Maybe we should explain: We take coffee in the morning, then again in the mid-afternoon. In doing these little roundups of the local publications, all of which--or at least many of which, including the Chronicle's food section and both alt-weeklies--come out on Wednesday, we're going to publish right around coffee time, so that just in case you, reader, take your caffeine on a similar schedule, you can join us in skimming the food news and reviews over your dark brew.

The SF Weekly's Meredith Brody has harsh words for Avenue G. One of those words was "Seviche," which all our web sources told us was a perfectly fine way to spell it, but we're convinced, based on hours spent gazing up at taqueria menus, that "ceviche" is correct. Anybody want to weigh in? Avenue G's San Francisco Cuisine Needs a Road Map [San Francisco Weekly]

Over at the Guardian, L.E. Leone has another lyrical, moving piece on weddings, funerals, the transition from man to woman and, as is more and more common these days, nothing on restaurants whatever. Butterflies [San Francisco Bay Guardian]

But Paul Reidinger picks up the slack, with a thorough investigation of Tinderbox, about which he had mostly nice things to say, despite the fact that it apparently styles itself as a "freestyle bistro" that Reidinger says has a bent for "artful eccentricity." Tinder is the Night [San Francisco Bay Guardian]

So the big news outlets aren't reporting any serious quake-related injuries or damage, which is good, but we think it's funny to read the man-on-the-street reactions. The Chron hilariously thought to interview a bowling alley employee:

The shaking wasn't bad enough to knock over bowling pins at the AMF lanes in Milpitas, where two bowling leagues were in mid-play when the earthquake hit.

"They were shocked, but they laughed about it afterward," said an employee who answered the phone at the bowling alley. "They didn't seem too scared. It was just a little weird. Having an earthquake in a bowling alley is kind of interesting."

We have to wonder whether one of the San Jose Mercury News reporters was already stationed at a son or daughter's middle-school band recital when the tremblor hit:

At Spangenberg Auditorium in Palo Alto, the Jordan Middle School Symphonic Band kept right on playing "Estampie" by W. Francis McBeth when the earthquake struck in the middle of a concert.

"They didn't tell us to stop," said clarinetist Zoe Greene, 13, with a shrug.

"I knew the lights wouldn't fall because of the safety cords, but I was worried about the curtain" said Chloe Koseff, another 13-year-old clarinet player whose knowledge of stage lighting safety procedures comes from her role as stage manager for the school's theater productions.

Band conductor Vivian Boudreaux-Mikasa kept the group right on tempo during the shaking. "At first I thought it was the wind blowing outside," she said. "If it had gone on any longer, I would have told them to duck and cover."

Had the quake struck half an hour later, the music would have been more appropriate: John Higgins' "Habitat (Visions of a Fragile Planet)".

But our favorite by far was this, from Camper English's Alcademics blog:

We just had a very long duration earthquake here in San Francisco, and I instinctively ran to the liquor cabinet to protect anything from falling out.

Sad, but true.

Ah, Camper, we're glad you have your priorities straight, as they're approximately our priorities, too.

Scary 5.6 quake jolts Bay Area [San Francisco Chronicle]

30 aftershocks recorded after 5.6 quake hits near Alum Rock [San Jose Mercury News]

Shaken, not stirred [Alcademics]

As middling as some may think the Guardian overall, we can't look at it objectively, especially the food section. We did an internship there many years ago and, through that as well as our regular perusal of the city's last independent alt-weekly, we have developed something of a man-crush on Contributing Editor Paul Reidinger, who has been the food section maven for as long as we can remember. We'll try to keep it in check here, but one thing we'd like to introduce, both as a tribute to Reidinger and because it's a good 10-second guide to local culinary trends, is the re-publication here of the Blender, the Guardian's five-part hit parade of the local food scene:

(1) Amberjack collar, Sebo, SF

(2) 2006 Cline Viognier, Nectar Wine Lounge, SF

(3) Lunch buffet, Mehak, Berk.

(4) Marmalade coconut, lemongrass shrimp over jade noodles, Citrus Club, SF

(5) Split pea soup and pumpernickel bread, Pea Soup Andersen's, Buellton

And we promise to give both the weeklies a more thorough going-over in just a bit.

The Blender [San Francisco Bay Guardian]

No way. This is what French students do for projects these days. Things have changed depuis votre temps à l'école. This is great, though. Close-ups of Crepe-House food, some clever heart-wipes and a soundtrack by Mika. These kids are definitely going places. Places other than the Crepe House.

The Chronicle's mid-week food section includes some interesting items:

We've been on the alert for signs of fallout from last week's publication of the 2008 Michelin Guide, and the Inside Scoop found one in the form of a not-so-jovial departure of two seemingly valuable line cooks from Fifth Floor. [Inside Scoop]

Some lucky panelists, who we're guessing are not grade-school children, got to do an extensive taste test of frozen corn. [Taster's Choice]

With winter on the horizon, Janet Fletcher compiles a little stock exchange of her own. Just in time, as temperatures dip into the 60s. [Stock Exchange]

Everybody's got a story about Halloween in the Castro. Everybody. We're not even going to link them all. Click on any news outlet and you'll see. We'll just link the Weekly, which points out that, sanctioned or not, the large crowd that will doubtless flood the Castro tomorrow will likely flood the doorways and gutters of the Castro with a little something of their own.

Also, the buzz on SFist comments is that Harvey's is going to be open, despite city government's bully-ragging.

Your Halloween Closures [SFist]

Halloween in the Castro: Where Will Everyone Pee? [SF Weekly]

Photo Credit: Duffergeek

Please bear with us while we settle on a standing title for our blog roundups. Here are some minor themes running through the local blogosphere today:

Cheese-related contests: We've posted a couple updates on the grilled cheese invitational, but Amateur Gourmet contains a similar item in the form of a casserole cookoff winner. [Amateur Gourmet]

Street food: Bunrab is visiting Korea, apparently for work, but hasn't done much except for to peruse street food. Meanwhile, Bay Area Bites found a map of local taco trucks and, in the same post, mentioned a Korean BBQ truck that makes regular stops 'round town so you, too, can do the Bunrab for less than the price of a plane ticket. [Bunrab], [ Bay Area Bites]

Wine: Zagat is plugging a couple of new wine bar openings, while An Obsession With Food frets over imported wine's carbon footprint. [Zagat], [An Obsession With Food]

It's nice the Burritoeater does a taqueria visit pretty much every three days. It keeps things regular in this crazy world of ours. It's especially nice that this time they visited El Faro because we had not yet seen their general write-up of the place, which includes the assertion that that particular taqueria was the BIRTHPLACE OF THE SUPER BURRITO.

Now, San Francisco claims to be the birthplace of a lot of things: Irish coffee, cioppino and hippies, for example, claim roots in this town. But the invention of the super burrito leaves pretty much everything else on earth far behind. To pinpoint that invention not only to a certain taqueria, but to a specific date--Tuesday, September 26, 1961--gives us the kind of satisfaction known only to people like that guy who caught Barry Bonds' record-breaking ball, or the children of the wizard who first combined chocolate with peanut butter. That is to say, total.

El Faro [burritoeater]

Photo Credit: The Amateur Gourmet

Curse our going home at the end of the day! We missed an important piece of late-breaking news. As the ever-vigilant Normal pointed out on our last post, the winners of the first-ever Oakland Grilled Cheese Invitational were announced yesterday evening.

Right about the time of the announcement, we were drinking pints of Budweiser on an empty stomach and wishing with all our hearts that some form of warm, bread-y, cheesy sustenance would magically appear before us. A contest-winning sandwich would have been just the thing, thank you, but alas, we settled for lukewarm pizza and can now only gaze at more contest photos and salivate.

Congratulations, Kathasaurus and Bustin, who picked up a score of 29.8 with their "queijo grelhado velho liso." Please look us up the next time you're cooking.

Official Results for the First Annual Oakland Regional Grilled Cheese Invitational [Grilledcheeseinvitational]

Photo Credit: Katie

While we wait for the winners to be announced in the first-ever Oakland Grilled Cheese Invitational last Thursday, the intrepid grilled cheese enthusiast Normal brings us a link to some photos, as well as a strongly worded assertion that the contest, while still undecided, has done much to further the cause of one of America's favorite comfort foods in Oakland. Thanks, Normal!

Grilled Cheese is the Winner! [Hellonormal]

Photo Credit: Marcy Mendelson

Not a moment too soon, some of our local food writers are chiming in with ideas for the holidays. We appreciate that Christmas and Hanukah haven't gotten much of a mention. Call us old fashioned, but we cringe at the sight of blue-and-silver or green-and-red-flecked decorations before Thanksgiving.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, Zagat’s wants you to enjoy that languid holiday in the comfort of someone else's dining room. And not a family member or dear friend, either. If you follow their advice, once the tryptophan kicks in all you'll have to worry about is getting a credit card onto the bill and finding your way home. A welcome relief from the hours of gravy-pot scrubbing that normally characterize the latter half of the day for at least a portion of the family.

A little more imminent, one of our favorite cornerstones on the booze beat, Camper English, ran an article in the Chron on Halloween cocktails last Friday. He's got a nice, booze-related blog, Alcademics, which apparently is part of a larger site he's designing.

Our question, though, is why does one need to change the name of the Bloody Mary (Rye: Bloody Scary) to make it more halloween-y? I mean, the cocktail is named after a queen who made her name torching people in the name of Catholicism. There's also that children's game where you can conjure Bloody Mary in the mirror and then she comes and kills you. And Rye doesn't think all this is macabre enough?

Turkey Day Dining Options [Zagat]
Scaring Up Halloween cocktails [SF Chronicle]

Photo Credit: Jdesign

We can’t take credit for finding these terrifying pictures. That goes to our friend Jamie, who woke us from our World Series couch slumber to a nightmare far more intense than anything that crept between the television and our unconsciousness. They’re from a site called Andiamnotlying. Oh, yes, you are. You’ve got to be. This is both horrible and wonderful, and we can't bear to hide any of it behind a jump. Well, just see for yourself:

Yes, that's right. And then there's all this:

It’s the food equivalent of a Real Doll — a revolting, plastic, desperate experience that would just rope you in with tractor beams powered by an evil curiosity.

Pretty much. And we'll note the pistol, dagger, candle and tape measure in that last photo. Ominous.
Happy Halloween!

Using McDonalds as Pizza Toppings

Photo Credit: Chinese Fashion

While we may be a little late on the ball here, we thought the publication last week of the 2008 San Francisco Michelin Guide deserved a mention. the French Laundry was the only restaurant to achieve a three-star rating, but quite a few others, including some new establishments, followed with one or two stars. Check out the full list here.

As it has only been out for a few days, we have not heard one way or another whether the latest guide is rife with inaccuracies, but after last year's seminal and rather poorly received effort, we're sure the little book will be gone over with many fine-toothed combs in the coming weeks. Those inspectors had better be doing three-star work themselves if they want to get back in the good graces of this city's tough crowd of restaurateurs and their devoted clientele.

The 2008 Michelin Guide.
Photo Credit: Michelin

It's not hard to find good food writing these days. It's not even hard to find good local food writing. In fact, this great city of ours plays host to more amateur and professional gastronomes than almost any other place I can think of. San Francisco is a city that runs on its stomach, not to mention blogging, messaging, talking and ranting on its stomach.
At Menupages, we aim to encourage that epicurean obsession by providing the unique service of collecting menus and posting them online. It's a simple mission, but important, and we hope to be of practical service.
In addition to being a portal of nuts-and-bolts restaurant information, we aim to contribute to the lively civic dialogue on how, where and when one might strap on the old feedbag. The Menupages San Francisco Blog serves to keep the reader up to date on important food news, as well as bringing tantalizing tidbits on, well, tantalizing tidbits, to his or her hungry eye. That's where I come in.
My name is Adam Martin. I'm the latest addition to the Menupages staff, a 10-year student of the local food scene and quite enthusiastic about digging into the blogosphere with an MP-serrated spork. I'll be taking the reigns of this esteemed blog, started by my predecessor, Paolo Lucchesi. I'll also be taking over the job of managing the hefty collection of San Francisco menus--a collection that I hope will grow not only by the work of our intrepid staff but with your help and input.
By way of professional background, I come most recently from a job as reporter for the San Francisco Examiner, where I covered police, fire, courts, the Planning Department, the Department of Building Inspection and other such institutions that lead one to drown one's stresses and sorrows in a rich Bernaise sauce. It only makes sense to now write about that sauce.
It's a treat to be able to share with you, reader, my musings on mastication, just as I hope you will share with me any news, gossip or hilarious anecdotes that reach the ear you so diligently keep to the proverbial ground. I hope we both come away from visits to this blog informed, entertained and ready for lunch.
Thank you for reading, and bon appetit!

Okay, well, Thee Parkside isn’t necessarily paradise, but we’re sure that wherever paradise is, it has bands, beer and free Sunday oyster barbecues. Meanwhile, Thee Parkside, which also has those things, apparently has a bit of a rough side, too.
From the Examiner:

Two minutes before midnight, the suspect, described as a 25-year-old black male, walked into Thee Parkside on 17th and Wisconsin streets brandishing a gun.
The suspect ordered all customers to the floor and went to the bartender demanding money from the register, according to San Francisco police. After the bartender complied, the suspect went to the customers, robbing them and fleeing with an unknown amount of money, police said.

The Examiner

This post in Burritophile’s Burrito Files should strike fear into the heart of all green-blooded guacamole lovers. While San Franciscans look from their redwood structures to the fog bank and back to their tinderbox homes with thankful eyes, it does appear the Southern California wildfires will affect us locally after all.
How will a city that runs on super burritos be transformed by a jump in guacamole prices? Probably very little, aside from more folks calling for “regular.” It’s still too bad, though.
But in more cheerful disaster-related news, the lauded Helmand Palace, a victim of February’s landslide in North Beach, has opened a new set of doors in Russian Hill. A commenter on Chowhound reports that the buffet is gone, but the menu and famous-by-association proprietor remain intact. The hillside restoration, on the other hand, has not gone as smoothly.

Burritophile's Burrito Files
Helmand Palace

Nobody said they were, really, but wow! The NYTimes most emailed article is entitled Five Easy Ways to Go Organic, and it's basically a blog post (no, it is a blog post) with an annotated list of five foods that are worth the trouble and money to buy organic. These are: milk, potatoes, peanut butter, ketchup and apples. Some of these things are unexpected, right? Like ketchup. It has to do with research that indicates "organic ketchup has about double the antioxidants of conventional ketchup." Doubtless. And peanut butter has a lot of fungicide in it. Fine, we're sure it does.

This list is obviously very family-oriented, and normal families at that. If everyone in America switched over to organic in those categories, it would force big farma to make serious reforms.

It's also much more you-oriented than everyone-oriented. A big chunk of the organic movement is about sustainable agriculture, not just what's healthier or better tasting for a given consumer; those are just side effects.

And also, these five things represent but the tiniest fraction of what's superior in organic form. What's not superior? We guess it's hard to quantify that superiority in order to make a price judgment, especially given our completely whacked-out sensibilities of the marginal value of better food.

But basically, this list strikes us as Old News. We guess it's still pretty relevant to a plurality of NYTimes readers, though.

Five Easy Ways to Go Organic [NYTimes]

The Grinder directed our attention to an excellent slide show over at Time Magazine. The photo essay is promoting Melanie Dunea's new book My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals, which has a gloriously simple conceit at its heart: fifty of the world's top chefs were asked what they would choose for their last meal on earth. This is a game that chefs (and foodies of all stripes) have long played among themselves for ages and the idea of compiling them into a book is, we think, genius. We were especially excited to see Gary Danko of (of course) Restaurant Gary Danko profiled: we especially enjoyed his choice of a feast "to be eaten by hand like at a Roman or Greek banquet" of "the finest foods from around the world, including caviar, spit-roasted suckling pigs, black truffles wrapped in salt pork and a roasted Bleu Bresse chicken."

Watching the drool-worthy slide show inspired us to pose the question to our fellow city editors here at MenuPages. Adam P. of MP: Chicago would start with illegal beluga caviar with all the trimmings and sashimi before moving on to his mom's brisket and would finish with brownies and chocolate chip cake and good vanilla ice cream. MP: Philadelphia's Neal would get an appetizer of al pastor sopes from Plaza Garibaldi before travelling to New York and hitting up Peter Luger Steak House for a porterhouse, German potatoes, and some fine whiskey. He'd forgo dessert in favor of a giant plate of bacon. New hire Adam M, soon to be the force behind this very blog, wants steamed clams, french fries, chowder, an al pastor super burrito, Anchor Steam beer, and mud pie from Mattie's Tavern in Los Olivos. Carolina over at MP: South Florida would like an appetizer of crema de malanga (a soup full of malanga, a yam-like root vegetable, garlic, and cream), followed by vaca frita, white rice, black beans, and tostones from Havana Harry's Restaurant, and a dessert of her friend's mom's passion fruit mousse topped with strawberries and mangoes from her uncle's tree. As for us, we'd start off with a pan-Mediterranean plate piled high with prosciutto, salami, jamon Iberico, pate, olives, Taleggio, Manchego, goat cheese, and a really excellent baguette, before a first course of spaghetti carbonara with fresh pasta, a second course of the grilled Wolfe's Neck sirloin from Rialto, and a light dessert of a few fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies. We'd drink bellinis throughout.

We're dying to know: what would you eat for your last supper?

The Rockstarification of Chefs Continues [The Grinder]
My Last Supper [Time Magazine]
My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals / Portraits, Interviews, and Recipes [Amazon]

Yum, Palencia:
upscale Filipino fare
fills a perfect niche.

Famous Rib Shack rocks!
Stellar smoked meats satisfy
and sauces aren't bad.

Yay, izakayas:
Japanese bar food is great,
coming to SF.

Big Night Italian
with Bay Area flavors
at Risibisi.

PlumpJack: efficient
but something big is missing.
Is it all the soul?

Veggie Ubuntu
will make carnivores happy
with its hearty fare.

This video of a man doing a stand up routine in which he simply reads reviews from our New York site has been generating a lot of buzz here at MenuPages (for real, we love being referenced in anything resembling pop culture). Instant messages (the primary form of communication round these parts) have been exchanged! Laughter has occurred! This qnarf fellow asserts that the major reasons for posting a review on MenuPages are "One: you HATED that restaurant, two: you're paid by that restaurant, and three: you are a crazy person." Not entirely false! We have one thought for Mr. qnarf: you should really see the reviews we can't publish. Comedy gold.

Menupages [YouTube: qnarf]

We're always interested in incidents of food-based sexism. Women and food are a continually controversial topic. Now, New York Magazine is weighing in with a fascinating round table discussion among some of that city's top female chefs.

The chefs discussed why, despite the fact that the majority of home cooks are estimated to be women, so few women run kitchens of prominent restaurants. Explanations ranged from the fact that many women simply aren't willing to make the personal sacrifices necessary to become a top chef (we'd argue that plenty of men aren't willing to do so either) to the sense that male investors aren't as willing to sink money into a female-owned operation. The chefs have some dispiriting anecdotes to share: both Jody Williams of Morandi and Anita Lo of Annisa report that their male comes addressed to "Mr." and Pearl Oyster Bar's Rebecca Charles says that her food deliveryman consistently gives the bill to her (male) sous-chef to sign.

Interestingly, most of the chefs agree that the food of female chefs is different (and better) than that of their male counterparts. Sara Jenkins opines: "I think women cook different food, and I think women cook better food. It’s more from the heart and more from the soul. I look at this whole molecular-gastronomy thing, and I’m like, “Boys with toys.” They’re just fascinated with technology and chemistry sets. I think we make better-tasting food. I’m sorry, I know that’s politically incorrect." We've long maintained that there are no innate gender differences in terms of cooking styles, but we will admit that men seem to be more interested in molecular gastronomy in a general sense than do women. On the other hand, however, when the contestants on The Next Iron Chef had to use molecular gastronomy tools, LA chef Jill Davie of Josie seemed to be the most into it of any of the chefs.

What do you think? Is there an innate difference in the ways that women and men cook? Why are there so few top female chefs?

Top Female Chefs Dish on Why They're Such a Rare Breed [New York Magazine]

A debate about pasta is slowly coming to a boil in the foodie world (sorry, we can never resist a pun). On Tuesday, Serious Eats launched their new video series "Mario Unclogged" (hee!) starring none other than Mario Batali. Batali's inaugural video topic? How to sauce pasta. Batali asserts that Americans put too much sauce on their overcooked pasta, turning it into a veritable soup! The very next day, Mark Bittman, the self-proclaimed minimalist, published a piece in the New York Times alleging the very opposite: that health-conscious eaters should create pasta dishes with twice as much sauce as pasta. Now. We have infinite respect for both Batali and Bittman. We don't have quite enough money for his big ticket restaurants, but we've had some of our favorite meals at Otto Enoteca and Pizzeria and we'll always watch a rerun of Molto Mario. Meanwhile, How to Cook Everything is one of our most frequently used cookbooks. Who should we trust on this vital matter?

As it turns out, we may not need to choose. It seems to us that Bittman is not necessarily advocating saucing all (or even most!) pasta dishes this way. Rather, he seems to be advocating for a new type of dish: one that involves pasta, but functions more as a showcase for vegetables than anything else. The butternut squash and tomato dish he demonstrates in his video, for example, seems more like a vegetable dish than a traditional pasta. We're generally interested in making our food healthier, so that's definitely something we might try next time we're making a veggie-heavy pasta dish. On the other hand, when we're making a pasta meal with a less healthful sauce or one with great fresh pasta, we're definitely going to follow the Batali principle. After all, your spaghetti carbonara really doesn't need to be swimming in eggy, porky goodness.

Below, Batali's video, just because he's hilarious and we can never quite get enough of him.

Mario Unclogged: How to Sauce Pasta [Serious Eats]
Serving Pasta: Forget What You Learned [New York Times]

•The Green Chile Kitchen & Market gets it all right. [Bay Area Bites]
•Would that these delicacies from the State Fair of Texas could come to this fair city! [GrubGirl]
•Vegan panna cotta? What will they think of next? [Chez Pim]
•Eater SF thinks that Andrew Knowlton isn't the only Next Iron Chef cast member who looks like he belongs on The Hills. [Eater SF]

Last night's episode of The Next Iron Chef was, once again, an excellent one. There was only one challenge, but two chefs were eliminated. We're still putting our money on Michael Symon and we suspect that Aaron Sanchez is not long for this competition's world. Let's jump right into it, shall we?

•The episode's sole challenge revolved around resourcefulness. The chefs were required to make two dishes using only an outdoor grill and a cooler full of ingredients that had been picked for them by one of the other chefs. Interestingly, Kaysen, Sanchez, Besh and Morou all seemed to sabotage each other a bit while Cosentino and Symon chose each other ingredients they thought the other would enjoy.
•The one weak spot of this show? The super-cheesy graphics. They look like rejects from Channel Seven News, guys.
•Perhaps unfairly, John Besh continues to kind of annoy us. We really can't quite articulate why except for the fact that he seems like the only chef who isn't buddying down with the others. His chicken-fried rabbit did, however, look killer.
•Can we please discuss Michael Symon's tattoo? There are flames and it says "Live to Cook" and it is either the best or worst thing we've ever seen. Maybe both at the same time?
•The way Cosentino pronounces "dandelion" (dandy-lion) is very endearing.
•Our highlight of the night was Morou's confessional about his dish's plating (hated by the judges), spoken in a crazy mixture of second and third person. We didn't manage to transcribe it exactly, but it was along the lines of: "Morou, you shouldn’t have done this and now he might go home.” Unfortunately, he was eliminated shortly thereafter, denying us of a chance to find out if he is the Brian Malarkey of this show.
•We knew that Kaysen was a goner as soon as he complained about how there wasn't much he could do with frog legs. Dude, that's the entire point of this show! No one wants to add an Iron Chef who's definitely going to lose Battle Frog Legs.
•Donatella Arpaia sounds just like Ellen DeGeneres.
•Andrew Knowlton continues to scale new heights of obnoxiousness. Last night, he seemed to have an irrational hatred for Sanchez. When discussing his escargot dish (which the other judges loved), he said "Well, the escargot tasted good, but I credit the farm in Burgundy for that." Tough talk from a man with the same haircut as Justin Bobby.
•Next week the chefs have to cook on an airplane because the in-flight challenge on Top Chef 3 apparently didn't air before they filmed The Next Iron Chef.

The Next Iron Chef [Food Network]

•Words cannot fully describe our desire to eat this bacon and egg risotto. [An Obsession With Food]
•Tourist-filled as it may be, there is damn fine ice cream to be had in Ghiradelli Square. [Bay Area Bites]
•Do you think the Cheese School of San Francisco gives homework? Because we would not procrastinate on that at all. [GrubGirl]
•Mmmm, fish tacos... [Jatbar]
•Who wouldn't love a ceviche bar? [Between Meals]
•Alice Waters prefers simple food to molecular gastronomy, which is sort of a burn on Grant Atchez. [Eater SF]

•MP: Boston wanted to fatten you up and tell you about dirty restaurants.
•MP: Chicago uncovered a real real creepy article and wanted to deep-fry lobster.
•MP: Philadelphia found a nasty "burrito" and exposed us all to a turkey-cam.
•MP: South Florida discussed The Dread Derek Jeter and got a little fascinated by an IKEA opening.

Hey! Did you know that Taco Bell is expanding to Mexico? True story! The company will advertise its "American tacos" south of the border with the slogan "Es Otra Cosa" (It's Something Different). This sounds like a spectacularly wrongheaded move to us, but it does give us a very good excuse to post our favorite Taco Bell lampooning of all time. Enjoy!

Taco Bell's Hard Shell May Be A Hard Sell [San Diego Union Tribune]
Taco Town [YouTube: sawyerhey]

Roasted vegetables:
Yum. Cauliflower, roasted
is so much better.

Pete's Tavern: sporty
but not merely a sports bar.
Food is beautiful.

Fish chili: legit!
Chili comes in many guises,
with many proteins.

Tinderbox: quite nice.
Promising Bernal Heights spot
is finding its way.

Fleur De Lys : uh oh!
Lost a star: service has slipped,
food's still mostly great.

Spruce is worth the wait.
Food's appeal is wide-ranging
and atmosphere rocks.

Esquire has long been our favorite dude magazine. Two of our top nonfiction writers (AJ Jacobs and Chuck Klosterman) appear on the masthead and the fiction section is pretty great. We rarely buy it, but we're always pretty pumped to see it in a waiting room. The neatest thing about Esquire, to our food-obsessed mind at least, are the food articles, which are written by the very distinguished critic John Mariani. His reviews are sophisticated, clever, and articulate. Our esteem for Mariani has only grown now that we've seen Esquire's list of the best new restaurants of 2007. Two San Francisco restaurants made the list, tying this fair city (along with Washington, D.C., Boston, and Atlanta) for the second highest number of restaurants to make the list (predictably, New York came first). Awesome!

So, which new restaurants made Esquire's list? Cafe Majestic and Lark Creek Steak. Mariani gives Cafe Majestic especially high praise, using the word "perfect" twice (in reference to both the drinks from bartender Michael Keady and the sweetness of the Dungeness crab salad). His fondness for Lark Creek Steak seems to be strongly influenced by the restaurant's unlikely location in the Westfield Mall and the incongruous nature of finding a "first-rate twenty-first-century chophouse, with more than just good meat on the menu and a room easy on the testosterone" in such a place.

Do you agree with Mariani that these are the city's two best new restaurants? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

The Best New Restaurants in America, 2007 [Esquire]
John Mariani [Official Site]
Cafe Majestic [Official Site]
Lark Creek Steak [Official Site]

The NRA (nope, not the National Rifle Association, but the National Restaurant Association) Smart Brief recently alerted us to a story in the thrillingly-named trade paper Broadcasting & Cable. It seems that Chuck E. Cheese's, the site of an overwhelming majority of the birthday parties we attended in elementary school, has volunteered to limit the marketing of their food. Two immediate thoughts:

1) The NRA headline "Chuck E. Cheese Agrees to Limit Marketing To Children" makes it sound as though either Chuck E. Cheese's has agreed not to market to adults or Chuck E. Cheese's will be marketing less to children, which would be weird and creepy because what kind of adult goes to Chuck E. Cheese's without a child in tow?
2) Are we missing something? Does Chuck E. Cheese's really market their food? We haven't been there in ages, but all we remember seeing advertised are the games and rides.

Massachusetts Representative Edward Markey is behind the push to persuade fast food restaurants to lower their marketing to children. While we admire any effort to curb childhood obesity, we can't help but think that perhaps it would be better to encourage Chuck E. Cheese's and other fast food chains to make their menu items healthier. After all, no kid sees an ad and says "Mom! Can we go to Chuck E. Cheese's? I'm dying to try their pizza!" No, kids want to go to Chuck E. Cheese's to play in that giant tub of plastic balls and win some prizes. Once they're there, they'll basically eat anything put in front of them. No one is suggesting that the chain replace pizza with tofu stir-fry, but wouldn't it be great if the pizzas could have less than 155 calories per slice?

National Restaurant Association [Official Site]
Chuck E. Cheese Agrees to Self-Regulate Kids’ Marketing [Broadcasting & Cable]
Chuck E. Cheese's [Official Site]
Congressman Edward Markey [Official Site]

During our elementary school years, there existed a grand total of seven "dinners" we would eat: spaghetti with butter and cheese, Kraft macaroni and cheese (made without butter), pizza with the cheese scraped off, chicken schnitzel, ginger and scallion lo mein, and "burritos" composed solely of tomato and cheddar in a tortilla. As an adult, we now have a very short list of foods we won't eat (mayonnaise, American, cottage and fontina cheeses and butterscotch are the only things we flat-out refuse to put in our mouth) and regularly babysit for a child that refuses to eat anything besides Annie's macaroni and cheese, chicken nuggets and "guacamole" (note: said guacamole is actually just a mashed-up avocado with a pinch of salt). We're well aware that most picky eaters grow out of it (god knows we did), but what causes it in the first place?

According to the New York Times, it's genetics! This means that if you were a picky eater as a child, your own kid is likely to burst into tears at the sight of stuffed cabbage (not that we regularly did that in elementary school or anything). The good news? There does seem to be a bit of a cure. Experts agree that calm, repeated exposure to new foods every day for five days to two weeks can soothe most fussy eaters. The experts also advise not giving in to children's demands for "safe" foods (a difficult thing to do when the vast majority of kid's menus at restaurants seem to consist solely of spaghetti, pizza, chicken nuggets, and hot dogs), and giving foods neat names (a fascinating study revealed that when peas were called "power peas", children consumed 50% more of the green guys).

As for us, we'll just spend the next few years quietly dreading the day when karma and our own picky genetics will come back to haunt us.

Picky Eaters? They Get It From You. [New York Times]
The Experts Suggest [New York Times]

[Photo: Golden Basin]

•How to get a burrito in the depths of Orange County! [Burritophile]
•How to slice a mushroom! [GrubGirl]
•Food for thought: should waiters serve women first? [Between Meals]
•Original Joe's had a bad weekend. [SFist]
•Food for thought, part two: How many signs does one restaurant need? [Eater SF]

We continue to be more than a little in love with The Next Iron Chef. Last night's episode managed to maintain the fast pace and high energy of the first, while upping the ante even higher with two great challenges. We're increasingly betting on a win for Michael Symon: not only is he a killer chef, but he's great TV...very funny and articulate. Let's take a look at some of the episode's other highlights:

•By far the best part of the opening credits is the moment when all eight of the chefs fold their arms in unison.
•We're very much charmed by how much the chefs seem to truly like each other. Every time they're cooking, you can see them affectionately teasing each other and/or complimenting each other's food (we particularly enjoyed Symon's comment after tasting new Cafe Boulud chef Gavin Kaysen's dish: "I'm going to retire and hire you."). It's a nice change after hyper-competitive shows like Top Chef and The Next Food Network Star. And why should these chefs be competitive? They have nothing to prove. Each runs a hugely successful restaurant that's garnered nationwide attention. Appearing on NIC can only boost their recognition, even if they don't win. It's a win-win situation, even for the "losers."
•The first challenge was to create one single bite that expresses their culinary philosophy. In an excellent twist, they then judged each other's morsels. Symon emerged victorious, due to an awesome-looking lamb tartare with garlic, olives, and heirloom tomatoes. Aaron Sanchez ran out of time and wasn't able to plate more than one portion of his take on shrimp ceviche. He whined about it. A lot. Dude, you have to watch your timing on these shows! John Besh, who, as the winner of last week's elimination challenge, got to taste Sanchez's only portion, pronounced it "perfect."
•The evening's second challenge was to create a dish using molecular gastronomy tools such as an immersion circulator and an anti-griddle. Interestingly enough, given the hype that molecular gastronomy receives in the media, all of the chefs said that these were definitely not tools they used in their restaurants and most, including Chris Cosentino (who quickly surpassed Sanchez for "Whiner of the Night") and Michael Symon, seemed moderately unhappy about being forced to do so. Wylie Dufresne of wd-50 came on to teach the chefs how to use the tools, and despite their pronounced dislike for molecular gastronomy, everyone seemed to perk up when Dufresne made instant ice cream by combining creme anglaise with liquid nitrogen.
•Besh continues to sweat like a whore in church every time he cooks. Seriously. He makes Top Chef's Howie look like a spokesman for Old Spice.
•Despite his moaning, Cosentino won the challenge. Tragically, Jill Davies, who we had grown to adore over the course of the episode, was eliminated. Her super-peppy attitude continued even after elimination. Unfortunately, between her elimination and Traci Des Jardins' dismissal last week, the one thing we know about The Next Iron Chef is that he will be a man. Sigh.

•There's nothing wrong with a great small bite. [Bay Area Bites]
•We can think of no finer way to commemorate the end of a year than with a burrito (or three) [Burritophile]
•A delightful Thai dinner from Sai Jai Thai. [GrubGirl]
•Banned on Chowhound: everything. [Eater SF]

•MP: Boston is not overly fond of slow news days.
•MP: Chicago is unimpressed by shills.
•MP: Philadelphia does not care for misspelled signs.
•MP: South Florida could do without picky children.

We've long thought that most fortune cookie messages are truly absurd. Prior to now, however, we were mostly just incredulous that we regularly received messages like "The weather is wonderful" and "You will be invited to a karaoke party." Now, however, it seems that a more pressing problem has arisen in the world of messages found in baked goods. Apparently, Wonton Foods, the world's largest manufacturer of fortune cookies, decided that they wanted their cookies to be "a little bit more value-added. ... We wanted to get some different perspective, to write something that is more contemporary.”

How did this "different perspective" manifest itself? Oh, you know, just in fortunes like "Today is a disastrous day. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em", "It's over your head now. Time to seek professional help", and our personal favorite "Your luck is just not there. Attend to practical matters today."

Some diners have complained, but we think these new-style fortune cookies are pretty hilarious (most especially when you picture them juxtaposed with the series of lucky numbers and Chinese word on the back of the fortunes). If we opened a cookie to find a slip of paper that suggested "Perhaps you've been focusing too much on yourself", we'd probably giggle. After all, it can't be much worse than the message we once received: "Your stupidity will be your downfall." So true. So true.

Don't Open This Cookie (Distastrous Day Inside) [New York Times]
Depressing Fortune Cookies Appearing Country-Wide [Slashfood]

We're very much looking forward to reading The Food Snob's Dictionary. The satirical book is authored by David Kamp (who previously wrote The Rock Snob's Dictionary and The Film Snob's Dictionary along withThe United States of Arugula) and Marion Rosenfeld and contains a plethora of entries about the minutia of food elitism, including this excellent description of heritage turkeys:

Heritage Turkey.Wattled-fowl equivalent of HEIRLOOM produce, denoting old-line indigenous breeds of turkeys that have approached extinction during the tyrannical, Butterball-fueled reign of the big-breasted hybrid freak known in the poultry industry as the Large White. Propelled by such organizations as SLOW FOOD, heritage turkeys, with such J. Crew-catalog names as Bourbon Red, Standard Bronze, Narragansett, and Jersey Buff, have been reintroduced in limited quantities to the market.

The heritage turkey we prepared for Thanksgiving was so dark-meated and intensely flavorful that Gramma wept as she said, “This! This is what turkeys tasted like in my girlhood in Vermont!”

We're assuming that any regular reader of this blog is at least a low-grade food snob (personally, we had a humiliating moment while watching The Next Iron Chef last weekend when we turned to our roommate and sagely commented that Michael Symon's dish sounded like "a really nice, classic flavor profile"), but in case you're unfamiliar, Kamp is kind enough to define the term: "Part groupie, part aesthete, part stark raving loon, the Food Snob is someone who has taken the amateur epicure’s admirable zeal for eating and cooking well to hollandaise-curdling extremes. He wears Bastad chef’s clogs even though he works in publishing or property law. He owns an $8,000 gas range with six burners and a griddle. ... He considers Elizabeth David, Richard Olney, and Fernand Point his greatest influences, in particular the latter’s masterful Ma Gastronomie, in the original French, which— What’s that? You don’t know who these people are? Then...then shame on you!"

The excerpts from The Food Snob's Dictionary are so enjoyable largely because Kamp and Rosenfeld are clearly writing from the perspective of those who have more than a touch of food snobbery themselves. Serious Eats has an excellent interview with Kamp, in which he reveals that he grew up in a "New Jersey family that did everything the New York Times weekend section told us to do." The interview is great and the book looks fantastic. We're very excited to get our hands on a copy.

The Food Snob's Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Gastronomical Knowledge [Amazon]
Food Snobbery Explained [Snobsite]
David Kamp: The Serious Eats Interview [Serious Eats]

Boston's Figs: oh dear.
We think it was a bad night,
but man. Pretty bad.

Dry-fryed chicken: yum.
A pair of Chinese places
make stellar dishes.

Yes! Bloody Marys.
With or without Tabasco,
they are pretty great.

Shabu shabu food
at Zabu Zabu is fun
and quite delicious.

Bong Su: much improved!
Menu is revamped, refined
while service still rocks.

Trendy Laiola
blends Spain and California
with lots of highlights.