Recently in For Category
My grandmother bought five-pound cans of Maxwell House and perked it on the stove. A drink in the evening was a rare glass of sherry. Suburban aunts made coffee in machines and their husbands drank gin and tonics out of wide glasses with urbane dancing frogs on them.
This is not my liquid life. I live in San Francisco where the drinks are complicated and expensive and there is nary a dancing frog in sight, let alone an ice cube from a freezer tray or, God forbid, coffee in a tin.
I’m not complaining. I drink well here. On our trip to the mountains of Colorado a few weeks ago though, it was back to basics and a welcome break.
First, let’s talk coffee. In Colorado, all the coffees were hot. Super hot. Mountain hot. Boiling hot. And they cost $3.75 for half a gallon of espresso and steamed milk. Well, almost half a gallon. This is fine with me. Hot, caffeinated and not bitter are my morning baselines. Above that line, I can really take it or leave it, even if I can tell the difference.
Back in San Francisco, I had it out with the barista at Ritual Coffee for delivering my coffee at room temperature for the umpteenth time. (This is apparently kind of a thing for me.) The guy said they had a POLICY that they did not steam their milk above a certain temperature because it carmelized the sugars. Apparently I like carmelized sugars based on my liking of apples covered in same and hot *(&#$#! milk in my cafe au lait.
That’s not to say that I don’t like what’s on offer here in general. Ritual Roasters, Four Barrel and Blue Bottle all spring from the Bay Area. Like Folgers crystals before them, they’re served in the finest restaurants around the country. (Another survey of their backgrounds here.) I’m not going to deny they’re good. Well, Blue Bottle and Ritual are good. Four Barrel I don’t get but a lot of people disagree with me so I’m outvoted there. Can I tell that these $4 cups of coffee are better than other coffees? Um, well, sort of. I can tell that they’re better than instant or coffeemaker coffee. And Starbucks. But that much better than much faster, cheaper, no-name coffee that I should pay twice as much? Probably not. Case in point: Dunkin’ Donuts makes my favorite coffee and I think they’re still on the Maxwell House train. So I’m not 100% sure I appreciate the level of precision that coneisseurship has brought to my morning cuppa.
Perhaps I’m being willfully dense here and resisting developing an expensive taste because then I’d have to spend $4 every morning rather than drinking what I can most conveniently get. I do this with wine. If I got hooked on $40 bottles of wine, I wouldn’t be able to drink the $10 bottle. So while I appreciate the expensive wines when they’re presented to me, I try not to take too much notice. I already spend enough money as it is.
Enough about me: if you’re looking around to taste the best of the best and have a nice sit-down while you’re in the city, here are my picks, with a heavy bias toward the south side of the city because that’s where we live.
Ritual Roasters’ original location on the gritty end of Valencia (21st/22nd Streets) will brew your regular coffee cup by cup, as well as serve you any espresso drink (with warm, not hot, milk). Rich flavor gleaned from their blends and their use of whole milk. My favorite of the top three but often crowded (they have free wifi) and they play non-background music - like, edgy, slightly metal indie stuff that’s hard to write to and chat to.
In which case, on a sunny day, you might prefer their new permanent cart in Hayes Valley (on Octavia just off Hayes) where you can sit outside and look in shops with commensurately priced goods of all kinds.
Similar music issues and an even grittier ‘hood, but less crowded and with a Scandinavian vibe, Haus on 24th Street brews Ritual as well and does a good job of it. Bonus: back patio with lots of sun, albeit also the neighbor’s laundry in view. Free wifi and excellent baked goods make up most of the way for the crabby hipster baristas.
Blue Bottle’s original San Francisco location in a garage on a side street in Hayes Valley has become enough of a landmark that now you don’t have to compete with cars: they’ve paved a little plaza in front. You can also pick up a cup at the super trendy, way-overcrowded-at-the-weekend-Farmers-Market yup-fest Ferry Building and downtown on Mint Plaza. Or - brilliant brilliant location choice - at Spin City, a high end laundromat in chic Noe Valley, Blue Bottle is served at the coffee window.
If you want to try Four Barrel, they have a giant, airy space on the other end of Valencia from Ritual, at 15th Street. You decide if you like it or not.
Let’s get back to Colorado and discuss cocktails. I sidled up to our lodge’s bar the first night to order a couple of straightforward cocktails: vodka cranberry and vodka tonic. No big deal. Nothing fancy. Didn’t want to go out on a pisco limb or anything in a building made of logs. The bartender delivers them in about thirty seconds and says, “That’ll be $7.” This prompts a tiny ethical dilemma. Should I tell him he’s only charged me for one, and at happy hour, well-drink prices even though it’s 9PM?
I ask. Turns out it’s not a mistake. Cocktails are $3.50. Cocktails with premium vodka no less. Living where I do and traveling mainly to other places like where I live, cocktails cost $9. Or $12. Or $14 if it’s that trendy and I’m paying for the slab of polished oak they use as a bar that they imported from a speakeasy in the basement of Versailles. Or something like that.
I will admit that I prefer the high-end cocktails at Beretta to the low-end ones at our old neighborhood’s dive bar Il Pirata. But do I notice if the bar makes their own ice using pure water and a special, I don’t know, vaporizing hyperbaric icebox or whatever? No, I do not. Can I tell if they’re using bottled bitters or homemade ones? Um, no. In the new world order or artisinal bars, I am a cretin and, for that, I’d like apologize to my bartender at Beretta who goes to so much trouble to make me happy.
I might be more of a high and mighty in this category if I drank more whiskey, bourbon or gin which seem to be the base of many, if not most, of the new breed of cocktails. I was a gin girl for a long time but have moved on to vodka and tequila for the most part, with a recent strong liking for pisco. This limits my range but it keeps the choosing simple.
I do wish that all bars offered the option of a straightforward drink at Colorado prices the way restaurants offer tap water or bottled. I can tolerate the tiny sneer that follows my, “Tap, please,” and would happily tolerate another if I could get Ketel One and Ocean Spray cranberry juice with tap-water ice cubes in an Ikea cup for half the price of my extra-special Pisco Punch.
Until that happens, here’s where I go.
For artisinal cocktails, it’s hard to beat Beretta. They have excellent food as well and, if you can get a seat (no reservations, go early), a buratta margherita pizza or chicken liver crostini will tide you over to a third drink if you want to hang out.
Bourbon & Branch is also well-reputed but you will need to plan ahead and make a reservation if you want food. I’ve written before about Range and their excellent food, but beware their hipster-looking cocktail menu: they’ve gone off the reservation in my estimation. Tomatoes have no place in evening drinks, unless by “evening” you mean “morning” and it’s a bloody mary you’re after.
We recently rediscovered Smugglers Cove in Hayes Valley (it used to be a trendy, purple-lit place we didn’t enjoy) where you can get a ridiculous number of pirate drinks made one-by-one by their single bartender. It’s not exactly the high-end science of mixology you’ll get at the places listed above, but tiki has been on an upswing the last couple of years and, let’s face it, sometimes you miss Club Med and their sweet, sweet drinks. (I’d advise only going in the week when the locals stop in for libations. We cruised in once on a Saturday and it was a bizarre mix of drunk, overweight, gay tourist developers and tacky bridge and tunnel girlies on a bender.)
Recently (like, yesterday) voted Best of the Bay for their unique happy hour - whoever orders first after 5PM, that’s the discount drink - we’ve latched onto Asiento of late for a not-dive but not-too-trendy evening drink accompanied by crazy good little plates. We haven’t made it there on a Sunday yet, but I hear they serve tater tots. Eighties lunchroom trashy trendy. I like it.
Although I enjoy all the developments in drinking my generation has ushered in, I (and my wallet) miss those dancing frogs and wish there a Dunkin Donuts at the end of my block. Until I find that block - or open a frog/donut outlet of my own - I’ll enjoy what San Francisco has to offer.
Oh, and if you’re in New York, don’t miss the Pisco Punch at Pegu Club. Best. Ever.
San Francisco’s crepe institution, Ti Couz, closed several weeks ago to little fanfare and, on my part, not much regret. Their decline to the point of my not regretting their passing is almost sadder than their demise. Or perhaps it just softened the blow. If they had gone out on top, we would have really missed them.
They used to be our go-to place for cocktails and crepes on a Friday evening after a long week. To avoid the delay of finding parking, we’d take the dodgy crosstown bus from the corner by our tiny, bright apartment and, eight minutes of watching the drug-addled homeless and a mother ignoring her too many children, we’d land half a block from Ti Couz’s comforts. But things have been sliding gradually for at least a year and our final visit in May would have been our last even if they hadn’t closed their doors.
They opened in 1992 and in their hey day they served excellent, reasonably priced Breton savory crepes. These were nicely preceded by their variations on the Cosmopolitan, the Lemon Drop and their signature champagne cocktail, the Ti Couz 10. When I visited San Francisco just after graduating college, on the fateful trip that convinced me that maybe someday I might like to live here (beware tourists of the siren song of a sunny day in the city by the bay!), a friend and I went to Ti Couz.
Oddly, since I had been to France and was a huge crepe fan, I’d never had Breton crepes. They’re made with buckwheat and look like the wheatberry and the HealthyForYou/TastesLikeCardboard bread loaves I bypass in the bakery aisle. Also, they’re huge, like a foot diameter tucked to a flat, square 8”. I was a rolled crepe, white-flour girl, raised at Boston’s long-gone and much-missed Magic Pan. Viva la crepe revolucion of the 1970s!!
Let’s digress here for a shout-out to that best of crepe-y institutions, The Magic Pan. Founded by Hungarians (??!$^%!) here in San Francisco and eventually and briefly a successful chain, they made crepes on the bottoms of pans, which is a tricky method only for professionals, like poaching an egg in a pot of water using only a spoon. (I don’t even want to hear about it if you can do this. Really. Just be quiet. You’re hurting my feelings even opening your mouth.)
Right behind the maitre’d’s desk was a guy standing in the middle of a ring of fire. Really it was a circular stove burner, but to a five year old it was Vegas. Above the flame rotated a frame built for ten or twelve pans. The chef had a bowl of crepe batter. When a pan came by, he’d dip the base in the batter and put it back on the frame. When it got back to him, he’d flip it and send it around again. F’ing brilliant.
They made ham and cheese crepes, lightly fried to seal them, and served with a sweet mustard cream sauce. Dude. So. Good. They put the “Mmmmm,” in Mmmmagic Pan. (Ham crepe and mustard sauce recipe here, cheese here, and don’t skip the apple dessert crepe. Don’t. Just don’t.)
The point is, I’d never had buckwheat crepes until Ti Couz. Theirs were excellent, especially their specials. I’m a terrible decisionmaker, so asking me to construct my own crepe from 25 options just spoils my dinner. Ti Couz put together some odd but always tasty combos of things like shrimp and mushroom with chipotle cream sauce. The reliability of those specials, along with their wildly satisfying Euro salad (excellent greens with magic vinaigrette or crudite salad with every possible vegetable in it nicely chopped) made it a comfort location supreme.
Then, last year, they discontinued their specials for what our waiter described as “financial reasons.” That didn’t sound right - if you’re picking it, why not choose a combo made up of this week’s cheapest ingredients? - but we sighed and kept going, doing our best with the arduous task of selecting our own combinations unaided by the increasingly lethargic staff.
Then they put up a banner reading, “Thank you San Francisco for 19 great years,” which panicked everyone that they were closing. But, when asked, they said they weren’t. It was just an anniversary thing. Which was weird. ‘Cause 19 isn’t a special anniversary is it? Should I have gotten them something? What is 19? Flour? Dirt?
In the fall, they bizarrely surrendered their liquor license. I don’t know much about the liquor license process, but I do know it’s damn hard to get one and I assume it pays for itself. They billed their regression as, “getting back to their Breton roots,” which apparently are soaked with slightly-alcoholic cider. I billed it as, “taking away the second of the two reasons I went there.” We toughed it out without our specials or our cocktails a couple of times, but the deed was done. We were out.
Apparently, so were they.
Despite their slow, disappointing decline, I will remember Ti Couz for their former days of tasty cocktail and savory crepe glory. And they will always hold a tiny special space in my heart: two days before A.’s premature arrival, we finally settled on her name (and the second choice which no, I won’t tell you in case I need it later) at a corner table in the back.
So farewell, Ti Couz. I’ll try some Magic Pan recipes at home and hope that someplace else steps up with a wide open, non-trendy space serving sweet Friday cocktails. Bon voyage to the great crepe pan in the sky. Say ‘hello’ to the Magic Pan for me.
We saw a four a half million dollar house this weekend. Down from $6.3 million, so really a huge bargain. Yes, it was posh. And super cool, which, at least in San Francisco, are two things that don’t necessarily go together. The interior is modern, gorgeous and hip, with art and a lot of the cement-colored paint that seems to be everywhere these days. It was a firehouse until 1959 and, when it went private, the owners, God love ‘em, kept the facade, the firepole (sweeeet) and the garage door front. In the late ‘90’s, it was renovated again and it’s been back on the market for two years. You’ve got to see this place: http://www.firehouse44.com/. You should really buy it. And invite me over. Permanently.
The “basement” is a cigar room and wine cellar. That’s it. (See images 13 + 14 under Photos/First Floor). The main floor is living spaces, indoor and out. The second floor is dining and cooking (two kitchens - you know: for the help). The third story is guest quarters (three bedrooms - if you have a $4.5-million home, you also have lots of friends who like to stay with you) + more living space. The fourth floor is your floor: main bedroom, two bathrooms, one with steam shower, the other with a tub looking out on your private deck. There’s a fifth floor that’s not listed - a “viewing tower” at the top of a spiral stair. That would be my office. And I’d want to be able to retract those stairs, by the way.
And there’s an elevator. And two staircases.
But here’s what’s weird. There are four bedrooms to four full baths and two half baths. That’s more than one bath per bed, two for the master suite alone. That is one clean millionaire. And not really a selling point for me. (Theoretically, anyway - I checked the sofa and my jeans pockets and I can’t find those extra millions I misplaced last Thursday).
I was saying to R., the owner should have just gone full OCD while s/he was at it and put in sinks every few feet for obsessive handwashing. I mean, even if I’m a germaphobe, I’m not really looking to shower every time, right? Although hazmat showers would have been good if you were already laying new plumbing. There’s room in the foyer by the firepole. Right next to where you store your boots made of gold, you could discreetly put a hook for your suit and helmet and a floor drain for the decontamination shower. No problem.
I noticed you before in the gallery. You were being loud and sounded angry even though it was a Maira Kalman exhibit. She’s not loud or angry. She’s all about being good-natured and wry and taking things in stride. And being amused. You didn’t seem amused.
I don’t know what’s up with you today. Maybe it’s every day. You are in a wheelchair so maybe it’s that. That would be difficult. I don’t know what I’d do if I were in a wheelchair. I hope I’d be one of those inspirational people who take up extreme skiing or sailboarding and get profiled in People or on Good Morning America. I think it would take me a really long time to get there though. I mean the being great about it, not the sailboarding. The sailboarding might take me forever. (I’ve never had very good balance.)
Whatever it is that’s bothering you though, it’s not nice for the rest of us if you take it out on a stranger who didn’t know you were waiting for the mom-with-kids/handicapped bathroom stall in the really nicely designed ladies room at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. Honestly, I didn’t know you were waiting when I took my time sorting A. out. Do you think I would’ve kept you waiting on purpose? I hope not. That would be a tough way to go through your day, thinking people who don’t even know you are purposely being rotten.
Not to sound like a mom, but you really didn’t need to take that tone with me. If you’d just politely said you were waiting or made your presence known - a slight cough, an amusing note under the door - I’d have been just as obliging, I promise, but you wouldn’t have put that little bit of unpleasantness into the world by making me and little A. feel bad. I know you can’t feel good about it either. No one does when they’re mean, however justified they feel they are. It backs up on you. I know. I’ve been there.
Please, next time give me a little more credit for being a person who doesn’t knowingly inconvenience strangers. And remember: other people don’t think about us as much as we’d all like to think that they do. Which means that when they drive by you in their cars, even if they seem like they’re looking right at you, they probably didn’t register your amazing ensemble, the one with the alluring hat and the matching socks that you wore specially. (Don’t worry: the people who love you did and that’s what matters.)
But it also means they didn’t mean to cut you off in traffic. They were probably thinking about something else entirely. Like how their boss yelled at them this afternoon or that maybe they married the wrong person. Or maybe they’re rushing to save a kitten, one of the really adorable ones.
Of course, there’s a very slight possibility that you’re right, that that person really did mean to intentionally rain on your day. I’m sorry if that happens to you regularly. That has to be difficult to bear. But take a moment, just today, to consider whether that’s really true, even if you really, really believe it is deep down inside. Think hard. Is the world really not on your side on purpose? Between ourselves, I doubt it. You know why? Because I wasn’t, even though you thought I was.
We - everyone, all of us - are exceptionally bad guessers. It’s the scared part of us that thinks we’re great at guessing and tells us our worst guess is the correct one. The fact is, most of the time, we just don’t have any idea what’s going on with other people, so we may as well decide to believe the nice thing, right? Because in the end, it will make everyone’s day, including yours and mine and tiny A.’s, a little brighter. And we can all use a little sun.
Have a nice afternoon.
Thanks to numupdraft for the photo.
Just in time for Christmas, our doves are back.
Our deck and the carriage entrance below us used to be home to an expanding family of them, but the unwelcome arrival of a cat (stupid neighbors - thankfully since moved - them and their stupid cat and their stupid band) and the pod of pigeons who found out about our garden fountain one particularly hot summer, pushed them out. It was like reverse gentrification. The doves stopped building their nest, stopped believing we were a safe neighborhood for their kids, and moved on to parts unknown.
Before they went, the entire family, twenty-three birds, made an impressive cameo appearance and then they were gone.
Perhaps sensing that I missed them or that the evil cat was gone or that this has been kind of a tough season, three or four of them have come back to sit on our railing and look relaxed. I’m so glad. They’re that lovely soft gray, their eyes are so dark and intelligent and their cooing makes me feel warm like cocoa.
Welcome back, birdies! We’re glad you’ve come home.
In Bi-Rite’s model, the cookies are soft and chewy and the ice cream is their housemade creamy stuff, so you can score the best of the bakery aisle and some of their excellent ice cream in one cellophane baggie.
Why do I bring this up now? Because what kid actually likes pumpkin pie after Thanksgiving dinner? I do but I couldn’t sell it to anyone under ten: the texture is pretty repellent. Bi-Rite is your solution. Buy half a dozen of their gingersnap cookie + pumpkin ice cream sandwiches and you’re set.
(Just to be clear on that math, the “buy six” plan is for someone entertaining no more than four kids at table. The other two are for you.)
They also stock chocolate chip cookies with vanilla ice cream, dark chocolate cookies with mint chip ice cream and snickerdoodle cookies with cinnamon ice cream but I don’t know why you’d ever leave my first love ginger+pumpkin. I ate it so fast I didn’t even take a picture for you to see what it looked like. I’ll remedy that later when I go get my next batch.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Available at Bi-Rite Market or Bi-Rite Creamery, both on 18th Street between Guerrero and Dolores. Creamery is almost at Dolores; grocery is in the middle of the block.
R, that’s what. R spent twelve hours today cutting over my old Movable Type platform to the new Movable Type platform and cleaning up categories, spacing, widgets and other things that wake me up in the middle of the night. Hooray R! You are officially da man.
Oh. My. God. If you live in San Francisco, you have got to venture over to the land of Gucci babies, Pucci mamas, over-bred puppies and post-frat bankers and get yourself a grilled cheese sandwich at the Blue Barn on Chestnut Street in the Marina. Holy Lord but they are good. They make me want to move into their storefront. In the mornings, they would give me cups of their famous Blue Bottle coffee to cleanse my palate. After that, I could help them fill up their organized, shiny containers with quantities of perfect, colorful vegetables for their custom-made salads. I wouldn’t have any salad though. I would eat only cheese.
They have six kinds of grilled cheese sandwiches. Goat, Sheep, Cheddar and three other kinds which I barely looked at because I snagged on the sheep’s milk cheese with jambon serrano and fig jam. The jam caramelizes in tiny chewy pockets in the bread. It is the best - the BEST - sandwich I have had in a long time. And I love me some sandwiches. I am a grilled cheese fanatic. For the record, I am also nutty for BLTs but that’s not what we’re talking about right now.
In addition to their grilled cheese menu, they have other sandwiches (which, I am sure, are of a lesser breed since they don’t include grilled cheese), macaroni and cheese and salads (fresh and packaged). They also have a mini cheese counter and Acme baguettes if you feel like you need to go home and have DIY grilled cheese. Oh - they also sell the jammy figginess that makes me swoon.
The place only has a couple of tables, so it’s mostly a take-out thing. If you have to take-out, don’t wait until you get home to open up your toasty warm packet of cheesy goodness. Eat it immediately. Go back often.
Anyone in the path of the tour of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? should go. It stars Kathleen Turner, who is predictably at home in the boozy, buxom Martha and Bill Irwin who is fluid and excellent as George. (Am I the only one who read the books about the hippos when I was a kid?) It is a rare opportunity to see Mr. Irwin, who trained, as I did, at the Circus Center in San Francisco. His rubbery and precise physicality serves George well. I saw this same production last year in New York with Nicole Kidman and it was exactly as painful as it should be and just a little more brilliant than that.
No, that’s not right. I didn’t see it “with Nicole Kidman” as in, “she was in the show.” I saw it “with Nicole Kidman” in that we went to see it together. I mean, I didn’t actually see it with Ms. Kidman per se. We were both there. We both stood in line for the bathroom. We sat a couple of rows away from each other, which I’ve done with people I do know, so it might have been like we were together. Except for her not knowing my name. And being there with other people. Except for that, we were there together. Just like me and Mats Wilander were dating when I was 11. Like that kind of “together.” You know what I mean.
Like a good New Yorker, I studiously avoided granting her any special attention, unlike the middle-aged woman from Omaha or Debuque or Tampa or who cares where because it was clearly Not New York in front of me, who chattered relentlessly at Ms. Kidman. I do not do this with celebrities. I feel that it would bring shame upon me and upon my family, although I’m unclear on what form that might take, since I do not usually offer both attention and my home address in the same breath.
For the record, I do not enjoy Ms. Kidman’s work. If you knew me, you would know this because I can’t stop myself from saying something cutting and personal every time she wafts onto a screen. I find her brittle. I also wish she would acknowledge the fact that she’s gay instead of continuing to marry men as if she weren’t. (I have third-hand confirmation on this, but I can’t tell you from who because I promised I wouldn’t, even though my source is notoriously indiscreet. And a psychiatrist, which, now that I’m thinking about it, is a little disturbing.)
On the other hand, I am in love with Edward Albee. In an unfortunate turn, I am taken and he is gay, but who’s counting? I have loved him since I read The Zoo Story when I was sixteen and seeing this production renews my love.
The tour will be in San Francisco for now and then move to Tucson in mid-May.
Not being able to remember how I found out about Annabelle Verhoye is an annoying lapse. I was rattling around New York for several years so it’s probably inevitable that I would cross paths with a lot of intriguing people and forget how I met most of them.
Beginnings be damned, I tracked her down once I did see her work, inviting myself, with my nonexistent art-buying budget into her studio on the west side on a bitterly cold winter day five years ago. I can’t explain why I loved her pieces. I do not usually like overtly feminine work. It must be the combination of the alien shapes of her delicate women and flowers combined with the layers of materials - paint, plastic, glass - that attracts me.
If you are in New York this week, go and see her first solo show at the Opera Gallery. Annabelle herself is warm and welcoming and her work is worth a trip.
The day our young landlady’s wild-haired and insane parents told me and my ex-boyfriend that we could not have our dog or any plants whatsoever on the half acre deck was the day we suspected we were doomed to leave our newly rented apartment in the tony Marina neighborhood. They were ‘concerned about the weight’ of my ficus and, apparently, window boxes. I lived resentfully with the barren expanse for three months before I left both the apartment and the boyfriend. When I drove by a year later, after the crazies had reclaimed the apartment for themselves, I saw that they had installed a large stone fountain on the deck. I’m sure it didn’t weigh nearly as much as my ficus.
Since then, things have been looking up. My next place was owned by the wonderful Jose and Bob. Bob is an all-American George Clooney type with a superhero profile and Jose is a gentle, smiling and boyish Asian. The two of them handed over their beautifully renovated Victorian flat to me and two friends and cheerfully made improvements at the slightest suggestion over the next three years. They didn’t even blanch when they saw the state of their pristine palace under the reign of my roommates.
The current living situation is even better. The studio is too small for two people but R and I stay for the deck and the landlady. The building is owned and managed by a woman who a.) knows how to build and fix things, and b.) does. Since R moved in and I joined him a year later, she’s put in a dishwasher, a new garden downstairs complete with goldfish, and built our deck, which is now a redwood expanse home to flourishing roses, lavender, iris, herbs and the happy ficus tree. Her boyfriend is an electrician, which is very handy. He blows leaves, washes our cars and has installed prison-grade floodlights that discourage the scary vagrants who used to sleep in the doorways.
Also, a big plus, she only rents to interesting people, like the photographer in the studio downstairs who specializes in pregnancy portraits. The other live-work space is rented to another photographer and his slim, Rollerderbying writer girlfriend. In the storefront, there’s a quiet and accommodating guy who repairs guitars and racing bicycles. The apartment across from us has seen more turnover. Amanda and her beautiful photographs used to live there in splendid organization. When she left - we were very sad - we got a recent divorcee who lasted three months before retreating back to the suburbs. Now, we have a hip and private technology girl who has a cool job at a travel site that takes her off to Belize and other places extraordinary.
It’s all very trendy and integrated into the community. Which is to say, I guess, Californian. Right?
My grandmother spent about a billion hours a year mulching, hydrating, feeding, clipping and worrying over several spiky rose plants. In return, she got back six or seven blooms per summer. I, on the other hand, have profusions of blossoms that appear as early as April and continue into the fall. I spend about 15 minutes every two weeks cutting them back and watering them.
There is no killing a rose bush in San Francisco. They will bloom no matter what horrible mold or evil bug attacks them. As far as I can tell, roses will thrive even if you only water them once a week in the summer and not at all in the winter.
The difference between me and my grandmother is zones. I am in Zone 9. She is in Zone 4. Apparently, so the web tells me, the country is divided into gardening zones. Greenhouses categorize and sell plants by zone. Much like raising children, it is bad form to compare them and worse to imply that one is superior to another, but it is impossible not to notice that Zone 9 supports the flowering plants that everyone wants in the garden and Zone 4 supports mostly fir trees.
So, this week, thorny points go to San Francisco. Keep up the good work.
Amendment: Since this review was published, I have been asked by the owner not to use some of the tables during lunchtime. As there were other readers/writers at similar tables, I assume this has to do with the frequency with which I visit the cafe and the duration of my visits (usually around two hours). I stand by my general comments below but retract my recommendation of the place as friendly to writers and hanging out. They are clearly more concerned about one-time spenders on busy days than steady repeat business, so I’m striking Momi’s from my list of regular haunts.
The most hospitable café in the Hayes Valley neighborhood for a warm cup of tea, low-end food and a place to take your laptop or the Sunday paper. There are other cafes but they are on busier corners or have odd clientele that make me nervous or annoyed. (Prime example, the otherwise serviceable café on the corner of Page and Laguna where you are likely to be overwhelmed by a crowd who have just had to sit quietly at the Zen Center across the street for God only knows how many hours. Beware.)
Momi Tobys serves excellent bagels (for San Francisco) which are toasted right up to the edge of burning and are not swamped by cream cheese (see Noah’s Bagels). Try onion or multi-seed, both happily salty. Their coffee is pretty bad, sitting in pots on burners as it does, but they have espresso drinks and a great selection of teas, some juices and both wine and beer, nice options in the evening. The menu is basic lunch stuff - chicken Caesar, soup, baguette crostini with pesto and a small selection of sandwiches - none of it superb but all of it solid. (If a tasty lunch is your sole object, head around the corner to Frjtz or a couple blocks down Hayes to Arlequin. Neither place is conducive to hanging out, but the food is superior to Momi’s.)
The main reason to stop by Momi Toby’s is to read for a while, to write for a bit or to hook up with friends for a coffee. (Don’t go overboard with the friends: none of the tables will accommodate more than three people comfortably.) Depending on who’s working, the music varies in quality and volume, but it’s generally interestingly circus-y alternative. (The chick who used to crank up the insane metal-meets-Muzak tunes has disappeared from the staff rotation, thank God.)
I write there regularly. The crowd’s there studying or reading themselves, so you get the friendly atmosphere without a lot of distracting, jerks who have something to prove on cellphones, the reason for abandoning a café closer to my apartment.
Cole Valley Bakery, corner of Cole and Parnassus, open 7-7, closed Monday
Cole Valley Bakery has a full range of tarts and pastries and breads for breakfast or pick-up. They also serve sandwiches, salads and soups to a lunchtime crowd.
Their croissants are, in all respects, real French croissants. This means that they are light, flaky and NOT the size of my head. They have a slightly crunchy exterior and plenty of room between the million interior layers of butter and magic dough. This would be reason enough to head to Cole Valley, but it’s not the only one. Their coffee is first-rate. It’s not stale or boiled or overheated or pumped full of Starbucks steroids. It is rich, straightforward coffee and the perfect base for their perfect café au lait.
Other highlights include their canelés, which I have seen nowhere else, and their panniers (or elephant ears, as we American’s have thuddingly dubbed them) put all others to shame.
Lunches are bigger than you would expect, so don’t over-order. Even their small garden salad is sufficient for a light lunch. The only flaw in their superior bakery line-up is their baguettes, which are tough. The mini-baguettes are the base for their numerous, pre-wrapped sandwiches, which are still worth getting. Be prepared to chew fiercely. Selections include Gruyere and ham, saucisson and cornichon, aoili turkey and cranberry and a superb tuna salad complete with bits of apple.
Their soups range from the very bland to the truly excellent, so make sure to ask for a sample before ordering.
Had everything we could get our hands on in the first 10 minutes of passing carts, with a heavy stress on dumpling-like items. The best being the shrimp ones. The satay is also well-sauced instead of the usual tandoori-esque treatment. The sweet rice dumplings get me every time. First, it’s not just rice. Second, while sweet, they are not the most excellent thing I seem to believe them to be. Beware a roving eye: the servers are very, very good at zoning in on you, which makes this a great place for a large party where there are more people to run defense. Or a greater chance of totally over-ordering. Still the best dim sum I’ve had in SF.
In the W Hotel on the corner below SFMOMA. Get it? “WXYZ”? The restaurant, like the hotel, is shooting for a very sleek, minimalist look which it achieves but which does not usually wear well. This translates into hip, high-backed curved booths with uneven pillowed seating. No matter: I’m sure the filling has failed under hipper bottoms than mine. The food was excellent. The special appetizer was a really stunning chicken pate, excellently smooth after the rough Provencal version we have been working our way through at home and which bears a striking resemblance in consistency to cat food. The salads were standard greens but large, well-chopped and well-dressed, a great version of a classic. I had a white fish special served on a bed of surprising pureed sweet potatoes. V. tasty. He had a pulled pork and pasta dish which was original but wrongly seasoned. Interesting but not as good. Dessert was superfluous after all the preceding.
Eliza’s in Potrero Hill is a solid, local Chinese place that I’m glad we finally found. Good service and presentation. Apparently very popular and very cheap. Local favorite. While bright, the decor is not the usual take-out genre of open spaces, empty tables and extreme lighting. I think I still prefer Eric’s, but the walnut prawns were crisp, the potstickers yummy (if not exceptionally so) and the standard Kung Pao chicken solid. The most original bit was the Mongolian Beef, which was served on a raised dish (inexplicably in an painted Italian pattern) and bedded on crispy, puffed rice twirls.
One nice thing about California that I have to concede: typing in “C” in a pulldown box for “State” yields “California” whereas typing in “N” yields, ahem, Nebraska.
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