Chris Hennes

Website. We ate here the first day we arrived in San Francisco because they don't take reservations and I hate relying on the airlines to get me anyplace at a particular time. It was an excellent introduction to the city. They have an interesting, varied, and delicious cocktail menu, as well as very reasonably-priced high-quality food. Food: Cerignola olives warm w/ citrus. I'm a sucker for olives and these did not dissapoint. Served warm with lemon rind, which gave a lovely aroma and tasted fantastic. Bruschetta w/ broc rabe. Two generous pieces of bruschetta with a large quantity of rabe and crescenza, also very good. Polenta w/ gorgonzola. I love gorgonzola, so this would have been hard to screw up: they did not. Margherita w/ buffalo milk mozz. I was surprised by the quantity of sauce on the pizza, but it was actually not bad at all. Maybe not the best pizza I've ever eaten, but a hell of a lot better than anything I can get in Oklahoma. Strawberry tart. Nondescript. To drink: Single Village Fix (mezcal, lime, pineapple gomme). Nice well-balanced mezcal drink: very smoky, but not objectionably so. Monte Carlo (rye, benedictine, bitters, orange). Nice Manhattan-genre cocktail, again well-balanced and quite good.

My wife and I ate at SPQR a few nights ago. They are taking reservations now via OpenTable (thankfully), and were very busy. The couple next to us ordered straight out of a tourist guidebook of some kind, so I'm guessing they've gotten good reviews in at least one such tome. It's a very small bistro-like neighborhood restaurant, crammed with as many tables as they could muster, so if you're looking for a romantic night out, this isn't it. That said, if you don't mind that feel, it's a very vibrant place. I started with the crispy pig's ear. I found that it had minimal pork flavor, which is not uncommon in pig's ear, but an absolutely excellent texture and a very nice tart salad. I can't recall what my wife had, but it was also very good. The appetizers are a clear winner in my book. Next I had the duck ravioli: the taste was good, if a little sweet for my tastes, and nothing terribly thrilling. My wife had the squid-ink pasta with crab; this had a nice flavor, but I found the fresh pasta a bit overcooked. For dessert I had some kind of cake thing. It was quite dry but tasted good, in particular the almonds. Bear in mind that I have no sweet tooth at all so it's possible that this was fantastic and I just didn't appreciate it... The upshot: a vibrant, cramped neighborhood hot-spot with very good appetizers. I'm not sure it's worth going out of your way for, and I wouldn't bother with the entrees, but it's pretty easy to get to on the Muni and you could do far worse.

I just returned from this trip and managed to catch three of the lunch options mentioned, but never did make it to breakfast. It's hard to be hungry in the morning after such gigantic dinners!! Here are my (somewhat terse) notes... Monday lunch - Burmese kitchen Ginger salad (I think? Ginger, peanut, pistachio, sesame seed, cabbage). This was excellent, a really wonderful flavor combination. Tamarind fish. Pretty mild, but not bad. Potato curry. Not really to my taste, it was like eating a bowl of cinnamon. Pumpkin stew. Nice flavors, more sweet potato than pumpkin, but good. Tuesday lunch - Kichi Grill (Westfield Mall Food Court) I think this was the Japanese place that Carolyn was talking about. I got the Poke Bowl as recommended, and it was very good (though I'm not much of a judge of Japanese food). Just watch out for that little nugget of Wasabi hiding under there, it can sneak up on you!! Wednesday lunch - Slanted Door Kumamoto oysters. Hard to go wrong with these, I think. I probably tried the sauces and then didn't give them a second thought, I prefer my oysters unadorned. These were delicious, perfectly shucked, fresh as can be. Crispy imperial rolls. Crispy and very good. Nice flavor, and nice accompaniments. Rice noodle stir-fry with chicken, shiitake mushrooms, broccoli, bean sprouts and egg. There was stuff besides rice noodles on this plate? It wasn't a bad dish, but that long list of ingredients had me expecting a little more than a plate of noodles with a few sprouts and a token mushroom. The rice noodles were a bit stickier than I might a have liked, predominant white pepper flavor that I did not object to. Crispy egg noodles with prawns, scallops, squid, carrots, broccoli, and shiitake mushrooms. Tasted overwhelmingly of shrimp, which were plentiful, but not of much else, though in contrast to the previous plate there was plenty of other stuff on the plate. Everything was well cooked, but the flavor was nothing to write home about. Service a bit slow at lunch, but friendly enough. We had no reservations, but no problem getting seated, although it was quite busy. Wednesday is a non-market day, I'd guess that on a market day you'd want a reservation, or a good amount of patience. I also grabbed a coffee and an espresso at the Blue Bottle in the Ferry Building. The coffee was very good, the espresso mediocre. Finally, a cherry turnover at Frog Hollow Farms' store in the Ferry Building, which was delicious.

I had lunch at Taco Hell today, and they had some new tacos on the menu. In soft corn tortillas, no less. I was intrigued, so grabbed two of them, one beef and one carnitas. The beef was too bland for my tastes, but the onion and cilantro relish was pretty good. I liked the carnitas much better, the flavor was not bad at all, with the same relish, and a fresh lime wedge. The tortillas themselves were past their prime, but I think that was a function of this particular location and it being Monday: they were at the end of a batch, I suspect. Ardent Taco Bell haters still won't like them, but those of you who occasionally indulge might want to give these a shot.

I'm interested in the coffee thing, but can't commit fo sure yet. Can you put me down as a tentative 'yes'?

I use "Bugialli on Pasta" from time to time, he discusses a lot of regional variations.

Do they have a page layout that is customized to the smartphone, or are you just using their regular website?

Has anyone tried to access the site from a smartphone? I am imagining being at the grocery store or market and seeing a special, or something particularly fresh, and building dinner around it on the spot.

So far so good: it seems to have recognized most of the cookbooks that I actually use. There are a few it recognized but that aren't indexed (yet...). My one complaint is that it doesn't include the page number of the recipe in the book, at least not that I can see. Is it in there somewhere?

Kerry, that's basically what I do, I use a bar code scanner to get the ISBNs, it can make a file with one code per line. So according to Nick's post above, that would work perfectly.

Who is entering this information in? Is it being purchased from the publishers directly, or is this startup doing that themselves? if they are doing it themselves there is a very good reason for the missing Escoffier...

Does everyone just use a whole number of lemons? I just juiced a bunch of leftover lemons: I have no idea how many. But I got 13 ounces of juice. So, any idea how much sugar?

Awesome, "bulk" as in, upload a file with an ISBN per line or something like that? That's how my book software works (Readerware), so that would be pretty seamless.

I finally made it to the Jack in the Box yesterday: I went with the Spicy Chicken sandwich and curly fries, and both were quite good. The tomato on the sandwich was anemic (though I suppose they all seem to be these days), but the chicken itself was very good. Thanks for the recommendation!

Nick, do you (or can you) enter your books by ISBN? Or is it by title?

Here's the info about their tuna, from this page:

Heritage Foods USA sells pole-caught tuna: they do accept wholesale accounts, I believe.

Interesting: if you are ever in Oklahoma City stop by Cheever's and try their chicken fried steak: I think it's excellent, but I'm not a Southerner (I just live here).

It's very hard (OK, impossible) to get fresh scallops here in Oklahoma. So if I want scallops I either a) fly to the coast or b) buy frozen. Option a requiring more commitment than I am willing to get into for a weeknight dinner, option b it is. I have heard that in the past decade freezing technology has improved dramatically; still, I'm skeptical. What about a ceviche? How do you cook frozen scallops? Has anyone tried them in raw applications? This landlocked cook needs to know!

An interesting point: I have definitely never had a tuna sandwich, and especially a tuna melt as good as what I make at home. But is that because there is some advantage to making it at home? Or is it just that we actually give a shit when making it ourselves, whereas at a diner or other sort of place that might serve a tuna sandwich, the standards just aren't very high?

From this description, I'd guess that the blades aren't sharp, for whatever reason. If it's smashing the meat then I agree, you'll wind up with something like a cube steak. The real magic of the jaccard, and what makes it different from other mechanical tenderizers, is the way it cleanly slices the fibers of the meat without tearing.

I'm not sure I can agree about ice cream: made at home is better than the kind you buy at the grocery store, sure. But I've had some really incredible ice creams at restaurants. If the pastry chef is good, there is no reason a restaurant can't turn out an ice cream every bit as good as what we make at home. Anything that requires fresh tortillas will be better at home: I have never been to a restaurant that was capable of turning out truly fresh tortillas, essentially a la minute, with each order. Maybe at the very high end?

Ah, stale! That was probably my problem, these were very fresh, still warm from the griddle. I need to make them ahead, I guess. A full day ahead, you suppose?

Heidi, I probably used something like five full-sized leaves to one cup of dried beans. Um, next time I will be using one leaf. And the gasoline comparison is apt (bear in mind that I like the smell of gasoline, and of epazote): it's an odd sweet scent.

That is not correct: see this post by nathanm for the difference between Jaccard and cube steak.