May 19, 2009

photo by Stuart Brioza

Yup, I finished the three-week cleanse. And not a moment too soon, since I was able to heartily enjoy my first glass of wine at the always-fantastico Meals on Wheels event on Sunday night. It was hard to still be eating as a vegetarian while surrounded with beef tongue pastrami from Stuart Brioza (who took this nice picture of Daniel Patterson of Coi's dish of new harvest potatoes, cucumber, sea beans, agretti, and ice plant flowers) and Nicole Krasinski; sushi from Ken of Hana and Go Fish; and my favorite dish from Mark Dommen of One Market, the smoked Tasmanian ocean trout "mi cuit" with potato rösti and quail egg. This town has mad talent, what can I say. But I was not going to jump back into meat and booze all turbo-like, in fact, I didn't want to. So thanks for all your encouragement this past month—I have received such supportive emails and suggestions from a bunch of you (meow), and certainly fielded plenty of cleanse questions at the event on Sunday.

Now, conducting the historic cocktail crawl in North Beach on Saturday was another matter entirely—fortunately I had Cantina's Duggan McDonnell (aka Shotzi), H. (Elixir), and Jeff Hollinger (Absinthe) there to drink for me and share their extensive cocktail history knowledge. (Big thanks to Camper of Alcademics for writing up all the bar backgrounder history—you can read more cool SF cocktail history here.)

Since I haven't thrown a tablehopper event in a while, it's high time for a get together. Enter: the first tablehopper wine tasting! Take a look in the socialite for more on a special Sicilian wine, food, and educational event I am hosting on Wednesday June 3rd at The Cheese School of San Francisco with Alex Fox—it's gonna be maggiore. We'll even be pouring a wine that's made in amphora! I'm also emceeing the third Edible Pursuit event on June 7th—always a blast.

Ready Freddy? Let's hop to it.

~Marcia (rhymes with Garcia)