Christopher Elbow chocolates

A few months ago, a new chocolate shop opened in Hayes Valley. Christopher Elbow chocolates is based in Kansas City, not a place that immediately springs to mind when the Great American Chocolate Renaissance is discussed. I had bought some of their products from Cocoa Bella, however, and knew they were good, if pricey.

They sell moderately expensive chocolate bars (the No. 10 41% milk chocolate with hazelnuts is pretty good), drinking chocolate, and bouchéees. The latter are a little too bleeding edge for my taste (spices do not belong in chocolate), but the Bourbon Pecan is to die for, a light and moist, pecan marzipan, almost creamy despite the deliberately roughly chopped texture, and topped with ganache. Not surprisingly, it is usually sold out at the other outlets..

The real draw, as far as I am concerned, is the hot chocolate. Dark, rich, creamy and thick, specially if you ask them to blend it with genuine praline, it is absolutely delicious. You can enjoy it in the twee little salon in the corner of the store before a concert at the nearby Symphony, or shopping in Hayes valley. If you are in the neighborhood, try also Miette Confiserie.

22:32 - permalink [Food, San Francisco]

A San Francisco local's advice to Macworld attendees

I have been living and working in downtown San Francisco for almost eight years now. Until a month ago, my office window (right) used to overlook Third Street and the Moscone center. San Francisco is a popular convention destination (one wonders why proctologists seem to prefer it to, say, Detroit) but Macworld Expo is definitely the biggest show in town. Restaurants and hotels are taken by storm, taxis become scarce, traffic gets even snarlier and the lines at Metron eateries cross the threshold of ludicrousness. So here are a few tips for Macworld attendees to have a better time and not caught in tourist traps.

Transportation

Driving in San Francisco is a non-starter. Traffic is horrendous, parking is scarce and you would lose far too much time just getting around. SF Muni is a pretty good public transport system (at least by admittedly paltry US standards) and their 1, 3 or 7 day Passport passes are good value.

Cars are mostly useless inside the city, but nice if you want to drive to make a Fry's run or a day trip to Marin across the Golden Gate. If you must drive, the friendly folks at Reliable Rent-a-Car will give you decent rates on Toyotas. Until I bought a car last month, they were my go-to place for when I needed a car.

Lunch

San Francisco has the best food in the United States, but you wouldn't know if from the overpriced eateries in a three block radius. The Firewood Cafe and Buckhorn Grill in the Metron are actually reasonably decent, but the throngs of convention-goers mean long lines. Mo's Grille has excellent burgers (I recommend the aptly named "Belly Buster"), and since access to it is a little tortuous, you have a fighting chance (it is literally just above the Moscone South).

Ranging a little further, Nova has decent burgers and a lovely lobster quesadilla, and the new Westfield Mall three blocks to the west has a decent food court. Some good local chains are Bistro Burger, S.F. Soup Co. or Café Madeleine (official birthday cake purveyor to Kefta).

That said, the best lunch experience is to take the historic F line streetcar to the Ferry Building Marketplace with its wide variety of gourmet food stores and eateries. I heartily recommend the clam chowder at Ferry Plaza Seafood (it used to be my Friday lunch of choice) or the eclectic fare at Boulette's Larder. Chocolates from Michael Recchiuti or fresh-pressed olive oil from Stonehouse make for great (and edible) souvenirs.

Staying hydrated is important when you expect to spend an entire day on the show floor. There is a Whole Foods store a mere block away where you can buy any required provisions.

Dining

Dining in San Francisco is an embarrassment of riches, it would be a shame to settle for overpriced hotel food. A word to the wise: most of the better places are hooked into the OpenTable reservation system which makes finding a good place with availability a much less hit-and-miss affair. This year Macworld coincides with the annual Dine About Town event where participating restaurants will offer specially discounted menus.

Equipment

Murphy's law will strike at the worst possible moment. If you need help with your Mac, the geniuses at the San Francisco Apple Store (or the smaller Chestnu St or Stonestown locations) can help. It's also good to keep in mind the Apple stores all offer free WiFi connectivity.

If you need commodity spare parts like a USB hub in a hurry, Central Computers is a mere block away and carries a wide assortment, albeit PC-centric.

If you are an attendee and have questions I have not answered, please feel free to email me, my contact info is at the right.

18:38 - permalink [Macintosh, San Francisco]

MacWorld SF 2007 round-up

One of the perks of living in San Francisco is easy access to MacWorld Expo. I can literally see the Moscone center a mere two blocks from my new office window. This year's show spanned both North and South halls, but in some ways was a let-down compared to the last two.

Of course, all the buzz was about the iPhone. The amazing thing is not that Apple should make one, but rather that not a single cell phone manufacturer has a clue about design and ergonomics. Nokia used to, but they have backslid badly with their sluggish and over-complex Series 60 allegedly smart phones.

The prototypes were securely held under glass bells, presumably to preserve them from the salivating legions of the Mac faithful. From the demos, it looks pretty snappy compared to the incredibly sluggish Symbian or Windows Mobile equivalents, but I have serious doubts as to whether even Apple can make on-screen virtual keyboards work.

The other marquee product is the Apple TV, essentially a severely anorexic Mac mini without an optical drive or separate power brick, and running an unspecified embedded OS with the Front Row user interface. Pity it is limited to 720p (the 1080i support is interpolated). At a time when CompUSA sells a top of the line 42 inch Sharp Aquos 1080p LCD flat panel for under $2000, the lack of 1080p support is puzzling.

I haven't seen that much innovation among the third party vendor stands either. Here is what I did find at least somewhat noteworthy:

• Fujitsu came out with a new model of its ScanSnap document scanner line, the S500M, the only document scanner with official Mac OS X support. They claim the new model is slightly faster, and has a much improved paper feed. Indeed, the 5110EOX2 I have is annoyingly prone to double-feeding. The new model is also bundled with ReadIRIS Pro and Acrobat 7 Standard, a pretty good bundle all in all since those two programs together retail for nearly the same price as the scanner.
• Speaking of PDF, viewing the PDFpen demo makes me regret even more shelling for that piece of bloatware that is Acrobat. Simple, inexpensive software to manage and edit your PDFs. They have a show special, 20% off if you follow the link www.smileonmymac.com/macworld.
• Invisible Shield was demonstrating its self-healing protective plastic film for various gizmos by shaking an iPod mini in a box filled with screws and bolts, and showing how it survived unscathed. They also make protective films for digital camera LCDs, this looks like an interesting option since DSLR LCDs are very easily scratched.
• A number of stands were using the Logitech 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator controller. Ovolab (makers of the excellent Phlink answering machine peripheral, were demoing a photo geocoding application Geophoto, with lightning-fast Google Earth style navigation (oddly enough, the Google stand did not use this nifty human interface device). The controller has six degrees of freedom and is remarkable easy to pick up.
• Logitech has a fairly subdued stand. There were no real demonstrations of their NuLOOQ controller for Photoshop users, nor of their newly acquired SlimDevices Transporter, or Harmony programmable remotes. The emphasis was on their laser mice. SlimDevices was a popular draw at previous MacWorlds, I am not sure whether Logitech has gotten a grip on how to market that product line yet.
• Infrant had a small stand with a ReadyNAS NV+. I had never seen this NAS before, it is much smaller, quieter and more solidly built than I expected. The rep at the counter was a new recruit and not all that knowledgeable about the product (I asked whether they expect to support iSCSI soon, which would make it a killer expansion option for my Solaris 10 home server with ZFS). Infrant has a partnership with SlimDevices, and the bundle of a Squeezebox with a ReadyNAS is one of the most attractive networked digital music options available, far superior to the flashy but ultimately unsatisfying Sonos.
• Matias was demonstrating a prototype of their new TactilePro 2.0 keyboard. They now make their mechanical keyswitches by themselves instead of buying them from Alps (as with the version 1.0 Tactilepro I am using to type this blog entry). I like the original version so much I bought a spare when Alps announced it was discontinuing the keyswitches. The feel of the 2.0 is slightly different from the old one, but it still has that honest-to-goodness clickety-clack feel, albeit with a more subdued sound. The other differences involve upgrading the built-in hub to USB 2.0 and adding the Optimizer feature, which turns the useless Caps Lock key into a shortcut key instead. I remap the Caps Lock key to Control anyways on Macs, Windows and Solaris, so this last feature is of dubious interest to me.
• Intelliscanner was selling rebadged Symbol CS1504 scanners for $250. Save your money, buy the OEM Symbol version for under $100 and use my free Python driver instead.
• Canon was out in force, as was HP. Nikon and Epson had smaller stands this year. I got to handle the excellent new Canon HV10 HD camcorder, the new 70-200mm f/4L IS lens (a version of the excellent 70-200mm f/4L lens I already own, with gyroscopic optical Image Stabilization added), and the upcoming new Pixma Pro 9500 pigment ink printer that should compete with the Epson R2400 and the HP B9810.

22:41 - permalink [Macintosh, San Francisco]

Copper is the new Titanium

For some time now, titanium has been the material to convey technological edginess. In the hierarchy of credit cards, it apparently trumps silver, gold and even platinum. The metal is used to make fashion statements in products as varied as the original Apple PowerBook, fancy (but dull) knives, high-end watches or cameras like the $20,000 fiftieth anniversary commemorative Leica M7. As an eminently biocompatible material, titanium is also used in implants. I am not entirely immune to the lure of the material, as I recently purchased the iconic titanium spork for travel use.

Titanium has also become the material of choice for extravagant architectural projects, Frank Gehry's abuse of the stuff in projects like the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao being only the most egregious example. Reportedly Gehry himself tires of the metal, but the tasteless committees that drive much of public architecture worldwide clamor for it, so he is trapped in the style just as surely as less famous architects are trapped in various forms of academism.

That said, there may be a backlash against titanium, and copper may be taking over as the new metal of choice in projects like the new De Young museum in San Francisco. I have also seen it used as a decorative element in a number of new residential buildings in my neighborhood in San Francisco (the picture to the left is from a building on California and Polk). Copper is of course the most beautiful of metals, with a rich hue reminiscent of sunset, and it gets even better with age as it gains its characteristic light green patina.

You read it here first...

23:47 - permalink [San Francisco]

Another one bites the dust

After a brief period of 100% digital shooting in 1999–2001, I went back to primarily shooting with film, both black & white and color slides. I process my B&W film at home but my apartment is too small for a darkroom to make prints, not do I have a room dark enough, so I rent time at a shared darkroom. I used to go to the Focus Gallery in Russian Hill, but when I called to book a slot about a month ago, the owner informed me he was shutting down his darkroom rental business and relocating. He did recommend a suitable replacement, which actually has nicer, brand new facilities, albeit in not as nice a neighborhood. Learning new equipment and procedures was still an annoyance

Color is much harder than B&W, and requires toxic chemicals. I shoot slides, which use the E-6 process, not the C-41 process for more common color negative film. For the last five years, I have been going to ChromeWorks, a Mom-and-Pop lab on Bryant Street, San Francisco's closest equivalent to New York's photo district. The only thing they did was E-6 film processing, and they did it exceedingly well, with superlative customer service and quite reasonable rates. When I went there today to hand them a roll for processing, I discovered they closed down two months ago, apparently a mere week after I last went there.

I ended up giving my roll to the NewLab, another pro lab a few blocks away, which is apparently the last E-6 lab in San Francisco (I had used their services before for color negative film, which I almost never use apart from the excellent Fuji Natura 1600).

Needless to say, these developments are not encouraging for a film enthusiast.

Update (2007-12-14):

There is at least one other E-6 lab in San Francisco, Fotodepo (1063 Market @ 7th). They cater mostly to Academy of Arts students and are not a pro lab by any means (I have never seen a more cluttered and untidy lab). In and in any case they are more expensive than the New Lab, if more conveniently located.

20:35 - permalink [Photo, San Francisco]

The San Francisco chocolate lover's shortlist

Here are my picks for the best chocolate places in the city:

• Chocolate tablets: Fog City News, an impressive lineup tended by the knowledgeable owner, Adam Smith.
• Honorable mention: Chocolat (2801 Leavenworth, in The Cannery, 415-674-8852). You wouldn't expect a decent chocolate shop in the lurid wasteland that is Fisherman's Wharf. You would be wrong, however. This store has the requisite stands of insipid Ghirardelli and Jelly Belly confections for the tourists, but also a decent selection from the likes of Michel Cluizel or Fran's
  Update (2006-11-24): the place apparently went out of business
• Chocolate bouchées: Cocoa Bella. This shop is a chocolate integrator: it collects chocolates from small chocolatiers across the world and brings them under a single roof. They also make hot chocolate.
• Honorable mention: Michael Recchiuti makes scrumptious confections, and his hazelnut praliné bar is to die for.
• Chocolate maker: Guittard. This fourth-generation family of chocolatiers, originally from France, have been supplying professionals like Recchiuti for a century and half. The best dessert I ever had in America was a Guittard chocolate and cherry cake at Eno in Atlanta, of all places. They now have a retail line of very high quality.
• Honorable mention: Scharffen-Berger. Everyone raves about their chocolates. While I love their natural cocoa powder, I have always had mixed feelings about their dark chocolate bars, and their milk chocolate seems like a half-hearted effort, too sweet and malty.
• Hot chocolate: Bittersweet on Fillmore has a good selection of hot chocolates, pastries and chocolate bars.
• Honorable mention: Blue Bottle Coffee, a tiny hole-in-the-wall place off Gough street near Hayes Valley, makes rich creamy hot chocolate from Sur del Lago dark chocolate.
• Chocolate pastries: Citizen Cake is a pastry chef's pastry shop. Wildly imaginative cakes (although you can get cut by the bleeding edge), a favorite among Opera or Symphony-goers. They also have a small satellite, Citizen Cupcake, on the top floor of the Virgin Megastore on Market and Stockton.
• Honorable mentions: Cafe Madeleine, a.k.a. Jil's Patisserie, formerly of Burlingame, now made in their Second Street shop (with two additional locations on California and O'Farrell). The Bay Bread boulangeries, specially those on Polk and Pine. Miette in the Ferry Building.

22:10 - permalink [Food, San Francisco]

Chuao Chocolatier Caracas bar

I am partial to milk chocolate with high cocoa content. It combines the best of both worlds: the rich flavor of dark chocolate, and the smoothness of milk chocolate. The better grades will be made of cocoa coming from a single region, ideally Venezuelan criollo. The natural candidate would be El Rey, a Venezuelan maker, but I don't like the milky aftertaste of their Caoba 41% cocoa bar. My favorite, Michel Cluizel, makes superlative bars with 50% cocoa content, but the cocoa is from Java or Madagascar. They even used to have a 60% bar blended with almond cream, unfortunately it seems to have been discontinued.

A new specialty chocolate store, Bittersweet Cafe, opened recently on Fillmore Street in san Francisco. They have a good selection, almost as good as Fog City News, with some brands I haven't seen before. One of those was this bar made from Venezuelan Chuao criollo beans, with a mix of chopped almonds, hazelnuts, and interestingly, pistachios. It is made by Chuao Chocolatier, a small artisanal company based in San Diego (but we won't hold their unfortunate choice of location against them).

The bar has a rich, deep flavor, and is not over-sweetened as is unfortunately too often the case with milk chocolates. The cocoa content is not indicated, but I would estimate it at around 40%. The nuts are crunchy and fresh, with no hint of rancidity. This is no small feat, hazelnuts and pistachios spoil easily and are tricky to work with. Fran's, based in Seattle, won't even ship some of their Oregon hazelnut confections outside Washington State out of fear they will lose their freshness by the time they arrive. At $6.50 ($6 if you buy direct in packs of 4), this is by no means cheap, but at least they give you an unusual 110 gram portion, none of that wimpy 75 gram size companies like Scharffen-Berger (now a part of the despicable Hershey group) are turning to in order to increase profits.

Merry Christmas to all, hopefully one rich in cacao...

20:04 - permalink [Food, San Francisco]

Explosion in San Francisco

I work at 153 Kearny in the San Francisco Financial district. At around 9:55AM, I heard a loud thud (not a sharp crack) and a pressure wave that rattled the windows. My first thought was naturally that a terrorist attack had occurred, and we decided to evacuate the office (as did the other tenants). Within 2 minutes, we were all out, and there were already first responders on the scene ushering us away from the scene. The awning on the Ralph Lauren store at the corner of Post and Kearny was in flames; I only took this one photo.

I did not see any wounded people, and most passersby left the scene in an orderly fashion. Many people a mere two blocks away were unaware that anything happened. Reports are contradictory, so after making sure all my staff were accounted for, I sent them all home — if it were a gas explosion or an electrical fire, it could be dangerous to return until we have an all-clear from the authorities.

11:03 - permalink [San Francisco]

Nob Hill's culinary renaissance

I live in San Francisco's Nob Hill. Nob is a contraction of Nabob, itself a corruption of the Urdu word Nawab, meaning the governor of a province in the Mughal empire. Of course, many locals call it Snob Hill, even though many bourgeois-bohemian neighborhoods like the nearby Russian Hill or Telegraph Hill are in reality far more exclusive, but this is where the big four robber barons of nineteenth century California, Crocker, Huntington, Stanford and Hopkins built their palaces.

I live just across Grace Cathedral, former location of the Crocker spite fence, which gives a good illustration of the robber barons' arrogant contempt for the law or common decency. They monopolized energy and the vital railroads that transported agricultural produce to the principal markets in the East Coast, and bled farmers white with high fares, with the complicity of venal politicians. The populist backlash around the turn of the century led to the initiative system that features so prominently in California politics, and renders it to a large extent ungovernable.

The nabobs have left, and their mansions have been converted into fancy hotels, public parks or a cathedral. Despite the hotels, Nob Hill had a reputation for being a gastronomic wasteland, specially when compared with Polk Gulch and Russian Hill, but that has changed dramatically in the four years I have been living here.

Last week, I went to Rue Saint Jacques, a new French restaurant that opened a mere seven weeks ago. I once lived at 123 rue Saint Jacques in Paris, when staying in a dorm at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, so I got a kick from the name. It is apparently named after a tony restaurant in London where the chef once worked. The starter course, a salmon tartare on a bed of Belgian endives was somewhat lackluster, but the next course, a filet of beef in a foie gras sauce, was absolutely heavenly, as was the nougat glacé, a sort of ice cream studded with candied fruit and nuts to resemble Montélimar nougat.

Another restaurant that opened its doors recently is C&L, a steakhouse which replaced the Charles Nob Hill restaurant. You could be excused for thinking this place does not want your business — the only sign of their presence is a very discreet brass plaque on a residential building. Charles Nob Hill had a good French nouvelle cuisine style menu, but unsurprisingly marred with affectation and not offering great value for money. These defects have been mostly addressed in the new restaurant, which has the same owners and is managed by the same staff.

The canonical steakhouse in San Francisco is Harris, but C&L does not compete with it head-on. The waitstaff is far more friendly, for starters, and the preparations are more refined as well. This is not to ding Harris, which is a very solid, if traditional and conservative steakhouse, regularly featured among the top ten in the nation — Harris' filet mignon Rossini is a must-experience for meat lovers. That said, C&L's menu is more innovative, albeit with smaller portions. I had their tangy mussel soup, followed with their "pot pie", a chunky steak served with glazed vegetables in a copper pan lined with dough and cooked in an oven, at once relatively light and bursting with flavor. I cannot vouch for their desserts as in the two times I have been there, I did not have enough appetite left, which is saying something, as I am somewhat of a dessertarian.

Nob Hill is also home to two restaurants that offer surprisingly good value, at least by San Francisco standards. Watergate is a French restaurant with an Asian accent, e.g. traditional French preparations like duck magret in truffle sauce, paired with exotic vegetables like Bok Choy, or their warm lobster martini with jasmine pearl sauce, a perennial favorite. I am not overly fond of "fusion" cuisine as it is often a lazy attempt to thrill jaded palates, at the expense of authenticity or the internal coherency of a culinary tradition. Watergate avoids this trap - their menu is original but impeccably executed in the best of French tradition, which strives for quality ingredients and balanced preparations that emphasize rather than overwhelm delicate flavors with too many spices.

The other bang-for-the-buck restaurant is Rue Lepic, which is the opposite of Watergate in that it is a scrupulously classical French restaurant run by a Japanese chef. They offer an excellent five-course menu for $38 that would pass muster with the crustiest of French traditionalists.

00:53 - permalink [Food, San Francisco]

Michael Recchiuti Hazelnut Praline

The dukes of Praslin-Choiseul stem from one of the most illustrious noble families in France, but they are best known because one of their pastry chefs invented the confection known as praliné in honor of his patron. Brillat-Savarin famously wrote "the invention of a new dish does more for the happiness of mankind than the discovery of a new star". Apparently it does wonders for a family's name recognition as well.

Praliné is basically a blend of finely ground hazelnuts and almonds and cooked with boiling sugar (otherwise, it would just be another form of marzipan). If it is mixed with chocolate, it becoms gianduja. If the nut fragments remain discernable in a matrix of caramelized sugar, the result is nougatine, one of the heights of French pastry-making. One interesting variety is feuilleté praliné, where the praliné is blended with pieces of extremely fine and crisp wafers to yield a confection that has at once the smoothness of praliné and the crispiness of a flaky pastry. When I was a kid, I would often buy "Lutti Noisettor", a hard hazelnut-flavored candy where the core had this same stratified laminated and crunchy texture, but it seems it has been discontinued, perhaps the fabrication technique was too complex to be profitable.

Michael Recchiuti is a chocolatier who moved to the San Francisco about a decade ago to start his confectionery business with his wife Jacky. He has a boutique in the Ferry Building food court and a number of the better groceries in the city carry his products. A small operation like his cannot make its own chocolate couverture, and it appears he relies on Guittard, another reputable San Francisco company. In addition to his lovely chocolate bouchées, Recchiuti makes a line of chocolate tablets.

My favorite one is the Hazelnut Praline, which is actually a feuilleté praliné. A safety disclaimer ought to be mandatory on the wrapper, as biting into a piece is an amazingly intense experience. The couverture is excellent, but it is the praliné that grabs your attention: rich, dark, clearly made with a high proprtion of nuts to sugar and blended with dark rather than milk chocolate, and with the delightful crispy texture of feuilletine. Everyone I gave a taste of this bar had the same reaction of utter amazement, it is that good.

The chocolate bar is clearly made by hand, as you can see from the irregular shape on the other side of the mold. This is unfortunate in a way, as it means distribution will remain limited for the foreseeable future. I have worked it into my standard tour of San Francisco for visiting friends and relatives, as they are unlikely to experience it elsewhere.

Update (2006-11-24):

All good things come to pass, and this product has been discontinued. The other Recchuti bars seem uninspiring.

01:01 - permalink [Food, San Francisco]

You say "tomato"

Britain is not known for being a gastronomic haven (although the situation has improved dramatically in London over the last 20 years or so). Still, they have some decent grocery products, like shortbread or Ribena blackcurrant drinks. US specialty groceries carry some, but by no means all British delights.

A few weeks ago, a small shop specialized in imported British foodstuffs opened in my neighborhood. The product it carries are the kind you would expect to find in a regular grocery store in the UK, don't expect esoteric Fortnum & Mason luxuries here, but a solid and growing selection, and a good destination for anyone who would like a little diversity in their daily vittles.

You Say Tomato, 1526 California (between Larkin and Polk), 415-921-2828

21:26 - permalink [Food, San Francisco]

Annals of idiotic California legislation

Gubernator Arnold Schwarzenegger signed on Wednesday a bill to ban the production and sale of foie gras in California in 2012. The bill was pushed by his outgoing horse-trading partner, Democratic state senator John Burton. The highly dubious rationale is that the force-feeding of ducks or geese to produce foie gras is "cruel". I can think of many culinary preparations that would qualify, such as lobsters or crabs boiled alive. Then again, many more people eat crustaceans than foie gras, thus they are not as safe a target for a grandstanding politician who has no compunctions about trying to stuff his unwanted offspring down San Francisco voters' throats.

I think the last thing San Francisco's stricken economy needs is another coup de grâce to its' restaurants, one of the few local industries that can (just barely) survive its business-hostile climate (our restaurateur mayor Gavin Newsom seems to agree). In the meantime, better to make your reservations at the French Laundry while you still can. In seven years' time, the only place you will be able to get your fix will be from shady characters in the dark alleys of the Tenderloin, if its gentrification is not complete by then. If you think foie gras is expensive today...

21:59 - permalink [Food, San Francisco, Soapbox]

The Bay Area, a bread basket?

Bread is the staff of life. - Jonathan Swift

Atkins faddists notwithstanding, bread has been with us ever since mankind migrated from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture, and to urban civilization, its corollary. Bread plays an important role in religious symbolism, from the unleavened bread of Jewish Passover, the transsubstantiation of Christ and the Lord's Prayer, or Muslim tradition according to which the cause of Adam's expulsion from Eden was wheat, not apples. The emblem of the Nizam of Hyderabad, my parents' birthplace, was a "kulcha", a sort of flat bread. Legend has it, a hermit prophesied the Nizam's dynasty would last for seven generations because its founder ate seven kulchas while the hermit's guest.

You can travel fifty thousand miles in America without once tasting a piece of good bread. - Henry Miller

The Bay Area is gifted with a plethora of artisan bakers, preparing all sorts of delights from the Noe Valley Bakery cherry-chocolate bread, to the more touristy (but perfectly acceptable) Boudin sourdough bread. There is even a website dedicated to local bakeries (it does not seem to have been updated very recently, however). Indeed, America has San Francisco to thank for the artisan bread revolution, started by Alice Waters and Acme Bread, just as Seattle is responsible for improving coffee standards nationwide. In America, restaurant critics inspect restrooms. In France, they ponder the quality of the bread and coffee served...

How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex? - Julia Child

What's more, good bread is actually cheaper. The plastery Wonderbread, originally introduced by the ITT conglomerate, retails for $3.69 a loaf at my local Cala Foods, whereas a loaf of Acme's delightfully nutty "Upstairs Bread" is a mere $2.50. Some bakeries like Southern California's La Brea Bakery are helping popularize bread by shipping frozen semi-cooked loaves to the large grocery chains, who finish baking on their premises. While purists sniff with disdain at the technique, it is very close in quality to the real thing, and miles ahead of industrial bread.

00:45 - permalink [Food, San Francisco]

Etienne Guittard Soleil d'Or

Ghirardelli is the best-known chocolate maker from San Francisco, but by no means the only one. The Bay Area is very serious about food, and boasts many fine chocolatiers such as Guittard, Scharffen-Berger, Joseph Schmidt, and Michael Recchiuti, all of which uphold a much higher standard of quality than Ghirardelli (while not inedible dreck like Hershey's, Ghirardelli is over-sweet and fairly lackluster).

Guittard is not as well known, as they used not to sell retail (their chocolate is used, among others, by See's Candies and Boudin Bakery, and I once had a wonderful cherry and Guittard chocolate cake at Eno in Atlanta). This changed when they recently introduced a line of premium chocolates, named after the firms's French founder, Etienne Guittard.

They probably don't have an extensive distribution network yet, but their products are starting to trickle into finer San Francisco groceries like my neighborhood one, Lebeau Nob Hill Market ("People in the Know / Shop at Lebeau").

I bought a 500g box of their "Soleil d'Or" milk chocolate, packaged as a box of "wafers" (little quarter-sized pieces reminiscent of Droste Pastilles). In this form, it is intended for cooking, but the bite-sized wafers are also perfect for snacking. It has a relatively high cocoa content for milk chocolate (38%, the usual is more like 32%), which gives it a satisfying taste that lingers in the mouth. This chocolate is also well balanced, it does not have the malty harshness of Scharffen-Berger milk chocolate or the milky aftertaste of Valrhona "Le Lacté". In fact, it comes close to my personal favorite, Michel Cluizel "Grand Lait Java", no small achievement, specially when you consider the difference in cocoa content (38% vs. 50%) and the price difference ($9 for a 500g box vs. $5 for a 100g tablet).

Update (2004-12-30):

Guittard updated their packaging (shown right). The newer one is more classy and eschews the pretentious "Soleil d'Or" and "Collection Etienne" labels, but the chocolate itself is unchanged. The box is also slightly lighter (1lb or 454g vs. 500g for the older one, i.e. a 10% price increase...), but at $9.99/lb, you are still paying Lindt prices for near Cluizel quality

18:48 - permalink [Food, San Francisco]

Attack of the London taxis

London-style taxis (also known as "Hackney carriages) are becoming a common sight in San Francisco, which is apparently one of the first cities in the US to get them. It is amusing, really, when most observers in London expected them to disappear a few years ago. The antiquated look of the London taxi endears it to Londoners, but more importantly, they are very roomy for passengers, and easy to get in and out of, even when you are carrying an umbrella...

One (regular) taxi driver complained to me the London taxis are under-powered and do not go fast enough for him to zip to the other side of the city to pick a ride. Anyone who has seen taxicabs drive in this city knows this is a feature, not a bug, in the interests of public safety. Not that taxi drivers are worse than others - I have never been in another city where drivers violate red lights as casually as in San Francisco, even though I have lived in Paris and Amsterdam.

Taxis, along with docks, are one of the few domains in everyday life where byzantine nineteenth century work arrangements still prevail in defiance of the free market. Most cities arbitrarily limit the number of taxis that can ply the streets, a system that usually benefits taxi companies more than taxi drivers, who often end up in a position similar to sharecroppers. The quotas are seldom updated to reflect demand, due to lobbying by entrenched taxi companies, and cities like Paris or San Francisco often face severe taxi shortages. The French demographer Alfred Sauvy (PDF) related how ministers would fear the wrath of taxi strikers and chicken out of raising numbers.

In San Francisco, proposition K, passed in 1978, limits the number of taxi medallions to 1300. The measure was designed to let genuine taxi drivers, not companies, own the medallions, by requiring a nominal number of driving hours to retain the medallion. The lucky few who hold medallions lease them for $20,000-30,000 a year to taxi companies for when they are not driving themselves. Most actual taxi drivers do not have medallions and lease them for $100 a day or so from taxi companies (sharecroppers on plantations were not required to pay for the privilege of employment).

Of course, the people profiting from this cozy arrangement are never content - the permit holders want to drive less so they can enjoy the rent they are collecting from the coveted medallions. One attempted ploy was to reduce the driving hours requirement for disabled workers. Needless to say, had the measure been passed, overnight many permit holders would have found themselves mysteriously incapacitated. Taxi companies would like to grab medallions for themselves and cut off permit holders from the trough.

The right solution would be to abolish the medallion system altogether, or grant one to all working as opposed to rent-collecting drivers. But of course that is the one solution all vested interests are adamantly opposed to, as it would upset their apple cart. Given the abysmally dysfunctional state of San Francisco municipal politics, the situation is unlikely to improve. No amount of window-dressing with London style cabs is going to change that.

12:38 - permalink [San Francisco, Soapbox]

9 Beet Stretch

I attended a rather unusual performance yesterday night, Norwegian artist Leif Inge's 9 Beet Stretch. Actually, I shouldn't be using the past tense as it started at 10PM and is still running as I write (I left around 8AM). You see, the work is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, digitally stretched to last 24 hours. It may sound like a happening gimmick, but interestingly enough some passages are still recognizable despite the tempo mangling. When combined with the setting - a typically SoMa artists' live-work loft with exposed rafters and liberally appointed with couches, reclining chairs, bean bags and mattresses - this gives off a definite tinge of unreality. Amusingly enough, when Beethoven first released his Ninth Symphony, it was criticized for being too long.

Beethoven's Ninth is the reason why audio CDs last 74 minutes - the symphony, known in Japan as the 大九 ("Dai Kyu", Great Ninth) is very popular there and Sony engineers ensured it would fit on a single disc. If they had preferred Mahler, we might have a higher capacity medium. Will the 24-hour Ninth become the yardstick for MP3 players? Not that this is the longest piece in the modern repertoire - the notorious musical provocateur John Cage wrote one called Organ²/ASLSP that started playing on September 5, 2001 and is expected to complete after 639 years...

Update (2004-06-25):

I have uploaded a gallery of photos I took during the performance.

Pictured: Leif Inge during an intermission

10:27 - permalink [San Francisco]

Richart Chocolates opens a San Francisco store

This morning, while walking to work, I noticed a brand new Richart Chocolates shop on Sutter street. Apparently it opened a month ago.

Richart is a Paris chocolatier who pioneered ornately decorated chocolate palets (their byline used to be "Richart - Art et Chocolat") with daring combinations of tastes.

They are as overpriced as in Paris, but make for a classy gift (many French companies send out Richart chocolates around Christmas as corporate gifts).

14:30 - permalink [Food, San Francisco]

Chocoholics rejoice!

Berkeley-based chocolatier Scharffen-Berger finally yielded to customer demand and introduced milk chocolate to their line, much to the gnashing of teeth of dark chocolate snobs nationwide, no doubt. According to the salesman at Fog City News, where I bought my bar, it has been available for two weeks now, even though the company's own website apparently makes no mention of it.

It has a high cocoa content (41%), and has the brand's distinctive rich flavor and long finish, although I find it a little bit too sweet. My preferred brand of premium milk chocolate remains Michel Cluizel, with their amazing 50% Java cocoa milk chocolate bars.

22:45 - permalink [Food, San Francisco]

First steps in Medium Format

I bought a used Hasselblad 500 C/M last week. I took my first shots last week-end (this is my first medium format camera, and I had to learn how to load it and process 120 format roll film). Today I installed an Epson 3170 scanner capable of scanning medium format negatives (at the highest quality settings of 3200 dpi at 48 bits, this yields 52 megapixel files weighing 300MB each!). The quality is simply amazing, even more than you could expect with the 4x larger negative area than 35mm. Here is a preview scan of one of the shots (the inner marketplace courtyard, Ferry Building, San Francisco), and a 3200 dpi blow-up of the upper left corner of the frame:

Technical details: taken on 2003-10-24, Hasselblad 500 C/M, Carl Zeiss Planar 80mm f/2.8 CF, Fuji Neopan 400 processed in Ilford DD-X, exposure 1/250s at f/4.

02:06 - permalink [Photo, San Francisco]

Ferry Building food court

I bought lunch from a store in the newly renovated San Francisco Ferry Building. The Ferry Building is one of San Francisco's landmarks, but it had fallen on hard times after being cut off from the city by the Embarcadero expressway (which was demolished after sustaining severe damage from the Loma Prieta earthquake).

The Ferry Building is home to a Farmer's Market and a gastronomic food court. Interestingly enough, the building was reopened with little fanfare in June of this year, and the shops have been slowly opening. The economic melt-down of the Bay Area probably has a lot to do with the low-key approach, but it makes it hard to figure when the food court will be completely operational (the lunch options there are still limited). There are a number of interesting organic and gourmet food shops, however, and I think it is already worth visiting even if not all shops are in place yet.

18:31 - permalink [Food, San Francisco]

Costco San Francisco switches to Noritsu

I visited the San Francisco Costco yesterday, and they have replaced their Fuji Frontier 370 mentioned here with a Noritsu QSS-3101 (PDF). This generation of Noritsu digital minilab uses a laser rather than the MLVA (LED) technology used in earlier Noritsu minilabs, and it should have equivalent quality (I will know for sure this coming Thursday when I get my prints back - it seems the word is out and Costco now has quite a backlog).

The nice thing is they now have a self-service Noritsu CT-1 kiosk where you can upload your photos from flash cards or CD, albeit with a slightly clunky interface. They also support 8x12 rather than 8x10 now, and more interestingly larger sizes such as 11x14 ($2.99), up to 12x18 (also $2.99 apiece).

Fortunately, the paper used is still Fuji Crystal Archive rather than the inferior Kodak alternatives Noritsu is usually associated with (Kodak resells Noritsu minilabs, and allegedly some Agfa minilab components as well).

Update (2003-07-30):

I picked up the prints this evening. Unfortunately, contrary to what the guy at the counter said, they did crop the photos instead of adding white margins. The end result? Many prints with partially decapitated people, and those that have been spared are too wide to fit in my 8x10 album.

The prints are sharp, but significantly darker and less saturated than my proof on-screen (I calibrate my monitor with a ColorVision SpyderPRO). The Fuji Frontier was much closer to the sRGB space, it seems. I have no idea why Noritsu calibrates its machines to some completely different standard than sRGB despite the fact the latter is the industry standard. I will take a calibration target when I go to have them redone tomorrow.

I consider myself quite knowledgeable about computers and digital photography, and I can cope with manual resizing of pictures to prevent brain-dead cropping, or working with custom profiles to work around poorly calibrated printers. I am sure 99% of the digital camera buying population will be unable to go through these unnecessary hoops. They will just get dull, oddly cropped photos back and naturally think the technology is at fault, and go back to using inkjet printers even though they produce grainy prints with poor durability, all for a king's ransom. Fuji, Kodak and the rest are already playing catch-up in the digital printing space, they will definitely lose the race if they do not improve their firmware and require digital minilab operators to calibrate their units.

Update (2003-09-24):

I gave them a lot of 25 11x14 to print on Monday. Mindful of my previous cropping fiasco, I first gave them a trial run of 6 last week (3 "lustre" and 3 glossy), as well as to test the Dry Creek Photo color management profiles. The prints came out fine, with reasonably accurate color (within the limits of the printer's gamut). They had a half inch white border on top and bottom, as the Noritsu's native output size is 12x14, and the lab technician told me they were expecting a trimmer next week.

Unfortunately, when I retrieved my prints yesterday (insert mandatory joke here about "someday, my prints will come"), unlike the trial run, they expanded the print to the full 12x14 paper area (thus trimming off about 1 inch on each side from the print, and ruining the composition). Costco disabled 11x14 and 12x18 prints from the CT-1 interface. They must be running the printer on manual for these print sizes because the software on the CT-1 is brain-dead about cropping, but it seems all operators are not equally well trained with the new equipment, and I suspect the user interface is confusing enough to allow them to shoot themselves (or me, in this case) in the foot.

Conclusion: color management profiles are a must for this Noritsu printer, and be very specific about cropping instructions as their workflow is inconsistent from operator to operator. And it's a good thing they have a money-back guarantee...

00:37 - permalink [Photo, San Francisco]