Weird Fish

Having dinner with Bill reminded me of how I need more guy friends, friends who will get drinks with me on a Tuesday night, eat fried food dipped in a mayo-like sauce and not flinch, and get me home safely.

We started our night at Weird Fish, a tiny, new place on Mission at 18th that makes you notice that it serves sustainably raised fish and that, according to some internet research on my part but no real-world tasting, serves a good tempeh version of fish and chips.

The space is narrow and long, only seating about 20 or so. The walls are painted a pale blue and there are funky, nautically-themed nick-nacks hanging about. The care the owners took in the details of creating an inviting and unique space really show, especially in the design of the small menu (I wanted to stick one in my purse). Bill was happy to see the fancy bottles of beer displayed beyond the bar area in the back.

The menu is as eclectic as the space. There's a section for "Fried Food," a fish and chips section with meat and non-meat versions, a section for "Lonely Sandwiches," and a section at the bottom of the small menu reserved for the "Suspicious Fish Dish." I was intrigued.

We started with the fried food: fried green beans, fried pickled, and fried calamari. It turned out to be a lot of fried food (these weren't no small appetizers) and our table was quickly covered in fried goodness. The green beans were good, although I couldn't really tell that they were green beans. The green The fried pickles were a fantastic treat--crisp and salty on the outside but juicy and sour just underneath that batter. The calamari was the worst of our fried food trio. It was a little tough though well seasoned.

I couldn't resist ordering the Suspicious Fish Dish. That was the only description of what would be coming to me. And, once it arrived, it turned out to be poached trout with a cactus and caper sauce over a bed of quinoa and zucchini. It looked very healthy and had the taste of hippie, if hippie could be a flavor. It wasn't bad and it was probably what my body needed after all that fried food, but I wanted a burst of flavor not poached trout.

Bill, on the other hand, continued the fried food trend by ordering the fish and chips. He also had a large bottle of beer and I had an Anchor Steam. We finished it all off with a slice of lemon tart.

[Off the subject but supposedly relevant: Our hostess was a woman who used to come into 826 to drop off a young girl for tutoring but whose name I can't recall, and Mo and Janice turned up at Weird Fish too. Small world.]

Bill and I continued our Tuesday evening down the street at Bruno's, where I had two vodka tonics, and we impressed our waitress with our cocktail-napkin-rose skills. And, then we journeyed further down the street to Lazlo's. I should have learned my lesson earlier in the night from not choosing my dining options based on names, but I couldn't help myself and order the Incredible Lightness of Being, which turned out to be too sour and too tart. I ended the night with one of my old man favorites, a whiskey sour.

[Off the subject yet again but supposedly relevant as well: The man sitting next to me at the bar of Lazlo's was the Asian Man from Street Wars. He had on the whole get-up--mustache, hat, long black shirt with white cuffs--and had with him envelopes of what must have been the profiles of players. I asked him about his moustache, and his response was kinda dirty and not fit to type but involved his girlfriend. He, however, wouldn't divulge details of the game.]

Piccino

Carlo started working at a new restaurant Piccino about a month ago. I had been hearing talk of it, all of which came from Colin and Eleanor since it’s co-owned by Colin’s dad’s wife, and wanted to pay a visit. But, because it only serves lunch (no dinner yet) Mondays through Fridays, getting there would be tough. I started to plot sick days, long lunches, half days, fake doctor’s appointments, anything to be able to eat there some time between the hours of 11:30AM and 3PM. But, thanks to the holiday that is Martin Luther King Jr. Day (god bless his soul), I got my chance. Shari picked me up, and I took my directions (no thanks to Google Maps) and we drove out to the Dogpatch.

Piccino is a bright blue place with a cheery façade and large windows on the corner of 22^nd and Tennessee. We stepped inside and were warmly welcomed. I was surprised at how small Piccino was. It looked like it could hold no more than 15 people and even those seats were placed snuggly next to each other. Shari and I chose a small table next to the bar and under the coffee menu.

There are only four people who run the show at Piccino. There’s Carlo, Margherita (she’s Colin’s dad’s wife), Margherita’s sister, and the tall, gray-haired Blue Bottle Coffee Man (at my last visit to the Blue Bottle garage-door stand on Linden the gray-haired man was not to be found and three people who I had never seen there before were making my latte and cappuccino; I now know where he’s gone). And, it makes for very unique and charming service. The Blue Bottle Coffee Man handed us our menus from behind the coffee bar and told us to “holler” with our order when we were ready. I’ve never had to holler my order over a coffee bar before in all my dining experience, and if it was someone other than the Coffee Man with his gray locks covering his eyes and his nice smile that reveals teeth adorned with braces I might not have so charmed. But, I hollered away, “We’d like the Piccino Special and the Margherita pizza please.”

As we waited for our food, we watched Carlo bring out dishes to the other tables and greet other friends. I felt like a spy watching him without him knowing that we were there but I wasn’t about to yell out his name while he was at work. And, he noticed us anyhow and said hello. He then brought out a cauliflower and radicchio salad with raisins, pine nuts, and balsamic vinaigrette along with a small dish of green olives. The salad was spicy from the radicchio, sweet from the raisins, and slightly tangy from the vinaigrette, and delicious as a combination. And, those olives were amazing—subtly salty for olives, tender, and not heavy on the tongue.

Shortly after, Margherita’s sister brought out the first of our pizzas. The Piccino Special has a white cheese of some sort that wasn’t mozzarella (I can’t remember what and feel that if I guess wrongly I may cause offense), Meyer lemon, and arugula. It was an interesting combination but one that worked. The thin, crisp crust was barely topped with the toppings but there was no need for a heavy-handed onslaught. The cheese, lemon, and arugula acted not as the stars of the dish but as equal players with the crust, and there was something remarkably fresh about the flavors that needed neither further adornment nor piles of excessiveness. In a world filled with Extreme Pizza, subtlety has become a lost art form but it seems like it is being well appreciated at Piccino.

Our tiny table was full already when Margherita came out next with the pizza which shares her name. She asked if we were Eleanor’s friends and introduced herself with a firm shake of a flour-dusted hand. We looked at the pizza in her hand, then to our table, back to the pizza, and then up at her. There was no space for the pizza on our tiny table, so she placed our pizza just an arm’s reach away on the bar. The women on the other side of the bar eyed our pie, which made me nervous. Shari and I needed to stake a claim to that pizza, so we piled it on top of our other one and took a slice. Once again, the pizza was remarkably simple—cheese, sauce, and crust—and delicious. The sauce was fresh and tasted of sun-ripened tomatoes, the crust crisp, and the cheese just chewy enough.

As if that wasn’t enough, Carlo then appeared again with a plate carrying a small round sandwich of some sort. I’d never called a sandwich cute before, but this was definitely a cute-looking sandwich with pieces of green sticking out from the sides, white sauce oozing from a hole in the golden baked dough (I can’t quite call it bread), and pink-tinged roast beef inside. And, not only was it a cute sandwich, but a tasty one too, and one that I gladly ate up. The dough was crunchy, the beef tenderly soft, and the sauce salty and tangy. If only all roast beef sandwiches could be made with such love.

We cleared our plates (something we didn’t expect to accomplish) and ordered cappuccinos. It’s nice knowing that because the Blue Bottle Coffee Man is there making Blue Bottle Coffee, our coffee needs would be taken care of and expertly so.

It was four o’clock when we left. We had arrived before two. Somehow two hours just slipped away easily eating pizza. But, as if Piccino was telling us that we had left too soon, Carlo called me to say that Shari had left something behind. You would never get such good lost-and-found service anywhere. So, we turned around and headed back to the bright blue building on the corner.

The un-hip hip

Manoella had described Ritual Cafe as too cool, and she was right. I met her there before we headed off to dinner at La Rondalla, and as I waited for her arrival I sat through a procession of uber-hipsters. The boys were all in jeans so tight they must have been stiched on. And, of course, everyone in the place, including myself, donned hoodies. A couple even rode their bicycles right in through the doorway and up to the counter.

I was glad to leave Hipsterland and walk over to La Rondalla where the servers and cooks know nothing of the term hipster, other than dishing out food to the drunken sort, and care not for pretension. I ordered the birria de chivo, which is a goat stew, Manoella ordered a fried beef dish, and we both had margaritas.

When the our waitress came with our food, she placed the birria in front of Manoella, perhaps assuming that no Asian girl would dare order a goat stew when there were so many taco, burrito, and fajita options. But, I'm no regular Asian. I know how to eat goat and roll my R's. I spooned on the diced onions, squeezed on some lime, rolled my tortilla, and dug in. The stew was thick with piles of tender goat meat in a rich broth. And, for those who've never eaten goat, it tasted like lamb.

The margarita was good and strong, so strong that Manoella actually asked to have more mix put in hers.

Hoodie or not, this was more my style.

Cheese puff gal

I asked one of my students to buy my lunch for me today. I asked for a pastrami sandwich and a bag of Sunchips. When she came back, she had my sandwich but no Sunchips. Instead, she had a bag of Cheetos Cheese Puffs, not even the crunchy kind. She had forgotten what I had asked for and guessed at what I would like. Apparently, she thought me to be a cheese puff kinda gal. I can't remember the last time I had a cheese puff.