses us all into the sea. My advice to complainers: invest in noise-cancellation headphones, cheerfully demand free meals in exchange for untold patience, and (hopefully) become your nemesis's most dedicated non-paying customer.

When it springs to life in the old El Herradero space on Mission at 18th, presumably early this summer, Commonwealth will be "a progressive American restaurant, building on California's tradition of showcasing local, seasonal foods while incorporating diverse culinary approaches from around the world." Many, many San Francisco restaurants plaster that sort of thesis statement across their websites. While it's pegged as an "innovative model of benevolent fine-dining...committed to benefiting our community," in which "a set portion of proceeds from [Chef Jason] Fox’s inventive tasting menus will be donated to local non-profits," none of Commonwealth's p.r. literature refers to the eatery-in-process as a charity exactly.

A free, potentially unreliable online dictionary defines charity: "Provision of help or relief to the poor; almsgiving; something given to help the needy; alms; an institution, organization, or fund established to help the needy; benevolence or generosity toward others or toward humanity; indulgence or forbearance in judging others." As applied to the restaurant world, the word takes a lot of different tacks. Jamie Oliver's Fifteen foundation trains disadvantaged youth to run a growing empire of restaurants. Since 1991, San Francisco's Delancey Street Foundation has run a vocational training program around its restaurant staffed by residents (often ex-convicts and former abusers of drugs and alcohol). Plenty of restaurants make a point of donating surplus food to banks and soup kitchens. I also think of Karma Kitchen, the three-year-old Berkeley cafe founded on the concept of pay-it-forward. Every meal is a "genuine gift" paid for by previous customers. The idea is that happy diners will then elect to become donors to allow subsequent visitors to enjoy the same nourishment and hospitality, and to perpetuate the cycle of trust, abundance, and community-awareness.

Though high-end big-ticket establishments occasionally throw a benefit bash situated around one holiday or another, most restaurants focused on helping others aren't overly preoccupied with pushing unique, gastronomically interesting meals. Relatively austere offerings such as dal and rice abound. I suppose that's why Commonwealth feels fresh -- even with brasserie Elmwood Cafe in Berkeley getting off to a good start last month. In an Eater S.F. bit posted the week before last, founder Anthony Myint laid out the mission pretty clearly:

"Basically, we're drawing on some aspects of [Mission Street Food], such as affordability and inventiveness of cuisine, and trying to make this a more consistent and sustainable business, which creates some revenue for local charities...[We're creating an] approachable fine dining atmosphere, focused on value-oriented food...The overall experience will be much more akin to fine dining than the sometimes charming, but often chaotic atmosphere at Lung Shan.”

Given the sprint-like pace at which cultural movements now gather speed, the idea that food can be an agent of positive change is not particularly new; the idea that a fine dining restaurant can -- and not just by sourcing produce from nearby farms or going "green" -- is, on the other hand, somewhat unprecedented. Eager "foodies" inevitably hover like locusts around any waves preparing to crash across the city's dining scene. Once street food emerged as a monster trend, the swelling popularity of carts and stands run not infrequently by unemployment check-cashing hobbyists helped draw positive attention to people with families depending on their fledgling Health Code-flaunting businesses for survival. They may compete with citizens who ten years ago might have worked at a dot com and snapped up SOMA lofts, but at least higher profiles and legitimacy loom closer for all, right? How appropriate to harness that reoccurring phenomenon with the intention of sharing profits with non-profit organizations bent on improving lives, not just lighting up the dining scene. Just as they do for Mission Street Food twice a week, lines will form around the block for Commonwealth when it opens. The lines will form partially because of the city's familiarity with Mission Street Food, but they will only stay if the restaurant is actually really good. Mission Street Food doesn't operate under the same pressure awaiting Commonwealth. It doesn't just appeal to people because it's a pop-up, or because its meals benefit charities. Each dinner is an opportunity to enjoy an unprecedented experience curated by a chef applying his learned techniques, background, and imagination to the concept. The chefs are usually relatively unheralded, and the meals give them an opportunity to garner more attention than they usually enjoy manning the sauce station at a celebrated restaurant with someone else's name on the menu out front. Imagine if Thomas Keller showed up one night with an army of assistants. The line would stretch up to Mount Davidson, but something would be lost all the same. Mission Street Food is a d.i.y. adventure with low prices to match. Dishes are executed with more consistency in a humming three-star kitchen with the same staff every night, but the spirit remains unique, lovably loose, with an invigorating, not unnerving, degree of uncertainty surrounding each dinner.

In this specific sense, Commonwealth can't be as exciting. It might be innovative, but it won't be rough-and-tumble. Instead, with a bar, a regular fleet of servers, a pedigreed designer, and a beloved local chef starting a new gig, it will be more like...a restaurant.

S.F. Weekly online food editor John Birdsall said so much a month ago when he reported on the developing project:

"Commonwealth is no Crossroads Cafe...some scrappy, scrape-together-funding place -- despite a well publicized cash-raising initiative on Kickstarter -- along the lines of the twice-weekly pop-up that put funky, fusty Lung Shan on the map. In a way, Commonwealth promises to reprise an earlier, finer-dining incarnation of Bar Tartine."

I'm excited to see if Commonwealth's business plan in any way influences how it's received. Will Commonwealth's food be assessed like that of any other hotly anticipated Mission District eatery? Given the press and circulating buzz, will its food be taken as seriously as whatever charitable mission diners perceive ? It should be. But even if it sucks -- and it almost assuredly won't -- who would want to savage a restaurant founded on such noble principles? Will Michael Bauer bash away if it doesn't measure up to expectations? Will Yelpers revel in reporting on over-dressed salads, shaky service, and ice-cold plates, or will they hold back? Will Commonwealth's community-bolstering aspirations wilt beneath a barrage of dismissive, incomprehensible tweets?

Stay tuned next week for some Q-and-A with Commonwealth folks.

As I get older, I identify less and less with my adolescent self. In fact, not infrequently, I imagine going back in time and smacking myself on the head. I'm only in my very late twenties, but the period of my life has already become a vague unpleasant fog punctuated on rare occasion by vivid waves of memory. I suspect strongly that I was whiny, overly self-conscious, woefully insecure, and generally a twerp. I do clearly remember that, when I was in my mid-teens, I (like most teenagers) didn't get along particularly well with my parents. I also recall that my impatience with their habits and eccentricities tended to erupt at meal-times.

A classic scenario: I was 13, on my first trip to Europe with the family. We were at a good French place in the 14th Arrondissement. My mom ordered in English, but she spoke with what my brother and I felt was a contrived French accent -- rolling R's, stretching out E's, her voice rising up higher than usual at the ends of sentences. She might have been nervous. She might have been drunk. In any event, whatever it was she was doing was unintentional. At first, we giggled into our water glasses, amused. After it happened at every restaurant we visited, we were mortified, irritated and finally nasty -- all because she insisted again and again that she was speaking no differently than usual.

Family vacations were known for bad meals -- but usually only on the nights we'd arrive in a new city. At the mercy of indifferent hotel clerks, governed by hasty impulses spurred on by empty stomachs and jet-lag, we'd fall prey to half-cooked, insipid pizza in Rome, succumb to over-priced, grease-laden bistro fare in Paris, and settle for fusion-y Mission-style burrito wraps in San Francisco. It became a chronic thing, a syndrome that permeated all interactions. The bad food and exhaustion would inevitably lead to an argument, and we’d end up trying to put it all back together the next day.

These days, I don't feel like a teenager too often -- except maybe when I'm home for the holidays. Now, when my mom comes to San Francisco for a vacation, good feelings swell to the surface. Our meals together are the highlights of her visits and I try hard to make them meaningful and pleasant.

In 2003, less than a year after I moved to the Bay Area, my mom visited for the first time. On the evening of her arrival, we were wandering around downtown, looking at buildings. Even though I hadn't yet had one myself, I figured she'd like to eat a fish taco -- because I'd heard it was one of those important California food things. I just didn't know where to get one. Since we were in the area already, we moseyed into the now-defunct Chevy's at Embarcadero Two and supped on grilled fish tacos with pico de gallo, lettuce, and fresh cheese. If she found the meal revolting, she didn't let on.

Since then, I have found better places to take her, destinations informed by what I've read and experienced as a focused seeker of tasty things -- a portion of my identity I had not quite realized in 2003. My mom digs unusual food, but nothing too strange. She will eat fish sauce, but not fish heads. She likes a clean restaurant with a pleasant atmosphere, but she's also cost-conscious and unswayed by pretentious flourishes. She eats seafood, but eschews meat -- which eliminates Korean barbecue joints, pork-heavy Shanghai-style dumpling houses, and Incanto from contention. My mom prefers to eat reasonably healthy food. As a result, sushi, ceviche, or pizza with vegetables appeal more than battered fish, cream-laden sauces, or anything destined to be dabbed with aioli. When I'm picking out a restaurant, I filter these criteria through other sets of necessary circumstance. When she visits, she usually stays somewhere in the Union Square, so I like to take her somewhere within swift striking distance via BART or Muni. Being lazy, I usually stick to my neighborhood, the Mission District, where I've lived for the vast majority of my time in San Francisco. On a few occasions, I have lightly pushed the envelope. In 2004, we went to Utopia Cafe, a sneaky spot down an alley in Chinatown. I wouldn't call it a "dive" exactly. That word is over-used; it shouldn't apply to every restaurant disinterested in putting a premium on inedible trappings like decor and service. Fruit flies circled like helicopters over a battlefield as we attacked clay pot rice with shrimp, mustard green soup, and salt-and-pepper fried bean curd, but the food tasted fresh, and that eclipsed any sanitation concerns. A year or so later, we went to Minako, the organic mother-and-daughter-owned Japanese eatery. I thought she'd enjoy the food -- tataki, gobo kinpira, salmon misozuke -- but I also suspected the restaurant's cool quirks would appeal, that she'd get a kick out of the snappy, funny daughter and the odd location -- Mission Street, boasting a sign the size of a playing card you can't see unless, as I recall, you're approaching from a very specific angle along the sidewalk. Another time we visited Kiji, an ordinary but inoffensive sushi place on Guerrero just because it was conveniently close to a Valencia shoe store she'd been perusing.

She really liked Delfina, but her reaction to the food nonetheless confirmed my suspicions that she would inevitably rather go out to eat what she doesn't cook at home, where pasta, pizza, and risotto frequently grace the dinner table. Even though Delfina is a better restaurant -- albeit a very different one -- she was truly blown away by Destino. We went there in 2006 or 2007 -- well after its heyday -- but she still talks about it -- because, at the time, it was so unusual to her.

She's coming to town for a few days later this week, and this time around, the first visit in nearly two years, I'm brimming with ideas. There's a Mayan restaurant in Louisville my mom adores. While it's not at all awful, it is something there that it would not be here, which is fine. After all, when it comes to barbecue and beef jerky, San Francisco could learn a few things too. Still, I'd like to take her to Poc Chuc -- even if platters of juicy, thin-sliced pork (the restaurant's namesake) don't jive with her diet. She'd be happy enough with feathery, toasty corn tortillas, a bowl of the smooth black beans, and a few bites of fish -- though I don't imagine she would dive into the head for the best pieces. I thought about Universal Cafe, but I think she'd prefer something less familiar. La Ciccia is another option, the current front-runner, I'm afraid. Sardinian flavors -- rich, heady fregula pasta with ricotta and cured tuna heart, smoky, spicy octopus stew -- diverge enough from the Italian fare she knows well. If I were really daring, we would go to Yellow Pa Taut on Bryant and 7th for the best Burmese in the city: Tea leaf salad, fried squash, and catfish noodle soup, perhaps -- all within spitting distance of the courthouse's grim facade.

I'm lucky to share life (and a kitchen) with my girlfriend, who has an equally serious relationship with food. Our weeks revolve around dinners together. When we eat somewhere particularly nice, whether an old stand-by or a newcomer, we often imagine how our parents would like it. Hers enjoy eating at least as much as mine, if not much more. That process is natural; it makes the meal better. I feel the same way about music. I have a few big stacks of vinyl, but I don't play records too often around the house. When friends are over, musician friends particularly, I'm galvanized into action. I slip on a record. I tell stories I know about the band. I react to what I'm hearing and the feelings I have about it in their presence, and their reactions combine with mine to enrich the experience. Food is not much different. A steak is better shared; so is Mavis Staples. The restaurants I pick for dinners with my mom have evolved along with me, but regardless of where we end up eating, every meal speaks to the power of shared experience. To adapt and respond to a well-travelled adage: If a meal falls on your table and there's no one there with whom to share it, its deliciousness cannot help but be diminished -- even if you write about it.

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.

Outside of Schmidt's looking into restaurant. Photo by Aimee Shapiro

One day last week, the lady and I had plans to visit Schmidt's for dinner. When we're deciding what to eat, we tend to favor collaboration and compromise, at least I do. Sometimes, rarely, our tastes don't intersect, and I always want to find dishes we both want, even if it means passing on something I'd really, really like to try. In the case of Schmidt's, a sleek, two month-old German eatery in the Mission District, I knew what I wanted, and would accept no proxies: hasenpfeffer, a red wine-soaked saddle and leg of rabbit with braised lingonberry-sweetened cabbage. In the hours leading up to our meals together, we typically examine menus online and discuss what appeals via texts and emails. Frequently, we have a pretty good idea of what we'll order before we walk through the restaurant's doors. On this occasion, I'd done my research, and knew, without question, that I had to hit that hop. The problem was, I wasn't so sure my lady would dance with me.

I positioned myself accordingly. At around 1:00 p.m., I sent off a quick text:

Was thinking about bunny. Now not so sure.

Her swift response, even more succinct, confirmed my fears:

I will not eat the bun.

Disappointed yet far from resigned, I honed a strategy. It was too early for negotiations. I ate lunch and crafted a diversionary text, giving the impression I was feeling flexible and perhaps willing to eat something else altogether:

Salad good. Still hungry. Tonight maybe fish if on special.

Rabbit is a polarizing meat. The world is full of people like my lady: hyper-carnivorous, adventurous gourmets who gleefully inhale piles of Korean barbecue, fried chicken dinners, and entire flocks in the form of steaming shawarmas, yet turn meek and wane at the prospect of the Easter Bunny, sauteed, on a plate. Rabbits are cute but surely no cuter than fuzzy sheep, baby chickens, and pink piglets -- cuddly creatures we're generally more comfortable cooing over and then, respectfully, consuming. Rabbits are also pets, but even those of us who have never fed and groomed one feel as if we know them. From folklore-steeped tricksters Bugs and Bre'er, to Thumper, Alice's elusive White, and the whole floppy-eared cast of Watership Down, the rabbit has an enduring and frequently anthropomorphized presence in popular culture, one that surpasses those of other commonly eaten animals. In whatever form, such familiar images, voices, stories, and carried connotations grip folks, and that, more than a real rabbit's bobbing tail, vacuous little eye-specks, and pink twitching nose, contributes to the skittishness diners display when there's hare to be had.

In many cultures, rabbits are a symbol of fertility and rebirth. They're associated with the season Spring and, of course, Easter. In real-life, they're viewed as gentle, vegetarian, harmless, and, despite their breeding proclivities, somehow suggestive of innocence. However, to gardeners like my mother in Louisville, Kentucky, they are far from innocent or harmless; they are a nuisance, a virulent menace fond of hopping, rustling and sniffing, through the backyard shrubbery every April to terrorize lettuce, cucumbers, squash, beans, herbs, and flowers. My mom doesn't hunt or even eat meat, but I doubt she'd mind if Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam showed up one year, shotguns at the ready, to declare war on her tormentors, and keep the neighborhood bistro stocked with lapin all summer long.

Back in San Francisco, it was 6:30 p.m. My lady and I rolled into Schmidt's, ravenous. As I'd suspected, there was no fish on special. My lady wanted a sausage, which was fine by me. We had to find another entree. I knew exactly what that had to be but I had to bide my time. If she sensed my profound resolve, she did not let on.

"I just don't think I can do it," she said, her eyes peering out, just barely visible above the menu held in front of her face.
"Do what?" I asked, feigning cluelessness.
"The bunny," she said, sighing. "I'm sure it's amazing, but I don't want to eat it."
"It's cool," I answered, sort of shrugging lightly and waving my hands as if I didn't care. "No bunny, no problem. I'll get a sausage too, maybe the duck one."
"Two sausages? They don't make the sausages here. If you're writing about this, we should get something they make here too," she said, ignoring my allusion.
"Well, I don't want blood sausage or the veal," I countered, gesturing towards the listing for an egg-topped schnitzel festooned with white anchovies, capers, and cauliflower. It was time to play hardball, to throw down cards, and make a final, decisive play. "I'm getting the rabbit," I said, folding my menu and reaching for the beer list. "Will you eat it?" I didn't look up as I spoke, trying to appear focused on selecting an appropriate brew.
There was a pause. "Hell yes."

And so, maneuvering ceased; we were eating rabbit.

In the classic 1949 cartoon Bowery Bugs, Bugs Bunny, pacing in circles around his den, carrot in mid-gnaw, makes, in that distinctive, chattering, Flatbush bark, his case for survival to a downtrodden New York City bookie in search of a good luck charm. "These rabbit's feet never brought me any luck," Bugs points out, pleading. "Look at the lives rabbits lead: Dogs, hunters, and hasenpfeffer."

Hasenpfeffer, a red wine-soaked saddle and leg of rabbit with braised lingonberry-sweetened cabbage. Photo by Aimee Shapiro

Bugs could use some perspective. If the version at Schmidt's serves as any indication, hassenpfeffer is an unpretentious yet noble and exceedingly delicious way for a rabbit to end up. For a goofy, unintelligent, nervous wreck of a mammal, this beast sure tastes serious, deep, and soulful after a trip through chef Matt Shapiro's kitchen. Sweet shards of pale meat tumble off delicate bones rising up from a creamy, golden moat of rich sauce, a purple mountain of cabbage looming behind. The picture currently floating around the Internet (to be fair, in the company of a positive, well-crafted mention) unfortunately makes Shapiro's hassenpfeffer look like a symptom of an obscure, unsavory medical condition, or something from one of the Alien movies, a mound of extraterrestrial dung, perhaps. I sympathize. My first crack at pictures in the restaurant's dark dining room turned out so badly I had to outsource art to a real photographer.

Bean Salad. Photo by Aimee Shapiro

The rabbit was the defining triumph but not so magnificent as to obscure the rest of the meal: an excellent Thuringer brat, snappy and juicy, best with a touch of an amazing sweet mustard (Schmidt's sells it, along with other German products such as mini-wieners, bottled, floating in water), a subtle, nutty, toothsome salad of green and waxed bean strips with hazelnuts, fried sage, and a citrus vinaigrette, and spaetzle, sans cheese, in fluffy, mild strands, like scrambled eggs colliding with a bowl of cereal -- in a good way. Far from the sort of heavily branded hot-spot designed to lure diners from around the city, Schmidt's is a new neighborhood gem the neighborhood can actually afford -- truly, simply, a very fine place to eat, much like Walzwerk, the owners' first restaurant, though more austere in appearance, with better food. We ordered some bread too, with the idea we'd use it to sop up every last bit of rabbit essence. This was unnecessary. The rabbit came with plenty of bread, the dense, heavy German sort. Unlike less refined purveyors of wurst, Schmidt's doesn't bludgeon you with excessive portions. Bread abuse in the line of duty -- respect for the rabbit's last luscious remnants -- caused me to walk at a 45 degree angle all the way home, stuffed, my body unable to conjure energy for any task beyond digestion. Yet even as I limped, 'kraut-addled, harebrained, breaded, and in need of a comfortable chair, part of me wanted to head back, to find a way to eat some more rabbit. To rock it, to roll it, slop it, and stroll it, once again -- at the hop.

Schmidt's
2400 Folsom St
(between 20th St & 21st St)
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 401-0200
*Cash only

The joint endeavor of Mission District housemates Kale Daikon and Eggplant Kohlrabi (a.k.a. Katrina Dodson and Erin Klenow), Weird Vegetables sprouts a cut above most local food blogs. Do not, for starters, confuse it with a younger, much less weird San Francisco-based rival going by the same name, a site dedicated, seemingly quite seriously, to "celebrating diversity throughout the plant kingdom." In contrast, the one of which I write inhabits a special dimension of biological whimsy, where the crisper spills forth a menagerie of anthropomorphic leaves, roots, and legumes, and a trip to the farmer's market feels like a twisted safari through unfamiliar lands. Stuffed into the blog's strange sieve of language and thought, vegetables are not merely waxed, sticker-tagged produce; they are characters. Identities, needs, wants, and feelings squirm within their husks and peels as well as flavors and nutrients. For Dodson and Klenow, they are ripe springboards for gleeful leaps into philosophy, linguistics, and general poetic absurdity as well as cookery.

Each entry often starts with a vegetable one of them has picked up at the store or market. From there, the specimen is assessed, first as object, then as food, an introduction irrigated with historical context and preparation suggestions, and subsequently sacrificed at the altar of their imagination. Take, for example, the August 2008 post on the lemon cucumber, in which Dodson sums up the chosen veggie as "a piece of produce that boasts the vaguely exotic yet familiar allure of the hybrid, the indeterminate, the mestizo...this fruit masquerading as a vegetable disguised as a fruit (a kind of double drag, F to V to F)." In the April 2009 treatise on farro ("Long Ago, a Farro Way"), a lisp-kissed summary of The Princess Bride acts as preamble to a discussion of the ancient grain's venerability and value, "farro" being, after all, a word perhaps best spoken with "a faraway look" in one's eyes. Clearly, vegetables are weird, often much weirder than we think, and the ways in which people treat these things they plant and eat says something about people too: namely, that they are weird as well. In early June, I visited the bloggers at their house. We skipped through the magic mustard greens garden, scouted scapes, and talked turnips.

Andrew Simmons: I like how your blog shares practical advice about actually cooking vegetables but also presents them as vibrant players in a somewhat goofy bio-cultural drama. What got you into vegetables? Did the blog evolve organically?

Katrina Dodson: I go to farmers' markets all the time and I spend a lot of time around food people, so I've learned something about vegetables from them as well.

AS: Why are vegetables weird?

KD: Certain types of vegetables can be weird because people don't normally eat them or aren't used to them, or they can be more common individual vegetables, like carrots and potatoes, that just look weird. I'm also really interested in the weirdness of language and how strange the naming of vegetables can be. I'm working on a Ph.D. in comparative literature right now so I think about metaphors all the time. That's the latest level of weirdness on the blog, the newest terrain.

Erin Klenow: I like how the name of a vegetable can freak someone out. The fact that something is called a blood orange is enough to get people to avoid eating it. And nipple fruit? It's pretty funny.

KD: Also known as titty fruit.

EK: It's often noted that people have aversions to eating gross parts of animals but when I mention a certain vegetable to some people, they just go ew ew ew.

KD: There's also the misguided idea that vegetarianism is boring, like you run out of things to eat because you just eat vegetables and nothing else. We're not vegetarians, by the way.

EK: When people ask me if I'm a vegetarian, I just say I only eat expensive meat.

KD: I taught a class at Berkeley on food called "Eating and Being Eaten." It was all about how food is always more than just food. Having that dialogue in my head really affected the blog.

AS: What did the class read?

KD: A lot of different things. There was a food politics section. We read some of The Omnivore's Dilemma, and talked about My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki and Kafka's A Hunger Artist. There was a whole meat theme. We talked about cannibalism too, because that’s a topic I’m really interested in.

AS: You have to bring that up at some point when you're talking about the idea of eating meat.

KD: There's a necessary violence that happens in the mere act of survival. You have to acknowledge it. Even vegetarians consume living things.

AS: When you write about vegetables, they sound like animals or aliens, bizarre creatures that might scuttle off the table. It's carnivorous, in a sense. Why don't you write about fruit?

EK: We do sometimes.

KD: They're technically a subset of vegetables. Vegetables are weirder than fruit though. People are more okay with weird fruit. They're sugary, luscious, and voluptuous. Fruit is meant to seduce. That's its biological function. Vegetables are gross. They have weird outgrowths. They're all like take it or leave it. In the lemon cucumber post, we talked about how "vegetable" is a cultural determination whereas "fruit" is biological. A fruit is any plant with an enclosed seed that comes from a flower. That's scientifically established, but vegetables are really undefined. They're just the edible parts of plants. Technically, anything goes.

AS: Erin, do you work in the food world?

EK: I was a waitress for a long time. Three years ago, I worked as an expeditor at Quince. I had to learn everything on the menu. I read a lot of food writing too. I grew up in Sonoma so I was always close to people who produced food, though I wasn't very conscious of it until later.

KD: I'm from San Francisco. We went to Berkeley together.

AS: I liked how, in the black radish entry, you compiled a list of black foods to see, in part, what they have in common. They're all polarizing. I've eaten black radish before so I think I know what you're talking about when you describe it as being "very radish-y." How would you describe a "radish-y" person?

KD: Kind of abrasive. Kind of funny. Acerbic. Sometimes goes a little too far.

EK: A little refreshing but also overwhelming.

AS: If you were a vegetable, which would you be?

KD: I'm clearly Kale Daikon -- my initials. I said onion once when someone asked me that but it's not, you know, because I have so many layers and you have to peel them off...

AS: But the onion is so common, the cheapest vegetable in the store...

KD: I was feeling like one at the time.

EK: I've always identified with eggplant -- for Erin, I guess. Eggplant are a little inconsistent. They can be delicious and creamy or bitter.

AS: I don't want to read too much into that, but you might be the kind of person that, given proper attention and care, can be a very pleasant cohort in friendship...

EK: I like that it's purple.

KD: I have to say that now I've picked up more of an affinity to the carrot. They're unexpectedly weird.

EK: I could be a turnip too now that I think about it. Roasted, they're so good. I like them but I think about things I want to eat and they aren't usually something I'd want to be.

AS: Maybe be something no one would eat.

KD: Like bracken? But they serve it at Cha-Ya.