Eat noodles

Lunette, North Beach crawl, best natural wines bars, Yosemite, spreadsheet obsessions, @erinlovesfun, MORE

Oct 02, 2024

∙ Paid

RESTAURANTS • First Person

Ferry to Cambodia

Open in the Ferry Building since June, Lunette is the latest spot from chef Nite Yun, known for her lauded Nyum Bai in Oakland. It’s easy to spot the colorful stall — just head to the east side of the historic Beaux Arts transit center. Once there, step right up to order at the counter, and you might get a glimpse of the star chef — who’s about to be featured on the new Netflix series Chef’s Table: Noodles — in the open kitchen.

The menu of Cambodian street fare poses the most important question you may have to ask yourself all day: Do you want to “eat noodles” or “eat rice”? If it’s noodles, the kuy teav phnom penh arrives on a bright red tray with a lime wedge teetering in the spoon. The bowl is as big as your face, so take a deep breath of the golden and aromatic broth, jammed with three types of pork, curled shrimp, fresh cilantro, and fried garlic, all buried in the depths of slender rice noodles.

But it’s not wrong to go with rice, like a sunny yellow coconut curry topped with crispy fried chicken. There are a few sides, including a thinly sliced cabbage salad laced with chiles so fiery it yielded tears.

Spoon scraping the bottom of the bowl, you won’t mind the odd pigeon (or tourist) strutting past. It’s well worth it for the only Cambodian noodles in San Francisco. –Becky Duffett

→ Lunette (Embarcadero) • 1 Ferry Building, Suite 33 • Tues–Fri 11a–7p, Sat 10a–6p • No reservations.

SF RESTAURANT LINKS: Fancy kimbap is the new San Francisco treat • New Mariana bar Lilah boasts boozy snowcones • Appreciating the dining boom at the Ferry Building • Michael and Lindsay Tusk launch dessert cart Gelateria di Cotogna • Quince, Four Kings, and Fikscue make NYT’s best US restaurants list.

WORK • Wednesday Routine

Fun house

ERIN FONG • Artist and content creator • erinloves.fun
Neighborhood you live in: Emeryville

It’s Wednesday morning. What’s the scene at your workplace?
As a freelance artist, my days are always so different, but the constant is starting my morning with an iced latte. This Breville at-home espresso machine has been a game-changer. I've been trying to keep to a morning routine of either journaling (à la Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and “Morning Pages”) or a quick workout (I recently joined Obe Fitness and am working with an online personal trainer). My home base is an artist live/work cooperative, so my commute to my studio — which houses a 1,000-lb vintage Vandercook letterpress machine and painting studio — is just steps away.

What’s on the agenda for today?
I just spent three weeks at an artist residency, so I’m getting back into the swing of things, tidying my studio, catching up on life tasks. My days are usually split between my art practice, my newly launched wholesale stationery line FunHouse FunHouse, and checking out fun stuff for @erinlovesfun. I’m currently working on an art submission for the cool gigantic hearts you see all over SF by San Francisco General Hospital Fund, bopping over to see my girl Nikki at The Woodbridge for a haircut, and swinging by Voss Gallery to see my piece in the Urban Tides exhibition.

Any restaurant plans today, tonight, this weekend?
I’m hoping to check out Motoring Coffee, a coffee shop-meets-vintage car club in Cow Hollow.

How about a little leisure or culture?
I try to support the local art scene by seeing as many exhibitions as possible. I’m looking forward to checking out “Neon as Soulcraft” at the Museum of Craft and Design. It’s curated by Kelsey Issel and Meryl Pataky of SheBends, who are elevating neon signage to fine art.

Any weekend getaways?
People think I’m always “jet-setting,” but honestly, I stick to about a four-hour radius from San Francisco. I recently stayed at the incredibly charming cottages at Nick’s Cove right on Tomales Bay. Each cabin is different, and we stayed in Nicolina, which is an adorable boat-turned-cabin. You can grab dinner at the on-site restaurant, get your oyster fill, and even kayak in the bay. Heading east to Gold Country, both The Holbrooke Hotel in Grass Valley and The National Exchange Hotel in Nevada City transport you back in time. These historic hotels have undergone major renovations in the past few years, so they feel fresh and modern while still maintaining their Wild West roots. My friend Travis Parsley oversees the bar programs there, and is always rolling out interesting new cocktails.

What was your last great vacation?
I just got back from camping in Yosemite, where I managed to snag a site right in the valley (no small feat). It was beyond amazing. We had direct access to so many waterfall hikes and endless swim spots. I gifted my partner a Bluejay e-bike for his birthday. Bringing our own bikes to the park was key to getting around.

What store or service do you always recommend?
A real treat yourself service is getting a facial at Monastery in Noe Valley with founder Athena Hewitt. The interiors are beautifully minimal, and their products are hand-crafted in a lab next door using the most delectable-smelling botanical ingredients. I highly recommend getting on their mailing list because, once a year, they sell their luxurious at-home facial Discover Kit, and you get to try all the products for only $1!

SF WORK AND PLAY LINKS: Inside the Richmond’s Internet Archive • SF has a new travel boss • Why is the IPO market so lackluster? • More companies are moving comp to bonuses • You’re probably using AI wrong.

WORK • Quarterly Report

Sheet music

It’s the first week of a new quarter — goodbye to Q3, a bottom-three quarter, with its summer lulls and dogged liminality — which means a fresh start on expectations (and the dashboards that track them).

Here at FOUND, in our infancy and with a predilection for software we don’t have to build ourselves, we’ve got ready-made dashboards available via Substack and Stripe, Meta and Quickbooks. They are all good and fine. At previous, more grown-up companies, I’ve used more sophisticated tracking tools, programs custom-built to pull data from varying sources and slice it multiple ways. Some of those were excellent.

But what really gets me excited these days is a Google Sheet I update by hand. It’s got subscription metrics from the four FOUND cities — NY, LA, SF & Miami. I created it out of necessity to aggregate this data (as each city is a different Substack, with its own Substack dashboard). And now, I’m addicted to it.

I update “Subs Data Network” every morning over coffee before the workday has begun. When I get word of new subscribers midday, via alerts from other programs, I get anxious because they haven’t yet made it in. And I wonder what the day’s paid subscriber upgrades will do to the conversion rate in cell B13.

It’s definitely not the most efficient way to operate. But an obsessed-about, handmade spreadsheet is also the surest indicator I have that a project has taken hold in my psyche. The practice has crept into my personal life, too. I wear a watch that tracks my runs, all available in a sophisticated app. But I also transfer them to a Sheet, day by day, mile by mile.

Someday, FOUND’s new business hires will demand that we employ better tools to track progress. Sheepishly, I’ll agree. But, on this dawn of a new quarter during these evolutionary days of FOUND, I already miss Subs Data Network, and — rudimentary as it is — the promise for our future it holds. –Josh Albertson

CULTURE & LEISURE • In Between Days

Cure Night • The Cure In Orange plus DJs • 4 Star Theatre (Richmond) • Fri @ 7p • GA, $15 per
Fatal Abduction • SF Mint (SoMa) • Sat @ 6p • VIP, $130 per
Clairo • Frost Amphitheatre (Stanford) • Sun @ 7p • GA, $90 per

BARS & RESTAURANTS • The Crawl

The allure of North Beach

When I go to San Francisco, I grab a friend or two from Marin, Napa, or the East Bay, and we head into North Beach for a one-night dining bender. The only rule is that all of the joints must be family-owned.

First, we check into the 1950s-style Hotel Bohème. For as little as $285 a night, you can nab a quaint room with a squeaky bed. I recommend room #104, which faces Columbus Ave.

Lunch is at Sotto Mare around the corner, where we order the crab cioppino with the traditional crab Louie. Then, it’s back along Columbus to Stella Pastry & Cafe for a cheese cannoli, followed by an interlude at City Lights bookstore for one-of-a-kind titles.

In the evening, we resume at Tony Nik’s Cafe, from which we walk around the block to the grittier Gino & Carlo sports bar, with two pool tables and a weekly billiards tournament — cash only.

Then, dinner at the traditional Italian Sodini’s Green Valley, where the linguini la casa is the must-order. The restaurant doesn’t accept reservations, but you can wait at the busy bar.

Finally, off to The Saloon for live music. There’s an eclectic, wild mix of people this time of year: An international swath of Burners worldwide congregate here, pre- and post-Burning Man. The French, especially, love this joint (as they do all of San Francisco).

Before breakfast the next morning, a cappuccino at Caffe Trieste, the epic coffee shop where all the beat poets once met. Writers and wannabes still gather here, and the old guard nabs the four tables early in the front with stories to tell. They do not warm up to outsiders. Also, cash only.

Finally, for a full breakfast, it’s two eggs with a spicy pork chop at Mo’s Grill on Grant Ave. — or, if we’re ending with a bang, one of their famous burgers with a milkshake. –Brad Inman

GETAWAYS LINKS: Vertigo-featured lodgings reopens in Nob Hill as Hotel Julian • Ritz Carlton Half Moon Bay debuts results of major renovation • Anticipated new hotel Regent Santa Monica Beach has opened • Virgin Atlantic overhauls loyalty program • Will raft of new luxury hotels spell the end of Hokkaido’s ski charm?

ASK FOUND

First, a quick primer on how this works: You send us the pressing questions of the day (on dining, services, living in the Bay Area). We all put our heads together (us, FOUND, + you, FOUND subscribers, who are also FOUND) in search of truth and beauty.

Three FOUND subscriber PROMPTS for which we are seeking intel:

Which dining spots have wowed you this fall?
What’s your favorite bookstore in the Bay Area?
Which spa are you booking to escape the chaos of the season?

Got answers or more questions? Hit reply or email found@itsfoundsf.com.

GOODS & SERVICES • The Nines

Natural wine bars

Key Club (Lower Nob Hill, above), swank space for wines from natty light to full funk