Frisco Vista

The Cake Gallery, located at 290 9th Street (at Folsom) has made a name for itself by offering a line of x-rated cakes. But, according to their website, “the majority of our custom cakes are actually delivered to businesses and children’s parties.” And indeed, at my day job I recently sampled a cake decorated with a map of Hawaii for a colleague who is moving there.

In addition to their erotic cakes, they offer kids’ birthday cakes, 50th birthday cakes, 3-D cakes, wedding cakes, baby shower cakes, over-the-hill birthday cakes, unique cartoon cakes for kids, bachelor party cakes, celebrity birthday cakes, baptism cakes, and novelty cakes for kids. Fortunately, their cakes are better than their photography — I did what I could with this image of a 3-D Barbie cake.

Gridskipper recommends the following Dim Sum restaurants in the city. What are they forgetting? Maybe as time goes by it will be possible to add to this list.

• Yank Sing (49 Stevenson St.)
• Hang Ah Tea Room (1 Pagoda Place) (yelp review)
• Imperial Palace (818 Washington St.) (yelp review)
• Koi Palace (365 Gellert Ave., Daly City) (warning: noisy website)
• Good Luck Dim Sum (736 Clement S.) (yelp review)
• S & T Hong Kong Seafood (2588 Noriega)
• House of Banquet (939 Clement St.)

The Bay Area’s culinary reputation has been taking some hits lately. “Alice Waters and sourdough bread aside,” Alan Richman wrote in GQ, “the Bay Area has contributed surprisingly little to the culinary ripening of America.” Tired lists like the one assembled by Chronicle food critic Michael Bauer probably aren’t helping, so Gridskipper made its own list. It’s a short list but a good one, including Anchor Steam Brewery, Ghirardelli Chocolate, the French Laundry, the London Wine Bar, the McEvoy Ranch, P.G. Molinari and Sons, the Slanted Door, St. George Spirits, and Tsar Nicoulai.

Casa Sanchez, based in San Francisco, makes some of the best chips and salsa around. They have a restaurant at 2778 24th Street (which has been getting some negative reviews). But their main business these days must be their salsa and chips for distribution, which are excellent. They offer both fresh and roasted salsas. Now Chowhound is trying to reverse engineer the fresh salsa. Click the link to see how they’re doing.

According to the packaging, the ingredients are “tomatoes, peppers, onions, cilantro, garlic, citric acid, and sea salt.” Should be easy, right? I think what makes it tricky is getting the right mix of peppers. La Chica Guapa and I once translated a book called the Mexico the Beautiful Cookbook by Susanna Palazuelos. There is an enormous variety of peppers available for Mexican cooking, and the art of combining them requires experience and discrimination.

Sometimes in San Francisco one encounters something called a “hangtown fry.” What is it? It’s a sort of omelet composed of oysters, eggs, and bacon. Some say the hangtown fry, which was served in 19th-century gold mining camps (the oysters were transported in barrels of sea water), is the first true California cuisine. It was an expensive meal, a signal that one had struck a rich vein.

The dish gets its name from Placerville, which was known colloquially as Hangtown because it was the site of a famous hanging of outlaws. Recently a Placerville group known as the “Hangtown Fryers” has tried to promote the dish as the official dish of the state of California.