Food + Drink

This SF Restaurant Owner Just Pulled a Beyoncé
Food + Drink, Hyperlocal News + Stories

This SF Restaurant Owner Just Pulled a Beyoncé

Aphotic dropped less than a month after SF’s Palette closed. And, yes: The same team behind the latter is now responsible for the former. The attention span of the modern-day human being is akin to that of the current population of vaquita dolphins — nearly non-existent. Even TikToks are getting shorter, statistically. (It’s one reason why I decided to debut Underscore_SF just a day after I formally announced my departure from The Bold Italic.) But you can’t blame us bipeds for our collective disjointedness; we’re inundated by literally hundreds, if not thousands, of stimuli every time we open our phones or laptops or turn on our FrameTVs.   How do you cut through the fray? Tailor to this current moment and time. Tease something briefly. Soft launch it, ASAP. Hard drop i...
This San Francisco Restaurant Is Having an Artisanal Garage Sale
Food + Drink, Hyperlocal News + Stories

This San Francisco Restaurant Is Having an Artisanal Garage Sale

Opened in 2019, SF’s Palette restaurant served as a nexus of creativity and cuisine in SoMa — but its hasty closure last month saw that connection fray into thin air. Palette, the San Francisco eater once located at 816 Folsom Street, was beloved for its New American fare and gorgeous art gallery. The space, itself, was a sprawling ode to how food and artist expression exist in tandem — oftentimes on the same plate. But as with literally hundreds of restaurants and bars in the Bay Area, Palette also couldn’t manage to climb out of the financial pits dug by the Covid-19 pandemic. “The pandemic’s ravage brought a new perspective, and opened my eyes to other ways of working, other opportunities seen through the perverse lens of loss, and hope for a better future,” Chef Peter Hemsley says ...
In Life and Death, Boichik Bagels Knits Bay Area Jews Together
Editors' Picks, Food + Drink

In Life and Death, Boichik Bagels Knits Bay Area Jews Together

There's a communal aspect to a plate of handmade, warm carbs from Boichik Bagels that's hard to share in words. But it's a feeling that weaves so many Bay Area Jews together. When the New York Times called Emily Winston’s Berkeley-based Boichik Bagels the best bagel place in America, random New Yorkers started phoning her store to scream at her and call her general manager a bitch. That’s how emotionally salient bagels can be. As a Jew, I know the almost-sacred role that bagels play in my own culture. Bagels are associated with the Ashkenazi side of the Jewish diaspora–the Jews who historically lived in Eastern Europe. My grandfather was a first-generation Polish immigrant, so a love of bagels is practically in my DNA. When I spoke to Winston just after the New York Times’ historic ...
San Francisco’s Viral Pancake Block Party Is Back, Baby
Food + Drink, Hyperlocal News + Stories, News to Know

San Francisco’s Viral Pancake Block Party Is Back, Baby

Well… at least for this upcoming Sunday. But the popular San Francisco party is a welcomed way to make new SF friends in 2023. Curtis Kimball rose to hyperlocal notoriety in 2022 after his series of pancake block parties grew into popular events. The street outside his Bernal Heights home regularly saw hundreds of people congregate and line up for freshly flipped pancakes for the monthly pancake party. The flapjack festivities began with humble, endearing roots; it was conceived as an event for people to meet new people — fresh friends over hot pancakes, if you will. It was an act of frequent platonic cordiality that even landed Kimball an appearance on the "Today" show. “You don’t know the good things that might happen from putting yourself out there, but you know some good thi...
After 17 Years, This Popular SF Food Newsletter Enters a New Era
Food + Drink, Hyperlocal News + Stories, San Franciscans We Fuck With

After 17 Years, This Popular SF Food Newsletter Enters a New Era

Marcia Gagliardi — the creative, food-savvy muse behind Tablehopper — is entering a new era with her digital product that’s been a touchstone in San Francisco for years. (Cheers!) 'San Franciscans We Fuck With' is our ongoing series that highlights locals who we admire for their tenacity, creativity, talent, and generosity. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone as active, as hard-working, and as effusively generous as Marcia Gagliardi: the self-described procurer behind all the "cat and food content" on her long-standing newsletter, Tablehopper. The newsletter, which sits in the canon of independent media ownership, features a wide array of insider tips, deep dives, and e-columns that center primarily on San Francisco gastronomy. Gagliardi was far ahead of the newsletter cr...
TCHO’s Karl the Nog Bar Will Help You Survive the Holidays
Food + Drink

TCHO’s Karl the Nog Bar Will Help You Survive the Holidays

The San Francisco Bay Area is a gastronomic touchstone for a reason — so it's little wonder why this holiday-inspired, locally-made chocolate bar is simply a dessert person's dream. Among the Bay Area's many peculiarities, one is especially charming: we've given a name to our city's ubiquitous weather formation, fog. And said the phenomenon has its own Twitter account with 357,000 followers. Many of San Francisco's most prominent citizens tweet at it routinely. @KarlTheFog started mysteriously in 2010 and has since tweeted over 10,000 times. The owner of the account posts anonymously, Banksy-like, from the perspective of San Francisco's omnipresent fog bank, Karl. Karl is apparently cheeky, deeply ironic, a little spicy, and prone to excessive drinking. Now another San Franci...
I Spent Friendsgiving at This Eco-Friendly Five-Star Hotel in San Francisco
Culture + Travel, Food + Drink

I Spent Friendsgiving at This Eco-Friendly Five-Star Hotel in San Francisco

If you're looking to have a sublime meal underneath a climate-controlled forest canopy, look no further than Terrene at 1 Hotel in SF's Embarcadero. The fourth Thursday in November has sat with an evergreen appeal and nostalgic lure for me, especially after leaving Texas nearly a decade ago. It’s a day brimming with sensory memories. The smell of caramelized sugar atop an apple crisp permeating out of the kitchen in Austin; the sight of crumpled tin foil pulled over rectangular serving dishes refracting the incandescent light above; sounds of laughter and convivial conversation, punctuated by clanks of colliding glassware. It’s a day brimming with orchestras of sensations that are rich for memory-making.   Alas, since living in San Francisco, the opportunity to spend T...
A New, Very Green Bodega Just Opened in SF’s Lower Nob Hill
Food + Drink, Hyperlocal News + Stories

A New, Very Green Bodega Just Opened in SF’s Lower Nob Hill

This San Francisco corner store is a verdant oasis of organization and modestly priced peanut butter. We’re a sucker for a solid bodega. There’s something mesmeric about following the isles of one after being overserved at a nearby bar; you let whimsy and impaired judgment lead your post-drinking snacking — a satiating journey riddled with situational serendipity, for better or worse. They’re also places to spot resident felines, minding their own business, swatting at your feet as you walk by. (I’m looking at you, Mish Mish at Mid City.) When you couldn’t be bothered to walk the half-mile to Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods, the family-run corner store less than 200 feet away from your apartment is there, allowing you to surrender to listlessness. So, yea: We love a well-kept, somewhat...
Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Gay Dinners
Essays, Food + Drink, Queerness

Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Gay Dinners

Even in San Francisco — the queer mecca of the world — gathering around with like-minded kin to break bread can be hard; I want to change that. For me, the absolute best part of eating is the communal aspect of it. It still feels like one of the few activities that can bring people together — it’s how you catch up with friends, makes business deals, falls in love. Human history is filled with important moments centered around a communal meal. In an oversaturated society, one marked by a growing number of short attention spans, taking the time to linger over the meal feels is a way to be present that doesn’t require bumping into strangers in the dark.  This should mean that the end-of-year holidays are an exciting time for me; it hasn’t been. Every queer person’s journey with self-a...
On Sharing Food and Cooking Nostalgia Come Thanksgiving Day
Food + Drink, Queerness

On Sharing Food and Cooking Nostalgia Come Thanksgiving Day

Breaking bread and sharing food amongst family, friends, and chosen family is something I will forever cherish — a sentiment that is only highlighted around a Thanksgiving meal. I grew up loving the Thanksgiving holiday as a kid — based solely on the idea of family gathering together to share food. I wasn’t taught the reality of the holiday in grade school - that for many Native Americans, Thanksgiving is actually a day of mourning and protest since it commemorates the arrival of settlers in North America and the centuries of oppression and genocide that followed. When I cook on Thanksgiving Day now as an adult, it’s about conjuring up childhood food memories that connect me to people in my life that have passed but whose spirits still influence me so greatly in the kitchen. I see my g...