without reservations

Siam, I said

SEVERAL EAGLE- eyed readers wrote – gently! – to dispute my recent foolish claim (in "Dream Thai," 11/2/05) that Thailand was once "a part of French Indochina." Gong! Thailand is indeed part of Indochina, but it was never subject to French rule, as Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were. France and the kingdom of Siam (antecedent of today's Thai nation) were in fact rivals, sometimes warring, for control of Indochina in the mid-19th century. Baku de Thai's Thai-French fusion food might be seen, in this light, as a reconciliation of sorts, a healing of old wounds, or perhaps just as an inevitable wrinkle in the ever-broadening map of French-plus fusion cuisines.

Another reader wrote to second my motion for a less deafening city, citing as especially offensive the thunderings of garbage trucks through residential neighborhoods at 5:30 in the morning. Yes, that is bad – and I testify from long personal experience – though not as nerve-jangling as leaf blowers or those absurd beepers that advise everyone for a mile in every direction that some truck has been shifted into reverse.

Questing against noise in the city is, if not hopeless, at least quixotic, but that does not make the quest pointless. The point is mainly to point out that noise is a harmful pollutant, injurious to human health, and if one restaurant turns down the bad music, if one lazy homeowner gets off his or her duff, sacks the gardening service with its egregiously loud and dirty leaf blowers and weed whackers, and picks up a rake or a broom for some exercise and fresh air, then that is one small step in the right direction and the near-ceaseless hectoring of one small columnist will have not been a total waste of time.

And here, with the holidays in sight, let us pause briefly for a moment in homage to Berkeley's Ten Speed Press, which continues to publish the best food-related books in the country. The jewel in the crown of this autumn's list is the oversized, and quite gorgeous, Boulevard: The Cookbook ($50), by Nancy Oakes and Pamela Mazzola with Lisa Weiss. Oakes opened Boulevard, the restaurant, on the Embarcadero in 1993, with the elevated 480 freeway newly demolished and the roadway not much more than a swath of shattered asphalt. But she saw what the area could become, and the restaurant is now an icon, as the cookbook is likely to be.

Other worthy titles include Teresa Barrenechea's recipe-rich The Cuisines of Spain ($40), a first-rate tract on an underrated food culture; Elizabeth Andoh's compendium of recipes from the Japanese home kitchen, Washoku ($35); and a period-piecey reissue of Madame E. Saint-Ange's La Bonne Cuisine ($40). Will there be a package deal?

Paul Reidinger

paulr@sfbg.com