Wise Sons

"Miss Otis regrets she is unable to lunch (breakfast-bagel, whatever) today, Madame... "

http://wisesonsdeli.com/location/fillmore/


Place: Wise Sons ~ Bagelry

Location:  1520 Fillmore Street
(between Geary Boulevard and O'Farrell Street)

Hours: Monday - Friday 7:00am, Saturday & Sunday 8:00am

Meal: (Kinda) Spicy Egg (Toasted Bagel Sandwich) ~ spicy harissa shmear[1], hippie greens, & scrambled egg; three rugelach[2]: Apricot, Chocolate, and Cinnamon Walnut; and a 12 oz cuppa Stumptown Coffee Roasters House Blend (Bagelry Blend, whatever)

https://www.stumptowncoffee.com/products/house-blend

(Firstly, Mumford & Sons... Wise Sons... close enough for government work [especially with this current musically-challenged administration].

Secondly, I never need an EweToobular juxtaselection justification for Lady Ella, Madame.)


Because it had been a few years since I last ate at 
Wise Sons (see last 'blog entry from Saturday, June 11th, 2016), I thought it time for another visit. This trip I went to their newer Bagelry on Fillmore Street, which has been opened since late-February 2016. There are several other locations that have now opened around the Bay Area (currently, in San Francisco proper there are five shops and one shop in Larkspur); and there is even a location in Tokyo now, but that is too long of a breakfastary roadtrip for me. 

There is not a lot of available seating (I suppose, like many a New York Jewish deli, they just want you to order your bagel "to take with" and to get you the h*ck-outta their joint in order to serve the next hungry/paying customer) with just eight stools at a counter-table in the middle of the front room, four more stools at a window-counter, and eight more stools wayyyyy in the back (which I did not discover until after I had already noshed my meal, or I woulda probably sat up there) in a second-level mezzanine overlooking the baking area.

This location is used as their main bakery/bagelry facility now, which they supply to all of their other locations (well, probably not the one in Japan; even the Japanese would know a stale bagel when they bit into one). It was pretty cool being able to see the bagels being made (and the joke that most of the bagelry bakers were Mexican was not lost on this goyish gringo).

(This bagel-artwork was in their bathroom. I honestly was trying to decipher which Hebrew letters/symbols were in the middle of the circles... then it dawned on me that they were just the bagel-holes. How do you say "D'oh!" in Yiddish? [Is that possibly: "D'ough!"?])


While I liked that this location is much closer (by at least fifteen-to-twenty minutes with city-driving) than their original/main delicatessen in the Mission, there are a lot more breakfastary offerings at their Mission location. Otherwise, some of the possible breakfast ideas that I could have ordered today were:

Bodega Egg & Cheese (Toasted Bagel Sandwich) ~ melted cheese, aioli, & scrambled egg (this can also be ordered with crispy pastrami ~ think Kosher bacon ~ for those of you that do partake of the dead, decaying bovine flesh, but are trying to maintain a no dead, decaying swine flesh diet);

East Coast Veggie (uggelach!) (Toasted Bagel Sandwich) ~ scallion shmear, radish, cucumber, tomato, red onion, & hippie greens;

or

maybe just one of their (six different types of) bagels with one of their (eight different types of) shmears.

They offer a choice of six kinds of bagels for these sandwiches: Everything, Sesame (which is what I went with this morning; this is your prototypical Jewish deli bagel in my opinion... and if'n you do not like my opinion, why in the h*ck is you reading this 'blog-thing?!), Salt, Poppy, Plain, or Onion Bialy. This was a good bagel-sandwich (much better than you will ever get at any of them McDonaldberg's delicatessen places), but it was still just a bagel-sandwich. As best as I can figure, the "hippie greens" were some kinda micro-greens (including probably arugula, sprouts, etc.). If I had one minor complaint, it was that this was all a bit on the unwieldy side. With the first bite I took, half of the scrambled egg stuff (which they have formed into a roundish patty about the size of a standard burger) spilled out the other side. I ended up putting it all back together and just tried to keep it together as best as possible. I was going to order it with added tomatoes and "smashed avocado", but that would have made it even more messier, Monsieur Mark.

Of the three mini-rugelach/rugelachen/rugelachs, I liked the Apricot one the best. These were all very good, though. They all were just one-to-two bites apiece.

Wise Sons offers their own homemade (deli-made, whatever) hot sauce for use as condimentary supplementation. Additionally, I saw bottles of both 
El Yucateco® EXXXtra Picante Salsa Kutbil-ik® de Chile Habanero and Huy Fong Foods, Inc. Sriracha Hot Chile Sauce in the upstairs mezzanine. Not really having anything else on which to try their hot sauce (and because their shmear was only "(Kinda) Spicy"), I used a good amount of it in my bagel-sandwich. It really has a nice flavour; the dill pickle juice in it really comes through (Sorry, Karl!). They even have bottles of it for sale. If I did not already have... and let's face it... wayyyyy too many bottles of other hot sauces in my refrigerator, I would definitely have pick(l)ed up a bottle for my own collection.

(not really so) Strange Coffee Interlude

I have had Stumptown Coffee Roasters at a few other restaurants throughout town and have always like what they offer. This House Blend was another winner with me. The last time that I ate at their main Mission delicatessen, they were selling Intelligentsia Coffee exclusively (which they may still sell at some of their other locations); both are very good Coffees, anyway. I also bought a 12 oz bagga (Why do so many places now-a-days sell these in 12 oz sizes instead of a full 16 oz-pounda?) as a gift for your 2018 Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award - Linda Miller Award for Fan Artist of the Year, Mr. David G. Hardy[3]. He stated that he would send me a print of my choosing in exchange. I explained to him that because it only came in a 12 oz bagga, he can just send me 3/4 of a picture.

"In the clearing stands (lies? lays?) a bagel... and a glorified doughnut by its trade... "
(Would I... lie la lie [please provide your own cymbal-crash sound effects here]... lie la la la lie lie... lie la lie [ditto above]... lie la la la la lie la la lie... to you?)


Glen Bacon Scale Rating:
(Kinda) Spicy Egg (Toasted Bagel Sandwich) ~ 6.4;
rugelach/rugelachen/rugelachs ~ 6.9;
Wise Sons "Pickle Brine Spiked" Hot Sauce ~ 6.8;
Stumptown Coffee Roasters House Blend ~ 7.1;
the esteemed artwork of Mr. David G. Hardy ~ 8.0

___________________

1. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day, number oy-vay:

They have this spelled as "shmear". It can also be spelled as "schmear", or according to my trusty, go-to lexicon for anything Yiddish-related (The Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten) as "shmeer":

shmeer
Pronounced as it is written; rhymes with "shear". From German: Smiere: "grease", or "bribe".

1. To paint.
2. To smear.
3. To spread. "Shmeer it on the bread."
4. A spread or paste. "With drinks, a caviar shmeer on crackers goes well." "Smoked fish, cream cheese, sour cream, and chives make a wonderful cocktail shmeer."
5. To bribe; a bribe. This is the most interesting usage, and has long been part of American slang. It is related to "greasing the palm". "Do the officials expect to be shmeered there?" "Do they take a shmeer?" There is a saying: "Az men shmeert nit, fort men nit." (If you don't bribe, you don't ride" - or, less literally, "Without bribery, you'll get nowhere.")
6. To strike or beat. "He landed a shmeer between the eyes."

2. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day, number two-vay:

So... here we go... the word "rugelach" may or may not already be in the plural form. So, to say "I ate three rugelachs." might be incorrect. I initially assumed that the pluralised form in Yiddish might be "rugelachen" (adding a standard German plural ending of "-en"); however, it appears that in Hebrew the "-ach" ending already symbolises the plural.

I even discussed this with a couple of the workers at the bagelry (read: bored the h*ck outta these polite workers). One of the guys suggested that maybe like "fish" and "sheep" it is already singular and plural. This sounds like the simplest (and probably closest to the etymological truth) answer, so I am sticking with it until proven otherwise.

(Hmmm?! So, should one singular piece be called a "rugel"? Where is Leo Rosten when you need an exact answer to these tough Yiddish lexiconical questions?)

3. Yes, this is a real event and honour!

https://rondoaward.com/rondoaward.com/blog/

If you would like to view more of Mr. David G. Hardy's classic artwork, you can either check it out on his defacedbook art page:

https://www.facebook.com/Retro-Reflections-and-Modern-Impressions-of-David-G-Hardy-124609941043505/  

or, if you do not have a defacedbook account (What are ya, some kinda Luddite or Amish or sumthin'?!), go to ebay:

https://www.ebay.com/usr/goldenageart?_trksid=p2047675.l2559 

to view some of his fine artwork for sale.