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San Francisco Chronicle
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
The Bay Area's most notable 24-hour restaurant is also a casino
Each week, critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan shares some of her favorite recent bites, the dishes and snacks and baked goods that didn't find their way into a full review. Want the list a few days earlier? Sign up for her free newsletter, Bite Curious. What a delight Café Colma, located inside Lucky Chances Casino, is. Where else can you get an Irish coffee and fettuccine alfredo (the real, wonderfully psychotic order of one of my dining companions) alongside Mongolian beef and all-day breakfast? Where else can you chase an order of adobo chicken with a banana split and a 3 a.m. game of Pai Gow? No offense to that alfredo, but the Filipino dishes are the highlights here. The sinigang with pork ribs is particularly noteworthy, bracingly sour and fortifying. I finally made it to Bar Shoji, the nighttime incarnation of the café behind the matcha einspänner craze; I've been dying to go since Cesar put it on our Now List. Does chef Intu-on Kornnawong's halibut ceviche ever sing. It's the dish that features the most overt Thai flavors — Kornnawong was formerly the chef at Jo's Modern Thai in Oakland — and you'll smell the lemongrass before the dish even hits the table. There's plenty of spice, and the nori rice crackers provided for scooping add delicate crunch. Deep in the Richmond District, Butter Love Bakeshop is not the place to go if you're seeking the immaculately laminated and shellacked goodies you might see in the window of a Parisian patisserie. Its crumbles, pies and doughnuts are rustic, even a little visually rough around the edges, but the pastry is nonetheless terrific. Case in point, the mega buttery, flaky puff pastry swaddling a full-sized hot dog and shredded cheese. Sure the frank was a little well done on the ends where it poked out of its pastry casing, but I can't imagine a better hand-held snack to take to the park or the beach. Chase it with a slice of seasonal fruit crumble.
San Francisco Chronicle
02-08-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Some of S.F.'s most coveted handmade pasta comes from this one-woman operation
Each week, critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan shares some of her favorite recent bites, the dishes and snacks and baked goods that didn't find their way into a full review. Want the list a few days earlier? Sign up for her free newsletter, Bite Curious. I don't get to eat dinner at home too often, and when I do, I'm usually reaching for something low-lift to supplement leftovers. Now in rotation is frozen pasta from Sfoglia Club, the one-woman micro-batch pasta company from Tanaya Joshi. A product designer by day, she folds intricate filled pastas by night and sells them via Hotplate. The drop model will be familiar to any sneakerhead, and her batches of balanzoni and tortelli sell out quickly. I got my hands on a couple boxes of sachetti — Joshi's version kind of look like hamentaschen but with four sides instead of three — stuffed with ricotta, corn and chives. The filling is very delicate; I've been saucing the sachetti ($20 per box) with butter, Calabrian chile and Parmesan so as not to overpower it. I didn't intend for this week's installment to be What I've Been Eating, Corn Edition, but facts are facts: Restaurants are exulting in corn season, and I am happily along for the ride. At Lunette in the Ferry Building, chef Nite Yun stir-fries fresh kernels with coconut milk, chicken schmaltz, dried shrimp and scallions. Yun modestly told me that the wok does all the work — the corn takes on just a touch of char — to which I say, 'Yeah, right.' It's a glorious summer side dish that I can't wait to eat again. Lunette. Ferry Building, 1, Suite 33/47, San Francisco. Over in Emeryville, Good to Eat also has a seasonal sweet corn special. For $14, you get two half-ears of corn, skewered and grilled. The singed cobs are then lacquered with shacha, a Taiwanese barbecue sauce, and coated in sesame seeds. If 'barbecue sauce' conjures up memories of sticky-sweet Kansas City ribs or tangy, vinegary Carolina pulled pork, shacha is something else entirely — savory and briny thanks to dried shellfish.
San Francisco Chronicle
26-07-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
S.F.'s most famous pizza spot has opened a new location — with $10.50 slices
Each week, critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan shares some of her favorite recent bites, the dishes and snacks and baked goods that didn't find their way into a full review. Want the list a few days earlier? Sign up for her free newsletter, Bite Curious. I just so happened to be catching a flight out of SFO's Terminal 1 last week during the grand opening of the SF Eats food court. As I waited for my egg and cheese from Napa Farms Market, SFO communications employees circled with cameras and cell phones, capturing content. The most noteworthy business in the food court is an outpost of Tony's Pizza Napoletana, the perennially popular North Beach restaurant from champion pizzaiolo Tony Gemignani. Look, the slices are great — a real middle finger to airport Sbarros everywhere — but they are also $10.50. Airport prices will never not take my breath away. Japantown's newest coffee shop is located on the ground floor of the New People building on Post Street. Best Boy Electric was lively on a recent weekday afternoon, with groups of students perched on stools, sipping matcha lattes and talking about restaurants (sorry for eavesdropping, it's my job). I opted for the Okinawa brown sugar latte — not too sweet, despite the name — and a slice of pistachio-huckleberry coffee cake from Loquat Bakery. There are also mochi muffins from Third Culture Bakery and assorted pastries from The Midwife and the Baker. Earlier this week, Shuggie's announced that it's phasing out pizza, the backbone of its food-waste-fighting menu, to make room for more seasonal, creative dishes. If the new stone fruit and tomato salad ($17) is a harbinger of things to come, we're in luck. It's so vivid and juicy that you will not care that said stone fruit and tomatoes are blemished, rescued from the farmers market discard pile. You won't be able to see much of the apricots and tomatoes anyway, buried as they are under an avalanche of seasoned peanuts and slightly bruised herbs. It's a bright, Southeast Asian-leaning take on the summeriest of salads.
San Francisco Chronicle
25-07-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
The S.F. restaurant that divided our critics: Why its format is no gimmick — it's essential
Editor's note: Food critics MacKenzie Chung Fegan and Cesar Hernandez are facing off this week over one iconic restaurant: State Bird Provisions. This is Fegan's response to Hernandez's review yesterday. Remember dessert trays? I think of them fondly and often. 'Ladyfingers, coffee and mascarpone' meant nothing to me at age 7, but ogling layers of oozing sponge and cocoa powder dusted over swooshes of cream — yes, whatever that is, I'll please have that. Dessert trays were left in the '90s along with smoking sections and those click-clack carbon paper credit card machines. Dim sum carts, another vestige of my childhood, survived a while longer. But post-COVID, they too are on the verge of extinction. In San Francisco, I can think of only two restaurants that still have them: Yank Sing and State Bird Provisions. State Bird's concept was built around dim sum carts when it debuted 13 years ago, immediately winning over the food world. It remains an exceptional restaurant, landing on our Top 100 list this year alongside sister establishment The Progress. But in his review yesterday — which I'd encourage you to read first since this is, effectively, a rebuttal — my colleague Cesar Hernandez argued that those dim sum carts are now a liability for the Michelin-starred restaurant. I respectfully but vocally disagree. While I concede that State Bird Provisions' most memorable dishes are found on the main menu, it's the cart service that makes it one of the jolliest and most distinctive dining experiences in the Bay Area. Extra! Extra! Dueling reviews San Francisco Chronicle critics MacKenzie Chung Fegan and Cesar Hernandez are dueling this week over one restaurant: State Bird Provisions. Check out Hernandez's take on the famous restaurant here. 'The dim sum schtick,' Cesar wrote, 'feels more customary than essential, more cute than efficient, more showy than delicious.' To this I say, to hell with efficiency, I'll optimize when I'm dead. Menus are surely the most sensible way to assemble a meal, all your choices laid out in front of you at once in a neatly organized fashion. They're also boring, a list of nouns and, if you're lucky, a jejune adjective or two. Select your appetizer, entrée, a side if you're feeling zany. You'll get exactly what you've ordered, and I congratulate you on making responsible life choices. But what State Bird's dim sum cart offers me is felicity. If I had seen 'steamed egg tofu' ($9) on the menu, I likely would have passed. But when a server waved it before my eyes, a quivering butter yellow square glistening with crimson, sesame-flecked chile oil, topped with pickled mushrooms, I had to have it. Cesar cast State Bird's dim sum offerings as a 'roller coaster,' delivering thrilling highs and dismal lows. He's not wrong that there are weak links, and we are mostly in accord about which they are. The garlic bread with burrata ($13) is shockingly a dud — tough and not very garlicky at all — and an attractive wedge salad needed to work harder. However, I disagree with his assessment that an avocado dish 'failed to delight.' It delighted me, the accompanying tonnato sauce a reminder that punchy tuna salad-and-avo sandwiches need to be brought back into the lunch rotation. I also concur that some of the strongest dishes coming out of State Bird's kitchen can be found on the main menu, not on the carts or trays that servers ferry around the room like peanut vendors at a ballpark. Standouts from the 'pancakes and toast' section during my visits included the sourdough sauerkraut pancakes ($15), sprinkled with caraway seeds, and the brown butter morel roti ($32), earthy and richly spiced. Cesar's favorite large-format dishes, which State Bird calls 'commandables,' are mine as well. Do as he says and build your meal around the slippery hand-cut noodles ($30) and the tofu and bean donabe, a dish inspired by mapo tofu but entirely its own thing ($30). With all this kumbaya agreement, where do Cesar and I diverge? In his review, he writes, 'I was constantly in this conundrum of choice, where the implied ephemeral state of the dim sum compelled me to act fast or miss out like a loser.' It's rare, in a restaurant setting, that we are afforded the opportunity to commune with our hunger. In a previous era, I might have put in an order for appetizers while I considered the full menu, but now, my server will caution that the kitchen prefers to receive the entire order at once — tough but fair. Rarely do I not ask, 'Have I ordered enough? Too much?' Cesar's conundrum of choice, the pressure to smash or pass while a server waits for your table's decision, is because this is not how we are accustomed to eating. But what a gift to be pushed to know your desires, to see a pile of glossy cherries abutting a foamy pool of brie ($10) and ask yourself, 'Do I want that right now? Is this what I crave?' Dine with a small group and you'll find yourself enrolled in a crash-course in collective decision making. Three people may shrug and dither, but the fourth might catch the server as he turns to go: 'I do want that.' You could request a printed version of the dim sum menu and order as you would at a more conventional menu, as Cesar revealed in his review. But this is the path of control. It's uncomfortable not to know what's coming next. The person you're dating is great, but what if there's someone better on the apps? Those persimmons with black sesame and kinako dressing that you liked so much and are now circling back — should you get a second helping or save room for the unknown? Being present takes practice. I suggest you start at State Bird Provisions. Accessibility: All on one floor. Wheelchair accessible tables, although aisles are narrow. No outdoor seating. Noise level: Loud. Meal for two, without drinks: $75-$150 What to order: Donabe ($30), hand-cut noodles with salsa macha ($30), whichever dim sum dishes make your heart leap Drinks: Beer and wine. 'Exceptional house-made non-alchoholic drinks like shiso-yuzu soda ($9) and Raspberry Julius ($10),' Cesar writes, and he is correct. Best practices: Order a couple of standout dishes off the main menu and then live in the moment! Let the sliding doors of fate direct your meal! And once again I agree with Cesar: Peanut milk ($4) is non-negotiable.
San Francisco Chronicle
05-07-2025
- General
- San Francisco Chronicle
This tiny Bay Area town is a surprising spot to find delicious Hawaiian food
Subbing in for MacKenzie Chung Fegan this week is Cesar Hernandez, sharing his favorite recent bites, dishes, snacks and baked goods that don't make it into a full review. Want the list a few days earlier? Sign up for MacKenzie's free newsletter, Bite Curious. I was delighted by the laidback atmosphere of The Altamont General Store, a counter-service restaurant and market in Occidental, the secluded town in Sonoma County with a population of 1,000. The casual restaurant makes a credible sausage breakfast sandwich ($16.50), slicked with romesco, but the Hawaiian-inspired plate lunch ($21) stole the show. I went with shrimp, which was slightly crisp and doused in a spicy-sweet sauce. It was rounded out with toothsome rice, creamy mac, miso broccoli and piquant, tangy kimchi. I had one of the greatest fish soups I've ever tried at Mountain View's HalalStreet Xinjiang Cuisine, which specializes in Northern Chinese and Uyghur cuisine. The hulking sea bass in a green peppercorn broth ($58.98) arrives at the table bubbling with fury. While the fish was tender and flaky, I couldn't get enough of the pickled cabbage. The decadent broth is more numbing than spicy, but keep drinking and your sinuses will loosen. I recommend trying it with a group of friends. Or tackle it alone, if you're brave enough. 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., 5-9 p.m. Monday-Friday, 11:30 a.m.-4:30-9 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. 174 Castro St., Mountain View. or 650-386-5103 I had wonderful snacks on a recent visit to the Restaurante Latino Los Sazones de mi Tierra, a new Guatemalan restaurant in San Leandro. The restaurant excels at crunchy appetizers like tostadas topped with sliced beets, boiled eggs and a spiral of ketchup. The standout was the garnaches ($15), 10 cracker-sized tostadas adorned with ground beef, tomato sauce and pickled cabbage. I like to think of them as improved Lunchables. 10 a.m.-9 p.m. daily. 16496 E. 14th St., San Leandro. 510-626-6471
