#7 | We'll take Salt Bae for $100, Alex
He Got Game
Hello!
I'm Bruce Cole, Publisher of Edible San Francisco.
While we're working on the next Edible SF issue, we've curated a lengthy, but definitely worthy list, of what we've been eating, drinking and thinking about.
First up, there's a new bread in town. Here goes.
EAT
Get in line: Turkey and Sharkey's Sourdough bread. Made by Kendall Brinkley and Tyler Sharkey. Page & Webster. Every Thursday. Noon till Gone.
He Got Game: Hank Shaw, aka, Hunter, Angler, Gardner, Cook, in the latest issue of the always intriguing Modern Huntsman: "The problem is that people think ducks are birds, but in the kitchen, ducks are not birds. In the kitchen, ducks are beef. You treat a breast like a steak and you treat the legs and wings like brisket, slow and low. If you get that, you've cracked the code."
We want it 🔥🔥🔥🔥Every time we heat up the wok for dinner on our stovetop and it gets no where near as hot as it could/should be (otherwise known as luke warm), we regret not firing up our propane burner on the patio. On the other hand, we've never actually fired up our patio propane burner with our wok in hand, so the learning curve might just scorch our dinner. Luckily, J. Kenji Lopez Alt just published a recipe tutotial using his outdoor burner set up for How to Cook Beef Chow Fun on his YouTube channel, Kenji's Cooking Show.
Why go to all this trouble? We're in pursuit of deliciousness as well as that elusive wok hei. Per Kenji: "Perfect stir-fries should have a complex smoky, singed flavor known as wok hei—the breath of the wok. It comes from a combination of polymers and oil breaking down within the skillet, and from microscopic droplets of fat vaporizing as you toss food up and over the edge of a wok into the hot column of air created by the intense burner below. The food must be cooked fast enough that it can develop these flavors while simultaneously retaining a crisp, fresh crunch. There's nothing worse than wok-cooked vegetables that have been sitting around in a steam table until they are dull and drab." You can read the rest of his treatise on stir fry here: The Food Lab: For the Best Stir-Fry, Fire Up the Grill (and you'll never look at your wok the same after).
DRINK
The Trans Brewers Crafting the Future of Beer: "Julia Astrid Davis of Chicago’s Empirical Brewery and Rachael Engel of Seattle’s Ghostfish Brewing Company are two women who weren’t afraid to start over and reboot not only their careers but their entire lives in the process." Holly Regan for Unearth Women.
What We're Drinking
2019 Ferrari Brothers Rose of Grenache, Santa Ynez Valley.
You remember Austin and Tony Ferrari, right? Formerly of the HIllside Supper Club (Precita Park) and Provender Coffee (Portrero Hill), they've since decamped to Cincinnati but that hasn't stopped them from producing this mighty fine rosé. The 2018 was one of our favorite rosés last year but this has a bit more zing and acid which makes it's cool, crisp and totally quaffable. (we grabbed this bottle at Bi-Rite Market).
THINK
We'll take Salt Bae for $100, Alex: A short explanation of why Tunde Way is selling salt to white people for $100.
Black Book, "a global representation platform for Black and non-white people working within hospitality and food media," founded by chef Zoe Adjonyoh, Dr Anna Sulan Masing, and Frankie Reddin, continues with week eight of a conversation on decolonising the food industry. Featuring: Preeti Mistry, Yemi Amu, Maya Marie, Michael Elégbèdé, and Selassie Atadika. Register here.
LISTEN: Emilia Morano-Williams talks to academic, journalist and artist Anna Sulan Masing and chef, author and activist Zoe Adjonyoh on the Future Thinking Podcast about what it means to decolonise the food industry and the importance of multiple narratives.
Count em: How many times have you said SF is a great "food city?" (which is also routinely tossed at LA, NYC, Tokyo, Paris, etc.)? Jonathan Nunn of the Vittles Newsletter (subscribe here) says of that phrase "all it means is simply that these cities contain a certain number of quality and diverse restaurants. It says nothing about how prevalent food poverty or scarcity is in these cities, whether these restaurants are sustainable or how many people have access to these restaurants or what type of people have access to these restaurants, or whether the cities green spaces are pregnant with fresh produce, or indeed, much of worth at all." More here: Whose food city? ─ The Northeastern Restaurants of Humayunpur, Delhi.
SAVE RESTAURANTS! Schumer Backs $120 Billion Restaurant Fund as Aid Talks Sputter. Via Bloomberg: the two parties remain more than $1 (fucking) trillion apart. (Italics mine).
Read the room people: Bon Appétit videos will return in September after mass exodus.
Complete that thought: "Food media isn’t very good at cultural criticism, partly because it’s too often siloed in that broad-brush malaise of —lifestyle content— partly because restaurant criticism’s roots are in telling rich people very literally how style their lives; and partly because Brillat-Savarin never realised that his famous maxim “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are” would come into contact with things like Instagram and the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen; and partly because, at large, elements of fandom and breathless acclaim have united to denormalise critique and frame it as an attack on personhood, either of the creator or the consumer. Just ask Pitchfork." James Hanson in his latest Indigestion newsletter.
Also seen on Twitter:
Charity can’t fill the COVID-19 hunger gap. Congress must increase SNAP funding now.
EAT LOCAL
The Burrito Crisis: SF Chronicle's Peter Hartlaub on his fav place in Alameda. Plus a side order of history: "There wasn’t a lot of media interest in the local Mexican food scene for the first couple of years Ramiro Hernandez (who founded Talk of the Town, later Taqueria Morelia, in 1975) was around. Then, on Jan. 24, 1977, The San Francisco Chronicle discovered burritos."
Reserve your seat for , author of Indianish: Recipes and Antics from a Modern American Family. Amuse bouche: Priya sits down with Salt + Spine host Brian Hogan Stewart to talk about her career, her cookbook, and more.
That’s all for this week. Before next week's newsletter, why not subscribe to Jonathan Nunn's Vittles Newsletter (see "food city" ☝️).
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Be well and take care,
–Bruce
p.s.
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