#126 | 🌯 The Ultimate SF Burrito List
We'll Be Missing the King This Spring
Hello!
Peach
Would you like to throw a stone at me? Here, take all that’s left of my peach. Blood-red, deep: Heaven knows how it came to pass. Somebody’s pound of flesh rendered up. Wrinkled with secrets And hard with the intention to keep them. Why, from silvery peach-bloom, From that shallow-silvery wine-glass on a short stem This rolling, dropping, heavy globule? I am thinking, of course, of the peach before I ate it. Why so velvety, why so voluptuous heavy? Why hanging with such inordinate weight? Why so indented? Why the groove? Why the lovely, bivalve roundnesses? Why the ripple down the sphere? Why the suggestion of incision? Why was not my peach round and finished like a billiard ball? It would have been if man had made it. Though I’ve eaten it now. But it wasn’t round and finished like a billiard ball; And because I say so, you would like to throw something at me. Here, you can have my peach stone.
—D.H. Lawrence
Hey there - I'm Bruce Cole, Publisher of Edible San Francisco. If you’re new here, welcome to Eat.Drink.Think., a newsletter spotlighting seasonal recipes, the latest SF Bay Area food news, poetry, and more!
👉 ICYMI: The most-clicked link from our last newsletter was the YouTube video of Luis rating croissants in Paris amidst the ongoing protests against raising the retirement age from 62 to 64.
Have you grabbed a copy of the latest issue yet? Becky Duffett’s cover story on Chasing the King details the devastating news that California king salmon season has been canceled entirely this year. She talks to fisherman Matt Juanes of @fv_plumeria to see how he plans to replace his usual spring salmon bounty, Tom Worthington of Monterey Fish Co. on how the absence of salmon will impact local restaurants, and Chef Nico Pena of Octavia talks about how he will sadly replace salmon on his menu. Jessica Entzel Nolan’s These Chefs Cook Like a Mother looks at women who gave up their restaurant chef careers to launch and build their grassroots food businesses and spotlights Sarah Bonar of Lucky Penny Bread, Monique Feybesse of Tarts de Feybesse, and Christina Teav-Liu of Mama Teav’s. Anna Voloshyna shares her recipe for Jingalov Hats with Spring Greens, and we’re featuring a recipe for Tofu Mushroom Curry from Ever-Green-Vietnamese: Super-Fresh Recipes, Starring Plants from Land and Sea by Andrea Nguyen. And Dan Bransfield stops by Outta Sight Pizza to see what pies they are slinging.
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Cheap Comfort: American cheese is not a quality product. In fact, its lack of quality is often the point, a grand embrace of the lowbrow and cheap that is the cornerstone of so much comfort food. Eater
Got Oat Milk? High School student sues LA School District after asking her school if she could hold a “day of action” promoting the benefits of non-dairy milk. The administration said yes, but only if she included pro-dairy information because USDA guidelines require milk to be served with public school lunches. The Washington Post (gift article)
The Bountiful Benefits of Beans: “Beans are protein-rich, sustainable, and delicious. Why doesn’t the US eat more of them?” Vox
We could start by eating more burritos!
🌯🌯🌯 How many of these can you cross off your list? You'll need Dan Bransfield’s new burrito poster to keep track.
We’re partial to the burritos at La Taq (carne asada) and El Castillito (al pastor), which was infamously excluded from Five ThirtyEight’s search for America’s best burrito despite the scoring tabulation that ranked it #3.
5 Drinks for Right Now: Christian Reynonso is on it in our latest issue with what you should be drinking right now, including the YTC Michelada with Chamoy Rimm (above) from Yo Tambien Cantina, New Wave Fix from Dalva, an Orange Shower from Shuggies Trash Pie, Atole de Plátano at Universal Bakery and a Key Bump (vermouth rouge shot) from Key Klub.
🧊 Don’t Dilute My Drink: For Clear Ice Afficiandos
Black Girl Magic: Two Sisters have built the largest Black-owned wine company in the U.S. How they got there when they grew up not knowing the other existed. SF Chronicle (gift article)
We’re Done With QR Codes In Restaurants: “For years, I’ve joined the restaurant technology industry in explaining the nuances of the tech. Diners don’t live in the nuance … They are almost universally disliked.” Expedite
🥧 Nobody’s Perfect, Maybe. Pies can leak. Tarts can be open and rustic. Cheesecakes will crack, and this is fine—even charming. Rudy Tandoh on the art of not trying too hard and the studied carelessness of a great dessert. The New Yorker
Black Women Are Key to the American Kitchen: Chef and food writer Becca Moss examines the Mammy stereotype and the inequity that still prevents most Black women from owning restaurants.
Millions of Black women who picked up those Native ingredients and applied both the intelligence and traditions of Africa and those of Europe that were imposed on them have yet to garner rightful recognition in the pantheon of the American professional kitchen. Their toil and intellectual property have been as dismissed and concealed as that of any slave, their names sacrificed and lost to the American project. Civil Eats
🐄 Antique Beef: Where retired dairy cows go to die. “If you’re going to eat beef, dairy beef is the most sustainable choice; dairy cows produce milk, cream, and butter until retirement. There’s just not anything else that comes close to being as responsibly sourced or as delicious tasting.” —Chris Kronner, owner-chef of the former Kronnerburger, on the trend of Bay Area chefs hankering for meat from retired Holstein dairy cows. SF Chronicle (gift article)
Related: “Within five to ten years, Holstein as a breed will be mentioned at the same level as Angus as a breed.” Bryan Flannery for Eater, from The Holstein Chain in our Oct. 22 edition.
🐮 One Bad Minute (Aka A Shot to the Head): Jordan Michelman witnessed the slaughter of a few grass-fed steers to understand why small-production ranchers claim their methods are the most ethical way to eat meat.
Small-production meat arguably offers an alternative way; it’s not abstention, nor is it gross excess, but rather a more nebulous and complicated thing—one often financially inaccessible to many. It’s easy to claim small-farm production as the more ethical choice, but that neatly ignores the real financial costs involved in sourcing beef this way, not to mention the environmental impact. Bon Appetit
“Food is the most efficient means of helping people to see themselves,” Satterfield says. The New Yorker
On repeat this week: Percussive Dub, Spiritual Jazz & Psychedelic Grooves with Millie McKee. “Selector Millie McKee embarks on an eclectic journey through some of her most treasured records. Based in Bristol, Millie is one of the most illuminating diggers in the city, whose keen instinct for rock, jazz, funk and lots more spellbinding genre agnostic sounds have made her a DJ of note in a town full of DJs of note.”
Thanks for reading EAT. DRINK. THINK. from Edible San Francisco!
That’s all for this week.
We’re outta here. Be well and take care,
—Bruce
“There are those who love to get dirty and fix things. They drink coffee at dawn, beer after work. And those who stay clean, just appreciate things. At breakfast they have milk and juice at night. There are those who do both, they drink tea.”
—Gary Snyder