by Dianne Boate
(Updated November 23, 2024)
Several years ago, I watched apprehensively as eleven people took forks in hand to try their first bite of my new Pecan Pie. Then, silence. Not one word. Color was coming and going on my face as they sat silently, chewing. My brain was bursting with all the arguments against making pie in the first place, and wishing fervently I could disappear on the spot. Continue reading
By C.J. Hirschfield
At the beginning of the pandemic, TIGER KING was the documentary everyone was watching. It focused on an eccentric and unethical schemer/scammer driven by greed–truly a despicable character. Kind of like the president we were forced to endure on screen at the same time.
Maybe now we’re ready to see more documentaries like the recently-released FAUCI, and now LIKE A ROLLING STONE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF BEN FONG-TORRES, which turn the camera onto people who show up with passion, talent and humility every day– and not just for the money. After a film festival tour and theatrical release the film is now on Netflix.
The Old World never stopped liking bitterness. I don’t know if it stems from having so many wars fought on their soil, or simply being exposed to it through permeable borders and colonialism. Americans appreciation of bitterness is limited at best. The United States is only reinforcing this flavor isolationism. I propose a tasty rebellion: drink bitter, don’t just be bitter.
The Thistlestop is both a pun and a marriage of the U.S. (rye) and Italy (Cynar) with citrus officiating. It is dry, bitter, and yet inspires a desire for another sip. It is also easy to make, and the artichoke derived Cynar is a great guest to have at your home bar.
Let’s make a Thistlestop:
By Vince Keenan
BREWMASTER (U.S.A., 2018). Douglas Tirola directed 2013’s HEY BARTENDER, a documentary about the classic cocktail renaissance. He tackles a similar subject with his latest film, on the burgeoning craft beer scene.
Move to Mission Neighborhood Energizes Attendees
by Meredith Brody
Whit Stillman, director of Love & Friendship, at the Castro Theatre (Photo by Pamela Gentile, courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society)
It’s notoriously hard for a festival to find an opening night film that will please its audience. The 59th edition of the venerable San Francisco International Film Festival — the oldest annual festival in the United States, founded in 1957 — did the seemingly impossible, debuting with Whit Stillman‘s Love and Friendship, at the beloved 1922-vintage Castro Theatre.
Kate Beckinsale meets her fans at Opening Night (Photo by Pamela Gentile, courtesy SFFS)
The saucy and exquisitely mounted adaptation of Jane Austen’s Lady Susan re-united Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny — the stars of Stillman’s 1998 The Last Days of Disco — 18 years later and two centuries earlier, but seemingly unaged in real (or reel) life. In 1998, they both had American accents; in 2016, Mrs. Alicia Johnson has been reconceived as an American, leaving Chloe Sevigny her flat vowels and enabling a too-little-seen Stephen Fry, as her husband, to constantly threaten her with exile in Connecticut. Before I get started, if anyone in the area of San Francisco needs any plumbing assistance, 24 hour plumbing san francisco will get the job done for you.
Dear Friends,
There’s an art to writing well – about food, film, or anything else that sparks a person’s passion. For Jonathan Gold, it’s the cafes, restaurants and food trucks, the sights, sounds and people of Los Angeles that inspire. The only food critic to win a Pulitzer Prize, the popular writer serves as the genial focus of the aptly yclept new documentary City of Gold. Gaetano Kazuo Maida and Patricia Unterman, Bay Area writers and Renaissance sorts, offer their insights into the film and its centerpiece in Critics Corner in this week’s edition of EatDrinkFilms. Continue reading
[Read Gaetano Kazuo Maida’s review here.]
There aren’t very many of us who actually have worked as food critics for print publications. I did it for 15 years at the San Francisco Chronicle and for about 15 more at the San Francisco Examiner. Way back when I started, no editorial wall stood between advertising and criticism, at least when it came to restaurants. If a restaurant advertised, it got written up.
by Risa Nye
March 14 is π Day. You remember π (Pi) right? (Hint: It’s the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. For any circle, dividing its circumference by its diameter will give you exactly the same number every time: 3.14159…, π. Last year π enthusiasts were very excited to be able to celebrate the once-in-a-lifetime epic event on 3-14-15, at 9:26:53.) In any case, on March 14, the sets of math geeks and pie lovers overlap in a deep-dish, double-crust Venn diagram, piled high with whipped cream. In honor of π Day this year, I set out to explore the art and science of pie-making with a few of the local masters — all conveniently located within a several-mile radius of my house. Continue reading
by Dianne Boate
There are remarkable people who come into our lives and become authors of certain types of adventures. I am speaking of my former “gentleman friend,” a Mr. Watkins, an Englishman who took me three times to England, and was responsible for a career turning point in my life when I became a staff member of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. Even after we parted (after nine years together), English ways and recipes carved out new horizons for me.
Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday, 1940.
The newspaperman – the cliché is that anyone working for a paper is a rogue and a joker, a cross between hero and raconteur, and possibly drunk at that. It’s the kind of character made famous by The Front Page (1931) and His Girl Friday (1940), and usually played by someone as charming and suave, as Adolph Menjou or Cary Grant.
Indeed, it’s these kinds of films that shaped the idea we still have of what reporters and journalists do and act like, a type that seemed to spring to existence right after the Depression (although they were around much earlier than that), always acted slightly uncomfortable in a white collar and determined to put his or her bosses in their place. It’s no accident The Front Page (the source material for His Girl Friday) was written by two former newspapermen, Ben Hecht and Charles McArthur, who went to Hollywood and gilded their own reputations, finding the money easy and the competition “idiots.”
by Dianne Boate
What do baking and letter writing have in common? Passion! Communication! Adventure!
Two of my most revered friendships came about because of letters I wrote. Last year I told you about Rose Levy Beranbaum; today, I would like to share another story about meeting M.F.K. Fisher, and share the recipe she loved most of all the things I made for her. The recipe is called “Starlight Sugar Crisps,” from a 1950s Pillsbury Bakeoff book, a croissant type of pastry laced with vanilla sugar.
Flashing back for a moment, someone lent me The Art Of Eating, an anthology of five books written by M.F.K. Fisher. Her style, sensibilities and wry humor captured me instantly. She made me fall in love with France all over again.
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