My Latest Northside Column: Where to Go, What to Do and Eat Near the Bay Area

For my latest Common Knowledge column in Northside San Francisco, I talked to Bay Gourmet leader Cathy Curtis about cool places to go, the best foods to eat, neat things to do in the Bay Area hinterlands.

COMMON KNOWLEDGE
The Bay Area Fun Belt
By John Zipperer 

After the fall of the Soviet Union, a new Russian term came into vogue: “the near afar.” It referred to those newly independent countries bordering the Russian Federation, at once close by and yet more distant than before because they were no longer part of the same empire. 

In the Bay Area, our “near afar” is a stunning belt of hills, wine country, farms, and small towns that girdles our metropolis, and getting there is quite easy. Knowing how to make the most of your time there can be a challenge, so I turned to an expert. When Cathy Curtis is not busy with her duties as the owner of Curtis Financial Planning, she volunteers at The Commonwealth Club as chair of our Bay Gourmet Forum, and she also leads groups of travelers on day trips and slightly longer visits to exciting destinations in the near afar. I asked Curtis to share with Northside San Francisco readers some tips for finding great local getaways.

Read the entire column

When she's not busy giving financial planning advice, Cathy Curtis enjoys showing people how to enjoy the finer features of the world. Photo by Beth Byrne.

The Science of Food Reviewers: Photographing the Photographer

When you go to a nice restaurant these days, it is not unusual to see people take out their cell phones and take a photo of their food before they begin eating. The explanation is probably that there are so many amateur food bloggers out there, pretending to be professional restaurant reviewers.

So I thought I'd snap the above photo at a recent meal when we were taken out for dinner by a professional wine and food editor. The first thing she or he (gotta be anonymous if you're a real restaurant reviewer, if at all possible) did when each of our plates arrived at the table was to snap images on his/her cell phone.

Consider it a behind-the-scenes look at the food writing business.

Heart Attack Grill: All Questions Answered

The web site for the Heart Attack Grill – an actual restaurant – more than explains why Americans are unashamed to have eaten themselves into overweight diabetes.

Yes, I know it's done tongue-in-cheek, but it's not completely off-base.

My Latest Northside San Francisco Column: Food Fights, From Tang to Tacos

Common Knowledge
Food fights: From Tang to tacos
By John Zipperer

Let’s blame Tang, that instant orangish drink given to schoolchildren in the mistaken belief that all good liquids begin life as colored powder. It symbolizes for many people one step too far away from actual food that was grown in or raised on good old-fashioned soil.

Why Tang? Why not some other faddish food or drink from the plastic seventies?

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Riesling and the Growth of the German Soul

I always thought German Riesling is a good part of many meals. I also have been following from afar the debates over racial and religious integration in Germany – the good (as in the country's enthusiastic embrace of its multi-racial and multi-religious young national soccer/football team at the recent World Cup in South Africa) and the bad (the nutty claims about Muslims and Jews in a book by former German bank exec Thilo Sarrazin).

What do these two things have to do with each other?

I was pleased this morning to read this article in The New York Times about a Chinese-born restaurateur who has become a successful and popular Berlin fixture. Jianhua Wu's Hotspot has become, well, a hotspot in the city after it was featured in a popular chef's TV program. Wu pairs Chinese food with German Riesling wines, and the result has been a hit.

The Times article also shows that integration is no more exciting or difficult than it has been for anyone else in the world. He didn't set out to undermine Germany (such as Sarrazin apparently believes). Like pretty much everyone else, he set out to build a career and a family. He's done that, in the process falling in love with his adopted country. Again, like pretty much every other immigrant.

Battle of the Burger Pics: Chicago vs The Commonwealth

The new edition of Chicago magazine arrived in my mailbox yesterday, sporting a closeup cover photo of a giant juicy hamburger. It immediately reminded me of the December 2008 cover we put together for The Commonwealth magazine.

For our cover, we went to the nearest bistro here in San Francisco's financial district, and we bought two sandwiches. One was a turkey club, and the other was some vegetarian concoction. We combined them to form the sandwich with the height we needed for the cover. You can see the result in the photo. (No food was injured in the making of this cover shoot; all sandwich material was eagerly swallowed up by young staffers following the photo session.)

Chicago, of course, is owned by Tribune Company, so God only knows what sort of budget they had to make their burger. They probably had it prepared in orbit -- because a low-gravity environment makes the cheese melt more uniformly, as I'm sure you know -- and beamed it directly to their expensive Michigan Avenue studios, where a team of fashion experts and eunuchs spent days making it look just right.

Both covers are shown here. Which burger would you rather eat? Do we need Bobby Flay to do a throwdown?

Peanut Butter

Peanut butter, the world's greatest food (or food ingredient; depends on how picky you are), is being pulled off store shelves around the country.
Sure, this country trashed the world economic system, gutted the Constitution, waged (poorly) two foreign wars (one of them on questionable grounds), and debased our political discussion. But peanut butter ... that, sir, is too much!