Hard Knox Cafe: Soul Food Cooking in San Francisco

Hard Knox Cafe
2526 3rd St.
San Francisco, CA
415-648-3770
M-Sat 11 am - 9 pm
Sun 11 am - 5 pm

Located out in the boonies, I mean, Dogpatch district near Portrero Hill, lies a tasty soul food restaurant. It’s apparently known by a lot of locals as when Mr. Sanchez took me there for dinner, we narrowly beat the rush.

Hard Knox Cafe - InteriorI can’t tell if this place is really a dive or a contrived dive, with the corrugated metal roofing used for wall paneling, and the various random signs nailed to that wall. Patrons are pretty diverse here, too. Clean cut yuppies, fashionably scruffy hipsters, and local residents all mix together among the vinyl-seated red booths and counter.

Trader Joe’s Italian Starter Sauce - Like Pomi Chopped Tomatoes

Pomi Chopped TomatoesA few years ago when I actually attended a cooking school through HomeChef, the instructors strongly suggested that if you were going to cut corners in making pasta sauce, at least use the boxed stuff, like the Pomi Chopped Tomatoes, in place of chopping up tomatoes yourself. Any admittance of using a jar of tomato sauce or a can of chopped tomatoes was looked down upon as the ultimate cop out and sacrifice of taste and freshness.

Why? Apparently the sweet and tangy taste of tomatoes is compromised by canning it in those tin things. Jars of sauce are guilty of having lots of sugar and water added to them.

Trader Joe’s Traditional Marinara Sauce: Bargain Pasta Sauce!

A jar of Trader Joe’s Traditional Marinara Sauce - A 99-cent BargainHit with a bout lately of work leaving precious free time left to cook a nice tomato sauce from scratch, I happened on this bargain at the local San Francisco Trader Joe’s.

Their Recipe #99: Traditional Marinara Sauce jar of spaghetti sauce sells for a whopping, brace yourselves, 99 cents! Yes, that’s $0.99, less than $1 (without tax) and all that. You’ve got to appreciate how they’re able to do this, when probably the most expensive piece of this purchase is the glass jar.

Mariposa Cafeteria: Roast Pork Special

Dear readers - I’m back after a few weeks of R&R after a knee surgery where I had friends delivering *gasp* healthy non-grub food for my bed-ridden self. I’ve now received clearance from my physical therapist to venture back out into the world, though checking out Mariposa Cafeteria may not have been her first suggestion.

Mariposa Cafeteria
1599 Tennessee Street
Corner of 26th St. & Tennessee St.
San Francisco, CA 94107
415-285-5105
Hours: M-F 8:00 am - 3:00 pm, Sat. 10:00 am - 2:00 pm

Close
E-mail It