Good Taste helps you eat well in the Bay Area. Today, this shameless food pornographer is recommending a phone- and photo-free supper club, can you imagine?
Back in January, I went to the first fun supper club in a new series highlighting Black and Brown chefs by curator Ask JG and Chef Shawn Phillips of Tartufino, Eater SF’s Best Pop-Up of 2025. For anyone who has felt unwelcome at certain San Francisco restaurants because of who they are, this series is presented as a welcome alternative.
A few months ago, JG introduced himself to Phillips on Instagram and offered him a new forum to go “no holds barred” in the kitchen. It turned out to be a great energy match.
“You’re a caged animal when you’re working under everybody else,” Phillips says. “You learn things from different people, but until you get your own spotlight to be able to show who you are, then you really don’t know what it is you’re doing. I think a lot of what I’m doing is influenced by memories from home… The influence comes from me just finally being able to cook whatever the hell I want, without anybody telling me what I can and I can’t do. That’s kind of what it boils down to.”
I probably took 100 pictures of Phillips’ food that night, but, going forward, he and JG would rather diners stop snapping, tuck their phones away, and be present in the moment.
“What happened to when we didn’t have phones?” Phillips asks. “I’m at that age—I’m 43-years-old—where we didn’t have phones. You actually had to talk to somebody. You got to sit down and have a conversation. And the first thing people want to do now is take a picture with your phone. Your phone wants to eat before you eat. Your phone smells the food before you smell the food. And pictures can be deceiving.”
“We’re building a nostalgic thing,” says JG. “We’re going to do it through a Black lens, through Black culture, through actual community.”
Their next event will be held on March 29 at Meski, San Francisco’s Ethiopian and Dominican fusion restaurant, in collaboration with its acclaimed chef, Nelson German. In addition to putting phones down (with the help of cases from sponsor Before The Internet), the requested attire is something one would wear to their granny’s house.
The à la carte menu upstairs will feature four dishes by Phillips as well as Meski dishes like sambusas, Rasta Pasta, and a Tomahawk steak. Downstairs, a reserved tasting menu will include wine and cocktail pairing options. The cocktail menu will have drinks from both Meski and April Jean.
Book a reservation for March 29 between 5pm-9pm to experience the tasting menu ($125 or $165 with wine or cocktail pairing) at What’s the 411? No reservations are needed for the à la carte menu upstairs ($30 and under). Future events by Ask JG will be announced on Instagram.
Tamara publishes the California Eating website, newsletter, and zine.
