Jackson West’s Obsessive Compulsion

I live in the Mission, which is the neighborhood that extends between 16th and 24th, Guerrero and State Route 101 here in San Francisco. In other words, it’s in the valley over which La Mission Dolores de San Francisco de Asis used to tower. I say used to not in the sense that it no longer towers - it’s still a magnificent monument, and obviously in the liveliest spot of any of the stops on the old Spanish mission trail. It’s just that the sign on the Sketchers outlet rises closer to God.

Long before anyone showed up from Madrid or Barcelona, the Bay Area as we call it was already a foodie’s paradise. Local tribes, including the Ohlone, were prosperous and peaceful. They occupied a pleasant trade outpost between the wealthy tribes of the Pacific Northwest and the desert tribes of southern California and the baja, who in turn brought them goods from yet farther afield. The Ohlone’s staple protein was shellfish, as evidenced by mounds of discarded shells piled dozens of feet high on Shellmound Street in Emeryville, which fittingly runs past the Ikea. Call me a savage, but I think I could do worse than having fresh fish, game, corn and greens to vary my steady diet of scallops, oysters, crab, shrimp and abalone.

When the Spanish showed up, they immediately saw the potential. If you were looking for the one perfect spot in the universe to make Paella, then you too would have realized you’d finally reached your destination. Grow the rice in the swamps along the Sacramento river. Hunt game for sausage in the hills and valleys of Alameda County. Fish any of the teeming bays - Half Moon, San Francisco, San Pablo, Tomales. Raise birds, pigs and goats on Alcatraz, Angel or Yerba Buena islands. And deliver all to the cooks in the mission and the haciendas atop the hills of the San Francisco penninsula. Unfortunately their dream involved whipping everyone in sight in order to accomplish this immediately - when we all know that a paella is best when prepared slowly and is big enough to feed everyone.

Anglos, of course, didn’t bother with the land until they found gold in it. Then they took it. It pained me to hear Colin Powell at the UN last year saying with a straight face “America does not fight wars of aggression.” I thought he was a student of history, and not just the kind they force feed you in high school. America just straight up jacked California from Mexico, along with everything else Mexico had north of the Rio Grande. That’s the truth. I think that’s why it took so long for San Francisco to be considered a world capitol of cuisine - armies and miners bring canned food, and when they get somewhere with food, they can it and ship it back. I really don’t want to think about all the beautiful salmon and oysters that went into cans to be boiled and served with white sauce between 1830 and 1980. It gives me the shivers.

Still, in the Mission, for all the trucker-hat wearing hipsters, you still get the sense that you aren’t that far from Mexico. Most of the signs are in spanish. Most of the people are from Latin America. And it is hard to escape what I like to call ‘The Tyranny of the Burrito.’ Granted, a Mission Burrito is what most American’s consider a burrito. The Mission is where people first put the rice and beans in the tortilla along with the meat and sauce - thereby developing a slightly oversized by thoroughly Jetson-like ‘food pill’ that contained complete nutrition in a handy, portable package. But Mission denizens like myself end up eating three or four a week, and that can’t be good.

So to mix it up, I often order myself a torta from Picayudo’s on 24th and Harrison. Picayudo’s is a small outpost on 24th that specializes in the national sandwich of Mexico - the torta. Tortas are basically like any other sandwich - meat, vegetables and mayonnaise between a french roll. It’s something I like to surprise tourists with, since it sounds so exotic but is actually perfectly familiar. The slight differences are where the surprise lies. Lettuce, tomato, onion and cheese are standard - as are crema (a kind of soupy sour cream that’s really more like creme fraiche), avocado and pickled jalapeno peppers. Then the whole thing gets heated and squished by one of those now ubiquitous Cuban sandwich presses. With butter.

Needless to say, these are monuments to sandwich planning and engineering. The Earl of Sandwich himself would excuse himself from a vote in the British House of Lords to come witness the sheer technological progress brought to bear on the humble invention of his ancestor. And the best part is you can get one of these anywhere along the mission trail and keep ordering them right across the border until you get to Mexico City.

TIP: If you finally get tired of the standard torta, and start to dread it like you dread yet another trip for a super burrito, carne asada - or just feeling adventurous, try this: ahogado (ah-o-GAA-do). They take your torta and smother it in red sauce, helping to melt the cheese and turning the bread into a warm gazpacho. Picayudos also has a fresh fruit juice bar and your standard selection of Mexican beers.

I am a lover of barbecue. Real barbecue. I’m certainly not alone - Calvin Trillin, son of Kansas City, is a prolificly avowed fan. Not everyone is, much to our likely mutual dismay. But then not everything people call ‘barbecue’ is, in fact, barbecue. Besides vegetarians, who I guess won’t allow themselves to enjoy barbecue (nothing that hasn’t died can be truly barbecued), I feel that those who profess to disliking barbecue simply haven’t had the real thing.

Real barbecue can actually be had all over the world, though of course with regional variations. Koreans can barbecue the hell out of meat. Asia generally, I feel, is a largely untapped barbecue resource. Barbecue is certainly endemic throughout North and South America. Home to the first barbecue, Africa is where devotees must look for the inner truths to cooking meat. In fact, the only region that seems a bit behind on the barbecue technology front is Europe, although I imagine this is some form of backsliding, since I’ve seen Errol Flynn in Robin Hood and assume that it’s historically accurate on the Q front.

Here in America most of the scorn heaped on bad barbecue is carted out of The South, presumably on mules. While I’ve had southern barbecue, in The South, I still think that if certain rules and regulations are adhered to, you can create good barbecue on the top of Mount Everest - although I think you’d have a hard time convincing the sherpas to drag a whole hog up there. And I can endorse select left coast barbecue establishments as equal to anything I’ve tasted in The South or any of the flyover states without reservation (with all due respect to Mr. Trillin, I have yet to visit Kansas City). I’ve heard they even have the real thing in New York City now. Imagine.

Speaking of New York City, that’s where I first heard of Brother-In-Law’s Barbecue. Now when your reputation precedes you by three thousand miles, you know you’ve got something. And when I finally found myself on this particular peninsula, wandering down Divisadero a few years ago, it was hard not to remember the name - or smell their esteemed product in the breeze.

What the folks at Brother-In-Law’s know is the basic requirements for good Q. First: A big oven, in this case the preferred brick. Fired by wood or charcoal - propane is for grilling. Quality cuts of meat from the less popular parts of the animal (although barbecue’s popularity of late has made back ribs the belle of the ball, priced accordingly). These are spiced liberally, but never sauced, and placed in the oven at a low heat with lots of moisture for a long time. What comes out can be called barbecue. Sauce, while not an afterthought, should never be necessary - but should always be delicious and available in quantity. Serve with starch, greens, beans and/or pie.

A good barbecue chef is like a good basketball player - he or she should incorporate the fundamentals into their technique so deeply that they become second nature, and then polish that technique with intuition and improvisation. By this estimate, if Brother-In-Law’s were the Warriors, they’d be a better draw than the Lakers.

My most recent trip I ordered the brisket, my new favorite barbecue subject, but the ribs and links are all good. As are the deserts, especially the peach cobbler. While there seems to be an international conspiracy in the barbecue community to overcharge for tiny portions of potato salad, the little bit they gave me was rich, yolky and delicious. The prices are reasonable, although the amount of human toil and care that goes into barbecue means that it is a special occassion item, so bring a twenty. And I think the Safeway brand sodas in the fridge are a subtle reminder that you should probably order yours takeout and buy some beer on the way home. But if you just have to taste proper Q, you will not be disappointed.

There is absolutely no feeling in the world like leaving work early. It’s like you’ve been given your day back. When I get off of work early, I like to play tourist - do the things that I would normally do if I had the whole day to myself. Go to the beach, maybe, or get a six pack and a torta and watch a movie. And the best part is you can do all this and still get to bed at a decent hour.

So on Friday, the best day of all days to get off of work early, I managed to leave at four. And with a productive week behind me, to boot. So I was feeling pretty good. I was on my way to exchange a mismatched video adapter for (what I thought would be) the right one. So instead of the usual shuttle-to-BART route, I hopped on the F-line streetcar to roll down to Market.

When the Loma Prieta earthquake tore the Embarcadero freeway a new one, San Francisco was given a chance to reclaim a beautiful lost waterfront. What used to be an ugly double-decker concrete ribbon separating the business district from the bay is now a beautiful six-lane promenade complete with parks, spectacular views, restaurants and even a Claes Oldenburg.

One of the great monuments to industrial design also graces this new stretch of bay - a collection of vintage streetcars from all over the world. Another happy consquence of the freeway’s demise was the extension of light rail all the way down Market, up the Embarcadero and north to Fisherman’s Wharf and the Marina. And rather than put some fancy modern cars on it, they stocked it with streetcars from three generations of San Francisco public transport, streetcars from accross the country, streetcars Milanese - they even have a streetcar from the Desire line in old New Orleans! They’re not as cool as the cable cars, but they’re not as crowded and they’re cheaper. And I get to ride them to and from work on occassion.

Well, I managed to get on the most senior of the seniors on the tour, and it was going out of service when it got to the Ferry Plaza Terminal. I swoon for the Ferry Plaza Market. So maybe it was weakness that made me reconsider my mission to get just the right laptop part and instead get a bite at the market. Maybe I was dazzled by the sun and sea breeze. I think it was the promise of cold, fresh oysters from Tomales Bay.

Now the market at the Ferry Plaza is a great public market. But it’s expensive. If I could afford to shop there every day, though, I would. I managed to spend about two hundred dollars on Christmas dinner there last winter - and eighty of those dollars were on the roast beef alone. But let me tell you - if Christ could come back, he’d have done it for a bite of that roast and that plate of cheese. So for special events, or when you want to splurge on yourself, drop by for groceries. The farmers market, which sets up several times a week, is always a bargain for the value, though.

There are, of course, a few restaurants in the Ferry Plaza. They will squeeze a restaurant into anything around here. But the building is big enough for everyone, and the food is all top-notch. Delica, the first American outpost of a popular Tokyo prepared-food chain is getting raves. As is Taylor’s Refresher, a farmer-supplied, all-organic, sustainably-grown alternative to McDonald’s for burgers, fries and shakes. These are both on my must-visit list.

The place I came back for was the Hog Island Oyster Company bar. Here you can sit with a bay view, a Heffeweizen and some of the freshest shellfish you can find. The oysters are from just up the coast and are delivered from their tanks at the farm daily. And don’t worry about whether or not your month has an ‘R’ in it or not: The pacific, sweetwater and french oysters don’t breed in ‘R’ months and are at their peak - whereas the kumamoto oysters are just the opposite, breeding in the opposite season. Generally shellfish are always at their peak in spring and fall - and don’t worry, your chances of getting sick are probably smaller than your chances of getting hit by one of the nice old streetcars.