Tag Archives: food

Mar 27 2013
11 Comments
Food, Outer Sunset, Posts about Breakfast, San Francisco, San Francisco bakeries

A True Story of Pastry Paralysis

beachside cafe pastry display san francisco

Photo courtesy of yelp.com

On a Saturday in mid-March, I walked 2.6 miles and 42 blocks down Irving Street to Beachside Cafe, and I was hungry.

My hunger grew the longer I walked, and along with it, hungry indecision. In my mind, I could see a pastry, the perfect, tender, sweet, and comforting pastry that would solve my craving, but I couldn’t quite make out what it was. Was it a cookie, a scone, a cinnamon bun or twist? It was impossible to tell.

There was almost no line as I walked into Beachside, and a full display of pastries glowed in the light of hunger and baked good glory. This was the first level of disaster. When faced with a display of pastries in which everything looked good, my mind froze up solid. I was left staring open-mouthed at the pastry display like the first Adam trying to name a billion different orange-colored things. I began to ask the server a series of questions, becoming more dissatisfied with every answer.

“What is your favorite?” “I really like banana nut muffin and the peanut butter cookie.” (boo)

“What’s your most popular pastry?” “The chocolate chip cookie.”(duh)

“What your second most popular pastry?” “Blueberry muffin?” (boring)

“Is the blueberry scone good?” “Yes.” (obvs)

“What’s that thing” “Scallion-bacon scone.” (weird)

“And that?” “Cinnamon apple muffin.” (reminds me too much of oatmeal)

These were the questions of a woman who clearly had no idea how to satisfy her need for a pastry or even what that particular need was. The crux of the issue is that I knew there was a right answer – there was a pastry on the shelf that would satisfy my deepest desires and yearnings, but I didn’t know how to find it, and I was terrified of missing the chance to sample the perfect pastry.

At last I chose the peanut butter cookie, and it was tasty – probably one of the better PB cookies I’ve had, but it didn’t hit the spot, the spot that cannot be named. It’s not the chocolate, pie, or berry spot. It is the pastry spot, and it is left un-hit, a hole in my soul that still seeks to be satisfied.

The quest continues. Who will win? The spot, or the human?

If you liked this, you might also like Experimentation in Pastries at Craftsmen and Wolves, Purchasing and Eating a Sandwich, and Deconstructed Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich.

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Mar 12 2013
9 Comments
Food, Posts about Breakfast, San Francisco

Your Life Coach Recommends Biscuits from the Pork Store Cafe

The Pork Store Cafe on Haight

The Pork Store Cafe on Haight

On Friday March 8th, the last day of the work week and the first day of what was then the rest of my life, I went to breakfast at the Pork Store Cafe.

My alarm that morning woke me in a spiteful way, right in the middle of a sleep cycle. For a moment, I debated whether or not it was worth it and that maybe I should just get a morning breakfast on Saturday. But my strength rallied and I finally got up. The instant my tennies hit the pavement I knew I’d made the right decision. Even better, I felt the breakfast hunger.

I arrived to the Pork Store Cafe at approximately 7:03 am, and about 15 minutes later, some of the most tempting breakfast food was steaming in front of me like a freaking holiday feast. I ordered the two eggs in a tasty nest, which consisted of two eggs over easy gently laid across the most deletable mixture of hashbrowns, peppers, onions, cheddar cheese, and a wild amount of bacon. You’re probably already salivating and I haven’t even gotten to the best part.

When I first walked in the door, I overheard a conversation between the waitress and a certain gentleman who was interested in purchasing biscuits but was being told that they would be another 15 minutes before they came out of the oven. Let me repeat that for those of you who are slow to understand the most important part of stories. He was waiting for a PAN OF PIPING HOT, FLUFFY AS HELL, FRESH OUT OF THE OVEN, HEAVEN BISCUITS.

Of course I had to have them. Lucky for me, a side of these biscuits was included with my meal. They came out slightly after I got the tasty nest due to the fact they were still being incubated by their oven mother, but I didn’t care about their tardiness. When I saw them, I became a believer in love at first sight.

I gently pulled them open in order to prepare them with butter and nearly fainted when I saw the amount of steam that Pork Store Cafe Biscuitscame off of them. The pats of butter melted with love and grace, and I took my first bite. It was one of those experiences when all I wanted at that moment was to be wrapped up in that biscuit for eternity, to have it surround me forever in an eternal embrace of fluffy goodness. I began to wax poetic about them in my mind, “A biscuit as textured and embracing as the hills of San Francisco, a biscuit as tender as a good mother’s love, a biscuit as fluffy as a middle school crush.”

I left that morning inspired, and vowed to never, ever skip Friday breakfasts again. And the biscuits. Sweet Mary mother of God, the biscuits. With the taste of those dear lambs, I believe I fleshed out a little more of my life’s purpose. I suggest you do the same.

This post is part of my general obsession with breakfast, breakfast foods, and the holistic experience that encompasses breakfast. If you want to munch on more of this topic, see I am the Breakfast Whisperer, Oh My God It’s Breakfast in Istanbul, and The Oatmeal that Changed My Life.

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Feb 27 2013
25 Comments
Food, Posts about Breakfast, San Francisco

I am the Breakfast Whisperer

Breakfast at mozSometimes I’m a marketing associate working an office job, printing out personal things at work because the paper quality is higher and vaguely feeling like I’d rather be outside building something with bricks.

Other times I’m a friend, mooching off my companions at restaurants, sampling their food, and arriving late with extra people in tow.

Once in a while I’m a lover, wooing my beau with orange-accented tennis shoes and a no-frills attitude towards personal dressing and home furnishings.

But sometimes, when the weather is right, and the sun is shining just so and the city is not quite awake, before 9:30 am on weekends and as early as 6:00 am during the week, I am the breakfast whisperer.

I love breakfast. Just to prove, I’ve blogged about it here, and here, and probably somewhere else too.

Like many passions, I can’t really explain why I love breakfasting. I only know that I do, and that I have a very specific idea about what constitutes the ideal breakfast experience. Allow me to describe:

The ideal breakfast is a solitary event and takes place as early as possible, anywhere from 5-7 am, depending on when the restaurant opens. The restaurant should not be busy, thus ensuring best possible service. If available, a window booth with a little bit of sunlight falling on the table should be had. A book should be there, or a newspaper, and this shall be read while drinking a cup of (preferably weak) coffee, a cup that shall be magically refilled without asking.

The server could be cheerful or grumpy, but above all, the service should be quiet and respect the holiness of the morning hours. Pancakes, bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns should all be had for $10 or less. The hot things should be hot. Tender things should be tender, and crispy things should crunch. Fancier items can be had, but food type, variety, and quality is only part of the breakfast experience.

In other words, I like to get up when it’s still dark outside and go alone to an empty restaurant and read the paper while eating normal foods that may or may not be good.

This might sound strange, but  it is my breakfast vision. However,  this is only one kind of breakfast experience. There’s also the social experience, the brunch experience, the breakfast for dinner experience, the traveling, the continental, the exotic, the homemade, the holiday, the…well you get it. There’s a lot of breakfast possibilities.

The breakfast I described is my ritual, a certain set of customs I perform that somehow make the world seem more reasonable and help me find my place in it. Setting off on a quest to find the best 7 am breakfast experience near downtown San Francisco has been one of the highlights of 2013.

All throughout the week I look forward to my excursions, to discovering yet another outlet for my breakfast passion. I think about breakfasts of weeks past, the crispy hashbrowns, the sourdough pancakes (from Bette’s Oceanview Diner – well worth the price tag), how a particular server was especially gracious, or the perfect bite of pancake, egg, bacon, and hashbrown all together while people-watching on a sunny street, wondering where they’re going in their lives and if they’ve ever had breakfast before.

I eat breakfast, for I am the breakfast whisperer.

If you have any stories about breakfast, feel free to share. Leave them in the comments or email me at richmondapt328@gmail.com. Or share something you’re passionate about. Just share.

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Jan 14 2013
6 Comments
Food, San Francisco, San Francisco bakeries, The Mission

Experimentation in Pastries at Craftsman & Wolves

craftsman and wolves the rebel within

the rebel within

Craftsman & Wolves is a new-ish bakery on Valencia St. It is not a carpentry supply store or a bizarre dance studio/cult. It’s one of those bakeries where it’s easy to be overcome with blind fear, the same fear a child experiences when they begin screaming after discovering they’re holding a stranger’s hand.

At first, everything looks delicious and I’m feeling confident.  I’m like, “Bakery….I know bakery. Bakery has cookie, has cake, has bread.” But then bakery turns out to have things called “the rebel within,” and “pain au cochon,” and a scone with “mango, ginger, coconut, and kaffir lime.” And when the woman helping boyfriend and me decide points to something and explains, “this is a financier,” I know that this is not the bakery of my homespun, capitalist youth (Panera).

Nevertheless, we persevere, wading through the muck of over-descriptive pastry names and decision-anxiety. We purchased one (1) brewed coffee, one (1) small latte, one (1) chocolate chip cookie, one (1) “rebel within,” and one (1) sesame passion fruit croissant. The total cost: a cool twenty (20) dollars. I wonder what my sister would say, the one that called $1 popcorn at the Wichita botanical garden “a rip-off.”

The place is packed and we’re forced to sit next to strangers. I’m not mad, I’m just telling it how it is.

We dig into the food, delicately placed on square ceramic plates that are clearly not from Ikea. The first surprise is that the rebel of “the rebel within” is a soft-boiled egg. BOOM. SURPRISE. The yoke is gooey and fairly delicious (if you like egg juice), adding to the flakey, hammy, biscuity, exterior. Unfortunately, the dough around the egg is a little raw, disappointing for a place that calls itself “a notion.”

The cookie was tantalizing, salty enough to make sure everyone knows there’s salt in it, and plenty of chocolate even for the women. It wasn’t doughy at all (though it was described as such by a review in 7×7), but I’d definitely stop back in on a day that I deserve a treat and dunk that mother-nucker in some Nescafe instant coffee (BRING ON THE BOOS! I FEED OFF YOUR HATRED!)

The third baked item, the croissant, was a little sad and dry. The flavor was good, but if I’d had a pat of softened butter or some edible lotion I would have moisturized the crap out of it.

Upon leaving Craftsman & Wolves, I knew I would probably return, if only for their carnitas and machengo mac and cheese. It was fairly tasty and certainly interesting. Maybe next time I’ll get something even more inscrutable, like a buckwheat, concord grape, and peanut butter cube cake.  Just try to figure that one out.

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Sep 13 2012
16 Comments
Food, Humorous

Top Chef Michael Mina Describes My Daily Diet

Teddie Peanut Butter only served on Friday and Saturday evenings.

Breakfast

Today we have a par-boiled oatmeal made with Trader Joe’s Organic Old Fashioned Rolled Oats, seasoned with Organic Pumpkin Spice and Morton’s Kosher Salt, both stolen from a roommate personally by Emily Drevets.

The oats are prepared by pouring tap water heated to exactly 212 degrees Fahrenheit over them and letting them sit for as long as you can stand. As a garnish, we sprinkle just a touch of raw oats over the finished dish. Served with tap water and our signature Nescafe Instant Coffee.

These oats remain mostly raw because they are not Quick Cooking, so you get some of that tough oaty texture that reminds you of the earth and eating wheat off the stalk. I feel this is a very honest dish that reconnects you with how eating must have felt for our ancestors.

Lunch

For this dish, I was inspired by childhood and children in general. I’m fascinated by the way they approach life, absorbing everything as if it were completely new, captivated by what has become ordinary to us. They are the very embodiment of “fresh eyes” and that’s where I got the idea for a Toasted Whole Wheat Peanut Butter and Raspberry Jam Sandwich.

To prepare this re-invented childhood classic, we open the bag of Trader Joe’s Organic Whole Wheat Bread and gently set two slices in a preheated toaster oven. As the bread toasts and becomes progressively drier, we ready the peanut butter and raspberry jam by taking the respective jars out of the fridge and opening them.

The peanut butter we’re using today is an Organic Crunchy, Natural Trader Joe’s Peanut Butter, made from local peanuts and harvested with the help of a man who is, by coincidence, my second cousin Bill. Bill and I don’t talk much, and our jam of the month is Safeway Brand Raspberry jam, with real cane sugar and artificial colorings.

Once the bread is done toasting, we remove it from the oven and slather it in peanut butter. The warmth of the toast causes the peanut butter to melt slightly, adding to the gooiness of the sandwich. Then, we smear raspberry jam on the toast, making sure to swirl the mixture.

Much like checking for the appropriate swirls of fat in high-quality meat, a healthy swirl in a peanut butter and raspberry jam sandwich is an equally important indicator of quality. Then we press the two slices together, seeing to it that some of the filling drips down the sides.

The drink of choice with this finished product: tap water. You’re going to need a lot in order to keep this viscous mixture moving down.

Dinner

Dinner today is a handful of Trader Joe’s Cats Cookies for People, kind of the big sister of Teddy Grahams with a similar, cinammony taste and innocent crunch, along with some spoonfuls of peanut butter straight out of the jar, served with Twinning’s English Breakfast Tea and tap water from a nickel-plated sink faucet in the bathroom.

I’ve found that eating eating peanut butter right from the jar works on both the experiential and gustatory levels, and the proximity to such a primary ingredient in its natural and abundant state is a real crowd pleaser.

Bon Appétit!

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