Now the wheel has turned again, and 433 Precita is set to become… a natural pet food store!
The new place is called Jeffrey’s Natural Pet Food, and Bernalwood is told it will offer a mix of house-made and locally produced organic dog and cat cuisine, in all your favorite flavors. Like, for example, Canine Beef, Yams, and Broccoli…
Jeffrey’s Natural Pet Foods is the best source of raw, organic and all natural pet foods, treats, supplies and information in San Francisco. At Jeffrey’s, we make our own locally sourced, fresh, handmade pet foods and treats.
Jeffrey’s Fresh Meat Pet Foods are prepared five days a week, using fresh and locally sourced ingredients. Our food contains only the highest quality ingredients: raw, free range meats free from hormones and antibiotics, fresh organic vegetables, vitamins and minerals. Our food is a great choice for your dog or cat.
The Precita Park outpost will be Jeffrey’s third; the other two are in The Castro and North Beach.
If all goes according to plan, Jeffrey’s Natural Pet Foods will be open this weekend. No word on plans for weekend brunch service; or if they do wedding, bar mitzvah, or quinceañera catering; or if reservations are required for parties of more than six.
Meanwhile, if you listen carefully, you might just hear the sound of a certain change-averse Bernal neighbor‘s head imploding just a few blocks away: “Gourmet organic pet food? Whaaaaaaaaaat???!”
I remember the first time I encountered a bowl of ramen. The year was 1986, and I was sitting in a New England movie theater, watching the opening scene of Tampopo, the wonderful Japanese comedy about the sensual joy of food and the complex art of making an excellent bowl of ramen. This is what I saw:
The scene is a spoof, but it obviously pointed to something very serious, and I knew at that moment that I wanted real Japanese ramen to be part of my life. Even though I was in New England. Even though it was the 1980s, and sushi was still considered a novelty. Somehow, I wanted to have ready access to tasty ramen like the delicious-looking stuff I saw on that movie screen.
It took a few more years until I had the opportunity to actually eat a proper bowl of ramen, and I had to go to Japan to do it. But it was worth the wait. Good ramen is superlative soul food: Delicious, hearty, soothing, and so much more.
Yet Japan is far away, even when you live in San Francisco.
A decade ago, you had to drive waaaaay down to the South Bay to get a good bowl of ramen. More recently, San Francisco has enjoyed something of a ramen boom, as general awareness of the Joy of Ramen has slowly permeated our local food culture. For a while, Katana Ramen, downtown, was the only ramen gig in town. Then, a few more ramen places opened in the Richmond. Then, ramen came to the hipster zones of The Mission, north of 18th Street. Your Bernalwood editor tried most of it, and much of it was pretty good, so that in due course, my ramen cravings could be satisfied with only a short car trip across town. We even had a ramen pop-up for a brief while on Cortland, though it was only available one day a week, and it didn’t last for long.
Yet there has not been a place where I could well and truly live the ramen dream that has beguiled me for these many years: To be able to get a decent bowl of ramen, within convenient walking distance from my home, without too much fuss, pretty much whenever the mood hits me.
Until now.
Coco Ramen opened a few months ago at at 3319 Mission Street, in a former head shop next door to Crazy Sushi, near 29th. Your Bernalwood editor has eaten at Coco Ramen three or four times since then, and I’m here to tell you that it’s it’s a big win for Bernal Heights.
Let’s get the caveats out of the way: No, Coco’s Ramen isn’t the best ramen in San Francisco. Yes, it’s connected to Crazy Sushi, which means the owners and staff are all Chinese. No, they don’t really have much in the way of idiosyncratic regional styles or exotic gourmet ingredients.
None of this is really meant as a ding. San Francisco is currently flush with fancy-schmancy ramen, yet Coco Ramen is simply a very solid neighborhood ramen joint; equivalent to a something a Japanese commuter might be quite content to find near the local train station. Simple. Reliable. Convenient. Affordable. Spiritually rejuvenating.
Here’s a bowl of Coco Ramen’s tonkatsu broth:
The broth is rich, fragrant, and flavorful, which is the most important thing. The noodles are springy and properly cooked. The smoked egg is excellent. The chashu roast pork slices are a weak link, but not terrible. Overall, pretty good!
I’m not a ramen snob but do frequent the good spots like dojo, parlor, santoukas, and orenchi. That said the ramen here is pretty good. They aren’t that fancy but do offer no/regular/black garlic options and have a good assortment of toppings. Their soft boiled egg is great! The braised pork belly is awesome too. One qualm I have is that, seeing as the owners are Chinese, there are clearly some Chinese rather than Japanese flavors, especially in the braised pork belly. It tastes like a traditional Chinese clay pot pork belly (which I love) but seemed a bit of a misfit in the ramen.
The chicken karaage likewise had a Chinese popcorn chicken taste to it.
Price was fine at $11.50 a bowl average.
Overall: 3.5 stars. Rounding down for the odd tastes, but still very delicious!
Boom. Exactly. The ramen at Coco does not disappoint, but the results from the other dishes on the menu can be uneven. The gyoza is quite good. The yakitori not so much. Grilled shishito peppers are meh.
But who cares! The point is, I can now walk out of my front door, and 10 minutes later find myself sitting in a perfectly cozy little ramen joint, ordering a perfectly respectable bowl of ramen, with no driving or airfare required, for lunch or dinner (any day but Tuesdays).
It took three decades for all these pieces to fall into place for me.
But now Coco Ramen is here in Bernal Heights, and my humble dream is fulfilled. Good ramen. In my neighborhood. Pretty much whenever I want.
Has it been two years already? Because it seems like just yesterday that the Hillside Supper Club crew was wandering around the Mission District in pop-up mode, dreaming of one day opening up a restaurant of their very own in Bernal Heights.
So on Monday, January 19, Hillside Supper Club is celebrating its second anniversary, and Chef Tony Ferrari writes to say he hopes you’ll drop by after 9:30 to celebrate:
Want to shoot over some details about our second anniversary dinner/party. We’re having a special reservation-only dinner earlier in the evening — but its already sold out.
After dinner is over (I’m guessing around 9-930ish) we will open up to the public and welcome everyone to celebrate the rest of the night with complementary sparking wine, five dollar draft beers, and seven dollar glasses of wine.
We again want to thank all of our friends, family, neighbors, guests, bernal heights, and industry folk for supporting us and allowing us to do what we love most: feeding people. We have come a long way and don’t plan on stopping any time soon. We are honored and grateful to be apart of it all.
We look forward to celebrating with everyone!
PS: Our limited poster was screen printed by hand with Jon Fischer, and we will be giving them out during the night.
Your Bernalwood editor is no The Michael Bauer, but I did dine at Hillside Supper Club on Friday night, and I did order the very same venison pot pie described below. So I can indeed confirm: It is extremely delicious:
There’s a new food fetish that’s attracting attention on the social media Interwebs, and it is deeply infused with Bernal Heights DNA. The Huffington Post captured the buzz:
The mention of a Thanksgiving turducken — you know, the turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken — will get mixed responses. Generally, avid carnivores are all for it; vegetarians are rightfully disgusted. But we’ve recently come across another type of turducken that we think everyone will be on board with: a donut turducken.
There’s no poultry of any kind to be found in this donut creation. The name was bestowed upon this breakfast pastry because it uses the same philosophy of the more traditional turducken: stuffing delicious things into already delicious things. It was made in the test kitchen of CHOW and we can’t stop thinking about it.
Consider how great chocolate frosted donuts are. Then top that with sprinkles and fill it with custard. The donut turducken takes this already truly stellar donut and stuffs it with an entire fried apple fritter. Amazing, we know.
Last week at CHOW, Kim Laidlaw was testing donut recipes […] As she was finishing up, she did something monstrous: She wrapped an apple fritter in a custard-filled donut, then glazed it with chocolate and paved it with sprinkles as subversively menacing as clownface. We spent—oh—10 minutes trying to think of a name monumental enough to describe a thing so weighted with desires of the id. Nothing seemed as right as referencing that other fantasy of conflated wants, the turducken. Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to the turducken of donuts, a cream-filled, double-fried, chocolate-glazed vector of desire.
It’s insane! It’s creative! It looks delicious! Those are all things we associate with Bernal Heights, so it should come as no surprise that the diabolical inventor of the turducken of donuts is Bernal recipe guru and author Kim Laidlaw, who lives on the south side of Folsom near the Alemany Farmer’s Market.
And someday, when you see long lines of skinny-jeaned hipsters queuing in long lines to sample the Turducken of Donuts, you will know that it was born of Bernal Heights.
PHOTOS: Turducken of Donuts by Chow. Kim Laidlaw and daughter via Kim Laidlaw
This Sunday, December 21, local chef Risa Lichtman is reprising her tasty pop-up brunch extravaganza inside the PizzaHacker on Mission Street. Chef Risa says:
I’m excited to bring Cry Baby’s Brunch Pop-Up back to Bernal! Our first installment was a great success, with delicious food, lovely people, and a packed house in our host shop, the PizzaHacker. Come join us again for another seasonal brunch featuring local produce & breads. Bring your friends & family, or come on your own..you won’t regret it either way!
Some favorite menu items include:
Lonely Mountain Egg Sandwich (add crispy prosciutto) – with a fried farm egg, arugula, fresh chevre, calabrian chili aioli, Arizmendi english muffin. side of greens.
Polenta Breakfast Bowl – with a poached farm egg, cheesy polenta, varietal winter squash, dino kale, and salsa verde.
The Cure – a pizza braid filled with fluffy farm eggs, pecorino, prosciutto, sweet ‘n sour chili sauce and a side of greens.
Cry Baby’s Brunch Pop-Up
Sunday, December 21, 2014 from 10:30am – 2pm
at PizzaHacker, 3299 Mission St (at 29th Street)
*Cash only!
Neighbor Andrea Cohen from Andi’s Market at 820 Cortland tells Bernalwood she’s added fresh deli sandwiches to her store’s repertoire — as well as a secure way to receive package deliveries:
When I was first considering taking over the old JC Market, one of the comments I heard over and over from Bernalites was that Cortland Avenue had no traditional sandwich deli—a place when you could get in and out with a fat sandwich, potato or macaroni salad or chips and a drink for $10 (or under). So now we’re doing that, and it’s <finally!> up and running.
We’re hand-slicing the basics: pastrami, roast beef, ham, turkey, salami, chicken breast, tuna salad and putting it on fresh Dutch crunch and sweet French rolls or wheat or sourdough bread. We also have gluten free bread for those who need it. We found an awesome old panini maker in the back of the store, had it refurbished, and can grill sandwiches as well. Green salads are fresh and simple—they can be ordered with or without deli meat.
Right now the deli is staffed at lunch (from 10am to 2pm), but if you want to pick up a sandwich later in the day, you can call it in between ten and two and we’ll have it ready. We also have a handful of “grab and go”. The macaroni and potato salads are great. We’ve priced everything sanely—and we’re using Columbus meat and high quality cheeses.
Also, separately, wanted to mention that we now have a Swapbox automated kiosk at the store — it’s a physical location for packages to be picked up and delivered. The box is at the store year-round, but is extra handy around the holidays for those not home to sign for packages. It’s a great way to avoid having packages stolen, and it’s easy to set up online.
Kugel (קוגל kugl, pronounced IPA: [ˈkʊɡl̩]) is a baked pudding or casserole, similar to a pie, most commonly made from egg noodles (Lokshen kugel) or potato. It is a traditional Ashkenazi Jewish dish.
Kugel is basically a sweet noodle dish, but what the Wikipedia fails to mention is that many contemporary Jews don’t really like kugel all that much… because it’s a sweet noodle dish.
Enter Bernal neighbor Julia Weber from Joy Street. Neighbor Julia is on a mission to redeem kugel for the 21st century. Neighbor Julia’s kugel with apricot nectar (recipe right here) — which comes from a recipe created by Rachel Breuer in the Excelsior — was recently discovered by the foodie scouts from The Food Network magazine, which also gave her contributions to the kugel arts a special shout out in the December 2014 issue:
Kugel seems to be the underdog of Hanukkah staples: Everyone talks about latkes and jelly doughnuts this time of year, but few people seem to give the traditional noodle casserole a second thought, until the Kugel Nosh Down came along. Friends Rebecca Weiner and Julia Weber dreamed up the cook-off two years ago, and they have launched a full-on kugel craze in San Francisco.
Want a taste? Neighbor Julia invites you to the 2014 Kugel Nosh Down this weekend to benefit the religious school at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav. Get your tickets here:
2nd Annual Kugel Nosh Down – Sunday, December 14, 3:00 – 5:00 p.m
Join us for an afternoon of kugel sampling and fun! Competitors will show off their skills with savory and sweet kugel samples. Prizes will be awarded! Help us choose the most delicious kugel and join family and friends while raising money for Beit Sefer Phyllis Mintzer, our fabulous Shabbat and Hebrew school for kids K-8!
Here’s the plan for the afternoon
3:00 p.m. Tasting begins with kugel, drinks, additional fabulous snacks, and more (entertaining surprises await!)
4:15 p.m. Voting concludes
4:45 p.m. Prizes awarded
5:00 p.m. More kugel tasting and event wrap up
Want to enter your delicioius kugel? Questions?Contact us at kugelnoshdown@gmail.com
Adults: $25 in advance; $30 at the door. Kids under 12, $5.00
Please note: $12.50 of each adult ticket may be tax-deductible.
Location:
Congregation Sha’ar Zahav
290 Dolores (at 16th Street)
San Francisco, CA 94103
As you know, Red Hill Station is the wonderful new(ish) seafood restaurant on Cortland opened by Bernal neighbors Taylor Pederson and Amy Reticker. It’s delicious. Also, it’s now open for both lunch and dinner. And food critics are starting to take notice. Zagat loves it, but Anna Roth, a critic with SF Weekly, published an odd review last week. The biggest problem with Red Hill Station, Roth says, is that it is too friendly.
To be sure, Roth really enjoyed her seafood:
There are a lot of highlights on the seafood-heavy menu. Red Hill served one of the best sandwiches I’ve had in recent memory, stuffed with albacore that had been slow-poached in olive oil and studded with capers and lemon juice. The oily tuna, bolstered with garlic aioli, melted into its buttered, toasted Acme roll, its juices dripping onto the plate and coating my fingers with every bite. I couldn’t stop eating it, even as I complained about how full I was. I had similarly strong feelings about the bay shrimp that accompanied the Caesar salad. Heavy on lime juice and tossed with toasted garlic and bread crumbs, the tiny, flavorful shrimp wouldn’t have been out of place at a Vietnamese restaurant.
Roth felt the vegetables at Red Hill could use some more love, but her main gripe had nothing to do with the food:
The most objectionable thing about the restaurant was the service, which was so aggressively friendly that it strayed into intrusive. Waiters inserted themselves into and hijacked conversations more than once, grinding them to a halt. It seemed to be a misplaced use of the friendly, small-town attitude of Bernal Heights, and the spot has already become a gathering point for the close-knit neighborhood. The restaurant was full on both visits, and the servers greeted many of the patrons by name. But all this extroversion can also be off-putting to outsiders, especially when dishes hover around $20 a plate.
Wait… what? This complaint is as sad as it is laughable. It’s like going to New York and whining that the dining scene there is “aggressively competitive,” or visiting Tokyo and grumbling that the service was “aggressively formal.” To whine about such things is to deny the essence of the place; the thing that makes the dining experience genuinely local. Of course, its fine to want something less local — McDonald’s created a very large business by assiduously stripping out all the local from the food, after all — but to complain about a chatty neighborly vibe in Bernal Heights is to miss the point of the exercise entirely.
Sure, to someone from off-hill, many of our local establishments may feel a little bit like stepping into an episode of Portlandia. But that’s precisely why we call Bernal’s main street Cortlandia, after all. It’s funny because it’s true.
Team Red Hill Station should wear this ridiculous criticism as a badge of honor. The food at Red Hill is exceptional, and the atmosphere inside is comfortable and relaxed. The data suggests this formula is working brilliantly for a great many happy, paying customers. If aggressive friendliness is to be the ding against Red Hill Station — and against the very thing that makes Bernal Heights so Bernal — then its safe to say we’re all doing something right.
There’s a new weekend-only brunch pop-up coming to the space at 903 Cortland. The pop-up is called āina, and like the name, the food will be Hawaiian. The restaurant will open up to the public this Saturday, November 22, with plans to serve brunch every weekend, Saturday and Sunday, 9 am-2 pm.
Team āina tells Bernalwood:
We are excited to provide a new brunch option for the Bernal Heights neighborhood at our new pop-up, called ‘āina (903 Cortland Avenue, CA 94110). ‘āina is from the Hawaiian language, and means land/earth. Jordan Keao, the chef, lives smack in Bernal; Jason Alonzo runs the front of the house, and he lives just down the hill.
Our idea is to incorporate all our past experiences and finally work for ourselves, allowing great creativity and responsible food sourcing. Everything we serve will be from the land or transformed from what the land has given to us. The food will have an Asian or Hawaiian influence with a breath of the classic breakfast dishes. We will cook with the seasons, using local ingredients from the bay area, as well as local ingredients from the chef’s home, the Big Island of Hawai’i. Our Facebook page has more information and a sample of our menu.
Mahalo,
From Jordan (the chef) and Jason (front of house).
Here’s a sample menu:
PHOTO: Poached egg, smoked royal king trumpet mushrooms, kabocha squash puree, wild watercress with some Chinese sausage Lap Cheong on top, from āina via Facebook
Neighbor Ian lives near Precita Park, and he’s spreading the word about a few new CSAs* that offer boxloads o’ fresh fruit to the Citizens of Bernalwood:
We still need a few more folks to sign up for the Frog Hollow Farm fruit CSA to get it off the ground. We had a great showing at our fruit tasting last weekend, and many neighbors got to sample the delicious Frog Hollow fruit, jams, chutney, olive oil, and sign up for box delivery.
Once we get a full roster, Frog Hollow will notify everyone on the waitlist and start deliveries. There is a lot of info on the Frog Hollow website about the CSA, the fruit, the size of boxes and the cost.
Need vegetables too? Our house also hosts a veggie box CSA for Full Belly Farms that people can sign up for as well. Sign up for either or both here:
There’s been lots of transformation on Mission Street in Bernal Heights, along the northern reaches of the La Lengua Autonomous Zone.
Anchoring the party, El Rio has (blessedly) been there since more or less forever, of course. More recently, the arrival of Blue Plate, Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack, Baby Blues BBQ, Iron and Gold, The Royal Cuckoo, Virgil’s, ICHI Sushi+Ni Bar, the Pizza Hacker, and a few other 21st century foodie/drinkie institutions have steadily transformed the northern half of Bernal’s stretch of Mission into a destination for folks from all over our City.
Yet so far, this transformation has not extended south beyond 30th Street and our Taoist Safeway. By the time you reach the (Bernalistically symbolic) intersection of Cortland and Mission, for example, you’ll notice that the urban fabric today remains pretty much as it has been since the 1980s. Pretty much.
Now, however, comes news that evolution is coming to our southern part of Mission Street. InsideScoop broke the story yesterday, revealing that at 3472 Mission Street, a new bar/restaurant called Old Devil Moon will soon replace La Terraza.
Google recently captured La Terraza for posterity, in first-rate form, looking awesome and adrift in time:
Old Devil Moon is in the works at 3472 Mission Street, the location probably best known as La Terraza, which has been owned and operated by brothers Pedro and Isidro Navarette for the last 20 years. La Terraza will remain open for about three to four more months, until the liquor license transfers.
Old Devil Moon will be a craft beer bar, albeit one with a full liquor license and menu of Southern food. The folks behind it are a trio of beer nerds: Chris Cohen (founder-president of the SF Homebrewers Guild), Andrew Kelley and Will Marshall.
That’s Chris, Andrew, and Will in the photo up top (though not necessarily in that order).
At first blush, this probably looks like yet another in a contemporary series of awkward local tales about Old-Timers vs. New People. Gentrification! Hipsters! “Erosion of our San Francisco culture!”
Alas, this isn’t really one of those kinds of stories. Instead, it’s is a tale of neighborly evolution and passing-of-the-torch. Old Devil Moon’s Chris Cohen told Bernalwood how the change of ownership went down:
Pedro was my next door neighbor on Tiffany Ave for 5+ years, and I knew he owned la Terraza from talking over the fence over the years.
One day when we were both taking the trash out at the same time I asked him if he knew any bar owners who may want to sell (I’d been looking for a space for months). He said, “I’ve actually been thinking about retiring for a couple years, I’d love to sell you my place.” It took another few months to get the deal done and we finally just posted the ABC notice of license transfer in their window today. Everyone did well and is happy with the results of the deal.
It’s essentially similar to what happened with Emmy’s taking over El Zocalo, and the Nap’s/Virgil’s story. Nap was ready to quit the business, and his bar wasn’t doing as well as it used to because the neighborhood had changed around the business. The process and reason for the changes at our La Terraza location are similar.
Pedro and his brother Isidro have owned La Terraza for about 20 years and are ready to retire. They were happy to sell to a neighbor.
Now Emmy has passed word to Bernalwood that Old Emmy’s closes tonight, and New Emmy’s opens this weekend:
Want to let our Bernal neighbors know that Tuesday night will be our last at 18 Virginia St.
We are hoping to open to the public either Friday or Saturday night at our new location, 3230 Mission Street.
We hope to be accepting reservations through our Facebook page as soon as Friday morning and presenting a happy hour and late night menu in a week or two.
Hope to see some regulars and neighbors over there soon!
PHOTO: Emmy Kaplan with actual spaghetti, via Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack
Neighbor Stacie from Little Bee Baking on Cortland tells us she has just a few spaces remaining in her new baking class that gets underway this Sunday, November 9. This is your big chance to learn the ancient secrets of pie dough:
I’ll be starting to teach baking classes at Little Bee in November.
This has been an idea I’ve had since starting the shop – I love teaching and creating a fun and relaxed environment where people aren’t afraid to try baking.
My first class will be about making traditional pie dough and I hope to teach a new class each month or so. I encourage people of all levels to join in. All ingredients and equipment are included. Students will get to take home their doughs at the end of class, and we will enjoy fresh baked pie with coffee or tea at the end over a relaxed Q & A session.
Look for details on cost, timing, and sign-up logistics in the poster below.
In a follow up email earlier today, Stacie said:
I have a four spots left for the first class this Sunday. If there’s a lot of interest, I am able to add a second class if necessary the following Sunday, 11/16 from 6-9. I’m also planning a class for December as well on 12/14.
PHOTO: Top, Stacie Pierce from Little Bee Baking, by Telstar Logistics
Bernalwood 
