San Francisco’s Richmond district is a long BART and bus ride away from where I once lived in the East Bay, a distant land as far as college me was concerned. But in 2003 I made the trek for a noir film festival and thought, maybe I’d try Russian food. My Russian teacher had recommended [...]
Baseball season is back. That means I’m going to eat some hot dogs soon. And I’m excited. I shouldn’t be, not considering the cost. Those between-inning lines are a bitch, standing in front of angry fans looking for beer number three, and behind slow dads buying meals for big families. The condiment dispensers never work [...]
I’ve had the good fortune to dine finely on occasion, to dust off the ol’ wingtips and drop stupid money on one meal: a tasting menu in Vegas or Napa, an omakase marathon into the triple digits, and other edibly metaphorical attempts at winning life. Sometimes those dinners leave stellar impressions, but none escape some [...]
I moved from Los Angeles to San Diego, then to Los Angeles, then to San Francisco, and I drove into this city with a promise to myself: when it came to Mexican comida, I would keep an open mind. I would allow for the possibility that Mexican food in the Mission style is every bit [...]
Happy New Year! It’s hard to believe that this blog has been alive for four years. It’s even harder to believe that in 2010 and 2009 I was able to bring on contributors from dining destinations are far-flung as Shanghai, Tokyo, Bonn, Majorca and even the American midwest. 2011 wasn’t quite as robust, since The [...]
This story is fourth in a series on Burmese food in San Francisco. What is Burmese cuisine? The question is problematic. I’ve been asking it for over a year, and I know as little about the topic now as I did when I first moved to San Francisco. Something as straight forward as “beef curry” [...]
This story is third in a series on Burmese food in San Francisco. When tourists come to San Francisco, they eat Chinese food in Chinatown. There’s nothing wrong with that. Chinatown is a cool place, and there’s good food there. However, it isn’t too bold to claim that the best Chinese food in the Bay [...]
This story is second in a series on Burmese food in San Francisco. When the number 38 bus reaches Geary and Third late on a Saturday night, I don’t have to look up to know I’m almost home. Every girl in a skirt and every guy in plaid disembarks on cue in a litany of [...]
This story is first in a series on Burmese food in San Francisco. The middleclass white person is a fickle eater. We can be picky about our special diets, about unfamiliar ingredients, about foods that our palates might insist are too greasy or too salty, and we can even balk at a menu’s linguistics. Just [...]
Burritos are pregnant with meaning. They are pregnant with lots of things, and some are even called pregnant by name, but others tell tales between the sheets of tortilla. El Porvenir’s carnitas burrito contains a San Diego origin story; the wet burrito at Berkeley’s La Burrita knows how stupid I act drunk; the Manuel Special [...]
