The establishments include a large number of smaller Asian restaurants and corner stores, but also include some well-known SF establishments ranging from the low-cost dives where you’d likely expect to get food poisoning anyway, to like Burma Super Star and Mandalay, Boogaloo’s, Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack, Bissap Baobab, the King of Thai chain, Peasant Pies, Osha, Seller’s Markets, to places that are a little more ‘up there’ Espetus Churrascaria and Tryptich. Even bars like Delerium are affected. [See the full list after the cut.]

In a quick glance at the restaurants, I didn’t notice any of the restaurants which label themselves as ’sustainable’ sticking out as being on the list… but that doesn’t mean that I think this is a “sustainable vs. industrial” food production issue, as it might appear. And I’m not laying any fault on the restaurants themselves…. not really.

What it really communicates to me is the bizarre disconnect between us and where our food comes from – especially when we’re dining out in restaurants. When I was still a vegetarian (at least when in Florida and the Midwest), not only was it impossible to find out where my food came from – most of the time, I couldn’t even find out if there was chicken in it or not. The wait staff usually doesn’t know… and in many places, there’s a communication gap between the servers and the kitchen. Although in San Francisco, it’s a little different… you’re usually able to find out if there’s meat in a meal… but if you have other dietary restrictions, restaurants are still not always accommodating – they’re unwilling to let you know what’s in a dish to protect their recipe, they simply don’t know, or they unintentionally (or, perhaps, sometimes intentionally) disseminate misinformation.

Note: the next page takes a while to load with all the restaurant data.

Why I care?One of my first dining experiences in the city happened during the spinach scare of ‘06. Spinach is one of my mainstays, and having gone without fresh spinach for a week (!), I was fiending. I visited an unnamed creperie at the mouth of the West Portal tunnel, and when their menu said that they weren’t serving fresh spinach in salads. Heartened, I asked if they were serving spinach in crepes, and they said they were; I asked if their spinach was fresh or frozen, and they said it was frozen and cooked. Twenty minutes later, halfway through my crepe, I hear a crunch, look down and see the spinach in the middle looked different from the spinach at the edges: not cooked… not frozen… fresh. I was one week into a new job, no health coverage yet to speak of, and rightfully concerned… yet more so, appalled that this could happen.

So even if you’re as diligent as possible, sometimes there simply isn’t a way to protect yourself, unless you cook all your meals from scratch – in which case you would be missing out on a world of culinary possibilities! There should be a way that we can protect ourselves… perhaps a sort of intelligent recipe profile – lists that restaurants can share with the consumer and public health officials… not necessarily nutritional information, the proportions of ingredients, or the brands of the ingredients themselves (in the case of things like soy sauce, etc). This would particularly help in situations where there is a communication gap between employees and patrons. However, it would require communication and cooperation from government and food manufacturers and distributors… and most importantly, funding (btw… if anyone knows of resources to fund a project like this, let me know – I have a great plan for designing such a system.)

Just let us know what we’re eating. And when we ask where it came from, tell us.

Here are the restaurants from that spreadsheet released by the California DPH. that contains other California cities as well. No, it’s not pretty… but nobody is paying me to put it up. Also, keep in mind that this may be either a general distribution list or a list of customers who actually received the contaminated products… the state wasn’t totally clear on that. But hey, better to be safe than sorry, right?

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1. Eating the Golden Pagoda
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3. Yamo is lots, but not a lot.

Although I’m now a recovering vegetarian, having been on that end of the spectrum for about 15 years, I was disheartened to have a similar (albeit opposite) experience when we headed to the Saturn cafe to satisfy our burger craving. Large signs on the windows heralding the presence of “Burgers” and “Shakes” and only a small sign above the door touting their fantastic vegetarian (but notedly, they didn’t say “ALL-vegetarian”) menu.

Luckily, after spending 15 years as a vegetarian, I’m well attuned to noticing the phrase “100% vegetarian.” And I noticed it on the menu the second I sat down… and two seconds later, I was out the nearest emergency exit door. Had there not been such a conflict between what was advertised and what was on the menu, and had I not been craving a big hunk of ground beef molded into the shape of a patty, I might have dove into any seitan-containing item on the menu… but I don’t take kindly to manipulation, and I wasn’t going to feel guilty leaving a restaurant which lured me in by false advertising.

But I’m a mid-century modern junkie. One star: for the decor alone.

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1. It tastes nothing like Greek to me.
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Damn, that’s some good meat. The ribs are slow-smoked, not quite falling off the bone, but tender, juicy, and just a bit caramelized on top. Get the sauce on the side to fully appreciate the flavor and quality of this meat.

As for the sauce, it’s sweet and not too spicy (read: not spicy enough for me), but that really doesn’t matter, ’cause here it’s all about the meat.

The potato salad was light, providing a nice counterpoint to the density and flavor of the ribs. Be forewarned, though… if you have a celery phobia as severe as mine, you might find it laden with Satan’s favorite vegetable.

Even though I ordered the rib sandwich, the chef saw one of his friends at the counter and thought the order was for him, so I didn’t get the standard order… it came with sauce on the side, probably a couple of extra ribs and some links too.

Links aren’t exactly my cup of tea: I prefer sucking the meat off a bone to eating meat that’s ground up, then compressed inside an intestine (unless it’s bratwurst). Nah, the links weren’t bad, but they’re the only remnant of that meal still sitting in my fridge 5 days later.

In summary:
+ Great ribs, decent everything else.
+ Not a fan of the style of sauce? Get it to go with sauce on the side, take home and dip or use your favorite instead.
+ Celery is the stalk of the devil.
+ Do I need to clean out my fridge? Probably.
+ Would I take my dad here? The answer is a resounding YES. So far, some of the best ribs I’ve had in the Bay Area… but then again, there hasn’t been too much stiff competition.

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This is not Greek food.

Some of it looks right. The vegetarian platter had things that looked and somewhat tasted like dolmas, bland hummus and pita.

But what were the hockey pucks? You call that falafel? And the oversized Totino’s pizza rolls? Don’t even try to tell me that crap is spanikopita with a straight face. Deep-fried and greasy as hell, the spinach and cheese was more akin to frozen pizza snacks or even egg rolls than anything any self-respecting Greek restaurants back home would even consider serving. And the tzatziki was just wrong. It was incredibly thick and seemed more like sour cream with dill than the tzatziki I’ve had anywhere else; no cucumber was noticeable at all.

The overall quality of the food, although it was nowhere near authentic it would have warranted two stars. But the last star gets taken away for my last bite. Even though I still had 1/3 of my meal left, but after tasting mold, the rest of that food went right where it belonged: into the compost.

One star, Daphne.

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