Rocketfish- NoCal's Best Sushi Happy Hour

Rocketfish, a new joint in Potrero Hill, has the best of many sushi Happy Hours in San Francisco. Sushi Happy Hours are a very happy trend with amazing values. Such as this $3 seaweed salad with kikurage mushrooms, akamodoki, hanasakuraso, wakame and agar,

or this $3 langostinos fritos with Japanese aioli,

or the $3 spicy tuna roll,

or the $8 walu carpaccio, with with salty lemon confit, caperberries, jalapeno vinaigrette, and sprouts ( my favorite dish)

and especially the $3 wok roasted shishitou chilies.

All of which encourages the drinking of a little midori, with a choice of cups

or this And some more serious plates like the $8 ceviche of shrimp, clams, ocotpus, salty lemon confit, caperberries, jalapeno vinaigrette and sprouts,

or the Kamehamela Roll, featuring more walu, escolar and cucumber salsa,

or some baby calamari tempura, with more shishitous,

some wagyu carpaccio with green mango,

and some skewers of chicken and pigs ears.

Finally, dessert - a little roasted fig with cinnamon,

and a trio of ices, raspberry-cabernet sorbet, green tea and Kahlua ice creams

Breakfast At Gourmet Village

First, a little Oaxacan tamal at the Orange Farmer's Market

Then on to Gourmet Village. This little spot in Millbrae packs them in on weekends. By noon they were sold out of pork cheeks and marinated duck tongues. By 12:30 there was a line waiting outside. Family dinners include shark's fin, abalone, birds nest, squab and other dishes for less than $50 per person.

A breakfast amuse bouche of pork belly
A tofu skin salad - my favorite dish.

Seafood chow fun included ling cod and several shell fish

"Farm chicken" clay pot included whole heads of baby cabbage, black mushrooms and some Loondu style streaky pork.

Osteria Coppa

New joint in downtown San Mateo uses local farmers and fishermen for fresh & local menu. Salami, pizza (650 F gas oven with Italian stone) and pasta are all scratch made in house.
Bigoli with with cranberry beans from Iacopi, home made pancetta and PR - excellent flavors, my favorite pasta

Fettucine with lobster, celery root and lemon verbena - nice pasta, semi bland sauce

Halibut tartare with winter radishes and cucumber and preserved lemon - this worked

Calamari babes, garbanzos, padron peppers and chile oil - my favorite plate

Artichoke pizza with Paremesan fonduta and lemon thyme
- pie looked better than it tasted. Onions overwhelmed all other flavors. Could barely taste cheese or chokes and didn't really like the flavor of the perfect - tavern style crust.

Renewable Energy Is All Hot Air

Research released to day by Bloomberg New Energy Finance exposes the political stances of progressive pols as hopelessly hypocritical. The news reveals that despite the hot air of politicians, governments of the world are spending 13 times as much money subsidizing dirty forms of energy over renewables and biofuels.

Governments provided $43-46 billion to renewable energy and biofuels technologies, projects, and companies in 2009, BNEF concludes in preliminary analysis. That total includes: feed-in-tariffs (FiTs), renewable energy credits or certificates (RECs), tax credits, cash grants, and other direct subsidies. It does not include subsidies to corn farmers to grow feedstock for use in US ethanol plants nor any value transfer due to carbon cap-and-trade schemes.

The figure contrasts $557 billion spent on subsidizing fossil fuels in 2008, as estimated by the International Energy Agency last month.

The full story http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100729006007&newsLang=en