Sweet Baby Woodruff, SF

Sweet Woodruff in the Tenderloin at 798 Sutter. Open for about a year now, and part of the Sons & Daughters family.

Popped in there based on Saran's rec, just before Stoppard's Arcadia at the A.C.T. (Because I am a fucking grown-up who goes to see three-hour plays on a Thursday evening. And not someone who passes out after work, then wakes up at 9 pm to wash a couple of dishes and peruse trashy pop culture blogs before falling back asleep.)

Incredibly friendly staff. 

I take a certain masochistic pleasure (courtesy my abusive, borderline personality disordered, Chinese mother) in getting surly responses from the wait staff at Kingdom of Dumpling, or being forced to wait for my entire goddamn party at Eiji. So I think I have a pretty thick skin when it comes to rarefied dining environments and wait staff who think being bitchy conveys either 1) their own superiority (see anything in the Marina) or 2) the superiority of their establishment.

Sweet Woodruff is the opposite of that. Their food is goo...nay, great enough to be bitchy about, but...they're not. The folks there are upbeat and chatty and serious about the food. 

There isn't really a front or back of the house, and I'd recommend sitting at the front counter so you can gawk at the food prep. If you're into that sort of thing. We watched the chef putz with a new dish (chicken schnitzel and brussel sprouts), all the while wondering what the hell he was prepping since it didn't look like anything listed on the menu. Because it wasn't. 

Drink: the wine comes in little jars. Which is kind of twee, but I guess part of the non-pretentious ethos of the place, but which, in an unfortunate twist of pinter-hipsterism becomes pretention. My Arnold Palmer had the perfect balance of citrus acid and tea tannins. Let's be real, I'll drink a too sweet Palmer, or even that Arizona chemical bomb, but ain't it nice to have low expectations and then be pleasantly surprised?

And the food:

All three of us ordered the gnocchi (peas, bacon, wild mushrooms, +$2 for ham). Because I mean, come on...gnocchi. My greedy self thought the $2 addition was getting me ham and bacon, but alas.

Light and rich gnocchi, sweet peas, melt in yo' mouth ham, and the chewy earthy umami of 'shrooms. Eat this.

Baby-faced chef (French Laundry, Michael Mina) making quenelles (of the chocolate pot de creme?) for our free dessert that never was--we had to run to the play.

If I didn't live in Oakland, I'd come here once a week because sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came. 

TL; DR: Get thee to Sweet Woodruff.

Good Friday

On this Good Friday, I performed the ritual sangria-drinking ceremony, which comes from the Latin sanguis, meaning blood, in remembrance of the blood that Christ, as my personal Lord and Savior, shed for me on THIS VERY DAY OF THE GREGORIAN CALENDAR.

Then, I ate Peruvian rotisseried chicken with three types of sauces, with the sauces representing the Holy Trinity and symbolizing the sacrifice Jesus made when he died a virgin, never able to get lost in the sauce like Usher.

Fuckin' Gluttony, NY

Ate myself into a stupor Monday night, such that I woke up at 5:30 in the a.m., whimpering and listening to my friend hacking her lungs out upstairs. And it wasn't even the shits or the vomits, it was just this terrible sense that I'd gone too far and that maybe my stomach would never be the same.

I rubbed my belly clock-wise like my yogis have taught me. (Sort of like they taught me how to be moderate and mindful in all things. Such as eating.) It made me feel a little better.

Spent Tuesday out and about and was only able to eat a fraction of what I can typically put down because 1) my stomach wanted to vomit itself out of my body and crawl away (as stomachs are wont), shaking a fist and cursing me and 2) my kidneys were melting.

It's Wednesday afternoon, and I'm still feelin' skeeved about food, so I'll leave you with Monday's Exhibit B:


Bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit, at Ray's, 3rd and St. Mark's.

Why did I eat this?

Because I'm a fucking asshole. A Jesus killer. A motherfucker. A son of a donkey-raping dog.

It was the single biggest mistake of my life.

I'll never forgive myself. Never.

Zenkichi, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY = Waste of Stomach Space

This is one of those times where you don't (or do) listen to the Yelp. Basically, 4 stars from the great, unwashed hoi polloi or a few lone Cassandras speaking truth to power: "Zenkichi is border line garbage food served in baby bowls."

I know. Them's some mixed metaphors and etc.

Laura made 'vations for Saturday, despite my reservations, because she had a $50 gift certificate to the place (expiration: 12/24).

So it is, and so it shall be, world without end: money over bitches.

The place feels appropriately Japanese-y--or what someone who has never been to Japan (comme moi) thinks of as Japanese-y. Some sticks of bamboo in the entrance way (welcome to the Orient! We are Siamese, if you please!), dark wood and mirrors, and the whole trope of the place: little booths individually curtained off with bamboo shades.

Basically, it looked like this:



Anyhoo, the decision was made to order two omakeses and some a la carte dishes. And, it was terrible (the food, not the decision). But one of those terribles that slowly encroaches upon your consciousness, as you withhold your judgment from course to course, thinking, "that wasn't that bad--surely it'll get better," but then it doesn't.


Miso soup, cabbage, daikon. Whatevs.


Maguro Carpaccio (tuna sashimi)--green yuzu pepper sauce. Thanks for the micro-chives. Makes a girl go from ashy to classy.


Simmered duck, soft egg, baby greens, sweet duck dressing. This one was a'ight. Mostly spinach greens, au jus (had to ax my friend--"What's that word that sounds like 'jew' or 'jiu' for sauce?"), and a soft egg on the side to be stirred and mixed in.


Cold tofu, bonito flakes, green onions, ginger (I fink?), and some kind of dashi.


Chilled plate: scallops and daikon in sesame sake-malt sauce (foreground); hamachi sashimi; mess o' shrooms (top left); squid (top right).

The scallop, dear reader, it tasted...fishy. A thing that was in a shell that was in a plastic bin that bumped around city streets and began to marinate in that quiet desperation of city life, and hate itself.

I had been waiting for a flavor to come kick me in the teeth or make fireworks in my mouf or wrap me in a bear-skin rug.

And it's after the bite of scallop that I realized the true destiny of our dinner, and I wanted to be all Edith Piaf-y and singing in a smokey room in my attenuated voice that everyone would find so charming, except my song would be "Oui, Je Regrette Tout."

Next!


Mess o' skrimps and edamame and tomato (top right).


"Meaty oysters grilled on the shell with red-miso sauce. Salty & sweet." Yes, salty and sweet completely obfuscating the taste of the oyster.


"Oyster, uni sea urchin, shrimp, Japanese mushrooms:
 oven-grilled in béchamel sauce." I think there was uni in here in the sense that they probably said, "haha, there is no uni in here" as they were plating the dish. This also was a'ight--mostly in the sense that it reveled in its mediocrity and was just like, seafood + butter = yum. I'd eat this shit again. If it were free.


"Zenkichi Salad
: homemade tofu, baby greens, sesame dressing." [stone cold stare] Zenkichi Salad, I'm mad-doggin' you.


Shirako & Shungiku Tempura: 
creamy cod milt & green chrysanthemum leaves (Kakiage-style, which just means chopped up and fried like fritters--yeah, Professor Google). I dunno where the milt is. But I went to the bathroom and got lost coming back, so maybe my dining companions et it all. The fuckers. (Edit: axed the bitches about the cod milt and they said they did not notice any creamy, white shit. Lies, all lies.)


Saikyo Miso Cod: 
grilled black cod in Kyoto miso marinade. I don't know why that piece closer to the camera is spinning like that. It makes me dizzy. Stop looking at it, edb. We dug into it before I had a chance to iPhotograph it (we're buzzed and we just want to eat something delicious and we were hoping this would be it)--iPhresh-ish and essentially iPhlavorless.


Salmon simmered in a clear broth with some kind of peppercorn (?) and 4 slices of snow peas. At this point, we are just shrugging at each other defeatedly. I'm looking at Laura and experiencing a case of I Tol' You Sos--hearkening back to her exact words: "4 stars out of 355 reviews! how is that not good?"

[Laura, I am retroactively mad-doggin' you.]


"Berkshire Pork Belly Donburi: pork belly sauteed with ginger soy sauce, served over rice." Joey and I ate most of this, because 1) he's a dude and 2) I have a hard time leaving food on the table, even if if it I'm full and even if it's just a'ight.

And the two orders of dessert:


Frozen Black Sesame Mousse--basically, black sesame ice cream. What did Mammy say? You ain't nothin' but a mule tricked out in a horse harness? I see you, "mousse."


Mineoka Tofu: milk tofu made with heavy cream and kudzu starch, strawberries, and some triflin' azuki red beans. A not very good blancmange. Here, I quit while I was ahead (behind?), because I didn't want to ingest any more not-very-delicious-calories.

You know, I can do simple. I don't need everything to be fried or drowning in butter. But if it's simple, if we're going for ascetic, which I think they are--sometimes--I want the ingredients to speak for themselves, to be so fresh they make you wanna slap somebody, to come together in clear, ringing tones. And they didn't. Two words:

Hot. Mess.

All hope abandon ye who enter here. Zenkichi, you have brought shame on omakase.

Zenkichi,