Soft Drinks

Ice Cream Bar Turns One, Launches Week of Deals

Ice Cream Bar (815 Cole) opened in January 2012, the culmination of two years' work from owner Juliet Pries, who took her expertise from the bar world (she was previously a part-owner of Kezar Pub) and applied it to her vision of a soda fountain for kids and adults of all ages. It wasn't easy, and P ... More >>

U.C. FUBAR: The Logo Is Dead. Long Live the Logo

Chocolate Lab: An Elegant Extension of Recchiuti Brand

Taylor's Tonics Unveils The Fizzary Soda Pop & Candy Shop

The Fizzary opened on August 27 in the Mission District, where it shares a block with Mission Pie. Nostalgic candies beckon from tables around the room. The varied confectionery assortment offers things like swirled candy sticks in flavors that veer toward the grown up (horehound), Necco wafers in ... More >>

S.F., You Have Some Damn Fine Arnold Palmers

Every six months I resolve to kick my Diet Coke habit and develop a short-lived enthusiasm for a caffeinated mid-afternoon alternative. You name it, I've tried it: kombucha, yerba mate, iced tea, BibiCaffe, cold-brewed coffee, on and on. Eventually I always drift back to the real thing. This time i ... More >>

Brews, Tunes, and BBQ: Cleophus Quealy Beer Company Launches This Weekend

What: Cleophus Quealy Summer Beer Tasting When: Saturday July 21st, 12 noon - 5 p.m. Where: Zoo Music Incubator, 1035 7th St., Oakland Cost: Free (tickets are required, available here) The Rundown: When you hear the words "startup" and "beta test," the first image that pops into your mind is proba ... More >>

Amazing Brew Mixes: This Week's Beer Cocktail Roundup

It was a dark and stormy night at the Hometown Buffet. Upon walking up to the bountiful soda fountain, you were suddenly gripped by inspiration. "What if I mixed all of the sodas together?" you thought. On that fateful evening, the suicide soft drink was born. These days, you likely have bursts of ... More >>

Hooked on Tonics: Pricilla Young of Brasserie S&P

Brasserie S&P at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel is officially set to open on Monday the 18th with a unique gin and tonic focused cocktail program: Patrons can customize the perfect gin & tonic for themselves by selecting one of 31 different gins (most accompanied by tasting notes), choice of tonic wate ... More >>

The Ice Cream Bar: Old-Fashioned Soda Fountain Goes Modern

The Ice Cream Bar Is an Adult-Friendly Soda Fountain

As long as I can remember, soda fountains -- retro or no -- have been always designated kid-friendly territory. They're for birthday parties and after-school outings, where everyone gets sugared up early enough to crash by 8. And there are plenty of kids hanging around the scoops at Cole Valley ... More >>

Ice Cream Bar Owner Juliet Pries on eBay, Tinctures, and Coca Leaves

​Thanks to byzantine SF permitting processes, it took Juliet Pries almost two years to open the Ice Cream Bar in Cole Valley, the subject of this week's restaurant review. But the delay gave her time to change the focus of the shop, expanding from ice cream into its most distinctive feature: pre-P ... More >>

William Pilz of Hapa SF Takes Over SodaCraft

​SFoodie was leaving the Ferry Plaza farmers market this afternoon when we noticed a familiar face behind the SodaCraft stand: William Pilz, owner of modern Filipino food truck Hapa SF. Pilz, it turns out, has just taken over production of the artisanal, seasonal, fermented sodas from SodaCraft fo ... More >>

Drink of the Week: The Brandy Lift at The Slanted Door

​There aren't a lot of milk cocktails that I associate being refreshing and extremely drinkable; for me, the thought usually conjures up memories of past experiences with sweet and heavy dessert or brunch style drinks. Like many things in life, the second you make up your mind, along comes a cockt ... More >>

Drink of the Week: A New Orleans Hangover Never Felt So Good

​The tiny bar in the back of Ice Cream Bar, the Cole Valley spot that is attempting to revive the lost art of the soda fountain, is unlike most anything I've seen before. The assortment of tiny bottles, each containing a tincture or extract, lined up next to Boston shaker tins suggest a bar, while ... More >>

Cyrus Noble Bourbon Returns to San Francisco

​San Francisco's first locally owned brand of bourbon, Cyrus Noble ($24.99/750ml)--bourbon made in Nelson County, Kentucky, but owned and distributed by Haas Brothers--is available again. Named after a distiller who fell into a vat of his own whiskey, the bourbon was sold in the city since 1871, ... More >>

Brisketfest is Back

​What: Brisketfest 2 Where: Shotwell's When: Wednesday, Dec. 7, 6 p.m. Cost: varies The rundown: By popular demand from everyone (except vegetarians, people with high cholesterol, and cows), Brisketfest is back. The organizers say the sequel will be bigger, badder, and hungrier than ever. Jab ... More >>

WIC Turns Corner Stores Into Real Markets

Paul Lowry/Flickr There's a lot of talk about "food deserts" in food policy circles these days -- impoverished areas where residents have no access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Corner stores in poor neighborhoods tend to be one of the major sources for food, but they stock nonperishables: chips, ... More >>

California Passes a Mysterious Food Handling Card Law, Diet Coke Officially Makes You Fat

​Today's notes on national stories, local trends, random tastes, and other bycatch dredged up from the food media. 1. Do you have your food handling card? The Chronicle's Michael Bauer delivers a real inside scoop: Thanks to a new law that no one in California knows about, by July 1 -- that's Fri ... More >>

Bob Marley's New Beverage Wants To Mellow You Out

Get mellow?​ Everyday stresses got you slurping caffeine like a crazed fiend? Workaday lifestyle keep you so amped up that you can never relax? Do you just need a little something extra to mellow you out at the end of the day? No, we haven't switched to writing ad copy. We're just expressing ... More >>

SodaCraft Coming to the Ferry Plaza Market

​Jesse Friedman, aka Beer and Nosh, aka the soon-to-be-released Almanac Beer, just announced on his blog this morning that he has a third alias: SodaCraft. We've written about Friedman's experiments with making ginger ale and other seasonal sodas for the New Taste Marketplace events his wife organ ... More >>

Local Brewer Jesse Friedman Now Slinging Soda Pop

jordan.ching12/FlickrOur favorite soda jerk: Jesse Friedman at the New Taste Marketplace.​When life gives you empty kegs and you want to make a family-friendly beverage, make soda. Jesse Friedman (of Beer and Nosh and Almanac Beer Co.) knew he was onto something while attending a friend's wedd ... More >>

Citizen Cake III: A Work in Progress

Kimberly SandieThe verrines at Citizen Cake are great. The savory stuff: hit and miss.​This week's review is of Citizen Cake ― or rather, Citizen Cake III, daughter of the Hayes Valley restaurant, granddaughter of Elizabeth Falkner's original pastry shop. As much as I've loved Falkner's imaginat ... More >>

Clean Cheese, Ginger Ale, and the Mighty Subway

Madame Fromage/FlickrSally Jackson's amazing cheese, now lost to the world after an FDA crackdown.​A new daily column: Notes on national stories, local trends, random tastes, and other miscellanea dredged up from the food media.1. Cheese makers under attack? San Francisco diners haven't felt the i ... More >>

BarBack Olympics Makes Drinking a Legitimate Sport. Finally

BerDerp™Ice relay course form the 2008 BarBack Olympics at 111 Minna.​On Sunday, 20 of the San Francisco Bay Area's best barbacks take center stage at Mezzanine in a series of challenges designed to replicate being deep in the weeds at the bar: bottle relay, ice bucket race, beer restocking ... More >>

Rapper Lyrics Born pays for his art by selling songs to ads and TV shows

'Big Soda' Pleased By Demise of San Francisco Soda Fee

Cheers, Gavin...​"Big Soda" is celebrating a bit today. How about a Fresca? With Mayor Gavin Newsom announcing the curtailing of his plan to impose a fee on the sales of soda within city limits to fund anti-obesity efforts, the folks who sell said sodas are satiated. "We're very happy with his cha ... More >>

City's Anti-Obesity Soda Ban Won't Affect Obesity

Not on city property you don't, Mean Joe...​Gavin Newsom's executive order forbidding soda machines on city property from hawking sugary soda is interesting for three reasons. One, the next photographer to snap a shot of Baby Montana with a soda is famous. Two, it warrants mentioning that Newsom d ... More >>

Mayor's Soft Drink Ban Isn't Really About Calories

The Upstairs Room/FlickrWouldn't you rather have a can of guava nectar?​Our favorite morsel from the blogs. At SFoodie's sister news blog, The Snitch, editor Joe Eskenazi ticks off the reasons Mayor Newsom's ban on sodas in vending machines on city property doesn't make sense. Newsom unleas ... More >>

Local Mission Eatery's House-Made Soda Spurns the Fizz

Tasty, if not exactly spritzy.​We heard about the house-made sodas at Local Mission Eatery, so we stopped in to buy one yesterday ― a fitting endeavor on such a toasty afternoon. With the exception of the old windowed meat locker, we didn't recognize the place from its days as the home of a ... More >>

What to Stock Your Bar with for That Holiday Cocktail Mixer

gibneb/FlickrSee? Easy.​When you get right down to it, the holiday season is all about lighting a candle in lieu of cursing the darkness during the gloomiest, coldest time of the year. From the Druids' burning yule log and Hanukkah's glowing menorah to the bulb-bedecked pine tree and the flami ... More >>

The Sneaky Teat and Other Sucking Trends

Drink of the Week: Taylor's Tonics' Chai Cola

​Taylor's Tonics of Santa Cruz offers a simple yet unique idea with its Redwood forest-brewed Chai Cola. A bubbly concoction featuring main ingredients of yerba mate, ginger, and black chai tea, this cola is sweetened with evaporated cane juice and tastes like a supercharged hybrid of ginger ale a ... More >>

For Chefs in S.F., Making a Root Beer Float Involves More Than Popping a Can

eyjensen/FlickrSpecial enough for a birthday: The root beer float (with cookies) at Michael Mina.​Even if you knew that today is National Root Beer Float Day -- a fact we learned from Three Olives Vodka, which just released a root beer-flavored vodka to a nation happily unaware of what it's be ... More >>

Little Skillet's stellar takeaway can brighten a summer day

Food, Glorious Food: One Man's Fancy Food Show Experience

The Fancy Food Show returned to Moscone Center last week, and as usual the task of shuffling from one free sample to another was more challenging than might be expected. The Center, as you probably know, covers several acres of sprawling subterranean SOMA real estate, and last Sunday, Monday and Tue ... More >>

Drink of the Week: Vignette's Rosé Soda

MP3 of the Day: The Cool Kids

Wednesday Night: Happy Hour Speed Dating at The Cellar

The "Taliban Mayor" the "Pandering Show Host" And Me

Drink of the Week: The Knockout's Rootbeer Float

Sliced Up Fingers, 7Up Parties and Airplanes on This Week's Top Model

What Comes Between

Three different ways to fill the space between two pieces of bread.

Slurm: Not Just For Futurama Anymore

The Once and Future City

We remember the old S.F. via the food that takes us back

666, Dude

Avril Lavigne and Tracy + the Plastics and the corruption of culture

Life in Hell

Denis Johnson's third Cassandra play is a long, dark -- and hilarious -- journey

Best Bitters to Have Swept the Restaurant Community

Fernet Branca

Crushed

A successful, prolific inventor reveals how not to create a new product

A Tall Cool One

The B Spot

Side Dish

Where Have All the Daddies Gone?; Noodling; Ch-changes; Funny Pages