I'm on my way to New York right now. How I love Virgin America's new SFO terminal. Breakfast pizzas, Acme bread, Cowgirl Creamery cheeses, decent down-tempo music that follows you wherever you go! It's like a frequent foodie flyer paradise. Just make sure to grab something to eat before boarding because I didn't and have now morosely perused Virgin's surprisingly lame lunch offerings and come up uninspired. More on my NYC trip in next week's blog.
The picture above is of my son Silas, still flushed from a soccer tryout at the Crocker Amazon fields that use green turf. Even though I know it's not really grass, just seeing the expanse of green makes me feel like I live somewhere where the sprinklers water freely with suburban, who-cares-about-the-water-shortage bliss. Like a mirage, it makes me want to run towards it and roll around on it like a little kid. But for Silas's sake, I refrain.
Silas and I stopped at Batter Up, which is why he's about to dive into that massive corn dog he's holding. He got the Portuguese sausage, while I got the Louisiana Hot Link. You can even mix and match your links, and add cheese. The owner Patrick is also releasing a couple new choices of batter soon: one made with honey and one made with jalapeño. Sauces include the "boom" sauce, a spicy mayo ketchup, and the "bomb" sauce, a wasabi mustard. For corn dog fanatics (that's you, Jina), this to-go window is little bit of paradise. Patrick is getting it together to get a food truck too. I think this should be assumed of every restaurant now and I'll just tell you if they're not going to have a food truck.
I also made it to Cat Head's BBQ in SoMa which took over for Big Nate's now that Nate Thurmond, the former NBA hall of famer, retired from the business. My picture of the ribs turned out garishly terrible (or brilliant in the style of flash-happy fashion photographer Juergen Teller), so you'll just have to stop in and order the ribs yourself because they're really tasty—the best of what we tried. The namesake buttermilk biscuits are good too. The sauces here run the gamut, including a habanero version that's almost inedible it's so spicy, and sides include collards and old-school mac and cheese dotted with pimentos. A beer and wine license is coming soon they hope but it's currently BYOB, so grab a six pack of Shiner Bock and go now. They also deliver, which is kind of awesome; however, this service stops early so inquire within.
Should you think I spend my days eating corn dogs and ribs (with the current comfort food culture, sometimes it does seems that way), I do make it to more upscale restaurants. Last week I stopped by the new French restaurant Bouche which had been recommended to me by a couple food writer types. It's located in the former Crudo, that sliver of a two-story space in Nob Hill that always feels like you've stumbled upon something special. It very Parisian in some ways. Lots of French accents floating around the kitchen and wait staff. It's candlelit and cozy and a bit quirky in its design. The food wasn't all consistent but some of it was really nice, particularly a great dish of brown-butter roasted carrots sprinkled with a dusting of almonds, cumin and bread crumbs that was far more the sum of its menu description. It definitely seemed to be derived from the teachings of Daniel Patterson, the chef-owner of Coi who's big on vegetables. I could be wrong but Bouche's chef, Nicolas Borzee, worked as Patterson's sous chef.
Bouche is open until 1 a.m. which made it a perfect post City Arts & Lectures meal since Joe and I had just been to see Blind Side and Moneyball author Michael Lewis—his talk made for great dinner conversation. Turns out he's writing a book about what it's like to be Obama right now. I can't wait.
What were the best things you've eaten this week?
