Citizen's Band: Serious Mac

Can we talk about mac and cheese for a second?



At the number two spot on the 7x7's Big Eat, Citizen's Band is throwing it down with a crispy slab o' macaroni, ooey gooey cheese sauce, and a golden pile of onion rings on top. It's like the pinnacle of mac-and-cheese achievement. It's enough to make your heart stop (almost literally).



This upscale diner (whatever that means) is very hipster and buried in the nether regions of SoMa. They're also serving up burgers, poutine, and fried chicken, as well as the obligatory kale salad, if you're feeling repentant. But please don't repent. Just go big and go for the mac.

Stock Photos of Babies

So I have a new job! At a parenting website! Which is both really great and means that I spend a lot of time looking at stock photos of babies. (I've also learned a number of things about pregnancy that I think most people would rather never know, but let's not get into that.)

It turns out that people take really crazy photos of their families. I'd like to take a moment and present to you some of the more disturbing trends in lifestyle photography that I've become aware of. Let's go by order of life event, shall we?

Wreck the Dress

After you get married, you have yet another photo session that shows you destroying your expensive wedding gown. I don't get it. I think it's either a ploy by wedding photographers to keep the cash flow moving in the off season, or a compulsion by new brides who are suddenly faced with the fact that they're no longer the center of attention.

Birth Announcements

I don't know what about pregnancy inspires people to hold up signs and take photos of themselves. It's a boy! It's a girl! Look, my husband's holding the sign! Look, my toddler's holding the sign! Look, we spelled out the gender of the baby in face paint on my belly! There's the occasional giggle, but for the most part, please hold the cheese.

Naked Bumps

Maybe I just wasn't raised in that kind of family. When I was 10 years old and my mom was pregnant, she didn't waltz around topless with her other children draped on her. (She did teach me how to carry two full grocery bags up a set of stairs. For a third-grader, that's pretty good!)

Amy Close Photography

Cake Smash

Did you know that people dress their 1-year-old babies up in precious outfits and then prod them to shove cake in their faces? It's true. And it's alive and well on Pinterest.

Crab Apple Photography

Toddler Outfits

I hope you're all familiar with Quinoa's work on Pinterest. If you're not, prepare yourself to waste half an hour and then click here. I love. But the best part about it is that there are people who are sincerely dressing up their 2- to 4-year-old girls like Vogue pixies and encouraging them to stand on stumps while they find the right Instagram filter. If you have the time and can afford the inevitable therapy bills, I say go for it. I'm actually kind of enjoying this one.

My Imaginary Well-Dressed Toddler Daughter

Have you seen any photos lately that made you stop and think--wait, what?!!

The Challenge: Rich Table

You know what's really good? Like really, surprisingly good? 

Sardine chips.

What is a sardine chip? 

I'm so glad you asked. 

Last week, I asked my friend Mary Z if she wanted to go check out Rich Table. I was dimly aware that Rich Table was this new restaurant in Hayes that was getting stellar reviews. It came to my attention that they hit number one on the 7x7 list, for something called . . . sardine chips. 

Mary and I emailed back and forth about whether we should sit at the bar or wait a month to get a reservation for dinner. The more people we talked to, the more raves we heard, and then literally within the space of a day Rich Table got nominated for Bon Appetit's best new restaurants in the country. At that point, I think it's safe to say we were excited. We decided to go, STAT. 

We waited an hour and a half to sit at the bar. They're not messing around, guys. The good news is, you can eat at the bar. Which we did. We feasted in the way that only twenty-something credit-card-happy foodies can feast. It was magnificent.

I had some hypotheses going in about what a sardine chip might be. Perhaps it was an entire sardine, deep-fried like a French fry. Perhaps it was a potato chip, seasoned with minced or pulverized sardine (thinking anchovy, or dried shrimp?). But no, it was none of these things. It was so much more.

 

A sardine chip is a large slice of potato, slit twice in the center, with a sardine fillet (side of sardine?) jimmied through, and fried in entirety like a potato chip. If you're still not sure, let me say, I get it. Sardines are at the fishy end of the pool. But the Pacific Northwesterner in me loved the chewiness and that pronounced, briny flavor. It wasn't gross. Not even a little bit. It was awesome.

We also had some stellar "donuts" with porcini powder, octopus bolognese, pappardelle with dry aged beef, and buttermilk poached chicken. Oh, and cocktails. Seriously--book now. The waits are going to get worse before they get better.

The Challenge: Petit Pretzels for Garlic Lovers

Number 36 on 7x7's Big Eat hits a longtime San Francisco favorite: Absinthe in Hayes Valley. I hear dinner is delicious, but I've only experienced the bar. Which is lovely, with polished wood, tiled floors, and in general, everything you would hope and expect from a pre-ballet, symphony, or opera libation. It's unapologetically yuppie, but undeniably charming.

If you need a nibble with your Savoy cocktail or pink bubbly, our friends at 7x7 would like to call your attention to the garlic pretzels. Not knotted, but just chic little bites.

They were delicious. So chewy, but with a crisp foot, a crunch of coarse salt, and a heady dose of garlic butter. My friend and I agreed, we could have happily skipped our dinner reservation, and munched down on a whole basket of these. Almost. 

The Challenge: Meaty

Number 73 on the 7x7's Big Eat: the Boca from Deli Board.

I went with a coworker during our lunch hour in SoMa. As you might expect, the walk to Folsom and 7th is a bit savory. But let me assure you, so is the MEAT.

Specifically: Brisket, corned beef, and pastrami. All on the same sandwich. With a big pickle alongside. 

To quote the corgi who was dining one table over: woof!

Starbucks vs. La Boulange: Why I'm Upset

Almond Croissant, La Boulange

About 12 months ago, Starbucks broke the news that they were acquiring La Boulange. Cue collective groaning. I believe my exact words were, "UGH! Why?! The whole world is getting lamer!!"

I've been a devotee of La Boulange for some time. I've frequented it since we moved to San Francisco. There's a location three blocks from our apartment in Noe Valley. I go at least once a week. Usually immediately following Saturday morning spin class, whereupon I devour an almond croissant (one step forward, two steps back). I make dirty faces at small children who scream while I'm trying to read. I know the baristas. Basically, it's home.

So here's the thing about La Boulange: It's not perfect. Tartine it's not. It's not even particularly authentically French. (Chocolate chips in madeleines? If you say so.) But in the realm of things that are readily available that don't totally suck, I find them outstanding. There's a big difference between La Boulange and trending bakeries like Miette, Patisserie Philippe, and Craftsman and Wolves. Let's call a spade a spade: La Boulange is a chain. They're not small batch and precious and thoughtful. But they do manage to crank out fresh pastries to over a dozen locations around the Bay Area, and you know what? The croissants are actually good. You can find a La Boulange in most neighborhoods. Sometimes, it's great to have a known quantity. You can pop in and out, and five minutes and five dollars later, you'll have a decent coffee and a fresh croissant.

The Starbucks takeover signaled the beginning of the end. I feared that La Boulange would only get bigger and more corporate and more, well, like a chain. Over time, this fear has been confirmed. Slowly and steadily, Starbucks and La Boulange are mutually making each other worse.

La Boulange pastry display

Menu Changes: La Boulange

So the whole schtick with La Boulange is that it's French, right? They serve boulangerie-style breads like baguette and brioche, patisserie-style pastries like macarons and financiers, and bistro-style croques, soupes, and salades. Cafe au lait arrives in a bowl. When you get your sandwich, you can load up on cornichons, Nicoise olives, and Dijon mustard. There are some questionable departures (see above note on madeleines), but they have a theme and it works.

Following the merger, a "frittata egg sandwich" turned up on the menu. I take it that somebody brilliant at Starbucks decided that Americans like egg sandwiches to go. First of all, frittata is Italian. Second of all, France has an iconic egg dish: QUICHE. What's wrong with quiche? Why do we have to go making up faux sandwiches?

The day they mess with the cannelés de Bordeaux, they're dead to me.

Starbucks pastry display

Menu Changes: Starbucks

So I know that Starbucks has become this huge, omnipresent entity, but let's not forget that it actually is responsible for a fairly pivotal moment in food history. Starbucks introduced Americans to Italian-style espresso. For huge swaths of America that were drinking battery-acid drip coffee up until the late 90s, that was a big deal. For San Franciscans like myself who quibble the merits of one small-batch roaster over another (I'm pro Blue Bottle), we tend to forget that life used to be very, very different.

Today, Starbucks does not try to be Italian in the way that La Boulange strives to be cute and French. Perhaps it never did. But I still don't really get the logic of pairing espresso with French pastry. Not that I was super attached to the Starbucks food offerings. Everything in there looked like it had been made five days ago. In a pinch, I would grab a slice of pound cake, which is actually something that I would personally bake and eat five days later, because I know that it holds up well. I'll go so far as to say that I liked Starbucks pumpkin bread. It was moist and sweet and spiced. You just couldn't think too hard about how many preservatives were in there.

The pumpkin bread is gone. They have cleared out the cases and replaced them with La Boulange pastries which are mysteriously not at all like the pastries you actually buy at La Boulange. In fact, they're dreadful, and a La Boulange barista told me that her friend who is a Starbucks barista told her that those pastries sit in a freezer at Starbucks for three weeks. I arrest my case.

Enough with the Heating Things Up

Finally, WHAT is the obsession with heating things up? You can't escape this at either Starbucks or La Boulange now. In fact, I got into an argument with a Starbucks barista over a morning bun. He told me he was "supposed to heat everything up." I told him to hand it over. And I'm here to tell you, hot or cold, it was still the worst morning bun of my life. (This was before I learned about the three-weeks-in-the-freezer deal. That's the last Starbucks croissant I'll ever eat.)

Microwaving is not going to make a two-week old frozen pastry any younger. And microwaving is not going to do anything to improve upon a truly fresh croissant. An almond croissant still warm from the oven is a beautiful thing. But a chocolate croissant an hour or two later, cooled to room temperature, is still SO MUCH BETTER than the dilapidated pain au raisin I received from La Boulange this morning. Please don't fake "fresh." Please don't abuse delicious pastries that were actually fresh to begin with. Please just stop.

Chocolate-Hazelnut Croissant, La Boulange

Looking Forward

When the merger happened, I expected Starbucks to make La Boulange worse. The unexpected twist was that La Boulange made Starbucks worse. With time, is it possible that things will get better? Will they fire the idiot with the egg sandwich idea? Will they bring the pumpkin bread back? Only time will tell, but I'm afraid I'm not optimistic.

It goes back to one of the most annoying cruxes of bakeries, which I alluded to earlier with Tartine. When they're small, they're good. But then they get too good, and then they're not small anymore. And then they're not good anymore. It's like there are two extremes. At the one end, you have the bakeries who insist on being small. That leads to long wait times and situations where a Tartine hipster-barista is giving you a hard time for ordering a dozen morning buns ("We'll give them to, but we're not supposed to, but just today . . . "). And on the other end of the spectrum, you have La Boulange foisting egg sandwiches on people and recklessly heating things up. I mean, I ask you.

In the off chance this has come off as a bit of a rant, I'd like to conclude by reiterating that I really do love La Boulange. I love the chocolate-hazelnut croissants so very, very much. I wish it the best. And I will watch it's slow and steady downfall with a sigh and a heavy heart.

Gatsby & OkCupid

Don't you just love the title of this post? It's like a Lewis Carroll riddle! How is a raven like a writing desk? What do Gatsby and an internet-dating site have in common?

Read and learn.

About six months ago, Stephen and I went out to grab dinner. We sat down at a neighborhood Thai joint and started sipping iced tea. I think Stephen was talking about the upcoming Star Trek film. I logically chimed in with, "Ooh, did you see the announcement of the new Baz Luhrmann version of Great Gatsby?" To which Stephen responded:

"Wait, which one was The Great Gatsby? I don't think I liked that one."

This was followed by an hour of heated argument where I eloquently expressed the merits of F. Scott Fitzgerald and 20th century American literature, and Stephen said he thought Nick was kind of a lame narrator and he didn't understand why this was such a big deal. Slamming down a spring roll, I hurled:

"Sometimes I don't understand how we're dating!"

Hyperbole? Maybe. But I'm an English major, and we can get away with this sort of thing.

Apparently you can date a person for more than five years without realizing that they "didn't really like" one of your favorite novels. I own three copies of The Great Gatsby--the one I read in high school, with my sixteen-year-old's notes, the one I read in college, with my twenty-year-old's notes, and a third that just came to me. (Sometimes paperbacks just materialize out of the universe, right?) Also, I'd like to point out that we have a print of the cover of Gatsby hanging in our apartment. Writing this now, it occurs to me that Stephen probably has no idea what that is.

And therein the riddle lies: If I was on OkCupid, there is no way I would let this kind of thing slide.

Having dated someone for more than five years, I'm of course not on OkCupid. I'd like to take this opportunity to disclaim that I'm about to give an opinion on something I have zero firsthand experience with. But that said, a lot of my friends are on it, and I find it . . . fascinating. It's up there with Uber--yeah, okay, cool idea, but I'm still not going to try it.

I have one friend who met an actual boyfriend on OkCupid. I have another friend who met the guy in real life, but then they reconnected and started dating after finding each other through the site. I have a few friends who have been on some mediocre dates. And then, I have whole lot of friends who never go on any dates at all. I feel like they might do some messaging? I don't really know. I think they mostly just click around. But really, it's this part, the screening process, that interests me most.

I was at a party recently where some OkCupid-ers were rehashing an argument that they'd all had on a recent camping trip. Someone had admitted to screening potential dates by their ability with grammar (or lack thereof). Apparently everyone ganged up on the grammarian and he was deemed snobbish and elitist, and he spent a good part of the rest of the weekend sulking in the wilderness. I was shocked. "But of course you'd judge someone based on their ability to communicate!" I exclaimed.

"Well, you're an editor," one girl shrugged. "I feel like that's different."

What? But then again, it's not like my boyfriend writes gorgeous and on-point emails. Don't get me wrong, he's the cleverest kid I know, but writing is not his forte.

My friend Karen is one of my favorite OkCupid enigmas. First of all, she outrageously under-mentions her interest in internet cat videos. Then, she holds men to mythologically high standards. Karen, if you're reading this, I'm actually really glad you're on OkCupid. I find it highly amusing.

Dating someone the old-fashioned way, you inevitably discover that you have different interests. You learn from each other. You also get into admittedly stupid arguments over Thai food. But you experience new things that you wouldn't unless you had that person in your life.

It's also weird what you can have in common with someone, without even realizing it. Stephen and I were attracted to each other before we realized that we both came from large families, had black-and-white tuxedo cats growing up, sucked our thumbs to a borderline embarrassing age, are both the rarest Myers-Briggs personality type (INTP), love PG Wodehouse and hilariously idiotic narrators in general, and harbor a healthy skepticism for anyone who believes too blindly and whole-heartedly in anything (that includes God and political parties and sports teams). It's entirely possible that the selection of young men that OkCupid would sort for me might have as much in common. But I don't know. I kind of like to think that Stevie and I were MFEO.

My theory is that OkCupid is supposed to pre-match good contenders for you, but it inevitably fails, because people don't actually know what they want. Please note, that's not the same as the old adage, "never dating someone who's good for you," which is a variation on the theme of "she always chooses terrible men." I'm not going to get into the psychoanalysis of who's good for your mental and emotional well-being. All I'm arguing is that you don't actually know what you want. No one can anticipate the many ways that a partner who is different from you is going to enrich your life and make you happy.

So, as a non-expert bystander, I say go au naturel! Hook up with more guys at bars. Or better yet, try to choreograph some meet-cutes. That's a better idea. An Italian tourist tried to hit on me at the Academy of Sciences last week. If you're single and unemployed, that could be a great way to go!

Also, does anybody want to go see Gatsby next month? Because apparently I don't have a date.