An Al Pastor Goodbye

Said farewell to San Francisco, for this week at least, with a delicious al pastor flavored send off at El Castellito, which serves up some of the best spicy slow-cooked marinated pork in town. Pictured below.
Off to New York for a week of tasting new releases from Piedmont for Wine & Spirits. Maybe [...]

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Late Night Bling, or I *Heart* SF

(Above: I started my Friday with a michelada at Nopalito, which is Tecate mixed with tomato, chili de arbol, salt and lime. Yeah, it’s good.)
This post is going up late because I’ve been sick all week. For the record, summer colds suck. And no, I don’t use Zicam.
After gorging ourselves senseless with the Third Degree [...]

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Pizza on Wheels

All this talk about new style street food carts and taco trucks modified into gourmet street food destinations has me hungry. Also, I’m thinking of these totally bad-ass variations on the mobile wood-burning pizza oven I saw last weekend in Paso Robles.
Check it:

This first pizza trailer is owned by Full of Life Flatbread, and they [...]

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SF Street Food Meets Terroir

Or, Terroir, welcome to SF street food.

(Above: An empty taco truck lacking signage is parked in front of Chez Spencer)
Via Inside Scoop, one of the bestest, greatest things ever in the San Francisco Chronicle: Looks like plans are in the works for a Chez Spencer taco truck, erm, make that a frog truck, to park [...]

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Big Bottles

What can I say? I’m a bit of a size-queen when it comes to magnums (or bigger) of wine.
Large-format bottles age better than 750s, the greater volume making for subtle and slow aging thanks in part to a low ratio of oxygen to wine. Perhaps hindering the desire to age your magnum is the fact [...]

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Delfina’s Craig Stoll Gives the Finger to Fox News

Juicy.
Apparently Craig Stoll of the James Beard Awarded Delfina and Pizzeria Delfina in San Francisco was scheduled to appear on the Fox News morning show but walked out after hearing what the hosts – presumably quoting disgruntled Yelpers – had to say about his pizza. As reported earlier this month by local magazine 7×7, [...]

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Wine Rumors: SF Restaurants Going Retail

Well, not exactly, but in the course of doing a little field research last night I learned that a hot, newish SF restaurant is planning to develop a wine program where all of their pricing is retail. Yep, retail… no 10% nor even 5% markup, but straight up retail. Signs of the times to be [...]

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The Best Fish Tacos on the Central Coast

Playing hooky is something I learned the value of a long time ago. It often brings new perspectives through serendipity, which is exactly what happened this past Saturday during the annual World of Pinot Noir festival in Pismo Beach. Before the grand tasting started, a small group of us headed over to the charming hamlet [...]

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The Beat on the Street

We all hear it these days. You work in the trade and there’s a constant refrain of consumers trading down in their wine purchases, especially at restaurants. The silver lining is that people aren’t abandoning wine altogether, they’re just spending less. Which makes sense: Wine prices were until recently ever so inflated. When things eventually [...]

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Lunch Fix: Vietnamese Sandwiches in Murray Hill

Had a quick run over to Baoguette in Murray Hill today for banh mi, or delicious Vietnamese sandwiches typically filled with pork, bbq chicken or even fish.
(Thanks to a tip from the new Tasting Table, both my colleague Chris and I had the skinny on this new place. Apparently so did many other lunching [...]

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