If the Slow Marketplace was the centerpiece of this weekend's Slow Food Nation event, then the Taste Pavilion was the main course. Ambling through For Mason for the evening session, fellow MenuPages blogger Alexis Wright, her "Sweetie," and third wheel yours truly, prepared to be overwhelmed.

Even before the massive, Fort Mason exhibition hall loomed into sight, we knew we were in for the kind of treat you have to work at. Lines ruled the day, and were overwhelming at first, but after suffering through a couple, it turned out most went pretty fast, and they all had a lovely payoff.

By now you've probably seen a good few photos of Saturday's Taste Pavilion, thanks to intrepid reporters at Eater SF, and the Slow Food Nation flickr pool. What's that? You just can't get enough? Great, here are some more photos and maybe an anecdote or two, after the jump.

I made a bee-line past the gigantic pizza line, the beer tent, and the Native American foods outside, determined to get the lay of the land. But before I could get 20 feet from the door, I ran into my old buddy Michelle Fuerst, of Homemade, who curated the pickle booth. Here she is doing her job, explaining pickles to a couple interested patrons:

And here is a plate of those wonderful, briney treats:

I wandered a little further, bouncing back and forth, clutching my "Slow Dough" and wondering where to spend it first (er, second, as I had just used it to dabble in picklology). Then I saw this guy:

That's Ed Ueber, a retired marine biologist and friend of the owners of Monterey Fish Market, in Berkeley. And that behind him is one hell of a bounty from the sea. The fish section turned out to be great, with a trio of little bites that included squid, a sardine on toast, and a pate:

Next, I wandered past the cocktail bar, where this dude was making a hell of a racket slapping, shaking, and generally molesting a collection of herbs that would eventually become some dynamite drinks. He's Carlos Yturria, and he manages the bar at Bacar:

The cocktail area turned out to be a riot, and a great value in terms of Slow Dough, basically the currency of the event. Admission included 20 "dollars" in the form of little circles that got scratched off at each tasting area. Some things took one, some two, and some three circles. Cocktails, surprisingly, only went for one circle for as many as you wanted.

Below is Lance Winters, distiller at Alameda's St. George Spirits, and the guy responsible for the United States' first domestic brand of absinthe in, like, forever. He's been making the stuff for his own use for about 11 years, he said, using organic wormwood from a supplier in Oregon and one in Davis.

He explained that absinthe turns cloudy in water because it secretes essential oils that are soluble in alcohol but not in water. "As we add water, they start to come out of solution in the form of little droplets. That's the cloudiness," he said. This guy loves his absinthe (can you tell?):

The cocktail section was pleasantly uncrowded, but that cannot be said about most of the event. Here's the line for the cheese plates:

This apparently wrapped around the outside of the building, at its height. By the time I took a stab at it, it was just poking out that side door. It was funny how quickly this room, like probably any long-ish assembly, developed its own culture. One overheard people talking about the cheese line in awed voices, and it soon became shorthand to refer to a member of your party who would be indisposed for a while.

It was worth it, though. That cheese was damned good. I ate mine before I even remembered to take a picture of it, but here's what it looked like in the case:

Another killer line formed at the pizza stand out front. Fortunately, Laverne Dicker and her comrades at the Bread Bakers Guild of America were there with bread sticks to stave off the hunger pangs:

There was so much bread at this place. They didn't just have it for eating, but also for making gigantic snail sculptures. Here's Alexis taking in the last rays of sun out in the Hall of Bread:

Finally, we had a great time sampling coffee under the tutelage of Edwin Martinez, a coffee farmer from Guatemala who was up for the event. His Finca Vista Hermosa, in Huehuetenango, provides beans for Barefoot Coffee Roasters, among others. He was loving pulling people out of the coffee line for special tastings:

And that was about it. For some reason, none of my charcuterie shots came out really well. Fortunately, though, Alexis and I double-teamed the coverage. Check back tomorrow for her more in-depth account of the evening, and still more photos, courtesy of "Sweetie."

A lot of cool stuff happened this morning as my old pal Kim Cuddy and I set out to take a tour of San Francisco's Alemany Farm. The only Slow Journey that was both free and didn't involve going anywhere (or anywhere you couldn't get to on BART), this was for me.

As we tromped through the bushes on the hillside above the farm, lost, but navigating by the landmark windmill, Kim stopped to eat blackberries that grow wild there. We were already late for the tour, so what the hell:

You couldn't get more in the spirit of Slow Food Nation than this place. A former San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners sight, the couple-acre patch just off Interstate Highway 280 and Alemany Boulevard was first plowed in 1995. Since then it's been known as St. Mary's Youth Farm, SLUG, an abandoned lot, and, since 2005, the independent Alemany Farm. It's a prime example of a piece of urban land transformed into the city's own salad bowl.

Once we made it through the gate, Kim and I took a partially guided tour of the farm's crops, corners, and crannies. Check it out, after the jump.

A lot of what Alemany Farm does is experimental. Antonio Roman-Alcala pointed out that people are less inclined to grow their own grains because grain crops are perceived as being space-inefficient. So the farm is growing a row of maiz corn right now, just to see how many tortillas they can get out of it:

Antonio showed us the rows of tomatoes and strawberries that are being dry-farmed. The leaves are limp from lack of water, but the fruits lay heavy and turgid on the ground.

He talked about the olive trees on the farm's east side that have borne a total of four fruits — that's going to take some experimentation to fix. There's an ongoing battle with gophers, who the farm refuses to poison.

"There's a few hawks that hang out here — some kestrals and some red-tails... There are feral cats, but they seem to coexist with the gophers," Antonio said.

As Antonio led the group through the farm's crops, Kim gave me a look. "I'm tired of being in this tour group. You think we can go explore?"

"Sure, why not?" I said. We tromped up a hill to the small cluster of fruit trees, where we found a bush/tree thing laden with apples.

How do we know these ugly things are apples? Because this hilarious thing happened: As we waded through the brown grass on the hillside, I began to get nervous. "You think we should be up here?" I said.

"I don't know. Hey, what are these weird fruits? You think they're apples or pears?" Kim said.

"Um, pears, maybe?"

"I'm going to eat one," Kim said. I got nervous, thinking how embarrassing it would be when Antonio came running over, red-faced with frustration at the weekend warriors destroying his crops. The guilt flowed.

"They're apples," Kim said, suddenly flush with knowledge. "Here, Adam, eat this apple."

I did, and with that bite, I lived up to my namesake.

We wandered further and found the beehives kept by the San Francisco Beekeepers' Association, which partners with Alemany Farm:

We found a cracked, paved path leading to a small, shaded grove. "I'll come here and read sometime," Kim announced. We saw this butterfly:

Kim, who has a stong affection for kale, based on a recipe for "kale slaw" that she loves, got really excited about this little volunteer. "It's rogue kale!" She exclaimed:

Finally, it was time to re-join the tour group and, shortly, the real world. The cars that zoom by within yards of the farm belie its tranquility. For me, I've seen that "SLUG" windmill everytime I've driven down 280, and never seen what's under it. If slow food is about making food into a respite from the crush of modernity, then Alemany Farm really does represent the essence of that movement. It's really too bad we had to leave before lunch, but hey, blogs don't update themselves. Here's what we missed:

Well, there's plenty to eat at the Tasting Pavilion, which is where I'm headed now. As always, check back for updates.

Friday was one packed day. In addition to a panel discussion full of zingers and insight, Slow Food Nation got started with the taste pavilions, a day's worth of slow tours and of course, the Slow Marketplace and Victory Garden. This is where I spent the morning, eating, chatting and generally hobnobbing with friend and impromptu guide, the Tablehopper, Marcia Gagliardi.

We met up in the Victory Garden, which splays out in front of City Hall for an entire block, full of circular planters like these:

Tons more photos after the jump...

Breakfast consisted of one of Scott Peacock's ham biscuits:

And a half a mufaletta sandwich from Salumi Artisan cured meats, of Seattle. Marcia, who spent her New Orleans vacation wandering around and tasting mufaletta, declared it excellent:

As we sat on our hay bale, chatting about this and that, the conversation turned to what you can and can't get to eat in New York. Our bale-mate swiveled his head and announced, "I was never able to get a really thick milkshake there. They turn the machine on and walk away for five minutes, and by the time they get back, it's chocolate milk." He's never been to the Shake Shack, he said, but then, he's from the Midwest, so he knows from milkshakes.

This turned out to be Barry Foy, author of the soon-to-be-released Devil's Food Dictionary, polishing off a plate of tlacoyos. I asked him what he was looking forward to eating this weekend. "I always make a bee-line for the cured meats," he said. I'll go to the end of the line and start over if I have to." Look out, Taste Pavilion — get that second salumi ready.

After picking up a New Orleans Iced Coffee from the Blue Bottle stand, we took a stroll through the marketplace:

We met all sorts of folks selling all sorts of food, like Pierre Bellevue, of Pan-O-Rama breads, whose gigantic loaf seems to have eclipsed his head-shot. Sorry Pierre, but what do you expect with bread like this?:

We did manage to get a shot of James Freeman, of Blue Bottle, as we thanked him for the pick-me-up. He was pushing Blue Bottle's Huehuetenango Highland coffee, from Guatemala:

Even though we were full of mufaletta and ham, Marcia and I couldn't help salivating at the rich, red tomatoes on display from Blue House Farm. They're dry-farmed, owner Ryan Casey told me, with a little help from the coastal fog and clay-rich soil:

Another mouth-watering dry-farmed product sat right next to the glowing pile of tomatoes. These apples come from Sebastapol, where husband and wife Paul and Kendra Kolling run the farm Nana Mae's Organics. Volunteer Keith Borglum presided over the pile:

Marcia and I enjoyed a sample of a surprisingly rich peach cobbler-type-thing made with Massa Organics rice:

For some reason I thought the J&P Organics sign was hilarious. Hey, dudes, you're way closer than a quarter-mile. Here's JP himself humoring a tired blogger:

Finally, we had a laugh with Dee Harley, a friend of Marcia's, who runs Harley Farms Goat Dairy in Pescadero. She showed off her new credit-card-swiping-thing, which she said was the smartest investment she had made in preparation for this market. But I don't know. That title could conceivably go to the goats who squirted out what would become this cheese. It's heavenly:

And then it was time for us to go our separate ways, I to the Food for Thought discussion, and Marcia to own this freaking town as the queen of food news and gossip. But not before posing for a couple of photos of ourselves. See if you can guess who's who:

By the way, yes, that is an upside down bus stacked on top of a right-side-up one to make one weird double-decker. It belongs to a group called the Whitehouse Organic Farming Project, or, awesomely, The Who Farm.

That's all for now. Check back for photos of Alemany Farm, the Taste Pavilion, and whatever pops up.

Today's Food For Thought panel discussion, "Re-Localizing Food," was interesting, yes, entertaining, for sure, but almost totally devoid of surprises. Did you know that Michael Pollan is in favor of using sustainable farming techniques and growing food closer to home? Why yes, actually. Did you also know that Winona LaDuke thinks people like those on her White Earth Indian Reservation deserve better access to fresh, local food? Yes, you probably did.

But underlying what might be characterized by the cynical as a one long choir-preach, we found a lovely surprise: These folks are funny. Sure, the humor is a little NPR-ish, but the zingers were not sparse among the four panelists as they rapped on their favorite issues, fielding questions and egging each other on.

LaDuke, an economist, Native American rights activist and former Green Party vice-presidential nominee, got a big laugh — and an appreciative round of murmurs — when she pointed out that the root of word colonization is "colon," meaning, to digest, as in, “how one dominant system digests other systems.” Zing! okay, maybe you had to be there.

But then Gary Nabhan, founder of Renewing America’s Food Traditions (RAFT), responded, “remember that Christopher Columbus, in Spanish, is called “Cristobal Colon... You might call his discovery of America 'The Great Colonoscopy.'” Whoa, where did that come from? These guys are on fire.

Later, as the discussion touched on environmental damage, Michael Pollan, author of Omnivore's Dilemma and, most recently, urged eaters to "vote with their forks," for local food, pointing out that, “the very idea that California exports water to New York City in the form of tomatoes is completely hilarious.” Yes, for some reason, in the context, it was.

As panelists mused on how to make fresh, local, organic produce available to people of limited means, Blue Hill restaurant and Stone Barn farm honcho Dan Barber played the straight man. "Did you have anything to add, Dan?" moderator and Saveur editor James Oseland asked, by way of drawing the farmer-cum-restaurateur out a little. "Being the guy who charges $40 for an entree?" Barber tossed back, "No."

Barber found more of a voice when the topic turned to the highly charged issue of Foie Gras, which Blue Hill has stopped serving, but which he loooooves. He talked about visiting a farm where the geese are treated so well that wild geese have been known to drop out of the sky to join them. A super-humane foie gras farm, you ask? No, really.

It turns out that geese naturally stuff themselves late in the fall to get ready for the winter. At some point during this gorging, they get about as rich and lethargic as those force-fed on industrial foie-gras farms. That's when they go to slaughter, and eventually to mini-toasts. Barber could barely restrain his enthusiasm (and saliva, maybe, but I was too far back to tell), as he described a flock of migrating birds settling in with the domestic flock, who are free to leave if they wish. "I’m listening to this guy, he’s like the goose whisperer," Barber said of the farmer.

“So you’re going to serve, now, certified volunteer foie gras?” quipped Pollan.

But, of course, the hilarity had to end sometime, even as LaDuke pondered the idea of eating 5 million pounds of wild rice. "I could try, but it might make more sense to trade with, say, the lemongrass people… I don’t know who the lemongrass people are…”

Okay, that last one was a bit insider-y, but fear not, dedicated slow-foodist. Video and audio of this and all the panels will be available through Slow Food Nation later this week, and of course, we'll link it all right here.

Food For Thought [Slow Food Nation]
Michael Pollan [Official Site]
Winona LaDuke [Wikipedia]
Gary Nabhan [Official Site]
Dan Barber [Blue Hills at Stone Barn]
James Oseland [Official Site]

What’s bigger news right now? The fact that it’s Labor Day weekend and most of us have 3 days to get into trouble or the fact that Slow Food Nation has finally arrived and is in full force? Being all wrapped up in the food world it feels like the latter, but we’ve found a few other goings on of interest if you’re feeling like you don’t want to slow down too much or you missed out on getting tickets to the Tasting Pavilion (sold out, but check out Whole Foods for last minute Sunday tickets).

SATURDAY
• The Sonoma Wine Country Weekend will be hopping this Labor Day weekend. “An epicurean event unlike any other, Sonoma Wine Country Weekend combines the elegance, sophistication, and style of the Sonoma County Showcase of Wine and Food with the festivity, frivolity and fundraising of the Sonoma Valley Harvest Wine Auction for three unforgettable days of celebration.” Sounds great to us. Prices range from $75 to $600 depending on the event and there are some events that are sold out but there are still plenty of open events to keep you happy.

• And just to make sure Slow Food and the Sonoma Wine and Country fests don’t take all the glory, the 38th Annual Millbrae Art and Wine Festival will also be kicking ass and taking names from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m on Saturday and Sunday. This is the Bay Area’s biggest Labor Day celebration. “stroll, browse, relax and enjoy a friendly and vibrant street fair with two days of stellar live music, gorgeous handcrafted work by 250 talented artists, fabulous food and wine, and the best family entertainment value around.” Oh, and this event is free. ‘Nuff said.

SUNDAY
• Sunday Streets is taking over 4 miles of San Francisco from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. so that people can walk, bike, skate, and dance their way through the city without worrying about being hit by a car (or a MUNI bus). Streets will be car-free from Bayview to Chinatown and people will be out in mass, in the middle of the street, getting down with the get down.

So that’s the scene. Get some rest, ladies and gentlemen and enjoy this labor-free weekend. See you Tuesday.

[Photo via Jeff Poskanzer/Flickr]

• Remember the salad days of college, when all you could afford were burritos? [MP: Boston]

• It's a bittersweet week for our Chicago editor, as her little brother/party correspondent heads off to college. [MP: Chicago]

• Let it be known: The Wire is well-missed. [MP: Philadelphia]

• Aww. Mexico's president misses his momma's mole sauce. [MP: San Francisco]

• The entire MenuPages family misses instant messaging with our South Florida editor, who spent the week in Korea. Also, we are jealous. [MP: South Florida]

So far in our slow food coverage we've brought you a telephone conversation with director Anya Fernald, a telephone conversation with Michael Pollan, and plenty of writing in italics. That's fine and everything, but this junk is actually starting! Let's get off the phone and into the field.

You can find updates throughout the day here. Meanwhile, you may be interested in some of the chatter going on elsewhere about the "largest celebration of American food."

• Eater SF has sneak-peak photos of the Taste Pavilions. These are the big free sample extravaganzas that also include the Green Kitchen demonstrations. Looks extravagant!

• Serious Eats posted an open letter from Ed Levine to Alice Waters and Slow Food Natoin, in which he makes a good point about an important issue conspicuously absent from this weekend's hustle and bustle.

• Finally, the San Francisco Chronicle is all over this story, including a Slow Food-related cocktail roundup and a Michael Bauer blog account of last night's kickoff dinner.

Shoot, it's creeping up on lunchtime. I'm going to go eat.

• Good news: it looks like the salmonella outbreak might finally be over! [Washington Post]

• Bad news: in the wake of last month's flooding in eastern India, villagers have resorted to eating uncooked rice mixed with polluted water. [Boston Globe]

• Good news! Items at a 99 cent store are still, generally, 99 cents or less. Way to run the least necessary sidebar of all time, guys. [LA Times]

• Bad news: mice can still really put a damper on your food wholesaling operation. [Chicago Tribune]

• Good news: Brazil seems to be handling rising food costs relatively well. Bad news: Argentina? Not so much. [New York Times]

There are some lies happening in this video (there is NO WAY that cherry turnovers are better than PB&J, or apple pie for that matter), but these qualms aside, it's nice to see a slightly underdog pastry get some chops. After all, although tasty, the turnover is no danish, muffin, or even scone in terms of breakfast food popularity.

We've long been curious about how these national food holidays came to be, especially since there seems to be one for every day (for example, National Banana Lover's Day and National Whiskey Sour Day bookend National Cherry Turnover Day). Also, how is each specific date chosen to celebrate National [insert food in question] Day: what is it about August 28th that makes it oh-so-very-cherry-turnover, as opposed to August 29th?

After some digging, it turns out that each day is designated by Presidential decree. A food gets picked for a national day after lobbyists, trade associations, and a whole other host of special interests petition the President to sign off on a national food holiday. Surprise, surprise, this whole phenomenon seems to be a peculiarly American happening.

So, while you bite into your celebratory cherry turnover today (or not), you can once again thank your lucky stars for capitalism, without which we would never have national food holidays. Oh, and ps: today is also Dream Day, to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream," which seems timely for this week.

"Obscure Commercial Holidays" [Stay Free Magazine]

We’ve been making our own dinner this week so it was nice to do a little dining out last night.

We met up with a friend at Café Reverie in Cole Valley and in addition to the wonderful weather we were surprised to see a few changes. First, they’ve moved the restroom. No biggie, you might say, but you may be more interested to learn that they moved the restroom to accommodate a kitchen expansion. Which accounts for the menu updates.

The menu is still heavy on breakfast items, salads and sandwiches, but they’ve also added several pasta dishes (the porcini truffle ravioli stood out) and a Tapas menu that includes spanish meatballs, grilled flank steak, and sautéed button mushrooms.

We love breakfast for dinner so we had one of the omelet specials (chicken apple sausage, onions, spinach, sundried tomatoes and jack cheese) and our dining partner had the Chicken Saltimbocca: chicken stuffed with procuitto, mozzarella and fresh sage. The prices, we think, are reasonable considering the rather large portion sizes. Our omelet was $9 and the Chicken Saltimbocca was $11.

The only complaint we had was the time it took to get our food. We acknowledge that stuffing chicken with anything and making it taste good takes time and yes, it is slow food week, but waiting upwards of 25 minutes while watching “everyone else” bound up to the counter to pick up their orders, well, let’s just say it makes for a very jealous stomach.

But for the most part Café Reverie is a pleasant experience. They have a lovely, gardeny, spacious back patio where we waited patiently sipping a gianormous glass of sparkling wine and admiring San Francisco when the sun comes out.

Café Reverie [Citysearch]

[Photo via lil’bear/Flickr]

With Slow Food Nation all around, a Civic Center marketplace of local, sustainable foods, and every retailer in the city jumping on the bandwagon, it could be easy to make all kinds of grand lifestyle decisions this weekend—“Who says it’s hard to be a locavore? Look at all this stuff”—but what about in January, long after the fruit stands are packed up, when school or work or whatever it is you do is in full swing, where will your new-found values get you then, in the face of Egg McMuffins and Pop Tarts?

I chatted on the phone with food politics whiz and general cage-rattler Michael Pollan yesterday about how to incorporate some slow-food values into one’s day-to-day life. How does one stay a responsible eater when one is busy as all hell? Can you still go to restaurants without ruining the planet? And what’s this all about, anyway?

“There’s been a lot of effort to complicate [the issues],” Pollan said, but in fact, the global effect of your food is simple. “In general, the closer your food is grown to where you eat it, and the less it is processed, the lighter its carbon footprint.”

“Sometimes the drive to complicate things is done in the interest to frustrate people’s desires to do the right thing,” Pollan told me.

Wait, that sounds awfully nefarious. Who would complicate important issues like this on purpose?

“The food industry is always trying to confuse the issue… If you have a sugary cereal and you slap a health claim on it, what are you doing but confusing the issue?”

Pollan pointed out that the highest-impact foods at the store, from an environmental and health point of view, are the highly processed ones, as well as meat, eggs, and dairy. In his most recent book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, he advocates shopping around the edge of the grocery store, where you find dairy, meat, produce, and bread, and avoiding the middle, where you find Hot Pockets, Pop Tarts, and Fruit Roll-Ups.

Pollan laid out three simple metrics by which to determine how damaging your food is to the planet, and yourself:

• Find out the animal’s feed. Grass-fed beef makes less of an impact than grain-fed. Most grass-fed or otherwise sustainably produced meats are labeled as such in gigantic letters.

• How processed is your food? The more that happens to it between the field and the table, the more resources it absorbs and the more nutrients are sapped. “In general, processed food like that [Pop Tart] takes 10 calories of fossil fuel energy for every one calorie of food energy," Pollan said.

• How far does it travel? The closer to you that your food is produced, the better.

Okay, that’s great and all, and most city-dwellers have access to some Berkeley Bowl equivalent, but dude, who shops for groceries? Many of us eat at restaurants almost all the time. And traveling? Hell, how are you supposed to stay responsible in an airport?

“When I’m on the road I tend to avoid meat unless I’m a place where I know where they get their meat,” Pollan said. “There’s one restaurant in every city these days that’s conceived in the spirit of Slow Foods and Chez Panisse, so I try to find out where that is, and, you know, just keep it simple.” God, he’s unflappable.

“If a restaurant offers grass-fed meat, I’ll order that. I want to support that industry and I really like it,” Pollan said. “I don’t order conventional meat that hasn’t been grown sustainably. I’d be much more likely to order fish, avoiding big, predator fish… those are the ones that are in most danger. Things like tuna and swordfish.”

But Pollan pointed out that there are sustainable fisheries, such as salmon in Alaska. “If it’s wild salmon from Alaska, they’ll usually tell you… More and more, restaurants will tell you where their food comes from and how they source it because it’s a selling point… that’s a very positive development.” You can print out a guide of sustainable seafood from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Neat. So where do you eat out, Michael Pollan?

“I really like restaurants where the chefs are serious about sourcing their food and elevate quality of ingredients over technique. To me, that’s what I really like. And I like pretty simple food. I don’t like fussy food.”

Pollan mentioned Chez Pannisse Café right off the bat, of course. “I love Picante, Oliveto. In the city I like Zuni Cafe, Quince.” He also mentioned Kirala, Cesar, and Saul’s deli, in Berkeley, and the new Camino, Pizzaiolo, in Oakland.

Pollan naturally wouldn’t single out an event this weekend as the most important, but he made an interesting point about the planning: “The architects they recruited for this—people in the restaurant business should pay attention to the design.” So there you go, restaurateurs. Get those business cards.

As for the rest of you, hey, good luck getting in to hear Pollan speak this weekend. Most of his events are sold out. But you can check through the Slow Food Nation schedule just in case, and also keep up with the man via his own website. He speaks publicly all the time. Come next busy January, catching a lecture might help you stay off the Pop Tarts a little longer.

Slow Food Nation [Official Site]
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto [Amazon]
Chez Panisse [Official Site]
Seafood Watch [Monterey Bay Aquarium]
Michael Pollan [Official Site]

[Photo: via ">Ken Light/Michaelpollan.com]

• A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge rules taco trucks can stay and vend, instead of being forced to move every hour. [LA Times]

• A look at how two South American nations are dealing with the rise in food pricesw. [New York Times]

• The disease outbreak near Tulsa is, in fact, E. coli, from a local restaurant that is (finally) named. [Tulsa World]

• Here's a guide to Slow Food Nation. The San Francisco event kicks off tomorrow. [SF Chronicle]

Umami -- that savory taste of meat -- gets all the press. Small wonder then that the two of the four other tastes (sweet, salty, sour and bitter) are so aptly named. Perhaps now's the chance for this flavor darling to get squeezed out of the limelight... at least for a little bit.

Fox News reports that scientists may have discovered a sixth taste. Celebrating this new discovery would be a bit premature, however, as (ta-da!) this is the taste of calcium. Yes, calcium: of broccoli, spinach, and collard greens.

You're probably not alone if you try to avoid these leafy veggies — but that may be precisely the fault of these new-found taste receptors: calcium in large quantities tends to have an unpleasantly bitter taste.

There may be reason to rejoice about this discovery, after all, according to Michael Tordoff, a behavioral geneticist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.

People don't consume as much calcium as nutritionists would like, and one reason for this is that foods high in calcium don't taste good to many people. Tweaking the taste could encourage a calcium-deficient population to consume more of this key nutrient.

That's um, great and everything, but in the meantime – pass the pork, would you?

Yes, MSG, the Secret Behind the Savor [NY Times]
Sixth (and Fifth) 'Taste' Possibly Discovered [Fox]

[Photo: via aquatone282/flickr]

No offense meant, in particular, to Westfield Center, but we're not really drawn to restaurants in malls. It's just not where we go when we want to stumble into something delicious. But after reading the San Francisco Business Times profile of Sarah Rocio Gomez, chef at Zazil, we're thinking we should take a culinary wander through downtown's big mall.

Gomez has a fascinating resume. She was a sous-chef for Mexican President Vicente Fox, went to Culinary University in Mexico, the Cordon Bleu, in Paris, and the Culinary Institute of America in New York. She's also a certified sommelier, and even had a newspaper cooking column as a little girl. Here's what she said about cooking for Fox:

Imagine serving to huge personalities, Tony Blair, Elton John, George Bush. President Fox’s favorite dishes were enchiladas, sopas and mole. We learned how to prepare the mole sauce from his mom.

The Dish: Sarah Rocio Gomez [San Francisco Business Times]
zazil
Zazil [Official Site]

A friend of ours was at a conference downtown at the Hilton yesterday and decided it would be a good opportunity for us to get lunch.

Our first thought was to check out the much-talked-about Urban Tavern, but we knew our wallet wouldn’t be up for it so we went with our friend’s suggestion to check out Sultan, the Indian place across the street from the Hilton.

Interestingly, Sultan is right next door to Naan n Curry, as in, they share a entrance way, which actually didn’t make us too excited to check things out, but a glowing write-up of Sultan’s “gourmet Indian” in the window put our mind at ease. Not to mention how clean, spacious and sparkly everything looked inside.

Lunch is buffet-style and for $10.95 a person we think you definitely get your money’s worth. The selection changes with the produce and ingredient availability, but rest assured you’ll find more than tiki masal (which was there of course) to keep you happy. Sultan is more than Indian food, it’s ambitious Indian food in the sense that menu changes daily, it features regional items not necessarily on the average Indian menu and all of the ingredients are—wait for the buzz words—organic and seasonal.

We had a little of everything. A vegetable curry dish, the tandori chicken, the cucumber and yogurt dip, which we thought went divinely with the incredibly flavorful strawberries and papaya. But perhaps our favorite part was the fresh naan brought to the table. We were happy to taste that it was light and bubbly like we think naan should be.

This was a good find. We’ll definitely be going back soon to what else pops up on the buffet table.

Urban Tavern [Official Site]
Sultan [Menupages]

[Photo via paper or plastic/Flickr]
Naan and Curry [MenuPages]
Naan n Curry [Official Site]

Welcome to the first day of coverage of this weekend's Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco. I'll be at the event, snapping photos, talking to participants and stuffing my face, and you can attend vicariously through me by reading the coverage right here. It's going to be a tough job wandering around collecting edible samples, but with your support, I'll get through it. To find out just what this weekend is all about, I got on the phone with Anya Fernald, Slow Food Nation's executive director.

Hanging around, staring at that victory garden outside City Hall, waiting for Slow Food Nation to start, is like nibbling bread while you wait for your entrée.

In this case, that entrée is a local, grass-fed steak with a side of tomatoes from the garden. The bread is homemade from organic flour, and the butter was just churned yesterday at a farm in Marin County.

“Middle America, 30 years ago, this was the norm,” Anya Fernald, executive director of Slow Food Nation, told me, as we chatted about the upcoming Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco this weekend. Part festival, part conference, part exhibition, the four-day American food celebration will draw an expected 50,000 attendees overall, Fernald said.

The weekend includes tasting expos, a marketplace, workshops, panel discussions, special dinners, as well as things like hikes and farm tours, all to encourage attendees to take a second look at the way they—and we, as a society—eat.

The idea is to wean Americans off our current dependence on processed and fast foods, and to “build momentum and demand for an American food system that is safer, healthier and more socially just," according to Fernald’s press statement.

“We want 10 percent of the attendees of this event to make one change ever day, every week. We It might be a small step like I’m going to cook dinner for my family this week or plant a garden, it might be I’m going to learn about food politics or pack a bag lunch… We’re not talking about radical life changes. This is about realistic, doable every day changes that everybody can make,” Fernald told me.

Fernald was quick to address and dispel any charge of elitism. “When did making your own jam become a privilege of the elite? Up until 1950, really a sign of poverty was making your own jam, growing your own garden, and people strove to become part of the middle class by rejecting that,” she said. The slow food movement aims to return to those values.

“Looking at that presumption that this is an elitist movement, I think America has been bamboozled into thinking that fasts food is the food of the masses,” Fernald said. “We need to push back against that notion that fast food is American food.”

But how can a bunch of activists making a big noise about sustainable food in a city as “blue”—downright aquamarine—as San Francisco?

“We’re drinking American wine, beer, we’re making pickles, we’re having dinner with friends, we’re planting gardens,” Fernald said. “It’s really “red state”’ values we’re talking about but they happen to be about food and they’re somehow associated with the left.”

The weekend is packed with things to do, and participants will have the opportunity spend as much time and money as they want. Free activities and exhibitions such as the slow marketplace and slow hikes, compete with ticketed events including panel discussions, dinners, a concert, field trips, and tasting exhibitions, running from $10 to more than $100.

Of all the 115 or so events that comprise the weekend, Fernald pointed to the slow marketplace as a cornerstone. That’s where attendees can buy the produce, grain, and small-scale products central to the movement. It’s also adjacent to the victory garden at City Hall.

Planted in July, the garden’s crops will be harvested and distributed by the San Francisco Food Bank over the weekend. The name comes from the World War II era, when individual families grew food on their own small plots.

Small-scale farming, small-scale food preparation, small, slow dinners with friends—these are the focuses of one massive event. It’s going to be a delicious weekend.

Slow Food Nation [Official Site]

[Photo: The City Hall victory garden, via Slow Food Nation Blog]

• A takeover-style robbery in Hayward, Calif. is just the latest in a wave of such crimes. [SF Chronicle]

• A much friendlier trend is also taking off in the form of underground restaurants. [New York Times]

• Could hot dogs in the school cafeteria cause colon cancer? [AP]

• Chicago-area rail commuters face last call in their beloved bar cars. [Chicago Tribune]

Ando invented the pre-cooked, freeze-dried noodles in 1958, when he was 48 years old. When he was 61 he invented their kissing cousin, cup noodles. "In life," he was known to remark, "there is no such thing as too late."

This year, demand for his inventions is expected to surpass 100 billion servings. Staggering, yes, but surprising? No. As the man famously (and perhaps cryptically) said, "mankind is Noodlekind."

Iconic Noodle Celebrates 50th Anniversary [NPR]

[Photo: Ramen selection, via davidrmunson's Flickr]

We started BootCamp SF (again) last week and for the remining five weeks of the program we have try to remember that it doesn't matter how many hills we sprint up or how many lunges we do carrying medicine balls--it's all in vein if we have a morning bun from Tartine with our coffee or macroni and cheese for dinner. But to keep things interesting, most of our thoughts focus on high fat content and cake. Yes, cake. We don't even really like cake and yet, cake seems to be the only thing we can think about. Well, that and our quads.

To help put our cravings in perspective, we've been scrolling through the often hysterical posts on Cake Wrecks . The picture above comes from the "Bring A Whole New Meaning to "Foot in Mouth" post back on July 26 and we're not sure what's worse, the fact that the cake was made for a podiatrist or the fact that's actually supposed to represent Chinese foot binding.

Yum, right? Now if only we can find a blog about macaroni and cheese disasters.

Cake Wrecks [Official Site]
Tartine Bakery [Official Site]
Tartine Bakery [Menupages]

[Photo via Cake Wrecks Offical Site]

Remember when Alexis took a look at San Francisco tiki bars of the past and present? That was great, but it made us kind of sad the genre has ebbed since it's heyday (an aside: Check out the photos of the The Crepe House front pillar on Tiki Central Forum. Turns out the place used to be a joint called Tiki Bob's).

But today a Daily Candy bulletin announced the opening of Miss Pearl's Jam House in Oakland, and while reading the description of the interior, we had something very close to an epiphany:

Jack London Square’s newest address emulates a Caribbean manse with vintage cruise liner nuances. Decked out with porthole windows, coral mosaic walls, and shell-encrusted menus, the island-inspired resto serves up tropical Southern flare: Florida conch and sweet corn fritters, jerk chicken, sugar cane barbecue shrimp, baked clams, and twice-fried plantains.

Pony up to the resin bar encasing pseudo-sea floor treasures for a stellar offering of light and dark rums, Key lime martinis, and the house specialty: Cuba Libra Jell-O shots.

Nautical and tropical-themed food and drink? A warm, party atmosphere? Authentic (or even better, faux-thentic) decorations? These things hark back to the tiki craze in a big way. Substitute the Caribbean for Polynesia and you have a new, island-themed bar and restaurant trend.

Only in this case, it seems the emphasis is heavy on the food, which is great. During a meal at the Southern/Caribbean-themed Front Porch back in spring, the waiter told us that many of the kitchen staff had just returned from a visit to the Caribbean, where they picked up creole cooking tips. That place has all sorts of wacky accoutrements, too, like wicker chairs out front and chicken served in paper baskets. If this is the new version of tiki, we say Tik-on!

And by the way, a great way to die would be drowning in a vat of the Front Porch's crab-meat grits. Honestly one of the best thing's to enter this mouth all year. Time to "Jam" over to Pearl's to see how they stack up.

Tiki Bob's, San Francisco, CA [Tiki Central]
Miss Pearl's Jam House [Official Site]
The Crepe House [Official Site]
The Front Porch [Official Site]

[Photo: via Tiki Central Forum]

Last week Miss Manners touched on the subject of correcting typos in retail store signage. Judith Martin took the nit-picking, though highly sympathetic, letter writer gently to task for the greatest etiquette infraction of all — correcting others — but then pointed out that it's not rude to inform the store's management of their public spelling mistakes. The letter-writer had alerted a salesperson who, Miss Manners pointed out, likely couldn't have cared less.

Same goes for restaurants, we would think. As a professional menu-dealer-with, we find typos everywhere, both at work and after. But does it do to correct these? It's a given your server won't care. In fact, unless you actually need to send something back or get more ketchup, your server probably won't even listen to you when you report on how the food is.

Back in June, Jane Black wrote a column in the Washington Post advocating an extremely passive-aggressive method of communicating menu typos: She describes a daydream wherein,

I enter a restaurant, order and sweetly ask the waiter if I can "hold on to the menu" during dinner. Then, using a distinctive purple pen, I discreetly copy-edit the descriptions of the dishes...

'Who was that anonymous proofreader?' chefs would whisper to one another. Correct-a-girl strikes again! Eliminating menu mistakes, one restaurant at a time.

But seriously, menu typos can be galling, and some obsessive types just can't see their way toward letting it rest. What's the best way to get the corrections to the menu-meister? Find out who that person is, and tell them. Most restaurants won't take it personally, just like they won't take constructive criticism of the food personally.

After the meal, if the typo seriously still bothers you, get up, ask the host who writes the menu, then either ask to speak to that person or convey a message via the host, indicating the typo. That's your best shot at getting your voice heard, but really, is it worth the trouble? (Sigh) Actually, yes. The restaurant, concerned for its reputation, probably does want to hear where it can improve, and the rest of us will dine easier, knowing Correct-a-girl (or boy) is out there, watching.

How to Proofread, Politely [Miss Manners/Washington Post]
The Art of Criticism [Table Manners/Chow]
Typos a la Carte, Ever A Specialty of the House [Washington Post]
White Problems — Typos on Menus [Stuff White People Like]

Photo: Via Aaron Gustafson/flickr]

• At least eleven listeriosis-related deaths in Canada; everyone is in a tizzy (especially the meat suppliers). [Bloomberg]

• Utah has to get 6 million carp out of Utah Lake, on the condition that they do something with the dead fish. [AP]

• MSG consumption is apparently linked to obesity. (Hey kids! Correlation is not causation!) [NYT]

• San Francisco is gearing up for this weekend's Slow Food Nation Festival. (MP's own Adam Martin will be there!) [SFChron]

• A man was found in the ceiling above the women's restroom in a Florida restaurant, spying on female patrons. [TCPalm]

The news hook on our earlier post came on the heels of a somewhat anachronistic decision by the FDA last week to allow food producers to irradiate spinach and lettuce, infusing them with just enough radioactivity to kill the micro-organisms that cause hazardous infections. From the Associated Press:

The Grocery Manufacturers Association had originally petitioned the FDA seeking to expand use of irradiation to many more types of produce several years ago. But in wake of the 2006 E. coli outbreak from spinach — which killed three people and sickened nearly 200 — plus a list of lettuce recalls, the industry group asked the FDA to rule on the leafy greens first.

The FDA still is considering what other types of produce might be OK to irradiate. Often mentioned as possible are tomatoes and peppers, which have been the focus of investigators trying to trace this summer's nationwide salmonella outbreak.

Remember when, a few hours ago, we said that just a modicum of forthcoming information could make the difference between a careful populace and a panic-inducing epidemic? Well, when big, faceless government organizations and big, faceless lobbying groups get together to talk about injecting scary technology into people's food, it helps to put out a bit of information on that plan. Otherwise, you get films like this:

FDA: Irradiating spinach, lettuce OK to kill germs [AP]
Search Results: Irradiation [FDA]

We went to Ti Couz on Sunday for crepes because that’s where you go for (real) crepes in the city. While we’ve perfected our favorite crepe combination (cheese, mushrooms, mushroom sauce and a sunny side up egg) we also make it a point to check out the daily specials.

It is our opinion that the salad of the day is always better than any of the salads on the menu and should pretty much always be ordered if it sounds even remotely appealing. The salads are large so a small salad for two is more than appropriate if each person has their own crepe. In fact, we think Ti Couz works well for shared plates in general. For two people, a small salad, a savory crepe and a sweet crepe should feel and taste just right.

Yesterday we had the special savory crepe of the day—grilled prawns, spinach and fresh mango salsa—and we split a Nutella and vanilla bean ice cream crepe with Sweetie. We also have to go on the record and say that we think Ti Couz makes one mean Bloody Mary (except for the fact they put Marcona almonds in the pits of the large green olives—consider the food allergists!) and we happily sucked our down while we waited for our order.

The nice thing about Ti Couz is it can be as affordable or as expensive as you’d like depending on your need for a cocktail or your hunger level. Go with a friend and split your order and you’ll have a nice meal for under $15. Enjoy a cocktail and your own crepes and it could set you back $30. Either way we think it’s worth it. Ti Couz is one of our favorite spots in the city.

Ti Couz Creperie [Menupages]

[Photo via biskuit/Flickr]

Is it just us or has this been a banner year for insane food-safety stories? First there was that gigantic meat recall, then the gigantic salmonella mystery, then just last week a Chicago man sued a restaurant where he claims he acquired a nine-food tapeworm in 2006. Also, Canada is in the middle of a deadly food poisoning outbreak.

Now comes news from the Tulsa World that one person has died and at least another 11 — and possibly as many as 20 &mdash were apparently infected with E. coli bacteria after eating at a "local restaurant" in Locust Grove (Mayes County), Oklahoma.

It is rather amazing that the newspaper shied away from naming the restaurant, or explaining its reason for omitting the name. Though in the wake of the reporting on that that salmonella scare, maybe it shouldn't be that surprising. In that incident, federal authorities took months to determine that the culprit in the scare was not tomatoes, but rather serrano and jalepeno peppers imported from Mexico. They only uncovered the truth after Minnesota scientists put them on the scent. Meanwhile, tomato growers lost around a quarter-billion dollars.

The tomato industry will survive that scare, but unless it is part of a huge chain, one restaurant in one small town in Oklahoma will probably not survive the death of a patron. So it's understandable that either Mayes County health officials or the World's editorial board withheld the name, pending confirmation of the infection source.

Isn't it scary that you could be put at risk of a serious illness to save the reputation of a business? On the other hand, wouldn't it be unfair for a restaurant to be associated with a deadly E. coli outbreak if it is later cleared? Unfortunately, there seems to be no universally good way to handle a health threat such as this.

It seems, however, that a good rule of thumb for public health officials would be to provide as much information as possible, as early as possible, occasionally omitting a detail that may be incriminating. For example, if health officials had reported earlier in the week that a trend may be afoot, perhaps that one fatal case would have avoided dining out. Of course, it may have taken all week to identify the trend.

In the end, restaurant patrons just have to accept that there will always be some small risk in having others cook for them. Risks can be reduced by ordering cooked food over raw and checking out health inspection scores, but they can never be fully eliminated.

One dead, 11 sickened in possible E. coli outbreak [Tulsa World]
Canadian Officials Link 4th Death to Food-Poisoning Outbreak [Bloomberg]
Food Safety [USDA]

[Photo: Via Meepocity/flickr]

• In a food-recall heavy summer, another one! This time it's Pepperoni Pizza Hot Pockets that consumers should avoid, at the risk of biting down into plastic. Mmm. [Market Watch]

• North Korea has created a new soy and corn based noodle to combat hunger problems. The noodles have more protein and fat and "delay feelings of hunger." [BBC]

• Some colleges and universities across the country are eschewing plastic trays in their cafeterias for reasons of being "green" and "not wasting water." The number of broken dishes does not seem to have gone up... yet. [AP]

• Hey, have you heard about that economy? In another sign of end-times, school lunch prices are also going up! [NYT]

• Healthy food prices are not just a US problem: fresh produce is a luxury item for Aboriginal communities in Australia. [ABC News Australia]

• "Where can I get a slice of pizza at 2AM?" [MP: Boston]

• "Is there any more vodka?" [MP: Chicago]

• "Why is this butter sculpture of Shawn Johnson so toothy?" [MP: Philadelphia]

• "Maybe we should all go to a tiki bar." [MP: San Francisco]

• "Why are Thursdays always so thirsty?" [MP: South Florida]

Mr Bean goes to a fancy restaurant for his birthday and orders steak tartare, not knowing that he'd be presented with a plate of raw meat. Not one to apologize for the misunderstanding and send it back, he gets a bit creative. Enjoy!

Mr Bean --- Restaurant [YouTube]

• Have you been waiting for years for the chance to irradiate spinach with FDA approval? If so, your time has come. [Washington Post]

• Is you local sushi restaurant ripping you off? Quite possibly! Is this the second time in a year this has been a news story? Quite possibly! [New York Times]

• Hurricane Fay soaks Florida for the fifth day in a row. We suspect this can't be good for either Florida's delightful residents or its delicious crops. [LA Times]

• Best. Cranberry crop. EVER. [Boston Globe]

• Burger King's profits went up 42% in the last quarter, but investors remain nonplussed. [Chicago Tribune]

So we know that the The Outside Lands Music festival in Golden Gate Park is getting most of the weekend’s attention and don’t get us wrong, we dig music festivals. But this sure-to-be-packed event is taking place in our ‘hood and we know it’s going to be just lousy with festival goers so we’ve made a point to see what else was going on this weekend.

SATURDAY

• Gravity is hosting Around The World in 80 Beers, a Belgian Beer tasting party from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Tickets are $30 and since we love Belgian beer this seems like a good way to start a Saturday night.

• The San Francisco Food Bank is offering a series of classes to support its effort. One of the classes in the San Francisco Cooks For A Cause series will be taking place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and will begin “with a cooking demonstration with Chef Patrick Farjas of the California Culinary Academy, and then participants prepare the dishes themselves.” This session is $150 per person and takes place at the California Culinary Academy at 350 Rhode Island Street.

SUNDAY

• Family Winemakersof California is hosting their 18th Annual Tasting at the Fort Mason Festival Pavilion from 2 p.m to 6 p.m. Tickets are $45 in advance and $55 at the door. There will be hundreds of wineries present for tasting so it might be a good idea to eat before hand. Greens is nearby.

• If you want to get out of the city, Charles Chocolates will be having their first ever chocolate making class hosted by Chuck Siegel himself. The class is from 1 p.m to 6 p.m. and it’s $300 per person, which is pretty steep, but here’s what you get:

You will not only learn the basics of chocolate making such as how to make ganaches and rolled truffles, but you will also learn more advanced chocolate making techniques, including chocolate tempering and making molded chocolates. At the end of each class, you'll be able to take home all your creations and you will receive a gift bag of supplies to help you make chocolates at home using the techniques you've learned. Each gift bag will contain a chocolate mold, an offset spatula, sheet pans and recipes.

•Personally, while everyone else is listening to M. Ward quietly strum his guitar, we’ll be at the Little Mermaid Sing-Along at the Castro Theater Saturday afternoon and we really couldn’t be happier.

Happy Friday!

[Photo via e.t/Flickr]

As a New Englander, we grew up thinking certain words were totally normal, only to have illusions shattered when we got to college. For example, a traffic circle is a "rotary" and a water fountain a "bubbler," and we honestly didn't know otherwise. Although we betray our Massachusetts roots with these words, our most pronounced regional words are definitely food terms, and the soda vs. pop vs. coke map that has been circulating this week has only fed into our latent stubbornness about the correct names for different foods.

First, this map. It shows "pop" dominating the Northwest and Midwest, "coke" being the preferred moniker in the South, and "soda" as the fave nomenclature in the Northeast and on the West Coast. (Soda is also the name of choice in all of the MenuPages cities. Fancy that!) The soft drink issue gets even fuzzier in the face of more obscure regional names. Supposedly, some people in New England call it "tonic" although we've never heard this. Ever. The Wikipedia page for soft drink naming conventions says that Southerners also call soda "drink" or "cold drink," which just seems confusing.

We're pretty sure that we're right about soda being soda, but that's hardly the last word in regional food names. New Englanders seem to be the most persnickety about their words, but the differences exist everywhere. One person's milkshake is another one's frappe, Floridians call Mahi Mahi "dolphin," and some people put sprinkles on their ice cream while others go for jimmies. Aside from soft drinks, the sandwich naming divide seems to be the biggest of all, with hoagie vs. sub duking it out for top dog. Again though, a Wikipedia page exists for the Submarine sandwich category, and it is all over the place. Hero, grinder, po' boy, Italian... and the list just goes on and on.

By the by, one last bit on the subject of the soft drink map: we're super curious about what's going on in sections of the map where one name is a complete outlier. What's going on with that one northwestern corner of Nebraska where they call it soda in a sea of pops? Why is it that the two opposing coasts are both holding down the "soda" fort? (And can we turn this political?)

[Photo: via sx70manipulator/Flickr]

A new Burger King ad campaign seems to have struck a chord of