Foreign Cinema

October 18

I've run into a fair amount of unexpected formality here in San Francisco. This evening I think it was meant ironically.

I was having dinner with Jeff Cranmer, whom you might recall from two blog entries ago, and his wife Susie, at Foreign Cinema. We had reservations for 8:30, but Jeff suggested that we meet at the bar attached to the restaurant at around 8 for a drink. He had forgotten the name of the bar, but it starts with an L.
"You can't miss it," he said.
But, arriving at 7:45, I did miss it, so I spoke with a well-dressed gentleman in a suit who looked like a doorman of sorts outside of Foreign Cinema and told him that although I was not supposed to be able to miss said bar, I somehow had.
He smiled, pleased, it seemed, by my honesty, or maybe by my phrasing.
"Sir, you did not miss it, but merely overstepped it by a few feet," he said, gesturing to the dark building next to Foreign Cinema, with the sign "Laszlo."
It was really dark. A woman outside smoking a cigarette said "I'll be right with you," as I walked in and sat, alone, at the bar, with not even a bartender to keep me company as she was having a cigarette.
When the cigarette had been smoked, I ordered a weissbier called Franziskaner, which it seemed to me could refer to someone from San Francisco. The bartender shrugged at my analysis of the name. I squeezed my lemon, sipped my beer and browsed the cocktail menu. The drink names had Communist themes, which struck me as an amusing shtick.
Jeff and Suzie arrived soon enough, and as if they were the arbiters of what is trendy in San Francisco, they were soon followed by several large groups who filled up the bar. They insisted that I was the evening's trailblazer in Laszlo, but I pointed out that my arrival had been meaningless. Only when they arrived did the world sit up and take notice.
So anyway, Foreign Cinema. Chef-owner Gayle Pirie came out, introduced herself and gave us a tour of the place and then the three of us ate food, drank wine and talked mostly about food, although we did share stories of loud neighbors from days past. I guess it's kind of interesting that we didn't really play catch-up about our lives. I mean, Jeff and I had done that a bit the night before, but it's interesting how with some friends, even if you don't see them for long stretches at a time, you can fall right into conversation without having to reestablish connections. We talked a little bit about Jeff's friend Greg Dicum, who we hoped might join us, but he couldn't. One of Greg's current missions, according to Jeff, is to rehabilitate the Boulevardier, which apparently is a Negroni made with rye instead of gin.
Our friend Michael Carpenter, who also is Jeff's brother-in-law as he is married to Susie's older sister Winnie, was supposed to meet up with us last night, and in fact we had gotten kind of concerned that he didn't show up or call. Some people do that, but not Michael.
It turns out that he had spent two-and-a-half hours stuck in an elevator. Really.
Tonight he had a work dinner from which he could not escape, but he called Jeff periodically, apprising him of his status, and finally arrived at around 11, telling tales of woe about his experience in the elevator, and amusing ones about his visiting mother-in-law and her indulgence of his daughter.
Michael was unusually enthusiastic and engaging this evening, and that seemed to inspire the staff of Foreign Cinema to bring out six-year-old Calvados, which Michael sipped at while recounting the emotional roller-coaster ride that imprisonment in an elevator apparently is. He seems okay, though.
Jeff and Susie took their leave sometime around midnight, I think. But Michael and I weren't done, so we went to The High Tide, a dive bar in the Tenderloin, near my hotel, with a gruff middle-aged Asian bartender who looked mildly insane as she poured me a bourbon on the rocks.
I rememberd that Michael and my other San Francisco friend Craig had drunk there before, back in November of 2000.
I remembered it was November of 2000 because it was the day before Election Day, and Michael expressed great enthusiasm about voting -- he's very sweet that way -- and the joy of knowing at the end of the next day who our president would be.
Of course, it turns out that we didn't know for weeks and weeks who the next president would be, so I remembered the conversation.
Have you been wondering where Craig has been all this time? He was on a business trip in Los Angeles during my San Francisco visit. But even if he had been in town I probably wouldn't have gotten to see him. His wife, Susan, just had their second child, a boy named Cormac.
Welcome to the world, Cormac.

What we ate at Foreign Cinema:

Warm Dungeness crab brandade with pickled onions and caperberries
Martin's arugula with chick peas, currants, sherry vinaigrette and garlic croutons
House cured sardines with cucmber-mint salad, barrel-aged Greek feta and tomato chutney (note the cucumber-mint, a Middle Eastern touch; remember how I mentioned a few entries ago about the Middle Eastern influence in San Francisco dining?)
Petrale sole with wild chanterelles, sungold cherry tomatoes and brown butter-caper sauce
Fried Persion spiced (Middle Eastern, I told you) chicken with escarole, frisee, persimmon, pomegranate, kishmish and sumac (the last four are all Middle Eastern, kishmish is an onion compote with raisins and my new favorite word)
Lavender pork chop with toasted Brussels sprouts, apples, Parsi style potato hash with turmeric
(roasted Moroccan quail with rose petal sauce and Tunisian duck breast with grilled grapes and warm figs also were on the menu and of Middle Eastern influence, but we didn't eat them)
Lemon custard tart with strawberry and fig compote with lemon verbena sorbet
Persimmon, walnut and currant tartlette with caramel and white chocolate sauces (arguably Middle Eastern)
Chocolate pot de creme with a crinkle cookie

The seven coffees of Spruce

October 18

My calves hurt.
I walked from the Prescott hotel to Spruce for lunch. It's just a couple of miles, which is no trouble for a tough New Yorker like me, except in San Francisco. I think visitors to the City by the Bay should be issued topographical maps so we know where the hills are. I suppose I could use the workout, though.
I'd been meaning to go to one of restaurateur Tim Stannard's restaurants since I met him in Aspen a few years ago, but I have never had any occasion to go to Woodside, where his flagship restaurant is, so Spruce would have to do.
It's a surprisingly formal place for laid-back San Francisco, especially considering I was sitting at the bar. Bartender Evan (he was much too couth to have introduced himself, but the hostess mentioned his name) walked around the bar to pour me my 2006 Domaine la Bastide Viognier (from Pays d'Hauterive in France's Languedoc region) from the right. He did it with enough style to make that potentially quaint move charming.
His apology seemed quite sincere that they were out of boudin blanc -- a recent favorable review had resulted in a run on that particular dish. No biggie. Instead, after my salad of lettuce and herbs with banyuls vinegar and a green olive crostone, I had the crispy preserved duckling with green lentils and sherry glazed apples.
Spruce offers seven different coffees, not including decaf, and none of them are flavored. They each have different origins, are priced differently, and are arranged according to darkness of roast. They are roasted in-house and drip-brewed to order. I had the lightest roast, an Ethiopian Sidamo, which Evan once again came from behind the bar to serve from the right.

Ozone

October 17

In honor of Jeff Cranmer, my friend who has taught me the magic of hyperbole, I am going to very briefly stray from my usual stance of not recommending restaurants on this blog and say that Ozone in San Francisco serves the best Thai food I have had in the United States.
I'm doing that because America needs it. Because I'm tired of mentioning Ozone to people and having them shrug and look at me like I just offered them a plate of ram testicles preserved in sour whey.
"Never heard of it," they say. I don't care if you've never heard of it. I don't care if Citysearch comments on it describe the fast delivery and friendly staff. They've missed the point. Ozone has obscure northern sausages like sai-ooa that taste like you could be eating them in Chiang Mai. They have roasted pork neck and fluffy catfish salad. They serve foods with flavors that we don't think of as being part of the Thai culinary palate -- earthy, rich dishes meant to counterbalance the hot-sour stuff that have won the hearts of American diners.
Jeff and I met in Bangkok, where the first thing he said to me was that he should give me five dollars for a particular restaurant review that I wrote (I was a critic at the time). That left me utterly confused and irrationally irritated, but I soon learned to appreciate Jeff's poetic use of language. His need to declare a good plate of khao man gai to be the best thing on the planet, to address his friends as King. It's just his way, and it's a way that glories in life's simple pleasures, that rejoices in a pleasant song or a tasty glass of scotch in the way that such things should be rejoiced in.
We met at Hemlock, a bar near Ozone, for beer before heading to Ozone, where we had more beer and I started ordering food like a crazy person.
"I think two appetizers is enough," he said.
Thai food in New York cannot compare to Thai food on the West Coast, you see, so I get carried away.
We had the sai-ooa and roasted pork neck. Jeff, who spent time in the Northern city of Chiang Mai, told the waitress in northern Thai dialect that the sai-ooa was delicious, but I guess she's from the central plains, because she didn't know what he was talking about.
Then things got blurry because of the gung chae nam pla. I don't remember what it was called on the menu, but it's shrimp marinated in fish sauce and then dressed up to be sour and spicy. Our waitress asked how spicy we wanted it, and not realizing that they would take me seriously, I said "very spicy."
So they served it very spicy by Thai standards and I might have lost consciousness. I know I babbled incoherently for awhile, trying to tell amusing anecdotes to Jeff while drinking beer and water and eating rice to kill the pain.
Still, I enjoyed the honey-roasted duck and the chicken in roasted chile sauce that followed.
"Are you all right?" Jeff asked.
I was exhilarated

Absinthe

October 17

So much food, so little time. I'm in San Francisco for just a couple of days, so I went straight from the airport to Absinthe, an old French bistro with a new chef. A young woman originally from New York's Upper East Side, Jamie Lauren, Scorpio, age 29, took over the kitchens in June and since then has been working to revamp the place (that’s her, on the left). She greeted me after I had lunch wearing a faded red Adidas cap, arms decked out in tattoos. She didn't like the Upper East Side, but is having a good time in the City by the Bay, which it seems to me is having a bit of a romance these days with Middle Eastern food. Or maybe it's just what I've been ordering. I had Jamie's Little Gem lettuces with pomegranate, shaved red onion, creamy dill dressing Persian cucumbers, mint and sumac. Middle Eastern -- at least the pomegranate, Persian cucumbers, mint and sumac. Well, and onion and to a certain extent dill.
Then I had the Croque Madame, which isn't Middle Eastern at all.
Jamie also sent me a soup of Jerusalem artichoke, spiced walnut oil, kaffir lime and micro cilantro. I had all of that with a couple glasses of Viognier.
Jamie's also buffing up Absinthe's cheese selection, so I had one of her sheep's milk selections paired with something light and Alsatian.
I had a cocktail for dessert, since cocktails clearly are a priority at the restaurant.
I chose the Java Islan: Espresso, Batavia Arrack, agave nectar and angostura bitters, chilled and served long over ice.

hungry, so very hungry, at Irving Mill

October 16

I like Hall Company parties. The publicists always manage to get a fun crowd and they keep everyone well liquored.
But they don’t feed them.
You’d think if you managed to draw a nice group of influential media types into a restaurant, understanding that it might be the only time they’ll set foot in the place, you would want them to sample the food.
Now, any self-respecting food writer understands that you can’t judge a restaurant by the food it serves at its opening party, but you can at least get a vague idea of what the place is all about.
But only food writers with the greedy, grasping hands of travel writers would have gotten much to eat last night, at the opening party of Irving Mill.
More than one person at the party asked me what I thought about the space, which until recently was the restaurant Candela.
I shrugged. I don’t know from space. It seemed fine. There was lots of freshly stained wood, and, you know, tables and chairs. A bar. I don’t know, and if I did I wouldn't have the words to describe the design features. Hanging from the ceiling were these round lamp things that I don't think were chandeliers. “Wagon wheels?” someone suggested. It might have been Josh Ozersky, but I can’t really remember because I was drinking Prosecco without eating.
My colleague, Sonya Moore came, too, and I introduced her around to some people, including Katy Sparks, a chef-consultant who was there with a new business partner. We took a tour of Irving Mill’s private space and chatted with executive pastry chef Colleen Grapes.
Executive chef John Schaefer was popping in and out of the dining room, going back into the kitchen clearly to cook something. He seemed really nice. I can’t tell you anything about his food except that he has been cooking at Gramercy Tavern for the past dozen years.
So there was no food, but it was a great crowd, with an unusually large number of celebrities. Benjamin Bratt was there for practically the whole night. He got there shortly after I did and was still there when I left, chatting with John Leguizamo and that actor who played the scary Irish-American prisoner in Oz. You know, the one with the brain-damaged brother. He also played a cop on Homicide: Life on the Street, but only very briefly, until his character murdered his ex-girlfriend or something like that. You know the guy.
I looked it up: Dean Winters.
Tom Colicchio was there, too, clearly to support his young protégé. People were commenting on how much thinner the Top Chef head judge looked in real life. I figured that was because cameras add 15 pounds, but I mentioned it to Tom and he said that he had, in fact, lost 15 pounds recently because he had been cooking on the line at his new Los Angeles unit of Craft.
So I guess if you’re chef, being on TV really does add 15 pounds.

What I finally had for dinner:

A barbacoa fajita burrito from Chipotle with red tomatillo salsa.