Mission Mission

Over the last month, an unusual amount of the food reporting in the Wall Street Journal has centered around the Mission’s most loved/hyped restaurants.

Today it was a feature on Wo Hing General Store, the new Charles Phan restaurant opened in the original Slanted Door space on Valencia. A couple weeks ago Bi-Rite and Humphry Slocombe were somewhat awkwardly portrayed as rivals in a cookbook review in the national lifestyle section.

The previous week, Mission Chinese Food’s ribs were one of four dishes featured in an article about lamb. A few days before that, the front page of the lifestyle section was devoted to an article on these newfangled “pop-ups” that led with a lengthy profile of Wise Sons, the brand new Jewish deli on 24^th.

Maybe 2012 is the year of the WSJ discovering the Mission, like how the NYT discovered Brooklyn in 2010:

[photo by Sexpigeon]

Look at that bottle! I don’t know about you, but I’d definitely pay $8 for a 10 ounce pour of PBR if they advertised it like this in the U.S.

[Angus Winchester]

Turns out The Mission ain’t what it used to be:

San Francisco is a place that offers at least a semblance of social life in the streets and has a mass-transit system that, being at least semi-functional, can get you home even after chasing large doses of MDMA with multiple Irish carbombs, resulting in an uncontrollable throwing up of copious amounts of last nights frozen pizza onto strangers who you had drunkenly mistook for childhood friends. Who doesn’t want to live in a place where you can simply exit your apartment, walk a few blocks, and end up at a bar filled to the brim with a battalion of apparently creative, interesting patrons? Or, at least, so went my daydreams.

As it stands, the reality is much different. Upon exiting BART and walking down the streets of the Mission, it becomes apparent that San Francisco has transformed in ways that I cannot appreciate. Newly Ipe-planked luxury condominiums with fancy, all glass, automatic underground garage doors, and heated post-industrial concrete polished floors, sit adjacent to coffee shops whose patrons sip on $6-7 dollar coffee while they guiltily donate some small, insignificant pittance towards “saving the third world” on their new high-end Mac gadgets.

Read on at Oakland Local. Also here’s what ipe is.

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Turns out last night’s buckets of rain did more than just make people feel scared/cozy. Humphry Slocombe laments via Twitter that the store has been flooded, which not only is surely causing lots of headaches but also has damaged copies of their newly-printed recipe book. Luckily they’ve probably got some bourbon on hand. We’re sorry, guys! Chin up!

Famed local booze blogger Camper English recently called out San Francisco bar owners and bartenders for their increasingly generic cocktail bars and menus:

As bartenders have figured out what works here (drinks with bitter flavors and fresh ingredients, but not too many) and what doesn’t (molecular mixology), they’ve played it increasingly safe with each new venue that opens. The new cocktail programs are great but they invoke fewer original ideas. Bartenders in up-and-coming cities have no such pre-fixed notions of what works in their market yet, and often take more creative risks both in the bar design and in the drinks. Now our local bartenders need to look outside the city for good ideas to incorporate and build upon.

I’ve noticed this trend as well, but I don’t think it’s specific to San Francisco. Now that there’s a fancy cocktail bar on every corner the hipper areas of major cities, you’d expect an increase in variety and creativity. Instead, bars seem content to ride the wave of cocktail obsession by offering unadorned classic cocktails at high and rising prices. Subbing out an ingredient for it’s schmancier equivalent (like using Cocchi Americano instead of dry vermouth) seems to qualify as an innovative variation. The design and styling of each new bar consists of as much hardwood as can fit in the budget while hopefully leaving room for funny outfits.

The issue is that while customers get more educated, the offerings are getting less impressive and more generic. Adding to the problem, there is so much demand for skilled bartenders that the people making these cocktails, at least in my experience, don’t always know what they’re doing. (Tip: if your bar is designed to look like a speakeasy, don’t muddle an orange into your Old-Fashioned.) In short, there’s often not a lot going on that I can’t do at least as well at home.  It’s sad because in most cases there are a lot of creative people and not enough venues, whereas in this case there are plenty of venues but not enough creativity.

Sometimes I wonder what we are going to do with all these neighborhood bars that have been overly remodeled to look like libraries when the bubble bursts and two thirds of them go out of business. Maybe we can turn them into libraries.

[Illustration by Joan Horne]

Now called Dante’s Weird Fish, the beloved vegan-friendly eatery reopens today, right on schedule. The menu still has all the classics, like the Little B. Stack and the fried pickles. Read all about it here.

[Grub Street SF]

This comment just popped up on the lengthy thread of gripes about the $15 burger situation at Mission Bowling Club:

Regarding the $15 burger, well, you know, that’s just like, uh, you’re opinion man…

It’s kind of a glass half-full/half-empty thing right? Of course it makes me sad to be the perpetrator of a $15 burger.

But keep in mind, at Duc Loi it was $8, then $9 towards the end. It was available from 12-3pm standing or sitting on a milk crate in a super market. That’s about as low overhead as you can get and it turned out that it was not a viable business model–I think for one two week stretch, I put in 50 hours and made $100.

Mission Bowling Club is an attempt at a viable business model for the owners and investors. If my food program isn’t profitable enough for them, someone else will be taking over the reins. And on the bright side, the Mission Burger IS available for $10 from 3-6pm in a restaurant with a full bar. So thrifty foodies can take heart.

Besides, the whole menu is cheap for fine dining and expensive for junk food, so if you’re one to judge based on labels, it’s a free country. You can rent movies, or go the movie theater. Some of these new fangled beers are kind of pricey too.

Of course our initial inclination is to side with Anthony, since he’s helping bring a unique entertainment option to the neighborhood and you’re, well, writing mean stuff on the internet. But the concern is understandable – I don’t see myself on an average afternoon spending $75 on a burger, a few beers and an hour of bowling.

Let me point one thing out: I grew up watching bowling alleys close. Whatever Amoeba was was gone for as long as I can remember, and the demise of Japantown Bowl just about ruined my dreams of a career in professional between-the-legs bowling. All we had left was Presidio and Serra bowl, so most of the city was without viable options. And the food at Presidio is inedible, so it really doesn’t matter how cheap it is. I can’t speak to Serra Bowl because I’ve never had a car, but that’s gone anyway so whatever.

So maybe we’re just not willing to pay for however much it is a bowling alley costs. But some people are giving it a shot, so should we just see how it goes?

But Anthony, we gotta know: does it come with fries?

Fresh & Easy, the rapidly expanding supermarket chain that combines the charm of an expensive Trader Joe’s with the mystique of a cheaper Whole Foods, has been approved by the Planning Commission to take over the old Delano’s space. Convenient location in an area where supermarkets are sparse, so for the moment I’m for it. It’ll also have a nice parking lot for the seven of you who drive.

Curbed SF reports:

The Commissioners added a condition that they could only sell beer and wine, since “most kids are not trying to steal wine at the grocery store”. The project was approved 4-3, with the condition that Fresh & Easy must apply for WIC as soon as the moratorium is lifted, and they must aim to meet a 100% local hiring goal.

Read on.

This promo for the new Humphry Slocombe book includes the story of the shop’s origin, some cute flirting between the founders, and a few thoughts on their ice cream philosophy. Check it out.

[via HuffPoSF]

I don’t know about you, but we’re pretty confident the Flour + Water chef can put together some bangin’ Italian sandwiches, and now’s your time to find out. The first takes place Wednesday 11:30-2:30 at McNaughton’s Flour + Water (pictured.) If you have a job (or don’t go east of South Van Ness,) there is a second pop-up planned at Clooney’s on 26th and Valencia on Friday evening.

The following sandwich is on the menu: prosciutto cotto, mortadella, pepperoncinis, whole grain mustard, olive tapenade, pickled carrot, wagon wheel cheese, foccacia- $10. Sweet.

[via Zagat]

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