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burger + hot dog + cheese + bacon = SUPER BURGER CHEESY DOG.

Wow.

I am so making these at my next bbq.

[Thanks Joon!]

So, 7×7 magazine just posted their annual “Eat & Drink” awards for San Francisco.. Hayes Valley restaurants scooped up 5 out of 20 of the awards:

best dessert: Citizen Cake
best pre-theater: Jardiniere
best for a large group: Sauce (woohoo! congrats you guys!)
best CA cuisine: Zuni Cafe
best restaurant cocktails: Absinthe

Woohoo.. go Hayes Valley. My hood rocks. Well, it’s definitely “up and coming” at least… And, it’s getting better — we’re getting at least two more new restaurants in this year, so that’s exciting. As Michelle excitedly reported last week, Miette Patisserie opened up here, which should give Citizen Cake a run for its money. I actually am not a huge fan of Citizen Cake — their desserts are WAY too sweet for my taste.

That said, I’m still a little disappointed with the eating choices we have here. It seems like we have either expensive fancy places, or disturbingly mediocre ones. Grr. I just want places that are cheap and super good… Like Hotei, Weird Fish, Citrus Club, and Hard Knox. Mmmmmm.

Oh yah.. this reminds me, but if you’re in San Diego and are looking for a good place to eat, check out sandiego.eats.it. Doug just launched it, and it’s looking pretty good. I’m waiting for him to launch sanfrancisco.eats.it — I’m all over that.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

We had a bunch of people over the Yang family house for a good ol’ fashioned Thanksgiving day dinner with three turkeys and all of the fixin’s.. The initial plan was to do three different styles of turkey: deep fried, bbq’d, and rotisserie’d (on the Showtime rotisserie grill)…

The bbq was the first to get going — Jason works for Kingsford and brought a brand new weber, along with the latest in Kingsford charcoal technology.. The process is pretty neat; once you get the coals going, you push the coals to the side, and put a tray of water in the middle, underneath the bird. Then, with the lid on (and the mesquite chips added) the bbq turns into a smokey furnace for the next 5 hours… Mmmm..

The rotisserie turkey was the next on the list, but unfortunately, had to duck out of the race early on account of the fact that the turkey didn’t FIT inside the rotisserie. Ooops. Even after we attempted to hack off its wings, it still didn’t fit. Poor turkey. So, in the end, turkey #2 was roasted in the oven for awhile, and then finished up on the grill.. Kind of a hybrid turkey.. Andy also glazed it in some honey sauce of some sort, but it was really out of the race anyway…

The deep fried turkey was the main event… After seeing all of the news this week about the dangers of turkey fryers, we took extra precautions so that my parents didn’t return from their vacation (they’re in Japan for the week) to a burnt down house.. We thought having three fire extinguishers around was enough.. The turkey cooks in the oil at 350 degrees farenheight, so we all took turns watching the thermometer whilst the cooking oil was brought up making sure that it didn’t get about 450 (the temperature at which oil spontaneously combusts).. It was taking a long while for the oil to heat up.. maybe a little *too* long.. until, we noticed that we were reading celsius. Oh geez. well, thankfully we noticed long before there was any real danger..

The bbq turkey took about 5 hours to cook, the fried turkey.. 1 hour… and in the end, both were super tasty. The bbq had an awesome smokey mesquite taste to it, so I think that it was the winner.. You’d think that the bbq would dry out the turkey and stuff, but honestly, that turkey came out perfectly.

It’s two days after Thanksgiving now, and I’m still stuffed.. In addition to the three turkeys, we had a veritable cornucopia of food comprising of bacon wrapped dates, bacon wrapped scallops, tasty corn soup, some sort of fried meatballs brought by the designers, mashed potatoes of two varieties, sweet potatoes, three different green bean casseroles, homemade cranberry sauce, gravy, homemade stuffing, and at least seven different pies (pumpkin, pecan, sweet potato, mince, peach and apple).. and.. deep fried twinkies.

Yah, we have a few leftovers.

This weekend, Supperclub San Francisco held its grand opening gala.. I’m just one of the investors, so I really don’t have *that* much to do with the actual place, so I can’t really take much credit for it. Anyway, it’s amazing. The place is gorgeous, with three rooms: a red bar “Le Bar Rouge”, a mirrored-colour changing lounge “La Salle Privée”, and the main balconied dining room “La Salle Neige” — all white, beds all around the sides.. Supperclub is already a legendary establishment in Amsterdam and Rome, and San Francisco is their first US venture.

The gala opening was spectacular. Themed “wild, silver and white”, I got decked out in an all white tuxedo for the event. Costumes ranged from hot silver dresses to tennis outfits (get it? white!) to one guy who pasted mirror tile all over himself (he would be been quite at home in the limo). The evening was punctuated a sampling of the various performances that will be happening throughout the course of a normal Supperclub meal — djs, drummers, opera singers, drag queens, and even a chocolate orgy.. So, if you’re around San Francisco, be sure to set aside an evening for a visit…

So.. my friend Damian’s friend Jason saw Beck at Pancho Villa Taqueria in the Mission last night… he writes:

Taqueria Mariachi for a Night:

Last night Melanie and I went to Pancho Villa for the award-winning deliciousness. As you may know, it’s not unusual for somebody to be
standing in the back playing a guitar. However, the dude playing the guitar last night was Beck. The normal mariachi guy was there and was
looking PISSED (I should’ve gotten a photo of him sulking in the front).

It was neat because I got the sense that most of the people in Pancho Villa didn’t even know who Beck was. He was singing while people were
eating their burritos, making trips to the salsa bar, walking around him to get to the bathroom, etc. In fact, he was largely ignored, just like everyone else who sings in the back at Pancho Villa. The lesson here:
even a celebrity can’t distract you from a Pancho Villa burrito.

Haha.. good stuff.. Beck plays with Le Tigre tonight at Bill Graham..

Mmmm.. hot dogs are sooo tasty.. The New York Times has a nice mutimedia article about hot dogs in and around NYC…

Mmm.. hot dog.

I’ll have to add these to my list of hot dog places to explore next time I’m out there..

[via thejerk .. it's nice that Pius is blogging about NYC hot dogs whilst travelling halfway across the world in Bangkok..]

Licorice & Piglets.. Two great tastes, together at last! Ok, so they probably don’t taste like pig, but I think I’m just going to have to get myself a tin of these.

[found at coolhunting]

so i had crawfish for dinner tonight… I was mulling over what to have for dinner at this cajun place when a semi-attractive girl in really short shorts walked over from the other table and told me that I should definitely try the crawfish. I believe her exact sell was… “c’mon.. they’re like eating little bugs.”

So, as not to argue with the semi-attractive girl in really short shorts (and the fat dude whose tie was tucked into his shirt who also chimed in that I get the crawfish), I ordered the crawfish.

So I asked semi-attractive girl in really short shorts how exactly one was supposed to eat these crawfish, and since she had just piled 87 crawfish on to her plate, she stopped by our table and gave us a little demo.

Step One: twist off the crawfish tail
Step Two: pinch the tail on the top bit to loosen it up a bit
Step Three: yank out the tail meat
Step Four: remove the “poop” off the top of the tail
Step Five: eat. yum. throw out the rest of the crawfish.

It was quite a messy operation, and after happily devouring the tiny bit of meat that she had so delicately extracted, the semi-attractive girl in really short shorts gave me a quick smile and bounced back to her table, hands and arms dripping with cajun-spiced crawfish juice.

The amazing part about crawfish is how little edible meat you actually get from each one… Out of the three pound portion of crawfish that I devoured, I’d say I’d probably eaten about 1/4 pound of meat… That’s a lot of waste.. But.. it sure was tasty.

Now.. I only had my camera phone with me, so I only have a few pics… Korby took some with his camera, but he didn’t bring the uploady cable, so these pics will have to do for now..

mmmm.. so following along my roadside america book, i visited “new york system” in providence, RI… I walked about 2 miles from tina’s theatre (where I followed her for the whole day, doing acting classes and such — that’s a whole other story, which maybe i’ll tell too) to this hot dog joint.. i walk in, it’s like 2pm and it’s empty, except for the two people that work there..

so.. according to the book, the thing to get here is the “wiener”… so i do. arriving about 23 seconds after you order it, the “wiener” comes on a plain brown plastic plate.. sitting in a untoasted white bun, the reddish hued wiener is smothered in raw onions, mustard, and some sort of mysterious beef sauce. I asked the dude what the sauce was and he told me it was a closely guarded secret.

Hmm… it was dangerously easy to down this hot dog, and I ended up eating three, having gotten the hint from the next patron who sat next to me (who ordered three). I had a nice conversation with Charlie, the dude behind the counter about the history of new york system and Charlie’s retirement plans in hawaii. New York System was founded in the 1920s by this greek dude Gustav Papas… He liked New York, but didn’t like the hubub, so he found a new home in Providence, RI, where he founded the original “New York System” on Smith Street (the one that I went to — which, incidentally, wasn’t the one mentioned in the Roadfood book that julia gave me). Anyway… the Papas family has owned and run this New York System on Smith street the whole time, but there are other New York Systems that are not run by the Papas family. The other New York Systems do not have the secret recipe of the mysterious beef sauce.

Anyway… the hot dog was.. pretty good, but then again, I love hot dogs and greasy diner food. The raw onions and the beef sauce was an odd combination — the onions were tart and sweet, and the beef sauce was slightly tangy. The hot dog itself was kind of mushy — it didn’t really have the snap of a fully cased hot dog, so I suspect that it was either caseless or had some sort of really thin case. The bun was wonder-bread soft and mushy and kind of looked like a slice of bread rather than a roll. I didn’t feel sick or anything afterwards, so that’s a good sign.

I’ve since left Providence, and now I’m in NYC — where I’m sure to find more delicious hot dogs… I’m meeting Audris and Donna tonight in the upper west side, so a visit to Gray’s Papaya is definitely on the horizon…

so… julia got me this wonderful book, roadside america — that highlights all sorts of diners and such all around the country.. yesterday morning, after visiting with ryan at dartmouth, i stopped off at the 4 aces diner to have breakfast.. 4 aces is kind of a biker bar meets diner meets colonial house kind of place. i had the “joker special” which was pancakes (with maple syrup — a must have, being so close to vermont and all), sausage, bacon and eggs… deeelicious.

I’m in providence right now, hanging out with tina the actress.. last night we went to this good-bye roast for oskar eustice (he’s going to head up the new york public theater) and then all morning i’ve been following tina around to her acting classes…