Hotdish Revolution Recap

The Holland Neighborhood association holds a potluck every year, calling it the Hotdish Revolution. It's a fundraiser for the neighborhood, and a good cheesy excuse for a get-together. So we decided to throw together a Halupsi and a Jello, and headed over.

Girlfriend pulled out her brain-shaped jello mold and mixed up a zombie-brain jello on Oreo cookie dirt, with gummi worms and a secret bloody side jello. It was lovely, and creepy, and, we hoped, delicious. 

Kuleto's cioppino

Kuleto's, on Powell Street, doesn't have Cioppino on the menu, but there it was, a huge bowl of it, and another in front of Akasha. Two steaming bowls of seafood sampler in a tomato base. Crabs, mussels, clams, fish. The local speciality. Why was it here, where they don't serve it? Good story.


We'd met up here the day before with my Cousin Terri, who works in the neighborhood. I hadn't seen Terri since 1976, when I was eight and the family was out on vacation. So I looked her up, and we talked for a while in Kuletos, and as it does, the conversation turned to what we were doing here in San Fran. I said we were looking for Cioppino, and hadn't found it yet. She said go up to North Beach, or Fisherman's Wharf, maybe, but wasn't sure. So we asked the waiter. He said Fisherman's Wharf, but he was hesitant. He was a food person, and he hated to send us up there for food. We don't have it ourselves, he said - it's tourist food.

Something about food

Ah, food. The other night, hungry to the point of exhaustion, I settled for an Archer Farms Turkey Club with a side of Archer Farms 'touch of Jasmine Plum' unsweetened water beverage.A good rule of thumb is to stay away from drinks whose name is longer than a twitter post. Oh, it wasn't bad water or anything, but they could have just stopped at 'water'. Why's everything so upscale?

This was the Target Deli section. We were shopping for Christmas, and time just got away from us, and I was ready to eat anything. Taco John's, air-dried peanut butter, railroad ties, microwave scrapings. Luckily my girlfriend was there to talk me down, point me towards something vaguely healthy in the big refrigerated case. There was yogurt, go-gurt, orange juice. Oh, look -- Turkey Club, I said. I could go for that. She looked at it and shrugged and left me to my fate.

The sandwich was not a club sandwich by any definition of club sandwich. It had turkey and a sad painting of lettuce, but the bread was not toasted, nor was it even bread. It was a pasty thick wrap of dough flecked with cheese that fell into my mouth and dissolved there, churning into the turkey flesh like a cheap cobbler might. I don't know how anyone could think to call this a club sandwich. I don't know why I took a picture of it, or why three days later I'm still thinking about it.

I may go back for another. You can't tell about these things.