Chronic Negress

The Negress had dinner at Anchor and Hope in San Francisco recently and there is much to tell. First of all, it is to be hoped that her blog posts will not rival the saga of Gilgamesh in length so she’s addressing this meal and the wines in two parts. You have to have a sense of the place before you can feel how it felt to eat there. So let’s catalog what the Negress saw from her perch at the metal bar.

First of all, from where she sat, there’s a great view of the kitchen and the line cooks deftly plopping hot pans onto raging fire. The cooks are all young and sensitive looking; the kind of guys who listen intently to their girl’s description of her tough day. However, their minds are wandering to the beer splashed on cod in the routine athletics of kitchen work.

The bar staff has one member who is pleasant and seriously bearded. There’s a compact, slightly swarthy guy in charge who seems nonplussed that the music stopped for no reason. He fiddles with a device from Apple and the Kings of Leon start their insistent melancholy. The Negress looks around and sees a couple next to her sharing their food. The male half is wearing a NYSE hat, which is like putting a target on your back. The hat does not seem to be ironic.

The theatre of food needs a cast

At the tables, a pair of women are tucking into sea urchin. One large table seems to be a mother-daughter gathering with the younger women all blinged out while the presumed Moms looks sensible and funny. Another slinky, blinged-out group comes in, and one pair of shoes in notable for its breathtaking series of design miscalculations. The woman looks like her ankles are wearing leather neckerchiefs, and the toes are impossibly pointy. These shoes say, “I just reduced my hourly rates” and we’re not talking fashion consulting.

The servers are watchful and attentive without helicoptering over the tables. There are some young women in their numbers, wearing ponytails and flowers in their hair. I’m in the hands of the bearded barkeep, who hands me the beer menu and the food menu. He pours me some cold water from a brown glass bottle into a tall glass. The Negress takes a breath. The adventure is about to begin.