in praise of sardines

Have you signed yet?

There is still time to encourage President-Elect Obama to appoint a Secretary of Agriculture that will fix our broken food system. If you care about sustainability, I urge my American readers to join Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, Marion Nestle, Wendell Barry, Bill Niman, Rick Bayless, Alice Waters, and 20,000 other Americans by signing your name to the following live petition (from Food Democracy Now).

"Dear President-Elect Obama,

We congratulate you on your historic victory and welcome the change that your election promises to usher in for our nation. As leaders in the sustainable agriculture and rural advocacy community we supported you in record numbers during the caucus, primary and general election because of the family farm-friendly policies that you advocated during your campaign.

As our nation’s future president, we hope that you will take our concerns under advisement when nominating our next Secretary of Agriculture because of the crucial role this Secretary will play in revitalizing our rural economies, protecting our nation’s food supply and our environment, improving human health and well-being, rescuing the independent family farmer, and creating a sustainable renewable energy future.

We believe that our nation is at a critical juncture in regard to agriculture and its impact on the environment and that our next Secretary of Agriculture must have a broad vision for our collective future that is greater than what past appointments have called for.

Presently, farmers face serious challenges in terms of the high costs of energy, inputs and land, as well as continually having to fight an economic system and legislative policies that undermine their ability to compete in the open market. The current system unnaturally favors economies of scale, consolidation and market concentration and the allocation of massive subsidies for commodities, all of which benefit the interests of corporate agribusiness over the livelihoods of farm families.

In addition, America must come to understand the environmental and human health implications of industrialized agriculture. From rising childhood and adult obesity to issues of food safety, global warming and air and water pollution, we believe our next Secretary of Agriculture must have a vision that calls for: recreating regional food systems, supporting the growth of humane, natural and organic farms, and protecting the environment, biodiversity and the health of our children while implementing policies that place conservation, soil health, animal welfare and worker’s rights as well as sustainable renewable energy near the top of their agenda.

Today we have a nutritional and environmental deficit that is as real and as great as that of our national debt and must be addressed with forward thinking and bold, decisive action. To deal with this crisis, our next Secretary of Agriculture must work to advance a new era of sustainability in agriculture, humane husbandry, food and renewable energy production that revitalizes our nation’s soil, air and water while stimulating opportunities for new farmers to return to the land.

We believe that a new administration should address our nation’s growing health problems by promoting a children’s school lunch program that incorporates more healthy food choices, including the creation of opportunities for schools to purchase food from local sources that place a high emphasis on nutrition and sustainable farming practices. We recognize that our children’s health is our nation’s future and that currently schools are unable to meet these needs because they do not have the financial resources to invest in better food choices. We believe this reflects and is in line with your emphasis on childhood education as a child’s health and nutrition are fundamental to their academic success.

We understand that this is a tall order, but one that is consistent with the values and policies that you advocated for in your bid for the White House. We realize that more conventional candidates are likely under consideration; however, we feel strongly that the next head of the USDA should have a significant grassroots background in promoting sustainable agriculture to create a prosperous future for rural America and a healthy future for all of America’s citizens.

With this in mind, we are offering a list of leaders who have demonstrated a commitment to the goals that you articulated during your campaign and we encourage you to consider them for the role of Secretary of Agriculture.

The Sustainable Choice for the Next U.S. Secretary of Agriculture

1. Gus Schumacher, Former Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Former Massachusetts Commissioner of Agriculture.
2. Chuck Hassebrook, Executive Director, Center for Rural Affairs, Lyons, NE.
3. Sarah Vogel, former two-term Commissioner of Agriculture for the State of North Dakota, attorney, Bismarck, ND.
4. Fred Kirschenmann, organic farmer, Distinguished Fellow, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Ames, IA and President, Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Pocantico Hills, NY.
5. Mark Ritchie, current Minnesota Secretary of State, former policy analyst in Minnesota’s Department of Agriculture under Governor Rudy Perpich, co-founder of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
6. Neil Hamilton, attorney, Dwight D. Opperman Chair of Law and Professor of Law and Director, Agricultural Law Center, Drake University, Des Moines, IA."

Click this link to sign this petition now!

For more information on this topic, read yesterday's New York Times editorial by Nicholas Kristof, "Secretary of Food" and last week's New York Times blog post by Kim Severson.

Behind the Curtain: Open Table

To join or not to join Open Table. That is one of the many decisions I'm currently facing as I open my restaurant, Contigo.

Pros

As a diner, I've been sold on Open Table since it entered onto the scene a decade ago. When I make reservations, I almost always make them through Open Table. I love it. The website is so user-friendly, it makes the reservation process easy and convenient. I learn where I can eat in seconds. As Danny Meyer said in a New York Times article published last year about Open Table: "In the old days, the question was, ‘Where should we eat?’ Now it’s, ‘Where can we eat?'" Open Table also makes it easy to cancel and change reservations. Best of all, Open Table costs me, the diner, nothing. It even gives me rewards points for booking some restaurant's tables through their site. What's not to love?

As a restaurant employee, I've also been impressed by Open Table. It is an invaluable tool for the front of the house staff. Managers, hosts, and servers can store guests' special requests, likes and dislikes, anniversaries, and other tidbits. All in all, it's a really terrific internal marketing system.

Donning my new hat as a restaurant owner, I look at Open Table as a marketing tool. Contigo will gain access to all those hungry eyeballs looking for an available table — two million diners book their tables through Open Table nationwide every month. As the Slanted Door's Charles Phan said in that same New York Times article, "All restaurants have to do it, whether you like it or not. There’s no way around it. At this point, there’s no other technology or easy solution for making Web reservations.” As of today, 342 restaurants in San Francisco can be booked through Open Table. Can I really afford to keep Contigo off that list?

Cons

Open Table is expensive! All those wonderful features and advantages come with a hefty price tag.

Here are the numbers. The start up costs are $1,299 plus tax. That gets you hardware, installation, and training. My generous, smart, and very persistent sales rep (who also reads IPOS) has offered me a discount for being a new restaurant, so I'll pay about $1,080.

Once Contigo opens, we will also pay Open Table a user fee of $199 per month, about $2,400 per year.

The start up costs and monthly costs are the same no matter what size or how expensive your restaurant is. My small neighborhood restaurant pays the same amount as a multi-million dollar 250-seat restaurant downtown.

The most significant charge is this: Open Table charges the restaurant $1 per cover (per person in your party) when diners book through its website, 25¢ when they book through the restaurant's website. The rationale for the higher charge when diners discover available tables through the Open Table website is that Open Table wants to be compensated for assisting the restaurant's marketing.

One buck per person. Sounds insignificant, doesn't it? The problem for more value-focused restaurants like Contigo is that Open Table charges us the same as the more expensive, special occasion restaurants. When a diner pays $40 to eat at Contigo, that dollar equals about 2.5% of the cost of the meal. That's significant in an industry where the average profit margin is less than 5%. At a more expensive restaurant, on the other hand, that dollar may equal less than 1% of the check.

Let's assume I go with Open Table. As the owner of a neighborhood restaurant, I'd like to keep about a third of Contigo's seats available for walk-ins. Let's assume most of the other two thirds of the restaurant's guests book through Open Table. If successful, a 60-seat restaurant like Contigo could easily pay $1,000-1,500 a month to Open Table in cover charges. That's $12-18,000 per year on top of the $2,400 annual charges and $1,080 start up costs. When you add all that up, the real per cover charge rises to closer to $1.25.

Spanish food and wine in the news

While I'm ironing out some wrinkles that are (surprise, surprise) slowing down my timetable for opening Contigo, I thought I'd point you to some interesting recent articles on Spanish food and wine. Access to some articles may require subscription.

Today, the Wall Street Journal profiles Spanish winemakers who are breaking the gender barrier. I learned that over half of the 198 wineries in one of my favorite Spanish wine regions, Rías Baixas [REE-ez BUY-shez] in Gallicia, are run by women. Awesome! The list includes most of my favorites — Martin Codax, Condes de Albarei, Santiago Ruiz, and Valmiñor. If you haven't had one of the affordable (usually $15-$20) aromatic Rías Baixas whites made from the albariño grape, you've been missing out. The citrusy, almondy wines are my go-to choice for seafood, especially scallops and octopus.

A couple of Spanish (Catalonian, actually) men, on the other hand, are having a very public cat fight. Read the BBC article about the Clash of the Culinary Titans, Ferran Adrià vs. Santi Santamaría. Since May, two of Spain's four Michelin 3-star chefs, Adrìa of the avante-garde-techno-emotional El Bulli and Santamaría of the more traditional Can Fabes, have been throwing metaphorical tomatoes at one another. Santamaría has labeled Adrìa's reliance on chemical stabilizers and gelling agents at El Bulli "pretentious" and a "public health issue."

What's my take? While I personally rely on more traditional methods in my cooking, I believe there's room for both styles. Then again, if you ever catch me using methyl cellulose or sodium alginate, slap me. Please.

If you'd rather watch a real tomato fight, check out Der Spiegel's slide show of last year's La Tomatina, the annual tomato wars in the tiny town of Buñol, near Valencia. In a tradition dating back 60 years, residents and tourists throw 300,000 pounds of tomatoes at one another for one hour every August. This year, the food fight will take place on August 27th. Book your tickets now!

Viva España!

Taking a break from Contigo construction updates, I want to toast a Cava to all the Spanish athletes and sports fans who have celebrated an unprecedented number of victories the past month. Go Spain!

Today Carlos Sastre won the Tour de France for the first time, upsetting expected winner Cadel Evans of Australia. Poor Cadel finished second to another Spaniard, Alberto Contador, last year.

Perfect timing

After spending all day Tuesday at Restaurant Bootcamp, I needed a drink. Happily, a dozen of the city's finest mixologists quenched my thirst yesterday at the Farmers' Market Cocktail Demo.

That's right, Small Business Week and Cocktail Week are both taking place this week in San Francisco. Who says this city isn't in tune with the needs of small business owners?

The salmon question

In May, cooks trawling* San Francisco's Ferry Plaza Farmers Market are like 6-year-olds on Christmas morning. Fava beans, spring onions, green garlic, pea leaves, English and snap peas, artichokes, asparagus, field grown rhubarb, and (at long last) sweet-as-candy pixie tangerines. Soon we'll taste Ben Lucero's miraculous strawberries (this coming Saturday, perhaps?) and the first good cherries.

The absence of one of our region's most beloved harbingers of spring, however, has left a gash in every omni-locavore's heart. No locally caught wild king salmon for the entire 2008 season (typically May through October). The sudden, drastic, and thus far unexplained decline of the local salmon population is an immense tragedy.

Like other regulars of the Saturday market, when I heard the news my thoughts went immediately to Larry Miyamura, the local salmon fisherman who has pampered our palates with pristine fresh-out-of-the-Pacific Chinook for nearly a decade. Larry and his wife Roz of Shogun Fish are still attending the market, but this year the coolers of ice that used to hold salmon that Larry caught are now filled with the more expensive Alaskan counterpart (along with an enviable selection of other beautiful fish, some of it far more local and affordable). I urge all my Bay Area readers to please frequent the Miyamuras' stand. You won't find fresher fish anywhere else in San Francisco.

I challenge you to find a cook out there who adores the local king more than I do. The current situation breaks my heart, so much so that I woke up one night last week at 3 am pondering it. I knew then that I had to write my thoughts down on IPOS.

At Contigo I planned to feature the unctuous fish on my menu throughout the season. Granted, like other local chefs, I will fill the void by serving other wild and sustainably caught seafood. Expensive wild Alaskan salmon most likely won't be an option. Instead, my menu will focus on utilizing local goodies like petrale sole, sanddabs, sardines, anchovies, smelt, halibut, black cod, lingcod, California sea bass, squid, Hog Island clams, mussels, and oysters, and, on the off chance I get it at a great price, sea urchin and spiny lobster. You'll also find other Pacific fish, like the various tunas and Alaskan halibut and black cod. Occasionally, east coast treats will make an appearance, like skatewing, Sierra mackerel, wild black and striped bass, line-caught hake (and its roe) and cod (most likely salted), scallops, monkfish liver, maybe even Maine lobster. When you see octopus on my menu — and believe me, you will — it will likely be from Spain. Economics may even encourage me to consider some of the farmed fish endorsed by the Monterey Aquarium Seafood Watch. But none of these fish are as dear to my heart as wild local king salmon.

It will come as no surprise, then, that there is one fish I will not serve at Contigo: farmed salmon.** Not even Scotland's eco-friendly Marine Conservation Society-endorsed Loch Duart salmon.

My decision isn't based on holier-than-thou food snob bull shit. It comes from my heart. My decision is based on respect for and solidarity with people like Larry Miyamura, hardworking fishermen who depend on the salmon season for the majority of their income. It's a personal choice. It just wouldn't feel right to me to put farmed salmon on my restaurant's menu. Especially not this year.

Remember the name that you all helped me choose for my restaurant? Contigo. Spanish for "with you." The name places emphasis on the values of connection and community, that circle that includes people like Larry and all the other producers, artisans, and foragers who make a living by bringing us the best seasonal products our local ecosystem has to offer. You and I dwell in that circle too. What hurts Larry hurts all of us.

I'm aware there may be logical contradictions in my decision. There's a lot of gray area in the topic of sustainable fishery stewardship and I don't pretend to be an expert (but my future purveyors, Monterey Fish and Ports Seafood, are. In fact, Monterey Fish founder/owner Paul Johnson has just written the best book on the subject, "Fish Forever." I highly recommend his book and plan to make it required reading for all my cooks).

I also want to emphasize that I'm not judging any restaurant or chef or home cook who serves or eats farmed salmon. Heck, I admit I sometimes eat farmed salmon, particularly when I find myself in New York pondering what to put on my bagel.

But my restaurant is like this blog. It's my personal vision, my tiny attempt at making the world a saner place. And in my world, when the local wild salmon population has been decimated, people don't have the option of eating farmed salmon imported from halfway around the world. They try something else.

In my world, serving farmed salmon lands you on a slope as slippery as a shoal of sardines. Local king salmon is one of the iconic seasonal products of the Bay Area. If I decided to serve purportedly eco-friendly Scottish farmed salmon as a replacement for the unavailable local Chinook during our usual salmon season, what would stop me from serving conventional hot house peppers from Holland in August? What would stop me from serving ever available farmed salmon year round? By extension, what would stop me from serving tomatoes in January or asparagus in October? You have to draw a line somewhere. You have to do the right thing.

On the plus side, now maybe I'll have more success convincing Omega-3-deprived diners to eat sardines.

* Fishing metaphor intended. Word geeks: see discussion of trawling vs. trolling.

** For various reasons, you won't find Chilean sea bass, tilapia, or catfish on my menu either.

Note: photos of dishes I made with local king salmon are from 2005 through 2007 and can be found on my FlickR page under the tag "salmon."

TANCAT

... means "closed" in Catalan.

I need to take an extended hiatus from In Praise of Sardines. I am sorry.

This is a blog about food and, right now, I've lost my appetite. The reason I need a break does not concern the restaurant. At least not yet. Let's just say that my alphabet now contains 1 less letter and leave it at that.

I will miss you all.

I cook like a girl

An article in the London Times caught my attention. According to the article "Sex on a Plate" (from Monday, May 7), many cooks and food writers believe there's a vast gulf between the way men and women cook. The article's author, Shiela Keating, suggests that the differences are so obvious that you could tell just by looking at a dish if a man or a woman cooked it. She even put her assertions to the test.

I look at my own dishes and I'm not so sure. Based on the author's criteria, I'm quite sure that I cook like a girl. Honestly, were the author's generalizations true, no statement would flatter me more. I tend to look to grandmothers — my own and others' — for inspiration at the stove. The article got this boy who cooks like a girl pondering this question: are the differences between the sexes in the kitchen as readily apparent as the Ms. Keating suggests?

The author starts off persuasively. She invokes the authority of a woman so many of us greatly admire, Alice Waters. Who would dare dispute Alice? (oh, right). Alice says: "The simpler the dish, the chances are it is probably made by a woman." She adds:

"Women’s natural instincts, especially if they have children, are to be nurturing. Our main focus is to feed people something that is good for them and that will make them happy . . . some men are in touch with that side of things, but educationally and culturally they are encouraged to look at cooking from a career point of view, to see it as an artistic endeavor. They tend to be more self-absorbed and involved in their own creations and self-expression and more disconnected from what’s happening in the dining room. Instead of ‘Are people liking the food?’ they are more likely to think: ‘I am the Chef, they should be liking it’."

In her article, Ms. Keating uses the following words and quotes to describe the differences between male and female cooking styles:

Feminine: simple, honest, relaxed, spontaneous, pared-back, ingredients-led, seasonal, nurturing, nutritious, lighter, healthier, more consistent, "more concerned with substance," "a little bit more je ne sais quoi,  a little more flair and finesse," "not worried about what other people are doing or what's fashionable," "doesn't matter to me how fast I can chop," "think of myself as a cook, not a chef"

Masculine: extravagant, robust, artistic, showy, experimental, self-absorbed, strict, ordered, competitive, bad-ass, bigger, stronger, bolder, high-octane, testosterone-fueled, macho, swaggering, molecular-gastronomy, wizardry, element of surprise, "need to impress," "the boys just want to get on to the most difficult section of the kitchen," "buy a fantastic piece of meat, slam it in the oven and crack open a bottle"

Looking at my own style of cooking (remember, as a man I can't help but be "self-absorbed"), every word in the "feminine" column describes the way I cook. With the exception of my navel-gazing ways, the masculine column doesn't fit me or my cooking style.

As I said, labeling my approach to cooking "feminine" would make me proud. I've gone out of my way to work at restaurants owned by women and to apprentice under female chefs. Peggy, Annie, Loretta, Barbara, Donia, Dana, and Jen are the first names of cooks I count as mentors. Amongst the few men I've cooked with, I only count Russ and Mark as mentors. And neither of them, I'd bet, would be offended if you told them they cook like girls.

My favorite cookbook authors and cooks? Mostly women. Marcella, Alice, Ruth, Rose, Judy, Patricia, Suzanne, Janet, Anya, Penelope, Samantha, Annie, Julie, Madhur, Lindsey, Claudia, and Gabrielle (let's see if anyone can correctly guess the last names of all those authors and cooks).

Need more evidence of my girlie ways? Molecular-gastronomy (or whatever you call it) doesn't interest me. Then again, neither did high school chem class. I've tried to get excited about new wave avant-garde techniques. Really, I have. I went all the way to El Bulli in Spain. I've eaten at El Cellar de Can Roca (Girona), Commerç 24 (Barcelona), and WD-50 (New York). All those multi-course meals were interesting and amusing (and pricey) ways to while away an evening. But I don't crave anything I ate those nights. Most dishes I hardly remember. With the exception of low temperature cooking and sous-vide, I find most avant-garde techniques overmanipulate the ingredients in such a way that the results detract from the overall integrity of the dish. But that's just me. What do you expect from someone who looks to grannies for inspiration?

Am I and my girlie ways merely one exception to Ms. Keating's rule? The author admits no. She mentions other, in her words, "contradictions to [her] generalizations" (Simon Hopkinson, Rowley Leigh, Alastair Little, and Jeremy Lee), but I've never heard of any of them (British readers, please enlighten me). In my own backyard, I suspect that Craig, Nate, Laurence (again, guess the last names!) and maybe a dozen (or a dozen dozen) other male chefs in the Bay Area cook the type of simple, honest, ingredients-led food that the author labels feminine? Perhaps Ms. Keating would dismiss the entire Bay Area restaurant scene (myself included) as one big anomaly, a hot bed for men who cook like women?

Some evidence, on the other hand, suggests that there's an outside possibility that I cook like a boy. I like to play with knives and fire. I like curing and smoking meat and fish. I admire Mario, Anthony, Fergus, and Montreal's Martin (ha! more surnames to guess). I find Jamie amusing. I eat offal.

Wait a minute. I know a lot of women who like all those people and things too (especially Anthony, though I suspect for different reasons). Could it just be the whacked out food-obsessed crowd I hang with? Come to think of it, some of the most bad-ass swaggering macho competitive cooks I've worked with happen to be women. Also, aren't there a few women (Elena and Aki, for example) who are into avant-garde techniques? And, while we're on the topic, self-absorption is hardly unique to the male of the species. Perhaps you've heard of Madonna, Britney, or Paris. What oh what could all these exceptions mean??

Oh, I know. It means that Ms. Keating's premise is a heap of rubbish. Do we really need one more way to encourage pointless stereotypes? Didn't we get enough of that Martian men/Venutian women crap at the end of the last century? Aren't there some factors that are perhaps a wee bit more significant in influencing how someone cooks than which sex organs he or she is born with? Don't we all, men and women, have both feminine and masculine aspects?

Now that you know my take, what's yours?

Do you think you could tell the sex of the person who cooked your meal based on what the finished plate looks like? Do you think there's a big difference between the way men and women cook?

Fridge Flashing

Subject: unedited and unposed photo of the contents of my refrigerator.

Date photo taken: Friday, May 4, 2007.

From the looks of my refrigerator, you wouldn't have guessed that N and I were leaving town the next day for an impromptu trip north for the weekend.

Receiving a weekly Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) basket from Two Small Farms every week is a mixed blessing. On the plus side, my fridge is bursting with fresh locally grown organic produce for just $20. The negative side? Same sentence, heavy emphasis on the word bursting. When you catch yourself fearing that you can't go away for the weekend because you'll fall behind in your veggie consumption, it's time to worry. Or feel guilty. Or, in my case, both. [Thanks, Mom]. I'm starting to feel like Sisyphus. Instead of a boulder, I have a CSA basket.

This picture was snapped 2 days after picking up last week's basket. Thursday, after a meeting with my Oakland-based architect, I headed to Berkeley to pick up a Hoffman free-range chicken (delivered fresh Wednesdays and Fridays) at Magnani Poultry and some sweet sweet sweet strawberries from Lucero at the Thursday farmers' market on Shattuck. Now that the bridge toll's gone up a buck, I wanted to make sure I got my money's worth from the trip. [Thanks again, Mom]. For good measure, I swung across town and tried the ice cream at Ici for the first time. Angels sang when I tasted the voluptuous scoop of chocolate. The marsala was "just good" in comparison.

But we're talking fridges here. Click on the picture above to get a detailed description of virtually every item in my fridge (If you're reading this post in an RSS reader, you may need to click through to IPOS to access the detailed descriptions). A window will pop up from my FlickR page. Hover your cursor over the food item and read the descriptions to your heart's content. Go on, peep away. You know you want to.

How's the contents of the fridge looking today, 4 days later? Saturday morning, the chicken went in the freezer (although I just pulled it out again for tomorrow's dinner). The strawberries joined us on our journey north. The rest? Most of those once fresh vegetables are still in there untouched.

Our one saving grace is our killer fridge. If you ever need to buy a new refrigerator, get thee an Amana. Our produce stays in perfect condition for longer than you can imagine. Better than a professional kitchen's walk-in refrigerator. Better than N's parents' fancy Sub Zero that cost triple what we paid. I never cease to be amazed.

What's with all this fridge nonsense, Brett? You can thank Sam of Becks & Posh. She's the Lady Godiva who started all this nonsense. Go peep at her fridge now, Tom. And Cookiecrumb's. And Sean's, Jen's, Marin Catherine's, San Francisco Catherine's, Dr. Biggles' ... the list goes on.

Fridge voyeurism. It's the new "cheese sandwich."

I gotta run. I have a lot of veggies to cook and eat before our next basket comes. Tomorrow.

Something loca in the press

The pack I run with are hardcore locavores. Most of them would sooner skip a meal than succumb to the temptations of Peruvian blueberries in March.

To all of you striving to eat locally produced food, I say this: it's time you take your ethical standards to the next level. Start consuming locally produced writing! Become a locareader (in Spanish, that's la rida loca).

If, like me, you live in San Franciscostan, you ought to start reading some of our fine locally produced magazines. Fellow locavores, I say we combine both of our passions and seek out local SF magazines dedicated to food. Let's go out and grab ourselves a copy of our fantastic local 'zine Edible San Francisco! In the Winter issue we'll find articles by esteemed food writers like Michael Ruhlman (blogger and noted author of Charcuterie and many other books), Shuna Fish Lydon of Eggbeater, Bonnie Azab Powell (aka Dairy Queen) of The Ethicurean, Andrea Arria-Devoe of Daily Candy, farmer Andy Griffin of Mariquita, and some dude named Brett Emerson... who the heck is that?? Where have I seen that name before?

Citywide not local enough for you? Check the newsstands in the little neighborhood, burough, or arrondissement that you call home. My enthusiasm for our local community newspaper, The Noe Valley Voice, knows no bounds. I've been known to cart the paper along to some rather exotic locales (witness actual picture to right). Why, look at that in the February issue! There's another article by that feller Brett Emerson (while this issue is no longer on the newsstands, the entire issue is available online). He sure seems to get around. I feel like I've read that same story somewhere else....

You may cry "foul!" and claim that my locareader plea was a ruse, smacking of blatant self promotion. Perhaps, says I. But still, shameless as I may be, I implore you to run out and grab yourself the Winter issue of Edible San Francisco. It hit the stands a couple of weeks ago, but if you're lucky you can still snap up one of the last remaining copies at one of the locations listed here. Heck, it's free! To make sure you don't miss the next exciting issue, why not take a minute to subscribe? You'll make editor and publisher Bruce Cole (formerly of Saute Wednesday) a happy man. Who knows? Maybe you'll see another piece by that Emerson guy in a future issue?