Drinking Lessons

I bellied up to the bar at the Hunt Club inside the Sorrento Hotel just as the press preview of last night's Drinking Lessons with Duggan McDonnell and Neyah White was about to begin. Everyone else had a glass of water beside them, and the 2pm Seattle sunshine had made me mighty thirsty, so I grabbed the bottle in front of me, a pretty vintage alcohol bottle filled with water.

Pouring myself a full glass, I quickly took a huge mouthful as a couple of Seattle's top food writers and editors gave me the curious side-eye. As my mouth began to burn, I realized I had--in fact--poured myself about five fingers of pisco, the artisanal grape brandy that McDonnell had distilled down in Peru and wasn't even on the US market yet.

Turning bright red in shame, I swallowed the mouthful of pisco as the bar around me erupted in laughter and applause.

"Yes, Ella, that's pisco," remarked McDonnell dryly.

"Everyone, meet Ella Lawrence!" laughed Michael Hebb.

I wished myself anywhere but in front of a full bar of my colleagues, but the buzz I'd gotten from swallowing about three shots of the strong brandy in one go quickly evaporated my embarrassment and I was able to focus on McDonnell and White's lessons for the afternoon.

McDonnell's Peruvian pisco is "achelado," or mixed-varietal (like a wine from the Côte-Rôtie). Red and white grapes (some of them from 90-year-old Peruvian vines) are fermented and distilled separately and then mixed and bottled--Pisco is never aged, which is why it's always clear--like water. :-/

The taste of the new world segued into a history of the Old World as White, in full Professor Cocktail mode, discoursed on bourbon and scotch--two very different whiskys that share some common background.

Because, by Tennessee law, bourbon barrels can only be used once, bourbon barrels are used all over the world: I've spotted Jack Daniels' barrels in Argentinean and Chilean wineries, ageing reds. It turns out that sherry is a big influence in the making of Jameson, because sherry barrels are used to age that Irish tipple, and some Glenmorangie is aged in barrels that have held Chateau D'Yquem Sauternes, the "PhD of a whisky thesis," quipped White as he flamed a piece of orange rind over a custom-created cocktail called the "Barrel to Barrel," featuring Nocino, Jameson, and an Oloroso sherry.

Beerunch

What better way to kick off Superbowl Sunday than with a brunch featuring beer? This morning, as part of beer week, MateVeza put on a "beerunch," a beer and food pairing brunch featuring morning-friendly brews.
At the Mission Rock Cafe, mellow hipsters in their early 30s gathered to pair MateVeza's yerba mate-infused IPA with huevos rancheros. Dogfish Head Brewery was well-represented; their spicy Pangaea Ale cut refreshingly through rich salmon.

HE'BREW ("the chosen beer") poured the Rejewvenator with a root-vegetable medley and 21st Amendment's Belgian Doom offset glazed ham nicely with hoppy bitterness complementing the ham's sweet maple glaze.

Speakeasey's Payback Porter was pleasant and cacao-infused, but the real winner was Magnolia Pub & Brewery's Smokestack Lightning Imperial Stout. The dark-roasted stout was rich and chocolatey, with a bittersweet bite that had everyone going back for seconds and thirds. Paired with bacon-y, pecan-studded roasted brussels sprouts, the ashy, intense stout became smooth and creamy.

Ichinokura Sake Brewery

Growing up in Northern California, one has a pretty good grasp of how wine is made. I was glad to have this background when visiting the Ichinokura Sake Brewery on our third day in Sendai City, because I would have felt a little lost in this huge plant. For many Americans, an introduction to sake came while dining at a sushi restaurant. A ceramic pitcher of hot, high-alcohol sake arrived, it washed down the sashimi and the nigiri in little cups, and we thought that all sake was the same. That’s a little like drinking a glass of white zinfandel straight from a box and thinking that all wines are pink and sweet.Sake (which is technically a beer, because it’s brewed and is derived from a grain), is often compared to wine because of its alcohol content (higher than a beer at around 16-20%) and because it works so well paired with food.
Sake’s flavor elements come from simple ingredients and a complicated process. The biggest factors that influence the finished product are water, rice, and yeast; other factors that have a hand in the sake’s flavor are weather and geography.
Sake is produced by fermenting rice. First, the rice is polished to remove the exterior of the rice grain (where protein and oil live), and the “pure core” of the rice is fermented. The more rice is polished away, the more high-quality the finished sake will be.
The rice is then soaked and washed, then cooked and fermented by adding koji and yeast (which change the starch into sugar, and then the sugar into alcohol) for several weeks. Koji is a mold that converts the rice’s starch into a simple sugar, which feeds one of many varieties of sake yeast to begin fermentation. The fermentation is often slowed by lowering the temperature; either by refrigeration or in snowy winter climates.After the rice ferments, it is pressed, and the liquids separate from the solids. Some sake has distilled alcohol added: this sake is called honjozo-shu, and is the cheap warm sake that many Westerners remember as their introduction to sake. After filtration, the remaining lees are removed (except in the case of nigori, where it is left in the sake to add a sweet taste and a creamy texture), and the sake is filtered and pasteurized (in most cases). Then, the sake rests and is diluted with water to lower the alcohol content and is bottled and drunk.

There are several different classifications of sake, with the most important being:

Junmai-shu. This is "pure rice sake," made from only rice, water and kōji, with no other additions.

Ginjo-shu is made from rice polished to 60% or less of its original weight. Sake made from rice polished to 50% or lower is called daiginjo-shu.
The term junmai (“pure rice sake”) can be added to ginjo or daiginjo, resulting in junmai ginjo and junmai daiginjo.
Sake can be served chilled, at room temperature, or heated, depending on the preference of the drinker, the quality of the sake, and the season. Hot sake is usually drunk in the winter, and high-grade sake like junmai daiginjo and junmai ginjo are not drunk this, because their delicate flavors and aromas will be lost through heating. Sake is often heated to hide the flavor of low-quality sake.
Aside from being served straight, sake can be used as a mixer for cocktails, like a “saketini” or a “sake bomb.”

Sake is best consumed within 2 or 3 hours after opening the bottle. It can be stored (in the refrigerator), although it is generally recommended to finish the sake within 2 days.

Needless to say, we drank a LOT of sake in Japan. 

Holla!

It seems The Man has as good of taste as the people I work with: Bourbon and Branch (one of whose bartenders works with me at The Restaurant) was named NUMBER ONE new bar in America by both Citysearch and MSN. Yeah! I knew that those strong Derby Manhattans had to reach a powerful editor somewhere. My boy Neyah is an amazing bartender; he's an alcohol intellectual that really gets off on stirring the rye the perfect amount of times so that it reaches the most exact temperature, flaming an orange rind just a half inch above a quivering surface tension of alcohol so the oil catches fire and when you drink the drink you fall off your barstool. I may be an elitist service and alcohol geek, but I love it when the things I love get recognition for being as awesome as they are. Holla! (Image unwitting courtesy of SFGate.com)

Tripe Tacos

I've just arrived home from the party of the year (according to a Restaurant Boy); Boulevard chef de cuisine Ravi's 30th. Renting a taco truck (the most reputable in town, according to gal pal the Tablehopper) and parking it out front of Wish on 12th and Folsom, the birthday boy filled up the bar with 200 friends and chefs galore.

Highlights of the evening:
-Drinking a too-sweet Sazerac on the rocks (Pernot on ice with a splash of rye whisky, anyone?), which made me behave myself because I had to drink it really slowly.

-Getting convinced by Incanto chef Chris Cosentino to try a tripe taco. I did, but promptly handed everything after the first bite to the nearest bystander. I'll leave the offal to the "lips and assholes--the other white meat" chef.

-Hearing a fan of Cosentino's praise his restaurant as such: "Dude, I brought a date into Incanto the other night, and although she'd been a vegetarian for eight years, she broke her vegetarianism to try a plate of your calf's brains!" High fives ensued.

-Passing trays of cupcakes after an uproarious round of singing "Happy Birthday" at midnight.

-Watching two line cooks get taken out roughly by Wish's bouncer, and hearing the sweet-natured chef of Nopa offer to go "Be the big guy crying in the corner." I don't really know what this means, but it provided me with a hilairous mental picture. Maybe the sazerac and the cupcake had something to do with that.

**

Very different from last night's cocktail party, a ritzy affair Telegraph Hill. Highlights of last night's party:

-The libations. Billecart Salmon, Flowers pinot noir, and Hansel chardonnay were the respective sparkling, red, and white wines. The food was superb, although the slender society women did not eat much of it.

-The view. Right at the base of Coit Tower, the new home (for which the cocktail/housewarming party was thrown) had a stunning outlook of the lit-up tower and the bay.

-Talking to [one of] the owner[s] of YouTube (who is only a year older than I am) and getting out all three of the questions that my date had double dog dared me to ask:

1) "So, you're the owner of YouTube. What's it feel like to be you?"
2) "Do you read perezhilton.com?"
3) "Do you need a haircut? Because our hostesses hairdresser was invited and he's right over there."

Although my first inclination had been to rudely blurt out all three statements at once, I wound up politely inserting myself in conversation with YouTube guy, who turned out to be a down-to-earth and semi-awkward computer dude, just as I had imagined.

-Telling all of the people I spoke with that I was related to my date in different ways. I told several people that Jeff was my husband, others that he was my cousin, and a few that he was my brother. I plan to sit back and wait to see how long it takes before rumours of my incestuousness start to fly.

After the cocktail party (and admiring how lovely Jeff's sculpture looked in our hostesses living room), six of us dined at Zuni, which gets mixed reviews from just about everyone I mention it to. We had a nice experience, I think both the food and the service are kind of, "eh." but the oysters are always stupendous. Our bartender was ROTTEN, he shook my gin martini extremely hard, was generally surly, and forced us to close our tab instead of allowing us to transfer it to the table.

Afterward, beloved Hotel Biron (industry night tomorrow, anyone?) called and sure enough, we wound up talking to the kitchen staff as they got off work and popped next door to pop some corks as well as our waiter (who commiserated with us about the snooty French bartender) for a chunk of the evening as we were leaving.

'Tis the season for cocktail parties and I look forward to asking more inappropriate questions and lying about the status of my dates for many weeks to come.

Rioja to the Max

The Restaurant was pretty slow on Monday night, what with the freezing weather and the rain and all, so three out of seven waiters finished relatively early and cabbed across town with one of the bartenders to Tsunami, an ueber-hip sushi joint in the Western Addition with a sake god-in-residence called JoJo. We lucked out and got the biggest table in the house (it was nearly 11pm and they were probably almost closed) and devoured Stellas, sushi, and sake until fishily happy. The waitress was someone I knew from junior college up north in the wine country, and although I'd seen her around town a lot this last year, I could never place her. She nailed it as soon as she saw my face, exclaiming, "Restaurant Girl! The only other non-sorority type from the swim team! Man, they sure thought we were freaks back then, didn't they?"

After settling up (and how is it that I always wind up paying fifty bucks for sushi when I just have a couple of pieces? I'll leave it at that, though, because there's nothing worse than a bill-haggler, especially with a group of waiters) and tipping Lydia enough to have made staying late worth her while, we took our requisite mixed-sake shots with her. It's trouble in paradise when a group of waiters go out--they're most likely all bound to know at least one person in the restaurant they dine in (which is why they went there in the first place), if they don't know someone already, they are bound to be friends with their waiter/chef/bartender by the time they leave, and restaurant people express their affection for one another by knocking back free alcohol together.

**

We were collected by an off-duty hostess from The Restaurant, and made our way to the Hotel Biron, an amazing little wine bar on Rose Alley, just behind the Zuni Cafe on Market Street. I'd found out last week due to a tip from chef de cuisine Ravi of Boulevard that the Hotel Biron celebrates industry night on Mondays; all bottles of wine are thirty percent off! With the help of a dear friend of mine (another waitress/writer type; there are more of us than we'd care to admit in this fine city) we went through a bottle of Dr. Loosen's Riesling and three bottles of a Rioja who's name escapes me. The Hotel Biron is great for a number of reasons, numbers three, four, and five of them are goat cheese, sheep cheese, and cow cheese (reasons #1 and #2 are, of course, red and white wine), on which I nibbled as I sucked down the temperanillo blend. Hotel Biron also has an extensive by-the-glass list, and the wine-geeky bartenders have often let me try each one of the type I wanted (explaining in-depth along the way) until I found a wine that I liked, then gone from there to discuss the different bottles, selecting one that was perfect.

We shut the place down and trundled back to one waitresses' house with a final bottle of Rioja, showing each other our dance moves until 3:30am. I don't go out with the staff of The Restaurant very much; hours are long and we all have our own lives (and aren't waestrels like so many other waiters--including myself at other points of my life--are), so when we get together for an Outing like the sushi/wine night, it seems really special, and I feel lucky to be working with a group of really smart, really interesting folks.

Bourbon and Branch

I recently, and belatedly, checked out the new speakeasy everyone's been talking about, Bourbon and Branch. Visiting the bar at 10pm with my roomie and a dapper bartender friend who's newly remodeled Luau has just reopened under the name Mercury (with the owners of Zebulon), we were escorted through the heavy wooden door and into the red-wallpapered room for our reserved seats at the bar. (FYI, the bar can't usually be reserved but Restaurant Girl has friends behind many bars in the city, and it was a pretty slow night in the Trender-loin). (photo unwitting courtesy of SFGate)

Bourbon and Branch is like a bartender's wet dream. First, guests can't just walk right in the door. They're viewed through the eye of a camera, which immediately makes them more docile (according to our bartender). If the potential quaffers look like a bunch of jerks, they aren't necessarily let in. A reservation is a must (even if the place is empty), so there's no bar-hopping.

Second, the bar features all kinds of esoteric bourbon, which for some reason is always a bartender's favorite drink (barkeeps, please weigh in here: tell Restaurant Girl why y'all love the mash so much!).

Third, on the back page of the hefty menu (for sale: $500) are listed The House Rules, two of which include, "Do not order a Cosmo," and "The bartender is always right." More of a rule follower than a rule breaker, Restaurant Girl felt inherently comfortable in this purposefully clandestine setting (a speakeasy) at which the parameters are defined, and immediately ordered the Rouge #10. A delicious concoction of house-infused pepper gin (Tanqueray number 10) muddled with fresh strawberries and lime juice and decorated with a few drops of Pastis on the surface of the drink (served up in a martini glass), it was probably the best cocktail I've ever had, hands down (and I don't throw around superlatives like that on a regular basis).

Brandon drank an old-fashioned (he's a bartender, so he likes bourbon, of course!) and although I egged my roommate on mercilessly to order a cosmo (she really does drink them sometimes, but she's not in the industry any more so we'll forgive her that), she followed the rules and ordered some sort of orangey-vodka drink also in a martini glass.

Another round followed, and was a little blurry, as second rounds are wont to be. I allowed the impeccable Neyah to choose my drink (actually, he offered, which was a huge weight off of my mind, and he's such a good bartender that I trusted him to pick something that would be the logical progression), and it was a salad-flavored martini, which is a lot better than it sounds. Probably something like Hendricks gin and very thin cucumber slices, with a tincture droppered over the top (they take their mixology very seriously at Bourbon and Branch; drops are dripped, alcohols are painstakingly stirred until they achieve just the right temperature from the ice cubes that drop down, impurity-free, out of the special ice machine that delivers them nine degrees colder than regular ice), and perfection is achieved.

**
After gentleman Brandon hailed roomie a cab and put her in it, he and I headed over for a late night snack to Farmer Brown, on our bartender's recommendation. DUD! Our bartender had told us it could be give or take, and this night it was definitely take. The joint was empty at 12:15, the bartender energetically sucking face with an off-duty waitress on the patron side of the bar. He grudgingly threw menus at us and sullenly made his way to his side of the bar, staring us aggressively down until I timidly asked what was better: the fried catfish or the chicken. Without an apology, he announced the kitchen stopped serving at midnight and B and I rushed out the door to Globe, which although not the oh-so-hot-spot it was a few years back (so I hear, this was actually my first time dining at Globe), was an oasis of good food and impeccable service in the middle of a foggy San Francisco night.

We had martinis (Stoli for him, Tanqueray for me; sadly, Globe does not have a sassy cocktail menu, nor esoteric alcohols) and some delicious snacks. The macaroni and cheese was bechemel-y and delicious, the salad lardon with just the right amount of bacon grease to wilt the frisee (and two little poached eggs, perfect for sharing), and the white-truffle mushroom pizza gave off heavenly odors. B let me take charge of the menu and discourse with the waiter and order whatever I wanted (what a guy), and the waiter was knowledgeable and friendly, something that's not so easy to find to find at 1am.

Impromptu Bourbon

I think I have an excess amount of energy. Saturday, after driving up to Carneros to pick grapes all day with the group of bohemian food-lovers I was lucky enough to fall in with a few weeks back, we crushed and de-stemmed nine 30-gallon barrells of pinot noir and feasted on a spread that Angelo had been making all day. It was the last day of the harvest and the big group of 12 or so of us was HUNGRY.

Angelo, his nephew Gaetano, and Angelo's friend Sandro (all lovely, warm, Sicilian men) had been cooking since 2pm. The feast included wild boar (that Angelo had hunted--he still has one more and he's going to roast the whole thing sometime in January), polenta, quartered fennel bulbs, eggplant done several ways, turnips, roasted peppers, lots of bread... a lot of things that I can't really remember right now but it was one of the most delicious meals I've ever had.

I'm used to "family meal" being a tedious affair in which the kitchen of a restaurant uses the waiters as walking garbage disposals--we're hungry enough at the beginning of the shift (because we don't have anything in our home fridges except for beer and Perrier) or at the end of the shift (because we've been sprinting from table to table all night) to put away whatever the kitchen throws at us. Family meal at Angelo's forge is another thing entirely. Bottles and bottles of wine were opened (from the pinot bottling we did last Wendesday) and the platters of food that piled over the table emptied out after just a half an hour, hungry grape pickers from all walks of life completely satisfied after a day of hard manual labor that they welcome as a respite from their fancy indoor city lives.

So after all of this (and I worked HARD crushing and de-stemming. It's my favorite part, I think because it happens so fast it reminds me of restaurant service, or catering) I decided to go to the Mission with a couple of the group who weren't falling asleep in their plates. We were going to check out the Litquake finale at 12 Galaxies but it was over by the time we got there so we headed over to Treat Street, a super divey bike messenger bar where my friend Emiley works. I'd never been there (I never get as far out as 24th and Treat!) and I wanted to see her. The bar was PACKED from all of the Litquake overflow, and after about a half an hour Em asked me to hop behind the bar and help her. She was alone and I was happy to collect and wash glassware.

The fun and dangerous part about having bartender friends is that you drink way too much and way too long--drinks are free and you're allowed to hang after hours (I was helping clean up). So there were a lot of bourbon shots taken, probably not the best idea after a whole evening of drinking home wine. I had some steam to blow off, though, but Sunday morning I had one of those mornings where I swore I'd never ingest anything alcoholic again.

Fancy Art Event

Last night I went to a fancy-pants art auction, which was a fundraiser for the Larkin Street Youth Services. The Youth Service Organization, which has been a model of excellence in San Francisco and nationwide for more than 20 years, gives youth on the streets the tools they need through housing, medical care, education, and job training, to permanently reclaim their lives.
There were over 200 pieces of really cool art at the event. I especially liked the pieces by Ariel Dunitz-Johnson, Felix Macnee, and Jeff Burwell. The event, which cost $100 a head, was hosted at 21 Buena Vista East, 5-stories of excellent taste overlooking the entire city. I wanted to drink sake in the bathroom all night, because the bathroom (one of the twelve or so in the house) had the most exceptional views from the Diet Coke billboard (my personal favorite billboard in the city because it glitters) by the Bay Bridge all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge.

I wound up hanging out at the bar (naturally) for a large part of the evening because a friend of mine was tending bar. The first thing he asked when he saw me was "How on earth did you weasel your way in here?" I assured him that I had a bona-fide invitation from the curator (I had even put on a cocktail dress and faux-shmina for the occasion) and proceeded to swap dirty jokes with him like he was behind the bar at the Restaurant where we worked together.

The food was excellent, but I didn't eat much of it because I was still recovering from the lunchtime dim sum feast I'd had with the Tablehopper at Golden River Seafood & Dim Sum Restaurant, all the way out on 22nd and Geary, a spot so far out in the Richmond I wasn't sure I was in Kansas any more. It was my first time eating Dim Sum and I think I overdid it.

I enjoyed myself at the Fancy Art Event (I always like to get dressed up and look at pretty things and drink free alcohol) but was assured by all involved that tonight is really the night to come. It's $45 and all of the artists will be there. Just my luck, I've got to work on the night of the tawdry fun.

Rain Has Come

And thus begins my year of never-ending winter. It was so lovely to have a month of sunshine upon my return to San Francisco from South America, but today the rain has arrived, reminding me that I missed summer entirely this year and am now in for two more months of winter. Sigh. Last night I went to Angelo Garro's forge in SoMa and helped Angelo and Jeff bottle wine. Helping to make wine is fun! Although I worked at wineries for years (Roshambo, Iron Horse Vineyards, and Michel-Schlumberger), it was always as a tastron, an events coordinator, or a tour guide--never in the cellars.

We bottled 50 cases of the 2005 Pinot Noir, drinking plenty of it as we went along, and finished the evening with a lovely dinner of homemade Penne (Angelo's nephew, Giatano, was cranking it out of an ancient machine as I arrived) with a sauce Angelo made with tomatoes from Jeff's parents' house in Healdsburg and sausage made by a friend of theirs whose name I've forgotten but is supposedly a famous sausage-maker. We also had a tomato salad (just fresh heirlooms with olive oil and vinegar and dried oregano that was hanging from the ceiling in bunches, from Angelo and Jeff's plot in one of the city's community gardens), and lots of songs (Hope from the Lincart gallery pulled out a guitar and proved she's got a set of pipes as soulful as Gillian Welch) and laughter. It amazes me how Angelo can have such a slow-food, Sicilian lifestyle right in the middle of San Francisco. Having been introduced to a group of people to whom simplicity and friendship is so important to is inspiring.

After bottling the pinot (two barrels), we punched down the grapes we'd picked last Wednesday. My hands are completely stained purple (although I managed to escape with my clothing free of wine-stains), and I have to wait tables tonight. I'll just wear them like a badge of honor, shrugging casually and saying, "Oh, you know how it goes during crush! I haven't had a day off in weeks and everything's covered in various stages of wine. But, you gotta do what you gotta do!" like a seasoned pro.

A Day in the Life

Instead of slobbing around in front of the laptop in my pajamas drinking coffee all day, stopping only for an hour of yoga somewhere in the middle, yesterday I decided to go up north for some manual labor in Healdsburg. I was called late the night before that by the owner of a.Muse gallery on 18th and Alabama, who I'd met at the soft opening of my friend Brandon's new spot, Luau. She was going up there to help harvest and crush two rows of Syrah as the guest of chef/blacksmith/Sicilian about town Angelo Garro and his young apprentice Jeff Burwell, who is one of her artists. I'm from Healdsburg, and I hadn't been up there in way too long (ever since I let DPT keep my car after one tow-job too many) so I agreed to keep Lori company on the drive and in the fields.

We arrived at 11am to join a jovial crew of artists and Europeans (including Angelo's cousin from Sicily, Jeff's cousin from Belgium, and an independent filmmaker from Slovakia who was mostly sick because she had put on a nicotine patch in order to kick her 15-year habit) sweating away, sickles in hand. We jumped right in and picked the two rows pretty quick (well, we only picked about 3/4 of a row, having been late). After putting everything through the crusher/de-stemmer it was time for a swim in the young apprentices parents pool while Angelo cooked lunch: wild boar ribs (which is almost common food in the Dry Creek Valley), a delicious pasta, crostini with cheeses, tomatoes, figs, and Angelo's own prosciutto, and lots of wine (jug wine from Preston, which is next door to the house and Angelo's syrah from last year).

More swimming and sunning followed lunch, and then Jeff and Lori and I headed down to the Barn Diva (where I worked and was fired from three times in 2004-2005) to see the general manager, who is a dear friend of mine (hence the re-hiring) and a friend of Jeff's as well (Healdsburg is a very, very small town). We quickly polished off 2 bottles of Roederer Rose (it's good to have friends who manage restaurants) and called it a day. It was 6pm and time to head back to the city; after promising the GM that I would return to Healdsburg next summer and stay in his empty bedroom (which has been empty for a year ever since his hippie chef left to get married in Santa Cruz) and clean for him and see how many more times in one summer I can get fired from the Barn.

**

I drove back to the city and dropped myself off on Cesar Chaves, which was the location of yet another Ghetto Gourmet (which I weaseled a seat at and a ticket to, through my hard work as a waitress on Sunday night. Thanks, Jeremy!!). The food was interesting, and you'll have to wait until next Wednesday to read more, somewhere in the actual printed-word world.

Following the "underground dinner," Michael Hebberoy, his lovely girlfriend Holly (who'd flown down from Seattle for a long weekend), the photographer who's documenting the dinners for his book, two friends of theirs who live in the Mission, and I headed over to Nopa for more wine and dessert. I like the food at Nopa very much, and the three other city-dwellers (we were joined by a friend of Holly's, who was jokingly peeved we were at Nopa at all as she'd wanted to surprise Holly with dinner there tomorrow night) agreed that the food was good but were in disagreement over the mural. I love it (it's an artists rendition of the Western Addition, complete with a hipster walking little dogs in Alamo Square, and I think I can see my old house), they hate it.

Dessert was two baskets of fries (I think Nopa has the best French fries in the city, served with a spicy harissa aioli), chocolate ice-cream, and spiced doughnut holes with a rum-caramel sauce. The fries were gone in a blink and we all picked at the desserts (they were very good but I think we wanted something saltier to accompany the two bottles of Nosis (where's the "G"? Anybody?) verdejo that Michael picked, yum. The two Blue Bottle espresso martinis went down easy, too, which was maybe not such a good thing as several shots of espresso right before bed atcually *do* make for a sleepless night.

A Study in Anthropology

Friday night was my last night at the foundering ship, and I am certainly glad to be done. I'll save the bitching about mis-management and abusive kitchen staff for my ex-coworkers over a shot of Fernet Branca with a beer back, and talk about the differences between cooks and waitresses instead.

As I may have mentioned, the foundering ship had an entirely new staff when I came back from South America. There were no more Mexicans cooking, instead the place is now being run by 22-year-old "culinary school hotshots" who are too big for their britches. The kids can cook all right, but the attitude that comes across the line with the plates was just too much for me. Too much for everyone that still works there, in fact; at the bar last week, two of the bar managers plotted how to get one of the cooks alone, outside of the building, so they could jump him and punch his face. This kid has a propensity for muttering snide comments under his breath, and their rage was warranted. I talked them out of it.

This huge attitude is compounded by the fact that most of the kids are decently good-looking. There is one cook, however, that we all called either "The Cute Cook," or "The Nice Cook," because not only was he the yummiest to view (over six feet, pretty roses tattooed on his forearm in place of the ubiquitous swallows or pin-up girls, hipster glasses, hot hot hot), he was the one who actually said hello to the front-of-the-house staff of his own accord and didn't look at you like you'd just crawled out from under a rock and asked what year it was like the other cooks do. Also all of the other cooks all have a variation of the same name and his is different, so nobody could remember it.

I can understand why cooks have this bad attitude--they put in three times as many hours as waiters do and get paid less than half as much. Now for me, this didn't make sense after one year of cooking at a fancy-pants restaurant when I was eighteen, so I got a job as a busser right quick. Some people are crazy enough to want to cook in restaurants for their careers, and I commend them for this. I have a great respect for cooks, I just wish they would be nicer to me. And I'm not some clueless waitress that just wants to go out and get drunk and go shopping the next day; I do this work because I'm passionate about food, and it generally confounds a line cook even more when I actually know all of the ingredients in Romesco and Rouille, and how these sauces are prepared.

I'd found out before the shift that the Cute Cook's long-distance relationship was no more, so I gave him every opportunity to ask me out on my last night at the foundering ship. Unfortunately, he did not pick up on my subtle clues, like when I asked him if he was going to come and visit at my new spot... "Blank," he responded "What the fuck is a Blank?" More promisingly, when I explained what and where a Blank was, he sort of ogled me and said "How could I NOT come and see you?" in an extremely sarcastic tone. I think working in restaurants has lowered my standards in men.

Culture Shock

Although I have experienced firsthand the shock that comes upon returning home from an exotic voyage, it was--well, shocking. I arrived in San Francisco yesterday afternoon to a city that was exactly the same as I left it. Wonderful, but San Francisco had seemed so exotic when I moved here last year. Now, it's just not Buenos Aires...

I made amends with the cat yesterday, and today made the restaurant rounds. I headed back to The Restaurant, which seems to have made some exciting changes in my absence. I'll return there next week, sigh.

After spending way too long gossiping with my coworkers at The Restaurant, I headed home but first stopped by The Bistro to see my friend who'd gotten me the ill-fated job in the first place. The elephant-graveyard waiter who'd been so mean to me when I worked there for a few weeks had forgotten all about his anti-Restaurant Girl malaise, and everyone was warm and welcoming. It's always touch-and-go on the status of returning to a restaurant to say hello when you've quit without notice. I was treated to a Negroni, some radishes, French fries, and a bowl of homemade pozole that chef had cooked up with his wife over the weekend. It's nice to know I'm not despised (though I have been encouraged to visit Mondays and Tuesdays, when the fussy GM is not on the floor).

Tomorrow I'm attending the invite-only opening of some new bar on Castro street, with one of my best friends from back home who is also a charismatic bartender at the newly-revamped Transfer Bar on Church Street. It's amazing how so much has changed inside of me the last two months, but now that I am back in San Francisco my life is exactly the same as it always was.

Doing Shots During Service

Last Wednesday all of the servers were called into work at The Restaurant, although there wasn't even 40 reservations on the book. All of us looked confusedly at each other, dressed in our white shirts and ties, and wondered how we were going to make any money. Well, we weren't.

There was to be a winemaker dinner the next night, and the restaurant would be closed to the public and we'd be denigrated to the job title of caterers (although we'd still be making our regular wage: MINIMUM). Because it was a winemaker dinner, there were to be 34 wines poured before and during dinner. We were there to wash and polish all of the rented crystal stemware.

Although the servers had sadly been given a three- or four-table section each, two of us quickly gave our tables away and took off our ties. Sitting down on the banquettes to polish, polish, and gossip won out making maybe $50, and we knew we'd get to leave earlier if we gave away all of our tables. Teal was bitter because she'd been given the cocktail lounge for her section (after six months of working in The Restaurant she'd never had to take this section), and I was bitter because I'd had to cut a camping trip with Valentino a day short to come in on a day that I was only on-call to polish wineglasses.

So, what's a couple of girls to do? Run across the street during service and take shots, of course! We grabbed the only other girl who works in The Restaurant (the hostess) and sprinted out the back door with the excuse that we were going to smoke (which only Teal does). Across the street at our favorite watering hole it was happy hour and we perched on the barstools and ordered a couple of Red Stripes. Our friendly bartender made up a shakerful of something refreshing and kamikaze-like, pouring it into four rocks glasses. We all clinked cheers, pounded our beers, and rushed back across the street to the theme song from "Purple Rain."

Heading back into the building, we ran into the owner as he was coming out, leaving for the night. Luckily, Teal had a cigarette in hand. He wished us a lovely evening polishing glassware, hopped in his Mercedes, and sped away. Needless to say, our night was much improved. As we sat morosely buffing, the sommelier felt sorry for us and opened up a bottle of prosecco, with the explicit instructions not to share: the servers working on the floor would have to stay late and finish polishing, and they'd have their own bottle. Suckas.

EOS Wine Bar

Valentino and I finally made it out to EOS on Monday for a re-try of the date we were supposed to have on Valentine's Day. I must say, it's pretty rare for me to leave a restaurant thinking "What a great meal! I really can't wait to come here again!", especially in this town of 4,000 or so restaurants. But by the time we were wiping our plates clean of the main courses, I was planning for my next jaunt to EOS.

We went there with the purpose of trying a bunch of wines, and I was very impressed with their list. We tried two different flights, the Varietal Hodgepodge Flight to begin, and my favorite was the Alsacean Pinot Blanc, as it usually is. Valentino doesn't care too much for whites, so I sipped the Soave, the Rhone blend, the Pinot Blanc, and the Riesling Kabinett with gusto.

I started off with a Thai spiced chopped salad, and Valentino had the organic lettuces with pommelo and hazelnut-shallot vinaigrette. Both were amazing, and we shared back and forth, but not too much because the salads suited our tastes perfectly. I love spicy, sour foods with mineralistic, high-acidity whites; he loves smoky, sweet, nutty tastes and so sticks with classic palate-pleasers and dark, plummy red wines.

Main courses were the Belgian ale marinated angus hangar steak for him, which was pretty good but arrived well after my Prince Edward Island Mussels with chorizo and Asian herbs. I think the waiter thought we wanted to do a fish course, then a meat course. With the main courses, we had the Spanish Reds Flight, which paired really well with the mussels and chorizo. We also added a half-glass of the Andrew Murray Vineyards "Esperance" blend (Grenache-Mourvedre-Syrah), which was good but overpriced at $5.50 for a tasting pour. Valentino and I both agreed that the best red was the Bodegas Murviedro Old Vine, which was a varietal I'd never tasted before: Monastrell.

Service was great; our waiter was extremely wine-knowledgeable. My favorite reds tend to be Cote du Rhones, and he had a lot to say about the white CdR that was in our first flight. We skipped dessert because although the food is supposed to be "tapas-style," we were quite full from 2 courses each. A signifier of a good meal is that each party likes what s/he ordered the best, and we felt that way after leaving EOS. On the way out the door, we noticed the little bistro next door, and I can't wait to go back!

The things we have in common

Yesterday as I interviewed the head expediter (the main link between the kitchen and the front-of-the-house staff) for a story I'm writing about twentysomethings who have college degrees yet work at so-called "temporary" jobs that aren't in their fields of study, I got to thinking about a point he brought up.

"Something interesting about working in restaurants," he said, "is that when someone moves on, you always say you're going to stay in touch with that person, but you never do."

"I guess it makes me realize that the only thing you really have in common is that you work together. And you drink together."

Too true. So many times have I moved onto another restaurant, or said goodbye to a coworker with promises to call or text, to get manicures, to go for cocktails, to play tennis. A month goes by and we chat sporadically, then two months and we still haven't seen each other, and after the third month I'll delete her (or his) number from my phone.

Is the fast pace of the dinner shift the only thing that keeps us comrades? Is a restaurant really, as Anthony has said, like a reality TV show in which contestants form alliances merely to further their own selfish goals? When I got off of work last night and headed across the street to the Transfer to meet my coworkers for drinks (like we do every Friday night, and most weeknights as well), I looked around at them throwing back shots and wondered what the point was.

After having a beer stolen by the waiter who showed up for work too fucked up to see straight (he was sent home immediately but apparently headed to the bar and waited for us all to show up, 5 hours later), I hopped in a cab and headed across town to a houseful of old friends from junior high school who were digging through a gigantic cardboard box of elementary school photos, and all the notes we passed each other up to our senior year. Happy cheers erupted as I trudged up the front porch, and we spent the next several hours reminiscing, laughing real laughter, and fell asleep in a big pile on the living room floor. Now those are some numbers I know my phone will have forever.