Getting Cooked

I’ve long been fascinated by industry watering holes: the fireman’s bar, the reporters’ dive, a pizzeria overrun with bike messengers. I wanted to know where they are, and how I could get in. But my taste for cheap swill and fast foods is limited at best. How could I indulge in fancy treats while still accessing the after-work crowd? Then it hit me: hit the town with the restaurant set.

So I cast my lot with the culinary elite this last week. I ate with chefs, drank with waiters, and caroused with critics. In this city so utterly obsessed with food, I sought out the insiders and the industry people, and plunged into the late night spots that feed and water the folk that keep San Francisco’s appetites whet, thirsts slaked, and stomachs full.

As my first bit of research, I reached out to Jessica Battilana, a friend-of-a-friend and food critic at 7x7 Magazine. I’d seen her byline posted in restaurant windows the city over, and if anyone knows the players in town, it is she.

After mulling over a handful of choices, and psyching each other out of our decidedly domestic nocturnal habits, we met one Thursday night at Nopa on Divisidero. We locked eyes at the crowded bar just after 11:00, she with her drink, me just placing my order for a stiff Vieux Carre. After a quick salvo of hellos, where’d-you-grow-ups, and I-think-your-wife-went-to-high-school-with-a-pal-of-mines, we started to take in the scene.

Nopa was bustling, and with a robust rep as one of the better bets for cocktails and a kitchen that serves late, I could see why this is an industry hang-out. “Things get pretty limited in San Francisco after 10:00,” she told me. “You’ve got Beretta, Globe, and Nopa. But even at that, it’s still a scene here. Lots of industry people come here, and you do it because you know you’re going to be seen.”

And seen we were. Flagged down by Andrew Generalao, the general manager at the Embarcadero restaurant La Mar Cebicheria, we made our way to the end of the bar. We sidled up just as some hi-tech hotshot finished pouring out drinks for those assembled, and tucked into cocktail number two for the night. On Andrew’s recommendation I joined him for a very strong Peruvian variant on the Manhattan. The house-brandied cherries were tiny alcoholic explosions in a wider sea of toothsome hard-stuff.

Before we had much time to chat, Chris Kronner, chef at slow food wonder Bar Tartine in the Mission wandered in with a quartet of his pals. Another round, then down the block to Madrone. Our little party stepped in to the throb of technofied salsa music, whirling dancers and the sweaty thrum of a teeming nightclub. It would have been easy to write our presence off as the foodie crowd slumming it, having a laugh over a Budweiser tallboy, until Andrew observed that the crowd is as much a part of the industry as the chefs and managers are.

“This is where my dishwashers and busboys hang out,” he said. “So many of them come from other parts of the world, and they don’t know many people here, so scenes like this are incredibly important to their happiness here. I love parties like this, because that hierarchy in the restaurant fades somewhat. And any restaurant person will tell you, if the dishwashers are unhappy, you’re fucked.”

It was around 11:00 PM when I arrived at Bar Tartine to meet up with Chris Kronner again for my second night on the town. At 27, he’s already amassed a pretty impressive resume, with stints at Slow Club and Serpentine before taking over the kitchen at Bar Tartine six months ago. As he finished up for the night I sipped a glass of Dogfish Head’s Palo Santo Marron beer and talked suds with one of the staff.

Chris and I had talked about heading over to Namu for our late night bite, but it turned out to be closed. After consulting with another chef, Melissa Perffit, who would join our excursion, we opted to head over to Heaven’s Dog in Soma. I’d only been for lunch once before, missing out on what are often called the best cocktails in town. Chris and Melissa’s pal Eric Atkins, manager at Heaven’s Dog, was on duty, so off we went.

Though the crowd was sparse, Eric was electric. A true mixologist, and one of the minds behind the bars at Beretta and the Slanted Door, Eric threw himself into the making of our drinks with improbable gusto. A modified Manhattan led into another Vieux Carre, but not before tastes of this and drams of that were liberally meted out. As Melissa, Chris, and Eric caught up on the latest local restaurant gossip—seems that much-delayed Bar Agricole is really moving forward—a steady march of tony Scotch and rare rum paraded before us.

We chased our top-drawer chicken wings, spicy seafood soup, and grilled quail with snorts of Ardbeg, a single malt Scotch, and Coal Ila, a 58% alcohol Scotch whisky whose sophisticated, peaty flavor was the standout of the night.

The conversation listed from the great food and drink writers—A.J. Liebling, Charles Baker, and Eric Fulton each won their share of fulsome praise—to the relative merits of Barney’s over Bloomingdales, and by the time we closed the place down I was feeling pretty terrific and terrifically lit.

After all this eating, drinking, and damned nice camaraderie, the bill came. My eyes bulged out of my head when I saw the tab, for which I dutifully reached. $23. How could all those drinks, the food, the samples of fancy hooch come to that paltry sum?

“At bottom, it’s not about being on the scene,” Chris told me. “It’s about hanging out with your friends when your shift ends. You go where they are, and obviously you’re treated differently. We all take care of each. You work long hours and you smell like food when you’re done. This, coming here, being taken care of, that’s one of the few perks.”

The tipping protocol on a tiny bill, after treatment like this? “Tip the amount of the tab,” said Chris. “Always.”

“You still have to come back for a last drink,” Chris insisted. As if I hadn’t had enough. But at 3:00 AM, my morning’s productivity at the office a foregone nullity, how could I refuse? Back in his kitchen Chris carefully measured just two spoonfuls of clear liquid out of a great mason jar and into a tumbler for me.

“One hundred seventy-five proof,” he said. “Real Napa moonshine.” Jesus, did it burn.

We finished with a mellow brandy over the night’s final round of hazily good-natured banter. I must have left his house after 4:00, my shaky, handicam vision and warm, tingling legs getting me the handful of blocks home. As I fell into bed, my only thought was, “Oh shit, if I’m going to finish this story in time, I have to go out again tomorrow night.”

On my very sleepy way home from work the following day I stopped into Bocadillo’s, one of my haunts, to make sure that manager Luke McKinley was still up for getting a drink once his shift ended. To my dismay, he was.

We met hours later, he with Bocadillos waitress and painter Heather Luque in tow, at The Residence on 14th St. near Market. Over a glass of Grenache—taking it much easier this time—I was privy to more restaurant scuttlebutt, Heather’s take on the perils of fine dining, and a long discourse on the bar that used to be here. It seems that before New Year’s, The Residence was a very smoky, very dirty bar called Amber, one which Luke described in none-too-glowing terms. I believe “90s frat house” was the term he used. Though now it has something of the English colonial feel to it—our man in Rhodesia.

Luke had been here the night before, chatting up the bartenders and other restaurant folk who work in the area. Tonight the bar had a steady clip of customers, but not so many as to be oppressive. Before long a young woman took out a fairly large plate of seared tuna and various condiments, set them on the bar, and tucked into a late dinner. “Server at Ducca,” Luke reported.

As 1:00 AM arrived I proved more quailing dove than plucky night owl. If the night before hadn’t done me in, the soporific Grenache finished me off. I bid Luke and Heather goodbye, oozed into a cab, and set off for home.

Though the last week had been loads of fun, I found myself unfit for this lifestyle. I’d eaten and drunk like a king, glimpsed the fraternity of restaurant workers at all levels of the trade, and lost myself in late nights of companionable consumption. This is how the pros do it, I learned. Nobody does it better.

If you’ve got the mettle for this kind of action then you’re a sturdier sort than me. Places that serve food late are often industry spots; cooks gotta eat too, right? Try Nopa for food and drinks; Heaven’s Dog for marvelous cocktails and Chinese fare; The Residence is a proper bar. Other names dropped include Globe in Jackson Square, Beretta in the Mission, and Namu in the Inner Richmond.

Photo Credits:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8348573@N05/1528275291/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aahadk/4265877756/