Le Blog de San Francisco.

Oh my, that was quick. The owners were quick to pull the plug on Repastoria Satyricon, before morphing the place into Bite Restaurant. Well, Bite won't have a long suffering agony like Terry Schiavo, they terminated the place yesterday.

We don't feel good about it, it is always sad to see a place go, and the kids in the kitchen were fun. On the other hand, a search for "bite restaurant" san francisco' has us first, and our comments were not exactly positive. We called the place a bit of a lost cause. So we were prescient, but not responsible as no one found us googling for Bite since we posted the review. Good luck to the employees for finding something new.

No one found us googling for Bite, but did anyone find us googling for something else? Surprisingly enough, quite a few. Going through the logs, it seems that 'Cafe du Soleil' has people anxious to know what it is about. Tartine is popular, Incanto as well (even though I've not been there yet, it must have come about in a Meredith context). Baku get some people curious. Falstaff and La Suite have a following, and Little Star Pizza intrigues many. And my typo on Espetus (espestus) seems to be a common one.

France voted overwhelmingly against the European constitution today. 57% against, 43% for, with a high turn out, 70%.

I have to shamefully admit that I stayed out of this one. Had I voted, I probably would have voted yes, as I believe in a stronger European integration, especially as a counter-weight to the US. I did not follow very closely the debate, but referendums in France are always elections on the popularity of the president (who is the only one who can call them) and it was not very wise of Chirac to choose this way to ratify the constitution. His own popularity has been going down steadily at the last 2 elections (for the county election and the French members of the European parliement). His prime minister has been unpopular for a long time. That team crystallized a lot of resentment.

Bite was called Repastoria Satyricon for a short time. It was an Italian restaurant, so Meredith reviewed it. Satyricon was tanking real fast, the owners decided to cut their loss and refocus. So one week they shut it down, and the next week, it was back as Bite. It is right next to Lime, the new hipper-than-thou lounge which serves small plate in Finnish furniture from the 50s (Saarinen inspired at least). After the change, Bite now serves small plate. It seems a bit of a lost cause, as Lime (which I stepped in but haven't eaten there yet, so I cannot assess the food) is always busy with lots of energy and sets the standard in the neighborhood. Bite will only get the crumbs.

Food-wise, Bite's is not very interesting. They try hard to have a menu catering to the taste of a youngish crowd, ie. tequila and vodka in the recipes. Pernod in the oysters. We had a beet salad that was ok, but a bit disassembled. We had some steak that was cheap ($14 or so) but the portion was too small, especially as it was listed in the biggest bites of the menu. See, it is not appetizers and entrees, it is small bites, big bites, bigger bites. The best dish was the barbecued ribs ($12) and the fries they came with. Dessert was disappointing: some fruit crumble, but done with frozen berries.

Service was surprisingly uneven. It was not so bad, but they brought me a plate of pasta I never ordered. Twice. And then it was still on the bill. I would excuse this from a new place (Baku's service had hiccups too which they must have smoothed by now) but the crew was at Repastoria Satyricon before. They should know what they are doing.

Post is up. It is about Yo's sushi, which I believe, deserves a good review, but was not my first choice initially. I tried baku de thai (which I mentioned here). I was not wowed enough to feature it at sfist. We also went to Bite, a new place on market street at sanchez-ish. Not wowed either. I'll write a review later. Went to Pastores (mission@cortland), a place that has little interest beyond its immediate neighborhood: it was decent cooking by a super nice lady, but that you could make yourself at home with ingredients from safeway or costco.

Went to another place in Nob Hill, rue lepic, not blown away, plus I refuse to write about Nob Hill places. I'll leave it to Meredith. Cafe du Soleil kept delaying their opening date until last Tuesday, on a morning I had to leave for a business trip at 4:30am. We went to stray fish sushi. There was a nice narrative behind stray fish: it is in a old bank building which was turned into a restaurant, Rock Soup, a couple years back. Rock Soup did not make it, which is sad, it was a nice place. As a sushi place, the layout at stray fish does not work, with only three counter seats, and boring sushis (Yo's deserve credit for carrying uni and toro, stuff that people might not order and that he might have to get rid off). All in all, it was a mess to find a place that I felt would be interesting. I was saved the night before leaving town by Yo's excellent sushi.

I have been late eviscerating Meredith today.

First, last week, my review was subpar. I give myself a D-. I caught part of Meredith obvious hypocrisy: she condemned the NYTimes as elitist for mentioning the ubiquitous tourists at the Ferry building, before she herself called the tourists there pesky.

What I miss was the most flagrant hypocritical comment. She wrote: My rule has always been that I champion any guidebook that leads you to one enjoyable place that you wouldn't otherwise have known about, in a review which did not champion any place that you wouldn't otherwise have known about. So she failed at her own criteria, reviewing again the slanted door, which she reviewed already, is on the chronicle top 100 list, was visited by the then sitting president of the USA Bill Clinton and is in the zagat top rated.

This ,week, I have to apologize, but I won't have much time to spend on her non-sense. She reviews Jacqueline (another perennial Chronical Top 100, which just got dropped from the list this year) and Matterhorn. Both are famous SF restaurants, both are in the zagat for years, both have been featured previously in the Weekly (Jacqueline won best of the bay this year and last year, Matterhorn won best fondue last year). Jacqueline is in North Beach, so Meredith is in familiar territory. She orders a $50 lobster souffle, earning one more time her title of La Virgen de la Langosta.

To recap: two well-known restaurants, one of them serving lobster in North Beach. Yes, indeed, it is another Meredith review, and we will not learn anything interesting, one more time.

PS: I love Jacqueline, it is a fantastic place, by the way. Go there if you have the opportunity, and don't forget to make a reservation. Just because Meredith went there does not mean it is bad. Meredith follows the zagat anyway.

has opened. I am out of the state for a few days, so won't try it myself until the week-end. Welcome to the neighborhood.

This is one for haddock, whose restaurant's menu welcomes well-behaved kids and well-behaved parents: it seems it is not enough, one also needs well-behaved patrons.

Last night we had dinner at Rue Lepic, a French restaurant on nob hill. We went there on the recommendation of a friend, and ended up not being wowed, and the main reason is that we got really angry at the two ladies next to our table. We are dining nicely, with our 16 month old kid, who has been surprisingly accomodating in restaurants so far.

The two ladies next to us start smiling at him, gagga, gooogooo, which gets him to laugh. But they don't stop, they keep interacting with him. When he says a word, they repeat it louder and giggle louder. Which gets him to raise it up a notch, and they start almost shrieking everytime he says or does something. I am imagining the other tables (luckily it's late and the restaurant is emptying) who expect a romantic setting, and have two somewhat drunk girls scream like babies, except louder. I am not having fun: if my kid is loud, I can take him outside. But I cannot tell those two to shut the fuck up, they're having a nice dinner and I cannot be rude. But every hint I drop, 'please don't get him too excited', 'it's better to ignore him while he quiets down', is just plain ignored. I was so pissed when the waiter brought them a complimentary dessert, keeping them around longer.

We had a somewhat similar experience a few night before at Bite. The cooks there are students at the culinary academy and are quite playful. It is an open kitchen, and we are sitting across from their counter in a booth. So they hide behind the counter and pop up like puppets. A life size peek-a-boo. Boy was the baby happy, and excited afterwards. In Bite, we could just let him walk around and cool down. He could be loud, no one cared, the place is definitely not formal. And the chefs were just kid themselves. At Rue Lepic, the two stupid girls had a blast, but ruined the evening for everyone around. Lesson: if you see a baby in the restaurant, just keep to yourself.

Did I dream, or was the finger in the original story manucured? I had to look back:
Considering the nail's slightly longer length and neat grooming, O'Hara speculated that it may have belonged to a woman, though "it's hard to tell."?

That would be his finger.

The finger was lost while the guy was working at a paving company, which has to be rough on the hands even with gloves. Which means that the wendy's woman groomed it before she cooked it. So much hard and gruesome work, it's a shame they did not got away with it.

The post is up at SFist. It is about two new restaurant guides. I wrote the review while I was traveling this week, which prompted questions like: so, you are visiting San Francisco next? Kinda, I guess.

We are #1 for people googling for Le Cafe du Soleil so we have a duty to update them: it will open on Tuesday, according to Aldoblog, who lives right around the corner. We'd give you up to the minute updates too if we weren't a few thousands miles away.

Slammed wrote an article back in July last year that praised Meredith Brody's writing. Well, there is a follow up to it by Phil Innes, and it mentions us.

Despite Brody’s elegant writing, she seems to have picked up a coterie of on-line stalkers. Their animosity is palpable. Poking fun at Meredith Brody is like clubbing baby seals: too easy. I agreed with several of her critics that the headline, “Jew Eat Yet?” was tasteless, but assumed that she, like most columnists, rarely gets to write her own headlines. Her detractors probably had a point about gnocchi colored a verdant green.

But I find Brody’s writing almost always evocative. The fog was rolling in, seemingly right into the restaurant. I think her blog critics sell her short...

Elegant writing???? She of the mammoth 130 words sentence? She the queen of pleonasm and superflous adverb (spherical disks, for Chrissake!) The only elegant writing in italic deals with baby seals, if you ask me. And us: on-line stalkers? Palpable animosity? We are so misunderstood, we just are humble fact checkers trying to bring common sense to Meredith. God knows she needs it.

Oh, and Phil, if you are going to quote us, give us a link, thanks!

It's back to the regular Brody beat, after the best of break. I said I would get back to the Best of issue, but haven't gotten around to it. A few things popped to mind: that last year's winner of 'best thin crust pizza' did not make it into this year top 5 pizza; last year winner for best fried chicken did not make it into this year's top 5 (either: reviewers are fickle like that, or they forgot the bullshit they were serving us last year). Anyhow, it does look like last year's debacle had the Weekly enlarge the food team for the occasion (like hell Meredith went to Popeye's) so it is harder for me to find grief: the more diverse the contributions, the more diluted the mind boggling comments of hers.

Also, I was going to make snark comments about the reader's poll, but I did not vote myself. I never found the on-line entry, and am way too lazy to fill out and mail a hard copy one. So it's totally predictable, with not one ounce of imagination, and it's my fault.

Enough with the best of issue, let's not attempt to stop the big wheel of time: we have another review to review. Or so I thought, until I realized that Meredith did not get back from her break yet. It's only worthless page filler. She goes to the Slanted Door, a place that the Weekly readers would have voted best vietnamese in a heartbeat, if there was such a category. She goes with Johnny Apple, and she does all the talking again. Remember her interview with Amanda Hesser (Meredith is obviously on the rolodex of the publicity manager for the publisher of NY Times writers) or the director of "Supersize Me". Well, it's the same today: it's not about letting Johnny Apple talk, but about her telling him that she knows his work, and that he should have mentioned this place that she knows in his book.

The funny part is that we always make fun of Meredith Brody for acting like a tourist, with her infinite North Beach escapades and risk-adverse fancy-pantsy restaurant selection. Guess what kind of book Johnny wrote? Apple's America: The Discriminating Traveler's Guide to 40 Great Cities. Common Cause! Meredith's Brother in Arms! Figther of the same Crusade: "Helping discriminating travelers." And of course, discriminating is an euphemism for carrying a fat wallet. Apple's list of SF places? Tadich Grill, Slanted Door, Fifth Floor, Gary Danko, Masa's, Yank Sing, Zuni Cafe, Chez Panisse and Oliveto. A good list if you are planning a get together with your fellow lottery winners or you are Larry Ellison personal assistant. I don't know who else would list Yank Sing as the required "cheap ethnic" item on their list.

Meredith picked the Slanted Door, a place that has been reviewed gazillion times even in the Weekly by her less than 9 months ago. Yawn. So a superflous lunch review with an author who writes tourist guides and that she would not let talk anyway. The point? Meredith eats with famous people. You don't. Meredith is cool. Good for her.

Lest we think otherwise, she eats with famous people who have an agenda to sell to us, and she is still dumb as a rock. She writes, about the piece in the NYTimes about the ferry building (I discussed it here) that it struck [her] as singularly wrongheaded, not to say elitist and mean-spirited.

First, elitist is a wrong word. It is the easy adjective for critics of the NYTimes, usually heaped by conservatives with scorn for the so-called "liberal media." Snob would be a better adjective.

But what does Meredith write a few paragraph later? Out the Door is a terrific alternative for those pesky tourists... So NY Times saying there are too many tourists? Elitist and mean-spirited. Meredith doing the same thing? I already told you: dumb as a rock.

That what I am (and my people to), according to teh Brits. That the Britons don't like the French, it's not big news, they have it for us since they burned Joan of Ark. But the Swedes call us: disobedient, immoral, disorganised, neo-colonialist and dirty; the Spaniards: cold, distant, vain and impolite. Pretty harsh stuff there.

Or is it? They qualify all these adjective as negative in the article. I for one find those quite endearing.

I was told that Cafe du Soleil, the new tenant of the Movida space, was going to open today. I am currently traveling, but an informant did go there, and they will open only on Wednesday. My informant did get a croissant as they were doing a dry run, but was not allowed to pay for it.

Water skiing snow bunny 

Went to Tahoe the second week-end of May and the mood was definitely at goofing around. They had a "competition" where people would ski down the hill into an water pond. The goal would be to cross the pond in style. This snow bunny made it. The picture I don't have but was the most impressive was this guy who had these new-ish two-way skis that you can ski backwards and forwards with, and did a 180 jump while he was on the water and STILL crossed the pond.

By the way, these two way skis: a bitch to ski behind, they are curved upward at both ends, so they toss the snow up in the air.

Went to this new place at the corner of 15th and valencia the week it opened.


Baku pictures 

Here's what I wrote about it to answer some question on chowhound. The dishes are clockwise from the top left: boar, creme brulee, fried catfish soup, squid salad.

I have tried Baku last week. You should wait a bit before you go.

The interior is loungy and nice. Hardwood floor, fancy art on the walls, two flat screen tvs showing how to make hand-painted china. The room is spacious, with large windows on the valencia side.

Food-wise, they have two menus. The first time I stopped, one menu was in Thai only, and they did not take credit card yet (they will eventually, with a $20 minimum). Second time, they had translated the thai menu. The first menu looks like some kind of fusion-ish menu with French influences. The thai menu had the thai dishes. I ordered from that menu, as I don't care much for rabbit normand.

I had: calamari salad. The calamari could have had a bit more snap to it, a bit more crispness. I associate crispness with freshness, so I was a bit disappointed. Otherwise, it was an ok dish.

Fried catfish soup. The soup had some tamarind in it and was very good. The catfish pieces were fried first, then tossed in the broth. It was served on a little cute fish-shaped dish with a little burner on the table. The catfish bits tasted like they had been prepared too early.

Wild board stir fry. I forgot what it was actually called, but it was the best dish. Lot of whole pepper grain, and little tomatillos in a thick dark curry sauce.

Overall, the food was okay, but not overwhelming. I do believe that is due mostly to growing pains. Service was nice (and pretty) but clueless. We had three waitresses willing to take our order, but no one to clear the plates. They would bring the next dish and find no room on the tables because of the previous plates. Again, an issue that will be solved when they assigned a role to each.

Wine-wise: the serving of merlot for $6 was one of the largest I've had lately, but it was some blackstone merlot where $6 gets you the whole bottle at safeway. The other choices weren't much better (smoking loon cab or bv). They don't have a wine list anyway, so you order blindly. My advice: call and ask about corkage.

Dessert: the ginger creme brulee was the best dish of the evening, with a thick sugar crust and a soft cream inside. The ginger flavor is light: I was able to discern it, but my companion who had not seen the menu never figured it out.

The bread pudding was dry and to be avoided.

Overall: still too early to call. Service will fall in place when the waitresses figure out what works and what does not. Food-wise, there are good things and nothing awful.

Optical Illusions 

It's 12:30am in Waterloo, Ontario, and the sign on this optician's storefront says: open. Could it be an ...optical illusion?

For croissants to taste good, they have to be fresh. Some of the best ones I've had were from the kitchen of the Sir Francis Drake hotel, on union sq. and the reason they were good was they had just been baked. On the other hand, I've had many pedestrian croissants at "good" places, just because it was in the afternoon. Well, le bon gateau, on castro at 18th, understands this, and they sell their morning pastries for 75c after 6pm. At least they know what they are worth. The chausson aux pommes was still tasty at that time, and it is a good snack after Rusty's class at the Castro Yoga Tree.

It's not really about the Chron, but more about some collective failure of the media here, but this morning I am reading the newspaper. The cover story, above the fold, with one big and one small picture is about the death of a by-stander in a shooting in Bayview. Sad story, an innocent victim, but front page? Maybe it's a small news day.

Bottom left corner, no picture, a short intro with a follow up on page like A9, a story that quotes: Eight months before the invasion of Iraq, the head of British foreign intelligence reported to Prime Minister Tony Blair that President Bush wanted to topple Saddam Hussein by military action and warned that U.S. intelligence was "being fixed around" that goal.

Here is a deception which cost more than 1,600 lives, and $200 billions, and with no end in sight, and the story is pushed to the side. I guess the media is "being fixed" as well.

2nd part of the Dan Leone interview now up at SFist.

While talking about SFist, I should note that it got Best Local Blog from the SF Weekly yesterday, so thanks to the Arts&Entertainment team of the Weekly.

The Chron gave a mention to Cafe du Soleil forthcoming opening. But what they don't know, and I'm going to tell you, is the actual date: this coming Monday. I'll be traveling, so will miss it.

They repainted the outside; gone is the "Bird Lives" painting, replaced by a turquoise blue wall that is begging to be tagged. I guess Bird is really dead now. Let's start the countdown until it is painted either in a darker tone, or with a crowded mural (for an example of such mural, just look across the street at the fall foliage on Thep Phanom). Day 0 is now.

Oh well, our contest did not prove very popular. It seems people are more eloquent when criticizing Meredith Brody than trying to emulate her. Which makes sense, I guess. Maybe we are the amongst the few who think that brutalizing the language Meredith's way could be fun sometimes.

So, the results: Sam, from the excellent BPNosh, where she's having a contest of her own now (which I have to enter now), nominated Darbar for "best way to spend $2," and Chez Maman for "best indication cooking isn't rocket science." She is 0 for 2, and for a very simple reason. Sam has good taste, she picked places she liked, thus had no chance of agreeing with Meredith.

We picked Thai House Express for best Thai, little star for best pizza and Falstaff for best substitute to foie gras. We are 2 for 3: little star only won the reader poll. Technically, Falstaff did not win for the subject I wrote up, but they got two awards: best fried chicken and best new (expensive) restaurant, where the foie gras substitute, ie. pork belly, is explicitely mentioned.

Prize-wise, I haven't received the 10 entries I wanted, but I want to thank my only contestant, so Sam, let me know how to get Eat This, San Francisco to you.

A review of the Best Of to follow sometimes today or tomorrow.

Our Contest has its first participant! Sam submitted two entries. Thank you so much for opening the flood gates, Sam, or so we hope.

We are google-addict, but this article raises some valid questions. The main one is that Google is a commercial company which performs a public service. When does the accountants come in to decide what to archive and what not to? So far, so good, google attempts to log any and all content. But the cost to have some bot crawl this blog is low compared to that of actually scanning a whole book. So French official worry that when google will do the math of the cost for archiving entire libraries, some items would be scanned preferably based on the potential revenue they could bring: a culture of popularity. Indeed, a scary thought.

So far, our Best of the Bay Contest is a dud. No one has submitted any Meredith-like entries. The deadline is on May, 10th. Come on, guys, it's fun. If I get 10 contestants, the winner gets a copy of Dan Leone's Eat this, San Francisco, so tell your friends.

My entries, which I hinted at before:

Best Thai Thai House Express. We loved Thai House Express so much that we refused to visit any other Thai restaurants since our previous Best of issue. As such, our awarding the trophy to Thai House Express is not sullied by the stains of competition or the materialism of comparison. We can safely and indomitably truely proclaim that Thai House Express's extraordinarily beautiful, colorful dishes which covered our table there were the most beautiful and colorfullest Thai dish we had all year.

Best Pizza Little Star The piping-hot, delightfully covered with colorful ingredients (like earth-tinted sausage, fresh snappy mushrooms in a chestnut hue, green bell peppers with verdant inflections, pearly and red onions, and chunky tomato sauce reminding us of the paintings of Vittore Carpaccio), pizzas at Little Star reach our table in a perfect spherical disc of even circumference shaped like a wheel in a circular cornmeal crust that stayed round and crisp under its bounty of flavors and liquefied juices.

[if you thought I made up "perfect spherical discs," I apologize, only a master of pleonasm could coin this. About the typo in foie gras below: Meredith always messes up her French.]

Best Substitute for Fois Gras Jack Falstaff We are saddened and our hearts are sunk and we scour our medicine cabinets in our cluttered bathrooms and our nightstands heavy under the weight of our remarkably interesting books, like our dog eared copy of A Cure to Literary Bulimia: Do Not Barf the Adjective by Linda McProust, a harrowing and empowering tale of fighting the cultural oppression of the tight and slim sentence, in search of booze or prozak, as the duck and geese coerced into eating to become fois gras are becoming disappearingly extinct. Gladly we welcome Falstaff's pork belly as a worthy successor, even though the porcine piggily hogs do not pair as well with earthy truffle as well. Maybe with lobster?

So I have three entries. Now, it's your turn. You have till Tuesday, midnight. Email at blog at cedichou.com or leave in comment anywhere in here. Just try, it's really super easy: Meredith only states the obvious, and obviousness comes very naturally.

SFist post is up. It is an interview with Dan Leone. Email interview, unfortunately, but interview nonetheless. What blew me away is that he took the time to reply to my silly questions. Anyhow, he definitely gets the award for coolest reviewer ever.

Oh, and before I get called up on the inconsistency of praising one reviewer who does not write about food, and disparaging another for the same reason. Dan makes writing about him: interesting, fun, surprising and relatively short. Plus he only his the sidekick/comic relief/Robin for Paul Reidinger's Batman. And he cannot be accused of catering to the tourists. Anyhow, let's not compare apple and oranges.

I have a kryptonite bike lock with the round key, the type you could open with a ballpoint pen. Big faux pas right here. So I tried to follow the steps in their exchange program: a) sign up on-line. b) wait ages c) eventually receive a mailing label to send the lock back to them with UPS at their charge.

Which I did the day before leaving for a trip last month, from work. Then I get to d) Wait more and more and nothing happens. I do use my bike quite a lot, so it is a major pain in the butt not to have the lock. When I look up the tracking number, the package I sent had been delivered the day after. So I call them.

Turns out that, to make up their booboo of making lockless lock, they sent out mailing labels with the destination address and the sending address inverted: UPS picked up the lock, took it for a ride, and brought it back to shipping at my work the day after. Kryptonite, earning our trust the hard way.

Now the resourceful people in shipping noticed the mistake, so they took it upon their own to send it back, replacing the addresses in the correct order. But they did it using FedEx. So Kryptonite did receive the lock a day later, but could not process it. It did not come using UPS, so it does not exist in their system.

Now they claim that they are not liable for the cost of shipping incurred on my side as they sent a correct mailing label the day after the wrong one. Man, for the price of shipping, I could have had a new lock already.

Just below we see how Meredith embezzles the Weekly to pay for her filial duties. Which bring us to the next con in the food world, Len Pickell. Here is a review of his work in the Chronicle. He was managing (and stealing from) the James Beard Foundation, a non-profit whose purpose is to gain recognition for the culinary arts as a bona fide art form.

The James Beard Foundation charter explains why Meredith always attempts to so desperately link food with arts (restaurant-as-theater this week, movies, exhibits, what not). She is just fishing for a Beard Award (it could explain also why the connections she make feel so artificial: it is imposed by external considerations, not by the intrinsic qualities of the restaurant).

Anyhow, the yearly award were given earlier this week, and nothing came our way. I guess the world worst food reviewer did not win. Actually, no one in the Bay Area won, except for Napa's Thomas Keller, for his best new restaurant in NY, Per Se. So to our Bay Area nominees for restaurants (Paul Bertolli at Oliveto, Elizabeth Falkner at Citizen Cake, Traci des Jardins at Jardiniere, Craig Stoll at Delfina, Paul Draper of Ridge Vineyards in Cupertino, Daniel Humm of Campton Place, Melissa Perello of the Fifth Floor, Nancy Oakes of Boulevard) and our nominees for journalism (Maile Carpentar of San Francisco Magazine, Carrol Ness of the Chron, Lauren Gard of the East Bay Express) we say: congratulations anyway, and you'll win next year!

We'll keep it short and sweet this week. Meredith does go to a restaurant, not an art exhibit or a movie, and this is enough to keep us happy. Her restaurant selection is as crappy as always, by which we mean she goes to yet another high-falutin food temple for expense accounts. She goes to La Folie and she seems a little jaded though. She describes the room color as oxblood, which sounds downright scary. She nitpicks with the food (not enough lobster, too much foie gras). Whatever. It must be sulky-teenager-hip to go to La Folie and come back not fully satisfied. We see where she got that attitude from: her dad sends back a freebie! Talk about looking gift horses in the mouth. Oh, and she went to La Folie for a birthday celebration. I love you mom, but heck if I'll pay for a meal for you. I could not expense some roses, so here is a bunch of asparagus! Happy cheapo birthday!

The Chron reviewed Cafe Maritime this past week. It is the favorite place of a good friend, and I went there not so long ago. I was going to write about it for SFist, but it is a place which serves lobster in the Marina, a category best left to its iconic expert, Meredith.

Or so I thought, until I read her review of the place (she wrote it a while back, under a previous chef, the new chef has revamped the menu and was absolutely charming) recently on the cafe's web page. And she writes:
Café Maritime's interior ... blends certain comforting allusions to the past (crisp, clean wainscoted walls; a wooden bar reminiscent of a boat) with modernistic elements (a curving, wavelike banquette backed by a silvery, sculptural metal wall)

This silvery, sculptural metal wall? It is white, for one thing, and it is made of plastic. It is a partition between the dining room and the kitchen, made of plastic tubes, like garden hose tubes, woven like the strands of a straw basket. You don't believe me? Here is Bauer's description:
A curved banquette in the rear follows the undulating lines of a screen made of clear plastic tubing that simulates a wave and shimmers in the filtered back lights from the kitchen.

Meredith's reviews? It's all fiction.

The little curve I created below, which shows that the impact of the benefits cut proposed by Bush's socsec plan hits middle-class mostly, is the theme of Krugman's column in the NYTimes today. He says it better, but we said it faster.