The Food Diaries

A few favourite San Francisco food spots

For all your hipster coffee needs: Ritual Roasters 1026 Valencia, 2157 San Francisco, - The Mission

If you’ve never experienced Pork Happy Hour (drinks, custom cuts, snacks): Fatted Calf (Wed evenings), 320 Fell St, San Francisco - Hayes Valley

Watch foreign (and indie) movies in a large, outdoor courtyard, while sampling fab California food & cocktails: Foreign Cinema, 2534 Mission, San Francisco - The Mission

Sample the best in-the-world salted caramel & chocolate ice cream: Bi-Rite: 3692 18th St (at Dolores), San Francisco

Foraging in Sonoma - chanterelles mushroom stir fry with eggs

Sonoma county in the heart of the California wine country is a great place to forage for wild mushrooms in the cooler months - especially chanterelles. You can find out more at the Sonoma County Mycological Association.

Once you get your hands on some lovely chanterelles, what to do with them? Here’s a nice breakfast/brunch-type way of serving them.

Take about a cup of cleaned and sliced chanterelles mushrooms and add to a pan with a good knob of butter. Throw in a finely chopped shallot and stir around till the everything has softened nicely (making sure any excess water from the mushrooms have evaporated). Season with sea salt and pepper. Serve with a simple scramble of eggs and some rye toast on the side.

Serves 2.

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Chino Farms & the Cult of the Vegetable

This is a fabulous local vegetable producer based in Rancho Santa Fe (just east of Del Mar and north of San Diego). It was started by a Japanese immigrant couple (interned in the US during the Second World War) who were keen to develop a small family business focused on variety and taste. Hence a visit to their Vegetable Shop will no doubt surprise you with its amazing selection on offer, many of which I had rarely ever seen before; purple Japanese sweet potatoes, pink carrots, red kale, candy striped beets all jostle for your attention in a very limited space (it really is just a stand). A summertime visit will produce a similarly extravagant variety of tomatoes and other summer vegetable and fruit offerings.

Don’t bother calling ahead to find out what’s on offer for the day (you just have to show up and see for yourself), don’t try and place an order (unless you are Alice Waters from Chez Panisse fame, who first helped spread the word about Chino Farms and is a big fan herself of the Slow Food movement), but do pay a visit if you are in the San Diego area (about a 20 minute drive from downtown).

Oh, and there are no prices displayed anywhere. Just expect to pay at least double or more what you would pay in a regular supermarket. But boy is it worth the premium.

FIX: An oasis of calm with decent coffee in Echo Park, LA

You’ll recognise this pattern in a city near you: a down-at-heels part of town slowly gets colonised by the hip/arty crowd. They get busy opening cool bars, decent cafes, vintage shops and art galleries. Soon the neighbourhood becomes gentrified beyond recognition, and when American Apparel finally opens a branch, you know it’s all over. Time for the hipsters to move onto to the next up-and-coming part of town. 

And so to LA, where Silverlake (the area east of Hollywood and west of downtown), was once the bastion of the edgy hipsters now taken over by nearby Echo Park in the coolness stakes. Goodbye to the weekend queues around the block at Intelligentsia. Hello instead to FIX, an oasis of calm and easy neighbourliness, where it is still possible to nab a table with ease on a sunny Saturday afternoon, and where the coffees are as good any you’ll find (the blends are actually provided by Intelligentsia).