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Maverick owners Scott Youkilis and Michael Pierce have promoted chef de cuisine Emmanuel Eng, who came on just last fall, to the role of executive chef, and with the promotion Eng is looking to take the menu in a new, more specific direction. Maverick opened in 2006 with a focus on regional American food with upscale twists, paired with good wine. Eng is looking to break free of the traditional appetizer-and-entrée sections of the menu, as he tells the Scoop, and move toward some more whimsical, "modern interpretations of classic American cuisine." To give you an idea, he'll be doing crispy sweetbreads with “Cool Ranch” and a sweet corn mousseline; and a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup with a house-made “Ritz Cracker” brioche. (He also just did a "junk food pairing" event this week.) Look for the new menu to launch June 1. [Scoop]

Jesse Hirsch is quick to note that the food is kind of secondary at Mission Bowling Club, and most people (as chef Anthony Myint admits as well) are there to bowl. Still, he finds the vegan burger "lush [and] complex" and the storied Mission Burger "justly ranked among the city's best." Also, he likes the whimsically plated sausage corn dog and the buttermilk panna cotta, but finds some other items that don't work so well, like a "rubbery" blackened sturgeon. All in all, he says, after Myint figures out what works as a bar menu and what the full dinner menu may end up being, it will live up to its potential as "a bowling alley with damn fine food." [Examiner]

Has everyone heard the news? Dogpatch is super happening now. Bon Appétit has even heard about it. They give nice shout-outs to Piccino, Poco Dulce, and the new Gilberth's Rotisserie & Grill. Also, they recommend doing a dining crawl at their new "favorite spots" in the nearby Mission, among which is one that hasn't quite opened yet: The Tartine Bread Annex at Bar Tartine. Ah, print media... your deadlines are always so far ahead. [Bon App]

Lest anyone suggest that Alice Waters doesn't know her way around a kitchen, we present Exhibit A, from the Lives column in today's Times, in which writer Daniel Duane recounts the story of a private meeting he had with Alice in her kitchen in which she made her famous capital-E Egg for him in the fireplace in her kitchen — something which she'd previously done for Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes, so now it's kind of like a favorite party trick. The Egg involves first building a fire, then making a salad with garden-fresh greens and slicing some artisanal bread, cracking open a bottle of Bandol rosé, then rubbing a large copper spoon with oil, cracking a local egg into it, and frying it over the open flame. "We’ve got only so many moves, each and every one of us," Duane writes, in Alice's defense, "and it was still a great egg." [NYT]

When Flip cam founder Jonathan Kaplan decided to get into the restaurant business last year, founding order-from-your-phone grilled-cheese chain The Melt, he said from the outset that he was looking to expand nationally. So far, the company has three locations in downtown S.F. and one down at Stanford. Now Grub Street sees them taking a retail space at 2400 Telegraph Avenue, a stone's throw from the Berkeley campus, and that makes perfect sense. No word on exactly when it will open, and stay tuned for news of where else in the country they'll be going — they already have this interactive map of the whole U.S. ready, but there's only the four locations on it right now. [Earlier]

A 14-year-old boy from Michigan found a finger in his Arby’s roast beef sandwich. According to Yahoo, a restaurant employee cut her finger off with a meat slicer. She left her station to deal with the injury without telling her co-workers, who continued to prepare orders.