Zoë, Army of One™, says all our talk of the Mission makes her nostalgic for Frjtz. The food is scrumptious and any place that serves wifi with their fries & dipping sauces can never be bad. But, Real Talk: their decor is almost painful. Is it a Belgian thing? Is this what Hercule Poirot’s dining room looks like?
This popped up in the Mission district. This is getting so predictable it’s like you can prophesy the menu. Anyone else weary of the gimmick? The deconstructed eatery? Grub? Home? Tablespoon? Spork?
What do you say we just call it Food and be done with it? We can open it up right next to where Restaurant used to be.
generic: (Inside my head) Holy Christ, this is the best tuna melt I’ve tasted in my entire life.
(Cook walks by.)
generic: You cooked this?
cook: Gotta problem?
generic: No.
cook: What’s the problem?
generic: This is the best tuna melt I’ve tasted in my entire life.
cook: (Nods) I make ‘em good.
generic: Why does it taste so great? There’s like, a tang in it?
cook: Little mustard.
generic: Mustard.
cook: And bit’a garlic oil.
generic: It tastes really good. No pepper?
cook: Naw, man. Pepper on the table.
generic: Excuse me?
cook: Pepper on the table.
(Points.)
generic: Oh. Well. Great sandwich.
cook: Thanks, man.
…
Metaphor for how we do our jobs? I think so. Lesson?
Pepper on table. Bring something else to it.
I would have recommended Tangerine (on 16th, around the edge of the Castro) even without the free glass of wine they’re offering.
That’s a seared sea bass, soy beans and sweet grape tomato sauce with a sauteed spinach/rice thing. It was good. I ate it up.
I can overlook comic sans and I can overlook “tequila lounge” but I can’t overlook both.
Fair enough. You want pictures? I have a cameraphone. Let’s do this.
Here’s today’s offering in infestation. Not yesterday’s, mind you, not the day before’s, but today’s. I kind of threw up a bit in my mouth taking this picture.
Catching these fuckers is hard because it involves a lot of trial and error. You have to use a combination of methods. Turns out the phrase “build a better mousetrap” still has currency because the ones we have now pretty much suck. The traditional method is a joke. They swipe the cheese and laugh their filthy rabid asses off. (I swear I can hear them mocking me.) And it’s hard to know the effectiveness of poisoned bait because it takes a while for them to die and they usually croak elsewhere. So you can’t tell if it’s actually working. And even if it does work, you have the smell of decaying vermin all throughout the house.
I had to turn the box upside down to get a good camera angle. What you see here is an opened-ended box that’s layered inside with a super-sticky surface. If they’re moving fast enough, they can run right through it, But they love those little packages of bait. There’s some kind of pest-cocaine inside. The make a lot of eerie scratching noises trying to claw and bite the package open, and once they get inside they really go to town.
So the trick is to put the poisoned pest-cocaine inside the sticky-box. It’s expensive, but if they spend long enough on the adhesive, they’ll get caught. If it sounds like I’ve had hours and hours in the middle of the night to think about this, it’s because I have. The sounds they make can raise the hair on the back of your neck—especially at 4am when they’re reenacting that scene from Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade. You know the one.
ALSO: KevMo at Uptown Almanac blogged my plight. Apparently he got an email from the owner of Tokyo Go-Go who was, um, irate. So I gave him a call, left a message, then he called me back. What follows is a dramatic recreation of the conversation and is in no way a verbatim transcript:
(ring-ring)
generic: This is generic.
Sushi Boss: Hi, this is Sushi Boss.
generic: Oh. Hi.
Sushi Boss: Look, I’m really sorry this is happening to you, but you’re kind of screwing my business by telling everyone our restaurant is infested.
generic: That’s not what I wrote.
Sushi Boss: You said there are rats in my restaurant.
generic: Re-read the blog post. I said there are rats in the building. Know why I said that?
Sushi Boss: Why?
generic: Cause there are rats in the building. I live in the building; I have rats, ergo… And it’s been a longstanding problem, for several months, before I even moved in.
Sushi Boss: I guess I should talk to the landlord about fixing this.
generic: I guess you should.
(Blackout)
I feel bad for him. But I’m not ordering the Unagi, youknowhatI’msayin?
“I owe an apology to every kitschy Chinese restaurant I’ve ever rejected as aesthetically inauthentic. No one loves China kitsch more than the Chinese. Red lanterns, tiny figurines, caged birds, silk hostess dresses, dragon designs and everything else I associated with silly Chinese restaurants was present in places that had no idea what to do when Westerners walked in and tried to order food.”
-Ezra Klein, after a trip to China
Give me one good reason why this 3-tiered gratuity shouldn’t be listed on every check.
I never understood the focaccia craze. It always seemed too dense and toothy. The bread usually overwhelms whatever it’s paired with … sandwiches, pizzas, even straight-up tomato pies.
Obviously I’d never had it prepared correctly because this shit at Cafe Divine just blew my mind. Light, slightly oily, a hint of salt = foodgasm. It’s not every bread that can outshine turkey and fucking bacon. But it did, gentle reader, it did.
North Beach FTW.
It’s 10pm and tumblr has given me a craving for a burger from NOPA. So I drive over and the host says it’s a twenty-minute wait except he says it like a question? and not a statement? which leads me to believe it could be up to 30 or 40, which is not how long a rational human being waits for a hamburger no matter how good it is.
So I glance up and, hold on, there’s a place called Acme Burgerhaus right across the street. I frogger on over and give the menu a look. It lists a Niman Ranch burger (pictured). Let’s just say it’s priced over $10 and leave it at that. But I’ve come from half-way across the city, so I figure what the hell and go with it.
Look: If you’re going to charge dubious prices for what is, let’s face it, a fairly simple entree—if all you cook is one kind of entree over and over—then the very least you can do is get the doneness right.
Fail.
Nopa burger
Looks good though bittermelon didn’t like it
Wha-?
Imma muthafucking burger connoisseur within SF city limits. I could hit Burger Joint for breakfast, Burger Meister for lunch and Burger Bar for dinner. (That’s a $60 entree, son.) I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.
You mileage may vary, but I felt the NOPA offering was solid. Their house-made ketchup is mouthwatering.
And now I gotta have one. Tonight.
i have a new, burning need to go to cha cha cha.
i have respect for restaurants that stand up against intrusive mariachi bands.
i am also mariachi-free.
Sing it, sister.
At first you’re like, hey, a mariachi band! And you tip them and smile and go back to canoodling with your date.
By the second round, you politely try to ignore them in the hopes that they go away. They don’t. They play their instruments and sing right in your face. They do this VERY LOUDLY. They’re smiling; you’re not.
By the third time the charm has completely worn off and the Mariachi Extortion makes you promise to never return to that establishment again.
The only known deterrent is to have everyone in the dinner party grab their cellphones and start yammering into them, with the left finger placed prominently in the other ear. It’s a violation of the Mission Hipster Code and I’m only too happy to do it.
