These days, dinner = contact with other people. Had Korean food awhile ago with Bill, Juan, and Felicia. Bill and Juan really enjoyed the little yogurt drinks they give you at the end. Also, got to see Zandra for the first time in over a month, which was nice. We explored the Japanese restaurant inside the Metreon, which was decent (nothing special, but totally fine). Finally, dinner with Pam — and my favorite affogato!

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I went to Taqueria Cancun last night (the one at Mission/18th) with Jake, and found a taqueria I nearly didn’t recognize. There was no free water, and during our entire dinner, only 3 Latinos came in to eat. Instead, it was a bunch of well-dressed folks — Caucasians and Asians, mostly — plus the occasional rail-thin hipster in a striped sport coat and funky hat.

the good ol’ burrito mojado

However, the burrito mojado was as I remembered it to be, as was the nasty ambient smell, which only materialized after a yuppie asked a staff member to close the door because it was too cold outside.

Can anyone recommend a good taqueria in SOMA? I know there is a Taqueria Cancun at Market/6th, but it doesn’t seem like there are many more in the area.

susan and brad @ universal cafe

Brad (of Cracottes dolphin fame) and Susan Brown drove up a couple of weeks ago to have brunch with me at Slow Club. It was really great to hang out with Brad and Susan; I hadn’t seen them since the Digital Shootout 2007 in Bonaire.

I love brunch in Portrero Hill. I like the food, ambiance, parking availability, and the relative lack of hipsters when compared to some other areas (like the area I happen to live in now).

Anyway, you can see some of their work. They are good shooters!

On the way back from seeing Vienna Teng perform at C. Donatiello winery in Healdsberg, Bill and I stopped to have dinner with Mandy, Elliot, and Aaron at a Mexican restaurant in West Portal. Halfway through dinner, we got to the bottom of one of the small baskets of chips, and I noticed something dark beneath one of the chips. I discovered a single rat turd.

The waitress came over, and I pointed out the turd to her. She removed the basket quickly and told us story about the chips being cooked on something where they also warm tortillas and cook chicken. “It’s chicken,” she said.

Now, I’m no chef, but I know what chicken looks like. More importantly, I know what chicken doesn’t look like. Specifically, chicken doesn’t look like rat turd. The poop piece was 100% a canonical rat turd — tapered ends and slight bend. And even if it was chicken (it wasn’t), we had two vegetarians with us at the table. It turns out that vegetarians don’t want chicken in their chips.

Synsepalum dulcificum and citrus

A year and a half ago, my aunt in Taiwan gave me a little dried fruit to taste. After chewing on the pulp, I ate some sour citrus fruit, and to my surprise, it converted sour to sweet! I’ve been telling friends about it since then, but had never found a mainstream article about the fruit hitting the States until now. The taste twist is due to a protein called miraculin, which is sort of a lame name. People are calling the experience “favor tripping.”

The miracle fruit, Synsepalum dulcificum, is native to West Africa and has been known to Westerners since the 18th century. The cause of the reaction is a protein called miraculin, which binds with the taste buds and acts as a sweetness inducer when it comes in contact with acids, according to a scientist who has studied the fruit…

Full article is at New York Times: A Tiny Fruit That Tricks the Tongue

I also just noticed that the NYT website overrides double clicks and turns it into a site search for that term. Argh.

Aaron is headed out to Taiwan for a couple of weeks. Where should he eat? I assume he will be in Taipei for awhile, but that he will be wandering around the entire island as well. He also wants to know if there are any sites he should absolutely not miss.

And tips?

My mother grew up in Luodong, and we found ourselves wandering around its night market tonight after going to a Tsunah Foundation event. The night market is literally a block away from where my mother grew up, although the surrounding area is very different. “There were rice paddies behind us, and in front of us, across the street… more rice paddies,” she told us, as we drove down the street.

We sat down at two places and ate some great stuff. The first was a dessert: fun yuen (or whatever — I am no pinyin expert) over shaved ice, grass jelly, and condensed milk. The rest of my family had it hot, which was a mistake; mine was much more tasty.

awesome dessert at the night market [see all photos]

The second was a sesame oil chicken in broth — a specific flavor I had previously only tasted at home. We very nearly decided to head back to Taipei directly from the Tsunah event, but I’m very happy that we didn’t! Photos follow… (read more »)

Douglas and Emily at Koi Palace

Douglas Seifert and Emily are in town for the holidays, and as has been tradition for years (with Douglas, anyway), we went out to eat dim sum. I’ve basically stopped eating shrimp because of the horrible way in which it is fished, but I am embarrassed to say that I do still have a bit of it when out for dim sum. Luckily, it’s only once or twice a year… (read more »)

Geoff Nuttall and Vienna Teng at Quince (all images)

The real reason for the dearth of social imagery around here is that I’m burned out. I’m away all the time shooting thousands of images of weird underwater critters, and I don’t have time to do anything with them, let alone the images I shoot of my friends. :(

Anyway, I wanted to post some now, for old times’ sake, of the dinner at Quince (all images).

Excerpt from “Why is it still acceptable to eat the endangered large predators of the sea?” by George Monbiot and published in the Guardian 3rd April 2007.

“If these animals lived on land there would be a global outcry. But the great beasts roaming the savannahs of the open seas summon no such support. Big sharks, giant tuna, marlin and swordfish should have the conservation status of the giant panda or the snow leopard. Yet still we believe it is acceptable for fishmongers to sell them and celebrity chefs to teach us how to cook them. “A study in this week’s edition of Science reveals the disastrous collapse of the ocean’s megafauna. The great sharks are now wobbling on the edge of extinction. Since 1972 the number of blacktip sharks has fallen by 93%, tiger sharks by 97% and bull sharks, dusky sharks and smooth hammerheads by 99%(1). Just about every population of major predators is now in freefall. Another paper, published in Nature four years ago, shows that over 90% of large predatory fishes throughout the global oceans have gone(2). “You respond with horror when you hear of Chinese feasts of bear paws and tiger meat. But these are no different, as far as conservation is concerned, from eating shark’s fin soup or swordfish or steaks from rare species of tuna. One practice is considered barbaric in Europe and North America. The other is promoted in restaurant reviews and recipes in the colour supplements of respectable newspapers.” [full article]

Two weddings ago, I had half a day to hang out with my sister in Los Angeles. She took me to a great vegetarian dim sum place in the San Gabriel Valley called Mission 261, where we (the two of us, and Daphne Wang) ate ribbit dumlpings [sic] and other delicacies.

vegetarian ribbit dumlpings (rabbit dumplings)

We also had lunch at a great little place in the corner of a strip mall with Sarah Kemble, whose presence in the Bay Area I miss. (read more »)

bev, vienna, pat, karine, peter and me @ sushi yasuda [see all]

My head might be as much as 50% wider than Peter’s head.

Bill Addison over at SFGate spent 10 weeks checking out 85 Bay Area taquerias. I’ve been to many of the places he mentions in the article and agree that burritos here are quite good. The article focuses on brick ‘n mortar establishments, which unfortunately precluded taco trucks from the comparison. I love a good taco truck taco; each time, before I wolf down my first one, there is only that brief flash of worry over the lack of running water in the truck before I forget all about it.

Last night, Dave Patchen, Ilya Levtov and I ended up at Tia Margarita up on Clement, which was (as Dave described it) “like a Mexican restaurant in the Mission, but twice the cost.” Oh well. The food was good. :)

When I was living in SF proper, I went to Taqueria Cancun at least once a week (the one at 29th and Mission, usually), but now that I’m in Oakland, I’ve lost my burrito routine.

Whoah. Nash just posted about burritos as well. What are the chances that we’d both post about burritos on the same day?

a close-up of me eating a cockroach (photo: douglas seifert)

It was teriyaki-glazed, and wasn’t all that bad..

OK, so I lied. I really did not enjoy eating the cockroach AT ALL, and it was certainly not teriyaki-flavored. I’m not sure what kind of cockroach it was, but it looked like a Madagascar hissing cockroach (Gromphadorhina portentosa). More nasty/interesting food photos from the Explorer’s Club Annual Dinner: [post] [photos only]

Explorer’s Club annual dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York

[just show me the pictures] Douglas Seifert invited me to attend the 103rd Explorer’s Club Annual Dinner (ECAD), which took place on March 17, 2007, at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. The Explorer’s Club was founded in 1904 and is an “international, multidisciplinary, professional society dedicated to the advancement of field research and the ideal that it is vital to preserve the instinct to explore.” The annual dinner’s goals are “to review the year in exploration, honor the world’s top explorers, and break bread together.” This year’s theme was polar exploration, and Master of Ceremonies Dan Rather presented the evening’s honorees and award recipients. (read more »)

Darioush Winery in near-infrared

Osvaldo Golijov has been in town for the past week to finish up a project with Francis Ford Coppola up at the Niebaum-Coppola Estate, which I guess is now called the Rubicon Estate. On Monday, Livia, Baby Jack, Corinne and I drove up to the estate to hang out for a couple of days. (read more »)

dessert and drinks, tokyo, japan

On December 16th, Hitomi took us out to have okonomiyaki at a little place in an area no tourist would ever have found. I had never had (nor heard of) okonomiyaki before, and really enjoyed the new experience. And since Hitomi was involved, we went out to another place afterward for a hugely decadent dessert (in a Japanese not-too-sweet sort of way, of course). [see photos at flickr]

Most of my friends are afraid to order Patagonian toothfish (commercially known as Chilean sea bass) when I’m sitting at the table, and ordering shark fin soup could lead to some serious drama.

A few days ago, the SF Chronicle reported that Whole Foods has started selling Chilean sea bass again because they have found a sustainable fishery around South Georgia Island. So go ahead and order Chilean sea bass, but be sure to ask where it comes from and whether it is MSC-certified, first. :)

i love food in japan

The problem with eating in Japan is that sometimes you can’t find anyone to translate the name of the fish you’re eating. :) (read more »)

Reunited with Andy Lan, an old violinist friend from nearly ten years ago, I met up today with him and a few of his friends to read string quintets (2 violins, 1 viola, 2 celli) at a beautiful, Eichler-esque house in San Mateo.

We started by reading an anonymous arrangement of a virtuosic Kreisler sonata (originally for violin and piano), followed by a string quintet reconstruction of Brahms Piano Quintet in F minor, opus 34. I didn’t know this beforehand, but the Brahms quintet was completed in 1862 — originally as a string quintet! Anyway, it was really a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed meeting a few more talented musicians in the Bay Area who masquerade as normal folks in other professions during the day.

After reading music, I went with Livia to Han Kook in Cupertino for Korean-food shopping madness. (read more »)