San Francisco treats
FRESH OUTLOOK Cans and packages are frowned upon in the Bay Area, where thoughts turn to the fresh, organic, seasonal and sustainable
SAN FRANCISCO—
I am hanging off the side of a cable car. Some streets here are crazy steep. On the edge of Chinatown, cars parked in a row perpendicular to the sidewalk are so tilted they look as if they’ll topple over like dominoes. We’re headed downhill and the gripman, or driver, is putting his shoulder into the job.
“ Do people fall off?” I ask him.
“ Occasionally,” he admits. “ It’s not a happy sight.” And not just when bars spill out their patrons late at night. Anytime, he says.
Listening in, a British couple clutching the posts next to mine manoeuvre their way inside. The car is crowded. My hair whips in the wind. The bell clangs. I feel like I’m in a Rice- ARoni commercial.
Rice- A- Roni is a mix of rice and noodles, sautéed in butter, then cooked with a chicken flavour packet. Marketing has made it synonymous with San Francisco scenery.
Its story dates back to Domenico DeDomenico ( rechristened Charlie by a dense immigration officer) and the pasta company he built. Rice- A- Roni was created by his descendants in 1958. They were Italians, but the recipe was inspired by an Armenian neighbour’s pilaf. TV commercials made it a household name in the ’ 60s. Happy people hung off cable cars and a catchy jingle declared it “ the San Francisco treat!” But do people in San Francisco eat it? Asked that question, local food writers just shrug and laugh. A bus driver admits he cooks it occasionally. “ I doctor it up,” he adds, perhaps to save face.
Rice- A- Roni, it seems, is contrary to the city’s modern culinary sensibilities. For San Francisco is the epicentre of California cuisine. It is a city striving to be closer to the Earth. All that is fresh, seasonal, organic and kind to the environment is revered. Here, milk cartons declare their contents “ hormonefree.” A farmers’ market sign threatens: “ Shoplifters will be composted.” Turn your mindset around, for you may even see the label “ non- organic.” It’s a fresh way of thinking. The Bay Area is where the Blue Bottle Coffee Co. will sell java no older than 48 hours after roasting. Where cheesemaker Laura Chenel, with a straight face, will confess to a spiritual connection with her goats. Where the French Laundry restaurant will feed you a nine- course vegeta-
ble tasting menu for $ 175 ( U. S.).
At that nearby Napa restaurant, chef- owner Thomas Keller serves a series of small plates at enormous prices. He is prone to repeating the phrase “flavour profiles.” The eating experience can last three or four hours, he warns. “ If you’re in a hurry, you should go somewhere else.”
Restaurateurs around here wear their hearts on their menus. This is what it says on one of the menus at Chez Panisse: “ All of our produce and meat comes from local farms and ranches that practise ecologically sound agriculture.” Chez Panisse is the birthplace of California cuisine and Alice Waters is its mommy. Waters opened the eatery in 1971 in Berkeley, a San Francisco suburb now known as the Gourmet Ghetto. Today, the restaurant feeds 500 people a day, she says, and that supports two farm people entirely and 75 farm people partially.
“ Food is about care — nourishment,” she says.
Waters runs a foundation that teaches children about organic gardening, cooking and healthy lunches. She wants youngsters to feel connected to nature. She wants to turn around the fast food values that promote haste and waste. She doesn’t want them eating anything packaged and preserved.
Goodbye, Rice- A-Roni. With its 32 ingredients ( including the taste bud cheater MSG), Original Rice- A- Roni is just the sort of thing she casts a suspicious eye on. When asked what she would erase from the American diet, she responds: “ There are a lot of things in bags that are offensive to me.” She pauses and adds softly: “Anything with a long list of ingredients.”
Waters’ California philosophy is not new: growing food nearby, cooking it fresh ( or drying it or curing it), eating it with friends and family. It’s simple. But California cuisine is more than the sum of its parts.
At a recent meal at Chez Panisse, I sit down to rabbit salad with green beans, breaded sand dabs ( little fish resembling flounders) baked to flaky tenderness, and ginger cake that has achieved perfection. Another landmark eatery preaching the gospel of California cuisine is Zuni Café in San Francisco. Here, the anchovies are house-cured and served with celery, parmesan and olives. Thick, juicy pork chops are garnished with toasted breadcrumb salsa. Our table of three attacks a mound of shoestring potatoes. The meal ends with a divine espresso granita.
Chef Judy Rodgers offers this advice in The Zuni Café Cookbook: A Compendium of Recipes & Cooking Lessons from San Francisco’s Beloved Restaurant: “ Study your market at least as avidly as your library. Look for a market that takes pride in featuring local, seasonal produce, however modest it may be in variety, and pay attention to that produce most of all. Clamour for organic and sustainably farmed foods.” The flavours of the city’s past have been added to the mix. San Francisco was settled by Spanish, Italians and Chinese, and has a strong African- American contingent. And now there is a Japanese craze. The cuisine of Ritz-Carlton Hotel chef Ron Siegel is described as modern French with a Japanese influence. At the recent Association Food Journalists conference, he intrigues diners with sashimi of golden osetra caviar, geoduck and abalone.
This is definitely a food town. In fact, the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau says a quarter of the tourists come mainly to dine.
I hop on the cable car to see what the tourists are eating at Fisherman’s Wharf. I find monstrous dungeness crabs, ready to be steamed on the spot by street vendors for $ 8.95 ( U. S.) a pound. “ Sidewalk seafood” dates back to the turn of the century when tourists flocked to the waterfront to see the fishing fleet. Cute sourdough rounds are scooped out and filled with clam chowder, a signature dish from the historic Boudin Bakery.
Chock-a-block tourist traps are filled with Ghirardelli chocolates and barrels of candy, along with cheap sunglasses and shark’s teeth. It is a cruel place to be hungry, but there is no shortage of down-and-outers. One, wearing a red sleeping bag as a cape, offers a strangely worded plea: “ Do you have any food change?”
Heading east along the waterfront, to the Ferry Building, the mood shifts to upscale. At Taylor’s Automatic Refresher, even diner fare has flair. It manages to be true to its roots as a country burger stand, but has moved away from the dark side with natural beef, fresh fish and farmers’ produce. You are given a pager that flashes when the production line is ready with your order. Will it be corn dogs or calamari, fish tacos or burgers? The ahi tuna burger is famous. The Texas burger, with jack cheese, guacamole, salsa and pickled jalapeños, sounds deadly. Sweet potato fries are dusted in chili powder. The espresso bean milkshake goes down smooth. The Ferry Building, opened in 1898 and renovated a few years ago, is San Francisco’s shrine to all that is fine and fresh, from the nouveau Vietnamese cuisine of The Slanted Door to chocolates almost too pretty to eat. On weekends, farmers and food producers set up 100 to 150 tents outside to sell politically correct fruit, vegetables, olive oils, preserves and snacks. The Bay Area is farmers’ market heaven. More than 120 weekly farmers’ markets operate here during the summer, according to the San Francisco Bay Crossings
newspaper. With housing projects overlooking it, the Alemany is cheaper and grittier than the farmers’ market at the Ferry Building. It has been going strong since 1943. Browsing among the 100 stalls, I find a harvest of special produce — Afghani melons (kharbuza), fresh dates, buddha’s hand citron, lobster mushrooms, key limes and meyer lemons.
This is back to the future. A century ago, a public market would attract shoppers to one central spot. Now supermarkets do that, but their goods are a lot less wholesome. San Francisco — with its blend of tradition and fresh ideas — has given me the urge to experiment. I decide Rice-A-Roni needs a makeover. I cook up a packet; it tastes bright and very commercial. I refine a homemade version. It’s not California cuisine, but it’s a more modern San Francisco treat. Something old, something new.