October 2, 2002

AFTER SOCCER A bunch of my soccer friends were crossing the street to the Dolores Park Cafe for smoothies, and I reckoned I'd join them. Between you and me, I was feeling somewhat slightly sick, in that overexercised out-of-shape way, and thought it might be advisable to be within sprinting distance of a bathroom for a while. The last thing in the world I was thinking about was a smoothie.

As it turned out, the line for the bathroom was almost as long as the line for everything else. Clearly this was not the place for me. And do you know how much a smoothie costs? A smoothie costs $3.75. It doesn't take an economist to figure out that you can get a burrito for that price.

"So ... what's the big idea behind these smoothies?" I asked my pal Bikkets, who isn't an economist.

"Electrolytes," she said, offering me a sip of her mango one ($3.75). "You gotta replace your electrolytes."

Bikkets is not a nutritionist either, or else she'd know that I personally don't lose electrolytes, because I don't use them in the first place. I'm a wood-burning power plant. Smell my sweat after a game of soccer and you'll understand, finally, how they make liquid smoke. I'm serious. I don't want to brag, but you can wring my shirt into your barbecue sauce. People rarely if ever do, admittedly, but they could is my point.

Anyway, so I guess that's why I don't crave smoothies or even Gatorade, like other serious sweaters. For me it's ribs or chickens or brisket I need, and I mentioned as much to Bikkets after sipping her mango smoothie ($3.75). She mentioned a "new" barbecue on Haight Street that I'd never heard of: Mimi's, she said, where Spaghetti Western used to be. So I went.

It wasn't Mimi's; it was Minnie's, Memphis Minnie's, but I had neither the time nor the peace of mind to quibble over such distinctions, because by the time I got there, my sense of a potential stomach situation had progressed to a sort of medical emergency. Luckily there was nobody in there, no lines. I'm sure I was a blur to the countergalperson, throwing a 20 at her on my way past, by way of establishing myself as a paying customer, ordering I didn't know what without hardly even looking at the menu.

I can tell you about Memphis Minnie's bathroom. It's nice and clean and roomy, with wooden cutouts of chickens and pigs and cow-colored curtains over the window, for atmosphere. The downside was that the lights kept going off every so often, for a second or two. A glitch in the electricity, or a hint to hurry the hell up in there?

In any case, and in spite of the power outages, Memphis Minnie's bathroom is my kind of place, and I highly recommend it! Three-and-a-half stars.

What was waiting for me on my emergence from the emergency, BTW, was a sweet smoked pork samwich with sides of beans and greens. Now what am I supposed to do with this? I wondered, sitting down and staring at it all.

A minute or two and a few sips of Nehi grape soda later, it hit me: Eat! Replace your barbecolytes! Write a review!

I reviewed Memphis Minnie's six years ago when it was still in the Mission. In between that and this, it spent some dark years associated with Johnny Love's on Polk Street. Some bad things happened, and some good things happened.

Bad: They got the idea that people were made of money. Price of "Minnie's Taster," which is any three meats and two sides, jumped from $8.50 to $17.95! (Economists? ...)

Good: It's still great 'cue, and if you look at the menu long and hard enough, you can probably find something affordable. Pork sandwich, for example: $6.25. The pit-smoked beans are still full of sausage and still to-die-for. (I'm still dying, for example.)

Bad: Something happened to the greens. Hopefully it was a one-day mistake, because they weren't even edible. In fact, they were unbelievably inedible, and it wasn't just the state of my stomach. I know 'cause I took them home to Crawdad for a second opinion. Her words: "Atrocious."