- Patricia Unterman
The marriage finally had to happen: a ham and oyster bar, breezily called Hog and Rocks.

I’m glad it happened in the laid-back Mission district, and that the idea occurred to Scott Youkilis, whose nearby Maverick is one of the best eating spots in town.

Youkilis, a native of Cincinnati, cooks unabashedly American. He first tasted country ham growing up near the ham-producing states of Tennessee and Kentucky.

Using hams at Maverick, he developed relationships with families that have been producing them for generations. Youkilis figured out that the best way to serve these salt-cured hog legs is like prosciutto, cut into thin, silky slices. At Hog, he offers four or five different hams each night. They include G & W from Murfreesboro, Tenn., aged nine to 11 months, at $11 a portion, a white plate covered with dewy pink slices. A frisee and cherry tomato salad garnish provides a wet counterpoint to this moist, fruity ham that’s balanced with a whisper of smoke.

Yes, you can choose San Daniele prosciutto ($10) or 15-month-old jamon serrano ($10), but why, when you can try ham from Caw Caw Creek ($14), a masterpiece aged in St. Matthews, S.C., and made from acorn-fed black pigs?

Very salty with lots of pure white fat and not a hint of smoke, this country ham tastes like the country — piggy and truffly. You need the buttered slices of soft, crusty bread that come with it to cut the salinity.

On the flip side of the ham menu is the oyster menu.

Though summer is not the best time to eat oysters, a few from the most-northern locales — crisp Summer Ice from British Columbia ($2 each), briny Wiley Point from Maine ($3) and firm, full-bodied Clavedon from New Zealand ($3), where it’s now winter — actually take the salt level down and the juiciness level up after eating the ham.

A select and blessedly edited list of beers, wines and cocktails, many at friendly keg prices, slake a mounting thirst.

Though his brother, Kevin, may be a baseball hero in Boston, our Youkilis bats a thousand with his clam dip ($7), a glass jar of smooth, gently clammy, chile-spiked sour cream surrounded by deliciously salty house-made potato chips.

And Youkilis’ jar of pimiento cheese ($6) accompanied with white bread, of course, made me sad about what I’d refused to eat all these years — once I tasted his.

If you long for vegetable matter, consider sharing the large chopped salad ($13), a colorful heap of little bits of radicchio, endive, beans, pickled peppers and cured meats in a piquant vinaigrette.

Or, you can gluttonously go for it with a grass-fed beef patty melt ($10), served on soft rye, crisp and buttery from toasting in a skillet, slathered with lots of sauteed onions, melted swiss and special sauce.

The set up of two long, raised communal tables in the center of a small room surrounded by tables and chairs on three sides, and a bar on the other, produces a terrible din during a packed house. Youkilis promises some sound-proofing soon.

In the meantime, savor those hams, plunge into dips and slurp down a few oysters. Who needs to hear with eating this good?

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner

Your New Spot for Shellfish and Swine in the Mission
Bacon was, understandably, the beginning of our pork obsession; it makes everything from ice cream and donuts to candy deliciouser.

So when we heard that new Mission restaurant Hog & Rocks, opening Sunday, would be pairing tasty swine with mouth-watering shellfish (in the form of ham and oysters), it seemed like a very logical eating step.

Diners can sample artisanal ham and bivalves from around the globe, with an Oyster Club in the works for frequent slurpers. The dim sum-style menu from chefs Scott Youkilis (of Maverick) and Ray England also includes crab and artichoke dip, fish pie with coho salmon and smoked trout, and corned beef tongue with crispy onions.

The vibe is straight-up laid-back: canned beer, chalkboard menus, specialty cocktails by the pitcher, and wide communal tables. Who knows what other happy pairings might emerge?

The City’s First Ham and Oyster Bar

This Sunday, you might be tempted to enjoy a few burgers, brats and beers.

Our advice: don’t. Well, okay, you can keep the beers.

Introducing Hog & Rocks, the city’s first ham and oyster bar, opening this Sunday in the Mission.

Basically, it’s a hangout for when you want to grab a late-night bite and a couple of cocktails with your buddies.

When you enter this temple of pork and oysters, take a stool at one of the communal tables across from the bar. Get things going with a round of Tequila Sunrises, mixed by Tres Agaves’ tequila-loving barman. Then, dive into a dozen oysters on the half shell paired with a plate of G & W Hamery ham—served with whiskey-glazed peanuts, as all ham should be.

And since Maverick’s chef/owner Scott Youkilis (brother to the Red Sox’s Kevin Youkilis) is behind it all, you’ll want to try his heartier dishes. We’re talking corned beef tongue with crispy onions—which, incidentally, is what Thomas Jefferson served at his July Fourth cookouts.

Oh, and in a few months, come back and scope out their oyster club (in development), which’ll track your tasting notes, your order history and any awe-inspiring feats of bivalve consumption you may achieve.

It’s like a baseball card for eating oysters.

Stoking the city’s obsessions with pork and old-timey libations is Hogs & Rocks, a casual, self-billed ‘ham and oyster bar’ in the Mission (from the talents behind Maverick and Tres Agaves) with a midpriced, American comfort-fare menu served till midnight; a boozy lineup of classic cocktails with retro pricing provides additional reasons to knock back the rocks, either at the walnut bar, communal tables or on the forthcoming patio.

There’s more to Hog & Rocks than its name intimates

Naming a restaurant can be problematic.

Take Hog & Rocks, a moniker referencing the new Mission restaurant’s genius commitment to serving both country ham and oysters on the half shell.

So much has been written about that clever combination that you might think the casual spot begins and ends with hog and rocks. Wrong.

Chef-partner Scott Youkilis and his chef de cuisine, Ray England, have assembled a collection of bold, reasonably priced plates meant for sharing–and pairing with the restaurant’s classic cocktails, keg wines and smart beer program.

The first section of the menu comprises superb jarred spreads, including zippy pimento cheese ($6) and chunky crab and artichoke ($8).

From there, the list swerves from sea to land with a rich oceanic incarnation of shepherd’s pie, with steelhead trout and fava beans ($13), and a lively salad ($10) of spinach with crisp wafers of corned beef tongue.

Even a local cliché such as the fancified burger ($10) is transformed into fresh meat: Here, a patty is pan-fried and served as part of a smashing patty melt on rye bread with Emmentaler and Frisco sauce.

A name, it seems, isn’t everything.

- Carolyn Alburger
Well look at the changes that have taken hold at the Hog & Rocks space since we last spoke. The first ever ham and oyster bar in San Francisco has turned out to be an 86-seat masculine boite, balancing candy-apple-colored chairs and cool slate walls in an Adamson-Molina design. Chef partner Scott Youkilis has brought on Ray England as chef de cuisine and Dave Esler as partner…because you can never have too many of those. The classic cocktails on which Tres Agaves’ Eric Rubin and GM Christine D’Abrosca consulted will comprise a refreshingly low price tag (still TBD), slapped on classics like the Vesper; made from gin, vodka and Lillet. Alcademics has the full list. And if you purchase a hurricane, $1 from the sale will be donated to the Greater New Orleans Foundation’s Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund. Not pictured here: a 16-seat outdoor patio to open mid-July.

- Jay Barmann
The new 19th Street eatery and watering hole, Hog & Rocks, allowed in its first Mission faithful last weekend, and it’s looking like the kind of concept that will be easy for most of that demographic to like: it’s airy, a little loud, the food is cheap, and the drinks are strong and fairly cheap ($6 wine on tap, $7 for cocktails, $9 for the New Orleans-style Hurricane, with a donation to the oil spill cleanup included). Beyond the oyster and ham bar offerings, chef Scott Youkilis’s menu is simple but still inventive and tasty, with a fish pie we wholeheartedly recommend, and a few nods in an East Coast direction like an Italian grinder, and a griddled patty melt. See all menus here, and below, check out our slideshow of the interior.

The tackiest of Southern indulgences, pimento cheese is now a favorite of top chefs nationwide

CHEESE, PLEASE: The creamy classic, as served at Highlands Bar and Grill in Birmingham, Ala.

For years, there was fine food on one side and pimento cheese on the other. But lately even haute-cuisine chefs have been reaching across the Mason-Dixon line and reinterpreting this Southern raid-the-fridge-and-spread-it-on-celery home staple. It’s part of a national rethink of Southern food, once decried as fatty and trashy, and now understood to be an American regional cuisine worthy of celebration.

While mom’s pimento cheese typically consists of processed cheese, supermarket mayo and a jar of chopped pimentos, chefs are upgrading the down-home dish by roasting their own bell peppers, enriching it with everything from artisanal mayonnaise to crème fraîche and adding international accents like chipotle and smoked paprika. We canvassed chefs from north to south to ask how they pay homage to this iconic spread. Below, a classic recipe and some ideas for how to shake it up.

— Katy McLaughlin

The Classic
For 25 years, chef Frank Stitt’s Highlands Bar and Grill in Birmingham, Ala., has served a platter of pimento cheese and crudité to regulars who know to ask for it (it’s not the menu).

The recipe: Shred 1 pound sharp yellow cheddar, then blend it with ¼ pound cream cheese, 1 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper, 3 large red bell peppers (roasted, peeled, seeded and chopped), ½ cup mayonnaise, 1 teaspoon sugar, a splash of hot sauce (such as Tabasco or Cholula), several splashes of Worcestershire and 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional). Serve chilled.

Southern, via Spain

At Hog & Rocks, a San Francisco bar that specializes in oysters and aged hams, chef Scott Youkilis marries Spanish and Southern flavors in a pimento cheese made with piquillo peppers, aged Majon cheese, mayonnaise and cheddar, served in a four-ounce Mason jar.

Up North

The owners of Van Horn Sandwich Shop, which opened in Brooklyn in January, hail from Chapel Hill, N.C., and have brought pulled pork and hush puppies with them. To make their BLP—a bacon, lettuce and pimento sandwich, of course—they both honor and update tradition with sharp yellow and white cheddar, mayo, roasted red peppers and the added kick of chipotle peppers and parmesan.

Haute Country

Thomas Keller, the dean of American haute cuisine, doesn’t serve pimento cheese at any of his restaurants. But at home he makes a mean grilled cheese sandwich with it. The secret to his version is combining uptown and downhome tastes: He uses crème fraîche and smoked paprika, blends it all with chopped-up jarred pimentos and spreads it on brioche.

Celebrity Chef Take

Bobby Flay, whose mini-chain Bobby’s Burger Place offers a Napa Valley burger (goat cheese and Meyer lemon mustard) and a Santa Fe (pickled jalapeños and blue corn chips), goes Southern with a pimento cheeseburger. He blends roasted red peppers, white and yellow cheddar, mayonnaise and cayenne pepper, spreads it on a brioche-like roll and adds the burger. Dietetic it’s not.

Read more at the WSJ

- Carolyn Alburger

Long a staple of izakayas and taquerias in San Francisco, tongue meat has started to break ethnic barriers, slipping its way onto California-influenced menus of every stripe. Chefs adore its flavor and its texture. Diners fall into one or two camps: “Why not?” or just “Why?” Love it or hate it, menu sightings of animal tongue are becoming almost common at popular restaurants around town. Over the course of interviewing several chefs about it, descriptors like “melt in your mouth,” “unctuous” and “delicate” were each dropped on several occasions. Naysayers, are you ready to be convinced? Take a look at what chefs are doing with it around town these days. Maybe it’ll get you to watch your mouth.

Hog & Rocks chef and owner Scott Youkilis puts braised, diced corned beef tongue in the onion and pepper stuffing for his potato skins. “People are excited to try an alternative potato skin topping,” he says. “It’s one of our most popular dishes.”

SoMa’s locavore-approved Radius restaurant likes to corn its beef tongue prior to serving. It’s mounted on rye bread toast points with traditional pastrami sandwich accoutrement like horseradish creme fraiche, pickled cabbage and whole grain mustard. On busy nights they’ll run through about ten tongue dishes in the course of the evening. “It’s hardly a tough sell,” says executive chef Chris Geremia.

The Dogpatch’s Kitchenette features slow cooked beef tongue pastrami on a sandwich made with rye bread and housemade wine mustard. Chef Douglas Monsalud says tongue has limited appeal for their regulars, so it’s not exactly a menu staple. “When someone bites into a well prepared tongue dish, though, they usually instantly like it,” he says. “In the end, however, if we run a tongue sandwich side by side with a fried chicken sandwich there’s no competition.”

A16 uses beef tongue in ragu, terrine and a whole lot more. Chef David Taylor says the key to selling it is pairing the meat with appealing ingredients like their housemade Meyer lemon salsa verde. “When we have this on the menu it sells out quickly,” says Taylor.

At Local: Mission Eatery, chef Jacob Des Voignes makes corned beef tongue with cabbage slaw and pickles for lunch, pickled tongue with chicories and gribiche for dinner. “It’s not as popular as the halibut,” he says. “But it holds its own.”

Nob Hill’s upper crust have been digging into Acquerello Chef de Cuisine Mark Pensa’s grilled lamb tongue with celery, salsa verde and Gaeta olive oil for about a year now. “It’s what I call a ‘sleeper,’” says executive chef-owner Suzette Gresham. “Something diners have a preconceived idea about it, but it delivers a fabulous, deliciously different-than-they-expected experience.” Suzette things the meat’s lack of another name option is its biggest menu stumbling block: “Lots of people love sweetbreads,” she says. “Would they order it if ‘thymus gland’ was written on the menu? Doubt it.

Read more at 7×7

- Lily Ko

While there are many great things about San Francisco, late-night dining in this notoriously early-to-bed city isn’t one of them. But that doesn’t mean you have to settle for diner food or cardboard-y pizza once the clock strikes 10 p.m. Instead, when those after-hours munchies emerge, keep this handy list in mind. Peppered with 15 awesome spots that serve up full meals well into the night, our roundup includes everything from the brand-new Basque tapas spot Txoko in North Beach (which stays open until 2 a.m.) to the fine treats and fancy cocktails at late-night spot The Alembic in the Haight, assuring there’s an option for every night owl, no matter his or her ‘hood of choice. Now, those are some good eats.

Hog & Rocks

If you order the oysters and ham at Hogs & Rocks, trust us, you won’t be disappointed. (Vegetarians not included, of course). Specifically, we recommend the ham-tasting plate and your pick of oysters, with an add-on of light, crisp, melt-in-your-mouth fish and chips and the daily dessert.

Read more at Refinery29