Broccoli & Chocolate

restaurants * food events * news

Review: The House

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Not like that mean doctor guy on TV, but like the teeny tiny little restaurant in Big-Plate-Italian*-dominated North Beach, San Francisco. The House. Grant Avenue just off Columbus. The location is unsuspecting. The website is underwhelming. The food is amazing.

Tuna rolly things. They don’t have a menu on their website, so you’re getting my best recollection of the dish names and components. Good luck!

I went for one of my four (yes, four) birthday meals this year. I went on my actual birthday. This was The Choice. It’s difficult to choose a birthday restaurant, let me tell you. “Angie, you know all the restaurants in SF, why don’t you pick?” Wait, what? Is there a sit-down Quizno’s in midtown**? No, seriously, I don’t know all the restaurants. I was looking on the SF Gate’s top 100 list and hadn’t even heard of most of the places. It’s sad, I know. And it’s exacerbated by the fact that I have a horrible memory. What I’m saying is, come birthday time, I’m on Yelp and OpenTable like every other idiot.

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Something Shiny

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Or tasty. Hi. I went to Spain. I’ve been stumbling over life trying to catch up with writing and other things I love. But I haven’t had time to sort my pictures, collect my thoughts, etc. So here — something shiny for you to look at in the meantime. I’ll be back soon… 🙂

French toast from Park Tavern’s brunch, North Beach.

Events: SF Street Food Festival 2012

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Ok, I didn’t actually go to the SF Street Food Festival this year. Yeah, fine, call me a jerk. Especially since they were so kind to invite me to the preview dinner last month. Which was awesome. But I went last year and, honestly, it was such a cluster that I wasn’t super excited to go again. Because I don’t like billions of people congregated in one area, not because I don’t like food, obv.

But, based on the preview dinner this year, I believe I would have liked much of the food at the festival. Here are a few of my favorite vendors who participated this year and the ridiculously delicious dishes they fed me a couple weeks ago:… 

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Products: Rewinery

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Update: Rewinery has closed. 🙁

So, I have a food blog. Hi, yes, this is it. Because of this, I sometimes get free stuff. Or get invited to food events. It’s kinda awesome. And while I never promise to write about any of these things, I will write about them if I particularly like them. And sometimes, you get a coupon for stuff too (see below).

Enter Rewinery.

Rewinery is a wine delivery service in SF. They have one wine on special at any point (they seem to rotate about every week or two) and you order two bottles (typically) for $30. It is then delivered to your door by bike messenger within the hour. Or, you can specify an hour in the future (not the past, sorry) for it to be delivered if you want to order for later…. 

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Review: Dosa

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Ok, I’ve been hearing about this place forever. I finally went recently. It was awesome, just like people (and the huge wait list) suggest.

They have two locations, Mission and Fillmore. I met Melanie way too late one night at the Fillmore location. We intended to go to SPQR, but were snubbed without a reservation*. So we got to Dosa around 9pm and I didn’t get home until midnight, so full that I thought I might explode. It was epic.

Dosa was full at 9pm on a Saturday night. And unlike SPQR, they were kind enough to put my name on a wait list**. We sat at the bar to wait our 30-45 minutes and then were kindly seated at a table for our 10pm dinner. Perfect!

Chutney appetizer. Four flavors! Good, but way too spicy for me. I could only eat one of them without crying.

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Review: Bottle Cap

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Update: Bottle Cap is now closed. But, The Square is now open!

Yeay, North Beach! I’ll stop pretending like there’s some lack of good restaurants here. But still, the majority are Italian. And while I LOVE Italian food, it gets a bit tedious. And, if I had to pick a favorite type of food, oddly, it would be American. Stars and stripes, baby, I love me some sandwiches and burgers and mac and cheese.

And they have all three at Bottle Cap, but, like, in good form (Humboldt burger and grilled cheese as “smallish plates”; cheesy shells as a side). But, still, the menu is “American”, which basically seems to mean anything that’s not already claimed by some other culture or country. Or, it can also kinda mean a mesh of a bunch of different things. What a great idea! I love meshes.

Bottle Cap Restaurant in North Beach

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Review: Salt House

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All lowercase lettering. Sandblasted brick walls. Exposed steel mezzanine. High ceilings. You know this SF restaurant.

Ok, you probably don’t; it sounds like lots of others. For which we can all be thankful: there are lots of chic, modern, schmancy, yummy restaurants in SF, yeay! Love this city. Moving on.

Inside the salt house

Salt House (or salt house — upper case is so 2009) is another restaurant serving classy American fare with their own special spin. A summary of my experience:… 

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Review: The Plant

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It’s so sad to me when people hear the names of restaurants like Plant and say something like, “Ugh, does that mean there’s nothing good on the menu?” When did plants become bad to eat? Why do meat eaters have to eat meat with every meal ever? I digress (and kinda apologize; you do what you want).

Plant is not a vegetarian restaurant. It is sorta healthy-ish, doesn’t have anything deep fried, and doesn’t have meat other than seafood and poultry. In fact, their website tells me they serve: all organic produce, all free range poultry, and sustainable seafood. Sounds good to me. And yes, they do have many meat-less dishes and some veggie-adventurous items (tempeh, anyone?). And it’s great! I love this place.

Inside The Plant on Pier 3.

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Review: Cafe Jacqueline

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Looking for a romantic dinner for two in the City? Cafe Jacqueline fits the bill: dim lighting; cozy, high-ceilinged dining area; chic vintage minimalist decor. This North Beach restaurant isn’t your standard Little Italy establishment for sure, but it’s also unique in the City as a whole. Which isn’t something you find too often.

Chocolate souffle. Read on.

What Cafe Jacqueline does is souffles. What is a souffle? It’s something that people of my parents’ and grandparents’ generation revered and feared. Like Donald Trump’s hair nowadays. People probably used to look to Julia Child for guidance on this difficult and notably finicky dish; I’d just go to Jackie*.

Since Wiki says it best, I’ll just quote that a souffle is a “lightly baked cake made with egg yolks and beaten egg whites combined with various other ingredients and served as a savory main dish or sweetened as a dessert”. Yeah, that. As a savory dinner dish, it’s like a ramekin-ed, puffy quiche. As a dessert, it’s like an airy, warm cake…. 

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Review: Sheba

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I’ll make this quick since I didn’t take any pictures. But, since all vegetarian sampler platters look the same at Ethiopian restaurants, I’ll just show you a pretty picture of another one I’ve eaten before:

Vegetarian Sampler

Sheba is an Ethiopian restaurant, bar, and piano lounge on Fillmore, just around the corner from the Fillmore concert hall. I love Ethiopian food. There’s not a whole lot of it in the city, so I’ve been slowly but surely seeking it out. I’ve only tried one other place in the Avenues somewhere, and I didn’t love it. This one was better.

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