Central America

"Harvest of Empire": You're Gonna Reap Just What You Sow

Los Rakas: Show Preview

Blue Bottle's New Small Lot Coffee Series

All through December, SFoodie is bringing you local gift ideas for the food obsessives in your life. The other day the kind folks at Blue Bottle sent over a little tin of special small-lot Ethiopian Nekisse coffee that retails for $15 for a third of a pound. We were initially struck by the high pri ... More >>

5 Ways to Try Alligator in San Francisco

Alligator dishes are popping up around San Francisco like crawfish in a running creek. Justin Simoneaux, executive chef of Boxing Room and from the small Cajun country town of Raceland, La., speculates why Bay Area eaters might be attracted to the reptile. "All these crazy Cajun alligator hunting sh ... More >>

Another Poll Shows Marijuana Legalization Has Overwhelming Support

If only President Barack Obama was marijuana, then he'd win reelection by a landslide.Marijuana legalization enjoys a 20-point advantage in the polls among American adults, according to a recent survey Rasmussen Reports. Fifty-six percent of Americans polled support the notion of marijuana being tax ... More >>

Live Review, 5/11/12: S.F. Symphony Looks Back at the City's Colorful Past in 'Barbary Coast'

San Francisco Symphony: Barbary Coast and Beyond Friday, May 11, 2012 Davies Symphony Hall Better than: Your grandparents' (but maybe not your great-great grandparents') symphony. When you hear there are gonna be banjo pickers and fiddlers on the stage, you tend to expect a high-lonesome hoedown o ... More >>

Meet Heather Meader-McCausland, Whose Alaskan Photos Make SFO Less Depressing

Heather Meader-McCausland grew up in rural Alaska, 100 miles above the Arctic Circle, and in Sonoma County, Calif. She was born to Elaine and Fred Meader, the filmmakers who produced the Alaskan documentary "Year of the Caribou," so nobody was surprised when she picked up a camera. Her photo exhibit ... More >>

De La Paz's Shark Senesac On the End Of Coffee

​​In an effort to chart the ever-expanding specialty coffee scene in the Bay Area, we've been engaging a selection of local coffee personalities to pick their brains about why coffee and why now. Today we talk with Shark Senesac of De La Paz Coffee.---You're in the process of opening a new ... More >>

Hear This: Los Rakas' Raka Rich Wants You to 'Check Yo B*tch'

Panama-born, Oakland-raised Raka Rich is best known as one-half of the rap group Los Rakas (with cousin Raka Dun), but he's also a solo artist who is planning to drop a new EP sometime in 2012. Today we have a taste of that release with a new single called "Check Yo B*tch." With its gentle, R&B- rem ... More >>

Los Dios de la Cine

Whisk on Wheels, New Argentine Food Truck

Photos by Luis Chong​SFoodie was eager to check out Whisk On Wheels, a 2-month-old food truck operated by an Argentine chef. So far, Argentine food trucks like Tanguito and El Porteno have enjoyed great success in the city, though the East Bay's Primo's Parrilla food truck called it quits e ... More >>

Alleged Conspirator in 1989 Salvadorean Jesuit Priest Massacre, May Live in Bay Area

Ignacio Ellacuria, one of the priests murdered in 1989.​Last week, a Spanish judge indicted and issued arrest warrants for 20 Salvadorean ex-military officials in the high-profile 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests during that country's Civil War. The case has significant San Francisco connection ... More >>

Mochilla's B Plus on Endtroducing, J-Dilla, and the Last Ten Years of Hip-Hop Photography

Los Angeles-based photographer and filmmaker Brian Cross (or B as he's commonly known) has blazed a distinct path through independent media over the past two decades. A native of Limerick, Ireland, Cross moved to L.A. in the early '90s and quickly became a go-to hip-hop photographer starting with a ... More >>

The Making of a MS-13 Gangster

How does this happen?​The youngest of the 24 accused Mara Salvatrucha gangsters operating in the Bay Area are barely 20 years old. They were still minors -- or had just turned 18 -- when they were arrested in 2008 during the Opeation Devil Horns gang take down. Since then, they have been indicted ... More >>

A Rat's Life: MS-13 Snitches Run Wild While Turning State's Evidence

Saturday: Rum and Pana-Mania at Smuggler's Cove

Lou Bustamante​Abuelo Rum at Smuggler's Cove Where: Smuggler's Cove, 650 Gough (at McAllister), 869-1900 When: Sat., Jan. 22, 5 p.m. sharp Cost: Free with Facebook RSVP The rundown: Put on your finest montuno and open up your locks for Pana-mania, as rum nucleus Smuggler's Cove hosts Rica ... More >>

International Warfare In San Francisco

Tempers flared in San Francisco last week...​Last week we wrote about a strange, albeit international, incident in the south of the city. A menacing group of hoodlums surrounded a stumbling drunk and asked him his country of origin. Not liking the answer, the leader of the pack said he was from a ... More >>

Which Is Witch

Video: Ukulele Lovers Swarm Castro Theatre By the Hundreds for Epic Strum-Off and 'Mighty Uke' Screening

Creatures of the ukulele cult in their natural habitat.This past Sunday, September 26, hundreds of ukulele devotees packed the Castro Theatre for a shot at breaking the world record with a mass strum-off. Their occasion? A screening of Mighty Uke, a new documentary on the history of the Hawaiia ... More >>

Oakland's Santero, a Santeria Priest, Beckons Spirits With His Beats

Tanit SakakiniSantero​Eric Santero, the Latino musician & DJ, will bring what he calls a "multimedia and multidisciplinary performance" to the upcoming All Shook Down Festival in North Beach on July 25. Recently added to the lineup, Santero's hip-hop & reggaeton stylings share an aesthetic ... More >>

An Immigrant's Heart

To survive the ordeal of escaping Guatemala, Julia needed a big Heart. But not this big.

Salty Peanut Pleasure Pulses through Heart's Fibrillation

Judy ParkerThe Valencia Street wine bar tosses together a snacky mix of peanuts, chiles, and fried sardines.​Heart's aptly named Fibrillation ($5) looked like something we'd gobble at Burmese standby Yellow Pa Taut, not a wine bar. Indeed, the glistening crunchy peanuts laced with green onions ... More >>

Don't Sound Like a Tool: How to Pronounce Coffee Regions

​Don't Sound Like a Tool is SFoodie's series of audio pronunciation guides to sort-of-common-but-not-obvious words we keep encountering on wine lists and menus. No more shame, no more pointing, no more godawful imitations of a language you don't speak.Five years ago, when buying coffee all you ... More >>

Vegan Fast-Food Loving Hut Opens in San Francisco Centre Food Court

​The Loving Hut, an international vegan fast-food chain with one San Francisco branch in Chinatown, just opened up a stall in the ground-floor food court of the San Francisco Centre on Saturday. Serving less than a dozen East-West dishes in the $5-$9 range ― nuggets of indeterminate provenance, ... More >>

VendrTV Spotlights the Pupusa-Making Magic of Estrellita's Snacks

With her star-studded smile, Estrellita's Snacks proprietor Maria del Carmen Flores is the latest San Francisco street food vendor to be featured on VendrTV, a nationally-focused Web show hosted by Daniel Delaney. In this cute episode, Delaney travels to the Alemany Farmers' Market to learn the stor ... More >>

Comfort Food: At home on the Nicaraguan strip

How to Make Nacatamales, the Other Hot Pocket

Jen SiskaAdelita's nacatamal, exposed.​Not only did this week's review give me an excuse to eat queso frito over and over again ― even reading the words "fried cheese" makes the heart of any native Midwesterner swell ― it meant walking around the Mission sampling nacatamales. And then losing y ... More >>

We Got the Beats

El Mundo de Mando: A Texas Taco Blogger's Crawl Through the Mission

Mando Rayo The holy trinity at Taqueria Pancho Villa.Austin, Tex., taco blogger Mando Rayo (aka El Mundo de Mando of TacoJournalism) was in Cali this week, getting his first-ever taste of S.F. flavor. How did the Mission stack up to taco culture in Central Texas? Read on, homie. Ahh, San Fra ... More >>

Luna Tics

Black Magic Spells

Sanctuary for Salvadoran Food

Give me your tired, your poor, but most definitely your pupusas.

In Defense of Creepy Crawlies

Can You See It?

Song Sung New

A weekly listing of new restaurants around town

A weekly listing of new restaurants around town

A weekly listing of new restaurants around town

A weekly listing of new restaurants around town

Sonny's Days

In which we meet a donkey, some crows, and Sonny Smith, who is not a folk singer

Weighty Matter

La Santaneca

Three Best Murals

Postscript

Ride of Passage

Hear This

Mission: Possible

Bitch, Bitch, Bitch

Politicos, prudes, and the paranoid protest the programming heard on Bay Area radio stations to the highest authority in the land -- the Federal Communications Commission

Paper Trails