April 9, 2009

This weekend it was clear, Spring has sprung. All you had to do was look at the farmers’ market and Dolores Park on Saturday to confirm it. I had fun riding my bike all over town this weekend—highlights include Jordan Mackay’s reading (Passion for Pinot) and wine tasting at Omnivore Books (read below in the chatterbox for a cool tip about Omnivore!), linner (that’s lunch-dinner) at an outside table at Phat Philly (read all about it in fresh meat), and the Festa di Primavera at the Ferry Building.



The Festa was a bounty o’ bites, but my very favorite was the crostini slathered with ’nduja from Boccalone, a spicy pork spread from Calabria (it’s the stuff I mentioned last week that was in my friend’s Italian gelato). Boccalone literally just released the ’nduja—after the event I promptly went downstairs to the salumeria to buy some. Although I’m going to top off my future crostini or panini with a dollop of TuttoCalabria hot spread sauce—the hotter the better, I say.

This weekend was perfect beer-drinking weather. So for this week’s giveaway, I have two tickets to a private VIP tasting party celebrating the 2008 winners of the Samuel Adams American Homebrew Contest. The party is next Thursday April 16th from 6pm–8pm at Tiernan's in Fisherman’s Wharf, so don’t enter unless you can make it (and you’re over 21, duh)! You’ll be able to sample the winning brews, meet the brewers and the winners (the two winning consumer homebrewers were from the Bay Area, beating out 1,500 other entries, go Cali), munch off a buffet of food, and did I mention there will be beer? Mmmmm, beer.

To enter to win the pair of tickets to this private party, all you need to do is forward this week’s tablehopper newsletter to one buddy, but even more would be so very fabulous. Just tell your friend(s) why they would dig a subscription to the tablehopper e-column (if you call it a blog, you are disqualified, I am so not kidding!), and CC or BCC luckyme[at]tablehopper[dot]com so I know you sent it—I promise I won’t use anyone’s email address. Deadline to enter is midnight this Friday April 10th—I’ll notify the winner over the weekend.

Oh, and for any of you homebrewers who want to take your shot at entering this year, you can submit American Homebrew Contest entries from April 15th–May 1st, 2009.

A few housekeeping notes: so who is the kind soul who “parked” the tablehopper page on Twitter? I’ve been trying to reach you and would love to hear from you, thanks yo!

And while I am bummed to be missing this year’s Pebble Beach Food & Wine event, I can’t wait to get out of dodge and head down to Palm Springs for Coachella. I leave next Thursday, and will be hitting the Saturday and Sunday shows. Does anyone have some below-cost tickets they need to unload, or VIP access they can style me and my cohort with? Awwwww yeah! I figured it couldn’t hurt to put it out there, you never know. You know where to find me.

Oh, and tablehopper was featured on the Malou Review (thanks ladies!), but yeeouch, they called me Mar-sha. Oh well—I guess they didn’t get the “Marcia rhymes with Garcia” memo. They must have been fans of The Brady Bunch. You can click the link to watch the segment.

Happy Easter (cheep cheep!) and Passover, people!

~Marcia