Food + Drink Archives

13Feb

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

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

19Dec

By Thomas SmithNo Comments

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

29Nov

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

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

25Nov

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

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

23Nov

By Sean AngNo Comments

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

20Nov

By Juanita MORE!No Comments

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...

SF’s Best Christmas Pop-Up Bar Comes Back Next Week

18Nov

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Food + Drink

SF’s Best Christmas Pop-Up Bar Comes Back Next Week

The concept behind San Francisco's Deck The Halls is a bit cringe — but it's a frivolously festive staple that offers a warm hug., time after time. ‘Tis the season for all things upbeat and jovial. (Well… it’s almost that season; let’s get through Thanksgiving first before we start looping in Mariah Carey.) And there’s something inextricably esoteric when the December holiday season descends on San Francisco. Drag queens skate on ice. Massive gingerbread houses pop up inside swanky hotel lobbies. The temperature chills, requiring us to all wear slightly thicker outerwear. Among the other seasonal tickets that unwrap this time of year are holiday-themed pop-up bars — perhaps the only iteration of the “Instagram-worthy” ploy worth praise. Of the dozen that temporarily open in SF a...

The Bay Area Is Experiencing a Pastrami Renaissance

18Nov

By Thomas Smith5 Comments

Food + Drink

The Bay Area Is Experiencing a Pastrami Renaissance

The San Francisco Bay Area has given birth to an uncountable amount of food trends. And, now, it's home to a carnivorous resurgence. As an Ashkenazi Jew, eating good deli food is a spiritual experience for me. For years, the Bay Area’s relative lack of good delis was a sore spot. I love our region’s bizarre, intense food culture. But sometimes, a Jew just needs a decent pastrami sandwich. Thankfully, the Bay Area can finally deliver that. In fact, our region is currently in the midst of a pastrami renaissance. It’s almost as thrilling as when Emily Winston, a self-described queer Berkeley Jew, beat those loud-mouthed New Yorkers as their own bagel game. Here are three places in the Bay Area that are leading our pastrami renaissance. Pyro's pastrami at Delirama When the pre...

5 SF Alternatives to Cooking Thanksgiving at Home

18Nov

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Food + Drink

5 SF Alternatives to Cooking Thanksgiving at Home

When the thought of rotating a sheet pan seems too much inside your San Francisco domicile, off-load the cooking tasks, besties. We’re all busy. We’re all exhausted. We’re all overstimulated. But we, too, are enough… regardless if we make a Thanksgiving dinner this year. If you’re like us and are not planning on lifting a finger for Turkey Day this year, he’s a quick rundown on some hyperlocal offerings/ideas to take the stress out of making (most of or all of) the feast at home. Maybeck’s Thanksgiving takeout dinner when you want to treat yourself, but don’t want to dirty a plate. The resto’s multi-course offering serves up to four dishes that include brussels sprouts, a fall salad, cranberry sauce, sausage and sage stuffing, turkey breast, and much more. More info. Get...

5 Autumn Treats in San Francisco Worth Breaking Keto

18Nov

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Food + Drink

5 Autumn Treats in San Francisco Worth Breaking Keto

San Francisco is filled with maple treats, pumpkin muffins, and so many more fall delights worth seeing your ketone levels drop. Pumpkin spice gets all the spotlight this time of year — or at least it feels that way in crescent years. And this isn’t a bash against the autumnal spice; we’ll drink PSLs until we’re orange in the face. This considered, there are so many other flavors to tickle your tastebuds with this time of year. Maples and toasted nuts afford a specific coziness; ginger warms both the belly and brain; cinnamon is at the forefront of our minds. Fortunately for us in San Francisco, there’s no shortage of places to indulge in all the aforenoted tastes. Here are our favorite fall treats in SF for 2022 that are absolutely worth breaking ketosis for. T...