At OTD, the wine is on tap

Photographs of OTD by Tim Williamson

By Chris Barnett

The price on the wine list looks like a proofreader’s mistake. But celebrated chef Charles Phan of Slanted Door fame — and owner of the new and wildly popular Out The Door Vietnamese bistro on Bush Street, just off Fillmore — is selling a 2008 sauvignon blanc from Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley for $4 a glass — or $16 for a full bottle.

Just don’t ask to see the bottle. Or smell the cork.

The sauvignon blanc and 11 other varietals flow from chrome spigots attached to sleek stainless steel cylinders connected to five-gallon kegs hidden behind closed doors. It’s wine on tap.

The artistic inkeepers

Bill and Denise Shields

Story and photographs
by Carina Woudenberg

Half a block up Pine Street from Fillmore, behind a perfectly maintained white picket fence, stands the Artists Inn.

A flag flies in the breeze, but there is no sign of what lies behind the pale blue and white facade: three former art studios that a decade ago were transformed into a charming bed and breakfast.

“Never did it cross our minds we’d run a B&B,” says the inn’s co-owner and co-proprietor Denise Shields. She and her husband, the respected artist Bill Shields, bought the house in the mid-70s when it desperately needed their love and care — and a major remodel.

The end of a design era

Every year, his clients have been invited to tour designer John Wheatman's home.

By Thomas Reynolds

In the springtime came the annual invitation to stop by the corner of Alta Plaza Park and tour the elegant home of interior designer John Wheatman.

Hundreds of current and former clients walked through on May 3, a cool, grey Sunday afternoon, to admire the treasures Wheatman has acquired and the good taste with which he has arranged them — and his garden, looking splendid in the mist, and grown entirely in pots and planters on the rooftop.

So it was a surprise when his letter of September 30 arrived. “I have decided to retire,” he wrote. “I have loved every minute of my involvement with you.” And in merely a month the end has come, after 45 years, for John Wheatman & Associates.