Hoity Toity Burgers at Short Order

There is no shortage of good food or good chefs today in L.A. This point was emphasized even more for me on a recent trip to Santa Barbara where we were hard pressed to find a place where we wanted to eat. So I should be careful when writing reviews like the one I am about to write because I now realize that my bar is so much higher than many others after being utterly spoiled for a full year now (ever since moving from the Palm Springs area to Venice Beach) on the culinary offerings of the City of Angels.

This particular piece is about the regular old burger. For almost eight months, Short Order has been on my “to try” list. The burger place at the Grove was debuted last year to much fanfare as collaboration between friends and superstar chefs Nancy Silverton (Mozza) and Amy Pressman (Old Town Bakery). Pressman passed away from cancer shortly before the place opened and Silverton went on anyway providing what she and Pressman would cook in their own kitchens. This included a meaty burger with a lamb version calling my name.

The Cute Gardener, who is much more discerning than me and not easily seduced immediately by hype, suggested we wait until the kinks got worked out before trying the place. What we found when we did was a very highly priced version of an American diner.

My lamb burger was the best I have ever had. The meat was cooked perfectly rare and the portion of arugula and the smattering of feta were in perfect ratio to the meat. Every bite was soft and full of tanginess surrounded by pillow-y tufts of bun. But for $15 on the second deck of a restaurant directly beneath the weekend sun, I would be hard-pressed to want to go back rather than trying to emulate the recipe at home.

I was also excited to see fried pickles on the menu and although the seasoning on them was great, it overpowered the actual pickles. Nancy’s Backyard Burger, for $14, was the CG’s choice of meal and although he said it tasted fine and the meat was cooked well, it wasn’t worthy of that price for him, especially with a high grade meat and sausage store serving up worldly varieties just steps away underneath us at the historical Farmers Market.

One neat touch is the presence of “adult” milkshakes on the menu. This one tasted exactly like an apple pie ala mode only spiked with alcohol.

It’s definitely worth a taste once but there are too many other burgers to try at more diplomatic prices on my list to return any time too soon. 

Watermarc Makes Laguna Melt in my Mouth for a Change

I know a lot of people are going to disagree with me when I say this, but I am usually hard-pressed to find much about Laguna Beach that I like. To each his own right? Some cities fit you like a second skin (San Francisco in my case) and some cities leave you kind of dry and itchy. That’s Laguna for me. It’s usually crowded, you can’t find parking at any of the coffee shops and the *art and food scenes are a bit spotty for my personal palate.  I know I am just generalizing but every time I have been there in the past decade for work or for play, I have come away kind of feeling the same way.

But recently the Cute Gardener and I took a daylong trek to eat at a restaurant called Watermarc presided over by Chef Marc Cohen and touting an impressive array on the lunch menu of 26 grazing plates. It was the best meal I have eaten in the city and my salad made it onto my mental list of memorable lamb dishes. It also helped that the free shuttles were running frequently due to the summer season and three simultaneous art festivals taking place so that we didn’t have to bear the traffic but could park at the top of the canyon and ride anywhere we wanted to go within the packed downtown district.

I am a sucker for lamb and was taught to cook a bevy of the eccentric meat’s dishes by the Greek orthodox aunt of an old friend. Helen and I used to stand around in her kitchen on Sundays drinking wine and making things like lamb stuffed artichokes steamed on a bone bed in a tomato sauce bath, lemon chicken squares and ground lamb stuffed dolmades just to name a few. It’s hard to find a chef who can live up to Helen’s cooking but this one did.

These were the most tender and flavorful bites of lamb chop I’ve had to date. Only bad thing was that the salad was served with all the ingredients separately. It took me a good five minutes to cut the grilled romaine, mix in the slaw and slice the meat from the chops to blend the salad together and I was salivating the entire time having already had a taste of the lamb.

We shared this adorable filet mignon potpie for a starter. Small and manageable with sweet and fork-able nuggets of great meat, it was delicious but more like a rustic, thick brown and savory soup than a creamy potpie.

The CG had a grilled chicken cordon bleu sandwich topped with shaved, honey smoked ham, asparagus, brie and cranberry marmalade. He’s super picky about his sandwiches and he liked this one which was a good sign for the restaurant overall.

I would come back to this restaurant if I were in Laguna again to try some of the other grazing plate items such as the ahi and watermelon skewers, the homemade ricotta with raisins, honeycomb and almonds or simply to sample some more of their creative, artisan cocktails.

*Even though the art scene in Laguna is not my favorite, I do have to send a shout out to my good friend and artist Micha VonDoring whose wood pieces are true works of exquisitely crafted art.

Sardine Stunner Perpetuates My Lust for Local 1205

I am not a huge sandwich person. It’s not that I don’t like bread but if I am going to waste my calories on bread it’s typically pulled hot and crusty from a loaf pre-dinner dredged in oil, butter or vinegar and not as a bed for other items that could surely be eaten alone. But for months I had been eying a particular sardine sandwich on the menu at Local 1205 – one of my favorite local foodie haunts on Abbot Kinney in Venice Beach.

I’ve written about Local 1205 before. It’s where I get my weekly smoothies that actually are made from scratch, my dose of gluten-free goddess brownies when I am on a dark chocolate craving twitch, and my Chakwave sacral chakra tonics when my orange energy center needs a swift kick. I had tried to eat their sandwiches two times already but because the store is stocked daily by deliveries from local farms and growers it’s been hit or miss. Sometimes products don’t arrive in time and sometimes they simply run out before I can get in to make an order. 

Recently I met a good friend and her baby there (good place for kids as it is a non-pretentious open air type market with plain wooden benches and chairs amongst the bustle) and finally got to try the sandwich that had been catching my eye.

I am madly in love with this now and wake up in the middle of the night craving it. It’s so bad that I remember the days when I was pregnant and would crave potato salad on top of cheese quesadillas. It’s that kind of full body smarting, tart and addicting dish that seems implausible but that I can’t deny and I am already dying to get back home at the end of the summer just so I can get my fix.

It’s simple. Toasted rye-style white bread with hard-boiled egg slices, sardines packed in oil laid down, flimsy and tangy dill pickle slices, watercress, and lemon-spiked aioli. The oil from the sardines sops the bread and you can’t get away with using less then four napkins while eating it. I want this again and again for the rest of my life and plan on making it at home now whenever I get a chance.

They also serve salads by the pound made fresh daily and we enjoyed a sampler plate of watermelon feta, kale and carrot, and creamy cole slaw.

For dessert, I had a vegan crepe, which was nothing more than a date fruit roll up stuffed with peanut butter, nuts, and cacao nibs which was great but I walked home still unable to wipe the taste of that spectacular sandwich from my brain.

You Say Potato, I Say Frittata

When he is at my house I cook for him. When I am at his house he cooks for me. One thing I have learned is that we have very different cooking styles.

I tend to prep as I cook grabbing what I need when I need it and paying attention to a carefully plotted timeline of what I need to do when I need to do it. In my ADD world, a roadmap is essential. This means that recipes blend together, things are timed to intermingle while cooking, all laid out in a long running stream-of-consciousness type plan. Because of this, ingredients stay out to get put away at the end, utensils are spread over countertops dripping with oil, the kitchen goes chaotic until the very end and there is usually a little bit of sweeping required. My dishes tend to be big, convoluted, and bold with flavor, and way too much food for two people concocted in a variety bowls and cups.

He is meticulous yet flows as he goes, starting with a general idea of what he wants to do and then improvises along the way. Economical portions of food are perfectly created from his precisely measured brain, utilizing few utensils for a wide variety of jobs. The prep area is in one tidy location where piles of diced vegetables sit neatly adjacent to proteins and pastas for dishes that tend to be simple, pure, fresh and ultimately developed in one or two pots.

But last week we cooked a very fast meal together out of the necessity of trying to get to a movie on time. He cooked potato and I cooked frittata and we only bristled each other at one moment over the appropriate amount of parmigiano-reggiano to use. I of course wanted to go over board and he wanted to stay under. We met somewhere in the middle.

This is one of those meals that can be made for breakfast, lunch or dinner on the quick.

ZUCCHINI FRITTATA

5 eggs

2 Tbsp. cream

2 Tbsp. olive oil, divided

1 small onion, finely chopped

1/2 tsp. salt

1 clove garlic, minced

3 small zucchini, sliced

1/3 cup parmesan or other hard, grating cheese

2 Tbsp. minced basil

1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

In a large bowl, whisk eggs and cream until whites are thoroughly broken up.

In a large frying pan, heat 1 Tbsp. of olive oil over medium-high heat. Add onion and salt. Cook, stirring frequently, until starting to brown, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add zucchini or summer squash and cook, stirring, until wilted, about 5 minutes.

Stir cheese, herbs, and pepper into the eggs. Stir in vegetable mixture.

Return pan to stove. Add remaining 1 Tbsp. oil and let sit until hot. Pour in egg-vegetable mixture. Reduce heat to medium-low. Cook until lightly browned on bottom, about 5 minutes.

Heat broiler, arranging a rack 6 to8 inches below the heating element.

Put frittata under broiler and cook, watching constantly, until frittata is set and top is browned, 2 to 3 minutes.

Run a silicone spatula around the edges, gradually working under the frittata until the entire thing is loose from the pan.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

HERB-FRIED POTATOES

3 -4 diced medium russet potatoes

1/2 teaspoon paprika

1/8 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

1 pinch ground cumin

3 tablespoons light olive oil

1 teaspoon minced lemon thyme

Wash, peel and dice potatoes into same size pieces

Toss potatoes in a bowl with paprika, pepper and cumin.

 Heat 3 tablespoons light olive oil in a very large non-stick saute pan over medium-high heat.

Add potatoes into skillet and fry, turning occasionally with a spatula until lightly golden.

Reduce heat to medium and sprinkle in the thyme.

Cook until soft per desire.

Shuck Your Own BYOB Oyster Day

I am admittedly a raw oyster addict. The Cute Gardener even goes so far as to call my lust for the sea creatures a fetish. And it’s true; I can hardly resist the plump and briny nuggets whenever they appear on a menu. I even belong to a non-official raw oyster and chardonnay club that is nothing more than a glorified excuse to meet on weekdays at lunchtime to slurp meat from hunky shells and crisp white wine from cold glasses.

So when a fellow foodie friend decided to throw an outdoor oyster party recently at San Buenaventura State Beach, we made it a point to stop by even though we had already filled the day with other plans.

It was a perfect sunny day with a salty breeze coming off the ocean when we rolled into the park around noon and found our friends at a series of picnic tables that had been taken over by colorful swaths of fabric and gem-like serving dishes.

The concept was simple; we would all bring our own oyster shucking gloves and knives (we purchased ours on Amazon.com, shipped directly to the home), and then bring other drinks and side dishes to share. 

The CG brought cucumbers and lemon fresh from his garden along with some sweet and sour pickles we had marinating in the fridge for a few days. I concocted my signature loaded-guacamole and offered it alongside blue corn chips.

For the oysters, we were all to buy our own per desire at the Jolly Oyster Truck, which makes its home at the park and serves fresh kumamoto and pacific varieties for about a buck a pop alongside manila clams.

The Jolly Oyster man was totally helpful, even letting us sample some oysters for free before we purchased our dozen. Because we had to shuck them ourselves, it took us a while to get them open and by the time we did they weren’t as cold as we would have liked. So my advice to anyone who wants to visit the park and partake in this cool oyster adventure is to bring along some ice and trays as well as the tools needed so that they remain perfectly cold.

We ate our oysters fast and shared a bottle of champagne before having to dash. Those who stayed went on to use the conveniently located grills to make BBQ oysters and clams as well as enjoying them raw.  

Next time, I would definitely stay longer and perhaps make some of the recipes I remember fondly from my last raw oyster outing day with one of my favorite chefs that took place at Hog Island up North.

Eva's Sunday Supper

Tender veal, simply adorned with light jus and exquisite buttery, fried potatoes

I’ve written before about my love of Sunday suppers even though I haven’t  really been a part of one since I was a kid and my grandfather Bruce would make spaghetti for the whole Southern California crew in his Placentia home. That’s the whole point though, I cherish the ritual that has rapidly become obsolete in this day and age when family and friends rarely have time to maintain a consistent tradition such as a shared meal together over a lazy early evening at the end of a week. So, I was thrilled when the Cute Gardener told me we had reservations for Sunday Supper at Eva this past weekend.

Italian chopped salad with chickpeas and salami, room temperature and slightly dressed with a creamy, tang

Many restaurants may claim to offer Sunday Suppers while really only adding a newly captioned gimmick to their menu item to get people in during slow spells but Eva went above and beyond to create an atmosphere and service that reflected something truly special. Maybe this is because Chef Mark Gold named the restaurant after his grandmother Eva who clearly impacted both his sense of cooking and hospitality.

According to his website, “Memories are made when we come together, share a bottle of wine and a couple of stories. Add to this a thoughtfully prepared meal and the memories become unforgettable. This is what inspires us at Eva.”

While we ate at the restaurant Gold made a point to frequently leave the exposed kitchen to warmly walk the room and converse with just about every customer, most of which he seemed to know by name, furthering my notion that eaters love it when they find a dining room that truly feels like home.

Although he touts himself as a Jew in a cowboy hat (with a ten gallon personality to match), on this particular Sunday he was chapeau-less and calling himself Jewish-Italiano in honor of the special menu he had created for us. Oftentimes you don’t even know what Eva will serve on Sunday until you show up but I had discovered earlier on Facebook that dinner would include chopped salad, shrimp scampi, veal and potato, lemon bars with Italian meringue and wine.

Lemon bars that passed the "tongue-smarting" test, addictive and tart

The food was tasty and the kind you would expect at home, swiveling on big platters around the lazy Susan. The wine (of which four kinds were offered in unlimited pours that the waiter constantly filled the glasses with when empty) flowed freely even though the entire cost of the meal was only $39 per person. If I lived in the neighborhood, I might make it a habit but for now it is definitely up there in the memorable moments category for me. 

Custom Cheese and Charcuterie at Anthony's

I have a thing for passionate chefs who open restaurants or stores because they can’t stand the idea of NOT sharing their love of food with others. It’s hard to make money in the food industry unless your famous or in a world-class and highly publicized location so my respect goes out to those who risk it all to cultivate a little piece of culinary art in the midst of their own unique lives like Anthony, the proprietor of Anthony’s Fine Food and Wine in La Canada.

Without the Cute Gardener’s guidance, I undoubtedly would’ve never crossed paths with this charming and quaint gourmet store that features an elite deli case teeming with awesome exotic cheeses and imported meats as well as shelves upon shelves of custom finds for the foodie like relishes, tapenades, chocolates, rare salts and more. Additionally grand is the fact that the store’s tiny, boutique floor also boasts small seating vignettes where one can sit to enjoy dinner and tapas amongst all the shoppers lending to an intimate, part of the family-type mentality between shoppers and eaters that smears away any pretension or consumerist subterfuge.

 Anthony choosing an angelic patacabra for our plate

Best of all is the fact that the black bearded and serious Anthony does more than lend his name to the place but walks the room, commandeers the counter and consults with customers opting for the meat and cheese board so that each individual order is laid with charcuterie that bespeaks the patron’s individual palate.

For just about 5 bucks apiece, the tapas are also outstanding.

Mojama tuna “Prosciutto” marinated in olive oil with green arbequina olives

Blistered shisito peppers with black sea salt

Even though this place is in a town not ordinarily touted for its cuisine, say for example like the adjacent Los Angeles, it is definitely a destination for me now that I will return to whenever I happen to be out that way. I feel a responsibility to support the small guys especially when they choose to not toe the line and do their own thing in places that they call home.

Astragalus Immune Boosting Brew

I’ve mentioned before that one of the reasons I can be such a huge foodie on the weekends is that the weekdays are filled with a balancing regimen of healthy super foods and special herbs and tonics. My foray into the world of healing consumptives of late has taken me down the path of tinctures and potions designed to allow me to step into a role of white witch crafting medicinal libations and nuggets that soothe and assuage the mind, body and soul. I love spending time in my kitchen concocting special things for loved ones and myself as mixtures boil, broths steep, soups swirl and magic is made over the ritualistic practice of being present, mixing with wisdom, paying attention to age old information and respecting the gifts that nature has always had to give.

Sometimes when I walk into Chinese restaurants, I smell a certain milkweed-sweet aroma permeating the kitchen areas that taunts slightly like comfort food reeling all my senses in. Recently, I discovered that this scent is often due to the presence of astragalus root in the broth used to cook rice. After some research, I found that the root is a traditional Chinese tonic herb with properties as an immune system booster, age reverser and cancer killer.

This past solstice, I celebrated with members of my spirit tribe by hosting a ritual at my home that ended with a feast of specially crafted foods meant to cleanse the organs, infuse the circulatory system and incite the blood with carbonated rejuvenation. One of the dishes was a bowl of Forbidden Black Rice cooked in my newfound astragalus root broth, the tiny bark-like flakes of woody material evoking a hearth-worthy warmth to the air in fragrance as it cooked yet the actual taste of the broth was no different then if I were to cook rice in plain water. 

Now, I tend to cook up gallons of the stuff to keep at all times in my fridge for whenever I need broth or stock. Not only does it work as a base, also it delivers good stuff to the lungs, liver and body. I even created a special healthy alternative to cheese risotto using it as a starter.

Astragalus Stock

Makes 4 cups

In a large soup pot, boil ¼ cup of astragalus root bits in 4 cups of water. Once boiling, bring down to low and simmer for one hour. Remove from heat and add water to get the total back up to 4 cups again, cover the pot and let sit out on the stove or counter overnight. In the morning, take out the root bits and place the broth in the fridge to use as you wish.

Astragalus Parmigiano Reggiano Brown Rice

Make a pot of brown rice as you normally would but instead of water use the astragalus broth. While the broth is boiling for the rice, put in a rind from a parmigiano reggiano wedge and let it cook in the broth and then with the rice until done. When done cooking the rice, throw out the rind. It lends a nice subtle tang to the rice.

A Tale of Two Spices and the Curse of Modernity

Chinois' love of the eighties extended way beyond these dessert plates and turquoise hue...

Wolfgang Puck was the first celebrity chef I ever knew of in my life; not so surprising considering I was a kid growing up in the Southern California ‘80s when Spago took L.A. by storm along with that whole new breed of California continental fusion cuisine.

In high school, one of my closest (and most exotic) friends Sylvie had a father who was a French chef named Michel and worked with Puck for a while. Michel was a big part of my foodie roots because when I would sleep over at their house, he would come home at midnight from whatever restaurant he had worked at with hunks of cheesecake and legs of frog and other tidbits of foreign goodness and would serve it to us with sips of red wine (even though we were only 14). My Francophile disease was obviously largely fueled there.

So by the time I actually lived in L.A. the Spago-craze had simmered from its boil with his newer restaurants taking reign, and I don’t mean the fast food Puck joints that have replaced California Pizza Kitchen in all the mega-malls. I am talking about places like Chinois on Main in Santa Monica that touts itself as an Asian Fusion restaurant and in 1983 when it opened its doors, was considered one of the nation’s finest examples of this. I had very high hopes when the Cute Gardener took me there this past weekend as one of our pit stops on the DineLA week but unfortunately left with a very cold taste in my mouth that I could not shake. After feeling baffled by Chinois’ (seemingly) overhyped 30-year reputation combined with our expectations in comparison to the actual experience, we realized that we might have been suffering from being too modern in our foodie-ness.

Spice Table's smoking hot behind-the-bar grill

Let me explain. Just the week before we had ventured out to Spice Table in Little Tokyo – also touted as Asian fusion but contemporary style by chef Bryant Ng. We ate a meal there that was exciting and revolutionary with flavors and spices that danced from Thai to Vietnamese to Indian all on the same plates, in new marriages and cutting edge ways.

Chinois’ Thai coconut soup tasted like chicken stock with bulbous overcooked meats and no typical citrus-based sprightly-ness…

…while the creamed kale with housemade paneer and pork belly starter at Spice Table pleased in its eccentricity.

Chinois’ crab cakes were mushy and bland, served in a boat of sauce and book-ended by two shrimp while….

...Spice Table’s version was a soupy spread of crab for toast adjacent to savory lamb belly skewers, pumping up the ordinary satay.

 

Chinois’ pork cube was dry and ordinary compared to…

Spice Table’s braised pigtail with meat that fell off the bones and little bits of marrow between all the joints.

Even though this dish was beautiful, the curry jasmine rice was nothing we hadn’t tried a thousand times before while the Spice Table’s rice came in a neo-sambal sauce.

Maybe what Chinois was suffering was just old age, something that should provoke a proper respect towards the trail it blazed. Kind of like the way new Italian restaurants use fresh ingredients rather than the daylong soaked canned tomatoes in a pot on red-checkered tablecloths of yore; or the way New Vegas eaters are regaled with Michelin star restaurants beyond the sea of cold prime rib buffets; or the unctuous, introduction of imported sashimi in Japanese restaurants replacing the teriyaki and tempura dinners. I guess it’s good that there exist the old and the new for both kinds of foodies: those who resist change and rely on the flavors of their comfortable old plates and those who are constantly seeking out new tastes from chefs who continue to explore and discover.

Fresh from the Garden Favorites: Pickles and Crumbles

The pregnant sun, hot and looming over Southern California can be oppressive this time of year but I dare not complain lest I be suddenly forsaken the glorious bounty that has unfolded from the ripe, warm bowels of the Cute Gardener’s backyard oasis that lies around the periphery of his house delivering us things like fresh black and boysenberries alongside squirmy, serpentine Japanese cucumbers each morning.

What to do with these crisp, staunch and curlicue variety of greens? Why pickle them of course, something I have discovered over the last few years to be a brilliantly creative thing. It’s kind of hard to mess up basic, refrigerator pickles. Simply cut your cukes, skin and all, into slices the width of your liking and place them in a pickling jar (you could even use old pickle jars that are depleted from the grocery store). Then create your pickling solution. This is where the possibilities are endless.

A basic solution calls for 1-1/2 cup of any kind of vinegar, 1-1/2 cup of sugar, and 1-1/2 cup of cold water. For those who don’t want to eat all of that sugar, you can cut down the amount or use substitutes like agave nectar or maple. Then you can build upon that and throw in anything you want to experiment with. I like to use things like dill, capers, peppercorns and celery salt. It takes about 24 hours in the fridge to taste what the pickle is going to turn out like and then you can still add more ingredients, continuing to tweak your solution per desire. Recently, I ended pouring a cup of red Italian wine into my jar halfway through a week of marinating along with some new crisp green beans from the garden. You want to try to be finished with your original pickles no more than two weeks from creating them.

In the mornings, I like to have fresh berries with my coffee, just-plucked from the garden, rinsed and served unadorned. But for the evening, nothing makes a better dessert than a crisp with a duo of blackberries and boysenberries underneath a healthier almond crumble that oozes hot and purple tartness into the mouth pre-bed.

Berry Crisp

Makes 2 16-oz. ramekins

3/8 cup almonds, finely chopped
3/8 cup walnuts, finely chopped

½ cup all purpose flour

¼ cup of packed light brown sugar

¼ cup granulated sugar

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled, and cut into ½ inch pieces

4 cups berries (we used boysenberries and blackberries here)

¼ cup sugar

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1.     Chop nuts in small food processor and set aside.

2.     Pulse flour, sugars, and cinnamon in small food processor.  Add butter and pulse 10 times, about 4 seconds each pulse. The mixture will first look like dry sand, then like coarse cornmeal. Add nuts, and then pulse four to five times, about 1 second each pulse. Topping should look like slightly clumpy wet sand. Refrigerate topping at least 15 minutes.

3.     Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 400 degrees.

4.     Wash berries. Mix in sugar and cornstarch. Fill ramekins with berry mixture.  Distribute chilled topping evenly over berries.

5.     Bake for 25 minutes until fruit is bubbling and topping turns deep golden brown. Cool, garnish if you'd like, and serve.

San Francisco Bar Beat

There is no better city in the world to become a barfly then San Francisco which is a great reason why the city is my favorite one in the US but an equally great reason why I do not live there. I could easily see myself shacking up as a regular on a stool (or a few) in various neighborhoods like Bukowsky to get my literary grit on.

But when I visit I like going to the old and beloved and well as finding the new. On a recent  trip with the Cute Gardener, we sampled quite a few so I decided to get inspired by my fellow man Jack Kerouac, who loved the city so much that he penned one of my favorite little books called San Francisco Blues, and ink some little ditties.

Aub Xam Xam

Haight Ashbury Persian lair, throbbing like a quilted womb,

Ottoman empire mosque shaped bar,

intimate corners 'neath sexy night

amber plum red light cush

weird and exotic rums

and dark-skinned, almond eyes girls

mingling with gay men

mingling with old, dazed, silver haired male hippies

and a pregnant bartender wiser than her 1960s waif sisters.

Good for heated conversations

quiet privacy beneath arched doorways

and jewel colored glasses that glisten

like prisms

throughout the blackness. A throbbing womb

to welcome and hold the curious.

St. Regis

South of Market lobby bar,

breathes and sighs,

whisks you in to its sleek elite,

black polished granite for the clack

of heels and nightcaps-

ending with men in dinnertime coats-

and their lovely dolls lolling across their laps.

Big burly bears stroking mutual thighs on couch,

arrogant young rich boys in for the feminine kill,

politicians getting loose with ladies for sale,

and a neat Old Man and the Sea in a tall glass

between my fishnet-coated knees.

The Alembic

Bare bones rectangular space

with noted street cocktail cred,

perched on stools till witching hour

sampling good old fashioned craft:

bourbon and cherries,

egg cream, port wine and coffee,

blood and sand with fruity brandy,

a poop deck scatological cognac…

…making friends with locals

dressed in vintage blue flick finery

laughter cracking alongside the cubes

of big fat ice floating in gold glass.

Photographing churches on the streets

rolling home.

Vesuvio

North Beach joint of the Beats and jazz,

history peppered, smoke shellac walls,

ground zero for literary pilgrims

cuba libres with lime and boisterous boys

bartended by unisex hep cats

no nonsense sketchpad and hang around den.

83

SOMA wood and swank,

belly up to the bar and spit out your list of faves

to the jolly and hip bartenders

who do nothing more than crave

a list of ingredients,

a piece of sassafras about your ass,

and thirty seconds of gab

before concocting for you, the

drink of your dreams

based on what’s inherent to your palate

and the mood you’d like to make.