You Know It’s Fall When…

… The local art supply shop, Flax, is advertising mask-making andface painting tutorials — just in time for Halloween! And who doesn’t love spooky saturdays?

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Mother Mother

Via Burrito Justice*, easily one of the top local San Francisco blogs, comes Mother Mother, a rockin’ group from Vancouver. Infectious, poppy rock with solid songwriting. And did I mention harmonies? Harmonies! Sort of a New Pornographers meets the Pixies kind of thing.
Mother Mother has two albums out, and you can stream them both at [...]

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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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It’s Good to be Home

Spent this past Saturday — a gloriously sunny afternoon — in Dolores Park enjoying a picnic and a bottle of 1990 Savennières-Roche aux Moines from Domaine aux Moines while playing cards and getting the first sunburn of the year. Lovely wine, although feeling a little soft and worn at the edges, so drink up.
It’s good [...]

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Building Community

Above: The new tools of the trade?
One of my favorite aspects about the wine, specialty cocktail and food business is that it builds communities, from casual tasting groups to communal neighborhood gardens. And this is one reason tools like blogging, twitter, Chowhound and (gasp) even Yelp are so well-suited to the food and wine world, [...]

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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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The NPA – Keeping Winedrinkers Safe

I have a post up at Wine & Spirits that talks about the Natural Process Alliance, a new project from Kevin Kelley of Salinia Wine Company. Kelley has made a skin-fermented chardonnay and a pinot gris relying only on indigenous yeasts and without using any added sulfur dioxide. The wines are delicious although quite limited [...]

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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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