San Francisco Chronicle Food & Home - Spoken Edition

On an unassuming slice of plain white bread, lathered with creamy mayonnaise, sits a rather generously cut slice of tomato. It doesn’t beg for much: a sprinkling of salt and a light dose of freshly ground black pepper. Another slice of bread might go on top. Either way, the construction seems fitting. This is how my husband makes his tomato sandwiches. It’s how he grew up eating the fruit on his farm on the southern edge of Virginia.

Eighteen months ago, customers lined up outside Cockscomb, the popular San Francisco restaurant run by celebrity chef Chris Cosentino, on a mission to try a veggie burger they had only read about. Cockscomb still serves the fabled Impossible Burger — you know, the one that expresses pink juices that turn brown as the wheat-gluten “meat” cooks, leading people to label it “the veggie burger that bleeds.” But, as of Friday, Aug.

Commons Club San Francisco, the new restaurant within the city’s forthcoming Virgin Hotels (250 Fourth Street), has tapped fine-dining chef Adrian Garcia to lead the kitchen. Garcia, whose track record includes stints at the Michelin-starred Quince and Benu, was last consulting for the new Stonemill Matcha bakery in the Mission. According the Virgin Hotels team, the food and drink options are still coming together.

Carmen Elias converses with a customer at La Mejor Bakery in San Francisco. The establishment has been owned by Elias for 25 years. Elias, who was born in Mexico and moved here in the 1960s, turned her bakery into an information hub for her Spanish-speaking customers and fellow business owners. less Carmen Elias converses with a customer at La Mejor Bakery in San Francisco. The establishment has been owned by Elias for 25 years.

Wildfire is a fact of life in today’s California, and right now a series of fires are devastating communities throughout Northern California. The Carr Fire near Redding, now classified by Cal Fire as the sixth most destructive fire ever in California, has killed at least six people. In Wine Country, the Mendocino Complex has destroyed at least 13 buildings. Many of you have asked whether any vineyards or wineries have been affected, and so far the answer is no.

Since taking over the former Juhu Beach Club in Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood (5179 Telegraph Ave.) in March, Janice and Brandi Dulce, the wife-and-wife team behind Filipino pop-up FOB Kitchen, have laid low while quietly working toward the much-anticipated opening of their first brick-and-mortar restaurant. Currently, FOB Kitchen is looking to make its debut in early September, according to the team.

Let’s say you’re having friends over for a get-together next week and you want to entertain outdoors. Then you notice your yard could use a little sprucing up. What to do? Let me say as a nurseryman that there is no shame in buying “instant color” to supplement your existing garden. Fortunately, nurseries and garden centers have your back. Here are a few tips that will lead to SUS (sprucing-up success).

There’s a new act heading to the former home of Doc’s Lab in North Beach. The venue was one of few remaining in San Francisco where folks could eat, drink, and listen to comedians or musicians on any given night. In February, Doc’s Lab (124 Columbus Ave.), along with its subterranean neighbor, Don Rickett’s restaurant, closed abruptly before quickly being put up for sale.

What do you drink when there’s nothing to drink? This was my dilemma last week, when I found myself on a 6-day Caribbean cruise. (Before you sneer at my choice of vacation, read Michael Ian Black’s brilliant, and very charitable, paen to cruises in the New York Times.) Ostensibly, there was plenty to drink on the cruise ship, with bars at every turn, cocktail waiters roaming the pool decks and frequent wine-glass refills at dinner.

Ask me to characterize the Valencia Street restaurant strip in 2018, and I offer up the following evidence: I am eating a grain bowl in a salad lounge. Taxonomically speaking, Mixt’s new Salad Lounge, one of the two rooms in its expansive new Valencia Street location, falls between the ultra-lounge (chill beats, the smell of pheromones smushed into the entire Macy’s cologne counter) and the airport lounge (dried-out cheese cubes, overly stimulating carpet).

My story is typical. When I moved to Los Angeles, Jonathan Gold taught me about the city — certainly more than “The Day of the Locust” or “If He Hollers Let Him Go” or Raymond Chandler or Mike Davis or Joan Didion — or any of the wonderful and awful movies I’d seen. From San Gabriel Valley Chinese to tacos in Bell Gardens to Compton barbecue, I mapped Los Angeles through eating.

The cake and ice cream, the last dish of the 7-Course Cello Player, at Avery in San Francisco. The cake and ice cream, the last dish of the 7-Course Cello Player, at Avery in San Francisco. The oyster aebleskiver, the second dish of the the 7-Course Cello Player at Avery in San Francisco.

Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles restaurant critic and one of the most influential food journalists of his generation, has died. He was 57. He died of pancreatic cancer, according to the Los Angeles Times, his current employer. He was reportedly diagnosed with the disease in early July.

Beth and Craig Wathen have a vision for their forthcoming City Beer space on Mission Street: it’ll be a cavernous beer library where customers are set adrift in a sea of labels and high-quality restaurant food. Barring any permitting or construction delays, City Beer’s new digs will open to the public sometime in August. The Wathens told Inside Scoop they plan to vacate their current space by July 31, and around the same time they’ll be handed the keys to 1148 Mission St.

A few years ago — I’m not sure when, because I remember it like it was yesterday — I was having dinner with Madeleine Kamman at a popular restaurant in San Francisco. The French-born Kamman ordered the roast chicken. When it arrived, she brushed back her white hair, looked down at the plate then focused her piercing blue eyes on the server: “A chicken breast?” she asked incredulously. “I’d like a thigh.