opa

Thursday night, after stumbling home from an ill-fated bar of the past, I caught the tail end of a huge BBQ my Greek landlords had thrown. I would love to party like them when I hit 70. I often find them chilling on the stoop with their homies, well after midnight.

Anyway, they had a surplus of food, and they gave me: 1 pork chop, 1 hamburger, 1 hot dog, 1 chicken wing, 1 sausage and 1 grilled ear of corn. They offered me some lemon potatoes but when I tried to serve myself they said, “You too shy!” and ladled me a Zorba-size serving. Five minutes later, as I gnawed on the pork chop in front of my computer, I got a knock on the door. “You want salad?” They brought down a huge tupperware full of feta, cukes and tomatoes from their garden. While I was chowing on the salad, I got another knock. They thrust a half loaf of bakery bread in my hand and said “That’s it!”

I will miss the Greeks.

shuckin’ oysters with pappy

look

Inspired by Emily, I’m going to post some pictures.

Rhode Island BBQ

switch hitter

I’ve decided to change a post about smoking pot into a post about oversharing.

Every step of the way with this blog, I’ve been unsure where the line is. I wanted to show the reality of my new weird life as a food journalist but sometimes this pushed me into dangerous realms. Like, is it kosher to talk about the crappy writing people submit, if I don’t identify them in an obvious way? Can I criticize aspects of how the Edible mags are run, without seeming ungrateful to work for them?

I’d rather avoid such quandaries, so with my transition to the West Coast, I plan to write more about:

-Meals cooked at home, with recipes and photos

-Freelancing in a new city

–NYC is like this, SF is like that

-First-person coverage of weird food events

-Photo-only posts

Also, less self-promotion on Facebook. I hope you’ll stick with me.

Crab and swiss melt, Becky's Diner, Portland, Maine

in good company

From Frank Bruni’s memoir, Born Round:

As the lunch ended, the chef appeared at my table to ask me, in a visibly nervous fashion, how I liked the potato-crusted cod, and if I thought the mustard-flavored ice cream in the gazpacho was a success. Inside my head I responded: You’re going by me? Not so long ago I was sitting on a stained futon at two in the morning watching Law & Order reruns with a large pizza and a box of chicken wings on my lap.

Recent e-mail from my old roommate Joanna:

Can we consider 2007-summer Jesse, for an even greater and thus more impressive leap between past and present? Dude, talk about reformation…. the guy I knew subsisted on F-16s from Wings Over, washed down with Old Thompson. Average 5 days a week. The sixth and seventh day were typically a meal from the corporate cantine brought home in styrofoam, balanced nicely with a Pacifico or two.

auld lang syne

I am heading to the beach for a week. Here’s a little recap of things:

1) Last Friday I had a meeting with the food editor of this hip SF magazine. I was a half-hour late, because of a perfect storm: a) I went to the wrong restaurant and b) my Blackberry died on the way there. When I showed up, sweating profusely and totally out of sorts, the editor was finishing her soup and closing out the check. Amazingly, she was very gracious and we got along swimmingly; it went from a total fail to a win. She used to work with Alice Waters and promised to connect me to everybody I “need to know” in San Francisco.

2) I may have forgotten to mention I’m moving to SF at the end of September. Don’t worry, I still will be working on EQ from afar, and writing a bunch of stories I have stored up. Including- a feature on Darryl Strawberry! More on that soon…

3) We decided to get the Breville indoor grill, kind of an upscale George Foreman. Our criterion: it’s the thing we will use the most. Fair?

4) How did I forget to tell you we attended the very last of these crazy pop-up dinners! The food was phenomenal, I’ll tell more about that later.

5) The Voice editor had a family emergency so my story is on hold for now. Will keep you posted.

And now…I’m off! Ciao bellas.

stay tuned

I’m in the middle of writing another piece for the Voice, more posts here soon…

SK Let’s Eat, summer edition

If you recall, on my last visit I brought SK some tasty New York treats on the plane. It was fun, but I’ve set an exhausting precedent for my visits.

This time around, I brought more burek, from a little shop I discovered on my biking escapades. This place is seriously Old World, with grizzled old Bosnians playing board games and 300 fat sausages on the grill. The burek was almost dense enough to push my luggage over the 50-pound weight limit. I preferred Ukus’ burek to the stuff from Djerdan, but SK did not agree. We’ll try to move past our differences.

I also brought two pretzel croissants from the legendary City Bakery. SK doesn’t love croissants, or pretzels, but combine them and she melts. We ate one at midnight, after a bit of SF nightlife (read: drinking). For more on the pretzel croissant, please to view this slideshow.

Next visit…sushi?

Aussies in the kitchen

As I mentioned earlier, we had houseguests last week. Two Australian dudes came over to observe us making dinner as part of a market research scheme. We were murky on their goals and their methods; all we knew was that we would score $100 and a new kitchen appliance.

SK got excited like they were visiting royalty. Her menu was planned long in advance- fish tacos with lime-pepper yogurt sauce, homemade blue corn tortilla chips and guacamole, watermelon/basil/jalapeno/feta salad, roasted corn on the cob with cayenne and Parmesan mayo, with a dessert of raspberry lambic beer floats.

I thought it was a bit elaborate- “But sweetie, it’s not like we’re gonna be on the Food Network here.” SK told me it was in fact a TV show, and she would be playing Donna Reed. Fair enough. Whether or not anyone was judging the results, it was a chance to showcase her kitchen mettle.

Turned out the Aussies weren’t actually eating, so the $125 we spent on the feast ($26/lb. for wild halibut!) may have been excessive. They didn’t even seem interested in the meal we were preparing. Their task was to glean general info about how Americans cook, so they could tailor their products effectively. Apparently they’ve had some serious misfires in the past, as Australians and Americans have very different kitchen priorities.

So they grilled us about everything- electric tea kettles, composting, non-stick pans, food co-ops, making candy at home, and the handles on our faucets. SK deftly fielded most of their queries while I faded into the background. When I asked what they were trying to learn, they said (in cute accents, natch): “We’ll know when we find it!”

SK was quite disappointed they wouldn’t eat our food, as she loves playing Hannah Hostess. The dudes seemed to have strong moral boundaries, like cops who refuse to drink on the job. “We’re on duty ma’am.” That’s why it was such a coup when, at the end of the night, they couldn’t resist sheepishly trying the guacamole. Then the watermelon salad. Then the fish. They even asked for seconds! SK was beaming when they left.

Now we are left to choose an appliance from their website. What would you get?

surge

On Sunday night, SK and I went to a black-walled wine bar to see one of her friends play some white-dude jazz. It was wholly non-offensive, as was the “blended wine” we nursed. I said we were yuppies, because I couldn’t think of anything more bourgie than wine and jazz. SK replied with something indistinguishable, because two sips of wine gets her toasted.

We were peckish after the show, so we did a Yelp search on nearby Vietnamese food (continuing our yuppie self-caricatures). Ooh, looks like we’re going to the Tenderloin! Such a strange part of town, the area abdicated to junkies, madmen and prostitutes. Sometimes you have to slam on your brakes when someone decides to lay down in the road or throw socks on your windshield.

After we picked up some cheap bahn mi (baguette sandwiches with radish, cucumber, carrots, cilantro and grilled pork) and pho (soup), I noticed a place called Susan’s Massage. Open until 2am, it was lit by a dim red light, with velvet curtains and a metal gate on the door. It blew my mind that there are such obvious places of ill-repute here, advertising out in the open. People talk about it on Yelp! In New York, our sin is more secret.

That night, I slept lightly and woke up at 5am, as happens semi-frequently here. I feel too alive with possibility to stay vertical for long. I popped up, ate some of SK’s legendary rhubarb pie, and did a bunch of magazine work until it was time to go to my job job. And somehow I ended up going out for fish breakfast at 11am, with Jen and Joe, who work in the basement. We went to an old-school San Francisco staple, where the waiters are bald and semi-threatening, the clientele is 300 years old, and the entrees cost at least $20.

Salmon and wasabi caviar with a Caesar salad (pictured right) and a side of fish chowder isn’t my go-to breakfast, but just like everything else here:

a) I’m adapting.

b) It is pretty friggin’ awesome.