1) Free Pizzetta at the Cosmopolitan in SOMA

Valid Daily (thru September 18th)
11:30am – 9:30pm (Mon-Fri)
5pm – 9:30pm (Saturday)
Cosmopolitan Restaurant Lounge
121 Spear St. @ Howard

Today’s Dishout takes you to one of the snazziest, jazziest restaurants in SOMA.  The Cosmopolitan Restaurant Lounge is giving away a free order of their popular Grilled Pizzetta for lunch, happy hour, and dinner! This mouthwatering treat is topped with asparagus, applewood smoked bacon, Vella “Mezzo Secco” & soft egg. It’s perfect for sharing, but after one bite, you probably won’t want to.

This Dishout is a $9.50 value.

/ GET THIS DEAL NOW /

2) Free Calamari at Mas Sake

Sunday – Wednesday (thru Sept. 6th)
6pm – 10pm
Mas Sake
2030 Lombard St. @ Fillmore

This Dishout is hotter than a mouthful of wasabe! From now until Labor Day, Mas Sake is giving away a free order of their calamari. This crowd-pleaser is lightly battered and fried with Japanese spices, and served with a sweet chili and spicy aioli.

This Dishout is a $9 value!

/ GET THIS DEAL NOW /

3) Pica Pica’s New 3 for $3 Happy Hour

Every Monday – Friday.
3pm – 5pm
Pica Pica Maize Kitchen
401 Valencia St. @ 15th

Pica Pica, the Mission’s popular Venezuelan arepera, has just launched happy hour! Daily drink special include $3 draft beers, $3 vino, and $15 pitchers of passionfruit sangria. All of these beverages pair well with the kitchen’s arepas and maize’wiches.

4) Nombe’s $50 Sake Pairing Dinner

Wednesday, August 17th. 7pm
Nombe
2491 Mission St. @ 21st

Nombe, the Mission’s popular izakaya, hosts a monthly series of sake & food pairing events. This month’s dinner will explore sakes of the Miyasaka Family of Suwa, Nagano, makers of the Miyasaka and Masumi brands. Nombe’s Sake Sommelier, has carefully selected Masumi’s Nanago, Yuedomo, and Yamahai Ginjo, in addition to the Miyaska Yamahai 50 brand. He will also have a secret welcome sake to greet diners coming for this special pairing. Chef Nick Balla’s menu for the event includes: Grilled Ribeye with Sake-Kasu; Heirloom Tomato Salad with Shiso; Dried Grilled Squid; and Marinated Hearts of Palm. The dinner + sake pairings is $50 per person.

5) 7×7 Magazine’s Nightlife Launch Party at Infusion Lounge

Thursday, August 18th.
7pm – 10pm
Infusion Lounge
124 Ellis St. @ Powell

Join the movers and shakers in SF’s entertainment, hospitality and promotion industries for the release of 7×7′s Nightlife Guide. The party will be Thursday, August 19 at Infusion Lounge and will feature $3 specialty cocktails; $2 beer; and complimentary tastings and bites until 8pm. There will be DJ beats until 10pm from DJ TS.

RSVP HERE – http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=119461571436989&ref=mf

6) San Francisco’s 1st Annual Peaches + Plums Dining Month

August 15th – September 15th
Participating Restaurants – http://myfruitmybody.com/restaurantmonth.html

San Francisco’s first annual Peaches + Plums Dining Month kicks off August 15 and runs through September 15th. In association with My Fruit My Body, San Francisco’s top restaurants have joined forces with independent peach and plum growers to raise awareness about the fruits’ cancer-fighting attributes. A generous group of 15 SF restaurants will feature peach & plum dishes, donating $1 from every dish sold to The Breast Cancer Site’s Gifts That Give More™ program, which funds free mammograms for women in need. Restaurants include: Gitane, Fifth Floor, DOSA on Fillmore, District, 5A5, Delarosa, Roam, and more.

MORE INFO – http://myfruitmybody.com/restaurantmonth.html

7) The Bold Italic Presents: The Haberdash – A Men’s Fashion Show

Wednesday, August 25th.
7pm – 9pm
Burritt Room
417 Stockton St. @ Sutter

The Bold Italic will be sending some of the best clothing in San Francisco down the runway on guys they like to hang with, interspersed with some good old fashioned revelry. There will be drinks courtesy of Distillery No. 209, and a viewing of the latest men’s fashions from great stores across the city, including Revolver, Candystore Collective, Jack’s San Francisco, and On The Fly. The Burritt Room, a new favorite watering hole for artisan cocktails, will provide the backdrop with panache, and DJ Paul Paul, who continuously sells out the Elbow Room with his Saturday Night Soul Party crew, will provide the ’60s mod, rock, and soul soundtrack. The Magbooth kids and Orange Photography will also be there to catch you on camera. Tickets are $15 per person, and include 2 Distillery 209 cocktails.

This event is part of The Haberdash: A Week of Fashion for Men August 23-29, with deals across the city at more than 15 men’s boutiques.

BUY TICKETS HERE - http://thehaberdash.eventbrite.com/

By Jessica Furui, Sake Sommelier - Ozumo, SF

Water keeps such a holy place in sake making. And for centuries, brewers didn’t exactly know what it was about the water that made good sake. They just knew that good water made good sake. Only after scientific advancements did they realize that water high in potassium, potash, calcium and magnesium was holier than water without the proper presence of these elements. These minerals provide the necessary nutrients for excellent propagation of koji (Aspergillus oryzae), the mold responsible for converting starch to sugar. These minerals also promote a strong and robust shubo, the yeast starter. These two steps are vital to the rest of the fermentation process. Ultimately, the delicate balance of minerals in water can either make or break your sake.

In the 1840s Yamamura Tazaemon owned two breweries separated by a few miles in Kobe. He brewed the same rice, the same brewing techniques and what he thought was the same water and the sake consistently tasted different. What he didn’t know was that there was a huge expanse of ground water nearly 50 meters below the surface of the Uozaki brewery that had been gently filtered by calcium deposits. Once he brought the water of Uozaki to the Nishinomiya brewery he knew he had found the source of superiority: the water.

With visits to several breweries over my 10 years of sake madness, each time the owner has made a point to show me their water source. Visiting Kamoizumi in Saijo, Hiroshima, Kazuhiro san and I climbed into his circa 1990, red, convertible Mazda Miata for a short ride up the mountain. With the wind in may hair and the smell of the leaves in the air, we came to a sweet little shrine next to a small, humble spring near the side of the road, the source of their water supply. They pumped the water all the way down to the brewery. Even townspeople would come and fill up buckets from the well to take home.

Moss covered ceilings and water droplets glistening from specks of light are the mysterious surroundings of a spring essential to Sawanoi brewery in rural Tokyo. Located several meters from the entrance, this little cave is cold, damp and musty. A great place for pristine water! The brewery is located literally right smack dab next to Tamagawa River, but they don’t use that water because the mineral content is too inconsistent.

Yoshida-san from Tedorigawa brewery in Ishikawa prefecture told me that they believe the water from their well takes about 100 years to get there. He says that it takes that long for the snow from nearby Hakusan Mountain to melt off and seep into the ground water. From the pre-fermentation steps like washing, soaking and steaming, plus all the water used in fermentation, the final product is about 70 per cent water. Here’s a few mind-boggling numbers for you to chew on: if we estimate a very small brewery using about 800 kg of rice in one tank, we then must estimate it takes about 30 times the rice (in weight) of water that is needed for that batch.

With all the great, mineral-perfect water in the sake world, you can bet your bottle there’s bad water too. The presence of iron will discolor the sake and negatively affect the flavor and taste. Another bad boy of water is manganese. It reacts with ultraviolet rays to cloud any lovely, clear sake. Don’t confuse this with nigori, or cloudy sake. Nigori is cloudy due to the residual sake lees left in the final product, not because it is damaged goods. Even left out for just a few hours, or under intense lighting, sake brewed with manganese-laced water has no chance.

The discovery of what they termed Miyamizu, shrine water, catapulted the brewers of the Nada region into sake heaven. They quickly learned the water there could support a vigorous fermentation, creating clean, solid sakes, perfect for the palate of Tokyo. To this day, about one third of all sake produced in the world comes from the Nada region, southwest of Tokyo, six hours by the famous bullet train. They are mainly large-scale productions from what the industry calls O-te, Big Hand. These breweries operate all year round, producing millions of liters a year; a far cry from smaller, regional producers focused mostly on quality and simplicity rather than quantity.

Like Catholics and wine, Shinto monks once brewed sake. Shintoism, a combination of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism meaning “the way of the gods,” is the indigenous religion of the Japanese archipelago. Appearing first around the sixth century, the Shinto religion was essential in many parts of modern day Japan, including different types of fermentation. It seems as though these monks had quite a good time making and drinking sake, because in 1420 the military stepped in an made these activities illegal for them. Just like moonshine here in the states, Big Brother has to get a piece of the pie, so the Japanese governing body started to tax sake. At this point private individuals, mostly wealthy landowners, started making the “water of the gods.” With the privatization of sake production, the government could tax away to their hearts delight.

Sake’s place in the world of Shinto is as apparent today as in was centuries ago. Used along with salt and water, sake is important in purification rites. On the third day of the New Year, sake is traditionally taken to purify the body and spirit. O-miki, holy sake brewed by monks, is consumed at the shrine to bless you with the gods.

Other uses of holy sake find their place in traditional Shinto weddingse But i a beautiful set of three shallow, wide, red-lacquered bowls, sa is poured into all three as they sit atop each othe,the smallest of the three at the top. The bride and groom drink three times from each bowl. Three being an auspicious number in Japan, three times three, even more holy. My hubby says that we will do the Sansankudo ceremony for our wedding when we move to Japan. I guess I can wait.

Another ceremony central to Shinto, kagami biraki, is used when opening a new business, at the start of sporting events, and often at weddings. Translating to “opening the mirror,” the top of a sake cask is hit with a wooden mallet, to reveal the sake below. It is then shared with those present to celebrate and bring prosperity. My personal favorite custom, Tsukimisake, is sake enjoyed under the beauty of a full moon, usually in fall under the harvest moon. Families make special food and lay out to enjoy the beauty of the moonshine. It is said that if a maiden drinks sake in which the moon has been reflected, she will become pregnant.

Good, often, great water is at the very core of sake production. Luckily Japan has some of the best water in the world, and what better way to use it than to make sake? Being an island nation located on top of a volcanic ring, its mountains have been pushed high into the sky. Due to its location on the globe, it gets to see quite a bit of precipitation. As this water slowly percolates through the hundreds of meters of rock and mineral deposits, it slowly becomes the destiny of many a sake brewer. The next time you go to Japan, make a point of visiting a brewery and you’ll see what I mean. Pride, honor and dedication fueled by great water and insanely great sake.

By Jonathan Yaffe

Article from Issue Five

In the Japanese world of alcoholic tradition, there is very little room for supplementing historical continuity with modern novelties. The imbibing of sake, for example, is surrounded by certain procedural expectations: never pour your own cup; sip – don’t shoot – out of a small glass or ceramic cup; kanpai before drinking; and drink at the correct temperature.

One cannot imagine the reaction of the ojiisan (Japanese grandfathers) when a group of fresh-off-the-boat American fraternity brothers on vacation proposed teaching the octogenarian regulars in the tiny bar in Fukuoka how to properly do a sake bomb.

Even coming from San Francisco, one of the few, true worldly cities, where most people know what pisco and mezcal are, I didn’t even know the difference between a nigorizake (濁り酒 -  thick white unfiltered sake) and a junmaishu (純米酒 sake made from rice, water and kōji, with no additives). I also thought that all sake was meant to be served warm; this is precisely the biggest obstacle keeping Japanese sakes from becoming truly appreciated in the states.

Nomenclature

Firstly, even the word sake is a misnomer and anyone who goes to Japan will feel lost in translation while ordering sake (酒), which is Japanese for alcohol. Instead, get used to ordering nihonshu (日本酒, literally Japanese sake). Secondly, while sake is often described as rice wine, in reality the brewing (rather than just fermenting) process is closer to that of beer. Although, during sake’s brewing process, the starch turns to sugar at the same time that the sugar ferments to alcohol, rather than in two separate steps. By keeping the temperature low, fermentation is slowed down to between two and six weeks.

Hot or Cold

While in many restaurants, sakes have a standard temperature, some allow patrons to specify the temperature they’d like to drink at. I cringed last week as I watched a British tourist in one of my favorite restaurants in Tokyo order a superb daiginjo (nihonshu made by milling away at least 50% of the rice grain), a premium sake from Niigata. He ordered it hot. I almost cried. It was the middle of the summer. As if he were just sent into the restaurant only to provoke me, he downed the entire glass in one shot. I shuddered.

Centuries ago, sake was made and stored in cedar casks, giving sake a distinct woody flavor. That’s probably the origin of warming sake. It’s a way to drink the unrefined beverage and still mask the woodiness and impurities. As a general rule of thumb, these days, sake is brewed to convey subtle tastes rather than the earthy boldness of centuries ago. Thus, most high-grade sakes are best slightly cooled (hiyazake or reishu). Ginjo sakes (high-grade premium sakes in which at least the outer fifty per cent of the rice kernel is milled away) best show their complex tastes chilled to about 50°F, often referred to as hana-hie (flower cool). Any colder and one really doesn’t taste the true essence of the drink. Junmai, which is often more earthy and full-bodied, with a slightly higher acidity, is often served at room temperature or just cooled slightly.

Do Unto Your Sake As You Would Do Unto Your Wine

You wouldn’t throw a bottle of rare Château Margaux into a warm saucepan with cloves and cinnamon. Please treat your sake just as well. Because heating sake often covers its true flavor, the sake we get served hot, or atsu-kan, is normally lower-grade nihonshu, in which not very much of the outer husks of the rice kernels are milled away. Like mulled wine in the West, hot sake is a beautiful thing on frigid winter nights, though it should be reserved for warming cold fingers rather than tasting brewed genius. If you really must warm your sake, make sure to warm it by first pouring it into a small decanter called a tokkuri and then placing the tokkuri in a bowl of hot water, not heating it beyond about 130°F, at which point it loses most of its intended flavor. Warm sake is best at about 115°F. Japanese companies are even experimenting with using RFID tags which continuously report the temperature of sake bottles wirelessly back to the sake manufacturers; this way customers can receive a report proving that the sake was never damaged by heat during transport or storage.

The Times, They Are a-Changing

These days, in a Japan in which futuristic innovation competes with tradition, there are bars that sell individual cups of “frozen sake” which are kept in the freezer and then shaken vigorously to create a sake slushy. In the winter, convenience stores sell self-heating cans of sake in which you simply press a button on the bottom, invert the can a few times, and enjoy your steaming nihonshu.

Still though, tradition is not lost. Many restaurants still have staff that are sake experts, who take great care to serve each nihonshu at the temperature that perfectly brings out its true flavor. Even if the drone next to you is doing sake bombs with a perfectly aged ginjo, do your part to appreciate the nuance, and order your sake hiya (chilled).