Frankly Speaking: Springfield lacks nothing when it comes to food

You might expect a person who truly loves good food to suffer some culinary culture shock on returning to Springfield after living 23 years in a city famed worldwide for great restaurants and great dining.

That city is San Francisco, whose presumed superiority in all matters cultural is for some the conventional wisdom.

To be sure, in Springfield it may be hard to find an eatery comparable to Jack's or Masa's or Berkeley's legendary Chez Panisse, where on the right night you can enjoy risotto with wood-oven-roasted rabbit, shellfish antipasto, white shrimp, grilled Paine Farm pigeon, lobster brodetto with roasted peppers, or other dishes that actually justify a six-month wait.

These are places where the food is so good it literally puts you into a transcendental state of being. As a friend once put it, |quot|Great food is easy to identify. It always leaves you feeling high.|quot|

In theory and on the surface, the gastronomical gap between S.F. and this place is enormous. The truth, however, is leavened by some unnerving facts. Fore-most among them, in my opinion, is that in San Francisco you can't find a good steak. You won't find one in a restaurant or in the supermarket.

In 23 years I didn't find one, and that's my story and I'm sticking to it. In fact, I'm convinced that if any good beef at all is being raised in California, every ounce of it's being sold to Japanese and other overseas restaurants, which I'm told is the case with much of the state's best produce. In any event, Californians seem to be left with feedlot beef so bland that it's all but flavorless.

The beef shortfall naturally means you can't find a good hamburger in S.F. either. You can find various concoctions of ground beef on wheat, or sourdough rolls with poppyseed dressing, or other odd condiments and cutesy names like |quot|houseburger du jour.|quot| Some of these creations can be tasty, but, again, none is the real thing like the ones you see plucked from a grill seasoned for a generation, as at Casper's on Walnut Street or, to be fair, from a lot of grills around these parts.

That's just a minuscule part of the picture; the rest goes much, much further than beef and burger, and I'm happy to say that there is great, great food in this town, by any criteria.

For example, it wasn't so long ago that I met some business folk for lunch at Mille's on Jefferson Street, a restaurant I'd heard touted but had never visited. The seafood bisque on the menu seemed a good idea, so I ordered and was soon served in a sourdough bowl a beautifully seasoned mix of creamy sauce and the freshest-tasting shrimp, fish and, I think, scallops, imaginable. I was enjoying one of the absolute best meals I'd ever had in my life. (And hey, I'm picky about that word |quot|best.|quot|)

Then there was the accidental drop-in to the Bar Next Door's lunchtime pizza buffet and the discovery of a creation called |quot|Northern pizza,|quot| which includes an Alfredo sauce that makes it, in my opinion, one of the great pizzas ever.

Our small space here won't allow us to even begin to touch the real dining picture in Springfield. That's the downside of commenting on restaurants at all for every one we mention, there must be a dozen or more that are comparably good and just as well liked. I'm continually hearing people mention in the most glowing terms places like Bijan's on Walnut Street for delicious food, Mike's Place for food and intimate setting, Carlos O'Kelly's for the only authentic white-sauce Mexican dishes in town, etc.

For now we'll just give the legendary City by the Bay its due on great restaurants and food, but we'll also light a candle for them for their lack of good steak, and great home-grown, vine-ripened, tart and delicious real tomatoes, and the many other Midwestern goodies we take for granted. (I'll especially commiserate with them because they'll likely never experience the unbelievably succulent and flavorful smothered pork chops at Steinarts' in Republic.)

While thinking of these food matters and whether one could write anything sensible about food in this space, I flipped on the TV and saw the Yim family, who serve up sweet n sour, spicy general chicken and other tasty Asian treats at their cafe The Riksha at the corner of Boonville and Olive downtown.

The Yims were talking about their vacation last month to visit family in their native Cambodia. It was a bittersweet account in which, though grateful to see their relatives, they also noted the extreme poverty in so much of Cambodia and how little freedom exists there.

It got to us, you know, this family's story. It especially got to us when a Yim daughter looked into the camera and said earnestly, |quot|I'm really glad to be an American.|quot|

There's often so much more to the food our friends in the restaurant and caf business prepare for us and serve us than mere ingredients. Eat hearty.