Eats and Beers

Another One Bites The Dust

Mikkeller Bar Quietly Shutters Amid Pandemic-Driven Downturn

Mikkeller Bar, the Tenderloin beerhall that regularly found itself atop the city’s best bar lists, is no longer. According to a tipster, the famed Danish-style bar quietly broke the news to its staff earlier this week. Now its owner has put the business up on the market for just $390,000.

From the real estate listing:

The highly acclaimed Mikkeller Bar location is for sale.  This 40 Tap location created a beer lovers paradise, with the volume and profits to prove it. A unique Type 42 ABC license is in place, as a 21 and up establishment. A Type 47 license should be easy to obtain here. Mikkeller Bar created a gastropub style full menu from their fully equipped kitchen. The design of this two story ADA compliant space is top notch. All but the original raw brick walls and metal beams were upgraded and built out prior to opening in 2013. Featuring a stainless steel 40 tap system, amazing natural oak panel walling and banquets, custom lighting and more. This location offers late night dining and drinking options in this high traffic location. The location is loved by SF locals, tourists and tech workers alike. It also benefits from convention goers and the customers of the many neighboring hotels such as Park 55 Hilton. Additionally the famous Union Square is a short couple blocks away.

Despite turning a healthy six-figure profit with a reported $4 million in yearly revenue, months of mandatory closures for bars and restaurants proved too much for the business. Last month, Mikkeller found itself selling off its inventory of partially-filled kegs and canned beer. But it was not enough to stop the bleeding.

Now the bones of one of the most celebrated craft beer outputs are being sold off in a firesale.

[Photo: Tap Traveler/Flickr]

Unscrupulicious

Tacolicious Forks Over $900,000 Settlement for Screwing Over Workers

Tacolicious—the Mission restaurant that helps keep upper crust Tostitos fanboys out of Farolito—just coughed up a $900,000 settlement for not paying their workers proper wages. It turns out only charging $9.50 for a side of guacamole just isn’t enough to pay the bills.

According to Eater SF, the settlement worth 94,737 orders of guac stemmed from a 2015 lawsuit in which two line cooks alleged the restaurant burdened employees with “improper compensation, inaccurate wage statements, illegal deductions, and failure to pay out for overtime.”

“We love our people and take great care of our people,” Tacolicious’s owner, Joe Hargrave, told Eater in a Trumpian statement. “We chose to settle because if we chose to fight it, we’d go out of business.”

Thanks to the settlement keeping them in business, you can still grab a roasted butternut squash taco for $4.95.

[Photo: Adam O/Yelp]

Yum

The Tradesman: Meeting All Your $16.00 Peanut Butter Burger Needs

Putting their “gorgeous wood” front and center, Zarin Gollogly and Spencer Lafrenz of Harrison Woodworking + Design have joined the ever increasing number of trailblazing entrepreneurs to open a bar/restaurant on the now-definitely-a-real-thing-and-not-the-creation-of-a-restaurant-group “20th Street Corridor.”

According to SF Eater:

The smoking-hot 20th Street corridor has yet another new stunner to add to its arsenal in the form of The Tradesman, which opens today in the same complex that houses Central Kitchen, Trick Dog, Salumeria, and Sightglass.

In addition to serving beer and wine, The Tradesman, which opened this past Friday, sports a diverse menu. Offerings include:

  • goat tartare cured yolk, watercress, horseradish, country bread ($6.00)
  • birria goat stew cilantro, fresh made corn tortillas ($13.00)
  • chicken and waffle ($14.00)
  • burger cheddar, peanut butter, sesame brioch bun ($16.00)

So the next time you find yourself staring at the precious landmark-themed menu at Trick Dog wondering what’s a guy/gal got to do to just get a goddamn Dogfish Head Sixty-One and some goat tartare, The Tradesman’s got you covered.

[Photo: Patricia Chang via SF Eater]

Beers & Bondage

Citizen Fox: A New Brewery Headed For the Mission

The bombed out shithole across the street from the best vegetarian banh mi in the Mission is finally being renovated and put to use. Citizen Fox, a brewery/restaurant to be located on the corner of 18th and Mission Street, is slated to open in late 2014. And while I’m thankful that this isn’t some craft cocktail “experience” dropped on us by the visionaries behind the upcoming new and improved Pop’s, I’m made more than a little wary by the ratio of buzzwords to content on Citizen Fox’s blog.

It only takes three sentences for Rich Higgins, Citizen Fox’s brewmaster, to start talking about his plans to “offer education” and “develop community.” I’m beginning to wonder if it’s even possible for someone in 2014 San Francisco to drop the bullshit and just open a restaurant that serves food. Afterall, this is a brewery, not an expansion of the Women’s Building.

Other tired platitudes that make an appearance:

The opening beer menu at Citizen Fox will be influenced by the things I love most about the Mission District — it’s warmth, liveliness, and vibrancy. […]

I’ll draw on a variety of European brewing traditions […] while infusing them with the creativity that’s such a big part of San Francisco’s hip food, craft beer, and cocktail scene.

Maybe Citizen Fox really will contribute positively to the community (in addition to the obvious benefit that it’s another spot to get drunk on artisan craft brews). For example, in an attempt to follow through on their promise to offer education, Citizen Fox is proposing a 10 month, 35-hour a week internship program that requires the following duties:

  • Attentive learning, training, and communication
  • Working while being watched by a curious public
  • Entering dimly lit and/or enclosed spaces occasionally
  • Frequent bending over, squatting, working above your head, working on ladders, working on knees, working on the floor
  • Repeated gripping and manual twisting of clamps, tools, and hoses

This exciting “journey into the craft brewing industry” reads less like an education curriculum and more like the rider on Kink.com’s “Public Disgrace: Brewery Edition.” But, hey, it pays $15,000.00. So fuck it, I’ll see you at the brewery.

[via Inside Scoop]

Haute Damn

High-Class Hot Dogs: Thing That Exists Now

Hipster foodie sensibilities have already co-opted pickles, bacon, juice, mac ‘n’ cheese, ice cream, and cupcakes and made them fancy (I love fancy cupcakes), and now it seems the sights have been set on sexing up hot dogs.  That’s right, these aren’t your everyday Mission dogs: these are Haute Dogs:

The Haute Dog is an all-beef hot dog baked in a mustard-seed croissant, and then topped with whole grain mustard and housemade salt and vinegar beet chips. […]

“We decided to focus on our version of the hot dog, and have some fun with that. We started playing with different compound butters and different flavors for the croissant, though what we really liked was the texture — and that’s where the chips came in,” he says. In other words, it’s basically like the adult version of putting chips in your sandwich.

Craftsman and Wolves’ William Werner is responsible for the $6.50 luxdog, who tells the Chronicle the inspiration for meat parts stick innovation came from Japan, “A friend of mine brings in all this Japanese denim. Last time he was there, he texted me this picture of — I don’t even know what – some meat product.”

Japanese denim and unidentifiable meat? They’re definitely onto something here.

But not everyone is sold.  The Bold Italic has already taken a shot at the haute dog, comparing it a sun-baked clam:

Still, is it just me, or does the Haute Dog look like something that spent way too much time out in the sun? Or, if you’re pervy, does the bun not seem a little suggestive? Vaginal even?

That’s the most unappetizing vagina I’ve ever seen.  I can’t wait to see if they roll out a vegan version.

[Inside Scoop]

Thanks for the Analysis New York

NYT: Linea Caffe "The Kind of Food That Reflects the Tastes of the Mission"

Linea Caffe opened just six months ago in Duc Loi’s grim back corner space, but the New York Times has already discovered the joint, praising its style and the “mash-up” of menu items.  “Espresso, waffles, loud-and-proud salads: Only in San Francisco are these three at home on the same menu,” exclaims the Times, marveling at how only those zany San Francisco kids could possibly pair greens with beans.

According to the Lt. Waffle menu, the waffles are “Brussels-style” — a loose claim. The crispy potato waffle, made with mashed and powdered potatoes pressed into the griddle with hunks of pastrami from Mission Chinese, is served with sauerkraut and pickled mustard seeds. It’s not like anything you’ll find in Belgium. Ditto the buckwheat waffle, a pillowy confection topped with salmon roe, crème fraîche and dill pickles. Add a chopped salad, with romaine, salted radish, fried pieces of tortilla and queso fresco, and you have a meal.

This is the kind of food that reflects the tastes of the Mission District, the neighborhood that’s now the gastronomic epicenter of the city: In this part of town, anything goes on the plate. But being unconventional only counts for so much; the crowd at Linea is there because the coffee, waffles and salads are worth it.

So, is Linea about to blow up as the next ‘it’ Mission coffeeshop-cum-restaurant?  Possibly.  When the Times gave Weird Fish—right around the corner from Linea—a glowing review in 2008, there was a line outside for years.  But today?  You can pretty much grab a table whenever you please, despite the restaurant remaining one of the neighborhood’s better splurge meals.

As for Linea “[reflecting] the tastes of the Mission District?” We’ll have to take New York’s word for that.

[NY Times]

Missed Connections Comix

Zantes Indian Pizza

I usually avoid making comics out of posts that reference specific businesses, but I used to live up the street from Zantes and if you’ve never tried their Indian Vege Pizza, it will truly expand your pizza related consciousness. While we’re talkng about pizza, I have some new t-shirts for sale.

Dear Sucker

San Franciscans Wait Two Hours in the Rain For Day-Old New York Bagels

Photo by @marmotilla

San Francisco reached peak pop-up pretentiousness this morning as throngs of bored foodies waited for “nearly two hours” for day-old New York bagels.

Taking place at Dear Mom, the Mission’s magnet of mediocrity, budding restauranteurs importers Sonya Haines and Wes Rowe unveiled their “Eastside Bagels” hustle, which sees Russ & Daughters bagels flown in from New York and flipped for $6 (bagel with cream cheese) to $12 (full bagel sandwich).  According to tweets from Andy Cooper, who suffered through the humiliation so we didn’t have to, the entire ordeal was a pointless exercise in doom and decadence:

 

The news of slow service and sell-outs led to an artisan riot, as moist customers raised their decorative pitchforks and hurled mildly-restrained criticism at the non-chefs.  Some poor schmuck even came up from San Jose, much to her frowny face:

While we’ve become dizzy with all the eye-rolling, we cannot help be impressed by the brilliance of this pop-up and its ability to lure people into the most degrading “yuppie bread line” possible.  Here are some other pop-up ideas to subsidize your next East Coast vacation:

  • “Box O’ Joe” Irish coffee pop-up at Buena Vista.
  • $12 reheated slice of Crazy Dough’s.
  • Bottles of water, filled from the bathroom sink of a West Philly Wawa.
  • $2 week-old Dunkin’ Donuts Munchkins.
  • Scratched Dropkick Murphy’s CDs purchased at various Quincy garage sales.
  • Coolers full of authentic snow collected from Brooklyn (gross old dirty snow, not the fresh stuff).
  • Rosemunde pop-up, featuring sausages imported from Rosemunde Williamsburg.
  • Bagels purchased from C-Town Supermarket that you claim Danny Bowien breathed on.

Go forth and make your money, young jetset entrepreneurs. And congratulations to you, foodies of San Francisco, for effectively releasing any claim of superiority over New York City.

Things About SF Food Because the Only Thing People Agree is Still Good in SF is Food

The Pain of Living Without El Farolito

In honor of SF Sketchfest kicking off this weekend, SF Weekly put out a comedy issue this week, featuring a grip of essays from local comedians celebrating the Bay.  They’re all worth a read, but Moshe Kasher’s piece, which swings from sarcastic to wistful, was among the best:

The Bay Area is special. We have something that no one else does: the highest rent in the universe. But also other stuff! I live in L.A. now (release the hounds!), so I know all too acutely the pain of living without El Farolito. I know the suffering that comes when, upon awakening, the stark reality of a cup of Philz being more than six hours away hits your brain with more disruptive force than a Google bus displacing your grandparents from their neighborhood.

This is the nightmare I live through. Having tasted the manna of the Bay, I now trudge through the stark reality of “life” in Los Angeles. I am barely able to get up most mornings and make it to my numerous television call times and constant high-powered Hollywood lunch meetings. What’s the point?

But I come back to my home — the place I grew up, the place I started doing comedy. The place I learned the difference between farm-to-table tomato foam and farm-to-table tomato water.

Read on.

(And if you want to see Moshe sling jokes, he’s performing tonight at Cobb’s and the Mission’s own Verdi Club as part of Sketchfest.)

[Photo by Tamara Mann]

Golden Era Loses its Lease

I found myself up in the Tenderloin the other night, hungering for Golden Era's vegan drumsticks and the warm glow of cult propaganda on the television, but the restaurant had gone kaput.

I was hoping there might be something good to the closure—perhaps the owners going on to bigger and even better things?—but, sadly, it's just another verse in San Francisco's sad song:

LOST OUR LEASE.

Golden Era will be closed permanently at this location starting Monday, November 25, 2013. We thank you for your patronage in the past 15 years. We will miss you all. Love, Love….

We reached out to the restaurant over Facebook and are yet to hear back.  But according to some folks on Yelp, the landlord jacked their rent when the lease was over and were economically showed them the door.

On Facebook, they announced, “we are working very hard to find our new home in SF.”  We'll update if we hear more.

[Photo by Jovan J]

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