I AM NOT SO FOND OF CHANGE

We got back to Sammy Cruz just in time to dump the suitcase contents into the washer and then back into the suitcases before departing for a three day conference (for Tama & her subaltern, Masina…) deep, dead center in the bowels of beautiful downtown San Francisco… 4^th and Market, a complex, over-crowded jumble of bus lanes, street repair closures and crazed drivers all overlaid with a one way grid and no left turn signs. I stayed with friends in the outer Richmond, above Golden Gate park so my hardest task was deciphering out how to get to the very small handful of streets that will actually let you across Market Street.  Since the conference attendees were wined and dined on Monday, I was off the hook for finding a restaurant until Tuesday.  Since we were in San Francisco there wasn’t much room for debate. Roosevelt’s Tamale Parlor… my favorite since 1976.

When I mentioned this intent to my friends, you can imagine my abject horror when they announced that “…it had recently changed hands.”  Well my fears were palliated some but far from quelled completely when they said that the food was actually better than ever.  Steeling myself I gathered up the gals and off we went to face this new demon.

It looked the same as we drove by looking for a parking spot.  The interior changes were slight but a little uncomfortable-ish.  They had crowded in a few more tables and the homey, framed newspaper articles and bull fight posters had been replaced by (very nice) expensively framed large, vintage Tamale Parlor calendar pages.  But, then, at some point they had taken out the bug zapper lights that lined the walls above the tables in the 70’s and I survived that…

Our waiter came by with menus and a wine list… What? A fucking wine list?

The menu was still good, even though they had dropped a few of the more obscure favorites like crepas con huitlacoche, and so we ordered. When the food arrived it was truly delicious. I mean GOOD… just no longer really authentic.

I chatted up our waiter/owner, complimented him on the food and learned that he had hoped to re-open serving his specialty, Italian/California fusion food. Apparently the neighborhood suggested this might be a mistake and so he ratcheted up the ingredients  to local and organic food sources but kept Maria in charge of the stove as she has been for more than a few decades.

Like all neighborhoods in the urban landscape, 24^th Street is changing, getting more gentrified and losing something tangible but hard to pin down. Like I said, the food was great but like the customers and the restaurant itself it lacks a fine degree of authenticity that is steeped into the walls of a place that has been around since 1919. You can maybe capture the look, but not the feeling… and that’s what I loved about the old Roosevelt’s Tamale Parlor.

And don’t even get me started on the greedy corporate bastards who yanked the 16 foot long Maxfield Parrish painting from the backbar of the Pied Piper Bar in the Palace Hotel on Market Street and sent it to be auctioned off in New York.

Man I hate being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21^st Century…