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Welcome to p.m. Intel, your bite-sized roundup of Bay Area food and restaurant news. Tips are always welcome, drop them here.
- Everyone’s favorite spiky-haired celebrity chef Guy Fieri showed up unexpectedly at the Sonoma County Fair over the weekend and, along with his friends, purchased more than a dozen pigs at the livestock auction. ABC-7 interviewed Frances Marshall, a member of the Sebastopol Future Farmers of America, who says she wrote Fieri a letter encouraging him to show up and place some bids on pigs. The chef ended up paying $10,000 for Marshall’s pig named Chevy. (The group ended up spending $30,000 on 16 pigs total.) Per Fieri’s Instagram post, they’ll all be donated to charity. [ABC-7]
- Yelp says it’s rolling out a new feature that allows users to check both a restaurant’s vaccination policy and the vaccination status of its staff, KRON-4 reports. The change comes as an increasing number of bars and restaurants have started instituting requirements that patrons show proof of vaccination in order to dine or drink indoors. [KRON-4]
- There’s a new daytime dining option now open at the Clift Royal Sonesta Hotel near Union Square. Called Fredericks and helmed by chef Daniel Corey (formerly of Michelin-starred Luce at the InterContinental), the white-washed breakfast and lunch spot sports stylish black-and-white flooring and a menu of coffee, pastries, sandwiches, and salads served seven days a week.
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- The “freewheeling” food at Clement Street Vietnamese restaurant Lily is worth going out of your way for, the SF Chronicle’s restaurant critic Soleil Ho reports in a piece centered around the runaway success of the restaurant’s $72 fried rice. Chef Rob Lam says he dreamed up the wagyu beef, caviar, and crab-topped dish as a joke during the pandemic — but serving it became a nightmare with customers ordering dozens of the dish every night. [SF Chronicle]
- Finally, SFGate dove deep into a bloody urban legend based at Pinecrest Diner near Union Square. “Was a San Francisco waitress really killed over poached eggs?” the website posits. [SFGate]