San Francisco Chronicle Food & Home - Spoken Edition

Anthony Strong’s modern Italian restaurant Prairie is open in the Mission where it took over the former home of Hogs & Rocks at the corner of 19th and San Carlos streets. It’s Strong’s first solo venture in the city, at least in the traditional sense. Strong’s most significant imprint on the restaurant, outside of the food, pertains to the service format. Once seated, guests will be handed a small menu and a pen.

Chef Smelly’s Creole and Soul Food, the legendary East Bay pop-up that draws lines down the street, has been forced out of its downtown Oakland home. At least for the time being. The pop-up has been operating out of Complex, an Oakland music venue, for the last three years. Edward Wooley, or Chef Smelly as he’s known in Oakland, said earlier this week that his operation was shut down after Alameda County declared pop-ups illegal.

It’s been exactly one year since the 2017 fires destroyed Kendra Kolling’s Kenwood home and left the future of her future of her beloved farmer’s market business in doubt. Today — Monday, Oct. 8 — marks the official opening of Kolling’s very first brick-and-mortar storefront, a cafe in Sebastopol’s Barlow shopping complex.

Russian Hill’s beloved Spanish restaurant Zarzuela will close in November as its longtime chef-owner Lucas Gasco retires and moves to Spain. The tapas spot has spent the last 24 years at the corner of Hyde and Union streets. Next in line for the building: Michael Pawlik, the executive chef of nearby Frascati. Pawlik and co-owner (and girlfriend) Amanda Banks Barker plan to open Abrazo, a Mediterranean restaurant with Spanish influences in the former Zarzuela space.

Roasted beet and garlic bring an unexpected va-va-voom to your ordinary hummus — velvety smooth, earthy and sweet. Not to mention that color — it’s a stunner. Serve with pita chips and crudites, or spread on a sandwich piled high with veggies.

One of my great pleasures is watching hummingbirds flit about sipping nectar, hearing the “zoom” as they fly by, seeing them perched on high in my backyard garden. I’ve learned that in San Francisco the most common hummingbirds are Allen’s and Anna’s, although others can be sighted. Hummingbirds will sip from feeders filled with red-dyed sugar water, but this will not sustain them.

When Prairie opens in the Mission District next week, it will be as much an exploration of Italian food as it is a chance for Anthony Strong to re-establish who he is as a chef. The longtime Pizzeria Delfina and Locanda chef spent much of 2017 opening and closing an ill-fated “virtual” restaurant named Young Fava. Now, with Prairie, he said he’s getting back to basics. On Oct. 12, Prairie will open in the former Hogs & Rocks space.

In their first cookbook, “Rich Table” (Chronicle Books; $35), chefs Sarah and Evan Rich share the tale of their courtship and how their Hayes Valley restaurant came to be one of the hottest dining spots in the country.

Rogelio Garcia had an epiphany after his stint on season 15 of Bravo’s Top Chef: it’s time to really start thinking about the future. “It comes down to just the finest details on that show,” he said. “I came back home and just really started thinking about what I wanted to do with my career.

San Francisco’s Elbo Room will close its doors after nearly three decades in the Mission. Co-owner Matt Shapiro, who bought the long-standing business in 2010 with Erik Cantu, said the last day will be Jan. 1. The bar and music venue’s new Oakland outpost will remain open. “It’s bittersweet, for sure,” Shapiro said. “San Francisco has changed a lot over the years so it feels weird that it has to close.

Alecia Moore has been harboring a secret. You probably know Moore as Pink, the pop star. As a class of people, pop stars are not generally accustomed to being able to keep secrets, and especially not Pink, who since 2000 has sold over 16 million albums, had 29 songs in the Billboard Top 40 and had her personal life plastered all over the tabloids.

Ray Laquindanum wields a collapsible-tripod selfie stick the way a conductor wields a baton. Outside 1608 Bistro, the new Filipino-American brunch spot on Russian Hill he’s vlogging about for his eponymous YouTube channel, up goes the camera at full extension so he can film himself introducing the place. It twirls around to catch a greeting from Vaughn Mendoza, friend and co-eater for the day, who throws up some hand signals.

San Francisco chef Joshua Skenes, best known for his four-star Saison, opened Angler this week — a highly-anticipated seafood restaurant on the Embarcadero. Angler is one of 2018’s most significant fall openings, in part because it’s substantially cheaper — appetizers are $12 to $28 and mains are $20 to $48 — than his other restaurant, Saison, which is one of the most expensive restaurants in the country, starting at $298 per person.

San Franciscans may have grown accustomed — in a grumbling, resentful kind of way — to spotting an “SF Mandates” surcharge on the bottom of the check they receive from a restaurant. But it still comes as a surprise to visitors from other parts of the country. Are restaurants in San Francisco required to put surcharges on menus? No.

As a nurseryman, I am occasionally asked: “What’s an attractive small tree that grows quickly and has lovely flowers?” That’s a short list, but one very fine candidate is the Mediterranean tree Vitex agnus-castus. Now, I’ve applied a very broad definition to the word “tree,” because this lovely specimen is actually a large bush that can be pruned to be more tree-like.