Black Cobra’s Jason Landrian (photo: Hillarie Jason)
Black Cobra’s vocalist/guitarist is a thrash metal-loving vegan who lives in San Francisco. Seems like a perfect fit, even the vegan part, but according to Landrian, the San Francisco vegan food scene is a bit lacking. It’s surprising, considering that the Bay Area is known as being a hippie haven and is a very health-conscious city. Luckily, Landrian says it far from a total loss and he’s still able to recommend a few good food spots to satisfy the pallets of all kinds of food preferences.
Tell me about the San Francisco food scene, as you see it.
Landrian: As someone who adheres to a vegan diet, it’s got a little bit of room to grow and it doesn’t have as many options as one would think for a city that’s supposed to be as progressive as San Francisco. It does have a lot of fine-dining establishments, and San Francisco is considered a mecca for foodie types, but it’s a little lacking in the vegan department and that’s always a bit of a bummer. There’s room to expand in that way, and I think people have a tendency to think that it would have more to offer in that regard.
Which places do you like to go to?
One of my favourite places that’s a little bit newer is called CatHead’s BBQ. It’s a BBQ joint, but they have a couple of vegan options, as well as the obvious omnivore fare, but it’s fantastic, man, and both of the chefs are from Tennessee originally, so it’s pretty authentic. Their collard greens are amazing and they have marinated portabello mushrooms, and it’s really good. Other than that, there are some finer-dining places, like there’s this five-star vegan restaurant called Millenium and if there’s a special occasion we might go there, but it’s pretty pricey and pretty high-end. We end up doing a lot of cooking at home, to be honest. I know San Francisco has a lot to offer, for a lot of people, and there are vegan options when you go out, like they have tofu scrambles and veggie burgers at a lot of places, and there’s a lot of Thai food and Indian food here, too, which tends to have a lot of vegetarian-friendly items on their menu.
Is it easy to find local ingredients when you want to cook at home?
Yeah, there are a plethora of farmer’s markets throughout the city on different days, depending on what neighbourhood you live in. There’s a big one downtown every week. And there are a lot of smaller markets and a couple of co-ops in town. Rainbow Grocery is one that’s pretty famous and it has a pretty solid customer base, and they tend to get a lot of stuff locally, which is really cool. There are a lot of people here that are really aware of where they get their ingredients from and people like to shop as local as possible. It’s really cool. In that regard, San Francisco is really great for food.
There seems to be quite a big food-cart scene as well. There’s that big food-cart setup out by the Costco or something?
Oh yeah, I know exactly where you mean. There’s that, and it’s always ongoing, and then there are certain nights where they have this thing called Off the Grid, and they have different nights, like every Thursday they’d do it right near Golden Gate Park and you could look it up and it would tell you which carts would be at which locations. That was always pretty cool to see and there’s definitely a good mixture of all kinds of food fare at any given moment throughout the city.
Where would you tell people to go if they came in to San Francisco? What’s the one place they’d have to hit up?
Man, I would definitely recommend CatHead’s. And burritos are the staple of San Francisco, for fast food. So if they’re looking for fast food, my other choice would be a burrito. Mission Street is pretty well known for its offerings, and there are tons of taquerias there, and some people will have their favourite place that they like to go; it just depends on who you ask. For me, it’s a place called Taqueria Cancun, and there’s two locations in the Mission District and they just make a pretty mean burrito. It’s awesome.
Black Cobra‘s most recent album, Invernal, came out in 2011 on Southern Lord Records. They are currently on a US tour.
No Comments