Stuff I Ate In California–San Francisco, Days 5 and 6

There is a lot of great food associated with San Francisco.  And rightly so.  Hidden among those monstrous mountains the locals refer to as hills lie some of the city’s finest secrets.  This was actually my third visit to this beautiful city by the bay and I was determined to eat as much as my gluttonous soul could hold.

Day 5

By this time, I was feeling just a tad bit guilty about eating like a starving pig.  I don’t eat like this at home, and thanks to all those mountain-hills, it was a miracle I hadn’t gained more than a pound by the time I got back to NY.

So what did I eat on Day 5?

Breakfast at Tartine Bakery in Mission Dolores:

Gougère

Coconut passion fruit lime Bavarian cake

Yes, I had cake for breakfast.  And it was GLORIOUS!  I adore passion fruit and as soon as I saw it was available, I had to have it.  Some people are impulse shoppers–I am an impulse eater.  The genoise cake layers were light and moist, and the passion fruit Bavarian cream in conjunction with the coconut and lime was so ethereal I nearly fainted from pure pleasure.

My only disappointment with my visit to Tartine was they’d run out of the banana cream tartlette I fell in love with the last time I was there.  Holy mother of chocolate, if you do nothing else in San Francisco, you MUST try this tartlette.  The crust is lined in dark chocolate and caramel, filled with banana pastry cream, and decorated with shaved chocolate and is just heavenly.  This is a grainy camera-phone picture of the tartlette I took on my previous trip:

For lunch, I stopped at Phô 2000 in Little Saigon:

Vietnamese iced coffee and phô fixings

Phô #3 (brisket, tripe, tendon, I forget what else)

I was very very disappointed that their iced coffee (strong chicory coffee mixed with condensed sweetened milk) was pre-made–I’m used to seeing an individual coffee filter placed on top of a drinking glass  and watching the coffee drip into the condensed milk at the bottom of the glass.  I know it’s more efficient to make a whole batch at once but it never really tastes the same, and I hate not knowing how long it’s been sitting around.

Day 6

This was my last night before I was to leave SF for Los Angeles, and my friends A and T invited me out for dinner at Nopa, which I think is short for north of the Panhandle.  We were led upstairs to our table on the balcony, which, to our delight, looked directly over the open kitchen.

We started with an amuse-bouche of crostini and a savory citrus-scented ricotta that came with a tiny salt bowl (I think it’s called a salt dip- I have one made of jadeite).   This was surprisingly good, creamy yet bright with a little crunch from the salt.

Appetizers:

Gem salad.  Haven’t the foggiest what was in this–it’s not on Nopa’s menu anymore

Warm olives with roasted garlic and, uh, olive oil

Giant white beans, tomato, feta, oregano, and breadcrumbs run quickly under the broiler

T ordered the tender, flavorful porchetta.  She was almost too mesmerized by the action in the kitchen below us to give the porchetta its proper due.  Almost.  Unfortunately, she wasn’t feeling well and was unable to eat more than a bite or two of her main.

Her husband A went with the grass-fed burger with pickled onions and french fries.  I didn’t try his burger but he seemed pleased with it.  It looked excellent, better than this picture makes it look.  The fries were nice too, crisp on the outside and potatoe-y on the inside.

I was feeling a little guilty about eating so much artery-clogging food since stepping foot in San Francisco, so I decided to get some semblance of health into my system via Nopa’s Moroccan vegetable tagine with toasted almonds and lemon yogurt.   Wow, really tasty!  It reminded me a little of ratatouille.  I’m typically not a fan of green olives but these were actually pretty good, briny but not eye-poppingly salty.   I should have asked our server where all the olives in our meal came from.

I remember this meal with great fondness as well as some bitterness because… that was the last time I saw my dear friend T alive.  She passed away four weeks later.

Rest in peace, my friend.  Wherever you are, I hope you’re dining on all the gourmet meals we didn’t get to share together.  I hope every day is a black & white cookie day.  I love you and miss you.

Stuff I Ate in California–San Francisco, Day 4

There is a lot of great food associated with San Francisco.  And rightly so.  Hidden among those monstrous mountains the locals refer to as hills lie some of the city’s finest secrets.  This was actually my third visit to this beautiful city by the bay and I was determined to eat as much as my gluttonous soul could hold.

Day 4

I think by now you know I like food.  Some people cannot walk by a jewelry store window without stopping to look at the sparklies; my friends will tell you that I can’t ever walk past a bakery without gazing longingly upon the pastries.

That goes for restaurants too.  I get carried away when I see portable food like those pot pies I mentioned in Day 3.  I had a couple of pies left over (thank goodness for an in-room fridge) and yes, I ate it cold.  My breakfast:

I really enjoyed my spinach and feta pot pie even though it was cold.  The whole wheat crust was a little on the tough side, though whether that was due to its overnight stay in the fridge or the whole wheat flour remains to be seen.  It did make me wish I had a toaster oven (I swear the guy in the hotel room next to mine had one- I smelled pizza rolls one night!) because if it tasted as good hot as it did cold, I probably would have swooned.  Not too salty, not too feta-y, and the spinach made me feel better about eating a pasty for breakfast.

I just realized I never gave my opinion on the curried potato pasty!  It was pretty damned good but then I’m really partial to curry.  Most of Peasant Pies‘ pot pie menu is vegetarian and they also offer vegan selections.   I’m neither vegetarian nor vegan but it’s nice to have veggie options.   It made me want to make my own curried potato pasties.   Soon, my pretty.  Soon.

I’d been hearing a lot of raves about Ella’s chicken hash and of course I had to taste for myself.   During my brief wait for a table, I got to chatting with a woman who was visiting from Brooklyn and so we passed a few pleasant minutes discussing our reasons for coming to Ella’s Restaurant and favorite breakfast places back home.

I was a little put off by the busser who told me the kitchen was closing in ten minutes and that I needed to hurry to put my order in.  I must be the only person who thinks the kitchen should close when the last customer (I was actually third to last, I think) is ready to place his/her order.  Anyway, I ordered two eggs over easy with my chicken hash and thick-sliced whole wheat toast.

Tasty!  Look at the gorgeous crust on that hash!

I thought this was so cute.  I vastly preferred scooping my ketchup out to squeezing a bottle and spattering it all over the place.

Housemade orange marmalade.  I usually dislike marmalade but was really impressed with Ella’s version.  Yum!

Next stop: Bi-Rite Creamery.  But first a loooong walk north to Cow Hollow to get a much-needed manicure and pedicure.  I typically don’t get manicures as they never ever last more than a day thanks to all the hand washing I do.  Pedicures, on the other hand, last for two weeks.

Hmm.  Now it sounds like I never wash my feet.

That’s Divisidero Street (Cow Hollow is in the background) and by the time I got to this point, I was panting and glad I’d ignored my vain impulse to bring heels on this trip.  Those San Francisco mountain-hills are no joke; I am pretty sure I could have bounced a quarter off my ass by the time I left SF.

I’m a big ol’ nerd so I’d already researched one of the best cheap nail places in town called City Famous Spa.  While they don’t have a website, they did get rave reviews on Yelp, and who am I to argue with Yelpers?  Only for my vanity would I unknowingly schlep up a 20° incline though I didn’t know just how steep this hill was until I was climbing it.

This appeared to be my day to disagree with the rest of the world; the pretty pale pink polish was a bit streaky, though Tina (the owner) was extremely meticulous about keeping it off the sides of my nails.  As for my toes, I can’t get close enough to them to pronounce a verdict one way or the other. *embarrassed*

Despite the slight streakiness, I can see why City Famous gets such wonderful reviews: Tina and her crew give the kind of customer service I typically associate with the more hoity-toity salons.  In fact, they are WAY more thoughtful and pleasant to interact with than the staff at the Peninsula in New York, where I once dropped $75 for a pedicure I could have gotten at my local joint for $30.  Tina might not have done a superlative job on my nails but she really made up for it with enthusiasm, friendliness, and warmth, and that’s enough reason for me to go back for a pedicure the next time I’m in San Francisco.

Now if only I could remember what color I’d chosen that day. . .

After the world’s friendliest mani/pedi, I hopped on the MUNI bus that would take me to my beloved Bi-Rite Creamery.  If you get their regular-sized cup or cone, you can get up to three scoops of ice cream.  I’m not graceful enough to eat an ice cream cone without wearing it, so I stick with the cups.  Bi-Rite Creamery is famous for their salted caramel ice cream, and rightly so, but I tell you, try their lavender-honey as well as the Earl Grey ice creams.  Just do it.  Get all three. They are sublime.  So orgasmic, I can only write in stilted sentences.  Totally worth the calories.

Now that I’d had my pre-dinner dessert, where was I going to enjoy my evening repast?  Why, Cafe Claude, of course!  (sorry about the pictures, it was pretty dim in there)

I sat at the bar where I could ogle the cute bartender and ordered one of the house cocktails, the Egalité:

I decided since I’d already spent oodles of money that day, I might as well go whole hog and have a four-course meal.  I started with the betterave again, which you’ve already seen.

You know what’s funny?  I don’t especially like liver but I just love pâté.  And guess what was on their menu??  Diners have the option of choosing one pâté or a sampler of three pâtés from the following:

Pâté Campagne  6.
country style pork pate flavored with black pepper
and red wine
Rillette du Périgord  6.
pork free, shredded all-natural duck meat, duck fat seasoned & cooked confit style
Truffle Mousse  6.
a creamy all-natural petaluma poultry chicken livers, truffles and cèpes marinated in sherry
Sauterne Mousse  6.
creamy all-natural petaluma poultry chicken liver, truffles and cepes marinated in sherry

I utterly adore both truffle mousse (really, who says no to truffles?) and Sauterne mousse, so those were a given, although the menu makes it sound like it’s the same thing.  Maybe it is, but who cares?  It’s good!  However, I’d never had duck rillettes and decided this was my chance.  Plus, what’s the point of going out to eat if you only eat what you know?

The truffle mousse was creamy with a slight peppery bite that followed the earthiness of the truffles.  I could have made a whole meal out of this, it was so satisfying.  Ditto for the Sauterne mousse, though it was more sweet and mild.  I can’t figure out why I didn’t love the rillette du Périgord though; I love duck, so why would I not like the rillette?  Oh well, there’s no accounting for taste, is there?  I was starting to get full and hadn’t even gotten to my main course.

I enjoyed this very much though I think it was a bit too heavy on the shiitake mushrooms- it’s got such a distinctive flavor that a little goes a long way.  Otherwise it was really well done.  The pasta was tender and flavorful, and it was just the right portion size: not gigantic but not puny either.

And for dessert: Café Claude’s crème brŭlée.

Stuff I Ate In California–San Francisco, Day 3

There is a lot of food associated with San Francisco.  And rightly so.  Hidden among those monstrous mountains the locals refer to as hills lie some of the city’s finest secrets.  This was actually my third visit to this beautiful city by the bay and I was determined to eat as much as my gluttonous soul could hold.

Day 3

I tried to be more selective and not eat nearly so much on this day because I’m pretty convinced now that in one of my past lives, I was the inspiration for the naming of the last of the deadly sins: gluttony.

On this day, I woke and thought, “I’ve only had dim sum once in SF (at the Mayflower in Outer Richmond).  Maybe it’s time to try out a place in Chinatown.”  I found a highly rated dim sum joint on Yelp and decided to hoof it from my hotel room, which was not very far away.   In NYC, this would not be a long or arduous walk, especially on a lovely day.  But NYC is flat.  In SF, such a walk is a bit more … aerobic thanks to the mountain-hills.  Only the thought of lovely steamed har gow (crystal shrimp dumplings), siu mai (pork and shrimp dumplings), and har cheung (shrimp wrapped in rice noodle) and maybe a gai bao (steamed bun stuffed with chicken and shiitake mushroom) kept me going.  The only thing all this exercise did was make me even hungrier and more impulsive about buying food.  Sorta like going grocery shopping on an empty stomach. Not a good idea.

I found my destination and immediately ordered all the food I mentioned above:

From top to bottom: har cheung, siu mai, and har gao

I discovered after buying a metric ton of food that House of Dim Sum, which is mostly take-out but does have dine-in service, was NOT the place I’d read about on Yelp; the place I was looking for was across the street.  Whoops.  Turns out House of Dim Sum has not-so-good reviews and rightly so.  I didn’t feel so good after eating the har gao, which tasted funny.  The pork in the siu mai was a little fatty but as I like my siu mai a wee bit on the fatty side anyway, this did not bother me at all.  I was kind of meh on the har cheung–I wouldn’t go out of my way to order these again despite these being my favorite dish (They also didn’t include the lightly sweetened soy sauce that normally accompanies har cheung.  I guess you have to ask for it?). Ditto for the gai bao.  The flavor wasn’t quite right; it wasn’t seasoned as well as I’m used to, and whoever made it really skimped on the ingredients.  In addition, the texture wasn’t quite right.  I ate all the siu mai and a few of the har cheung.  The rest went into the garbage.

Gai bao

I was deeply disappointed (and a little bit embarrassed) by this dim sum experience.  I guess you could say I’m mega-spoiled when it comes to good Chinese food.  My dad won’t put up with the crappy stuff; as long as a restaurant continues to turn out excellent dim sum, he will return over and over again because at heart, he is a creature of habit.  But the minute he notices the food quality is starting to slip, he’ll mention it once to the manager and if on a subsequent visit it doesn’t improve, he simply doesn’t go back.  There are just too many wonderful Chinese restaurants in NYC to continue patronizing one that compromises on quality.

I almost hesitate to divulge the name of my next stop: San Tung, whose owners are Koreans raised in China and make The. Most. Awesome. Chicken. Wings. EVER.  If you like Bon Chon or Kyo Chon (both are Korean fried chicken chain restaurants), you’ll love San Tung.  Shatteringly crisp despite being coated with a savory-sweet sauce, their wings are juicy, flavorful, and tender, and so good, I would want these at my wedding reception should such a momentous occasion occur.  I called A and asked if I could bring some wings over as part of that night’s dinner.  As expected, the answer was yes and could I get some fried dumplings too?  😀

Though I didn’t order it this time, San Tung’s dry-fried string beans are also out of this world

Oh man, these wings… sigh….

That night’s dinner table

On my way to the bus that would take me to my friends’ home, I passed a little shop called Peasant Pies that sells…POT PIES!!  They’re actually pasties (pronounced PASS-tees) which are little savory turnovers filled with various, uh, fillings.  I purchased ones containing curried potato, spinach and feta, and beef pot pie and put those into my magic tote bag for midnight snackage before continuing on my way to A’s house.

Look how happy it was to get into my belly!

And as I’d promised myself, I munched on the curried potato pot pie for my midnight snack.

Stuff I Ate in California–San Francisco, Day 2

There is a lot of food involved with San Francisco.  And rightly so.  Hidden among those monstrous mountains the locals refer to as hills lie some of the city’s finest secrets.  This was actually my third visit to this beautiful city by the bay and I was determined to eat as much as my gluttonous soul could hold.

Day Two

I woke up hungry.

Even after consuming massive amounts of food the previous day, and even after the way I lay in my bed like a beached whale after returning to my hotel room, I woke up hungry.  I know this is probably due to a moderate metabolism (although judging by the size of my tummy and bum, it’s definitely not fast enough), but can a person really burn off five million calories whilst sleeping??  Did I sleep-run a marathon or something? I wondered.

In any case, I thought about what I was going to eat first and then brightened up.  Remember those two crème brûlèes I bought on Day One?  Guess what I had for breakfast?

Chocolate peppermint

.COM (Cinnamon Orange Maple)

Unfortunately, the brûlée melted, but that’s no one’s fault but mine for not eating it right away.  I fully expected to fall in love with the chocolate peppermint because my love for chocolate borders on the unholy, but surprisingly, I didn’t.  It was creamy and tasty, but there wasn’t as much chocolate punch as I’d wanted, though the peppermint definitely made its presence known.

The .COM, on the other hand, was an unknown quantity.  I’m not a fan of maple; I don’t hate it, but I need a lot less of it than other people.  And I think people can be way too heavy-handed with cinnamon at times.   But I’m nothing if not adventurous when it comes to dessert, although I do admit it was with great trepidation that I dipped my spoon into the .COM.  As it turned out,  cinnamon + orange + maple + custard =  explosion of happy.   Talk about a dark horse!  Sighhhh.

While consuming this breakfast of champions, I looked at one of those slick looking “Best of [city you’re in]” guides that always seem to be in every hotel room I’ve ever stayed in and looked closely at their restaurant listings.  I paused at Café Claude and went online to look at their menu.  Holy… I wanted to try everything on their menu, it all sounded so wonderful!  I was sold!

Once there, I was dizzy with both anticipation and indecision.  Should I start with the soupe  à l’oignon or maybe indulge my love of beets and go with their salade du betterave?  Or maybe I should be more continental and order a pâté trio?  I was seriously tempted to order one thing from every course/category, but while I’m not really daunted by the thought of having a leisurely seven-course meal, I felt I should at least pretend to be not so greedy.

I started with a St. Germain cocktail.  Hey, it was five o’clock in New York!

This bread was so crusty and tender all at the same time.  You KNOW I used all that butter!

Beet salad: roasted beets, snow pea julienne, crumbled feta, pistou, and cherry tomatoes. SUBLIME!

Pan-seared salmon, fava bean stew, eggplant caviar, more pistou, and fried basil.  The salmon was slightly overdone but still very tasty

Regrettably, I did not have dessert.  I wish now that I’d indulged but at the time, I felt like I’d just spent more on this lunch than I’d spent on food the entire previous day.  I guess I shouldn’t have ordered that St. Germain but you know, the liver wants what it wants. 😉

Dinner was again spent at my friends’ home.  This was pretty much the plan for the rest of my visit, because believe it or not, my main reason for being in SF was not just to eat but also to see my friend, who is very ill and isn’t up to all-day visits from her friends.

You know, I’m not a praying kind of gal, but for her I pray every day.  I pray for a cure that takes away her illness and will allow her to watch her son grow up.  I pray for her to not be taken away from us, but sometimes I think the gods are hard of hearing.