Mission Mission

Fuck yeah! The Mission dominated this year’s 7×7 2010 Big Eat SF with 26% of the 100 recommended restaurants. Take that, Hayes Valley! I’m not going to bother calculating that number for the other ‘hoods because who cares about them right?

Here’s the goods:

2. Coffee-rubbed pork shoulder at Range
3. Carnitas taco at La Taqueria
8. Morning bun at Tartine Bakery
11. Pork sugo with pappardelle at Delfina
21. Pizza margherita at Pizzeria Delfina
23. Beer sausage with sauerkraut, grilled onions at Rosamunde Sausage Grill
25. Loaf of bread straight out of the oven at Tartine
32. Pupusas at Balompie Café
35. Salted-caramel ice cream at Bi-Rite Creamery
39. Pierna enchilada torta at La Torta Gorda
45. Secret Breakfast from Humphry Slocombe
46. Chips and salsa at Papalote
50. An obscure Belgian beer at The Monk’s Kettle
52. Coconut buns from King’s Bakery
54. Spiced-chocolate doughnut at Dynamo Donut with a Four Barrel coffee
56. Nuevo Paloma at Beretta
60. The Little Star at Little Star Pizza
64. Paper masala dosa at Dosa
65. Cookies-and-cream cookie and milk at Anthony’s Cookies
78. Super burrito at Taqueria Cancun
83. French fries at Universal Cafe
86. A cheese slice at Arinell Pizza
88. Buckwheat crepe and a French cider at Ti Couz
92. Bacon-wrapped hot dog from a cart in the Mission
97. Lamb schawerma at Truly Mediterranean
98. Bloody Mary with brunch at Foreign Cinema

Mission Street Food announced yesterday the next step in their great experiment’s evolution: They’re opening a restaurant of their own. And not only that, they want us all to invest! For the low, low price of just $500, you can tell your mom or your http://www.missionmission.org/2010/02/01/mission-street-food-going-full-time-seeking-investors/ friends that you’re an investor in the hottest new restaurant in San Francisco. Link.

Photo by snackfight.

As Ron Perlman uttered in Fallout, “War. War never changes.” Accordingly, the fourth major theater of the San Francisco Food Wars stormed on today at Thirsty Bear. Herbs, cheeses, grains, and nuts fleshed out the theme: Yeast Affliction — that’s bread disease to you and me.

Sourdough was, as one might expect of an SF event, a competitive genre. Palo Alto’s Mayfield Bakery had a particularly wonderful sourdough and Jen Rosa took the gold for her Rosemary Sourdough — a well earned victory.

Your correspondents’ personal pick of the show was Wild Yeast‘s Semolina Sourdough with Fennel, Currants, and Pine Nuts. Seriously, that was some amazing shit.

And the enticingly named “Hurricane” (not pictured) totally deserved people’s choice: brown rice and seaweed! The seaweed was intense but with a slab of butter proved perfectly balanced. Your correspondents can’t wait for the recipes to be released.

The Fancy Boyz easily swept up the coveted Mission Mission best-dressed award. Their fermented Pain a l’Ancienne wasn’t half-bad neithers.

It wasn’t all buttery and fluffy, though. While Stable’s yard is large enough to allow for mingling, Thirsty Bear couldn’t really handle the volume. Any time your correspondents tried to stop and enjoy the bread, we were accidentally blocking someone or unintentionally in line for something. While the event was fun, we hope future battles retreat back to Stable.

Photography by Ashleigh Cole

Any of y’all go?

Pizza Zone (‘N’ Grill!) on Duboce and Valencia.

Look, I’m not going to pretend I know anything about street art. The closest I got to “tagging” was repeatedly drawing the Stüssy S all over my binder in 7th grade.

But I think it’s really tacky when businesses paint their signs in graffiti text. It reminds me of those arcade machines in the 90′s that would show you a tag-font “Stay In School” splash screen when they started up. Even then I was cynical enough to see through their ridiculous attempt to appeal to my “urban” side.

“You had such an opportunity!  Why didn’t you go for it?”

“I dunno.  I guess I’m sad.”

photo by Eric Wolfinger - http://ericwolfinger.com/

Move over gamelan! Accordion is the new hotness. Marié Abe plays at Tartine Bakery on Fridays (TONIGHT) from 6-8pm. I don’t even know why I’m bothering to type anything else since after seeing the HOTT picture above I’m sure you have already left this site and you’re totally myspace-stalking the shit out of her.

Marié is from Japan and was April in 2009′s Accordion Babes Calendar. She plays in a ton of groups including the Japonize Elephants, Tango No. 9, and Thorny Brocky. Most of her music is pretty damn heavy and experimental, but at Tartine they keep it a bit more accessible for the baked goods crowd with jazz, Brazilian choros, French musette waltzes, and such. She’ll be joined by Darren Johnson (Nice Guy Trio, Brass Menazeri) and Lisa Mezzacappa. No cover, so tip well.

And if that’s not enough accordion for you, head over to Amnesia from 7-9pm for Rob Reich and Craig Ventresco right afterwards, playing some good old ragtime, blues, and early jazz.

I’m not vegan, but I enjoy vegansaurus, thus I support vegansaurus’ vegan outrage over the new Weird Fish menu.  Take it away, vegansaurus!:

Sorry, I’m all about fostering open communications and being awesome about local restaurants with vegan options but FUCK YOU, WEIRD FISH. You cannot giveth fried seitan and then taketh away. Oh and replace it with a shaved papaya salad. You can shaved papaya GO TO HELL-A. That doesn’t even make sense but I AM SO MAD RIGHT NOW.

Oh yes and no more lunch or brunch. I hate my life.

Yeah!  Get ‘em!  But also: wtf, Weird Fish?

P.S. I’m pretty sure the ‘saurus pictured is Trey Anastasio from Phish. We can assume he’s vegan (hippie!), making him a highly appropriate vegansaurus, right?  Also: Weird Phish?  Not to brag, but I’m SO GOOD at image selection.

I’ll admit I was a little skeptical when it first arrived in the mail.  Being a neighbor living within 500 feet of the new proposal, I received a letter from owner Jeff Segal about his ambitious plans to open a wine bar just around the corner, right next door to my landlord’s laundry place (damn–I knew there was  a reason why there’s no washer or dryer in my building!).

It was full of well-intentioned statements like (paraphrasing) “I live in the Mission, and I saw a really big need in the community for a place that brought wine and food to a place that makes it accessible,” and “I’ve been waiting my whole life to start a wine bar and restaurant like this.”  My roommates and I each rolled our collective eyes and thought “here we go again . . .“  Who needs another douche-and-yuppie magnet on Valencia Street?

Well, it’s finally here.  Furthermore, I think I might actually go check it out.  Perhaps Rosumunde and Pi Bar have softened me up to the idea of the casual eat-and-drink spot, but I find myself kind of rooting for this place a little bit.  The collaberation with Kitchenette might explain some of that, since so far every time I’ve biked out to the Dogpatch to try them out for lunch I’ve been greeted by an hour-long line.  Now maybe I’ll finally get to taste one of their beef & pork polpette sandwiches with amatriciana sauce (tomato, fatted calf bacon, chile flakes) and parmesan cheese or their sautéed chinese broccoli leaf and roasted butternut squash side salads with sultana raisins, slivered almond, chili oil.  They really know how to title entrees.

And it doesn’t look that bad in there!  I don’t know.  Am I misguided?  Do we really need a place like this on Valencia?  I do know one thing however:  the fact that co-op Arizmendi Bakery (whose mission is basically to bake delicious bread while training its staff how to own and operate their own bakery) is also opening a location right next door is a damn good thing for Valencia.

UPDATE:  MissionMission reader Mike Z. saw it go down:

i got a burrito at papalote yesterday and the crew that were putting up the sign on that place were punk/metalheads.  they had just finished and were drinking beers out of bags.  outside the wine bar.

[exterior photo from SFoodie]

[interior photo from Judy Parker]

Siiiiiiick! Aren’t you worried that if you pour that imp down your gullet it’ll erode your insides and consume your soul!?!?!? I’d be!!!!!!

Photo by dreamyshade.

Previously:

Demon Cat

Demon Clown

Demon Ghostbat

No big deal, just a picture of someone enjoying an El Farolito quesadilla, right?

Psych! It’s a picture of someone enjoying an El Farolito quesadilla in the East Village, NYC!

You can do it too: On the way to SFO, hop out at 24th St. station. Run into El Farolito and order that quesadilla to go. It’s probably a good idea to avoid the sour cream. Immediately double-ziplock bag it and toss it in your luggage. When you land in NYC 6 hours later, call up your friend and tell her that you’ll be bringing lunch. Don’t worry, as a previous mission resident, the concern of a salmonella infection will be dwarfed by her longing for decent Mexican food*.

Your clothes will smell like carne asada for a week, but the look on her face will be worth it. She’ll give you a big hug and tell you that this was a way better gift than the “Alcatraz Swim Team” T-Shirt you brought last time.

The question is, what can your NYC friend do for you? Imported pizza? Nah, contrary to what they think, we have plenty of good pizza here.

*The “Mexican” food in NYC borders on the terrible. Trust me when I say I wish it were otherwise.