The Hopp Stop

For Christmas, I gave Vanessa the gift of six months of Zingermans* Bacon of the Month Club. We enjoyed the last shipment this morning for brunch. It was Benton’s Tennessee Hickory Smoked Country Bacon, from Madisonville, Tennessee.

*Zingermans is a fancy, awesome deli and gourmet food store in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for those not in the know. At one point, the NY Times named it best deli in the country.

The bacon is cured with salt, brown sugar and pepper, and is very thick and meaty (how I like it, although Vanessa is less a fan). I’d have to say that this was my least favorite bacon of the six from Zingermans, because it was extremely salty and very smoky flavored. I like salt and I like smokiness in my bacon, but too much of a good thing is too much.

Even so, the bacon was enjoyable and we had a tasty brunch. This was also my first time cooking eggs for Vanessa, after two years of dating and many eggs made by her for me. Yes, I’m not much of a cook.

For the record, I think my favorite of all of the Zingermans bacon selections was what is basically Zingermans’ house bacon, found at this link.

Last night, Vanessa and I made our second visit to Spork, a restaurant that is a couple blocks away from my apartment in the Mission. We had enjoyed our initial visit, maybe six months, but were not blown away by the food–Spork occupies the “not cheap, but not too expensive” niche, of which there are a multitude of great places in SF, including Andalu, Vanessa’s favorite restaurant.

However, other friends that had visited Spork subsequent to us reported in with much more positive views, so we figured we owed it a second chance. Our take: very good. I think we’ll definitely add it to the rotation of restaurants that we frequent.

The broccoli and cauliflower chile appetizer was great, if a bit too spicy for Vanessa. I also enjoyed the mozzarella starter, which came with fava beans, olive oil and kalamata olives. Nothing fancy or revelatory in the flavor, but still good. For our entrees, Vanessa got the steak and I ordered the seared scallops. The scallops were the winner there, as they were large, flavorful and seared just right. As Vanessa put it, she likes scallops that are sufficiently seared to not have a mushy, overly scallopy center. To end the meal, we had some tasty and light beignets sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. The only real miss all evening was the coffee, which was pretty flavorless and blah, despite using Ritual beans. No espresso available, either (my preference).

Recommended.

First off, I thought I would report on our Saturday meal at the Acme Chophouse at PacBell. I’d classify this place as a classic tourist restaurant, in that all it has going for it (relative to the general excellence found in SF) is its location. It’s much like the parade of crap Italian along Columbus in North Beach. Chris estimates the food was overpriced by 50%; I’d agree. The food wasn’t horrible, just nothing special and not in proportion to the price. Also, the waitress was disaffected and unable to look us in the eye and had no knowledge of how to pour wine. In the end, I enjoyed the meal due to the company. My friend Ceballos and his girlfriend Clare are in town on the 24th and we’re headed to Dosa, so I’m pretty fired up for that meal–a real contrast from Acme Chophouse.

Speaking of Chris, he has a large head. But not as large a head as Bruce Bochy, the Giants’ new manager. I love the headline of this Chronicle article: “NEW HEAD MAN: San Francisco’s 16th Manager Owns Reputation To Match His Cap Size.” Which, if you’re wondering, is claimed to be a size 8.

iLounge is a great resource for all things iPod-related (and apparently iPhone-related and Apple TV-related, too, based on their pre-release coverage). They have a 4-part (I think only 4) guide to headphones up that’s worth reading, especially if you haven’t started reading the gospel according to canalphones. I’m very happy with my Etymotic ER-6s, have had them for almost three and half years now. Once the pair inevitably breaks, I’m not sure whether I’ll get another set in the $100 to $200 range, or ante up for something even better. The rational choice is the former.

And to close, here’s some baseball/Michigan football news spotted by Correspondent A.Bo from the wilds of Central America: “White Sox minor-league pitcher Clayton Richard hasn’t been sacked since he was a Michigan quarterback in 2005. That almost changed Sunday. An errant Richard throw struck Sox closer Bobby Jenks in the neck as he was warming up in the bullpen to pitch in a ”B” game and almost sidelined Jenks for the day. Jenks had to be restrained by minor-league pitching coach Curt Hasler.”

…Island Jerk! I’ve already forgotten what my favorite flavor was. I think it was Twisted Chili Lime. Maybe Rob Thomas can comment in the Comments as to his favorite.

Also, unrelated, the SF Chronicle is now publishing podcasts of crackpot reader voicemails. Here’s the first audio file. This answers who has time to call up a newspaper and complain.