May 25, 2010
MAY 2010 is looking like a good month for forests. In a couple of days, on the 27th, the Oslo Forest Climate Conference is expected to mark another step on the road to a comprehensive deal on tropical deforestation. And last week, on the 18th, an unlikely-seeming collection of forest-products companies and environmental organisations announced the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, which should drastically change the way in which huge areas of Canadian forest are managed. (more…)
April 9, 2010
Coffee has been part of Bay Area culture from the start. Folgers and Hills Brothers started by providing java (a term coined on San Francisco’s piers) to thirsty 49ers. And there have long been boutique roasters like Caffe Trieste in North Beach, which has made Italian-style espresso since 1956, and Peet’s, which introduced its characteristic dark roasts in Berkeley in 1966 and led, through its descendant Starbucks, to a wholesale revision in the way America drinks coffee.
Today the pattern is repeating itself as small local roasters are expanding to make their marks in distant cities.
February 11, 2010
Lung Shan is an unremarkable Chinese restaurant in the Mission District. But on Thursday and Saturday nights it’s rocked by an invasion of diners and chefs with much more than sweet and sour pork on their minds.
On those nights, Lung Shan becomes Mission Street Food, one of a number of pop-up restaurants that have opened in the Bay Area over the last couple of years in spaces not normally used for fine dining.
On a recent Thursday, Tommy Halvorson, the chef that night, ignored Lung Shan’s huge woks as he worked pans crammed onto its small stove. Behind him, Anthony Myint assembled sea urchin into sashimi with young coconut and candied pecans ($8).
January 1, 2010
At high noon on Oct. 25, 2008, the zeppelin Eureka glided over the Golden Gate Bridge, around San Francisco’s waterfront, and then south to land lightly at Moffett Field in Mountain View — the first dirigible to grace the region’s skies since the days when Silicon Valley was more famous for its peaches than for its personal computers.
Alexandra Hall, the co-founder and chief executive of Airship Ventures, had hoped to make rigid-bodied dirigibles a regular presence in the Bay Area skies once again, ferrying well-heeled tourists on $495 rides above San Francisco Bay, conducting atmospheric experiments and serving as a flying billboard.
January 1, 2010
At Om Shan Tea, the air is filled with the clatter of small earthenware teapots, the sound of ethereal gongs and flutes and quiet animated conversation. Tea drinkers cluster on reed stools around low tables surrounded by antiques from tea-drinking lands.
Oshan Anand, the owner of this year-old teahouse in the Mission district of San Francisco, sits at an antique tea table of dark wood and stone and pours tiny cups of pu-erh, the aged Chinese tea that, like wine, is often known by region and vintage.