Eats and Beers

The Electric Burrito Acid Test

Johnny0 of Burrito Justice, a leader in iPhone photography, figured it would be good idea to invert the colors of a burrito, noting it looks like “Chipotle, inside a reactor.”  Or painfully disproportionate genitalia wearing a recycable contraceptive.

Just Another Tuesday Night at Mission Hill Saloon

I don't go to Mission Hill Saloon nearly often enough, but after reading about the mayhem that goes down there on tastr, I'm tempted to change my ways:

Tonight at the Saloon, a man of many addictions with a bike seat necklace, walked into the bar and demanded a drink. When denied, he turned around and promptly downed a shot of hot wax from the candle nearest him. He stared everyone deep into their eyes and walked out. Wtf?

And if that isn't enough insanity for you, be sure to read up on their Buffalo Trace / Session Lager drink special.

Waffle Holocaust

Did you know that Eggo waffles were invented in San Jose?  If that's not reason enough to Kill Your Eggo and banish its cold, delicious buttermilk corpse into the deepest of graves, then I don't know what is.

Taco-mergency Taco Ambulance Revealed

As commenter Adam noted yesterday, it appears our dreams of having a fleet of Mexican fast food first responders saving us from hangovers and malnourishment have been crushed: the Taco-mergency taco truck is in fact a movie prop (note the 555 phone number).  I maintain this is the best idea to come to mobile food vending since the advent of the ice cream truck.  What this town needs isn't another boring food truck, but a fire engine hosing you down with beans and cheese and a swat team shooting you in the face with guacamole.

Someone, please make this happen.

(Thanks Steve!)

Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem Opens on Mission

This spot opened the other night in the former Bissap Baobab space on Mission and 19th.  The grill is not yet opened, the video games aren't hooked up, and they got their supply of beer only yesterday (three bucks for a red-white-and-blue Bud), but it seems like it's an alright spot for those interested in loud electric music over the usual metal tracks played at nearby Bender's.

The place is owned by the proprietors of Russian Hill's Bullitt and Tonic bars, so that alone pretty much will tells you what to expect.  The interior is pretty minimal with almost nothing on the walls, big tables, small black pleather stumps to sit on, and no Muppet memorabilia anywhere. However, the bartender who happened to look like Animal (and dismissed the idea of an “opening,” saying they got their license so they just started pouring drinks to whomever walked in the door) indicated there is still a bunch of work to do on the place.

Let's just hope they import their killer sweet potato tater tots to the Mission.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention they will have Jameson on tap “soon.”

It's a Taco-mergency

My life is a perpetual taco-mergency.  If it were not for Farolito and their 3am closing time, I'd probably have bleed out along Mission Street or outside of Pop's years ago.  But the problem with brick and mortar bean and cheese hospitals is you still need to make your way there, which is difficult if Jameson or a stray bullet has rendered your limbs useless.  But a taco truck pulling up to Bender's at 75 miles an hour with the red and white flashing and the siren song of tortillas and diarrhea echoing against Victorian architecture?  That, my friends, is a game changer.

An additional Twitter search indicates that this taco truck is parked outside of Alamo Sq. for the filming of “Five Year Engagement.”  Is this $2-savior-on-wheels a cheap film prop or an new San Francisco establishment?  If you're in the know, do clue us in.

[Tablehopper Tweet, NY Theater Tweet]

Carlos Club Permanently Shut Down For Sketchy Biz

According to Mission Local, the Department of Alcohol Beverage Control has permanently closed Carlos Club outside the 24th Mission BART station for “sketchy cocktail waitressing”:

According to Danielle Shafer, supervisor investigator with the Department of Alcohol Beverage ControlA six-month department investigation, which began 2009 and completed early 2010, found bar owner Carlos Gutierrez and his employees guilty of profit sharing – that is, hiring cocktail waitresses to pressure patrons into buying drinks at a higher rate than normal.

The investigator saw Carlos Club waitresses going around charging customers between $5 and $10 more than the bar’s standard prices and splitting the profits between owner and bar girl employee. This is, said  Shafer, “common practice in certain areas but illegal in San Francisco.” The practice is especially typical, she said, in Asia and Latin America.

The article goes on to say that Carlos has a year to get the liquor license “transferred to an another location and owner” and the business must remain closed until a new owner comes forward.   How long it it will take for this to become the next Bar Tartine or French-inspired Mexican-American Tequila-Whiskey Cocktail Lounge remains unclear.

[Mission Local | Photo by Thomas Hawk]

Local Brewers Create Eponymous Beverage For The Google Shuttle Crowd

Ever since the FDA ban of Four Loko, I've felt that the next logical and questionably legal step in the alcohol-and-stimulant game was to combine beer with Viagra.  Considering the brilliance of Sparks and Four Loko was giving consumers the ability to get hammered yet stay alert until sunrise without slamming lines of cocaine, it only seems sensible to have a beer that prevents whiskey dick.

As it turns out, depraved minds think alike.  Sea Monkey Fuck-Juice (yes, that's actually their name), the local brewers behind the “delicious; inevitable” Valencia Street Gentrification Porter, claim to have fused the two lascivious substances together:

My grandfather once said to me, “Son, you can lead a horse to water, but a man you should lead to beer.” For him, brewing beer was more than just a way to make the days go by. Nothing came before beer, not work, not raising his kids, not even his own health. The only thing he loved half as much as beer was a small collection of Sea Monkeys he kept in a glass jar on his bedside table. Deep down he knew they were just brine shrimp, but that didn't stop him from loving those little creatures with all his heart. Every night he'd throw in a chicken leg or two to keep his pets fed, and every morning he'd clean out the jar and start over because Sea Monkeys don't eat chicken.

Then once in a while he'd wake up with a mad twinkle in his eye and grab a sack of special powder from under the bed. He'd call all us kids into the room and we'd watch as he sprinkled a few pinches of powder over the Sea Monkeys. Before long they'd start pairing up and grabbing onto each other, their little tails flailing as they spiraled like drunken fireworks around and around the jar. Then the old man would add some more powder and the Sea Monkeys would lose their grip on monogamy, one shrimp grabbing onto another onto another in a kind of erotic conga line. And of course after a few more pinches of powder the Sea Monkeys would go completely berserk, swimming around in a dizzying and frenzied aquatic orgy. Eventually the little shrimp would get tired and stop swimming, and then with a somber grin he'd dump the poor, spent creatures down the drain, saying “It's true what they say, if you have to die, die with passion, die with dignity, die in a terrifying underwater sex romp.”

By now you've probably worked out the secret ingredient in my grandfather's recipe.

If you dare to read on, you'll note that they take a shot at the FDA and proclaim that they've temporarily removed “Sea Monkey Love Salt” from the receipe until it is tested for mass consumption, which might explains why Dolores Park yesterday didn't erupt into a uncontrollable orgy of hipsters with an appetite for orgasms fit only for subhuman punks and dogs.

The hardening effects of the beer aside, the brew is quite delicious; and I typically hate porters.  Smooth without lacking flavor, just enough hops to give the beer some taste without offending the palate of the PBR crowd: it's the perfect beer for summer.  The beer is even carted around Dolores Park in a Google-branded duffel bag, an obvious nod to the porter's name, which one of the brewers claim was a consolation prize for a failed interview at the company.  Best of all, they sell these homebrews for the same price as Cold Beer Cold Water flips his generic brews.  And while they lack the swagger and sex appeal of the kingpin of illicit alcohol sales, they make one helluva product.

[Sea Monkey Fuck-Juice]

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