Sans Cart

San Francisco street food hit celebrity status a while back, but now we’ve reached a new plateau: the street-food celebrity chef. The duties are the same as for ordinary restaurant-food celebrity chefs — they must be able to hold a crowd without displaying any skills at all in the kitchen, just like Anthony Bourdain. In our case, that crowd will be spread in front of the panel discussion “The Street Food Movement: SF Hearts the Cart,” which takes place sans food, sans even an amuse-bouche, but with some of the leading chefs of the movement: Anthony Myint (Mission Street Food), Brian Kimball (Magic Curry Kart), Steven Gdula (Gobba Gobba Hey), and Charles Phan (a regular restaurant-food celebrity chef, to be sure, but street food is unhinged that way). Leading the talk is moderator and SF Weekly contributor Tamara Palmer. She plans to tackle important issues (permits, technique), but she could just make it all about salt, for example, or potholes. After the discussion, the crowd fans out to 111 Minna, where the aforementioned chefs make the food that made them famous, joining the Crème Brûlée Cart, Bike Basket Pies, the liquid-nitrogen–fueled Smitten Ice Cream, and more.
Thu., Oct. 29, 6:30 p.m., 2009