Subject: Matthew Stafford

• Early Bird Special: The Broken Record

  Jen SiskaHoodies and ball caps allowedIf you've ever wondered what the hell a gastropub is, get the ultimate schooling by reading SF Weekly food critic Matthew Stafford's review of the Broken Record (1166 Geneva at Edinburgh) in the Excelsior. Think bar food done by serious chefs who actually love the genre, without a whisker of the attitude that'd make you think twice about dressing in your favorite broken-in black skinnylegs and scuffed-up Vans. Stafford plows through house-smoked pigmeat samm

  June 2, 2009

• Power Breakfast: Joe's Special

  September 9, 2008

• Destination: Mission

  September 12, 2008

• Caribbean Cuisine: San Rafael's Sol Food

  October 3, 2008

• Happy Hundredth, John's Grill

  John's Grill celebrated its hundredth birthday a few weeks ago, and as a longtime fan of Old San Francisco and the works of Dashiell Hammett, I made sure to help observe the occasion. Hammett figures into the equation because at one point in his magnum opus, "The Maltese Falcon," gumshoe Sam Spade ducks into John's for a quick meal of chops, potatoes and sliced tomatoes before heading to Burlingame on a bum steer. I myself was on the trail of one of the 8-cent martinis the bar would be offering

  November 28, 2008

• Lake Tahoe: From Alpine Anaheim to Temple of Cutting-Edge Cal Cuisine

  By Matthew Stafford The first time I headed up to Lake Tahoe a decade or so ago, I figured the place would be lined with rustic, pine-timbered ski lodges where grizzled mountain men grilled trout fresh from the lake and served it on a plank with a few huckleberries and a mug of hard cider. Imagine my disappointment when upon arrival at the lake's southern shores I beheld instead a sort of alpine Anaheim brimming with pizza parlors, chop suey joints, frat-boy cantinas, golden arches and (a favor

  December 17, 2008

• The Fire Inside's Delightful

  One of the finest aspects of the urban holiday experience is meeting friends for a hot toddy in an elegant and festively decorated saloon: a modern-day variation on those ancient winter festivals our forebears conjured up to distance the damp, cold darkness. My favorite rendezvous is the Big Four, a cozy little bar just off the Huntington Hotel lobby at Taylor and California, where the questing merrymaker can sip a perfectly crafted cocktail by the crackling hearth while the resident piano man n

  December 18, 2008

• This New Year's Eve, Out with the Old

  By Matthew Stafford New Year's Eve - known to legendary boozer Humphrey Bogart as "amateur night" - is a holiday fraught with potholes and land mines. On this wind-chilled evening of manufactured revelry, people from every walk of life take it upon themselves to have a great time or die trying. This grim determination to usher in the new year at a transcendent, life-altering level is as doomed to failure as any keenly anticipated dinner cruise or senior prom. The barkeep runs out of the good st

  December 31, 2008

• Mail Call: The Frosting Goes Where?

  As previously reported, we receive a lot of stupid stuff in the mail. As the editorial assistant, and thus the mail maven, I feel it's my duty to bring you the absolute best of the worst. Yesterday, we received a letter bomb. A chocolate letter bomb.A note arrived for one of our esteemed food writers, Matthew Stafford. It felt...squishy. And leaky. Due to the fact that I'm a naturally curious person and have little to no common sense, I opened the letter, which was somewhat difficult because it

  March 6, 2009

• Filmed on the Body 2

  Week 2 of the San Francisco International Film Festival

  April 25, 2001

• The Whole Truth

  The rise and fall of a dot-com

  April 18, 2001

• Filmed on the Body

  The 44th annual S.F. International Film Festival gets sexy, with women on top -- and just about everywhere else

  April 18, 2001

• Letters to the Editor

  January 3, 2001

• Letters to the Editor

  November 1, 2000

• Capsule Reviews

  April 26, 2000

• Capsule reviews

  At All Costs; Close-Up; Eeny Meeny; The Jazzman From the Gulag; Mask of Desire; Handsome Arno; Nowhere to Hide; Our Song; Return of the Idiot; Seduced and Abandoned; This Years Love; Trixie; Voyages; Wisconsin Death Trip

  April 19, 2000

• Cinema Paradiso

  The 43rd San Francisco International Film Festival

  April 19, 2000

• Early Bird Special: Contigo

  Jen SiskaContigoAfter scarfing pork-belly bocaditos and octopus salad at Contigo in Noe Valley, SF Weekly food critic Matthew Stafford gets all dreamy thinking about the vacay he took in Barcelona. Stafford thinks chef-owner Brett Emerson gets all the details right in this local simulacrum of the Catalan tapas bar. Drool over the full review later today at sfweekly.com. Meantime, here's a taste: The similarities between the Bay Area and Catalonia are striking. Both regions have a fierce independ

  May 5, 2009

• Local Flavor: The Five Best Doughnuts in San Francisco

  m.bibelot via FlickrDoughnuts from Dynamo: The maple-bacon is in the top row, centerThere may be no American food more enduring than the doughnut. Food snobs, vegans, cops -- who doesn't love a crusty sinker or a fat glazed dunker? In honor of National Doughnut Day, we thought we'd offer our guide (listed in no particular order) to the city's five best. Grab an extra napkin -- this could get messy. 1. Raspberry bombolino ($2 for the small size, $2.50 for large) at I Preferiti di Boriana in the

  June 5, 2009

• It Isn't a Party Until Somebody Cries: The Week in SFoodie

  • It was an unapologetic week of eating, with a tear or two thrown in for good measure. New SFoodie blogger Mary Ladd was busted gorging on the tasty but little-known savory foods at Mission Pie. Meanwhile, Matthew Stafford downed a mai tai (or two) in anticipation of summer. • We dropped our bag lunch in the bin and checked out two places still too new to have scuff marks on the baseboards or gum under the seats: Marino in Hayes Valley and Wexler's in the FiDi. • SFoodie blogger Tamara

  June 19, 2009

• Summer Brewery Guide Goes Down Like a Coupla Cold Ones

  Tambako the Jaguar/FlickrSlake your thirst -- for nerd-grade beer knowledge, that is. Today's SF Weekly comes bearing a nifty summer guide that includes a stein-by-stein breakdown of the city's breweries by SFoodie blogger and Weekly restaurant critic Matthew Stafford. Eager for a taste of Shock and Awe Double Daddy, Fleishhacker Stout, or Daddy's Chocolate Milk? First have a read at www.sfweekly.com, then head out for some serious guzzling at places like Magnolia, 21st Amendment, and Elizabeth

  June 24, 2009

• Early Bird Special: Little Skillet

  Jen SiskaAh, summer, when a young man's fancy turns to chicken 'n' waffles. What is it about the Harlem classic -- an inter-meal mashup of homely comforts -- that's poised for revival? In the Tenderloin, Gussie's Chicken and Waffles is due to drop any day now. And halfway between AT&T and South Park, techies and others escape office cubes to line up for chicken 'n' waffles (plus neo-Southern favorites) at takeout-only Little Skillet (360 Ritch at Townsend). Weekly restaurant critic Matthew Staff

  June 30, 2009

• Be the Change You Wish to Eat: The Week in SFoodie

  shunafish/FlickrAppleman: armed with new challenges.• It was a week all about moving on, starting with Meredith Brody's Hot Meal report on Five, the luxe-y Berkeley hotel eatery that marks the re-appearance of beloved S.F. chef Scott Howard. She's dreaming about a return. • Mary Ladd tracked another re-appearance: After breaking hearts for departing the Mission, Suriya Thai surfaced in SOMA. Hey Valencia Street: see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya. • Tamara Palmer took a late-night stroll throu

  July 17, 2009

• Early Bird Special: S.F.'s Street-Food Scene

  Jen SiskaCreme Brulee Guy in Linda Street: Stafford likes his culinary showbiz.​We've hogged major bandwidth in blog posts about the city's underground, Twitter-stoked street-food scene, treating the phenomenon more as news than the subject of serious parsing from the POV of gastronomy. In tomorrow's Eat column, SF Weekly restaurant critic Matthew Stafford considers S.F.'s flotilla of carts from an eater's perspective, mingling with the crowds in Dolores Park and elsewhere to clock calorie

  July 28, 2009

• New Broken Record Chef Not So New

  James Moisey/Twitter James Moisey (left) It's been three weeks since the Frito pie hit the fan at the Broken Record (1166 Geneva at Edinburgh): chefs Ryan Ostler and Katharine Zacher got the hell out, citing burnout in interviews. And even though Tablehopper reported that a new chef would be reopening the kitchen July 18th, a fog heavier than any summer marine layer seemed to hang over the Excelsior. The BR was done.   Except it wasn't. This morning SFoodie had a phone chat with

  July 31, 2009

• Early Bird Special: Trademark

  K. Todd Storch/FlickrBelden Alley: S.F.'s urban Epcot now has an American place.​An early nibble of the Weekly's Wednesday food review. Like some urban, particularly fragrant Epcot Center, Belden Alley has long offered the city a taste of global cuisines. Well, recognizably Euro cuisines, what with Plouf and Café Bastille, Café Tiramisu, and the Barcelona copycat B44. But where the vodka bar Voda once offered a taste of, well, Vegas, stands Trademark (56 Belden at Pine), a restaurant d

  August 25, 2009

• Early Bird Special: Three Corner Markets

  Tamara PalmerA pork shoulder sandwich from Pal's Takeaway in Tony's Market.​An early nibble from the Weekly's Wednesday food review. SF Weekly food critic Matthew Stafford haunts corner markets in the Mission this week, only not for the reasons you'd think. Instead of showing up to score Snus and St. Ides (or shall we say, just to score Snus and St. Ides), Stafford's on the hunt for sandwiches -- good freakin' sandwiches, no less. Turns out the Great Recession has been good for more than

  October 20, 2009

• Early Bird Special: Ironside

  Jen SiskaIronside's cuban sandwich​An early nibble from the Weekly's Wednesday food review. Point your finger at the jobless rate or the housing bubble's bust: We're living through a moment of intense repurposing. And while we may not be at the point of sock darning, we're seriously digging restaurants that manage to remake the familiar into something convincingly modern. The SOMA restaurant Ironside (680 Second St. at Townsend) scores a double hit in that regard, rehabbing both a former

  November 10, 2009

• Early Bird Special: Saison

  J. BirdsallHalibut in smoky seafood broth at a Saison prix fixe from July.​An early nibble from the Weekly's Wednesday food review. In any kind of normal economy -- you know, the one where the roast chicken at Zuni was a logical weeknight option when you didn't quite feel like pushing a cart through Safeway -- Joshua Skenes would own the kind of fine-dining establishment that'd soak up major magazine ink. Instead, the 30-year-old cooking phenom has had to make do with the nonstaurant, bo

  November 17, 2009