'Super pop-up' food hall feeds into plans for S.F.'s Mid-Market

Behind a 150-foot construction barricade at the vacant Hollywood Billiards on Market Street is one of the most ambitious food marketplaces the city has seen: seven new culinary venues under one roof, including an Anchor Steam bar, a fish market, a wine shop, and restaurants offering Moroccan-Peruvian fusion, Vietnamese pho, barbecue, cold-brewed coffee and pastries.
The food court will open at the end of the month, but the really remarkable thing is that it will all be torn down in less than two years.

The "super pop-up" project at 1028 Market, dubbed the Hall, is developer Tidewater Capital's effort to solve a problem vexing city officials trying to redevelop blocks of boarded-up buildings along Market Street between Fifth and 10th streets. Despite the dozen proposals in the Mid-Market area, the reality is that the city won't approve most of them until 2015 or even 2016. Add 18 months or two years of construction, and you're looking at four or five years of vacant storefronts before much of the much-hyped revival takes place.

Nowhere is this more obvious than the north side of the 1000 block of Market Street, in the vicinity of Golden Gate Avenue and Jones and McAllister streets. Here Tidewater Capital has submitted plans to build 186 housing units over 10,000 square feet of retail. Next door, Shorenstein Properties is hoping to win approvals to build 301 apartments at 1066 Market St., a site that includes a sliver of Market Street but spreads back onto a large surface parking lot along Golden Gate and Jones.
"Our block has so much potential - what we are trying to do is to unleash that and harness the power of food to get people to come enjoy the site," said Tidewater partner Craig Young. "You show up three or four years from now and there is an apartment building and you remember the great event you went to."

Hollywood Billiards has been vacant for seven years. The ground-floor space, which used to house a strip club, was in such bad shape that Tidewater had to rebuild portions of the facade and put in new ceilings, walls, windows and concrete floors.

Each food vendor will have a large stall, and a prep kitchen will serve all the restaurants. There will be communal picnic-style tables both on the sidewalk and inside.
"The Hall will help activate a key block along Central Market while longer-term development at the old Hollywood Billiards site continues," Mayor Ed Lee said.

The development of the Hall is part of a wider effort to make Mid-Market safer and more vibrant. In addition, SF Beautiful is organizing a series of evening concerts at United Nations Plaza. The Rainin Foundation recently gave $100,000 to install two illuminated benches at Sixth and Market and light up the San Cristina building at 1000 Market St.

Shorenstein Properties is also working on a plan to make better use of its 1066 Market St. property, said Meg Spriggs, managing director of the company's apartment development arm. Shorenstein is storing 12 pianos at 1066 Market that will be periodically wheeled out for public use, including at Civic Center Plaza and the Hall next door.

Just two buildings will remain on the block once the two developments are completed. One is a mosque with retail downstairs, the other the San Cristina building, a former office building that Community Housing Partnership converted into studios for the formerly homeless. The lower floors of the flatiron building lease space to Showdogs, a gourmet sausage and beer joint, and Machine, a coffee kiosk.

David Schnur, Community Housing Partnership's director of development, said tenants in the San Cristina welcome new neighbors and retailers.

"It's a troubled block, and our tenants want to live in a safe, high-quality neighborhood," he said. "Eliminating vacant buildings and vacant storefronts will benefit our tenants as much as anyone else."
But he said that the new retail coming in needs to serve everyone - low-income residents as well as the tech workers making $150,000 a year at Twitter or Zendesk. "The neighborhood needs to remain a neighborhood for people of all income levels," he said. "We have been able to develop in that part of town because nobody with deeper pockets than ourselves was interested in it. ... Right now there is plenty of low-cost food in the neighborhood - it would be a problem if it were to all go upscale."
Mid-Market is still a tough place to operate a store. The 1000 block attracts a constant group of drug dealers - mostly marijuana - and their customers.

If the Hall concept takes off, the restaurants could move into other vacant spaces in the neighborhood and eventually into the new Tidewater project, once it is built, Young said. For retailers, it's a low-risk chance to test the market without signing guarantees or taking out construction loans to build out a space.

"Folks are not going to have to wait years before they see something - it's going to be a shot of electricity back into the neighborhood," Young said. "It's a ton of work up front, and we have a relatively short period of time to recover those costs, and we are taking risk, but we all realize that it's the right thing to do."

Tidewater has hired Ilana Lipsett of Free Space, which organizes cultural events in vacant spaces, to curate cultural activities in the 1028 Market space.

"It's going to be about using food, music and art to bring people together and help them express themselves," she said. "It's not going to change the cost of housing in San Francisco, but it could change the tenor of relationships between different populations."


Article and complete list of Photos can be found at:  http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Super-pop-up-food-hall-feeds-into-plans-for-5729488.php#photo-6805012 

Kusakabe review: a true omakase menu

Sitting in Kusakabe at the light polished wood sushi counter, cut from a single tree, with a delicate glass pitcher of sake, a small hand towel in a black saucer and the fifth of 11 courses, the thought emerges: This style of refined dining could also be a boon for fixed-price Western restaurants.

The people who say they wouldn't go to the French Laundry, Benu or Saison because of the precious parade of courses, the formal atmosphere and the extended length of time at the table are some of the same people sitting at the sushi counter eating one bite of delicate sushi after another, as one hour slips into the next.
It's hard not to be captivated by the skill of chef-owner Mitsunori Kusakabe. There are no decisions to be made as diners sit back, relax and are taken on a culinary journey that costs $95 for 11 dishes, mostly sushi but with a soup course and another hot dish.
Dinner begins with a briny broth of kelp tea designed to decompress the 17 patrons at the sushi bar and the 12 who are seated at tables. The waiter also brings a damp black finger towel so diners can wipe their fingers after picking up the sushi with their hands - the way suggested by the waiter, who is as calming as the tea.
Kusakabe defines his menu as omakase sushi, kaiseki style, referring to two distinct types of dining. Kaiseki is a set menu, precisely designed and served. A true omakase menu is based on individual diners' preferences gleaned from their ongoing relationship with the chef. It's a menu built on trust.
Yet in a broader sense the term is accurate here because the chef creates the menu; it's somewhat standardized, but on each of my three visits he made adjustments. Every ingredient is sliced, chopped, drizzled and squeezed to order.
For the first course, the chef places a piece of bluefin tuna, dark from its soy sauce cure, on a small pad of rice. He briefly torches half the flesh to caramelize it, intensify the flavor and firm up the texture - an artful contrast in a single bite.
Next comes a piece of halibut sliced to order, with shallow slits in the flesh to help diffuse the flavorings. The chef adds a dab of its liver gently scooped from a tiny tin, places it on the center of the white flesh, dribbles on a soy-like sauce and tops it with delicate ribbons of shiso. Next up is bonito with a small mound of pickled daikon and rings of scallions.
The sashimi - slices of amber jack and halibut because I am allergic to the scallops that would normally be part of the mix - is arranged on a mound of what looks like snow cone ice accompanied by a soy dipping sauce and a chunky blend of yuzu and onions.
Miso soup offered a warm change of pace, an intense broth with two tender duck meatballs, mitsuba (Japanese parsley) and a hint of sansho peppers. On other visits the soup featured summer truffles floating among the ribbons of herbs, with eringi and shimeji mushrooms visible just below the surface. The flavors are at once strong and subtle.
Next comes what's labeled unique sushi, although everything that came before could be described the same way. In this case, "unique" meant Tasmanian trout cured in kombu on two squares of rice flavored with cilantro and sesame seed. It was finished with sesame miso to bring all the flavors together.
On subsequent visits, the chef served a rice flour cracker that resembled a small pottery bowl shaped like a flower. It's so shiny and well formed that the chef had to tell me to pick it up and eat the entire thing, because I had started to use chopsticks to pick up the rice and barbecued eel on top.

Next is the second warm dish, which was the same on all three visits - two finger-size pieces of crab on tofu, caked in crispy rice and garnished with a slice of key lime so thin it looked like parchment. The waiter then pours on Hokkaido kombu dashi broth. It's yet another example of the tension between bold, subtle, crisp, creamy, warm and cool - the dish touches all those notes. This type of juxtaposition describes many of Kusakabe's dishes.
The next two bites, labeled "sushi chic," included striped bass with a sprinkling of sea salt, gratings of Meyer lemon peel and a few drops of juice. In between each course the chef wipes off the black lacquer rectangles on the shelf above the counter in front of each diner, and replenishes the small bowls of pickled ginger.
For her part, the server is always subtly looking over diners' shoulders, answering questions and helping them to decide what to order from 16 sakes, 16 wines or five beers.
The sake is available in a 3-ounce glass, 6-ounce carafe or by the bottle. Each round is served in different containers - crystal cubes, thick earthen pottery, translucent green cups and long-stemmed wineglasses for the more expensive Daiginjo ($15-$30 for a 3-ounce pour).

Light to heavy

The meal continues to progress from lighter to heavier preparations. Next is what turns out to be the most intriguing dish of all - Copper River salmon with just a sprig of microgreens on top. I could have sworn there was a brush of maple syrup because it was so sweet, but we were simply tasting the natural essence of the fish. In just about every case, the fish is served at the perfect stage for sushi.

To finish, there's a choice: a slice of A5 Wagyu or toro - a lush, fatty piece of fish - on a pad of rice and topped with a small knob of wasabi.

That's the end of the tasting menu. From there, diners can order from 20 a la carte sushi or sashimi items or, if you have an appetite like mine, you might want to try the expertly prepared Santa Barbara sea urchin ($8.50 per piece), Hokkaido uni ($14) or barbecued white eel ($14). Then there's whiting cured with kombu and bonito flakes ($8.50), cherrywood-smoked bonito ($8.50) and five maki rolls, including one with braised Japanese squash ($7.50).
Desserts are also extra: mild green tea creme brulee ($6) and a refreshing yuzu and shiso ice ($4.50) topped with a green tea cookie in the shape of a K.

By the time you get to that point you feel as satisfied and refreshed as if you've had a relaxing massage and rest.
On my last visit, as I was paying the bill, the gracious waiter leaned over and whispered that if I let them know next time, they would do preparations differently from the printed menu. Finally I discovered what a true omakase menu might mean.

Kusakabe

Food: Rating: THREE AND A HALF STARS
Service: Rating: THREE STARS
Atmosphere: Rating: THREE STARS
Prices: $$$$
Noise rating: Noise Rating: ONE BELL
584 Washington St. (at Montgomery), San Francisco
(415) 757-0155. www.kusakabe-sf.com
Dinner Tuesday-Sunday, 5 p.m to last seating at 8:30 p.m. Beer, wine and sake. Reservations and credit cards accepted. Difficult street parking.

 

Michael Bauer is The San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic. Find his blog at http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com and his reviews on www.sfgate.com. E-mail: mbauer@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@michaelbauer1

RATINGS KEY

FOUR STARS = Extraordinary; THREE STARS = Excellent; TWO STARS = Good; ONE STAR = Fair; NO STARS = Poor

$ = Inexpensive: entrees $10 and under; $$ = Moderate: $11-$17; $$$ = Expensive: $18-$24; $$$$ = Very Expensive: more than $25

ONE BELL = Pleasantly quiet (less than 65 decibels); TWO BELLS = Can talk easily (65-70); THREE BELLS = Talking normally gets difficult (70-75); FOUR BELLS = Can talk only in raised voices (75-80); BOMB = Too noisy for normal conversation (80+)

Prices are based on main courses. When entrees fall between these categories, the prices of appetizers help determine the dollar ratings. Chronicle critics make every attempt to remain anonymous. All meals are paid for by The Chronicle. Star ratings are based on a minimum of three visits. Ratings are updated continually based on at least one revisit.

Reviewers: Michael Bauer (M.B.), Nicholas Boer (N.B.), Mandy Erickson (M.E.), Amanda Gold (A.G.), Janny Hu (J.H.), Allen Matthews (A.M.) and Carey Sweet (C.S.)

SF Chronicle: How I lost 11 pounds and still eat everything I want

When I meet people and they find out that I eat for a living, they want to know my secret and why I don’t weigh 300 pounds.

It’s not something I’ve thought about because I’ve never really had a weight problem, although, like many people, I’ve added a pound or so a year during the last decade

Last week, I went to the doctor for my annual check up and discovered I had lost 11 pounds which was more than 7 percent of my body weight. I knew I had lost several inches around the waist, but I wasn’t on a diet although I had made a few minor lifestyle changes.

My weight loss is a confluence of several factors, starting with good metabolism (thank you, Mom and Dad).

However in the past year I’ve upped my exercise routine from about 40 minutes on the treadmill to an hour, walking at about 4.4 miles an hour. About the same time I stopped my daily latte, cutting out the calories from the milk. It wasn’t because of weight, but more because I thought I might was becoming intolerant to  milk products. Still, in a year’s time those missing calories can add up to lost pounds.

Another secret weapon: Sheba who eats the leftovers and stares at me over the fence at Farmshop

One of the biggest factors is that I received a Jawbone Up, a wrist band designed to be worn 24-7 that records steps and sleep patterns. It can also record food intake, but for me that aspect is useless so I skip the daily food diary.
I’ve always been a walker, but wearing the band has brought activity front and center. I park down the block and walk to my front door; I take stairs instead of elevators, and if there’s a chance to walk or drive, I go for people power.

My eating patterns haven’t changed — I still order everything and eat as much as I want — though I  try to take home part of the protein for Sheba, who also maintains a svelte figure through exercise and her Brittney genes.

Another factor: As I increased my exercise I also began drinking coconut water, and my desk drawer is filled with cashews, almonds, peanuts and sunflower seeds. Does that mean I’m eating like a bird?

I skip breakfast, and if I’m not going out for a review I have a light lunch. If I get hungry in the afternoon I reach for a hand full of nuts. It feels like I’m actually eating more than I was before.

Article and Photos Sourced From:  http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2014/06/24/how-i-lost-11-pounds-and-still-eat-everything-i-wanted/

Age Old Cheese Making is Under Scrutiny!

Federal regulators are scrutinizing the use of wooden racks to age fine cheeses, questioning the cleanliness of an age-old practice used by many artisan cheesemakers in Sonoma County.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration seemed to back off its stance this week following a backlash from foodies and cheesemakers across the United States. Local cheesemakers said they plan no changes to their operations while the FDA examines the issue.

“At this point there doesn't seem to be any imminent change,” said Liam Callahan, owner and cheesemaker at Bellwether Farms near Petaluma.

Bellwether Farms owner and cheesemaker Liam Callahan
currently uses wooden boards to age the
artisan cheeses at his farm near Petaluma.
(CHRISTOPHER CHUNG/Press Democrat)

The FDA ignited a firestorm when it interpreted a decades-old regulation requiring that cheesemaking equipment be designed and constructed of material that is “adequately cleanable.” A letter written by a senior FDA manager made it appear that wood, which has been used for centuries to help age cheese, was no longer sanitary enough.
“Wooden shelves or boards cannot be adequately cleaned and sanitized,” said the letter by Monica Metz, the FDA's chief official responsible for food safety issues involving cheese.

“The porous structure of wood enables it to absorb and retain bacteria,” she wrote, adding that wood aging boards “could be a potential source of pathogenic microorganisms in the finished products.”
Callahan said that aging wheels of cheese on wood racks is critical to their craft. The wooden planks help to control moisture and provide an amenable surface for the microbes that add flavor and character to cheese. Switching to metal or plastic shelves would be costly and would change the taste of aged cheeses.
Cheese would “definitely come out differently” on stainless steel or plastic shelving, although the result is hard to predict, Callahan said.
Social media blew up in this week as cheesemakers from California to Vermont took to the Internet. The hashtag #saveourcheese surfaced on Twitter. Chefs and cheese lovers took to Facebook and blogs to rebut the notion that wood was harmful.
Cleanliness is critical to cheesemaking regardless of the material used for aging shelves, said Gabe Luddy, the fourth-generation cheesemaker at Vella Cheese Company in Sonoma.
“We've always prided ourselves on having a very clean plant,” he said.
The 82-year-old company's signature product, dry jack cheese, is aged on wood, a practice Luddy said is legal in Canada and Europe.
Callahan, whose 24-year-old company's product line includes three aged cheeses, said there is “conflicting evidence” on whether wood surfaces accommodate bacteria growth, but the same concern applies to plastic if the surface is roughened, for example by knife cuts, he said.
The cheese industry has “zero tolerance” for the presence of bacteria in its products, Callahan said.
In a statement issued Tuesday in response to the growing controversy, the FDA said it had adopted no new rule on the use of wooden shelves in cheesemaking, nor taken “any enforcement action based solely on the use of wooden shelves.”
The agency said it “will engage with the artisanal cheese-making community” to determine whether certain cheeses can be safely aged on wood.
The head of the 1,500-member American Cheese Society said the trade group will begin discussions on the matter with the FDA beginning next week.
“We feel that wood is safe and cleanable for aging cheeses,” said Nora Weiser, the organization's executive director.
In key cheesemaking states such as California, Wisconsin and Vermont, up to 75 percent of the cheesemaker members of the American Cheese Society use wood to age or ripen some of their products. Half the cheeses imported into the U.S. are aged on wood, the group said.
Artisan cheesemaking is a small industry in the North Bay with an ardent following. The Sonoma Marin Cheese Trail listing 29 cheesemakers in the two counties.
The controversy erupted Monday with numerous media reports that the FDA had adopted a ban on wood aging boards, citing the letter sent by Metz in January to the New York state Agriculture Department.
“FDA may destroy American artisan cheese industry,” a Forbes report said.
“It made for a great headline,” Luddy said. “The story kind of blew up.”
FDA spokeswoman Lauren Sucher said the letter was “correspondence between two regulators — not an agency announcement of new policy.”
The FDA's statement Tuesday said the agency was “always open to evidence that shows that wood can be safely used for specific processes, such as aging cheese.
Weiser, head of the cheesemakers' group, said companies can go about business as usual “if they are doing it properly.”
The local cheesemakers said they foresee no immediate rule change by the FDA, but the matter is not resolved.
“I'm not sure this has completely gone to rest,” Callahan said.
The New York Times contributed to this story.

Social media blew up in this week as cheesemakers from California to Vermont took to the Internet. The hashtag #saveourcheese surfaced on Twitter. Chefs and cheese lovers took to Facebook and blogs to rebut the notion that wood was harmful.
Cleanliness is critical to cheesemaking regardless of the material used for aging shelves, said Gabe Luddy, the fourth-generation cheesemaker at Vella Cheese Company in Sonoma.
“We've always prided ourselves on having a very clean plant,” he said.
The 82-year-old company's signature product, dry jack cheese, is aged on wood, a practice Luddy said is legal in Canada and Europe.
Callahan, whose 24-year-old company's product line includes three aged cheeses, said there is “conflicting evidence” on whether wood surfaces accommodate bacteria growth, but the same concern applies to plastic if the surface is roughened, for example by knife cuts, he said.
The cheese industry has “zero tolerance” for the presence of bacteria in its products, Callahan said.
In a statement issued Tuesday in response to the growing controversy, the FDA said it had adopted no new rule on the use of wooden shelves in cheesemaking, nor taken “any enforcement action based solely on the use of wooden shelves.”
The agency said it “will engage with the artisanal cheese-making community” to determine whether certain cheeses can be safely aged on wood.
The head of the 1,500-member American Cheese Society said the trade group will begin discussions on the matter with the FDA beginning next week.
“We feel that wood is safe and cleanable for aging cheeses,” said Nora Weiser, the organization's executive director.
In key cheesemaking states such as California, Wisconsin and Vermont, up to 75 percent of the cheesemaker members of the American Cheese Society use wood to age or ripen some of their products. Half the cheeses imported into the U.S. are aged on wood, the group said.

Artisan cheesemaking is a small industry in the North Bay with an ardent following. The Sonoma Marin Cheese Trail listing 29 cheesemakers in the two counties.
The controversy erupted Monday with numerous media reports that the FDA had adopted a ban on wood aging boards, citing the letter sent by Metz in January to the New York state Agriculture Department.
“FDA may destroy American artisan cheese industry,” a Forbes report said.
“It made for a great headline,” Luddy said. “The story kind of blew up.”
FDA spokeswoman Lauren Sucher said the letter was “correspondence between two regulators — not an agency announcement of new policy.”
The FDA's statement Tuesday said the agency was “always open to evidence that shows that wood can be safely used for specific processes, such as aging cheese.
Weiser, head of the cheesemakers' group, said companies can go about business as usual “if they are doing it properly.”
The local cheesemakers said they foresee no immediate rule change by the FDA, but the matter is not resolved.
“I'm not sure this has completely gone to rest,” Callahan said.
The New York Times contributed to this story.


Article and Photos Sourced From:  http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20140611/articles/140619902#page=3