East Africa

See What $5 Buys You In Bananas, Coffee, Beer, And Other Foods Around the World

A few weeks ago we told you about Buzzfeed's video illustrating what 2,000 calories looks like in everything from bagels to bacon. They've followed it with a video showing what five American dollars will buy you in various foods around the world. Key takeaways: Coffee is at a premium in Italy, you c ... More >>

Arthouse Movie Listings for March 13-19, 2013

Oscar Nominated Shorts: Live Action and Documentary

Bummer's Almanac: Predicting 2013

331 Cortland: Entrepreneurs Share Space and Successes

Crane Worker Finds Gnarly Mammoth Tooth at Central Station Construction Site

San Francisco construction crews dug up an 11,000-year-old woolly mammoth tooth and possibly a jaw yesterday afternoon, more than 100 feet below the surface where the city's Central Station is to be built. Crane operator Brandon Valasik was excavating at the east end of the Transbay Transit Center s ... More >>

Get Ethiopian Food Delivered to Your Door

We recently offered five good reasons to love Good Eggs, a new local company that facilitates the pickup or delivery of food from local artisans. Now we've got one more to add to what will surely be a growing list: Eji's, a caterer of traditional Ethiopian cuisine. Eji Atlaw grew up in Addis Ababa, ... More >>

James Freeman, Blue Bottle Coffee Founder, Just Wrote the Book on Coffee

Any good San Franciscan knows how to muse over a cup of coffee. We can't help but remembering fondly the coffee drinkers at Four Barrel who continued sipping obliviously as two burglars used this hipster hotspot as an attempted escape route last November. I've sat in many a coffee shop, eavesdr ... More >>

CopperWire: How Jam Sessions in Ethiopia Became a Hip-Hop Space Opera

CopperWire is a new hip-hop trio featuring S.F. R&B singer and prodigy Meklit Hadero, rapper Gabriel Teodros, and producer-rapper Burntface (government name: Ellias Fullmore). The group comes with its own mythology: Its debut album, Earthbound, tells the story of three renegades in the year 2089 who ... More >>

Arthouse Movie Listings April 4-10, 2012

Radio Africa & Kitchen: Chef Pops Up in Bayview with a Family-Style Restaurant

​ Chef Eskender Aseged made his name hosting pop-ups for the past seven years. Now he's using that expertise to launch his own family-style restaurant in Bayview next week. Aseged's new restaurant, Radio Africa & Kitchen, started in Aseged's home after he moved to San Francisco from Ethiopia ... More >>

Masterminds 2012: Honoring 10 Extraordinary Bay Area artists

Michael Scott Moore, Former SF Weekly Writer, Kidnapped by Somali Pirates

​Michael Scott Moore, who previously worked as a theater critic for SF Weekly, was reportedly captured by Somali pirates over the weekend while he was traveling to central Somalia to research for his book about Somali pirates. The LA Times reports that Moore was on his way to the airport when 15 m ... More >>

tUnE-yArDs' Merrill Garbus on Her Creative Philosophy, Finding Inspiration in the Bay, and the Wisdom of Steve Jobs

By CHLOE ROTH In 2009, tUnE-yArDs frontwoman Merrill Garbus was lured from Montreal to Oakland by "Love and fear of illegal immigrant status in Canada." Lucky for us. "I started sadly playing a ukulele that my mom had given me," Garbus says. "Though it crossed my mind that being a doctor was probab ... More >>

Illy's Espressamente Cafe Opens Downtown

Johnny O./YelpThe new downtown Illy Espressamente. ​International coffee powerhouse Illy is stretching its espresso-tinged fingers in to the heavily populated world of San Francisco cafes with Espressamente Illy, a high-end cafe now open at 123 Battery. It is Illy's ninth Esspressamente to ope ... More >>

Ann Coulter and Her Awful Comments About Occupy

Shut up, already!​If we can credit Ann Coulter with anything, it's giving people new reasons to despise her -- and that's being polite. She proved her ability to stir up a white-hot hatred among people again when she went on San Francisco's KSFO this morning where she talked about her new book and ... More >>

Red Hot Chili Peppers' New Single Marks the Return of the Funk-Rock Masters

I'm with You, cover design by Damien Hirst​The Red Hot Chili Peppers are back, finally, after a five-year hiatus. Their 10th album, I'm With You, will hit stores on August 30, but in the meantime, patient fans get a sneak peak with "The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie," which RHCP released to ... More >>

AfroUrbanites Throw Second "Modern Ethiopian" Pop-Up in Berkeley

​"The food we cook at home is a lot different from our parents' Ethiopian food," says Faiza Farah, who has begun organizing AfroUrbanites pop-up dinners with Tsedey Seisu. "We stay true to a lot of the techniques and the slow cooking, but we fool around with ingredients. A lot of our stuff is very ... More >>

African-Amazing

Arthouse Movie Listings for May 4-10, 2011

Out with the Kids: Hands-On at Assab

Alex HochmanThis is the neatest your dinner will look all night.​As parents, we're constantly begging our children to be more hands on. We get all exultant over the Zeum or the Exploratorium because they're hands on museums. We peer over our iPhone screens to yell at the kids to turn off the t ... More >>

R.I.P. Poly Styrene, X-Ray Spex Singer and Punk Pioneer

Fabrizio RamoneR.I.P. Poly Styrene​ Legendary punk pioneer and X-Ray Spex frontwoman Poly Styrene, born Marianne Elliott Said, passed away last night from breast cancer at the age of 53. In an unfortunate coincidence with the passing last week of TV on the Radio's Gerard Smith, her new solo al ... More >>

Help S.F. Singer Meklit Hadero Bring Her Music to Ethiopia Next Month

Meklit Hadero​ Ethiopian born, S.F.-based jazz singer Meklit Hadero is planning a big trip to Ethiopia next month to perform for the people of her native country. It's her second such visit, after Hadero designed a similar journey in 2009. Hadero will perform for free in two places in Ethiopia ... More >>

Oh Cancer, Up Yours: Appreciating Poly Styrene

​ A tiny, curly-haired creature pressed into a life-size test tube, smiling just slightly with braces and wrapped in a bright yellow coat with dark tights. Posing on the cover of the landmark X-Ray Spex album, Germ-Free Adolescents, in 1978, Poly Styrene (née Marianne Joan Elliott-Said) looke ... More >>

Q&A with Bicycle Coffee Co.'s Brad Butler and Brandon McKee

Alex HochmanCousins on bikes: Bicycle Coffee's Brad Butler, left, and Brandon McKee.​In June 2009, Bicycle Coffee Co. began delivering freshly roasted organic, fair trade, single-origin Arabica beans to stores and cafes via bicycle. Bicycle Coffee sets up at the Grand Lake farmers' market on S ... More >>

Soul-Funk Outfit The Budos Band Wants To Harsh Your Mellows, Hippies

Lotsa people, lotsa attitude.​You've got to love New Yorkers for their blatant honesty. Speaking to Jared Tankel, baritone saxophone player in 10-piece Staten Island global-funk group The Budos Band, he makes it clear to aspiring rappers that his instrumental band is not interested in collaboratin ... More >>

Globetrotting DJ Maga Bo Recorded Goats in Sudan; Cleared the 'Floor in Zanzibar

Maga Bo​Most of us spend our days planted in a cubicle fantasizing about beaches, historic monuments, and maybe seeing a penguin in its natural habitat. That latest jealousy comes from a conversation with musician, producer, composer, sound engineer -- and non-desk-bound frequent traveler -- DJ Ma ... More >>

Hurrah! California Can Grow Coffee. Is It Worth the Effort?

Michael HutchingsCalifornia coffee, at a premium.​The LA Times food shocked me awake this morning with an article about Jay Ruskey, a farmer near Santa Barbara who was growing, and selling, organic coffee at local farmers' markets. Up until now, the only U.S. state to produce small amounts of coff ... More >>

Friday Night: Roger Waters Turns The Wall Into A Rallying Cry at Oracle Arena

Christopher VictorioRoger Waters performed The Wall at Oracle Arena Friday night.​Roger Waters' 'The Wall' December 3, 2010@ Oracle Arena Better than: A hippie-dippy stoner protest. We don't need no education We don't need no thought control We sang the anthem as school kids. In bong-fuele ... More >>

Don't worry, America. San Francisco knows what's best for you

Afternoon Coffee at Ma*Velous

Yes, you sip it like tea.​ I first heard of the idea of a distinction between morning coffee and afternoon coffee a few years ago, when a barista at a Seattle coffee shop was describing the shop's array of beans on offer. The cafe's Central American and Indonesian beans, he told me, were straightf ... More >>

Fall Arts: A designer and a diva give flavor to "Aida"

Nas and Damian Marley show the wrong way to Africa

"The Expendables": Sly, Dolph, Jason, Jet, and friends get nostalgically brutal

Fresh Eats: SFoodie recommends fried chicken, tortas, and pre-Prohibition beer

All Shook Down: A cross-section of the festival schedule

In Which SFoodie Unwittingly Sounds Like a Tool

Correct no more: It's Sidam-A.​Thanks to a series of comments appearing under our latest "Don't Sound Like a Tool" audio guide, SFoodie learned of a subtle shift in the spelling of an Ethiopian coffee-growing region that has much larger political undertones. We've been happily drinking Sidamo coff ... 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 >>

Who Are You? Who Who?

M.I.A.'s diluted politics

M.I.A.'s Shock Tactics Dilute Her Politics

Image Courtesy of: Grant Gilliland​ M.I.A. thrives on misinterpretation. Her debut album, Arular, was named after her Tamil Tiger dad and released in the midst of the War on Terror with a lead track taunting, "I've got the bombs to make you blow." Her antagonistic resolve arrived at a time when ... More >>

Meklit Hadero takes on the world

Warm Up With Sheba's Authentic Ethiopian Spice

T. PalmerKitfo and tibs wat: Two Ethiopian takes on beef.​Ever read a piece of food writing that made you so hungry you had to experience that same food as soon as possible? That happened when we read our friend Carolyn Alburger's thoughtful profile of Netsanet Alemayehu, chef/proprietor of Sheba ... More >>

Secret Places

A few modest ethnic eateries that are worth checking out.

Golden Ticket

Accidental Tourists

Doc treats Sudanese lost boys as feel-good fodder, ignoring their plight and their history

Real San Francisco

Hyde Street Bistro

Champion of Breakfasts

Eye of the Tigre

Night+Day