Foods

Five-Dollar Delicious: Duc Loi's Vietnamese Sandwiches

Mixed Milk Cheeses: The Tasty Joys of Combining Goat and Cow

Often, cheese makers blend milk from different animals to create flavors a single milk can't provide. La Tur, a three milk cheese (sheep, cow and goat) from Caseficio dell'Alta Langa in Italy, is an exceptional example.  But sheep- and goat-milk cheese producers blend milk for a functional re ... More >>

Duc Loi Kitchen's Excellent $5 Vietnamese Sandwiches

One-month-old Duc Loi Kitchen seems destined to become the Saigon Sandwiches of the Mission. Last time SFoodie visited this food counter inside Duc Loi Supermarket, we were the last customer of the temporary outpost of Mission Burger back in 2010. Duc Loi delivers on both quantity and quality, ... More >>

Bi Rite Bars: A Taste Tour of the Newest Bars

We love Bi-Rite Creamery and their signature Salted Caramel ice cream, and we love Michael Mischer and his designer chocolate bars with their creative inclusions, so how could we not be excited about their love child, the new Bi-Rite Creamery chocolate bars? After Bi-Rite private-label chocolate lo ... More >>

Salumeria: Come for the Sandwich, Stay for the Potato Salad (And Maybe Another Sandwich)

Judging by the number of customers devouring sandwiches and heading back for seconds, the upcoming Salumeria deli and sandwich shop should have no problem winning over a crowd. During a three-hour lunchtime pop-up the Flour Water offshoot held today at the Window, foodies had the chance to preview ... More >>

San Francisco's 10 Best Sandwiches

​Given the care that San Francisco cooks lavish on the humblest of vegetables, it's no surprise that sandwich-making in this town qualifies as an artisanal pursuit. Even journeyman makers hunt down the perfect bread for their masterpieces and whisk together small-batch mayonnaise. In fact, we're s ... More >>

Forget Skiing, It's Cheese This Weekend

​This weekend, it's Disneyland for cheese, expect instead of rides there are tours of cheese making facilities; instead of performances and plush, strolling characters there are cheese seminars, authors, and producers; and instead of crappy food at the end of long lines it's all cheese.  &nbs ... More >>

Chocolate and Spirits: Coco Delice Boozes It Up

​Coco Délice has embraced alcohol. The Emeryville based chocolatier, long a purveyor of premium bon bons in classic French style, has recently added adult-beverages to its fillings. For their newest additions, the chocolate shop tapped Berkeley-based Bison Organic Brewing. The result: Bison Bla ... More >>

Goat vs. Sheep vs. Cow: It's a Cheesemaker's Yogurt Face-Off

​ Vs. ​ One is an anomaly, two is a signal, and three is a trend. We found three Norcal cheese makers taking a new path in milk-life-extension: yogurt. We tasted through cow, goat, and sheep yogurt offerings to help you decide what to consider for breakfast. First up: Lactose-free cow-milk y ... More >>

Jade Pepper Chocolate Blends the Pacific Islands Into Treats

​Jade chocolates caught our attention when they qualified as a finalist at the Good Food Awards tasting we attended. These chocolatiers focus on "blending teas and spices from Asia and the Pacific Islands into chocolates," and their product line delivers assertively on that promise.&nbs ... More >>

Roostertail: 1950s American Plates Meet S.F.'s 2012 Palate

Jablow's Meats Launches a Pastrami Pop-Up

Jablow's MeatsJablow's pastrami sandwich with potato salad, and pickle.​Dan Jablow, a cooking school grad and former Fatted Calf employee, has been refining his recipes for lunch meats for more than a year, showing up at the monthly New Taste Marketplace events to test them out with the public. Op ... More >>

Golden Glass: Slow Food, Wine, and Free Tickets on Us

​ Hey, want to go to Slow Food's Golden Glass event? SFoodie has two tickets to award to the person who writes the best one-line description of a wine, real or imagined, in the comments section below. If you like Italian wines, you'll like the Golden Glass wine and food event, and we may even be ... More >>

Ryan Farr of 4505 Meats Talks Whole Beast Butchery

In the more than two years since Ryan Farr and his wife, Cesalee, founded 4505 Meats, the artisanal butcher has achieved nationwide fame. He has been called a "rock star butcher" by the New York Times and recently appeared on the Martha Stewart Show. In Whole Beast Butchery, Farr provides step-by- ... More >>

Eat All the Cupcakes at S.F.'s Cupcake Challenge

What: S.F. Cupcake Challenge Where: Mezzanine When: Sun., January 14, 1-4 p.m. Cost: $40 The rundown: Cupcakes are here to stay and you can either get on board or... move to the moon? Because pretty much every inch of Earth's surface is covered with adorable little cupcakeries. Give yourself ov ... More >>

Fresh Eats: Gordon Edgar Chooses His Favorite New Cheeses

Gordon Edgar's 2011 Finds: New Cheeses to Discover

​SFoodie is calling up food types around the city to ask them about their favorite discovery of the past year, whether it's new or ancient, an ingredient or a person. We'll be running their responses through the end of the year. By this point in his career, Gordon Edgar, head cheese-buyer at R ... More >>

Belcampo Meats Wants to Bring Animals All the Way From Farm to (Your) Fork

Royalty-Free Images/FlickrAngus cattle, like the kind currently chewing its cud at Belcampo Meat's farm.​For a cow to magically transform into the ribeye steak sitting in your fridge, the animal travels through numerous middlemen: From the farmer to the feedlot, the feedlot to the slaughterhouse, ... More >>

Top 7 S.F. Bay Area Chocolates to Send Home and Make People Jealous Happy

Visions of these will be dancing through some heads.​Shopping for the most discerning person on your list? Looking for something for someone you hardly know at all but still have to buy a gift for? Well, this list is for you! With the exception of nobody, everyone loves chocolate, so give the ... More >>

The Beefbreaker: Oscar Yedra Wants His Cut of the New Meat-Carving Movement

Umami Burger and the Melt: Science Meets Fast Food with Muddled Results

Il Cane Rosso's Rich, Surprising Pancetta

Alan Scherstuhl​ The current iteration of San Francisco-style pancetta seems at times a cheap ploy by the fancier restaurants in town at making good old American bacon an elegant side dish for the peaking trend of dignified brunches. It's too often straight slabs of seasoned pork that bear a s ... More >>

Meet and Eat With Your Favorite Cheesemakers

​What: Meet the Cheesemaker, a California Artisan Cheese Guild Fundraiser Where:The Cheese School of San Francisco When: Fri., November 11, 7-9 p.m. Cost: $35 The rundown: Every year, the Cheese School in North Beach hosts a bunch of California's cheesemakers to raise funds for the Califor ... More >>

Humphry Slocombe Introduces New Line of Caramel Candies

Humphry Slocombe​Humphry Slocombe gets a lot of attention for its ice cream, but there are little toppings and treats (like frosted peanuts and duck fat pecan pie) that comparatively fly as much under the radar as is possible for this popular parlor. One new such addition: a line of in-house c ... More >>

Leatherneck Steakhouse: Veterans' Club Serves Classic American Fare

Prime Rib Shabu House Finally Reopens

Earl G./YelpPrime Rib Shabu House.​Three months ago, I was finishing up a review of the new Chinese-America shabu shabu restaurants in the Sunset and Richmond. My favorite? Prime Rib Shabu House, the two-year-old restaurant opened by Luke Sung (Isa's founding chef) and Patrick Wong. Four days bef ... More >>

Is Organic Produce Actually Cheaper to Grow?

​Yeah, yeah, yeah: Certified organic produce is more expensive than conventional, and the premium prices that organic farmers can charge make their farms more than twice as profitable as conventional farms. But a new study suggests that organic grains, fruits, and vegetables don't have to be so e ... More >>

Your Seasonal Produce Guide: Cranberry Beans

A new weekly series on what to do with your farmers' market impulse buys and CSA box surprises. Cranberry beans are part of Phaseolus vulgaris family of shelling beans. The cranberry beans we typically see here are of the Cargamanto or Crimson varieties. Cargamanto beans are cream colored with da ... More >>

Cheese Affinage? New York Times: Pro. Rainbow's Head Cheesemonger: Meh.

​Yesterday, the New York Times published a feature on affinage, the practice of properly aging cheeses until they hit that perfect moment for eating. The article profiled several East Coast cheesemongers who practice affinage, most notably Murray's Cheese Shop in Manhattan, which has a master ... More >>

Margherita-ville: Checking Out FiDi's Cupola Pizzeria and Pachino

Jonathan KauffmanCupola Pizzeria's pizza margherita, $13.50​Generation X seemed to devote a lot of time in our 20s complaining about being in the shadow of the baby boom generation. So I feel a certain empathy for the pizza restaurants that opened over the spring and summer this year, in the shado ... More >>

Comprehensive Guide to CSAs in San Francisco: Meat, Eggs, Dairy, Etc.

A CSA meat package from Marin Sun Farms​Many people tend to think of CSAs only for fruits and vegetables, but in the Bay Area we're also blessed with a variety of meatier options. We've done the work of finding the farmers; now all you have to do is place your order and start up the grill. In ... More >>

Fog Harbor Fish House Cooks Sustainable Fish For the Masses

Photos by W. Blake GrayTrout ($18)​Fog Harbor Fish House recently became the first restaurant on Fisherman's Wharf to commit to using 100% sustainable seafood. SF Weekly had never written anything about the restaurant, so I joined the flock of German and French tourists walking down Embarcader ... More >>

The Five Best Breads in San Francisco

J Rodman Jr./flickrAcme baguettes.Back in the 1980s, the Bay Area led the renaissance of artisanal baking, and you can still sense that depth of experience in every complimentary bread plate, every $8 sandwich, and every grocery store in San Francisco. We take good bread for granted, no longer paus ... More >>

Swedish Chocolatier Cooks Up $29 Chocolates with Goat Cheese, Cigars

Photos by W. Blake Gray​When Swedish chocolatier Emanuel Andrén offered to visit us with chocolate truffles that cost $29 each, we were intrigued. We thought they might be the most expensive chocolates in the world, but were disappointed to learn they aren't even in the ballpark. Still ... More >>

Draeger's Makes American Kobe Beef Pastrami Sweet

​Viognier restaurant, atop the impressively upscale San Mateo grocery store Draeger's, is moving into meat production, and was kind enough to drop us off a taste of its first product, American Kobe Beef Pastrami. The idea is fascinating. Pastrami, usually made from beef brisket -- one of the ... More >>

Fresh Eats: Cypress Grove Delivers a PsycheDillic '60s Flashback

Organic Chicken Actually Proven to Be Safer

Alarmed by the recent outbreak of drug-resistent salmonella in ground turkey, which killed one Californian woman? The way to protect yourself might be to buy organic. Yesterday, NPR reported that a University of Maryland study found that big organic chicken farms have much lower levels of antibio ... More >>

Hey FDA: Pick On Big Food Producers, Not Little Ones

Genaro Molina/Los Angeles TimesDanielle Fetzer and Steven Pociunas, volunteers at Rawesome Foods in Venice, after the store was raided​After a year-long investigation, agents from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration joined state and local authorities yesterday to bust owners of a small Venic ... More >>

San Francisco's Top Five Hot Dogs

John BirdsallDa Beef's Chicago-style hot dog.​Like Shakespeare plays, biblical parables, and that damn Pachelbel's Canon, the hot dog is the theme on which a million variations are played. The frankfurter has been upscaled and deep-fried, pressed into lettuce as well as Acme rolls. SFoodie has eat ... More >>

Quince's Rum and Cheese Pairing Is Good for the Rum

Ben Narasin​Quince restaurant continues its series of cheese and spirit pairings this week with rum and artisan cheese ($36, available only in the bar and lounge). While Quince's first effort, Scotch and cheese, is a somewhat established coupling, rum and cheese is far more esoteric. That make ... More >>

Txoko: Brainy Finger Food Could Stand to Be Less Brainy

Freddie's Sandwiches: Still Hot After 85 Years

Duck Eggs: Add Richness To Breakfast

Ben NarasinDuck Eggs (R) vs. Chicken Egg (L)​Like any amateur chef, I'm always looking for new, unknown, reclaimed, or forgotten food or ingredients. Duck eggs fit many of these descriptors. Prized by bakers for their superior protein content and richness, duck eggs are almost never seen in ... More >>

Freddie's Sandwiches: Still Hot After 85 Years

Photos by W. Blake GrayEddie Sweileh, Maura Mancia and Maria López make the sandwiches at Freddie's​Freddie's Sandwiches is tucked away on a quiet corner downhill from North Beach and uphill from Fisherman's Wharf. You'd think the location would be challenging, but owner Ed Sweileh has ... More >>

Tadashi Ono, Japanese Hot Pot Expert, Describes the Real Shabu Shabu

Melissa BarnesShabu shabu at Shabu Pub, which is not traditionally Japanese​While researching this week's review of Chinese-American shabu shabu restaurants in the Richmond and Sunset, I called Tadashi Ono, the chef of Matsuri in New York and co-author of Japanese Hot Pots. I wanted to get a sense ... More >>

M&L Market Still Makes You Follow the Rules for a Pastrami Sandwich

Jonathan KauffmanM&L Market's turkey-pastrami sandwich. This is a half sandwich ($4.20), by the way.​ Now that the SFoodie's 92 is over, I'm returning to a series about restaurants that have been around so long they've slipped into a media black hole. There are three constants about the line ... More >>

Olivier's Butchery Throws Dogpatch a Bone

xdebx//FlickrFrench cuts of meat without TSA hassles​"You know what the funniest thing about Europe is? It's the little differences. I mean, they got the same shit over there that we got here, but it's just...it's just there it's a little different." -Vincent Vega, Pulp FictionOpening next Thursda ... More >>

A Full List of the 92 Best Dishes in S.F. for Fresh Eats

S.F. Rising: Olive Ciabatta from Bakers of Paris

Jonathan KauffmanBakers of Paris's olive ciabatta.​A weekly survey of bread in San Francisco ― the baked and the fried, the artisan and the novelty.Olive Ciabatta Source: Bakers of Paris stand, Inner Sunset Sunday farmers' market (also at Upper Haight, Divisadero, and Fort Mason markets) Price ... More >>

Outside Lands Announces Local Food and Wine Lineup w/ Flour Water, Ritual Coffee, More

Christopher VictorioBecause this will make you hungry.​ Outside Lands has always made an effort to bring in highlights of the local food and wine scene to festival goers. Every year the offerings get a little bigger, and this year's festival is no different. For its return to a three-day forma ... More >>