A High End Restaurant For Dogs Has Opened In The Mission…
Written By: Habibi Bridges
Just when I thought that San Francisco couldn’t get any worse, I have now discovered a new low for this city. With some of the worst income disparity in the world combined with a severe homelessness problem, we also have another epidemic: rich dog people.
I’ve seen it all: dog hotels, dog salons. San Francisco residents pushing their dogs in strollers (wasn’t the point of walking the dog was for the exercise?), cafes offering puppachinos, and Dog knows other ways the residents of this city have lavishly doted on their beloved pets. I get it, to a degree. I want my cats to have a great life and feed them the best food, however, within reason. These rich dog people, on the other hand, are just fucking ridiculous.
So ridiculous, in fact, that a high end dog restaurant (you read it right, a restaurant for dogs) has opened up shop on Valencia in the Mission. Not only is the concept outrageous, but the location is all the more tone deaf given that it exists in one of the only neighborhoods in San Francisco with any semblance of an existing working class. The Mission also has some of the worst rates of homelessness in the city as well, and yet people are walking their designer dogs past the bodies of overdose victims on the sidewalk to feed their Frenchie a filet mignon.
The restaurant is named Dogue, a cringeworthy portmanteau between “dog” and “Vogue”, eliciting a luxurious experience for dogs of an elite clientéle. I personally think it’s unoriginal garbage. Not to mention, San Francisco already has a high end bakery just for dogs named Mishka, which has two locations. That is two too many.
They have a tasting menu that costs seventy five dollars. For some people, that’s the amount they spend on groceries for a single week. Why must there be a tasting menu for dogs, who are remarkably less discriminating over what they put into their mouths than humans? Also, not sure if the owner did thorough research before opening, but dogs only have a meager 1,700 taste buds in comparison to the 9,000 humans have, which makes the idea of a three course tasting menu all the more laughable.
Apparently he is aware of the criticisms that his restaurant has been receiving regarding the exclusive nature of the restaurant, nonetheless he’s sticking to it due to his firm belief in a raw food diet for dogs.
Here’s a question though: do the dogs give a fuck how the food looks before they drive their nose into the food? Something tells me no.
The problem is, he’s missing his own point–there is no need to garnish or plate these fresh ingredients and sell it at a high markup. He should know very well that his role in the raw dog food movement is not what people are protesting–it’s the idea of taking up real estate in an overpriced housing market in one of the last working class strongholds of San Francisco while a man overdoses on fentanyl outside the restaurant doors, just so that rich people can bring their dogs to eat expensive food in public as a status symbol. If these people really cared about the health of their dogs, they would feed them raw food everyday at home–not take them to Dogue once in a while to dress their Shiba in a bowtie and eat a quail egg truffle mousse and a tuna tartare. This restaurant is a disgrace in a city that chose money over its people, exacerbating a worsening struggle to find shelter and resources for addicts on the street.
Dogue has no place in San Francisco, let alone the Mission.
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