Scowl, Nu?

Egad! Avery stole my Smirk! Since it was my birthday, we decided that we should go for sushi since we haven't in quite a while, mostly because we can't seem to find a place that has a selection of fish that is varied as well as exceptionally fresh. Well, there is Ebisu, but it always has a two-hour wait, and there are those few scattered hole-in-the-wall places that seat, like, eight people total, and there's Blowfish, which although it has ultra-modern space-age decor, a sake bar and shows cool anime videos on movie screens placed strategically around the restaurant, it has some weird, untraditional vibes; like even though you may choose to sit at the sushi bar, a waiter will still come over to take your order, and they serve their sake in clear glass decanters (which look like small flower vases) and clear shot glass-type glasses which isn't conducive to keeping the hot sake actually hot at all. Not only that, you're literally elbow-to-elbow with the rest of the patrons, their sushi is only so-so, and the place gets packed/over-run/SRO with caucasian yuppies getting drunk on sake by 9:00 PM.

But Kabuto…Kabuto! It is heaven on earth. HUGE selection of fish. FRESH fish. Melt-in-your mouth fish. We ate practically everything on the nigiri menu, and even ventured onto the vegetarian side of the menu board after we had exhausted the seafood options. (an important aside: Kabuto is the only sushi bar I've ever sat at that has been kind enough to provide a real chopstick rest, and it's this and other little attention-to-detail touches — like when the waitress told me to watch out for the little dip in the floor beneath the carpeting under my feet and then apologized: "This restaurant is so old!" –  that change a good experience into a great one.) After nearly three hours, we left with the best, happiest, most peaceful sushi buzz ever!

Nothing satisfies us like a good sushi dinner. Actually, I don't know if you'd even call it dinner… it's more like a three-hour sushi experience.

Case in point, Saturday night. Since it's almost Janet's birthday, we decided that it was a perfect opportunity to haul our asses out to Kabuto Sushi in the Richmond District. Kabuto is located in the middle of nowhere… and it requires that we take two buses (which in itself is a trial) and budget 45 minutes for the commute just one way. Plus, it's in an apparent no cabs 'round here zone, which means that getting home takes another 45 minutes.

Still, the sushi at Kabuto is certainly worth the hassle of getting out there. For almost three hours, Janet and I ate almost everything on the fresh-fish menu, including a handful of foods that I hadn't ever had before. Highlights of the meal:

• Mackerel nigiri (Tataki Style / slightly seared on the edges)… perfectly fresh, and absolutely delicious
• Katsuo nigiri – my favorite fish… and as amazing as usual
• Natto – fermented soybeans with a raw chicken egg yolk
• Ume (sour plum) Shiso (burdock leaf) maki roll with fresh mountain potato – crisp with a marvelous texture
• Ume (sour plum) Shiso (burdock leaf) maki roll with halibut – though the ingredients were almost the same as the previous roll, this roll had a very smoky taste… funny, because none of the ingredients have a smoky taste when eaten individually
• Shi-Sha-Mo (grilled smelt with a large roe sac) Te-Maki (hand roll) – I didn't know that they could even make this as a hand roll. Truly amazing.

Add to this a ton of Sapporo beer, a few bottles of Kiku-Masamune sake (hot) and a glass each of cold nigori sake (and the brands completely escape me now), and we left the meal completely sated, and almost two hundred dollars poorer. Still, you have to splurge every once in a while… right?

Is anyone else getting sick of Hershey Foods buying up all of the remaining candy companies out there?

I mean, don't get me wrong… I love Hershey Kisses and I used to trade most of my Halloween candy for those elusive miniature bars of Hershey Special dark… but lately it has been really disturbing me that every American-made candy bar that I see has the Hershey logo printed on its backside.

Hershey owns Reese Candy, creators of the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. They own the rights to produce Nestle's KitKat and all Cadbury products in the United States. They bought the recipes for Almond Joy, Milk Duds, Payday and Twizzlers.

Case in point: Saturday night. While Janet and I were grabbing an emergency umbrella at Rite Aid, I noticed a rack of candy bars… wrapped in grey-silver with blue writing. Oh my stars, a Zero Bar!

Zero Bars were my absolute favorite candy bars as a kid.. they were my father's as well. Whenever we should find a cache of them, we would buy as many as we could get our hands on… sometimes buying multiple cases. They were that hard to find, and that good.

If you've never experienced a Zero Bar, let me explain: this is Frank Martoccio's (the creator) finest creation… even better than Payday Candy Bars. It's aerated nougat (think 3 Musketeers) with caramel and chopped almonds covered with white chocolate. This was my first introduction to white chocolate… well before the Nestle's White craze in the mid-eighties (which was a mistake almost as large as the whole Clear Pepsi debacle). It was heavenly.

I remember asking my father why it was so hard to find the delicious confection. It was then that he explained that the candy was made by a company called Leaf Candy (he then showed me the logo on the back of the wrapper), and since it was a small company, it had limited distribution. It was the Zero Bar that taught me the simplest concepts of commerce, supply and production.

So, naturally, when I saw the Zero bars at Rite Aid, I bought four of them… out of fear that I would never see another Zero Bar in San Francisco again. Since I don't eat that much candy (really, I don't), I flipped them over to see what the expiration date was. That's when I saw the logo… Hershey Chocolate USA.

I don't know why it bothers me so… the recipe is the same… the taste is the same… but for some reason the memory is just a little tainted.

Does everything have to change?

As usual, Saturday Night was spent at the Toronado. Upon our 11pm arrival, were immediately faced with the typical crowd of people. So we decided to forgo pushing through the crowd so we could place our order and decided to just talk to Tad for a while.

A few minute later, Carmen (a long time regular) stopped in and immediately obtained two choice seats at the bar. About 15 minutes later, our typical seats opened up and we pounced on them.

Ian immediately greeted me with a barleywine called “GWB 1987″… I have no idea what it really was, but it tasted exactly like a tawny port. I then ordered a Hop Ottin IPA. Janet had a Framboise.

Five minutes later… Steve from Speakeasy Brewery comes in for a beer… and he asks if I had the IPA yet. My response: I’ve only had Prohibition (the IPA like beer that they brew) a couple hundred times… of course I have, Steve. He then informs me that this wasn’t the Prohibition on tap… it was their hundredth batch commemorative IPA. I immediately downed the Hop Ottin and started on this yet unnamed IPA.

The IPA, which I will call Barfly’s Pale, was the beer that could really win mainstream support from the Sierra Nevada / Anderson Valley IPA crowd. It was a extremely crisp, pale beer… so hoppy that you could practically chew the beer. I easily rate this to be as good of an IPA as my current favorite Pale Ale (Hop Ottin from Anderson Valley). Unfortunately, only 2.5 BBL (5 kegs) were produced… but at least all of the publicly available kegs are at the Toronado. Sometime while I was drinking the Barfly’s Pale, Janet ordered a Weinstephaner Lager (from one of the oldest breweries in Germany).

Though we only had two beers each (I don’t count the taste of the barleywine), we ended up not getting home until after 4am, about three hours later than we initially intended.

Still, it was worth staying late… not only did we get a chance to finally talk to Ian, we got the grand tour of the new shelves that he and Johnny built in the keg-storage closet.

Last night we went to the Toronado to visit with Ian and have a few barleywines, since it was the barleywine festival and all. But as it typically happens during one of these big festivals, Ian was too busy serving $1.00 tasters of barleywines to these pseudo-beer-geeks (who didn’t seem to tip well at all), which made it difficult to order a round of beer, let alone talk to Ian for any length of time.

Since it was a festival, the usual cast of characters were there: the group from Magnolia Brewing, Dave and Jennifer (the owner and his girlfriend), Nico Freccia from Celebrator Beer News and a ton of people who I see at every special event. It was nice to see Stu at the bar again… he was released from the hospital last night. His hair was green, his Guinness was black and the pins sticking out of his shoulder were a bloody shade of gun metal (long story, we’ll tell you about it later).

So we spent the night talking to Todd and Tad (who showed up for a quick pint) and drinking our beers. Janet got one of those 30oz buckets of Hoegaarden White. I decided to go on a barleywine kick. My tasting notes follow:

• Alaska Brewing Co. – Old Growth What a strange little beer. It smelled of pine trees (they brewed it with spruce tree tips), tasted of strawberries and had the kick of a small mule. A fantastic barleywine.
• Broken Drum – Percussion Eh. Nothing special. Passable.

• Lagunitas – Brown Shugga A favorite… candy-sweet and potent as hell.

• Stone House Brewing – Old Mjolnir Dangerously drinkable. Dark, strong and not too sweet. I’d get this again, if I had a chance.

Since Barleywines are so strong and sweet, I needed something to wash them down, and a De Koninck did the job perfectly. I would have had a taste of the Barley and Hopps 1995 Big Head Barleywine (which closed last year due to the smoking prohibition at their brew pub) or the aged in bourbon-barrel Hair of the Dog Batch 29, but the three gallon keg ran out within a few hours of its tapping.

We’ll be back on Saturday to sample the few remaining barleywines, so expect a Sunday night update.

In the Fun Facts and Useless Miscellaneous Trivia Department, upon finding out that Avery is a M*A*S*H fanatic, Tad challenged him to name the five characters that have been on the show from start to finish. Avery’s first answer was “Nurse Kelly.” “Nurse Kelly!” cried Tad. “She’s the crux! No one ever gets Nurse Kelly!” See, he is a fanatic. He even has a blue and white Hawaiian shirt that we refer to as “the Hawkeye shirt.”