HOPEFULLY BY THE time you read this we will have found a place. In the city, I mean. We're moving back, me and Crawdad and Weirdo the Cat and three girl chickens named Rube Roy. If not, if we haven't found a place yet, we'll be desperate. Desperate times calling for desperate measures, here's a cry for help: If anyone knows of a two-bedroom apartment, flat, or farmhouse up for rent in San Francisco, e-mail me, defleone@yahoo.com.

All we've been hearing is oh, how easy it is to rent these days, For Rent signs in every window, landlordladypersons lining up to make their cases and turn in applications, coughing up their 25 bucks for your Security Deposit Returnal check. Negotiating down ... It's a renter's market, we hear. It's easy pickin's. Maybe so, but not if you need a place with any kind of acreage whatsoever ... outbuildings, a chicken coop, workshop ...

Sonoma County has spoiled us – best-case scenario. Worst: We're off our rockers/roosts, or out of our minds/whiskers. But wait. We're willing to spend as much as $1,400 for all-of-the-above! Seventeen, 18, even 19 hundred if you throw in hardwood floors, a fireplace, claw-foot tub, and some yoga mats.

All kidding aside though, we are looking. And we are frustrated. And we are spoiled, and sad. The chickens, in particular, are starting to get nervous. Because the word "yard," in city parlance, means some cement with a barbecue grill, a chair, and a couple of planters. Crank it on down from that for an idea of "garden."

Shit, man.

Well, my pa and step are in for a visit. And another thing I have going for me is a new favorite Mexican-Salvadoran restaurant, which we all ate at last night, and which I wouldn't mind living right next to. La Costa del Sol. It's on Mission, in our old stomping grounds, across from the Walgreens next to the Safeway. Mission and 30th, in other words. If you haven't checked this place out yet, check it out. Nobody in the world was there the night we went. But that was a Monday. But the other time Crawdad was there, nobody was there either. But that was a Tuesday.

In any case, it's a great restaurant, cozy and colorful and fishy. There's a wallful of original oceanic paintings, featuring big waves, boats, and beaches. And the ceiling, that half of the restaurant, is draped – or netted – with netting, drooped full of plastic fishies and crabs and stuff. The other half of the ceiling and the center posts that divide the place into two are aquatically muralized with big huge fishes, such as whales, hammerheads, and – my favorite touch – a fierce-looking shark gulping down a school of little guys. If Jacques Cousteau were alive and hungry, hanging in the Mission, this is where he'd eat. It's very cool and blue and underwatery. Except for the lion, which, apropos of nothing I can come up with, dominates the door to the kitchen. What's up with the lion?

Shoulda asked our waiterguyperson, while he was explaining another painting to me. After we'd ordered and before our feast was served, I wandered away from the table a bit to look into a particularly odd painting that seemed to be trying to tell a story: something baptismal, including dreams, departures, arrivals, El Salvador, the Golden Gate Bridge, and a cigarette butt. I was just on the verge of a theory when the waiterguyperson sidled up beside me, hands behind back, like a curator, and explained, "This my boss life."

"Really?" I was impressed.

The idea to open a restaurant in San Francisco came to the boss in this dream, in El Salvador, as I understand it, some time after someone poured water on his head but before he smoked a cigarette. I don't know, it all made sense at the time.

Except for the lion. Maybe that was a prediction that some guy named Leone would come into the place some day and love it enough to put it in the paper.

Great, great food. The ceviche ($9) was my favorite thing. The chicken fajitas ($9) was my least favorite. But mostly I want to talk about what I ordered: churrasco Nicaraguense, because it knocked my socks off. For $9.50 you get a plate full of salty carne asada, sweet fried plantains, dirty rice (with beans and meat in it), cabbage salad, and a couple of delicious plump little sausages – which weren't even mentioned on the menu, unless I missed it.

That's a lot of food, folks, and none of it was mayonnaise.

Need I say more? Good, 'cause I'm out of space.

La Costa del Sol. 3385 Mission (at 30th St.), S.F. (415) 643-1514. Mon.-Thurs., 9 a.m.-11 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 9 a.m.-3 a.m. Beer and wine. American Express, MasterCard, Visa. Wheelchair accessible.