San Francisco’s stellar siren, Veronica Klaus

Knockout song stylist Veronica Klaus is a real San Francisco gem, delivering respectful yet singular interpretations of  Great American Songbook tunes that will please devotees while winning new converts from younger generations.  The resident Tuesday night performer at the late, lamented Enrico’s restaurant during its final two years, Klaus now performs regularly at the Rrrazz Room—where she’ll be showcasing selections from the Peggy Lee songbook this weekend—along with Joe’s Pub in New York, The Gardenia Room in L.A., and other marvelous boîtes hither and yon.

Her superb new album, Something Cool, has been on heavy rotation here in the San Francisco Agenda office. Among the highlights is  Klaus’ jaded, jazzy rendition—killer trumpet solo!— of “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game,” a song oddly unfamiliar to the general public despite having previously been recorded by performers ranging from Ella Fitzgerald, to the Marvelettes, to Massive Attack.

Clearly, our Ms. Klaus has a discerning musical palate. And she’s equally impeccable in her selections of food, fashion, et cetera. Which is why we asked her to answer our Insider Tips questionnaire. Read her answers, and buy her album, stat!

What’s your favorite cultural institution to spend time at in the city?  

 The Alameda Antiques flea market—held the first Sunday of every month—qualifies as a cultural institution for me! You can learn a lot at a museum, but you can also learn a lot about society by the things it saves and casts off. Put on your hat, dress up and make an occasion of it!

Where’s your favorite view in the city?  

 It’s great to take in the sites while riding a bicycle through Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach. The park really is an incredible resource and presents LOTS of different opportunities for sightseeing and mind clearing. I do it as often as possible in good weather early in the morning.  There’s something about putting it in high gear and going as fast as you can downhill through the meadows and the mist that really starts the day right! Rent a bike and go!

Where is shopping central for you?

I’m an compulsive browser when it comes to antiques and vintage, and there are several places to get your fix:  For clothing and accessories it’s Torso Vintages near Union Square downtown. They have an exquisite collection of designer, vintage and accessories that always amazes me–from Yma Sumac estate vintage gowns to FABULOUS hats!  Full disclosure: I work there too, but believe me, I shop!

For antiques and such there is Stuff on Valencia–two floors of fantastic and fantastically priced things that I may not end up buying but NEED to
visit often. For instance, there’s a folding screen made up, probably in the 70s, of authentic 30s hand-painted movie boards used to advertise in theater
lobbys.  NO ONE does this sort of calligraphy painting by hand anymore and it is exquisite!

Name one thing a visitor shouldn’t miss eating in San Francisco?

 The sweetbreads at Florio!  I don’t know exactly what they are–and please don’t tell me–but they are the most decadent succulent treats in town! What’s even better?  Though they used to only be an appetizer, they recently added them as an ENTREE size dish!  Oh, and did I mention there is bacon involved?

What’s your cocktail spot of choice? 

Two places for different moods:  Most of the time when I go out to a club I want to see some live music with my cocktail, and the best place in town for that is The Rrazz Room!  It’s a fantastic room to see a show in:  great sight-lines, sound, and a stellar array of artists!  It’s downtown at the Nikko Hotel in Union Square so it’s very centrally located.  You might be lucky and catch renowned artists like Della Reese, Mary Wilson formerly of the Supremes or the amazingly talented Tammy Hall playing piano with her own trio or accompanying any number of wonderful singers! [Ed: Including Ms. Klaus...but, while she's biased, we completely agree with her recommendation.]

For those nights when you just want a quiet cocktail with friends, The Comstock Saloon in North Beach has been in continuous operation since 1907 and is a great holdover from the old days of the Barbary Coast!  They are serious about their bartending there and take great pains to make you the PERFECT Manhattan….though a good Scotch neat is more my style.  One of the attractions you must look for is the original porcelain trough running along under the bar stools which used to function as a spittoon and supposed urinal for lazy, and intoxicated 49ers.  Don’t worry, it’s only a conversation piece now.

You’ve got $50 or more per person to spend for a meal, where would you choose?  

Da Flora restaurant on Columbus in North Beach—home of the sweetbreads!  Flora and Mary Beth run this fine Venetian cuisine establishment in a tiny little10 table space that is dark and cozy–just what I would imagine a fabulous century old Venetian restaurant to look like.  The gnocchi will start the meal off with delicious comfort and the menu usually includes a risotto orduck livers and other assorted ultra fresh and delicious regional specialties.  Try to take it easy on the house made focaccia bread because you will need the room.  They have their specialty cheeses flown in and for wine aficionados, Flora is adept at suggesting the perfect compliment to their amazing menu!  Call for reservations.

So now you’ve got less than $15 per person to spend for a meal. Where will it be?  

It’s got to be Pancho Villa Mexican restaurant on 16th St. near Valencia.  For a budget meal, there is NOTHING better than Pancho Villa’s carnitas burrito with black beans and guacamole.  You can smother it with Pico de Gallo at the salsa bar for free!  Delicious, and a bargain! Oh yes, and if you want seconds you don’t have to stand in line again….don’task how I know that.

What would you tell a visitor that they absolutely must do while in San Francisco which they probably wouldn’t find in a guidebook? 

The rooftop garden at the Fairmont Hotel is a gorgeous and chic place to spend a free hour and is open to the public!  You can take a free City Guides tour of the hotel
and get some wonderful insights on its history in San Francisco: it was built before the 1906 earthquake and has quite a storied past.

Jim Provenzano

Writer Jim Provenzano‘s latest novel, Every Time I Think of You, won a 2011 Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Romance. It’s a coming of age/coming out story that also addresses the challenges of physical disability, without ever feeling didactic or issue-oriented. Former sportswriter Provenzano—perhaps best known for his wrestling novel, PINS—is also the editor of BARtab, the Bay Area Reporter‘s glossy monthly guide to GLBT arts and nightlife, making him an ideal addition to our rogues gallery of Insider Tipsters.

Given his recent fictional focus on a character with disabilities, Provenzano suggested that, in addition to his personal favorite spots in San Francisco, he’d like to share some useful websites for travelers with disabilities. We couldn’t be happier to facilitate that:

• The San Francisco Access Guide:  A resource hub from The San Francisco Travel Association                            
• San Francisco On the Level: Wheelchair accessible tours of the city with no grades of more than 8%
• Ability Trip: San Francisco:  SF section of a trusted global guide to accessible travel

And now, on with Provenzano’s picks…

What’s your favorite SF cultural institution?

Aside from the GLBT Historical Society, which Michelle Tea previously spotlighted in your blog, I’d have to say The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, at least the foyer— it’s architect Mario Botta’s masterpiece, and word is that it’s going to be smashed apart to make way for, I dunno, something else. Really a shame. See it while you can, the way it is now.

Treasure Island with a hot Army guy before Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was abolished, on July 4, while holding hands. Sorry, that’s sharing a bit too much. Seriously, I’d recommend taking in the skyline while kayaking outside a Giants game in McCovey Cove; or from Angel Island; or from across the Golden Gate Bridge in the Marin Headlands.

Provenzano’s tips continue, after the jump

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Folks around the country are always making light of San Franciscans’ fetishistic foodies. And while its true we have our share of proselytizing vegans, strident locavores, gluten demonizers, and the like, its also true that, on the whole, we seem to truly enjoy food—eating it, cooking it, talking about it, building community around it—than any other American city I can think of. The Bay Area offers top-quality farmers’ markets every day, enough restaurants to eat in a different one every night for more than five years (for real!), educational institutions like the San Francisco Cheese School, and edifying celebrations like the annual Freestone Fermentation Festival.

Perhaps the spot that most positively captures the Bay Area’s love of all things edible is 18 Reasons, a welcoming storefront non-profit in the the Mission District, on the same block as the famed Bi-Rite Creamery and Bi-Rite Market, whose owners operate the food-centric community center.

18 Reasons hosts a remarkable range of programming: Knife skills lessons, chocolate and wine pairings, pickle-making classes, food-related book groups, local farmers’ lectures, drop-in suppers, introductions to various ethnic cuisines with lectures and tastings, culinary art exhibits. Virtually all are open to the general public, and offered at discounted fees to members. Beyond the specific topic at hand, 18 Reasons’ events provide an opportunity to meet folks who share a passion for food:  For locals, its a great way to expand one’s social circle; and for out-of-towners with a hunger for culinary experience its an opportunity to access a vortex of voluble local food folk. Stop in on the first day of a vacation and you can probably get tips on a whole week’s worth of under-the-radar foodie experiences.

For a small, community-based operation, 18 Reasons does a remarkable job of planning ahead: listings of classes and events are posted several months in advance, so its realistic for travelers to include a visit in their San Francisco itineraries.

And if you can’t make it to town, you can always daydream over a new series of 18 Reasons videos.  Find the premier after the jump

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For 15 years, San Francisco author Michelle Tea has spearheaded Sister Spit, a loose collaborative of roadtripping queer writers and performers that brings alcohol- and vegan meatloaf-fueled evenings of cabaret-styled provocation to college campuses, community centers, and art spaces around the country. This fall, venerable SF publisher City Lights will launch an entire line of Sister Spit Books, to be curated by Tea, whose own past novels, including the lesbian landmark Valencia bode well for what promises to be an edgy, engaging imprint. We’ll keep SF Agenda readers informed about local authors and events related to Sister Spit, but while we wait for news, we asked Michelle to answer our Insider Tips questionnaire about some of her recommendations for SF visitors and locals.

 The GLBT Historical Society. Their archives are open to the public, and contain really incredible artifacts – Harvey Milk’s Levi’s, Sylvester’s sequined stage costumes, a bar stool from the legendary ‘female impersonators’ nightclub Finnochio’s. They have the entire collection of every On Our Backs ever published (who knew Dorothy Allison was writing for them at the start?! Not me!). One gentleman left the Society a collection of his lovers’ pubic hair, all neatly collected in little glass jars and labeled with their names. It’s really a fun and vast collection, and they also run a storefront museum in Castro on 18th Street that shows different aspects of the archives with cultural context. San Francisco is really lucky to have this institution!

What’s the best spot to take in a view of the city?

Probably the view from the top of Dolores Park. The park itself curves out beneath you like this pretty green bowl, and then beyond that is the city. It’s a great, inspiring view, especially on a sunny day. At night I like the view of the waterfront when you’re driving back over the Bay Bridge. It looks so charming and exciting, old fashioned somehow with the ferry building, but totally not, with the giant buildings.

Michelle Tea has to eat and run (Photo: Amos Mac)

You are one of the best dressed literary ladies around.  Where do you like to shop.

For clothes, in the Mission, I like the Candy Store Collective and The Bell Jar. For vintage Stone Pony and Painted Bird are great and for actual thrifting, Community Thrift and Thrift Town. In a city of mad thrifters you can still find treasures at these places! I also love high-end consignment and discount stores, and good places for that are Sui Generis and in the Castro (second hand stuff you can’t afford the first time around) [Ed.: Honey, love that store, but I can't afford most of their stuff the second time around either!], and My Roomate’s Closet in the Marina (where Philip Lim and Costume National go to die).

For interesting ephemera I like 826 Valencia (which is like a fun house on top of being an actual store, where one can open drawers and discover dioramas, or get themselves swabbed. That would be a trap door of mop heads tumbling down on you.) and Paxton Gate and Viracocha, which is like a beautiful art installation you can buy earrings at.

For books I love Dog Eared Books, which are new and used with a fantastic remainder table. And City Lights is the best is like being in a museum and  wonderful bookstore at the same time. There is so much history, and then shelves of the best edgy and political work that is out right now. A whole alcove dedicated to zines and chapbooks, and a whole floor dedicated to poetry! Unheard of!

What would you tell visitors are San Francisco’s “must eats”? 

I am obsessed with the tacos and burritos from Pancho Villa on 16th Street in the Mission, in particular their chili verde chicken, which is stewed and delicious. I like to get ‘baby burritos’, which are slightly smaller version of the giant ones that can be a bit too much. You can pick spinich or chili tortillas, and there are tons of bean options, like 10 different agua frescas and a giant salsa bar. Also, for a really special and slightly otherworldly dining experience, check out Outerlands, in the Outer Sunset just blocks from the ocean. It looks like it was made by ocean-dwelling gnomes, with driftwood and plants hung on rusting chains, and the food is really great.Their Sunday brunch is awesome, and the wait can be annoying but a few doors down is Trouble Coffee, a little shop that sells only three things – coffee, fresh young coconuts (they slice the top off for you) and thick slices of cinnamon toast. Get some caffeine and a snack to tide you over and browse overpriced but lovely hippie wares at The General Store. If it’s a nice day check out their backyard, which has a big old picnic table and a lovely little greenhouse.

And for the best, most extravagant meal of your life, splurge at Atelier Crenn, a Michelin-starred restaurant where a wildly talented and creative French chef serves up Asian-inspired dishes with the help of molecular gastronomy.The menu is a poem, and on my visit one of the desserts came with smoked fog. Yes, fog.

More food, drink, and—gulp—death, after the jump Read more…

Chef David Bazirgan of the Fifth Floor

Back in the 1990s, I covered movies, books, and music for daily and weekly newspapers. Being a literal as well as cultural omnivore, I was invited to do some restaurant reviewing. I balked.

Not because I was uninterested in the notion, but because, for all the intellectual enjoyment that turning critical thinking into shareable prose can provide, I wanted to keep one of my greatest pleasures- eating -to myself and my chosen dining companions. I wasn’t ready to regularly run another of my passions through the the gears of verbal translation and writerly angst.

Over the years. I’ve become much less interested in serving as a de facto promoter for the industrial product of the film and music industries. And as my writing on those topics has fallen by the wayside, I’ve come to enjoy the more personal aspects of writing about dining and travel: accounts of estaurant meals and trips can be miniature narratives in which the writer is also a character.

I mention all of this in light of a dinner John and I enjoyed a couple months back at The Fifth Floor. It took me right back to those selfish days when I didn’t want to “share my food.” Chef David Bazirgan and his team put together such extraordinary dishes, so smartly conceived and flat-out delicious, that I’ve resisted writing about them here. I’ve wanted to hold them as pure, vaporous pleasures in my memory, not try to pin them down with the insufficiencies of language.

From a culinary standpoint, it was the best meal I’ve had in the Bay Area over the past two years. And I’m afraid I’m going to remain cruelly withholding about it. Please, please manufacture a special occasion to try it for yourself (“I need to take my tongue on a date” or “It’s the first anniversary of today last year”).

“C’mon,” the reader coaxes, “Just show a little leg.”

Of lamb, perhaps? Well…It was perfectly accompanied with a sweet and piquant mix of pickled raisins, cauliflower and cippolini onions.

I’ll also tease you with Bazirgan’s signature Mendocino uni flan, which is like the best chawan mushiyou’ve ever had, exponentially enriched with not only urchin but also a palate-haunting blend of kaffir lime and saffron. Read more…

A model posing as a VA flight attendant (Photo: Virgin America)

In last month’s print edition of PASSPORT magazine, I chatted with a half dozen veteran GLBT flight attendants about what led them to pursue a line of work that often goes unappreciated by the traveling public. They also shared some recommendations on where to hang out in their favorite layover cities.

San Francisco’s Robb Growdon was one of the inaugural Virgin America flight attendants when the airline launched its SFO-hubbed fleet a few years back. He’d always wanted to be a crew member and, in fact, left a 25-year career in fashion retail to be part of VA’s start-up team. When his colleagues who live in other cities tap him for restaurant advice, Growdon points to a couple of personal standbys where early dinners can be followed by two of the city’s loveliest post-prandial strolls:

Hamburger heaven at Balboa Cafe

• The Balboa Cafe–where the deservedly renowned burger is served on a baguette and accompanied by super crisp shoestring fries–is a healthy five block walk from Marina Green, where you can stroll alongside sailboats as you take in the sunset

• Chenery Park serves up straightforward, impeccably fresh American cuisine, including a signature Andouille gumbo and a house smoked pork chop dressed with bacon and apricots. It’s around the corner from Glen Canyon, a steep-sided wildflower strewn natural wonder in the midst of the city. Keep an eye out for coyotes (Really!).

And here to read more about what makes flight attendants tick.

In the hot seat at the Clift (Photo: P.J.Ohm)

Whenever I think about the Clift Hotel, I start humming “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” It’s the last link in a free associative chain triggered by the Clift’s memorably outlandish lobby decor. That 1984 tune, of course, is from Tears for Fears’ fey-tastic 1984 album Songs from the Big Chair.

My bouts of nostalgia notwithstanding, the Clift plays host to a series of musical events that are utterly au courant. The next two shows are coming up soon, and if you click on the links below, you can get on the guest lists, gratis.

• On Thursday, May 24, experimental trip-hopster Shlohmo ushers in the Memorial Day weekend. GUEST LIST 
• On Friday, June 2, Diego Garcia—brainy Brown graduate and former leader of Elefant—brings his dreamy, Beatlesque pop to town. This one’s a must catch. GUEST LIST

The free shows, in the hotel’s swank Velvet Room, will get underway around 10 p.m. (Doors at 9ish). But since you’renot spending anything for tickets, consider showing up early to kick off the night with luxe libations in the adjacent Redwood Room, one of the most indisputably alluring cocktail lounges in town. Most weeknights, the post-work crowd thins out around 7:30 and the handsome room maintains a comfortable level of volume and crush for a couple magic hours, the ideal time to tap the staff’s creativity and knowledge of locally sourced spirits.

One of the handsomest bars in town (Photo: Clift Hotel)

Crackerjack barman Anthony Kim recently joined me in lamenting the sparse supply of Hangar One’s bracing chipotle-infused vodka, but made up for it with the Redwood Room’s signature House of Pisco cocktail, which blends pisco (Peruvian eau de vie) with pineapple and clove gum syrup, and green chartreuse. A skinny helix of lemon peel straddling the glass provided a bitter aromatic counterbalance to the drink’s slight sweetness. Kim is a master pisco mixologist; his concoctions using the locally imported Encanto brand recently won him a trip to Peru for the annual grape harvest.

Pour yourself a drink and check out Diego Garcia on video after the jump

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