North Beach News

As I settle onto a bar stool at Vesuvio Cafe in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood, the bartender pours me just what I've come here for: a perfect pint of Anchor Steam beer.

If you want to get technical about it, any sandwich consumed first thing in the morning is a "breakfast sandwich," but we know what you're really after as you roll groggily out of bed: oozing, melted cheese, fluffy scrambled or fried eggs, optional meat of choice, all encased by sweet, glorious carbohydrates.

It's brilliantly clear, deep amber in color, and capped by a bone-white head of foam.

"You've made the visible, invisible and the invisible, visible," observed Dennis Bartels, executive director of The Exploratorium, to architect Marc L'Italien, FAIA.

I feel like I've been having this discussion for 30 years, and it still keeps coming back.