The Piano Man of Zuni Cafe
The six o’clock sun streams through the floor-to-ceiling windows, illuminating the long copper-topped bar and an oddity for a Thursday evening or any evening, really, at
The Outsize Importance of the Tiny Organic Seed
Parsley. Frank Morton is talking about parsley, possibly the least sexy, most maligned herb imaginable, often relegated to the role of garnish. And he’s excited. “Parsley could be the new
Law and Orders
It’s not every Saturday night that San Francisco Chronicle food critic Michael Bauer is shown to his seat by a former prostitute who spent serious time on
The Breakfast Club
Scrawled across the chest of every server at Sweet Maple is a tribute to its signature item. “I [heart] Millionaire’s Bacon,” the T-shirts tout. Indeed,
Caviar Queen
At first glance — with her platinum hair, humongous diamond rings and wrinkle-free skin — Deborah Keane looks like your stereotypical wealthy California mom. Then
I Tried It … One of Those Damn Juice Cleanses
The text caught me in a weak moment: two days after Thanksgiving, while I was eating a bacon-gruyere cheeseburger for lunch. “Juice fast! Juice fast!
The Joy of Cooking with Samin
When Samin Nosrat wants something, she writes a letter — a real, old-fashioned, heartfelt letter. “I’m an insane stalker person,” says the 34-year-old cook/writer/surfer with
The San Tung Addiction
It’s Monday afternoon, 4 p.m.—purgatory in restaurant time—and San Tung’s 100 seats are full. Asian-American families sit tweezing spicy green beans and slurping handmade noodles as
The Price of Poetry
On Clay Street, in San Francisco’s Chinatown, next to Adult Media Exotica and across from a Chinese community center, there is a restaurant called Jai Yun,
The Comfort Food of Strangers
At first I think we might have come to the wrong address. When my cousin Dave and I ring the bell of a Bartlett Street duplex
Sir and Star at the Olema: Life, Death and Rebirth of a Restaurant Legend
On a foggy Sunday in January 2007, several weeks after a fire razed Manka’s Inverness Lodge in Northern California, hundreds of mourners poured into the
Pastrami: Discuss
Notes from the first-ever Deli Summit Noah and Rae Bernamoff’s The Mile End Cookbook: From Hash to Hamantaschen, which came out earlier this month, contains more
