"Item! Been to 21 and Le Cirque?"

The Jackie Harveyish headline above is funny, because ... because I think it is, anyway. Raymond Sokolov's latest column in the Wall Street Journal, "Bay Watch," isn't funny, and not just because I think it isn't, but because it's plain crap writing that should have been spiked, yesterday or in 1998 or whenever.

Sokolov -- oops, sorry, he says "We" -- "didn't expect to be wowed at Aqua [...] where we had an acceptable lunch a few years back and remember it only as less boring than our dining companions." (Maybe one companion resisted the urge to say "Waiter? Bring me the lobster bisque so I can pour it down this guy's pants." "We'll" never know.) Then there's blah blah blah about venerable Aqua chef's "cutting-edge mix of militantly San Francisco foods," foie gras, abalone, pork belly, chanterelles, this and that. It's like dashing through Whole Foods! Maybe the Journal should send a reporter out shopping.

Skipping his bit about Ame, "an experiment in japonaiserie," the piece jumps to that hot new place, have you heard of it? Boulevard's emphasis is on "local ingredients and basic techniques with a twist." It's a very short graf, even with the deconstruction of the suckling pig from Manteca.

The East Bay vs. West Bay premise is tired and dorky, the "survival guide" approach is spurious except for those on expense accounts and the Wall Street Journal reveals itself, again, to be completely out of its element on this kind of coverage. Next time just call it Frisco so the rest of us can skip and enjoy Perbacco in peace.

You Call it Heparin, I Call it Sausage

The tainted heparin (blood-thinner) from pharma company Baxter has everyone in a tizzy. The WSJ sent a reporter to a heparin-extraction plant in China. Source material: pig intestines. And as one photo caption in this series explains, what doesn't turn into heparin is saved for sausage casings.

The captions say the stuff coming out of the intestines is "pulp." Is that a typo? Shouldn't it be "poop"?

Recipe: Italian Egg Rolls

This is adapted from, um, Dom DeLuise:

Slice up a couple of eggplants, lengthwise, into thin slices, no more than 1/4 inch thick. (Save the odds and ends. See below.) Put them down on cutting boards or something and sweat them out with salt for about 10 minutes. In the meantime, prep your station: Beat a couple of eggs, and get your bread crumbs on a plate. Grease a couple of cookie sheets. Preheat the oven to 350.

Dab the moisture off the eggplants with a paper towel, and then take the slices one by one and dredge them in egg and then in bread crumbs and lay them on the cookie sheets. Once they're all done, pop them in the oven for 15 minutes so they get tender.

Take what's left of your setup and bread the odds and ends; you'll fry these as a appetizer for later or save them for sandwiches.

Mix 15 ounces or so of ricotta in a bowl with some fresh-cut parsley. I also added a chopped garlic clove and cracked in some fresh pepper. Slice up a half-pound ball of mozzarella, again in thin slices. I used fresh mozz, since that's what they had at 22nd and Irving.

Now that you've gone through the prep, you're ready to assemble. Put a bit of cheese on a slice of baked eggplant, and top with a spoonful of ricotta. Roll it up and place it seam side down in a baking pan. When you've got them all rolled up and nestled, ladle some marinara sauce on top. (You have some of that marinara you made last time, don't you?) Grate a little Parmesan or whatnot on top and pop the pan or pans back in the hot oven for 30 minutes.

At the end of the evening, you won't exactly look like Dom, but you'll be well sated so you can do all the dishes.

Do Everyone a Favor, Dude: Dine Alone

> Jennifer Esposito, 28, an image consultant who lives in Rye Brook, N.Y., lived for four years with a man who ate only pizza, noodles with butter and the occasional baked potato.

Either give this woman a medal, or take away her meds.

Postcard from the Edge of a Waffle Breakfast

From Bistro friend Paul Festa's Southern film-screening tour:

Breakfast was at the Waffle House. The signage was so getto [sic!] that I was sure I had chosen a local favorite, but I wasn’t ten minutes in my cream-colored PT Cruiser (the gayest car in South Carolina and George combined!) when I saw another, and then another, and soon I realized that I had breakfasted at the iHOP of the south.

Click here to read the whole post, complete with sly Louis Prima reference.

Pizza Photo of the Week

You asked for it, you got it: pesto sausage, crimini mushrooms, and the United States of arugula.

Hot Hot Heat

Yuck? Pickles and Kool-Aid

This is less a "Yuck?" and more of a "Yuck!", combined with a sober acknowledgment that our little United States of Arugula isn't feeding the souls or any other part of the underclass. In places like the Sunnydale projects, people have trouble finding a market with fresh produce -- if they can get out of the apartment at all, as a story in today's Chron relates.

The finished products are placed on the table next to a tub of licorice and a jar of pickles soaking in Kool-Aid, another popular snack in Sunnydale's underground stores. As if he heard the oven buzzer, a young boy stops in and asks Sandy if she made cupcakes yet. He gives her 50 cents and she drops it into a black ceramic jar on her kitchen counter.

Review: Salt House/SF/USA

My current read is David Kamp's "The United States of Arugula," which is broadly about the emergence of our national cuisine due to the vim and vigor of the Great Gourmets (Beard, Claiborne, Child, et al.) and grand capitalism trailing gustatory trends. "So, you want baby greens? You want Scharffen Berger? You can have it all."

Where a place like, say, Zuni has been pointing this way all along, a place like Salt House in the financial district, I'd say, no longer has to genuflect toward France or Italy. We've come a long way, baby, and Rupert's paying.

With shellfish so fresh and rabbit so tender and a wine list so versatile, the Old World never really goes away, but it's like a culinary Obama moment, where the California or continental cuisines are day-old definitions. Striped bass with red cabbage and chorizo? Fine. Parsnip soup? It's wintertime. Fulton Valley chicken and fingerlings? You're welcome.

Great lighting, warm furniture to offset the cool-glass picture windows, attentive and informed service, a little loud but a lot of fun. Perfect portions. Homemade cookies.

Now going for two years, you've got to hand it to the management -- not just for keeping the expense-account crowds coming, but for finding the foodie sweet spot and serving it up. If the Fanch is reading, maybe she can talk about the partners running this show (along with Town Hall). They've got it dialed in.

Stack 'Em High

This goes against everything I went over in the last post, and maybe the last couple of posts. But I would be among those eager to do this, for the sake of doing something incredible. I also like to eat with my hands.

Look at the sheer enormity of meat in this picture. Also note the bottle of Dr. Pepper next to the cans of acetylene fuel. Is that for flavoring, or to keep the cooks awake while they wield those machetes?

The only thing you have to wonder is what kind of beer they put out, and who has to drive home.

Mostly Plants

K recently dazzled me with two big pans of lasagna, a food memory now slightly tinged by the fact that it had two pounds of the red stuff. Today I have to pat myself on the midsection, because except for two tiny, tiny slices of smoked ham I had a meatless day.

Lunch was at Wildflower, spendy and toothsome as always, and for dinner I scrounged around the fridge for the last of mushrooms and celery to sauté, tossing in a clove of garlic at the end. Meantime I prepped the assembly: First the tortillas, then the brie, smoked cheddar, ham, spinach new from the TJ's bag. Topped the stack with the veg, and in the same pan folded in the two torts.

Five minutes later, a flip. Five minutes later, they sit on a plate, and I scoop out half an avocado on 'em. Finish with some salsa from a jar, and feed.

The Reds

Whew! Now we've gotta push back on the other red flesh besides tuna. This food blog is going to to turn into a guilt blog by the time I'm done.

here's a money quote that dovetails with my "send the marketplace a message" mantra:

> If price spikes don’t change eating habits, perhaps the combination of deforestation, pollution, climate change, starvation, heart disease and animal cruelty will gradually encourage the simple daily act of eating more plants and fewer animals.

I heard long ago that Harris Ranch had 100,000 head of cattle, and now the New York Times backs me up.

Bistro East, Part 3

I'm a bit remiss in finishing the report of our trip to New York. The weekend got off to a rousing start when I met a certain ex-Kazakh gentleman Thursday eve at the venerable Knickerbocker Bar & Grill on University. We sat at the bar and kibbitzed with the harried bartendress, ate guinea-hen quesadillas (really), and ordered something like a few martinis. Whatever the final count, it was enough to prompt the 'tendress to offer us, unprovoked, a drink on the house.

By 8.30 my friend was piling into a cab to get to his next social engagement. I staggered back to the in-laws and tried to pretend to be half-sober. My cover was blown a couple hours later when Da Fanch opened the bathroom door and found me kneeling in prayer to the porcelain goddess.

The next day, work at the Madison Ave. headquarters of the Singular Capitalist was a bit rough. My head cleared a bit after a dash through the rain and lunch at a hot-pot pho joint on 32nd St. with my editor.

By evening, I was raring to go. After a tour of the Gray Lady's new armoire, my Riv-eting companion and I hit the West Village, which probably means a lot less today than it did, say, 25 years ago. We found a darling little spot run by Venezuelans, Flor's Kitchen, which was fairly cheap and down-home enough to serve gristly but super-flavorful steak and greasy but super-flavorful arepas. Just like Hugo's mama used to make it.

The culinary highlight of the trip, however, was served not at a restaurant but Saturday night in my in-laws' dining room. Cousins of Da Fanch brought venison from their upstate farm. We salted and peppered several steaks, seared them and finished them in a hot oven. It was meat the way off-duty chefs eat it: hot, browned outside, red inside, with a pan sauce that's half red wine and half blood. Chew on that for a while.

I've actually left out a few interesting meals, but like me after 10 days in New York, this post has had enough.

Show of Hands

Who's ready to cut back on fishy sushi? Anybody?

Parental Pizza

My first homemade pizza since parenthood -- no easy feat because of the logistics of rolling out the dough, heating the oven full-blast, and thus the kitchen, for an hour, and the general mess -- and it came out quite well. It helped that I was home alone tonight. Toppings: marinated white anchovies, slivers of roasted red peppers, and white onion. Damn.

Aziza Night

K and I popped into our neighborhood destination restaurant for a couple of the seven seats at the bar for a little drink and bite. In the middle of doing two of the things we enjoy best and two of the things our friends enjoy best, inspiration strikes. But first the rundown:

Kristen has her glass of sparkling rosé. I start with the gin ginger, a typically Azizan concoction. Imagine categorizing your liquors, then pairing them with fruit or what have you that can be muddled or infused. My mix starts with muddled ginger and squirts of lemon/verbena, then a healthy pour of Beefeater and some simple syrup. It's iced, shaken, served. Delicious.

For the nosh, we share the usual delicacy, grilled flatbreads with spreads: roasted eggplant, yogurt dill and now chickpea, a novel variation. Feeling toothsome, I go for the sardines. They are arranged in a star patten in an enormous, round pasta plate, filleted and grilled, atop lentils, chopped peppers and fennel. I don't say a thing until I scoop up the very last dash.

So I'm making an executive decision: Alex and Jomo, mark your calendars and tell your sweethearts that I'm taking everybody out to dinner the weekend of Sept. 27-28. Table is for six. No excuses or contingencies. Final date is TK, and it'll be my treat.

Bistro East, Part 2: Otto

No way we could spend a week in New York and read Heat (full review later) without darkening one of Mario Batali's doors. So with Da Fanch's gourmand cousins in town from Norwich, all seven of us walked over to Otto, his pizza place.

In Heat, Buford reports that Batali took many weeks, maybe months to get the pizzas, cooked on a flattop griddle, not in an oven, to the point where customers stopped sending them back. ("There were complaints. They were too spongy. They were undercooked. They weren't crispy. You couldn't cut them with a knife. Joe wasn't sleeping: 'Everyone is suddenly a fucking pizza expert.'" - p.160)

We didn't send ours back, though we didn't think they were oh so molto. I had the bottarga and fennel; Fanch had the mushroom. We liked the crust; we liked the sauce; but both toppings were too salty, the mushrooms unpleasantly so. I fretted: perhaps they're supposed to be salty, and we're not eating them with the right appetizers, or something. Perhaps we're not good enough.

This was crazy talk, of course. Someone in the kitchen had a heavy hand with the salt. Period.

Everything else was top-notch. The apps came in large ramekins and several went around the table. All delicious, especially the cold lentils, the octopus, and the eggplant caponatina, all redolent of late-night outdoor Mediterranean dinners eaten ad hoc, dish by dish at the proprietor's whim.

The waiter showed great patience as we maneuvered the Schnoodle's stroller through a maze of tables, and again as certain members of our party took interminable amounts of time to decide what to order. We also had internal disagreements about the wine selection -- what seemed like hundreds of Italian wines to choose from, none less than $35 a bottle, and none of us knew a thing about them. The waiter was unflappable. He recommended a bottle, not cheap, and damn if he didn't match it to our criteria. We ordered a second bottle.

Stuffed to the gills, we ordered a couple desserts anyway: the olive oil and ricotta coppettas (coppette?). Olive oil gelato at first sounds like a candidate for a Yuck?, but it was sublime. Gotta get the A-Ron to put it on his menu at the next Page Street party.

One complaint, other than the pizza, was the noise level. I was sitting under a speaker, and the music, a mix of guitar rock and Brit-pop that might well have been streaming right from Mario's iPod, kept changing volume level with songs getting cut off in the middle. I know it's a pizzeria, but at these prices, the kids in the kitchen shouldn't be fighting over the stereo.

Coming soon, part 3 (mistakenly advertised in the last post as Part 2): Revenge of the Beefeater, a Venezuelan hideaway, and Oh! Deer.

Blue Fin?

We all know about the king of ska, but here we're talking about the end of the king of sushi. Take my word for it or take Bob Simon's, but the marketplace has to, has to push/pull back on the supply chain.

We don't need every other restaurant opening on Geary to serve raw fish. We will run out, without a doubt.

Bistro East, Part 1

Greetings from Gotham. (And photo by cpzhao -- click here to see more!)

Showing off the Monkeypants to friends and family has been a nonstop endeavor and no easy feat. We knew that from the get-go when, waiting for our delayed flight to board at SFO last Friday, the captain came out to the gate to say it was some of the worst weather he'd ever seen in his career. He also said the grounds crew couldn't even load baggage because they worried the wind would rip the cargo door from its hinges. Oh, and Lila was completely congested with her first-ever cold.

We finally made it with nary a scratch (not even a peep from Lila despite the congestion and pressure) and settled into bed Chez Fancher before midnight local time. Less than 24 hours later, true to form, we were stuffing ourselves at the Saigon Grill on University between 11th and 12th Sts. There were seven adults, one rambunctious toddler, and our Miss Monkeypants, and we all ordered a dish plus a few more. Plus a couple bowls of soup because, hey, it's winter and we all had colds.

Somehow it all disappeared. We have a major difference of opinion, however, as to the quality. I'm feeling magnanimous. I thought it was pretty good. Perhaps I was dazzled by the quantity and the friendliness of the staff who accomodated our requests for stroller parking, a booster seat, and a small plate of plain egg noodles for 2-year-old Ezra. The Fanch begs to differ: "It sucked," she said, which, when pressed to explain, she upgraded to "really really mediocre."

A few nights later we left La Monkeypants with her grandparents for our first date night. Nervous as we were, we went all of two blocks away to a swanky tapas place, Alta. Lovely room, adventurous, extensive menu, but then there was Dean.

Dean was the first waiter who addressed us (though others later would bring dishes and take follow-on orders), and he was an idiot. "Excuse me," I asked, pointing to one of the menu items, Danish Pork Ribs roasted with kecap manis & coriander. "What's kecap manis?"

"It's the stuff it gets roasted with that makes it kinda sticky," was roughly his explanation. Not very descriptive, I thought, but I moved on.

"What's 'fideos vermicelli'? I don't know what fideos means."

"I dunno," said Dean. "I'll go ask."

He came back a while later and said, "Some kind of pasta."

I formulated how to proceed, and Dean -- a very busy man -- started to turn. "Um..."

"What?" he said. Not "Yes?" or "Sorry" or "Pardon me." "What."

"I figured that from the 'vermicelli' part," I said. "But I don't know what fideos means."

I think he shrugged and walked away. I was too stunned to think clearly. It was the most unprofessional act in a nice restaurant I'd ever seen. I wondered if he was the half-retarded son of the owner. There could be no other explanation.

The food was good, the Spanish Manhattan was one of the few $10 drinks I've ever felt was worth it, and the tapas were often spectacular and never dull except for the avocado relleno with crabmeat and shrimp. Silly us: to New Yorkers an entire avocado artfully sliced and stuffed with spicy seafood salad is $11 worth of exotic in January. To Californians, it's an easy 4-pack mesh bag at Trader Joe's.

The Fanch was so appalled with Dean, that a $50-per-person meal could be served by such a dolt, she mentioned him to the maitre'd on the way out. How did we know his name? On my way back from the loo at one point, I passed him trying to chat up one of the waitresses outside the kitchen. She was adding up a check and was barely listening, but another waiter passed by and said with a little passive-aggressive laugh, "Get back to work, Dean."

Part 2: Revenge of the Beefeater, a Venezuelan hideaway, and Oh! Deer

Kirin Chicken

Either it was boot camp Tuesday or the guy sitting behind me on the bus Wednesday, but by noon Thursday I was pretty much toast from a cold. The Limited brought me all the way back to where I started the day, 25th and Geary, and woozy as I was I was not going to pass on Kirin.

The room is a few notches above lots of other Chinese places, with a mix of incandescents and CFLs instead of factory-floor fluorescent tubes, but the brown carpet has got to go. At any rate, I beelined for the lunch special won-ton soup with shredded chicken. The shredded chicken is in fact a nice mix of light and dark meat julienned with the cleaver, piled atop of a steaming heap of won tons and choy sum in broth. A couple dashes of hot chili and you have what the doctor would order.

p.s. Chinese cuisine of the Kirin type goes in and out of favor with people -- whether it's the grease, quality of ingredients, dining experience, whatever. I understand, at the same time that I recognize it as a little picky. This is soup, rice plates, vegetables whipped in a wok in a flash. In my condition, how could I endure anything else?