Masa

Next to a Raiders game, the Alameda Swap Meet may be the most overwhelming place you can visit on a Sunday afternoon, an immense converted factory complex south of downtown swarming with people, stuffed with hundreds of stalls selling everything from sea-turtle extract to straw ranchero hats, fluffy white first-communion dresses to the latest in pin-striped gangsta wear, and alive with the racket of two-dozen pumped CD players blasting trumpet-bright norteno hits.

When I was growing up on the Veracruz coast, the slap-slap of women's hands forming corn tortillas was as constant and soothing to me as the crash of the nearby surf. I remember wandering into our breezy, tiled kitchen each morning and devouring the puffy gold discs as our maids whisked them from the sizzling hot comal. Just as constant was the large ball of masa that sat on the counter top covered with a dampened piece of rough-hewn cloth.

There hasn't been a lot of recent restaurant news from San Francisco. This year Chez Panisse will celebrate its 19th birthday--Alice Waters' revolution has become mainstream. These days just about every restaurant in the Bay Area brags about its fresh, regional cuisine. There is Green's at Fort Mason--still the best vegetarian restaurant in the country. Square One serves original and eclectic food, the Hayes Street Grill is still the place to go for fish, and Masa is still Masa's without Masa.