Mina elaborates on his Millenium concept

No entrees, says the NY Times:

in a year or so [Mina] plans to open a wine bar and restaurant in San Francisco that will have no main courses but rather 25 dishes of about the same size divided into five categories.

This is from a story on the death of the entree, which is really just a fancy way of saying we now tend to eat more courses, because we want to live like kings, because we're upwardly mobile, because we're Americans, but Americans who increasingly ape the French, except with much less valuable currency, because in trying to live like kings we tend to overdo things and spend more than we earn.

Tanya Holland brings TV glitz to West Oakland

West Oakland twice struck out landing the Wayans Brothers, who were going to build a movie studio thing on the old Army Base until they realized their children's "fun zone" would be right next to toxic emissions from giant container ships. Woops.

Now the neighborhood has finally landed a development from a TV star, albeit on a slightly smaller scale and a lot more healthy: Tanya Holland, who previously hosted "Melting Pot" on the Food Network and ran the kitchen at Le Theatre in Berkeley, is opening Brown Sugar Kitchen next month at the former home of Triangle Cafe at Mandela and 26th.

The concept is "cooking with soul" using "locally grown, organic and seasonal ingredients whenever possible." Wines are from African American California vintners -- and from the South of France. There will be microbrews -- and Blue Bottle Coffee.

Think of soul food combined with formal French training. The recipes in Holland's cookbook should give you some idea.

Holland is doing a cooking demo Friday night at the Museum of California (in Oakland).

More in my Business Times update: Food Network star to open West Oakland restaurant (free link)

More than half of SF restaurants open on Thanksgiving today

"I think there was a time 20 years ago where most restaurants closed for Thanksgiving. I think that’s gradually shifted to where most [400+] are open.”

--Kevin Westlye, Golden Gate Restaurant Association, in the Examiner


(Photo courtesy Maitri on Flickr via Creative Commons license.)

Failure of SF grease recycling goes ignored

So the city of San Francisco is trying to recycle restaurant grease into biofuel for automobiles, to save the city's pipes from having a heart attack, and to clean our air, and to save the planet from melting, and it's going to be so awesome, even the Chronicle and its self-styled nemesis BeyondChron manage to agree on its front-page-worthy awesomeness.

Which is why I think it's funny no one mentioned this has been tried before, and has failed.

Two years ago the Golden Gate Restaurant Association named Bay Area Biofuel of Richmond its "preferred vendor" for grease recycling, and then in May 2006 I wrote a big front page article saying the company was growing production based on the partnership, and hoped to soon be profitable. The executive director of the restaurant association said Bay Area Biofuel "has all the right stuff" for the partnership, and according to my notes told me the association had conducted interviews to "find the industry leader" before settling on the company.

In October 2006, my colleague Lizette Wilson checked in with Bay Area Biofuel as part of a industry roundup article. She found the company still unprofitable, looking for more money from investors and drowning in unprocessed grease ("We need to expand production significantly to keep up with supply and be profitable").

By February of this year, the company's website had disappeared.

Then in May, Bay Area Biofuel Inc. of Richmond, CA filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation in an Oakland court, according to Dow Jones Newswires' Corporate Filings Alert.

With Bay Area Biofuel gone, the city obviously needed to turn to a different company for its new grease recycling program. It settled on Blue Sky Bio-fuels of Oakland, which according to the Chronicle has been making biofuel for just two months.

I'm not saying San Francisco's new grease-to-biofuel effort will definitely fail, just that the city and its partner Blue Sky need to be asked what they will do to avoid the fate of Bay Area Biofuel and how certain they are about the sustainability of the restaurant grease recycling program. And coverage of the city's high-profile announcement should take note of the dead corporate body lying on this green road to the future.

By all accounts, including those of restaurateurs I interviewed in May 2006, restaurants are more likely to recycle their grease -- instead of pouring it down the drain -- if pickup is timely and reliable. There are well-established companies willing to reliably pick up restaurant grease for less glamorous ends than biofuel, as they have been doing for years. If restaurants are going to be encouraged to switch to a new recycler, it should probably be someone who is going to be around for some time to come.

(Photo courtesy nchoz on Flickr via Creative Commons license.)

Tony Bourdain keeping it real in Fruitvale

My friend Connie emailed to say Anthony Bourdain is chowing down in front of at least one of the famed taco trucks in the Fruitvale district of Oakland:

so i just sent zack on a taco run to our favorite
truck (mi grullense) and he just called saying that
tony bourdain was there (w/the contra costa times).
he's super tall and ordered the cabeza and the tripa.

cool, huh?

Very cool, but what would be even cooler is if Tony could convince one of those truck owners to publish "Taco Truck Confidential." SO much scarier than Kitchen Confidential.

(PS, maybe he found this place through nerdfury??)

Gary Danko's eunuch orgy

So apparently Gary Danko has this fantasy about the end of the world, which involves ... well, read for yourself:

Gary Danko envisions a "delicious and awesome festival" set on the banks of a lake in Udaipur, and featuring eunuchs, platform beds, and fifteen wines, including a Nebuchadnezzar of Krug champagne from 1947.

That's from the New Yorker, quoting from a new book called Last Supper, about the fantasy last meals of various chefs. Udaipur, by the way, is a lake-filled city in India.

Someone PLEASE order this thing with overnight shipping and send me all the other juicy details!! (I'd do it myself, but it's starting to sound like the sort of thing that might be illegal to send through the mail.)

In the meantime, we all should thank Gary, the sole San Francisco chef in the book, for representing our gloriously and freakishly hedonistic city so very, very well!

Then Tyler Florence, recently transplanted to Marin, ruins the whole Bay Area's rep by poring boring sauce on the whole thing and saying he fantasizes about a “classic Southern feast of my childhood ... No frou frou French. No snout-to-tail. No fucking foie gras.”

I love chicken fried steak as much as the next Texas boy, but Tyler it has to be said: LAME! YOUR FANTASY DOESN'T EVEN CONTAIN A SINGLE CASTRATED DUDE!!

New Yorker: No seconds

Desperate scramble for line cooks (and the future of tipping)

The Chronicle this morning takes a front-page look at how low kitchen wages make it quite difficult to retain solid line cooks, while increasingly demanding chef bosses make it even tougher.

This is one of the more interesting aspects of the widening divide between the tipped front of the house and untipped kitchen workers. Owners argue that recent minimum wage hikes have exacerbated the divide by diverting owners' money to waiters, who earn minimum wage but have historically been their best compensated employees because of tips. Owners say that money would have otherwise been spent on raises for the kitchen staff.

Proposed solutions to the problem range from replacing tips with a service charge to, more recently, getting the city to freeze the minimum wage for tipped workers, instead of increasing it every year.

Eater SF isn't sure it sees the problem, here, since waiters only get paid (*cough*) nine bucks an hour, and this one blog that hates everything ever in the Chronicle also hates this story.

One solution that occurred to me recently is simple but uncomfortable and unlikely: if we all cut back our tips enough to make up for the minimum wage hikes and eventual health care benefits, owners will have room to raise prices and give wage hikes to the back of the house.

After another year or two of minimum wage hikes, 10-15 percent could become the new 15-20 percent. If your tax dollars and menu prices have hiked the minimum wage several times in four years to 35 percent above the statewide minimum and if the promise of free health care for uninsured workers is delivered (assuming failure of a pending a suit by restaurant owners), is it not reasonable to adjust your tip to account for this more dignified standard of living?

Dlibert creator flails with restaurant in Bay Area

Dilbert creator Scott Adams is struggling to manage his restaurant "Stacey's" in a Dublin strip mall, according to a New York Times story today.

The restaurant is bleeding money as customers choose national chain restaurants over Stacey's. Owner adams took over the deteriorating operations in July and tried to improve everything from the food to the decor, but his staff just laughed at him and compared him to an actual infant baby, probably because he has no management experience and virtually zero restaurant experience (he bussed tables a long time ago).

Nevertheless, the whole staff seems to think he's a great guy, and not a terrible boss. Now he's trying to use his Dilbert celebrity to drive business to the place. Oh, also, he has a smaller Stacey;s in Pleasanton that is doing well.

Thanks to the chef-owner who sent me this -- with no small dose of Schadenfreude, surely.

NY Times: The Tables Turn for Dilbert’s Creator

Oakland hipster slams restaurant in RECORD TIME, so John Birdsall is now obsolete

Flora, a cute little restaurant in downtown Oakland, has been open for approximately four hours, so of course it has already been declared DEAD AND PASSE AND LAME by a snide local hipster who has better taste in restaurants than you, because you live on the wrong side of the Caldecott Tunnel and work in an office and are probably wearing Dockers.

Kevin Cook, food writer at Novometro.com, hasn't actually been to Flora, but he has read another writer's blog about when she went to Flora earlier this afternoon, and he has already had it up to here with the restaurant, which he vows to never visit again, or ever, since he's never actually been in the first place.

Based on seven pictures and a 193-word review, Cook declared, in the comments of course, the following:

I will never understand why a place like flora attracts anyone. I don’t care how new the kitchen staff is–making a decent vinaigrette shouldn’t take any practice or time for a professional. Tuna melt? Come on, this place sounds like an upscale togos for the walnut creet office worker lunch crowd.

To recap: Kevin Cook does not understand why Flora does not throw in the towel and shut down and admit it's over, already, since it has managed to ruin its reputation in the four hours it has been open by making a bad vinaigrette and, uh, serving sandwiches, to people who work in offices. And possibly live in Walnut Creek. Ew.

This is the glorious future of food criticism, which shows why reviews printed on dead trees by so-called professionals who secretly love sandwiches and Contra Costa County and cubicles are now obsolete forever, oh holy god I want John Birdsall back they laid him off I didn't want to tell you but there it is The End.

(Seriously, the East Bay Express laid off Birdsall and six other staffers, including Kara Platoni.)

A Better Oakland: Flora opens tonight! (Updated with pictures)

Lame waiter words enrage Frank Bruni

He hates

• "Enjoy"
• "Enjoying"
• "Pardon my reach"
• Talking to you in the first person (plural): "Do we have any food allergies ..."
  
• Talking to you in the third person: "Would madam enjoy ..."
• "Enjoy"
• "Perfect."
• "Excellent choice."
• "Enjoy"

Not the freshest story idea, but we must read Bruni faithfully, because some day he is going to lose it, in a restaurant, with the violence, and it is going to be awesome.

NY Times: Tonight, Patronizing Language. Enjoy.

Previously: You May Kiss the Chef’s Napkin Ring

Exclusive Flora pic! (... link. Exclusive Flora pic LINK. Still exclamation-mark worthy!)

The team behind high-end Mexican restaurants Dona Tomas in Oakland and Tacubaya in Berkeley are close to opening their Uptown Oakland joint, Flora.

I walked past the restaurant last night and spied a small group inside, putting on the finishing touches. It is looking like the casual cocktail cafe we were promised last year, with a definite Raymond Chandler, late 1940s feel.

My cell phone shots are awful, so go check out this picture, taken by one of my companions last night.

Town Hall guys strike again

Marcia at Tablehopper made me laugh: She says the owners of Town Hall and Salt House would "make a great law firm."

They're called Rosenthal, Rosenthal and Washington.

Or at least, that's what I'm calling them from now to eternity.

They're launching an "oyster bar and fish shack" and, in keeping with their operating philosophy, putting it in the same neighborhood as their other two restaurants (and not in Oakland). This lets the founders keep a close eye on all their properties and more easily trade staff and, presumably, ingredients. Plus you can do effective cross-marketing and more easily generate buzz, since you already have a neighborhood client base. At some point there's an upper limit where, if you open too many restaurants in one neighborhood you start cannibalizing your sales, but apparently these guys don't think they're close to that point yet.

Also, more chaos at Mint Plaza.

Tablehopper

Michael Mina also rocking the Millenium

Nice scoop in the Chronicle today, Mina is going in to the Millenium Tower condo project:

• Mina + "his longtime wine director" Rajat Parr
• Named RN74 after Burgundy highway
• spring 2009 opening "at the earliest" (building itself not done until spring 2009)
  
• 4,700 square feet, with 70 seats in dining room, 60 in bar
• "moderately priced French-American cuisine ... A typical menu will offer five vegetable dishes, five fish, five pork and poultry items, and five meats."
• Mina: "I just want it to be very relaxd."

I'm a bit of a dunce -- I was tipped to something like this nearly two months ago and forgot to ask Mina about it when I had him on the phone last week. Sigh.

Foie gras is back at Jardiniere

SF Chronicle, August 2003, following attacks on chef Laurent Manrique of Aqua:

Jardiniere's Traci Des Jardins ... said she will discontinue her signature foie gras and see how customers respond. Although she, like many chefs, wonders if her restaurant will be the next target, Des Jardins says her decision is not about fear. Ever since she visited a foie gras farm in 1995, Des Jardins said she's been "haunted by the image of those ducks."

Jardiniere menu, November 2007:

***
Liberty Farms Duck Breast,
Fuyu Persimmon, Chestnuts and Foie Gras Beignet, Huckleberry Jus
Emeritus Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley, California 2005
***

And from the Jardiniere New Year's Eve menu (PDF) for later this year:

Terrine of Foie Gras
Ginger Gelée and Toasted
Prum Riesling Auslese “Wehlener
Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Germany 1997

Jardinier's opera-loving customers, it would appear, are quite fond of foie gras, and not particularly concerned with Traci Des Jardins' traumatic, terrifying nightmares.

Tough crowd!

Truffle crisis means you should probably skip the supplement

Not only do California chefs have to buy truffles with worthless American dollars, but it's pretty much no use even trying, according to my awesome chef tipster writes:

Truffles. Theoretically this is their time. There was no late-summer rain in Piemonte, or most of Italy for that matter and so there are no truffles. Some are popping up in the March, Tuscany, Umbria, northern Campania and Lazio, but they're weak and ridiculously expensive. I've got about the best truffle connection you can get and I'd have to pay 2700/lb for little fucking marbles with precious little perfume. I was in Rome two weeks ago and had some - they were ok, but hardly worth it. After three days of packing, traveling and getting into the states, they'll be pointless and most people will probably have to help them along with truffle oil and other such tricks. ... So far, this is a bad year.

The little ones seem to work well enough in special cheeses and macarons, but point taken!

Michael Mina brasserie -- may yet be (Or: My seduction by Laurence Geller)

Last week I had a date with Laurence Geller, CEO of Strategic Hotels & Resorts and, by extension, the owner of the Westin Saint Francis hotel here in San Francisco. He put me in an apron, plied me with wine, cooked for me in a rooftop kitchen, gave me a signed copy of his rather purple novel "Do Not Disturb" and entertained me with the most delightful story about Michael Mina.

Michael Mina was going to make him a brasserie, in his hotel. Michael Mina was going to put it in the old Oak Room. Michael Mina was going to also make a bakery inside the brasserie and give it a window onto Post Street, somehow, and everyone was going to come and it was going to be awesome.

Laurence told me this, and gave me champagne, which made me happy, and then later he told as much to his 10 other guests, even though he did not care for them in that special way in which he cared for me, and he poured us more wine, and we were happy.

There were warning signs. When, the next day, I called the general manager of the St. Francis, a reliable and trustworthy fellow, he let on that the brasserie plans were, well, in the conceptual stage, but still "likely." And that Michael Mina was in talks but not, shall we say, signed on the dotted line. Michael Mina could not be reached for comment.

Actually, Michael Mina was reached for comment, the day after we went to press. Telling me that the plan for a brasserie was very preliminary, one among perhaps 15 projects Mina's company (total restaurants: 10) is weighing at any given time. But he was fairly certain he'd be running the St. Francis' new bar, the Clock Bar. But writing about the brasserie would be, uh, premature.

Well, Michael, you'll have to call Laurence about that one. Careful -- he's a sweet talker.

SF Business Times: St. Francis sees $150M hotel upgrade: CEO: But first, fix tourism (free link)

Charles Phan only now realizing he opened his new restaurant in the MALL FOOD COURT. Ahem.

Apparently people are minting money at the year-old expansion of Westfield SF Centre mall, but not poor Charles Phan of Slanted Door, who has a restaurant in the basement food court called Out The Door.

Bloomingdale's made a year's worth of money in nine months at the mall, but Phan is all, :-(

As he told my colleague Sarah Duxbury last week:

... his Out the Door concept is only doing OK.

"People are not embracing the mall in the evening as much as I'd like to see," he said, adding that his 150-seat, 5,000-square-foot restaurant gets only one dinner seating and is not meeting his projections.

See? No turns at dinner!

Imagine that. People not wanting to eat dinner in the mall food court. Hmmmm.

Phan's expectations may be just slightly inflated by his experience at the Ferry Building, where since opening in 2003 he has made close to $12 million per year. There, he does two or even three turns each night at dinner.

Besides Westfield, Phan now has spinoffs in the works in Pacific Heights, mid-Market and at the California Academy of Sciences.

Business Times: Westfield dazzles (free link)

Bruni joins Thomas Keller pile-on

New York Times food critic Frank Bruni today questions whether Thomas Keller has stretched himself too far, lending a sympathetic ear to the Bloomberg story published yesterday.

In a blog post, Bruni reminds us that Keller has a line of "silver-plated holloware sold by Christofle," along with the frozen food, expansion restaurants and other sorts of "diversification and division of interests that arguably contradict Mr. Keller’s words and posture in the past."

He adds:

... Mr. Keller has stretched and continues to stretch...

I read the Bloomberg and Eater reports on Keller an hour after having a cup of coffee at Bouchon Bakery in the Time Warner Center, where I met an out-of-town friend for a quick breakfast. I didn’t eat, but I made a fairly thorough visual survey of the muffins, croissants and cookies — there it was! my beloved Nutter Butter! — and I could see several kitchen hands, in advance of lunchtime, making a vast quantity of sandwiches in an assembly-line fashion.

Bruni: Thomas Keller, Inc.

Thomas Keller 'not going to be able to keep the quality' while selling frozen food, Ruth Reichl says

Bloomberg this morning published a Thomas Keller feature on its financial news wire, exploring whether diversions like a 20-room hotel, catering operation and frozen food line will impact quality at Keller's flagship French Laundry.

Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl tells Bloomberg's James Temple, " You have to expect that with your attention that diverted, you're not going to be able to keep the quality ... I just don't think that's possible.''

The story notes that Keller consulted on the Pixar movie Ratatouille, in which the main character becomes upset when a chef's image is used to sell frozen food on television. And yet Keller recently "designed and placed his name on two real- life frozen dishes for FiveLeaf, a unit of Cuisine Solutions Inc., based in Alexandria, Virginia. The company will soon begin pitching one, Mac and Cheese Lobster with Orzo, to retail stores, said Lillian Liu, the company's marketing manager."

Michael Bauer says, "Once you get into frozen food and pizzas, your fine dining brand gets a little fuzzed out." He is refering to Wolfgang Puck, apparently, but the reader will probably draw a parallel to Keller.

Keller said he mitigates against the risks of growth by

• growing slowly and carefully, as when he shut down French Laundry for nearly 5 months while working on Per Se,
• plugging in the old staff at new ventures,which keeps quality high and keeps staff from leaving for bigger opportunities.
  

Bauer weighed in on this topic in August, saying he did not think the French Laundry has lost its edge and still operated on "a sublime level" above other restaurants. He added that a recent meal there "wasn't as remarkable" as one two years prior, his all time favorite meal.

In July, I summarized some French Laundry backlash from online food writers.

Bloomberg: French Laundry's Keller Takes Plunge With Frozen Foods, Burgers


(Photo cropped from original courtesy mikebaudio on Flickr via Creative Commons license. You may redistribute and "remix" this cropped version under the same license.)

Google computer nerds to teach children how to eat healthy. Oh holy God.

Google invites you to bring your children to its Mountain View headquarters next month for pizza, soda and television so it can teach them how to not be obese.

If you're afraid your kids are going to grow fat watching television on their computer or chatting with friends on the computer or surfing the Internet all day on the computer or deciding to become computer programmers who marry their computers and eat chips and Mountain Dew until the day their startup gets bought by the world's biggest computer, probably the best way to allay your fears is to march them down to Google headquarters.

Go there on October 20, when the company is fighting childhood obesity by holding a benefit for a TV show aimed at children.

The show is called "DooF" -- "food" spelled backwards -- and airs on PBS.

The benefit basically is a day of eating and walking around the Googleplex, but hey it's not as bad as I make it sound: the pizza is from an organic "make your own" workshop deal that will be led by Steve Sullivan of Acme Bread and by Google's pizza chef.

The soda is Italian soda from a "Euro Cafe" so, uh, probably still not healthy.

The TV is just a big screen showing interviews with kids at the event itself so it will not keep your kids glued.

You also get to tour an organic garden, sip smoothies, learn about "raw foods," taste apples from Donner Trail Fruit, do a food spelling bee, have a cheese sniffing contest with Cowgirl Creamery, and listen to some hip hop dudes called "Felonious." Fair enough.

Just make sure you don't accidentally come on some other day, or your impressionable youth will instead learn how to set up a webcam, start a blog and immerse herself in software development so that she can someday work in a giant computer that controls her transportation, laundry, diet, hair style, dating options, etc.

And bring some cash because Google can't just be letting anyone in the door for free, it's not like they are made of money.

Business Times: Hey kids! Come pig out at Google!

Hotel concierge brags he lives better than you could DREAM OF LIVING!!

An anonymous hotel concierge just wrote in to the comments to explain that he rolls posher than you, makes more money than you, lives larger than you and expects you to keep on tipping and not complaining about his commissions and kickbacks and who pays his salary or whatever.

Awesome!!1!

Here is a taste:

So for those of you who think poor little concierges, what a poor living, you are wrong. Most of us have a better living than any of you. You get free everything. GC to go to restaurants, free rides to the airport and I can go on and on.

But where does the money come from?

Concierges make commision out of everything they do. How do you think they make a living???!!! that tour bus you booked, they make commission, that helicopter tour, scuba diving tour, limo, you name it they get commission just for recommending it.

Oh, also? Some concierges get salary AND TIPS on top of all this. Because, you know, when someone sells you something on commission, it is polite to not only buy it, but to tip as well.

Anyway the commenter's point is that, while kickbacks from the vendors he recommends may finance his extravagant lifestyle, they do not influence him in any way:

I take pride of what I do and I am REALLY good. Never has anybody complained about me either pushig nor selling. My company does not make me sell anything. Since when does it matter WHO pays your salary?

... wether I recommend my company or the neighbors company, I will still make money out of it. And that just comes with the title.

Does every single business that might get a recommendation from a concierge pay a commission?

Creating a positive relationship with concierges can pay dividends. When Ola Fendert was trying to get the word out about Oola's unusually late hours, he reached out to concierges, doormen and taxi drivers, including by plying them with free meals in some cases. (I mentioned the concierge thing in my article on late-night dining.)

You could argue that this sort of wining and dining is a way of spreading knowledge and ultimately helping make patrons aware about a restaurant staying open until 1am, still a rare, hard-to-find thing in San Francisco.

You could also argue that concierges who accept this sort of outreach are going to be influenced to recommend a restaurant that offers them freebies or commissions over a restaurant that doesn't give these goodies, even when the latter restaurant is the better recommendation for the patron.

These sorts of debates are not unknown in the journalism world. But the best journalists uniformly decline freebies, at least past a certain level.

Maybe concierges are totally different, maybe not.

Limon or Dosa at Mint Plaza??

Like a sweet, sweet Julep on a hot Kentucky Derby day, everyone is grabbing at Mint Plaza, a dingy little lane where Martin Building Company is building a restaurant row to rival Belden Place.

The plaza includes three large restaurant spots, one spoken for by Portrero Hill bistro Chez Papa and the other dibbed by Russian Hill's Sushi Groove. Cult coffee roaster Blue Bottle has a café in 800 square feet, as well.

The third big spot was to go to the Castillo's family's Peruvian-Californian restaurant, Limon, but talks fell through.

Then, I was told by a source involved in the project, talks shifted to Dosa, Emily and Anjan Mitra's South Indian place about five blocks away in the same Mission District neighborhood.

Today, the Chronicle's Inside Scoop reports that Limon is back, "getting close to signing a lease."

Indian, Peruvian – the bigger question is whether Martin can make a culinary destination by photocopying neighborhood restaurants and tearing them out of their original, uh, neighborhoods. Hmmm. Worked for the Ferry Building, I guess.

Oh, and Chez Papa and Sushi Groove were supposed to open by Labor Day -- what happened to all that?

Phan FINALLY seals deal with Soma Grand

Six months after the developers of the Soma Grand condo complex started hyping their talks with developer Charles Phan to prospective buyers, it looks like the restaurant deal is actually officially happening, if the Chronicle's Inside Scoop is to be believed.

Phan of course is known for his ubiquitous chain of StarbucksSlanted Door-branded restaurants, including the relocated "original" Slanted Door in the Ferry Building, a new one under construction in Pacific Heights, the Out the Door takeout spinoff in the Ferry Building, the Out the Door in Westfield San Francisco Centre and the forthcoming joint project with Loretta Keller at the California Academy of Sciences.

So if you loooorve Charles' crab cellophane noodles to the tune of around $700,000, give or take a few hundred thousand, and you actually mange to get a hold of a mortgage amid the financial markets meltdown, totally go for it!

Hoist Thomas Keller by his own Sysco petard, no really GO AHEAD, says ex-employee!

There's an awesome new post in the comments from ex-Thomas Keller employee "Ken," who confirms that, yes, Keller uses Sysco frozen fries at Bouchon to make what food-media empress Laura Froelich has declared are the best French-fried potatoes on the planet.

But Ken's bigger message is that Thomas Keller has no secrets.

Ask him for the model number of his fryer, he'll tell you. Ask him for what kind of Sysco oil he uses, he'll tell you.

Wait, what?? He uses Sysco OIL even?? Not like goose fat, or rendered Unicorn, or at least the carefully distilled juice of a grass-fed free-range happy cow? God this keeps. Getting. Worse.

But anyway, the point is, you could totally TAKE ON Thomas Keller using nothing more than his goodwill and copies of his own cookbooks. Here's the whole comment:

As a former employee of TK, I will tell you that you are correct about where the fries come from. I will also tell you that if you asked Thomas or Jeff Cerciello, they would tell you what kind of fryer they use and what kind of Sysco oil they use too.

Now, all you have to do is cook and season the fries. Match what they do and open your own place, it's that simple. TK has never hidden anything from anyone. His recipes and techniques mentioned in the TFL and Bouchon cookbooks are on the money and the same as the cooks thaqt work for him carry around in their precious pocket notebooks. TK feels that all you need to know about working for him or cooking in general is - desire.

Another secret about TK is that the pork he uses actually comes from pigs, but don't reveal this, it may cause a stir.

I hope all you local chefs looking to steal Thomas Keller's Michelin-star-studded crown got all that. Basically all you need is DESIRE, along with some chutzpah, hard work, Thomas Keller cookbooks and the ability to READ.

Hey where'd all the chefs go after the last part??

View comment with original post

(Photo cropped from original courtesy mikebaudio on Flickr via Creative Commons license. You may redistribute and "remix" this cropped version under the same license.)

Farina neighbors really, really pissed off

Neighbors of Mission District Italian place Farina are upset over how the restaurants' customers are double parking their cars and worried about the rooftop seating and the full liquor license.

They think the joint is going to become a haven for loudmouth drunktards who will scream from the rooftop and puke all over their streets and leave their cars in all kinds of illegal places.

Eighty of them complained to the restaurant owners before the place was even built -- parking was already out of control. Then they found out about the roof seating and full bar and got more pissed.

Then 50 wrote letters against the place to the Planning Commission. The commission approved the restaurant anyway and everyone got triple pissed.

The restaurant opened in June, approximately, which apparently pissed the neighbors off even more.

One neighbor got so pissed he was arrested for throwing paint on cars parked illegally outside the restaurant. The only witness was someone from the restaurant so the charges were dropped.

But just to give you a sense of how being pissed can change a man: the guy allegedly throwing paint is, by day, working as a criminal attorney.

Also, he told SF Magazine, on the record, as Matt Wilson, the following: "I just want everyone to know that this restaurant has fucked me."

Like I said: Piiiiissed.

SF Magazine, which wrote about the whole situation (offline, since it is now the year 1993), thinks Farina's owners need to learn to be more nice and friendly to the quadruple-pissed neighbors, because after all Delfina, Range and Bar Tartine have learned to do so.

Either that or just keep having them hauled off to jail for being so damned pissed all the time.

(Photo courtesy of katerw on Flickr via Creative Commons license.)

SF hotels face capital famine

Hi!

Hope you had a GREAT summer!

Did you have a GREAT summer?

Hope so!

Because now the money is gone!

Yup!

Gone!

Probably not a big deal. The money went away for the month of August, and may return in September, or October, or sometime in the fall, or maybe next year, or maybe not quite ever, but everyone expects it will probably come back.

But for now it's taken a little vacation. Or an extended sabbatical. Whatever.

Don't want to overstate things. By "the money," I just mean the commercial paper that underwrote 80 percent of all hotel finance. And by "gone," I just mean not being given out to anyone, anywhere, anymore.

This really is not a big deal, unless you're a hotelier. Or a restaurateur. Or in the construction industry.

Or a broker, or in interior design, or an architect.

Or in the hospitality industry. Or in a business impacted by the hospitality industry. Or in a business that touches in some way on real estate.

Or in a business that needs, like, capital.

In a nutshell, the problem is that most commercial lending was done through supposedly very safe "commercial paper," or short-term loans to reliable businesses.

But Jim Cramer's hedge fund buddies took some of these loans and invested them in subprime mortgages, junk bonds and probably high-grade Columbian cocaine, no is really sure at this point because we're only talking about hundreds of billions of dollars and who really tracks that sort of pocket change.

Mainstream banks like the one that runs your checking account thought this all sounded swell and started borrowing and lending money this way too.

No one worried too much because as soon as someone made one of these insane loans he could then chop it up into a million pieces and sell the pieces to other investors who didn't know or care much about what they were buying.

They just cared that the loan had been stamped "AAA" by the ratings agencies, who of course valued the loans using computers, esoteric math no one understood and inputs no one could agree on.

About a month ago, everyone finally realized that some of this paper was not backed by operationally sound businesses but instead by people lending money to typical American homeowners which, as you might imagine, is a batshit crazy business to be in. Then they realized they couldn't tell which commercial paper was being used badly and which was sound. Then they stopped issuing commercial paper, which is a way of saying they stopped loaning anyone any money.

Commercial paper underwrites 80 percent of hotel deals, according to Jones Lang LaSalle. Ha ha, pretty hilarious madcap situation, right?

So now hotels, who by the way were sort of supposed to be the saviors of the hard-pressed local restaurant industry, can't get cash and have lost about 20 percent of their total value in like a month or two.

A small fraction of the top hotels can still get money from what are known as "balance sheet lenders," aka people who actually have cash money to lend and aren't counting on reselling the debt to others to offload the risk and aren't like panicking or whatever. Also, if you had a deal closed -- truly closed, not just nonrefundable -- before the meltdown, it will generally still go through, which is why you will still see deals being announced.

The whole capital crunch nearly derailed the recent Hotel Palomar sale a couple of times, all the principals told me, but luckily it was far enough along to make it to the finish line.

More in the ...

Business Times: Credit crunch leaves S.F. hoteliers hungry (free link)

Foodies are amoral creeps, including Michael Pollan, says Atlantic writer

Quick, read it while the Google cache still exists!

Atlantic writer B.R. Myers savages foodies, starting with Michael Pollan, for celebrating the joys of feeding while ignoring, even mocking, the suffering of animals:

The pleasures of the oral cavity are now widely regarded as more important, more intrinsically moral, and a more vital part of civilized tradition than any other pleasures ... This can be seen in the public’s toleration of a level of cruelty in meat production that it would tolerate nowhere else ...

This is a prime example of food writers’ hostility to the very language of moral values. In mocking and debasing it, they exert, with Madison Avenue’s help, a baleful influence on American English as a whole. If words like sinful and decadent are now just a cutesy way of saying “delicious but fattening,” so that any serious use of them marks the speaker as a crank ...

Agree with it or not, Myers' essay presents an intriguing argument about food and foodie culture that will keep you reading. It is presented as a review of Pollan's Omnivore's Dilmema, and presents that book in a unique new light.

The essay is supposed to be roped off only for Atlantic subscribers, but Google still offers the essay for free from its cache:

Hard to Swallow page 1 (google cache)
Hard to Swallow page 2 (google cache)
Hard to Swallow page 3 (google cache)
Hard to Swallow page 4 (google cache)

Lest you think I post this to bash Michael Pollan, I should note that Myers clearly admires his work and praises two thirds of Omnivore's Dilemma in no uncertain terms.

Myers, by the way, put himself on the map with the thrilling A Reader's Manifesto, an essay attacking literary pretension.

(Also in the same issue of the Atlantic, an essay on San Francisco's Camp Bread and the scones therein.)

Aqua taking Fifth Floor in 'very French direction,' source says

Griffin Capital's $58 million acquisition of Hotel Palomar from Kimpton included a detailed agreement on how the Fifth Floor restaurant would evolve, a source close to the deal told me, including Aqua Development Corp. running the restaurant, a female chef who has already been specified and an overhaul that takes the restaurant in "a very French direction."

This is all from my Business Times story Friday.

More and more hotel managers are entirely outsourcing restaurant operations. Ducca at Westin Market Street is being run by Puccini Group, who will also run Eno, the wine, cheese and chocolate bar in the Westin St. Francis.

Kimpton also plans to tweak the menu under the new executive chef at Scala's, Patrick Robertson, and as reported here previously, at Grand Cafe to renovate the bar and take the menu in a more French and casual direction.

Business Times: Kimpton spices up hotel restaurants (free link)

Zuni, Quince buy their produce in Berkeley

Tonight Anne and I watched the engaging documentary "Eat at Bill's," about Monterey Market in Berkeley, and learned that chefs from Zuni, Quince, Foreign Cinema and other San Francisco restaurants cross the bay to buy vegetables and fruit there, a mile from our home.

I knew Monterey Market as the place where Anne could get sour cherries for pie at certain times of year, and as the neighborhood place with better variety than Berkeley Bowl, which is a much longer drive away (albeit with longer hours).

What I didn't realize is that Monterey Market has become a key supporter of pioneering farmers and a hub for some of the most interesting produce out there. Nor did I realize how many culinary maestros slip in its back door every morning.

I was pessimistic that a documentary about a produce market could fill an hour. Eat at Bill's is an uplifting and fun movie that unexpectedly brought me close to tears.

I checked the movie out from the library, another option is to buy the DVD online for $20. They also carry it at Monterey Market.

The filmmaker, Lisa Brenneis, wrote more about the movie in Edible East Bay.

Thomas Keller's Sysco fries are totally punk rock, blogger says

In which Laura Froelich makes Michael Pollan cry some more

—•—

Dear Michael Pollan,

There, there.

We know you're down because Nancy Pelosi personally hung, bled and skinned your farm reform bill in a Smithfield abattoir on account of it being terrorism, the kind of terrorism that keeps Democrats from controlling Congress again in 2008, when the new president might give them permission to finally end the war or whatever.

Might we suggest some ways to cope with your depression, Michael? Start with some bourbon, neat, followed perhaps by a kill-crazy rampage in which you and your mob personally smash all tractors, ethanol tanks and lifesaving hospital technology your great great grandmother's great great grandmother wouldn't recognize as anything other than witchcraft.

And then fire up your laptop (named for a genetically engineered fruit no doubt!) and log on to food writer Laura Froelich's blog, where she says prepared French fries from Sysco, the massive food service company, are the absolute best in the world, far better than the ones made by hand in a fussy traditional French style by Tony Bourdain in New York.

Laura is especially fond of the Sysco fries served in gauche Las Vegas by agribusiness giant Thomas Keller. As an Archer Daniels Midland spokesman Keller's rep told New York Magazine:

One of the top reasons Bouchon uses frozen French Fries is consistency ... the consistency in these fries is often better than that of fresh potatoes.

The second reason is capacity. Bouchon would need to use over 200 pounds of potatoes a day to fulfill French Fry orders.

Laura Froelich is also a fan of the product. She writes of Bouchon's frozen, government-subsidized corporate welfare fries:

In my opinion, the Keller fries were stellar. Thin-cut (but not too thin), crispy (but not crunchy) on the outside, light and fluffy on the inside, and just the right proportions of oil and salt.

Feeling better already, Michael? Thought so! Interest you in a FunYun??

Fro Fro Blog: Chowdown - Keller vs. Bourdain

New York Magazine: Keller Cops to Using — No! — Frozen Fries

Ogden has 'less active role' in Lark Creek Restaurant Group, Dellar says

My coworker Elizabeth Browne at the Business Times reports in this week's issue on all the growth at Lark Creek Restaurant Group, and interestingly gets co-founder Michael Dellar to admit that his partner, chef Bradley Ogden, has taken a big step back from the business.

It seems Ogden is especially uninvolved in Bay Area restaurants like Yankee Pier and Lark Creek Steak, according to money man Dellar. From the story:

The 8,000-square-foot Bradley Ogden opened at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas in 2003, and was named best new restaurant for 2004 by the prestigious James Beard Foundation. Ogden moved to Las Vegas to start the venture and has since taken a less active role in the company, Dellar said, with culinary efforts now headed by Adrian Hoffman, former chef at One Market.

I asked Dellar about his relationship with Ogden in February. He said Ogden was still with the company but had pulled back:

He's just not here very much ... He's here occaissionally -- he makes regular visits here, but his time is spent more and more with our business partners [for example in Las Vegas].

In the Meantime, Dellar is growing the company from 11 restaurants now to 13 in 2008 and 16 in 2009, in the greater Bay Area and "Southern California, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Ariz. and the Seattle area." Revenue companywide will be around $45 million this year.

Business Times: Lark Creek is flowing into new locations (subscriber-only link for three weeks)

Aqua takeover of Fifth Floor approaches

At a cocktail reception last night for the Grand Cafe's new executive cheif, Mauro Pando, I asked everyone I encountered about the situation at another Kimpton hotel restaurant, Fifth Floor, which has been in management contract talks with Laurent Manrique's Aqua Development Corp.

It sounds like that deal is about to happen.

Here's what someone from the Fifth Floor told me: "it's not going to be a big surprise" when the restaurant announces its new executive chef, likely later this week. This was after I asked about Laurent and Aqua.

When Mauro told a couple of us that he lives up in Carneros, I asked if Laurent didn't live up that way as well and whether he'd be overseeing Grand Cafe. His only reply was a chuckle.

We'll see. The possibility of Laurent working at Aqua was first reported in the Chronicle's Inside Scoop.

Another salient detail is that the Fifth Floor and its hotel, the Palomar, have been up for sale for some time. I first reported this back in December.

At Grand Cafe, Pando is returning the restaurants to its traditional French roots, but also taking prices down a notch. He is presenting more casual, brasserie fare, "a very country approach" with rural dishes like cassoulet.

He is also renovating the "petit cafe" and bar, including adding a zinc bar and bringing in more light.

(For the record, I did not partake in the free dinner following the reception.)

Chow eyeing Jack London Square in Oakland, even as food hall shrinks

San Francisco restaurant Chow is interested in a location in Oakland's Jack London Square, the East Bay Express reported Wednesday, even as the square's developers struggle to attract other food tenants.

Meanwhile, the developers have cut way back on the restaurant and food component of the so-called "Harvest Hall" at the center of the Jack London Square expansion, I reported Friday. It was going to be 185,000 square feet of sit-down restaurants, food stalls, produce shops, meat markets, a cooking school, exhibitions and other food attractions.

Now it's two-thirds offices, with only the lower two of six floors dedicated to food. Apparently this was allowed under the entitlements approved by the city council a couple of years ago.

The changes were put forward after the developers closed on $200 million in construction financing for the first half of the development. Office is easier to fund these days than food, particularly if you are taking a Slow Food approach.

Business Times: Oakland's Harvest Hall will be mostly offices / Developers line up $200M to begin (free link)
East Bay Express: Back to Square One

House wine still sucks, but is now pretty

So remember how restaurants used to mix up the last dregs of wine bottles opened months ago, creating a nasty slush known as "house wine" which they would sell at a very slight discount to college students and other suckers?

Or maybe they would just pick some cheap-ass wine and designate it the "house wine" for the rest of the month?

Well forget all that! Contemporary house wine is totally different and new and chichi and awesome!

See now, instead of making house wine from actual wine that was actually corked, the restaurants are going straight to the wineries and asking for leftover grape juice that didn't even make it into bottles so they can mix it all together in giant containers and serve it in DEAD SEXY glass containers with etching on the side and everything!

As San Francisco magazine reports, the whole thing is very noble and responsible and restaurants would practically be burning down the planet and destroying the wine industry if they didn't sell cheap-ass wine:

In an attempt to reduce waste and lower wine prices, Salt House, under the guidance of co-owner Doug Washington, started partnering with local wineries to create custom blends of house wines served on tap. Imagine: no corks! More money for dessert!

Also doing this are Laiola and Two, aka Hawthorne Lane.

Most of the house wines are a blend of three types of grapes, like Salt House's "Athena Seniors Red '05," which is Cab, Zin and Syrah. Two offers some house wines of a single grape type, like Sangiovese, and there are some two-grape blends at the other places.

At Salt House, the house wines are priced around $10 per bottle lower than the cheapest wines, and are available by the half bottle and glass.

If I'm being a little harsh and catty here (hard to imagine!!), it's probably because I'm totally jealous of Marcia from Tablehopper for sniffing out the story and getting it into SF Mag.

In all seriousness, this is an interesting trend.

(No link, SF Mag story not online.)

Straits looking to conquer world, cash out

Chris Yeo of Straits, who mints money out of his Santana Row and Westfield SF Center locations, is closing on a lease in Las Vegas and is in talks with Host Hotels about a hotel in Newport Beach, a deal that could potentially lead to a partnership or acquisition.

Yeo wants to get bought or go public in four years, so brought in nightlife and front-of-the-house restaurant guru Parnell Delchan, who, random trivia, at one point was Matthew McConaughey's boss at Kwanzaa in New York. [Can we play this up for our LA readers?? -ed.]

He's also looking at mall deals in the Midwest and some other deals in Vegas. Not bad for a former hairdresser.

More in the ...

Business Times: Straits owner brings on manager to grow chain (free link)

Alan Richman drafted to re-stab Michael Bauer and defend vulnerable city of Los Angeles

Oh hey look! It's Alan Richman, the GQ food writer who touched hearts across the country with his loving advice to the restaurants and residents of hurricane-ravaged New Orleans to stop being so fat, narcissistic and lazy all the time and then maybe they wouldn't be so wet and smelly and poor right now!

And he's knifing Michael Bauer on a blog in Los Angeles!

Michael Bauer is a joke. He's not talented. The chefs know he's coming.

Richman either said or seconded those words at a May panel discussion in Las Vegas, according to Eater LA, which printed his comments at the time but put his name to them just last week before concluding, "Maybe not so far off the mark after all."

Richman apparently called Bauer a hack because Bauer meets his definition of the word: someone who turns down what became Frank Bruni's job at the New York Times and then says mean things about Alan Richman.

Like Ghandi, Richman glows in the light of egoless love for his fellow man, so his words come from a place of truth, not spite. And Los Angeles is an impoverished and oppressed city with few elite residents or friends to defend its honor -- precisely the sort of place that moves Richman's giant heart.

So Richman is indeed the perfect savior to turn to when San Francisco's dark lord of gluttony attempts to sully the unimpeachably pristine reputation of Tinseltown's fine restaurants, or to maybe-sort-of sully it, assuming you skimmed his article in traffic with your agent on speakerphone and a botox needle somewhere in your face while listening to KFI or whatever.

Now, Los Angeles, if you'll excuse us, we need to get back to whining about how Michelin doesn't "get" us and hating on our food critics the only way we can stomach: unilaterally.

Thomas Keller backlash close to boiling over

To some, 'slipping' French Laundry is 'not the best,' 'disappointed' customers say other chefs 'within striking distance'

Is the mainstream media next?

—•—

It was exactly two years ago Monday when a well-established weblog called San Francisco Gourmet posted a surprising, reluctantly brutal review of Thomas Keller's iconic restaurant the French Laundry, saying that over three visits between 2003 and mid-2005 the restaurant "appears to be slipping," mixing up orders, fumbling dish descriptions and letting waiters regularly reach across diners to deliver food and wine.

Meanwhile, the review noted, French Laundry's prices had nearly doubled over five years, rocketing up much faster than those at other top-shelf restaurants in the area, even as those other restaurants gained ground against the French Laundry in food and service quality.

"The French Laundry has exhibited service that has consistently been below excellent," the review stated. "The menu itself seemed to be a notch below what it once was ... I suspect that The French Laundry will not be able to reclaim its past glory."

Reaction to the review was not encouraging. One commenter called it "blasphemous" and said it "lost all credibility" by comparing the French Laundry to a lesser restaurant, Gary Danko. Meanwhile, San Francisco Gourmet drew no concurring opinions from the torrent of French Laundry reviews gushing from the many new weblogs then emerging.

"I was starting to think that I would be the lone voice in the wilderness forever," the author of San Francisco Gourmet wrote earlier this year.

In retrospect, the review was a remarkable harbinger of things to come, probably because it was written by someone especially familiar with the restaurant, with at least six visits to the restaurant in five years.

In November 2006, almost a year and a half after San Francisco Gourmet's French Laundry piece, a blogger and self-described lifetime gourmand named Vedat Milor posted a review titled, "The French Laundry: Solid but imperfect." Milor, too, had visited the restaurant on numerous past occasions and felt it was slipping.

He said the restaurant "displays an automatic, slightly assembly line quality," with predictable food, weak examples of luxury ingredients like truffles and caviar and undisclosed add-on prices.

This description echoed Gary Danko, who called the French Laundry "the Laundromat" when I interviewed him shortly after the French Laundry took three debut Michelin stars to Danko's one.

This past May, a San Francisco-based freelance food writer named Catherine Nash chimed in with her own critical take on the Laundromat. She had visited four years prior, and the restaurant had exceeded her high expectations. This time?

"We were not blown away," Nash wrote on her weblog, Food Musings. " It was not nearly as exciting as we'd remembered or as wonderful as other meals we've had ... it was just not that interesting."

San Francisco PBS station KQED joined in the backlash in June, publishing on its "Bay Area Bites" website a French Laundry review from Michael Procopio, a waiter, former San Francisco Chronicle food section intern and 1997 graduate of the California Culinary Academy.

This story was the first faintly negative review of French Laundry I had seen, and the one that sparked the idea for this post, even before I heard backlash rumblings in the bigger, non-blog media world.

The review included some highly complimentary words for the food and servers. But Procopio found "something was not quite right," including the robotic staff, who insisted he order champagne rather than a still white wine; who recited dish descriptions while mispronouncing key words and who ultimately sent a chill up his spine. Procopio concluded the restaurant embodied "uniformity," "repetition" and "machinery well-oiled."

His unease reached its dramatic crescendo when an aggressively confused waiter read Procopio's $1277 bill aloud to Procopio, his dining companion and the rest of the restaurant.

We were pleased to know that everyone in the room knew how much we spent. Perhaps our waiter thought that a guest at one of the other tables might avail us of his or her superior math skills. We were, all of us, quietly horrified.

Three themes emerge repeatedly in the bad reviews.

1. Speculation that the opening of Per Se in New York, to say nothing of Keller's three other expansion restaurants, movie consulting or books, has led to an inevitable muting of the culinary and service heights reached at the original French Laundry. San Francisco Gourmet and Milor both mentioned this issue, and Nash brought it up in a comment attached to someone else's review.
   
   
2. That people are holding the French Laundry to very high standards because of its very high prices, which have shot up over five years. Keller was asked about pricing at a Commonwealth Club event in May and became defensive, arguing that he provides good value for the price and pointing to the much cheaper option ($45) at his Ad Hoc, also in Yountville.
   
   
3. The identification of alternative top restaurants, in particular Manresa. San Francisco Gourmet, for example, wrote that Manresa's David Kinch is giving Keller "a run for his money" and, along with Danko and Ron Siegel, is "within striking distance." Milor said Manresa and one other restaurant offered "higher quality product" than French Laundry, "impeccably prepared."
   
   The blogger behind ChuckEats.com earlier this month ranked Manresa ahead of French Laundry in a review where he found the latter's food seemed to sympathize with critics who find at French Laundry "a perfection without blemish or character, sanitized, safe, and soulless."
   

I am agnostic on whether French Laundry is slipping. My one visit to French Laundry in 2003 was my all-time favorite restaurant meal; it also featured a tasting menu half as expensive as the one offered today.

But I will submit to you the following: Hand-wringing over quality at Thomas Keller's growing empire of restaurants in general and at French Laundry, in particular, is likely to continue to work its way up the media food chain, rightly or wrongly. Count on it, and watch for it.

So sick and wrong: Mark Pastore cooks local kids. And serves them as a 'special' dish.

Can you awful San Francisco foodies ever stop pushing the envelope? Do you have no decency?

Smoke pot and launder drug money in your restaurants, fine. Launch a jihad against science and progress, whatever. Launch a satanic crop-circle cult and worship an Austrian eugenics guy, boring with bored sauce.

But the kids. The KIDS. Can't you leave them alone, terrorists?

Here's Mark Pastore, the chef-owner at Incanto -- and a SICKO -- in the summer Edible San Francisco:

He had a smile on his face when he answered ... "How do you think it's going to look if I have 'neighborhood kid' on the menu?"

Uh, awful?

But he did it. And did it again. And he would keep going, if he could get his hands on more kids.

The author of the article, Andy Griffin, is trying to help him. He thinks, if he can round up enough kids, he can also sell them to Palestinians, Moroccans, Mexicans, Filipinos, Jamaicans ...

Griffin has anticipated your outrage, and has an answer:

America's political culture has embraced multiculturalism, yet goat meat has yet to break into the mainstream. Why? ...

I call Mark Pastore ... Pastore means shepherd in Italian, so Mark is almost fated to serve goat. He had a smile on his face when he answered. "You want to sell me tender, young, locally-grown goats? How do you think it's going to look if I have 'neighborhood kid' on the menu?"

Mark was kidding. Incanto does serve goat sometimes, but the supply of high-quality goat isn't as consistent as it is for pork or lamb. Kid production can be problematic.

At this point, I decided Griffin was creeping me out on a whole other level and stopped reading. But you might want to pick up the magazine (story not online) and read this for yourself. It's almost unbelievable.

Especially the picture of a kid being roasted over a spit.

SF food bloggers should grow spines, not hide behind keyboards, say (lame!) chefs. (Was that passive aggressive??)

Mix a bunch of a high end chefs together with some wine, radio tape recorders and a stuffy, older audience at the Commonwealth Club. Allow to simmer for half an hour or so. The inevitable result? Bashing on food bloggers!

Steffan Terje, Perbacco: It's a pradigm shift, a new generation is taking over. I guess we have to get used to this -- everybody's a critic. I don't know if I like it yet.

Michael Dellar, Lark Creek Restaurant Group, darkly: Think of the alternative ... (chuckles) [veiled Michael Bauer reference?? --ed.]

Pete Sittnick, Pat Kuleto's new restaurants: I would rather, if that person had a problem, just tell me that night. Don't put it on some blog I don't know how to access.

Steffan: We're in the people business, shaking hands, kissing babies [shurely againsht health code? -ed.] .... We thrive on this instant feedback.

Dellar: [Story about a customer recently in the restaurants who insisted there was a finger nail in his/her blended, frozen lemonade, when really it was a lemon peel, even when shown the peel. One hour later it was on the Internet.] It's everyone's right to do that.

Yup. They actually want you to be direct, and complain, with your vocal chords, in person, instead of scribbling in your little blogger notebook and angrily belting out your mad little screed on your blog or Yelp or whatever you kids are calling it these days. You know, since that is likely to be well received in the typical restaurant, a cauldron of mentally-imbalanced cooks armed with knives, bitter waiters with your credit card number and clueless, coke-addled hostesses who could not care less about your petty third degree burns or whatnot.

Just kidding! Actually if you use this thing called "tact," apparently you can stand up for yourself in situations like these. So it is rumored. And with these things called "Google Alerts," restaurant owners don't have to complain about not being able to "access" your blog or whatever, but that's beside the point.

Oh, also? Your precious Craig Stoll at Delfina? Who feeds Thomas Keller when Tommy comes to SF? He promises to burst your eardrums, underpay his cooks and raise your prices!

Stoll on prices: People will be getting used to higher price menus for everyubody,

You name the city, and restaurants on par with the people at this table are easily 4,5,6,7 dollars higher (per entree).

Stoll on noise: Our architects -- it's their fault! [Joke -- laughter.] If you have a booked place, it's going to be loud. You want your restaurant to be busy and exciting.

Honest to God, I want a certain level of noise.

On cooks: If we paid cooks what they were worth, people wouldn't be able to afford to eat in our restaurant.

Some additional details from Laura Froelich: 2nd Annual State of San Francisco Restaurants

SF cooks vs NY cooks -- guess who wins, hippie

Hey, hippie San Francisco cook dude, put down the ganja reefer weed for a second and try to focus on something other than your own navel!

Danny Myers apprentice Sarah Schafer has come to San Francisco from New York, and she brought some opinions with her about YOU! So wake up and sober up and detox or whatever!

"I don't want to sound like I'm putting any West Coast chefs down," said Frisson Executive Chef Sarah Schafer, 10 minutes into a discourse on the virtues of New York cooks. "I just don't think they are as disciplined as East Coast chefs."

Oh yes, she did!

She totally just did that!

That might sound rough, but Sarah has some constructive, practical advice to go with her criticism:

• Try not to be a total flake, especially if you have an interview scheduled!
• It's called discipline. Have you heard of it?
• Did you know there are other cuisines other than California Cuisine!? Hard to believe, I know!
• You are not a television star so please just stop.
• Work in New York and, if possible, make sure your schooling and childhood were in New York
• Try to do something other than smoke ganja weed and sleep all the time!

It turns out there are a lot of other chefs around town who favor cooks from East Coast kitchen culture, which is basically "Shut up and get yelled at and do as you are told," very military except even meaner.

And it turns out that if you want to work in certain top kitchens and have a problem with this, go eat some tofu or to yoga class or surfing or just drop some ecstasy and sleep for 16 hours on your stupid futon or whatever, you dirty hippie, and deal with it The End.

Full story in the ...

Business Times: S.F. chefs seek cooks with N.Y. state of mind / They're used to higher pressure, work load (free link)

Beer ruined by male insecurity

Beer is so rarely served in properly-shaped glassware that places like Toronado, Magnolia Brewery and Alembic have made their names just by having the proper crystal in their cabinets, and Dean Biersch is touting proper glasses as part of his forthcoming tavern in Sonoma.

And the reason you can't get the proper glass for, say, your Trumer Pils at just any old neighborhood pub is that men are afraid of having smaller-than-average ... vessels of beer. Ya, that's it, that's what their insecure about the size of.

The owner of Magnolia and Alembic Dave McLean reveals all in a recent 7X7 blurb:

“You’d be very surprised at how sensitive some men get about being served a smaller glass than the others at their table,” he says. “Must be a masculinity thing.”

... We try it out. In a tulip glass, his exquisitely hoppy Proving Ground IPA smells powerfully like a stroll through a flowering mountain meadow. But in a pint glass, the aromas dissipate.

So even though Belgian ales and hoppy beers are best served in a tulip glass and pilsners in narrow cylinders, they usually aren't, because some whiny man might whine. 7X7:

European mean are apparently much more sophisticated about the whole thing. Typical.

7X7: Beer Genius

Truffle inflation reaches crisis levels in Alameda

OK, seriously, NO ONE tell Daniel Patterson about this because he's going to start smashing aromatherapy bottles and taking hostages at Centerfolds or whatever.

It's not even been two weeks since the food writer/chef railed in the New York Times about the evil evil evils of so-called Truffle Oil which, hey, not only is completely unrelated to truffles but which also fell to Earth, presumably from outer space.

Today, from the City of Alameda, where the food has been getting more interesting as the island's military history recedes further into the past, we are presented via the Express with a new gastropub called Hobnob.

Where you can get, no really seriously, Truffle Fries, for FIVE DOLLARS.

Truffle. French fries. In a bar. For five. Dollars.

What could possibly be fishy about that?!

The Express' John Birdsall, a heavily armed food media don, is an impatient man with no time for surface narratives, and he obviously has no problem with this. To wit:

Look no further than the truffle fries — a dish that successfully balances fancy with the familiar profile of good old bar food — as proof of Amy Voisenat's ability to read Alameda. Forget some decadent fantasy of pommes frites sprinkled with shavings of black truffle. Voisenat's vision is a pile of skinny fries with a firm grasp of the ordinary, even lacking, as far as I could tell, the tossing with Parmesan and herbs the menu described. [WTF? They couldn't even deliver on herbs and powdered cheese?? For TRUFFLE FRIES? --ed.] They did, however, come with a ramekin of truffle aioli — really good truffle aioli: pale and soft and with bright acidity, a playful bite of garlic, and the delicious, dog-bed funk of truffle oil.

It was a dish that didn't seem like much on first dunk, but revealed a subtle and unpretentious sense of refinement the more you ate. And if all that truffle stuff seemed weird, I imagine you could ask for ketchup and just go on yakking. [We need to have a long conversation some time about word choice, John. Soon. -ed]

Truffle Oil has been a seductress to some of the nation's top chefs, like the chef de cuisine at Per Se.

And know she's going to instigate a bar fight between Daniel Patterson and John Birdsall, in Alameda, with broken bottles and EVERYTHING, and it's going to be awesome.

Larry Biggie writes in to defend what remains of his honor

A couple of weeks ago I noted that a couple of Oakland entrepreneurs were trying to follow the path blazed by Cafe Gratitude of San Francisco and get customers to finance their cafe bar by pre-paying for gift cards ("The future of restaurant finance is here: Oakland man pre-pays for $1000 of beer").

According to the Oakland Tribune article at the time, the aspiring cafe owners had sold only about $14,000 of the $125,000 they needed in pre-sales, almost entirely to friends and family.

But then there was Larry Biggie, of Adams Point, who pre-paid for $1000 in gift cards.

I wrote, "That's a lot of organic beer, Larry." Heh. I crack myself up sometimes.

Anyway, Larry, who is apparently a banker and also apparently a real, actual person with the best ever name "Larry Biggie," has emailed to say he had coffee more in mind than beer.

He was a good sport about the whole thing and apparently got a good laugh out of my post, which is awesome, because people with that much caffeine in their system usually take every little thing wayyyy too seriously.

Come to think of it, Larry, are you sure you aren't a beer kind of a guy?

I also heard from one of the Awaken Cafe people, Cortt Dunlap, also a nice guy. And yes, Cortt, you're right, I am both a journalist and self-styled programmer, which makes me pretty much the perfect demographic for a place that sells alcoholic beverages and coffee, respectively. Given the scale of my habit I'll need about $6k per year, which I'm not sure I can swing, but on the other hand I did just meet this overcaffeinated banker ...

Nirvana at the Communist Table?

You've probably already read the Chronicle's Food section cover story on communal tables; if not, go read it, it's a fresh look at a long-developing trend.

What I wonder, from a business standpoint, is whether this is a rare, perfect overlap of the interests of patron and proprietor. The patron gets a fun seat, available at the last minute, where she can meet friends and maybe suitors.

The proprietor gets highly efficient use of his space, plenty of cocktail sales to grease the socializing and, apparently, at Pres a Vi, the sale of a whole bottle of Veuve to some dude trying to impress some chick, successfully it turns out.

So what's the catch here? Is service a headache, keeping track of all those individual orders and who is paying for who? Do people linger too long after they are done eating?

And if people want to be so social, what's with the explosion in private dining rooms? The Hilton's planned "urban tavern" is supposed to have four separate private dining areas AND a communal table.

Perhaps it's a sign people are weaving restaurants into new parts of their lives as good food becomes more prized and more central, with restaurants stealing ground from singles bars and private clubs. Lucratively, I might add.

Chronicle biodynamics letters: So. Very. Best.

I'm awarding Jim Cuthbertson of El Cerrito and especially Kathy Cheer of Santa Cruz the coveted title "Honorary Covers Editor at Large" for their letters to the Chronicle today, regarding the recent story on How Biodynamic Pagan Sacrifice Can Help Guerrilla Market Your Restaurant, blogged here under the title "Chefs turn to witchcraft and sorcery in logical next step for food world."

For those that missed these letters tucked into the back of the Food section, Cuthbertson wrote that "Organic farming is real and has real benefits ... Burying stuff in a skull is just plain weird."

And Kathy Cheer, well, let's just say that not only am I going to print her letter in full, but also that I encourage her to sue me for copyright infringement just so I can meet her in person and shake her hand:

Rudolf Steiner's speeches on biodynamic farming bring to mind the following quote from Shakespeare's "Macbeth":

Saith the witches: "eye of newt, toe of frog, wool of bat, tongue of dog ..."

For those who have the time, this approach to farming is whimsical. For those responsible for feeding large populations, this is tomfoolery.

Blessed be.

Well, these letters may not get you, say, a high-profile gig as a regular contributor to New York Times Magazine, but we're happy to run your stuff over at Covers!

I'm a sucker for a nice turn of phrase, I guess. Even though, like Arugula, Michael Pollan or a well-timed stint laundering narcoprofits, biodynamics is neither all bad nor all good. Right?? Tell me there's a redeeming ending here.

Mean words for Presidio Social Club

I can't help but point out a recurring theme in the reviews of Presidio Social Club: The service sort of really sucks!

And it sucks in the friendliest, nicest, most warm-spirited possible way, which goes a hell of a long way, as the consistently positive overall reviews of Presidio Social Club attest.

Listen to Josh Sens in San Francisco magazine:

Where the Social Club suffers is in its atrocious service, as bad as any I've encountered in a restaurant more ambitious than a Jack in the Box. To call the waiters AWOL would be too kind. On both occasions when I was at their mercy, they seemed to synchronize their passes by my table not to military time but to the travel patterns of rare comets. On their infrequent appearances, they were friendly but forgetful. Oh right, your cocktail. Ah yes, your sauteed spinach. Questions about the menu? The fish special, say, or the stock in the veal stew? Don't ask, because they won't tell.

That paragraph sure caught my attention, and stuck in my head even as Sens went on to give an overall "very good," two-of-four star review, apparently on the strength of the cocktails, desserts, and the staff's overall niceness.

So I decided to check around. Apparently Michael Bauer raised a similar, if more muted, critique of the service. He wrote that the staff were "seemingly inexperienced," failed to bring utensils and brought the wrong drinks.

But like Sens, Bauer was eventually won over by friendliness and desserts and cocktails, plus some fine (though uneven) entrees and apps.

Then there's KQED's food blog, where food writer Catherine Nash wrote, "Our waiter had the wink and swagger of a good ole boy, and I had to wonder if he was flirting or stealing nips from the bar since we rarely saw him." Bus boys and food runners were better than the waiter, plus desserts and cocktails were to die for -- you get the idea by now.

Not surprisingly, you can find similar critiques of the service at Presidio Social Club on the Web, if you look for them.

Funny me, but I can't imagine having worse-than-AWOL waiters on two different visits to the same restaurant, as Sens at SF magazine described, and then giving the place anything better than "good," at best. Especially if, like Sens, my review is published two and a half months after similar criticisms were aired in the Chronicle and a month after they were aired on the KQED food blog, giving the restaurant plenty of time to fix things, even taking into account long magazine lead times.

But then, I've never actually been to Presidio Social Club, which seems to have a Reality Distortion Field strong enough to impress Steve Jobs himself. As Nash put it, "the critic in me may have shrugged, but the rest of me had fallen in love."

Chefs turn to witchcraft and sorcery in logical next step for food world

So you've taken Michael Pollan's advice. You replaced science with culture, and then you threw out "anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food," and your "ancestors " get to veto everything you'd like to buy in the supermarket.

Which kind of sucks, since your great ancestors were salt-of-the-earth types in East Texas and Oklahoma who mostly just fried the sort of critters you find around your yard, and you came to San Francisco to move beyond all that, but whatever. You've made the haj to Terra Madre for the Slow Food truffle-and-wine orgy, and even enthusiastically applauded the flag of Iran. Yay!

Locavore, check; organic/sustainable, check; rallied against demon corn, check.

What's next?

Well, it turns out, ritualistically stuffing excrement and chamomile into cow horns and deer bladders is next! Awesome.

It sounds weird at first, but really it makes sense if you think about it. We went organic because we didn't want to eat food with poison on it, right? And then we went sustainable because we didn't want our grandchildren to starve in a sea of fire and sand, right?

Well, now we're going to go "biodynamic" because Lucifer is a being of light that makes us creative and free and because we need "rituals, practices and formulas based on (the) study of nature and the cosmos -- for example, the making and applying of certain preparations by the lunar, solar and astrological calendars."

Wait, what??

No no, hold on, the Chronicle explains further, it starts making a lot more sense:

Two of the preparations, 501 and 500, involve stirring quartz and manure respectively into water in a way that creates a vortex in the water, reversing direction intermittently throughout one hour. The mixture is highly dilute, and often described as "homeopathic" in dosage.

Some other formulas include those injected into compost. One consists of dried chamomile flowers stuffed into intestines (natural sausage casings) and buried underground for six months. A yarrow compost preparation consists of dried yarrow blossoms stuffed into the bladder of a deer, hung from a tree for six months then buried underground for another six months. Oak bark preparation, also used in compost, must be placed in the skull of a domesticated horned animal and buried for six months before it is used.

See, it's not so bad. The whole thing was dreamed up by an Austrian esotericist named Rudolph Steiner who defenders say was quite charming, only very rarely delivering controversial lectures on race and mostly just prattling on about Anthroposophy, which is about "sense-free thinking" and "spiritual science" and other things that make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

The key thing is, biodynamics can give you an edge. That's why two-Michelin-starred Manresa chef David Kinch is doing it -- it gets him out of the undistinguished scrum of chefs shopping organic at the farmer's market and into what he called "the next level" on the "voodoo side."

Read all about it, if you haven't already:

Chronicle: Digging biodynamic / Restaurateurs look beyond organic in quest to cultivate pristine produce


(Photo Courtesy anatomist on Flickr)

Michael Bauer gets his Izakaya

What Michael Bauer wants, Michael Bauer gets!

Well, except for a decent table where other patrons don't brush against him a million times an hour, or a small plates restaurant with any sense of pacing, or a respectful hostess half the time, or ... well ... maybe he can't exactly snap his fingers and get whatever he wants.

But he's getting Izakaya!

And the news comes within just two months after Bauer noted on his blog that "the Japanese izakaya way of dining has largely passed us by" in the Bay Area. Izakaya is Japanese bar food.

Exhibit A: The planned Japanese restaurant and baseball lounge at O (free link, see fourth paragraph) in the Japantown Miyako Hotel, soon to be renamed Kabuki Hotel, is supposed to focus on Izakaya dishes. Supposedly they have the designer who did Bix and Myth, they had not named the chef by the time I wrote that story but supposedly were excited about a local up and comer. This is a Joie de Vivre property -- look for close to a dozen new restaurants from them over the next two years, openings overseen by their new food and beverage director David Hoemann.

Exhibit B: SF restaurant Ozumo, which is planning two distinct restaurants in Oakland, is planning an Izakaya menu (free link) at the one carrying the Ozumo name, at Broadway and Grand Ave.


(Photo courtesy SiFu Renka)

Wine as a percentage of sales in Bay Area restaurants (chart)

Wine as a percentage of sales in Bay Area restaurants

Restaurant	Sales from wine	As of	Source
Village Pub, Woodside	47%	May 2007	Business Times article
A16, San Francisco	40%+	May 2007	Business Times article
Rubicon, San Francisco	33%+	May 2007	Business Times article

Not a ton of info, but I hope to update this chart as with the chart on restaurant revenue.

If you work at a restaurant, send me your wine sales percentage info!

One table, $50,000 in wine. Happens monthly at the French Laundry.

Campton Place sommelier Michael Scaffidi this month revealed that when he was a somm at the French Laundry from 2004-2007, he would personally serve at least one diner per month dropping $50,000 on wine in one meal.

That nugget of information comes from a package on sommeliers from this past week's Business Times, assembled by editor Emily Fancher.

Also from that issue, here's a handful of stats on what portion of sales is from wine at various restaurants. I hope to update that table from time to time. If you work for a restaurant, send me your wine sales percentage!

Here are the stories from the sommelier package:

• A nose for good wine / Wine culture is broadening, and so is the task of the sommelier (free link)
• Shelley Lindgren: Years of study to bring right wine to the table (A16 somm) (free link)
• Andrew Green: Fine skills can't be faked (Village Pub somm) (subscriber-only link until July 2007)
• Cezar Kusik: There are no shortcuts to knowing wine (Rubicon somm) (subscriber-only link until July 2007)
• Michael Scaffidi: Sommeliers teach and also entertain (Campton place somm, former French Laundry) (subscriber-only link until July 2007)
  

New hotel and restaurant in old Pac Bell tower will be nicer than St. Regis, says architect

When the St. Regis hotel opened in San Francisco in 2005, its general manager said it would be more luxurious than anything else in town -- past the Four Seasons, past the Ritz, "top top ... really superior."

The hotel has been charging $400-500 a night and, from what I hear, not negotiating that rate down significantly for anyone.

Now there's another contender -- the "Jazz Era" Pac Bell building, which will become a hotel and condos under a plan from Wilson Meany Sullivan, which is about to pay $118 million for it (free link).

The architect for the building says the 70-80 hotel rooms will be "more intimate than the St. Regis with an even higher level of service." Perhaps they already have a hotel operator lined up, then, since there are a only a handful of companies that would fit that bill.

This is a Biz Times scoop but not by me: real estate reporter JK Dineen gets the credit.

Full story: S.F. tower to become luxe hotel / Wilson Meany Sullivan recasts AT&T building

(free link)

No, Thomas Keller does not run Per Se and did not write the Bouchon cookbook. Next question.

Speaking in San Francisco Thursday, French Laundry executive chef Thomas Keller was especially blunt about his detachment from his New York restaurant Per Se and his second cookbook Bouchon.

Keller spoke in San Francisco last Thursday at the Commonwealth Club, fielding a variety of questions from the audience and moderator Tara Duggan from the Chronicle.

The topic of celebrity chefs came up, and Keller said he basically has five restaurants to provide opportunities to his staff. In the way of explaining how great his staff is at running things, he put some significant distance between himself and some of his projects:

[Bouchon founding chef Jeffrey Cerciello] wrote an extraordinary book -- that's his book. I know my name is on the cover -- that's a publishing house thing.
...

[At Per Se,] I wanted to make sure our developers who built the buildings really understood what a commitment building a restaurant was. I say that as someone who is somewhat detached from it because it is a Jonathan Benno restaurant.

It's not breaking news that celebrity chefs are not heavily involved in each of the several restaurants they typically run, and Cerciello was mentioned in the cover flap for Bouchon cookbook. But it was interesting to hear Keller really emphasizing the point, because it swims against the marketing that emphasizes Keller's role in the restaurant and book.

By the way, there didn't seem to be any question that Keller is still firmly in control at the flagship restaurant, the French Laundry in Yountville, and he was clear about his intense involvement in the French Laundry Coobook, published in 1999.

Keller also talked about the prices at his restaurant, molecular gastronomy and French Laundry's recent purchase of a ... well, of a laundry. The whole thing is supposed to air on KQED at some point.

More in my Business Times update: French Laundry chef talks about celebrity life (free link)

This event was also blogged by Laura Froelich, who has some additional quotes.

The future of restaurant finance is here: Oakland man pre-pays for $1000 of beer

Two restaurant groups -- one for hippies, the other for hipsters -- are raising money by selling pre-paid gift cards in advance of opening, with a face vale 25 percent above the price, the Oakland Tribune reports.

The pioneer of the trend was Cafe Gratitude of SF and Berkeley, the vegan restaurant where the waiters tell you how wonderful and empowered your aura is but sometimes need to just bring the damned food, already.

Now Oakland's Awaken Cafe is copying the business model, hoping to raise $125,000 toward the $495,000 they need to open a coffee-by-day, beer-by-night abode at the former Golden Bull, which was known as a great place to buy a 40 oz container of Budweiser and listen to NWA on the jukebox.

The kicker is, they have only sold $14,000 in gift cards so far, and 19 of the 22 cards were to friends and family,

But what redeems the whole story and saves it from being a free advertisement for Awaken Cafe Investor Relations is one "Larry Biggie" of Adams Point, who allegedly bought $1,000 in gift cards.

That's a lot of organic beer, Larry.

Full story: Cafe's patrons hold key for capital

Daniel Patterson hates and detests visiting you; hired waiter with paranoid schizophrenia; has investors who are a little slow (if you catch my drift)

Daniel Patterson, a prolific magazine writer who apparently has his own restaurant, wrote today on Chez Pim about the burning shame of coming out of the kitchen to visit customer tables, where he feels like some kind of awkward mental case, which is not at all how any of us expect chefs to be, since they are known for their social graces.

Patterson much prefers the warm comfort of his kitchen, where a psychotic waiter almost killed everyone.

At least there he doesn't have to spend for-EVER at an investor's table and explain very slowly for the millionth time why the food keeps changing, as he did in his dining room on opening night.

The kitchen also keeps him away from what he calls his "bitchy neighbor," an architect who drives a baby blue BMW. (So best!)

Pim scored quite a coup by luring Patterson to her site. He normally writes for the New York Times' various magazines and glossy publications like San Francisco. When he wasn't writing articles or dodging Alice Waters' narco death squads he ran the restaurant Elisabeth Daniel (RIP) and the kitchen at Frisson.

Patterson says his opening day was "boring," but it's not so bad when you selectively quote his story out of context!!:

6:30 AM
Wake up. My blood has been siphoned off and replaced with barely molten lead.

7:15AM
The mechanical tech failed to start the [f--ing air conditioning]. This inspired me to leave a brief but colorful [explitive-laden and physically-threatening-to-the-point-of-illegality ] message with the contractor, encouraging them to pay a visit in the morning to finish the job [or, alternatively, take part in an impromptu seminar on what a well-sharpened chef's knife can do to human fingers]. There are excuses, which I break off [like so many sauteed contractor digits].

8:30AM
Our [a--hole neighbor] is a[n] architect of indeterminate ability [-- though his office is next to a strip club in a seedy part of town, if that tells you anything --] who owns a building in the back of the alley that abuts the restaurant. It'€™s a nice alley ... [considering the] two residential hotel buildings ... [and] Centerfolds[, which is exactly as classy as it sounds].

What is Mr. Architect most concerned about? [The strippers? The drug-addict-filled hovels next door?] Our garbage cans, which cannot remain outside during the day. It is a major obstacle in his grand scheme to turn the alley into the charming, tree-lined ... lane of someone'€s youth. [OK, of my youth. But you get the point.]

Our first sin had been ... forcing him to sit on many occasions for minutes at a time in his baby blue BMW M3 [(license plate: 'JERKOFF')], cartoon smoke rising from his ears, while a worker moved his truck.

9:30 AM
Having learned the painful way that an overly ambitious opening menu is the root of most quality and timing disasters, this time I'€™m playing it safe. This, as [so-called] friends noted rather sharply the previous evening, leaves the "€œinnovation" level a little light, but [they are jerks, and will not got invited to future preview dinners. I think I'll take that guy from Covers just to spite them].

I have ... voodoo ... we will ritually sacrifice innocent[s], ... invoking the devil. Of modernity, [but whatever.]

12PM
I stood on the top step of a ten foot ladder, reaching forward three feet while twisting to the left to apply another layer of matte medium to a corner pane. The fact that I have no health insurance is weighing heavily on my mind at this moment.

6PM
I make a horrible line cook ... pulled in a dozen directions, peripatetically moving around the kitchen in an attempt to see and taste everything. I would hate working with me.

7PM
One of the servers, who had never been involved in a restaurant opening before, and is used to more corporate environs, [thanks to the Department of Corrections' "work-release" program,] is becoming increasingly enraged by the chaos. He insists on keeping a list that he titles – I kid not – “Mental Notes,” of all of the things that are going wrong around him, everything from clutter in the service station to the other servers who jostle him as he works. Midway through the night there are two pages of increasingly scrawling and disjointed handwriting posted in the service station, which by the last line looks to be the work of either an anguished six year old or a long-term resident in a psychiatric ward. He decides to leave mid-service. With our blessing.

[Because having all our patrons physically murdered on opening night is not exactly good press. And the Chronicle automatically shaves half a star off the "ambiance" rating for each mass-murder killing spree in the dining room, as Chez Panisse learned the hard way.]

8:00PM
There’s a lull in the action, and I head into the dining room to say hi to our first guests, who are just finishing up their meal. I normally hate, hate, hate visiting the dining room, unless it’s someone that I know well. I feel nervous and out of place, standing awkwardly in front of the table muttering inanities. But it’s opening night and I feel obligated, so I trudge out.

Our first guests are from Sonoma, where I opened my first restaurant, Babette’s. I thank them for coming in, say hi to a few of my fiancées co-workers and head back to the kitchen.

10:00PM
A little longer of a visit at the investor’s table. He is surprised that the food is better than the pre-opening meal yesterday [, sort of like a small child is surprised by his own image in a mirror, or by the setting of the sun]. I explain, again, [, since my explanation to Smarty McMoneypants didn't seem to stick the first 10 times,] that it will keep improving at a rapid pace for months, and then slow to small incremental improvements – it will take at least a year until it achieves a level of performance I find remotely satisfactory.

Patterson's full articles at Chez Pim:
Opening Day, by Daniel Patterson
Opening Day (Part II)

Deal I hyped falls through

Back in December I wrote that PBS chef Nick Stellino would "probably" take over the kitchen at the Argent/Westin hotel.

Strictly speaking this was true, and I was right about the hotel investing in a new Italian restaurant as part of a trend toward better hotel dining.

But I was way wrong about Stellino: Inside Scoop reported that Marta Cristina Causone of Osteria Laguna in New York will run the new kitchen.

So now I place blame for my false hype squarely where it belongs: With you, the reader. For shame!

Ozumo on a roll in Oakland. Get it?? Shut up.

Ozumo is doing it YET AGAIN -- going for a new location in Oakland. They can't get enough of the Uptown district!

This is in addition to the new, second Ozumo at Signature Properties' Broadway Grand condo project.

Going beyond that done deal, the team behind Ozumo told me they plan -- but had not yet signed the lease to -- do a wine bar, wine shop and restaurant concept in the large basement of the historic (and attractive) Cathedral Building just a few blocks away from Broadway Grand. They have already applied for a liquor license.

My understanding, by the way, is that Ozumo will not be using the name "Ozumo" in connection with the new location, per agreement with their original Oakland sugar daddy/landlord Signature Properties.

For those who don't know, Ozumo is a swanky sushi place on the San Francisco Embarcadero near the financial district. Owner Jeremy James has been drawn to Oakland in part by lower costs there as the minimum wage rises in San Francisco.

I was tipped off to this story by The DTO, the Web site that broke the news. Go check it out! I'm still marking this "scoop" because I confirmed the advanced negotiations and plans and got details on the concept. Plus I'm MSM -- I'm evil like that. Muhahahaahahaa!

Business Times: S.F. sushi place plans second Oakland spot (free link)

In restaurants, small is the new big. (Did I just type that?)

Andrew McCormack of Frisson, Joseph Manzare of Tres Agaves and Dennis Leary of Rubicon are among the big-name restaurateurs who have recently opened twee little places with the aim of keeping down those ever-rising San Francisco labor costs, some of which exempt restaurants with fewer than 20 people.

The small size also helps make the restaurant feel like a comfortable home away from home for meeting up with friends, or just plain meeting friends.

McCormack's case is particularly interesting, as he has gone from the biggest and splashiest restaurant space in the dot-com era or immediately after to a truly small little neighborhood joint.

More in my restaurant design story:

Business Times: In restaurant design, small is the next big thing; Restaurateurs turn to cozier spaces to counter rising costs (free link)

I also did a sidebar on restaurant design mistakes:

Restaurateurs dodge building bugaboos (free link)

Alice Waters at Cody's tomorrow night; will get you high, kill us all

Alice Waters biographer Thomas McNamee will be at Cody's San Francisco tomorrow night, 7 pm, which means Alice will certainly be remote-controlling his every last word and gesture and will effectively be present herself. Should be awesome.

The reading starts at 7 and the tentative agenda is:

• 7:05 pm Welcome and inconsolable sobbing from Cody's owner Andy Ross.
• 7:10 pm McNamee hands out Waters' famous PCP-laced tarts to lucky first 20 guests.
• 7:15 pm Reading begins with chapter on Waters' CIA training in Santa Barbara and how she came up with genius ruse of creating hippie restaurant in Berkeley to lure, spy on SDS and Black Panthers and free-thinking professors.
  
• 7:22 pm Visibly intoxicated John Birdsall arrives.
• 7:23 pm Waters "security detail" of Trotskyite drug lords moves to eject Birdsall, not realizing he has concealed a chef's knife under his apron.
• 7:24 pm McNamee's batteries run out just as he was getting to something interesting on arugula, crowd becomes frantic.
  
• 7:25 pm High off organic Columbian cocaine, Waters' "security detail" panics when a foaming-at-the-mouth Birdsall unsheaths his bloody knife. In the ensuing chaos, they spray the entire crowd with standard Chez Panisse-issue Uzis.
• 7:26 pm Ross reminds survivors there will be NO REFUNDS on unsigned books.
  

See you there!

Cody's Stockton Street: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 - Thomas McNamee

Campton Place sale is richest hotel deal in San Francisco history; also first involving pig iron manufacturer

Campton Place just sold to a division of India's Tata Group for a record-smashing $527,000 per room.

Tata's Taj Hotels will pay $58 million for the 110-room property. Hotel consultant Rick Swig and Tom Callahan of PKF Consulting both say that blows other hotel deals out of the water on a per-key basis, surpassing the $470,000 per key for Ritz Carlton in 1998 and the $460,000 per key partner buyout at Four Seasons last year.

Tata is a massive conglomerate that makes cars, trucks, jewelry and pig iron, and yet they will still be much better at operating Campton Place's restaurant than the prior owner, hotel specialist Kor Group, Swig said. Apparently Taj is known for high service quality and a long-term commitment to their properties.

Kor didn't have a long-term commitment to Campton, selling it after less than a year and a half, during which time it managed to nearly destroy the restaurant's reputation.

I was chasing the story down last night. As it turns out, Tata put out a press release to Indian media Monday, and then Kor followed suit this morning in the U.S..

Business Times Web update: Campton Place hotel sale smashes record (free link)

Campton Place for sale

When Kor Group bought Campton Place a year and a half ago, it had four stars from Michael Bauer, ranking it among the top four restaurants within city limits, at least by the Chronicle's standards.

Campton Place's restaurant arguably made the reputation of the hotel, and was a key reason that Kor paid $400,000 for each of its 110 rooms, the city's richest hotel deal in seven years.

Things went downhill quickly after Los Angeles-based Kor started running Campton Place, its first SF hotel:

• chef Daniel Humm left for New York;
  
• Michael Bauer gave the restaurant a devastating review that cut it to two and a half stars and said, "it's clear that Campton Place is no longer playing in the big leagues;" and
  
• the city's debut Michelin Guide said the kitchen had "floundered" and did not award it a single star.

Now Kor has put the hotel up for sale, I reported in Friday's Business Times (free link). Given the hyperactive market for San Francisco hotels lately, Campton hopes to earn a profit on the property despite the fortunes of its restaurant.

If a sale occurs, Kor's experience in San Francisco will have been brief. If the price isn't right, it will clearly have been bitter. Campton is Kor's last hotel in the city. The company briefly owned, then sold, the shuttered Canterbury Hotel.

To be fair, Humm said his departure had was not a result of the hotel sale to Kor. Also, whatever faults the restaurant may have, its pastry chef seems to have developed a loyal following in some circles.

Full story: Los Angeles group to sell lone S.F. hotel (free link)

Alice Waters is high RIGHT NOW, as a matter of fact

The last words in the April 2007 7x7 magazine are from an interview with Alice Waters:

What are your vices?

You mean in terms of food? Because I really console myself by eating and drinking.

Sex, drugs, rock and roll -- anything.

All of those things.

The reporter then transformed into a giant talking bundle of broccoli rabe, which Waters stabbed repeatedly with her chef's knife before curling into a quivering ball in the corner of the blood-soaked interview room.

Previously: Drug dealers bankrolled Chez Panisse; Waters dropped LSD; hippie waiters stole wine, smok--zzzzzz ......

Hubert Keller doubles down in ... St Louis?

Hubert Keller of Fleur de Lys has not one but two restaurants going in St. Louis: a Burger Bar and a steakhouse called "Sleek," both in a riverboat casino, according to the Chronicle's Inside Scoop.

The Chronicle also reminds us that Keller is trying to put Burger Bar in San Francisco, but as a Covers reader you already knew that, and you already knew about one of the two St. Louis restaurants.

St. Louis seems like a weird place for such a high-end chef. When I reported about the Burger Bar in St. Louis in January, Ed Levine told me he thought it was odd because "Hubert's a bit of hipster and might not want to hang out a lot in St. Louis."

Levine isn't kidding about the hipster bit: a photograph of Hubert DJ-ing a party has appeared in 7X7. Apparently it's a major hobby of his, and he agreed to train a DJ ("Frenchy Le Freak," no joke) in his kitchen if the DJ would train Hubert on the wheels of steel.

Drug dealers bankrolled Chez Panisse; Waters dropped LSD; hippie waiters stole wine, smok--zzzzzz ......

So according to this totally uptight Bloomberg money writer dude in snooty old "London," the new book on Alice Waters says her earliest investors were Marxist drug lords; her high-as-a-kite waiters stole $30,000 worth of wine and she personally almost went on a kill-crazy Zodiac-style rampage while high on LSD.

Channeling her longtime mentor Eric "Eazy-E" Wright, who invented gangsta rap after a stint in the Chez Panisse kitchen, Alice says something totally deep about the whole amazing scene and how everything is, like, connected:

"They (the drug dealers) were the only people who had money ... The only sort of counterculture people who had money. We couldn't get it from a bank. God knows."

Thankfully, we in the Bay Area don't get our "book reviews" from a Republican New York smear machine like Bloomberg any more than we get our dietary advice from "scientists" with "advanced degrees" from "accredited universities."

We have our own, totally unmedicated John Birdsall at the Express to speak truth to power, and he's not going to play the Man's little games. Tell him a story about drug-crazed restaurateurs who are frothing at the mouth as they hand satchels full of drug money to the criminal waiter gangs doping up patrons and plotting a communist revolution, and he'll calmly yawn, call your tale a boring, "incurious" "surface narrative" written by an obvious sellout and of course not mention any of this in his book review because it doesn't matter.

Logically.

Thanks to the Express' Weatherman Chris Thompson for telling us which way the reactionary wind is blowing.

Bloomberg's story about drug deals, LSD and other things that put us to sleep in the Bay Area: Inside Dope on Chez Panisse, Complete With LSD, Stoned Waiters

Pork belly: So hot right now

Knife's Edge writes that pork belly has become "so trendy that by now I'd say it's passe."

The chef reports that denizens of his Northern California town are flocking to his own restaurant's pork belly with root beer reduction, which he originally thought would be too adventurous for most customers.

He writes: "It's selling. More than we ever have before. Perhaps the mullet wearing citizens of my town only see the BEER part of the sauce and their eyes glaze over."

I enjoyed a wonderful pork belly at Ad Hoc on Superbowl Sunday, then noticed it the other day on the menu at Vitrine in the St. Regis. Some Web searches turn up pork belly recently on the menus of La Folie, Farallon, Salt House, Cortez and Redd. Among others, surely.

Next stop: Olive Garden.

Full Knife's Edge pork belly post: C'est la vie say the old folks

Cap on minimum wage for tipped employees

San Francisco restaurants have been pushing for a statewide tip credit for many years now, which would allow them to count tips toward the minimum wage they pay waiters, at least partly.

Now they are trying to get something similar done on the city level. The idea is to freeze the minimum wage at $9.14 for tipped workers, so they would not get the annual cost of living increases.

The idea is that waiters, bartenders and bussers are making so much money on tips that they can afford to give up their annual minimum wage hikes. Restaurant owners would then have money to give delayed raises to their back-of-the-house workers and to stay afloat, the thinking goes.

A Golden Gate Restaurant Association study two years ago put typical waiter tips at $22-30 per hour, with bussers making an estimated 20 percent of that. The accuracy of such figures could become a key point in determining whether the wage cap idea gains political currency among the Board of Supervisors; whether they see a freeze of the minimum wage, which won't sell, or a freeze in raises for well-off workers, which will sell.

Another idea is to support the gross receipts tax plan floated by Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, who shows his love for both caps and freezing in the picture at right. Peskin wants a gross receipts tax in place of the payroll tax, a move that would benefit restaurants since their biggest cost is labor.

Either way, restaurants clearly want to put some ideas behind the possible one-day restaurant shutdown I reported more than a week ago.

Full details in my Business Times update today:

S.F. restaurants may push for minimum wage freeze for workers who get tips (free link)

Correction: Tyler Florence and Kimpton talking, but NOT about Grand Cafe and Scala's

In a Business Times Web update linked to previously from Covers, I wrote that San Francisco boutique hotel chain Kimpton was talking to TV chef Tyler Florence about possibly cooking at the Grand Cafe and Scala's.

As some of you may have guessed, if a chef like Tyler Florence is going to open a restaurant, it is is generally going to be under his own name. Florence did NOT talk to Kimpton about operating Grand Cafe or Scala's, he talked about a variety of opportunities for collaboration, whether at a national level or in one of Kimpton's new hotels.

There are no immediate plans. A Kimpton spokesman told me the door is open to working together going forward.

I have not changed my original Covers post, since it did not include any of the incorrect information, but we have corrected the original Business Times Web article:

TV chef moving to Bay Area (corrected)

Alice Waters used biographer to get even with Jeremiah Tower. Supposedly.

The East Bay Express' lunatic chef, John Birdsall, can often be found ending careers and asking searing questions like "What's up with that, Bay Area?"

But when he's not knife-blogging, the guy actually writes some enlightening restaurant reviews and, now, a deliciously dishy book review about Alice Waters. So there's no need for John to hunt me down and skin me alive like a game hen.

Birdsall hungrily tears into Waters' latest biographer, Thomas McNamee, for being Waters' idiot parrot man, writing a bio that was not only authorized but suggested by Waters, that does not investigate deeply but instead seems "content with surface narratives."

It's no coincidence, Birdsall thinks, that the book lashes Jeremiah Tower, who was none-too-kind to Waters in his recent book California Dish. Birdsall writes:

It's tempting to think of this book in part as Waters' answer to Tower, whom McNamee presents as rather pathetic. Come to think of it, Waters may have chosen McNamee to tell her story precisely because she sensed he wouldn't probe too deeply.

Full review: Shallow Alice

Copia opening in San Francisco

My colleague Sarah Duxbury has the scoop in today's Business Times on how Copia, a sort of food museum in Napa Valley, is opening a satellite office in San Francisco at Ghirardelli Square.

The SF Copia will share space with Cellar 360, a Healdsburg wine retailer than will offer tastings and small plates of food. Cellar 360 is a division of Australian spirits firm Foster's Group, which owns wine brands like Beringer and Stag's Leap, but the tastings will be run by people from Copia.

Copia will offer everything from a half-hour tasting course to a two-year certification from the Wine & Spirits Education Trust, Sarah writes. Copia is the only entity on the West Coast to offer such certification.

The 6,000-square foot facility is joined in Ghirardelli Square by Fairmont's fractional ownership hotel, set to open in thee fall.

Sarah's Copia story is not online; this may change on Monday but I wanted to post something today because I see the press release is going out.

Tyler Florence moving to Bay Area from NY, is talking to Kimpton

Because I'm cheap, I haven't had cable at home for a few years now, prefering to watch my favorite shows on DVD from Netflix. This led to an awkward situation when I interviewed Tom Colicchio at 'wichraft SF and he had to explain to me that he was on TV and what Top Chef is, by way of answering a question about traffic to his restaurant.

I am similarly not sure how to play Tyler Florence's move to Mill Valley from New York, confirmed for me just now by his wife (and press contact), since I am not well acquainted with any of his three Food Network shows -- Food 911, Tyler's Ultimate and How to Boil Water.

Will this be giddy news, as the accompanying photo suggests, to all of Tyler's female fans in the Bay Area? Is he admired by local chefs despite his partnership with Applebee's? After all, he was listed in Bill Buford's New Yorker takedown of the Food Network as part of the more credible first wave of hosts on that channel, as opposed to the more telegenic later waves.

In any case, I note in my Business Times Web update on Tyler's move, where you can get more info on this, that:

Florence could likely pick his opportunities in San Francisco. In addition to the three Kimpton openings, the 1,900-room downtown Hilton needs a chef for its planned gourmet tavern; the Argent/Westin is putting in a high-end Italian restaurant and has held talks with PBS chef Nick Stellino; the 1,500-room downtown Marriott has announced it will overhaul its restaurant; the InterContinental hotel under construction next to the Moscone Convention Center will have a 24-hour Italian restaurant and has announced no chef; and HEI Holdings is redoing the restaurant at Le Meridien.

GraceAnn Walden, by the way, broke news of Tyler's move in a brief mention in her monthly e-mail newsletter earlier this week, so consider signing up for that on her website. I am the first to report he is in talks with Kimpton though, so I'm going to mark this as "scoop."

My full story: TV chef moving to Bay Area

Boulevard takes third swing at James Beard best restaurant prize

San Francisco's Boulevard is nominated for the third year in a row for best restaurant in the U.S., Nate Appleman of A16 is up for rising star, Tartine back for best pastry chef and Ame back for best service.

More on yesterday's James Beard nominations in my Business Times update:

Boulevard up again for best U.S. restaurant award (free link)

Late at night, restaurants struggle to make money

Who would have thought: paying restaurant workers time and a half on a $9.14 minimum wage does not do much for the bottom line, especially when everyone is sitting around twiddling their thumbs because it's one in the morning and no one knows your kitchen is open, so the place is empty.

Also, everyone did their heavy drinking and eating earlier in the night, somewhere else, so your margins are shot.

"In total, it probably is a wash," said Laurence Jossel of Nopa, the 11-month-old Western Addition hotspot that keeps its kitchen open until 1 a.m. every night. "Some people start this and fade out, because it's a commitment -- in terms of time, in terms of lots of things, especially financially."

Of course, this is the dark view of late-night dining. On the bright side, San Franciscans are slowly but surely becoming trained to expect certain restaurants to stay open well past 11 p.m., so business is ramping up for late night places.

I give a taste of the economics of open-late restaurants in a story from Friday's Business Times: Eateries bite into the night (free link)

The story is sort of dollars-and-cents coda to Amanda Berne's excellent story on late-night dining in the Chronicle in October.

Early returns on Aqua wine bar: 'Barely ... legitimate', 'clueless' help, 'might disappoint serious wine connoisseurs'

Alder Yarrow is a respected local wine blogger and thus particularly well-equipped to review the new wine bar from Aqua Development, Rouge et Blanc.

Which is precisely what he did a few days ago. Some key tasting notes:

• "the list ... now includes about fifteen wines from all over the world, some that are unfortunately still pedestrian"
• "disappointingly, the bar does not offer half-pours, however the staff tell me that it is their policy to offer a free taste pour of every wine on the list to anyone who asks, which allows Rouge et Blanc to barely hang onto its status as a legitimate wine bar according to my criteria."
• "a modest list of wines available by the bottle ... will satisfy most ordinary interests at several price ranges, but ... might disappoint serious wine connoisseurs looking for special or off-the-beaten-track wines"
• "I hope they'll eventually get rid of the few glaringly mass-market wines"
  
• "both of the folks I spoke with were pretty much clueless about the wines on the list. One even told me he had been asked the same question about what varietals were in the white blend I was drinking several times over the past couple of months, but apparently that hadn't provided enough impetus for him to actually find out the answer, and all I was left with was a shrug."

By the way, this review earns Rouge et Blanc 2.5 stars on Yarrow's scale, which is insane. Until you consider that half of the scale is given over to fire code compliance -- operative doors, working extinguishers, that kind of thing -- and most of the rest is based on how many kinds of credit cards they accept. Who knew?!

Marin IJ: Farallon does $10m per year in revenue. Also, chefs' favorite Marin restaurants.

Restaurants may shut down in protest

San Francisco restaurateurs are enthusiastic about a possible day of protest in which they all close their doors in opposition to the city's minimum wage and other mandates.

The protest idea came out of a meeting attended by close to 100 restaurateurs at Tres Agaves Thursday, about twice as many people as expected.

It looks like restaurants interested in adding service charges to their bills will not be coordinating with one another, to avoid charges of collusion.

More in my Business Times Web update: Restaurants ponder shutdown protest (free link)

Four Seasons to help you lose weight

It's the menu that helped charming Brit Jeremy Emmerson lose 50 pounds in five months, and if that doesn't sound, erm, appetizing, read Marcia's Tablehopper writeup of the conversion of the Four Seasons restaurant to a steak-and-seafood joint. (The real secret, as always, was exercise, namely running.)

Jeremy's weight loss, which I've chatted with him about (including the requisite "did you say fifteen of FIFTY? question"), recalls Jan Birnbaum's experience as documented in the Chronicle.

Chez Panisse chef says there's nothing funny about pizza

Inside Scoop: In the rough and tumble Oakland Hills, "Chez Panisse Cafe veteran chef and produce buyer Russell Moore has taken over the former Country Home Furniture store to open Camino (3917 Grand Ave.) in about a year."

Also, the oven will be a towering stone inferno whose flames will cook lamb, fish and stews and also avenge Rusell Moore's passionate hatred of pizza, a type of food he is totally over because he's not jealous of Pizzaiolo even though it was started by his apprentice and they light their stoves with hundred dollar bills.

Also, Dona Tomas couple still opening in Uptown, in case you forgot, because I stopped reminding you every five seconds of the restaurant that sits on the very nexus of all threads of my personal and professional lives. The Chron does reveal the food: "house-ground hamburger, pasta alla Norma, chowder and salads."

5% service charge topic of big restaurant meeting

Restaurateurs around the city are seriously considering adding a 5% service charge to cover minimum wage increases, I reported in Friday's Business Times (free link).

Dozens of owners, along with the head of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, are expected to meet this Thursday at Tres Agaves to talk about the issue and possibly coordinate a strategy. Either that or just drink some delicious margaritas at three in the afternoon, but far be it from anyone in the industry to consume alcohol during working hours.

This service charge idea is not new in San Francisco. It surfaced (free link) back in 2004, when the city's higher minimum wage first went into effect, but it turned out to be a false alarm.

But allegedly it's for real this time. Since going into effect in 2004, the minimum wage has since increased three times.

Meanwhile, restaurant owners said they can't hike menu prices any higher -- diners have started ordering cheaper items, cutting back how often they eat out and, horror of horrors, taken to drinking less.

So the restaurateurs have taken up what some of them concede is a bit of psychological trickery: a bill surcharge that could range from 3-18%, depending on the restaurant, but would probably end up being around 5% most of the time.

Technically this can be deducted from the tip. But Mark Pastore at Incanto, who imposed a 5 percent service charge back in 2004, told me that "people rarely do" deduct it from the
tip, even though his menu description of the fee as a "partial service charge" is designed to imply they may do so.

Someone asked me on email this weekend whether this could amount to collusion. In short, the restaurants don't think so. When I asked Kevin Westlye of the restaurant association about this in the course of reporting my story, he said the association attorney believes the meetings are fine because restaurants are not setting prices per se but instead discussing a percentage surcharge. In other words, they are not talking about setting the price of a steak or certain kind of wine, things that would continue to vary widely, but about a percentage on top of these prices.

Full story: 'Service charge' on the boil at S.F. restaurants (free link)

Chris Yeo may expand to Vegas, once had three struggling businesses, aspires to be like Kimpton

I profiled Chris Yeo of Straits (free link) in Friday's Business Times, and if you can't write an interesting profile of this guy you don't belong in journalism.

The story writes itself: After training at Vidal Sassoon in London, Singaporean hairdresser immigrates to the U.S. He starts a successful hair salon by lying to his landlord and working long hours. Parlays his haircutting profits and clients into a restaurant serving his native cuisine. Signs the restaurant lease as his wife is in labor.

The restaurant is failing, so he gambles on a move to a larger space. Then he gambles on a nightclub. Nightclub tanks, but luckily the restaurant takes off.

The restaurant becomes two, then three, then four, now five, with a deal "95 percent" likely in Las Vegas and expansion to Southern California and Seattle on the horizon.

Oh, and it's a total cash machine, with low food costs and high drinks tabs.

I hope I did Chris some justice.

Full story, including some hard revenue numbers:

A long Strait journey / Restaurateur Chris Yeo's story (free link)

Women chefs and the 'stainless steel ceiling'

The Chronicle's list of five 'rising star' chefs includes just one woman, and John Birdsall at the East Bay Express thinks this highlights a "stainless steel ceiling" in the industry. He says the business hates women and gays and any man with a complete set of fingers.

But it sounds like Birdsall didn't read Jan Newberry's interesting and well-researched piece in San Francisco Magazine on this very topic a month ago. The awesome picture of Melissa Perello alone warrants a clickthrough (update: now it's gone! But she was running in a field looking very freeeee), but here are some salient excepts:

Laurent Manrique, executive chef of Aqua, didn’t receive a single résumé from a woman when he was looking to hire a new chef de cuisine last December, and Perello says that when she left Fifth Floor, no woman working in the kitchen there was prepared to take her place. Other restaurateurs, like Gayle Pirie, 42, of Foreign Cinema, and Elisabeth Prueitt, 43, of Bar Tartine, say they’d love to hire more female cooks, but few apply.

And this:

However unpleasant the (macho kitchen) antics can get, most female chefs say they take them in stride. Nor is the problem that they’re hitting the glass ceiling, something women in other industries complain about. “San Francisco is a great city for women chefs,” says Michelle Mah, 31, chef at Ponzu. “Everyone here accepts that if you cook great food, that’s all that matters.” Rachel Sillcocks, 29, sous-chef at Healdsburg’s Cyrus, agrees. “The opportunities for women aren’t any less than they are for men.”

Newberry's philosophy for why there aren't more women executive chefs is basically this: They are smarter and less ego-driven than men.

The reason there were more women executive chefs 30 years ago is that they weren't as aware of the downsides of the industry, they didn't have food TV and Kitchen Confidential. Now that the trail has been blazed and been found wanting, Newberry posits, women are availing themselves of supposedly "lesser" opportunities that allow room to breathe, like the pastry station, wine cellar, catering and private chef gigs.

In other words, the only way you can say female chefs are hitting a ceiling is with a macho, patriarchal view of what constitutes success. You know, a view like Birdsall's.

I hasten to add, this is Newberry talking. I would never accuse Birdsall, powerful Godfather of a food media machine, of judging women on attributes other than merit, like appearance.

And in all sincerity, I am by no means saying Newberry's article is the final word on gender relations in the kitchen.

Correction: THIRD Out the Door in Pacific Heights

In yesterday's item on Charles Phan starting construction on his third Out the Door in Pacific Heights, I said it was the second Out the Door.

In reality, it's the third: One next door to the original Slanted Door in the Ferry Building, one in Westfield SF Centre and the new one. I forgot about the original because somehow in my espresso-addled brain it's just part of Slanted Door.

Charles Phan expansion to Pacific Heights now under way

Slanted Door chef-owner Charles Phan is opening a third Out the Door.

He bought a building in Pacific Heights where he is working on a 3,000 square foot restaurant. When I talked to him on the phone just now he was in the middle of demolition.

I have the address and more on the food concept in an update on the Business Times website today (free link).

I was going to mark this "scoop" but I just Googled and found 7x7 posted something to their website March 1.

7x7 people: When you're not busy ogling the owners of District, consider putting this sort of stuff -- you know, "news" -- on your blog. That and an RSS feed.

UPDATE: OK, I just did some more Googling, and can proudly say that other than tablehopper, Chowhound, 7x7 and the Zoning Board, I was totally first with the story. (So glad I didn't use the "scoop" tag. So very glad.)

Well, at least we know construction has started.

This post has been corrected from its original form.

Early returns on District: Horrible service, bad design, painful acoustics, rude overcharging, mixed food. But otherwise, uh, 'very good.'

Fatemeh at Gastronomie realizes District has only been open two weeks, and realizes that it's more of a bar than a restaurant. Nevertheless, she is pissed off.

I'm not sure what the trouble is.

Sure, her eardrums nearly exploded from the "acoustic nightmare."

Yes, the cramped design left her "bumped" every two minutes or so (paging Michael Bauer ...).

Oh, and maybe the bartender forgot her three-item order. Twice.

Granted, her Carpaccio was "swimming" in what appeared to be bottled Caesar-salad dressing.

But is this really such a big deal?

After all, to make up for all its mistakes, the bar-staurant generously berated her date for underpaying for a bottle wine, before grumpily admitting the humiliating incident had been their fault due to a misreading of the menu.

Such sweethearts!

Fatemeh worries:

Is it fair to judge a restaurant a mere two weeks after opening and post a negative review on a public blog? Probably not.

Actually, given that we're all adults and understand that the place may well improve in time, and given that it's open for business and accepting money, it's totally fair.

And given Fatemeh's review, it's totally awesome.

(I haven't found any other early reviews, except for a few written before District's opening. Including this one from the 7x7 blog that recommends District because it is owned by "these tall good-looking guys who could have stepped straight out of the cast of Melrose Place." Great. That really speaks to me!)

Full review:

Gastronomie: District Wine Bar. Just Another Pretty Face?

Gordon Biersch founder ditches SF for new restaurant

Gordon Biersch co-founder Dean Biersch initially wanted to put his new beer restaurant in San Francisco, but says he has decided to put it in the city of Sonoma due to spiraling costs in SF.

Biersch's tavern is to be called Hopmonk. The place is optimized for serving beer -- each beer is to be carefully selected, served in traditional glassware appropriate to that particular brew, and paired carefully with food.

The beers will be imported from Europe and selected from regional craft brewers in the U.S. Biersch will also brew a house pilsner of his own design, under contract to a brewer (likely Gordon Biersch).

The idea is to have a constantly-changing lineup of beers by category, for example during a winter month Hopmunk might feature bocks and dunkelweizens.

The food and decor is to be locally-inspired, with a Northern California flavor, rather than an imitation of the sort of pub and pub food one might find in Europe. Though it will use local ingredients, Biersch is not aiming for a high-end "gastropub" type menu as at, for example, Salt House, but more of the traditional bar foods -- sandwiches, burgers, soups, salads.

I have the full story in the Business Times:

Biersch taps out in S.F. (free link)

Charles Phan, Soma Grand and guerilla marketing

SocketSite today reports as rumor that Charles Phan of Slanted Door is in talks to put in a restaurant at Soma Grand, a luxury San Francisco condo development that just opened a sales office.

It's actually not a rumor: Phan is indeed in talks. I heard the same gossip a week or two ago and called Charles. He told me there were talks but that they were preliminary and he had not decided whether to do anything yet. His publicist confirmed for me just now that this continues to be true.

I'm not holding my breath on this one. But I *am* fascinated by this rumor, because it's giving a significant amount of of free publicity and word-of-mouth to Soma Grand just as the development is offering units for sale.

SocketSite is a scrappy Web publication that doggedly follows the local condo market and the economics therein. The Phan/Soma Grand chatter has become pretty widespread and could certainly affect sales prices of units in the building, but if I were a buyer I would not spend an extra penny on the chance that this deal will happen, simply because it is so preliminary.

Even if it does happen, is Charles' hotness and quality level up to this point, no matter how high both might be, worth a premium?

Isn't there a significant risk that even if this deal goes through (again I'm not holding my breath) Phan, like any other chef, could

1. leave after his lease expires in five or ten years;
   
2. delegate to people whose quality isn't up to snuff;
   
3. create noise issues from tightly-packed, cocktail-swilling diners;
   
4. be on the unhappy side of a new dining fad
   
5. ????
   

-- I'm not saying this stuff will happen but there's enough of a risk that it makes you question whether there should be any premium paid by a condo buyer to be in Phan's building.

In the final financial analysis, when you are talking about an investment of upwards of $700,000, risks from interest rates, local economy, building quality, crime, and the school district, to name just a few, are of much higher importance than who is running the ground-floor restaurant.

And of course most buyers will probably not make their decision based on who is running the restaurants.

But the Phan rumor, as it spreads among individuals and from media like SocketSite, does help the developers of Soma Grand get people in the door on the cheap. It spreads the name of the development and lodges it in people's memory. It adds a halo of hipness and legitimacy.

This isn't just a restaurant rumor, it is free publicity in an increasingly cutthroat condo market. And it will make an excellent case study for a guerilla marketing class at some point, whether that was the intent behind the rumor or not.

Kimpton suddenly bereft of chefs

Marcia at tablehopper is digging the dirt like something furious; maybe she's trying to get back to 'stralia?

First she tallies departures at Kimpton (astutely): With David Cohen gone from Scala's, Kimpton is now without exec chefs at:

• Fifth Floor
• Grand Cafe
• Scala's

The company has been on a national growth tear and this might have the executives distracted from the restaurants.

Marcia also gets her hands on an email from Arnold Eric Wong, one of the founders who left Bacar. Wong isn't quite blunt but does admit that the break with Bacar's "new majority owner" is tied to a juicy-sounding "struggle with the moral, ethical and professional dilemmas associated with Bacar's ongoing enterprise. I tried to come to a compromise that would uphold my personal and professional integrity while working with the new general partners."

So tablehopper saunters off for a vacation in Australia and comes back with serious scoopage.

I so HATE her! (Kidding, mate, kidding.)

Tablehopper chatterbox

Aqua opening wine bar

Chronicle Inside Scoop: "Laurent Manrique and partners will open Rouge et Blanc, a wine bar in the former Viansa Enoteca (334 Grant Ave.), next to their Cafe de la Presse. Rouge et Blanc will offer an international selection of 40 to 50 wines, with about 15 by the glass, along with charcuterie, cheese and what Manrique calls 'croque baguettes'-- croque monsieur-like sandwiches on baguettes."

Also, AsiaSF expanding to Hollywood!

SF Magazine publisher to beat you with his cain

Scot Bondlow's Pubisher's Note in the March SF magazine is worth the price of the whole book.

The angry press baron is furious at baristas and waiters and various servant types for being insufficiently obsequious when they thank you back when you thank them. Or they actually don't thank you at all for saying "thank you," but instead say something vaguely neutral. In Scot's words:

A popular phrase ... has worked its way into the current vernacular of people of various ages and backgrounds. It shows up wherever I go. It's the reply "No problem."

Doesn't seem like much?

Here's my problem with "No problem": it has replaced a foundation of basic etiquette and common courtesy, the phrase "You're welcome."

Example: you're in a restaurant, and you've just paid the check and left a tip, and you say "Thank you."

To which the waiter replies, "No problem."

Really? That wasn't a problem?! For him to do his job?!

At the coffee shop. From your stockbroker. Your doctor even ... Please point this out to your family, employees and co-workers, and maybe even muster up the courage, as I have on a few occasions, to actually challenge the reply.

In the April Publisher's note, Bondlow is expected to issue an 8,000-word denunciation of people who think "gesundheit" is a suitable substitute for "God bless you."

Sanctimonious Scotch snobs moving to bourbon; Maker's and Coke to cost $19

From the "If you read it in a glossy magazine it must be true" department: Bourbon whiskey is taking the last of the rich guys who used to spend their money driving up the price of single-malt scotch. And you thought they had all moved on to premium rum, organic vodka or high-grade cocaine!

According to always-honest San Francisco magazine -- well, at least they're ostensibly plugged in among the big spenders -- "small batch whiskey looks to be the next big thing in San Francisco. Young drinkers have been educating themselves with the selection of fine new American bourbons, ryes and single malts now on the market."

A new bar in the Haight called Alembic is all over this trend, with a bourbon-soaked cocktail list (PDF) and what has to be one of the most obnoxious websites in the city, and that's saying a lot considering how Flashfully awful the typical restaurant Web presence is.

Whiskey Thieves on Geary and Hyde claims 70 American whiskeys behind the bar, albeit in divey surroundings accentuated by legal smoking (typical Yelp review: " This place BLEEDS brawlin ...").

In addition to Alembic and Whiskey Thieves, which seem to be reasonably legit exemplars of the Bourbon trend, SF Mag threw in as examples Nihon and Jardiniere. ???! . Still, an interesting new way to spend a lot of money on booze.

Schnapps, by the way, remains pretty much the last liquor type without a ridiculously overpriced, "ultrapremium" brand extension. It's holed up with Boones Farm in the Liquor Alamo.

Correction: My headline originally said 'Jack and Coke,' but Jack is not bourbon. Thanks to Echa in the comments for setting me straight.

Ozumo East is confirmed

I reported a month ago that Ozumo was likely to go into Oakland; I report today on the Business Times website that the deal has closed and Ozumo's Oakland location confirmed (free link).

Ozumo Owner Jeremy James told me in January:

"We're a well established, highly thought of San Francisco restaurant. Opening a second store in Oakland would be very comforting ... It always feels good being wanted."
...

"In terms of a more welcome business climate, Oakland is right off that bat," James said.

Ozumo's Oakland location will go into 8,000 square feet at the new Broadway Grand condo project in the Uptown district, at Broadway and Grand Ave. The project is still under construction but sales begin Feb. 24.

The new Ozumo will include an "Izakaya" menu of bar snacks.

There's more on Broadway Grand in the Chronicle. I confess I sat on this item for a few days and only corrected my delinquency when I saw it mentioned briefly in the Chron story this morning.

Bo of Bo's BBQ is Berkeley hippie plus Mississippi farm kid ...

... and he's really generous, writes James Temple in an interesting Contra Costa Times profile of Bo, who is already legendary in the East Bay for his barbecue, served out of his restaurant in Lafayette.

Bo gives little gifts that are sometimes not so little, Temple writes. Bo gives free wine when his line gets long. Bo gives money for local homeless children, and food for battered women. Bo coaches little league. Bo helps jazz musicians as a teacher, mentor and benefactor.

Bo gives extra food when he caters. Bo pays musicians at his restaurant so generously that at least one calls him "exceeding generous" and suggested to Bo that he take back some of the money.

Bo seems sort of like a relaxed hippie, which makes sense because he was a grad student at Cal. Temple writes:

His ever-present bright yellow bandanna and bushy white beard suggest the hippie leanings of someone who attended Cal in the early 1970s. So does his penchant for peppering his speech with words like man, beautiful and love.

McSwine hugs customers on their way in. McSwine hugs customers on their way out. He sits down at tables filled with his friends and gabs away. He strolls up to tables filled with strangers and introduces himself.

When people who work to better the community show up, people like him -- firefighters, cops and teachers -- they might get a free beer. They might get a free meal.

But Bo is not shy about calling out the "crap meat" he sees at other BBQ places. And, as Temple notes in a scoop:

McSwine is in discussions to open additional Bay Area operations, potentially in the North and South Bays, and will soon begin selling his barbecue sauce in local stores.

A quick detour on food:

My grandfather in Dallas used to love serving smoked ribs and brisket when we'd visit from Houston, so I enjoy barbecue and visit as many local places as I can. I judge them by the pork ribs, my favorite dish.

I've visited Bo's twice now, and it's now my favorite barbecue joint in the Bay Area, though Everett and Jones at Jack London Square is very competitive on the all important ribs.

I love Bo's ribs, but for some reason my passion falls short of what I would expect, given the care clearly put into the food. I used to think it was a problem with how he smoked the meat, but the last visit revealed exquisitely pink and juicy meat that pulled easily off the bone.

The ribs that get me most excited are barbecued by me personally or by friends and family. Perhaps it's the smell of smoke on clothes, or some other irrational, psychological cue, like the investment of four hours slavishly working a bullet smoker. Maybe it's the smell of smoldering hickory. Maybe it's just the strong spice rub I prefer.

And it's certainly a testament to Bo that the only thing missing at his restaurant is the memory of a long, hot day above a BBQ pit.

Full story: Southern-bred generosity provides tasty, jazzy dish (Contra Costa Times) (free link)

(Disclaimer/name drop: Temple is a friend of mine.)

Hilton's $13m Gramercy Tavern lookalike

The monstrous San Francisco Hilton can't stop eating. So it's building an "urban tavern" to lure gullible prey (free link).

Traumatized onlookers will remember that the 1,900-room beast ritually devoured three general managers in as many years. But the hotel is still hungry and must be fed, so out come the barrels of delicious, sweet cash money to fill its belly -- for now.

Hotel owners have set aside $13 million to build a restaurant and bar with 240 seats, plus 20,000 square feet of adjoining meeting space.

The place has no chef or name yet, but Hilton has a pretty developed idea of what the place will be.

It's a gastropub, a bar serving gourmet renditions of hearty foods. It's supposed to lure in unsuspecting businessmen for lunch or dinner. Before they know what's happened, they will be handing over their Amex Black cards for backslapping parties in the private wine room, global arbitrage lectures in the meeting hall and client suites in the hotel tower.

Ideally, they won't emerge from the hotel for several years, confused and destitute. Hotels around town have become increasingly adept at this game in recent years, leading to a slew of new high-end hotel restaurants (free link).

Hilton's restaurant is designed to mimic the investment banker's natural habitat: clubby, with dark woods, faux leather, copper and these medieval looking chandeliers. Engstrom Design Group has been working on the interior and expects to begin demolition in August.

The place was built with an eye toward Gramercy Tavern in New York, according to Hilton's new Food and Beverage Director Stefan Gruvberger. But it's unlike anything else in the Hilton chain and is supposed to feel very separate from the hotel.

It will even have its own entrance, near the corner of Mason and O'Farrell, and the Hilton logo will be banished from the premises. It is set to open in March 2008.

Full story:

Hilton to spend $13M to build new restaurant (free link)

ACTUAL SF rezzy scalper unmasked by Bauer!

A few weeks back I noted that a scalper of restaurant reservations was threatening to come to San Francisco from home base in New York.

Now Michael Bauer has found an actual, operating rezzy scalper here in SF, or at least offering SF reservations: withoutreservations.biz.

The scariest part: there was a 7:15 Wednesday night rezzy at Coco 500 still available when Bauer mentioned the site at the bottom of a blog wrapup on VD (as chefs call the "romantic" day they detest deep in their hearts even if it makes them truckloads of money).

At some point between 5 am and 9 am, someone bought that scalped reservation!

For shame, San Francisco. For shame.

It's not clear how the Bauer found the site. The context of his post implies it might have been via press release. I'm not trying to devalue his scoop, just amazed if a restaurant reservation scalper actually solicited press coverage.

(Valentine's rant link courtesy Knife's Edge.)

Farmer Brown wants to reap new place

Farmer Brown chef-owner Jay Foster wants to take over the Plush Room in the York Hotel, the hotel's new owner told me.

Personality Hotels is buying the York from CTwo hotels, plus the Maxwell Hotel from Joie de Vivre Hospitality, bringing its total stable of Union Square hotels to seven.

Personality is already landlord to Farmer Brown: the neo-soul food restaurant is located in the company's Metropolis hotel.

I learned all this at a party for the Diva hotel, which was recently renovated with the help of a bunch of up-and-coming artists. Personality Hotels founder Yvonne Lembi-Detert was excited about the new hotels, but gave no indication on how likely she is to let Farmer Brown run the Plush Room.

Prior to writing my story, I confirmed the hotel sales with CTwo and Joie de Vivre. But after we went to press, someone from Personality called to tell me that the loans for the acquisitions are not fully nailed down yet, so these are not quite done deals at the moment.

The Plush Room, aka Empire Plush Room, is now run by Razz Productions.

This all comes from a story I wrote on Personality Hotels (free link) in Friday's Business Times.

Slow Food opens San Francisco office, wants it permanently

Slow Food International has opened a San Francisco office, its second permanent office in the U.S. outside of New York, and hopes to make it permanent.

The office was opened about six months ago in North Beach, at Stockton and Union Streets, primarily to organize the much-heralded Slow Food Nation food expo, which is set for May 1-4, 2008 at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.

Slow Food now estimates the expo will draw 60,000 people to Fort Mason Center!

But the office is also meant to service the highly visible San Francisco-area chapter of Slow Food USA, and Slow Food International would like to keep the office going even after the Expo folds up shop and, in all likelihood, moves to the East Coast in 2009, for example Ann Arbor.

For now, the office is small, about 600 square feet and two people, including Slow Food Nation's Content Director, who I spoke to for the full story on the Business Times website today (free link). But it is expected to grow.

Vessel charging $500 per table; new age of excess

I almost forgot to post my front page story from Friday's Business Times:

A spate of new bars are riding the second dot-com wave, targeting conspicuous consumers with new fees and rules.

My lead example is Vessel, already open many nights as part of its "soft opening" and set to formally open Feb. 22. Vessel is on Campton Place, across from the hotel and next door to Alfred's steakhouse.

The bar cost $1 million - $5 million to build but is hoping to swiftly recoup that from consumers, charging nighttime rates of $500 for a full, 12-person table and $250 for a half table. That's just to sit down, not including bottle service or other drinks.

I also mention the Ambassador, opened in January and reserving booths for people spending hundreds of dollars on bottle service, and of course Bourbon and Branch, where you need a reservation in advance and have a time limit on your visit.

Finally, there's "Mister," a forthcoming Financial District barbershop-and-bar, which targets affluent young financial services types and offers memberships at the "player," "hitter" and "mogul" level.

Fake wine bars make Alder Yarrow want to spit

Alder Yarrow has a fun rant on an experience that is becoming all too common:

You wander into a newly opened "Bistro and Wine Bar" in a favorite neighborhood only to find it is actually just a restaurant -- sometimes even lacking the very piece of furniture that "bar" generally refers to -- that serves wine by the (often over-full and impossible to swirl) glass?

Real wine bars have actual, um, bars, along with wine by the taste and an extensive list that changes, according to Alder. Ideally, they have knowledgeable servers and nice stemware. Sounds reasonable.

Fake wine bars meanwhile, tend to be restaurants with the words "and Wine Bar" tacked on to the end of their name. Or wine shops with a tasting area.

Worth a read.

Chronicle critic leaves for Dallas

Food critic Bill Addison is leaving the Chronicle for the Dallas Morning News, the Express reports, with no replacement in sight.

Addison was at the paper for just nine months, having been hired from an alt weekly in Atlanta.

The Express says there's a hiring freeze in effect at the Chron, and that existing food staff will have to pick up the slack from Addison's departure. The staff is already pinch-hitting at the Inside Scoop column, which until October had its own writer.

The optimistic view is that perhaps this could eventually turn into a chance to hire Jonathan Kauffman back to the area from Seattle.

Blind waiters and pitch black dining rooms

Interesting story out of China: Dark restaurants, in which you order in the light and proceed to a pitch-black dining room to eat, where you are served by blind waiters.

I was tipped off to a story in the Shanghai Daily Jan 23, available for the moment via Google's cache. One of these dark restaurants opened in Beijing in late December, catering to young people and expatriates, and will soon open in Shanghai. The company behind them hopes to have 20 outlets throughout Asia by the end of next year.

The company's president said: "Eating in the darkness increases intimacy, which best embodies the slogan of the restaurant: A world without emotional distance."

Cell phones, watched and lighters are confiscated and guests are led to their tables by hosts wearing night vision goggles. But "the restaurant will recruit some blind servers in addition 10 ordinary staff," the story states, as in Beijing and other dark restaurants.

A sidebar, not online, claims the first "dark restaurant" opened in Zurich in 1999 by a blind priest who wanted to create jobs for the blind and help diners better understand their challenges.

I have created a "global restaurants" label for stories like this one and the Japanese authentic restaurant inspectors.

Hubert Keller's Burger Bar coming to SF

Fleur de Lys chef-owner Hubert Keller is bringing his Las Vegas concept Burger Bar back home to San Francisco, though he has not yet picked out a location.

Keller is also spreading Burger Bar to St. Louis, where one is already under construction as part of a casino project, and possibly to Hawaii.

Keller told me Burger Bar is doing close to 1,000 covers per day in Las Vegas and that he is hoping it will soon cross the $7 million per year revenue mark. Bon Apetit credits the ultra-luxe hamburger joint with spawning a long line of imitators after it opened in March 2004. High end burger places have since opened from chefs like Laurent Tourondel and David Burke in New York, Bobby Flay in Las Vegas (reportedly) and of course Thomas Keller in Napa Valley, who is hoping to soon uncork his burger place.

(Of course New York chef Daniel Boulud was serving a high-end burger at his DB Bistro Moderne by the start of 2003, before Keller’s Burger Bar, but that was not a standalone burger joint.)

I report all this in today's Business Times, along with what neighborhoods Hubert is looking in, what other restaurateurs think of the idea and why SF may be more perfect for Burger Bar than Las Vegas.

Limon the leading restaurant at Old Mint

Alongside the forthcoming redevelopment of San Francisco's Old Mint is the transformation of little Jessie Street behind the mint into an attractive, pedestrian-friendly plaza. Fronting the plaza will be three restaurants, installed into the ground floors of various historic buildings across from the Mint.

Upstairs from the restaurants will be condominiums and lofts.

Most prestigious among the restaurants to be located in these attractive old structures will be an entry from the Castillo family, proprietors of the Peruvian restaurant Limon in SoMA. The Limon team is putting in the restaurant at 418 Jessie Street.

This information comes courtesy of a nice scoop in Tablehopper on Wednesday, which I somehow overlooked until last night.