Category Archives: American restaurants

Truck Food Goes Upscale at Berkeley’s Brazil Cafe

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Walkup food cart and beer garden at Brazil Cafe in Berkeley, California

Walkup food cart and beer garden at Brazil Cafe in Berkeley, California

Normally, there’s a distinct drawback to a food truck. Where do you eat the damn stuff? The possibilities include a curb, a shared picnic table, the unprotected front seat of a car, a dusty parking lot. None are entirely satisfying, the hope being the food is sufficiently transcendent to transport you to another world.

Fortunately, Brazil Cafe has come up with a lovely solution at one of its Berkeley, California locations. Technically, it’s not a truck, more of a hybrid, with a beautiful fixed kitchen where the food is prepared and where partner Westbrae Biergarten pours glasses of local craft beer.

And yes, the seating is still mostly upscale picnic tables, with a few lawn-furniture tables and umbrellas added in what appears to be an old parking lot. But everything’s nicely spaced out, creating a most inviting aesthetic. It’s a wonderful place to linger over food and a beer or glass of wine on a warm Berkeley evening.

A perfect way to spend a balmy Berkeley evening

A perfect way to spend a balmy Berkeley evening

The cardboard boxes of food are mostly $9 or $10 and quite tasty, with the rice bowls and sausage winning out over the tri-tip sandwich, the latter’s indifferent bread knocking the grade down a notch.

Brazil Cafe
1280 Gilman Street
Sunday to Thursday 11 am-9 pm, Friday-Saturday 11 am-10 pm

Citizen’s Band an Upscale, Down-and-Dirty Diner

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Citizen's Band ups the burger ante with a medium-rare Kobe patty, tomato marmalade and challah bun

Citizen’s Band ups the burger ante with a medium-rare Kobe patty, tomato marmalade and challah bun

I can’t quite tell if Citizen’s Band, in San Francisco’s South of Market neighbourhood, is a grunge bar or an upscale diner. Maybe a bit of both.

Definitely the former with its industrial soundtrack and darkened interior. Though they throw me off with a selection of wines, craft beers and especially lemonades tinged with basil, strawberry or mint.

The short menu is also a mixed grill, ranging from poutine to hash and eggs emerging from chef/co-owner Chris Beerman’s small, open kitchen. Unexpected little details also make their mark, like the 12-hour-cooked pork belly in the ramen to the Idaho-raised kobe beef in my medium-rare burger, served with tomato marmalade in a challah bun from Pinkie’s Bakery next door.

When it comes down to food this flavourful, I don’t really care what kind of place they call it.

Citizen’s Band
1198 Folsom Street, San Francisco
Weekdays 11:30 am-2 pm and 5 pm onwards, weekends 10 am-2 pm and 5:30 pm onwards
Citizen's Band on Urbanspoon

It’s No Hanging Offence to Crave This Signature San Francisco Dish

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Crispy oysters are at the heart of the hangtown fry, a delightful dish at Brenda's French Soul Food

Crispy oysters are at the heart of the hangtown fry, a delightful dish at Brenda’s French Soul Food

It’s a signature San Francisco breakfast I’ve been dying to try. Called the hangtown fry—a mixture of oysters, eggs and bacons cooked in a skillet—it was a celebratory dish for gold miners who hit payday in the late 1800s. The Tadich Grill is said to cook up a mean version, but at more than $20, it expands my road-trip warrior’s budget more than my belly.

So I plug a downtown-area meter with a slug of quarters and head to *Brenda’s French Soul Food, where I avoid the short 9 am weekday lineup by taking a counter seat. This is one great $13 “omelette”, the crispy oysters blending wonderfully with the other ingredients. The waitress’s t-shirt says “Kiss My Grits,” so I naturally go with that creamy side, instead of hash browns. And the biscuit is a feathery accompaniment, unlike the leaden versions I’ve choked on elsewhere.

I’ve struck it rich.

The shrimp and grits aren't too shabby, either

The shrimp and grits aren’t too shabby, either

Brenda’s French Soul Food
652 Polk Street, San Francisco
Monday-Tuesday 8 am-3 pm, Wednesday to Saturday 8 am-10 pm, Sunday 8 am-8 pm
Brenda's French Soul Food on Urbanspoon

On a Mission to Find San Francisco’s Strangest Chinese Food

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Strange but delicious dishes like squid-ink noodles and chick peas at Mission Chinese Food in San Francisco

Strange but delicious dishes like squid-ink noodles and chick peas at Mission Chinese Food in San Francisco

This can’t be the right place, I’m thinking, as I walk up a particularly dodgy stretch of Mission Street at night. But then I see the telltale signs: A small lineup on the sidewalk and, inside, some casually dressed couples hunched over bowls and plates of unusual-looking food.

Maybe it’s appropriate that Korean-born star chef Danny Bowien is taking Asian fusion cuisine to the outer limits not at an upscale location but in the dingy cacophony of San Francisco’s Mission district, where the prices for this kind of experimentation are much cheaper. Mission Chinese Food, or Lung Shan Restaurant, as the sign over the door says, is one of the darkest restaurants I’ve frequented, with little Christmas lights masking a spartan interior of plain walls and tables and, overhead, a long, red Chinese dragon.

There's a reason these photos are so dark; it's the dim lighting

There’s a reason these photos are so dark; it’s the dim lighting

But one is not here for the atmosphere but for the strange food experiments. Like a “I don’t know how this dish works but it does” plate of wonderfully chewy squid-ink noodles with chickpeas, fennel, mint and a lamb dipping sauce. Or slightly sour lamb dumplings or thrice-cooked bacon and rice cakes with bitter melon ($12). How does he think these things up?

Vegetables Mission Chinese Food style

Vegetables Mission Chinese Food style

Mission Chinese Food
2234 Mission Street, San Francisco
Daily 11:30 am-3 pm and 5 pm-10:30 pm, except closed Wednesday
Mission Chinese Food on Urbanspoon

Raising the Bakery Bar in San Francisco

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Gorgeous, gooey gougere at glorious Tartine Bakery & Cafe in San Francisco

Gorgeous, gooey gougere at glorious Tartine Bakery & Cafe in San Francisco

Tartine Bakery & Cafe, in San Francisco’s Mission district, has 5,600 Yelp reviews and counting. So it doesn’t need any help from me. Still, that many people can’t be wrong, and a Canadian coffee roaster I respect suggested it as the one place I should visit on my road trip down the U.S. west coast.

Lots of tempting treats at Tartine

Lots of tempting treats at Tartine

The line, in mid-morning, is short and fast moving, and I scarcely have time to decide whether to get a buttermilk currant scone or a decadent brioche bread pudding brimming with fresh fruit. Instead, I go with a gorgeous gougere, the light, flaky pastry encasing a soft, croissant-like filling of Gruyere cheese.

I might have to add a 5,601th review.

A perfect breakfast

A perfect breakfast

Tartine co-owner and baker extraordinaire Chad Robertson also has a restaurant, Bar Tartine, and is opening a second bakery, The Manufactory, in the exquisite, historic Heath Ceramic building in San Francisco’s Mission district. It will go well with the funky Blue Bottle coffee kiosk in the same space.

Tartine Bakery & Cafe
600 Guerrero Street, San Francisco
Opens at 7:30 am Tuesday to Friday, 8 am Monday and Saturday, 9 am Sunday. Closes at 7 or 8 pm, depending on whether the moon is full and the mood strikes them. Restaurateurs of the world, can you please think of your poor customers and simplify your hours? Is that too much to ask?
Tartine Bakery on Urbanspoon

Befitting San Francisco’s socially conscious nature, Arizmendi Bakery is a cooperative. Not content just to produce good scones, muffins and breads (try the cheddar jalapeño breadsticks), Arizmendi, a loose affiliation of various local bakeries under the same name, has a mandate to create a positive workforce and develop skills.

I’m here for the $2.50 slice of the day’s thin-crust lunchtime pizza, which today comprises just three toppings: house-made tomato sauce, tangy goat cheese and fresh basil. There may be fancier creations of chef-driven pizza palaces in San Francisco, but this humble pie hits the spot, and does a world of good.

Pizza slice of the day at Arizmendi Bakery

Pizza slice of the day at Arizmendi Bakery

Arizmendi Bakery
1286 Valencia Street (and several other area locations)
Weekdays 7 am-7 pm (except closed Tuesday), weekends 8 am-7 pm
Arizmendi on Urbanspoon

Big as a Lion’s Head Soup in Davis, California

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Burger-sized meatballs in this boat of a clay-pot soup at Shanghai Town Restaurant in Davis, California

Burger-sized meatballs in this boat of a clay-pot soup at Shanghai Town Restaurant in Davis, California

Why am I in Davis, California, a university town northeast of San Francisco that would normally register as no more than a passing freeway sign? I’m here on a flyer, after a seatmate at a Sacramento sandwich spot suggests I visit Shanghai Town Restaurant, a nondescript plaza eatery with formica tables and a lunch combination plate featuring the usual Chinese food suspects.

Specifically, I’m here to try just one thing: a Shanghai specialty known as Lion’s Head clay-pot soup, featuring pork meatballs. After ordering, I’m thinking $10.45 is a bit steep for soup in a Chinese hole-in-the-wall. But then this veritable cauldron is plunked down on the table, still bubbling.

“Gee, maybe I should have order a medium,” I say to the older, co-owner. “One size,” he replies before leaving me to do battle. In I dive, slurping the delicious broth and chewing delicate cabbage and soft, fist-sized meatballs; the rice noodles are lurking somewhere in the depths.

After 15 minutes of yeoman work, I’ve scarcely made a dent in the still smouldering pot, despite having sweated through a couple of napkins. I leave with a carton of untouched meatballs and a litre of broth, content my $10 has bought me two more bowls of a delightful discovery.

Shanghai Town Restaurant
1260 Lake Boulevard, Suite 111
Tuesday to Sunday 11:30 am-9:30 pm. Closed Monday
Shanghai Town on Urbanspoon