Subject: Ethnic and Regional Cuisines

• Comfort drinking at Buca di Beppo

  January 21, 2009

• San Francisco Street Food Top Ten

  July 16, 2008

• Tamales Bay

  April 15, 2009

• One by Day, Another by Night

  Two meals yield different experiences at new downtown Venetian-style restaurant

  September 19, 2007

• Flowering in the Mission

  Unusual Ligurian dishes and fabulous desserts await the food-obsessed at Farina

  September 5, 2007

• It'za Izakaya

  You can get (almost) any kind of Japanese food you want at Hime restaurant

  August 15, 2007

• Hard-Core Sushi

  Sebo raises the bar for quality and variety

  August 1, 2007

• Baby, Te Amo

  Adorable new Italian cafe and wine bar in the Mission already draws many fans

  July 11, 2007

• Closer Than Italy

  Lucky Glen Park gets a new neighborhood hangout

  June 13, 2007

• Palace Feast

  Don't miss the suckling pig or the drunken chicken, but skip the dim sum

  April 18, 2007

• Only in San Francisco

  The sole Istrian restaurant on the West Coast is hiding in plain sight

  March 28, 2007

• Mi Amor

  Let him count the ways this unique Italian restaurant won his heart

  February 14, 2007

• Presents and Future

  The food is as important as the wine list at the excellent Cav Wine Bar & Kitchen

  January 3, 2007

• Omnivorous

  In 2006, San Francisco is still a marvelous place to eat (stop the presses!)

  December 27, 2006

• Girls Gone Mild

  Coastal Mexican cuisine, plus 15 — count 'em, 15 — different margaritas

  December 13, 2006

• Instant Italian

  Perbacco gets it right straight out of the gate

  November 22, 2006

• Three Out of Four

  We like the beautiful decor, excellent service, and interesting drinks more than the uneven food at Bong Su

  September 20, 2006

• Dinner and a Show

  The food duels with presentation at the best little sushi house in San Francisco

  July 19, 2006

• Picnic in the City

  Forget the burgers and brats; we're packing roast beef sushi

  June 28, 2006

• Aix Marks the Spot

  Really good eating at a friendly neighborhood bistro

  April 19, 2006

• Contigo takes a bite out of Catalan

  May 6, 2009

• Beretta: Cocktails, pizza, and a wall of noise on Valencia

  April 29, 2009

• Hot Meal: Schmidt's Deli

  There can't be too many German restaurants in San Francisco to suit us -- we're BIG schnitzel fans! -- so learning that Christiana Schmidt and Isabell Mysyk (owners of the gemütlich East German Walzwerk on South Van Ness) were opening a deli on Folsom brought a tear of joy to our eye. So did the choice of eight different sausages ($8 each), served with sauerkraut, potato salad, and two kinds of mustard (hot and grainy). Pictured above is the excellent, smoky-yet-mild Thüringer bratwurst.

  June 4, 2009

• Nopa offshoot Nopalito offers rustic Mexican fare

  May 13, 2009

• Pop Review: A Taste of Oaxaca on Mission

  Janine Kahn Tucked among the Mission's rampant taquerias, it's possible to find authentic regional Mexican food. An appealing new spot advertises its roots in its name: La Oaxaquena. Its tidy storefront, with tiny blue formica-topped tables and wooden chairs -- there are a few more seats perched at a counter in the back -- is nicely decorated with textiles, pottery, and folk art from its namesake home in Southern Mexico. Janine Kahn The Oaxacan specialties featured on the menu inclu

  May 13, 2009

• Chez Spencer French Taco Truck Drew Crowds to a SOMA Parking Lot Last Night

  French-food-lovin' patrons needed patience to deal with long waitsFrench food from a taco truck? Last night Chez Spencer restaurant rolled out its rehabbed taco wagon (or as the French would say, a camion de taco), dispensing sautéed sweetbreads, escargot "lollipops," and potato-garlic soup from the parking lot of Oil Can Henry's quick lube. Clearly, Spencer on the Go suffered first-night jitters - it took us 45 minutes to get our order of curried frog legs. Chez Spencer chef and owner Lauren

  May 22, 2009

• Former Alice Waters Assistant Turning His Hand to Bento Boxes with a Drop-Dead Sensibility

  Peko-Peko's kakuni, made with pork from Marin Sun FarmsEven in this town, many of us know Japanese food as monster maki, fast-food ramen, and greasy tonkatsu cutlets. Sylvan Brackett wants to change that. The former assistant to Alice Waters is making bento boxes combining authentic Japanese technique and Slow Food sourcing. Make that Sylvan Mishima Brackett. The 33-year-old wants you to know he has a Japanese mom, grew up in a Japanese-style house, and spent two years cooking in Japan. Bracket

  May 21, 2009

• Shanghai comes to Chinatown via Bund

  June 17, 2009

• Puccini and Pinetti's Touristy Location Trumps Its Cuisine

  November 14, 2007

• Tsunami Mission Bay's Boxless Bento: Splurge Worthy

  Janine KahnYeah, we noticed it's not technically in a box.Unless you do sketchy things with other peoples' money for a living, $15 for lunch is probably out of reach. Except on super special occasions, like making it through another week still employed. Next time you have something to celebrate, head to Tsunami Mission Bay (302 King at Fourth St.), which is owned by the same folks who run Nihon Whisky Lounge, Café Abir, and the NOPA sushi bar of the same name. Tsunami's new bento box ($15) offe

  July 20, 2009

• Local Flavor: Two Tastes of Venice at Da Flora

  Meredith Brody Hunters' special: duck livers alla veneziana. Da Flora (701 Columbus at Filbert) has one of the coziest, most charming dining rooms in the city: deep-red walls with interesting art, big windows topped with old ship models, lighting from a Murano glass chandelier and hanging Fortuny lanterns. It's a fantasy of a Venetian ostaria. Owner Flora Gaspar and executive chef Jen McMahon have perfected two must-order dishes that are just as charming: sweet potato gnocchi in she

  July 24, 2009

• Four West Coast Restaurants Changing Sushi As We've Known It

  elkanah5730/FlickrThe new traditionalist: Sebo's Michael Black.​It's ironic -- sushi, a cuisine that fetishizes a few simple, pristine ingredients, just might be the last restaurant genre to pick up the ingredient-centric mantra of modern food. But a sustainable sushi revolution that ignited in San Francisco has gradually spread to other West Coast cities, causing more and more sushi lovers to question where the tuna in their nigiri is from, and whether or not it's depleting global fish st

  August 6, 2009

• Early Bird Special: 54 Mint

  Jen Siska54 Mint's caprese salad.​An early taste of SF Weekly's Wednesday food review. This may be a city whose obsession with thin-crust shows no sign of cooling, but newcomer 54 Mint (16 Mint at Jessie) isn't exactly willing to pander. No, the still-new Italian restaurant in Mint Plaza's sleek Euroscape has a very Sicily-meets-Manhattan sense of itself, one that doesn't include Cali-style pies. Not surprising, since one of the owners here is co-owner of Il Buco in New York City. SF Wee

  August 11, 2009

• 54 Mint offers boldly flavored fare at a charming downtown location

  August 12, 2009

• Ocean Taqueria: Customizable Goodness as Big as a Human Limb

  hypermodern/Flickr And you thought we were exaggerating.Choosing Mexican food usually means heading to the Mission, where the choices are plenty and the competition is stiff. For residents in Ingleside and the Sunset, the choices aren't as many, but there are a few taqueria standouts. One of these is Ocean Taqueria, a hole-in-the-wall on Ocean Avenue that serves good, fresh Mexican food. The meal of choice here is the burrito, which comes in many different forms, shapes, and sizes. You c

  August 19, 2009

• Vegan Eats: Cha-Ya's Japanese Cooking Sticks to Your Ribs

  Hana Gomoku: Sushi rice with kaiware, shiitake, green bean, carrot, lotus root, tofu pouch, yam cake, hijiki, burdock, broccolini, daikon, cauliflower, and zucchini.​We heart eating vegan, but have never felt quite so nourished and satisfied as we have after eating at the recently opened Sunset branch of the Japanese vegan restaurant Cha-Ya (1386 Ninth Ave. at Judah -- also 762 Valencia at 18th St. and 1686 Shattuck at Lincoln, Berkeley). Greeted by a seemingly endless men

  August 20, 2009

• Pace Yourself

  September 9, 2009

• Hot Meal: Liba Falafel Truck

  The falafel sandwich: A handheld mezze platter.​Today marked the San Francisco debut for Liba, Gail Lillian's taco truck turned falafel wagon, splashed with tendril-y design elements and an electric honeydew-green color scheme. Its location: a strip-like lot skirting an old loading dock at 155 De Haro (at Alameda), behind Showplace Square East in the Design Center district, at the base of Potrero Hill. Sweet potato fries come sprinkled with persillade.​ The limited menu offers fala

  September 14, 2009

• You Will Never, Ever Weary of Pizza: A SFoodie Lunch Planner

  ​Tuesday, September 15, 2009 You thought pizza would've been over - oh - about the time you ordered your last Cosmo. But no, you're well onto rye whiskey, but pizza is only proliferating, like Chinese mitten crabs in the Delta. Might as well eat one (a pizza, doofus, not a mitten crab) made at the hand of a genuine Italian pizzaiolo. Go for the Monte Biancho, says SF Weekly critic Meredith Bordy, a pie shingled with tomatoes, mozzarella, prosciutto, and mascarpone: Caffe BaoNecci, 516 Gre

  September 15, 2009

• Early Bird Special: Aicha

  Jen SiskaAicha's kefta tagine (right).​An early nibble from the Weekly's Wednesday food review. Little Aicha (1303 Polk at Bush) showed up in Polk Gulch last June, in the space where De Afghanan Kabob House once ruled. SF Weekly restaurant critic showed up, too, working her way through a series of Moroccan dishes at the modest mom 'n' pop that busts out small (an medium-size) dishes, with prices to match. Vegetables shiny with olive oil. Cinnamon-y chicken baked in the phyllo-like pastry

  September 15, 2009

• Aicha serves flavorful Moroccan food at popular prices

  September 16, 2009

• John's Snack and Deli, the FiDi's Original Mom-Style Taco Fusion

  nerd.loveKimbap sushi, a meaty take on maki.​Long before Kung Fu Tacos began selling Asian-fusion tacos out of a truck in the Financial District, John from John's Snack and Deli was serving Korean fusion from an unassuming convenience store in the same 'hood. At first glance, John's looks like a tiny market with little more to offer beyond Lotto tickets, gum, and cigarettes, but behind the counter lies a small kitchen that serves mom-inspired Korean dishes. Some days, John's mom is actuall

  October 2, 2009

• Why You Should Hear Andrew Coe Talk About Bad Chinese Food Tonight at Omnivore Books

  Ankou/FlickrChop suey, America's gateway dish.​Apparently, we have some New York City bohos to thank (or curse) for the birth of chop suey, the slippery Americanized dish that still shows up at many of the approximately 40,000 Chinese restaurants around the country. Chop suey, a "mixed pieces" hodgepodge of meat cooked quickly with veggies and doused with cornstarch-thickened sauce, has its detractors, and rightly so. But history suggests it single-handedly helped grow America's interest i

  October 8, 2009

• Sweet Beat: Italian Gelato (in Some Very Un-Italian Flavors) at Marco Polo

  Randy F./YelpDurian (left) and mango gelati.​A gelato craving might make you think of heading straight to North Beach this weekend, but Marco Polo Italian Ice Cream in Parkside provides authentic, homemade gelato with an array of unique flavors, minus the trek across town. The tiny, no-frills shop serves gelato made daily in its kitchen with fresh ingredients. You won't find shiny displays, cute cups, and uniformed employees, but you will have some of the best gelato available in San Franc

  October 9, 2009

• Beijing Restaurant, Yao Ming's favorite S.F. spot, offers unusual delights

  October 14, 2009

• Organizers at U.C. Berkeley Want to Make the World's Longest California Roll. Why?

  revjim5000/FlickrThe length to beat: 300 feet.​Yeah, this is how we roll: Food history may be made on Sunday, Nov. 8, when a group in Berkeley attempts to make the world's longest California roll. Eight years ago, a group in Maui set a record for a 300-foot-long roll. The Cal organizers hope to beat the record and "bring the California roll record back to Cal!" Eaters, you will be able to eat the results of the sushi made with crab (or, um, krab), cucumber, and avocado, all wrapped in vin

  October 26, 2009

• Muguboka offers homey Korean fare that goes beyond meat

  October 28, 2009

• Early-Bird Special: Yu-Zen

  cygnoir/FlickrYu-Zen's futo maki.​An early nibble from the Weekly's Wednesday food review. We all know the taste of mid-grade sushi-joint food like we know the taste of a McDonald's burger: starchy tempura, elaborately gooshy fantasy rolls, watery miso soup. Get something better, and it seems like revelation. That's the case at Yu-Zen (4036 Balboa at 42nd Ave.), a no-frills Outer Richmond sushi bar where the sprawling menu offers up modest delights in the form of chirashi sushi, izakaya

  November 3, 2009

• Yu-Zen and the art of sushi

  November 4, 2009

• A Little Slice of Succulence in the 'Hood: A SFoodie Lunch Planner

  phxpma/FlickrAll eyes here.​Thursday, November 12, 2009 It's the Tenderloin, for god's sake, not some food court in Danville -- you expect a little atmosphere. Once the food arrives, you won't notice, especially if you order the extra-succulent chicken tikka masala, saag dal (lentils and spinach), and garlic naan: Pakwan, 501 O'Farrell (at Jones), 776-0160. And it's all cheap as hell, which makes the whole Tenderloin divey thing seem downright charming. Follow us on Twitter: @SFoodie

  November 12, 2009