Archive for the ‘in California’ Category
Napa in pictures … Day 2
t says: Day 2 started off pretty early in Napa – I popped in Bouchon Bakery for some delicious pastries. Unfortunately, I took no pictures … let’s just say it was awesome. Oh – and also, let’s just say that if you go any later than 7:30am on a Saturday during tourist season, you’re going to wait (fortunately, I got there at 7). After breakfast, g got her nails did (it’s becoming a vacation tradition!). With full bellies and g’s finished nails, we got down to business with our first tasting of the day: Ma(i)sonry.
Maisonry serves a variety of wines to taste in an indoor-outdoor gallery, including a garden with sculptures. It was a wonderful setting in which to drink wine.
g and I elected for a tasting of a crap-ton of high-end cabernets. 5 in a row. Tasting notes include: “an immature teenage punk-rocker with tusseled hair”, “a classy alluring woman at a skinny black dress”, “a sexy vixen with whips and chains”, “raisins gone wild”, “a baby’s bottom”. End result: Kristine Ash’s offering (the vixen) and Tor’s offering (the baby’s bottom) were our favorite, with Tor getting the slight edge for grace.
Ma(i)sonry is a great place to go to taste some phenomenal cabs from a variety of winemakers and vineyards. Yes, it’s pricey, but this was clearly the best “tasting” we had on our trip because it allowed us to compare similarly-pedigreed/priced cabs head-to-head, with no bias or pressure to buy. Now if only we could afford more of those bottles to bring home with us … maybe next time … Grade: A.
we proceeded to lunch at TK’s ad hoc …
the best fried chicken i’ve ever had … seriously … the crust could not be any more perfect! Even the cornbread was wondrously fluffy – however – you feel your arteries clogging with every buttery bite …
ribs and a piece of shoulder … it evoked memories of bbq’s of my childhood but with a length and complexity that i could probably only now recognize. the sauce that was oh-so-addictive – i would use it on every sandwich ever if i had access to it
the potato salad and corn were pretty good – not super-remarkable, but not bad, either …
and here it is: an Ad Hoc cookie … the base recipe for my own cookies … i kinda-gotta-say it: I like mine better – a darker chocolate and a lighter cookie in both flavor and texture – sorry TK!
Our next wine stop was Ehler’s Estate. We don’t have pictures, so you’ll just have to take my word that they do a nice job there, with a few solid cabs, of which the 1886 comes out on top (predictable, as it’s their top bottling). Personally, I feel that their more interesting offerings were the non-cabs (Petite Verdot and Cab Franc), but maybe that’s just me being picky (or maybe I still had Kristine Ashe on my mind …). Grade: B+ (A fun place to visit, but I’m not sure we’d go again on our next trip).
By this time, g wanted a pre-dinner nap, so while she slumbered, I ventured into Napa for another wine-tasting:
Bounty Hunter Wines. This. Place. Is. Awesome. For real! It’s part wine bar and part wine shop (and part bbq joint). They have an impressive selection of wines by the glass (and by the “taste”) including a few bottlings unique to Bounty Hunter, and the food looked darn tasty (not fancy – just plain ‘ol tasty). The had a very nice pinot from Brittan vineyards that I’m currently trying to figure out how I can get more into PA. We’re definitely going to revisit this place on our next trip – I wanna go back with g! Grade: A+.
Napa Vintner’s Collective. This little tasting room is most similar to the Carlton Winemaker’s Studio that we visited in Oregon. The shtick is that it serves as a tasting room for a lot of very tiny vineyards/winemakers throughout the valley. It had a pretty reasonable tasting fee ($25), but they don’t allow you to pick every wine you want to try – it’s all subject to whatever they have open at the time. Grade: A-.
For dinner, we went to Bouchon …
Bouchon has a bustling bistro feel, with some very attractive entrees on the menu (think homely French – not quite as rustic as Bibou, but not fancy-shmancy, either). As you can seen above the meal started off nicely …
… but then the lights went out! At first it was very romantic. g made an astute observation, “this is kind of like our version of camping!” Yep – she’s right-on. In any case, the restaurant ultimately had to close down, cutting our meal short. At this point we had had our appetizers (I had an octopus appetizer that was actually quite rubbery – g’s salad was ok), and were kinda-sorta forced to eat our entree in the dark (after the lights went out, we were served our mains in the dark without being asked whether or not we’d like to continue dining). I have to say that I was a bit nonplussed about this experience and contemplated asking the manager if we could abandon our entrees (or at least mine – the gnocchi dish was actually not a great dish to eat in the dark), but he appeared very busy/preoocupied with all that was happening. We sucked it up, paid the full bill (they made no offers to comp anything and I was too irritated to raise a fuss), and walked out. Sorry Bouchon – two sad courses out of four and a disregard for patron’s dining experience … you get a D- (the good bread helps you evade an F) <g interrupts: Holy crap! You gave Bouchon a D-? I think that’s a little harsh!> back to t: Ok, then maybe a D … but the point is that it’s so not worth a Michelin Star or the tariff we paid. I did attempt to contact the restaurant to talk about the experience, but no response yet …
Fortunately, I had some Kara’s Cupcakes to put a smile on my face back the hotel room. Thank goodness for Kara.
Napa in pictures … Day 1
t says: g and I had the opportunity to revisit Napa over a long weekend and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Rather than give the super-detailed blow-by-blow, we’ll try to do the Napa-related posts more like a picture album for super-fast skimming …
greetings from Napa! (This was sitting on the bed of our hotel room when we arrived … why I decided to start off this post with this particular pic, I have no idea … but it’s pretty hilarious-looking, right?)
So if the towel-dog wasn’t weird enough, you can see that the “cottage” we stayed in was jam-packed full of oddities … like Breathe-right strips … But the way we figured it: the place was clean, convenient, and relatively inexpensive, so if nothing else, it was a bed to sleep on and a spot to park our rental car …
Our first real meal in Cali was at Bistro Jeanty (we did eat some SFO airport sushi for lunch that was surprisingly good!). It’s without a doubt one of the best “steals” for dinner in the Valley … the food is simple and solid, the wine list is respectable, and the service is kind.
Without a doubt, the most remarkable dish of the evening was the heirloom tomato salad – it was the most perfectly homely dish of tomatoes that really made you wish you could have it for lunch every day for the rest of your life (and I don’t even really like tomatoes that much).
The most humorous dish was my pig’s foot – but it’s misleading, because while it’s shaped lie a pig’s foot …
… it’s actually just a pile of shredded pork molded into a foot-shaped construct and then fried … it was delicious, but it’s not like it’s going to challenge Bibou’s pig’s foot or anything …
Sadly, we lack pictures of where we went on Day 1 for wine … So here’s some boring text …
1) Revana Family Vineyards: It’s a somewhat “exclusive” place in that visits are done by appointment only, and the facilities are actually quite small (<15 acres total). I seem to recall them putting out something like 1000 cases per year, but I could be wrong. They only do cab (with a splash of other Bordeaux varietals) and have a pretty impressive track record. Our hostess Nathalie was very nice – perhaps the best of our entire trip. The tasting was free for us (we’re part of a wine club of their sister property Alexana in Oregon), but there were only two wines (both cab) available. I’ll go on record right now and say that their 2009 cabernet has such a beautifully feminine flavor profile, with wonderful balance of lively red fruits, tart acidity, and nice length that had I had $150 to drop on a bottle of wine, I would have considered it! That said, I doubt it’ll score well by wine reviewers, so maybe it’ll go on sale in the future … Grade: A- (they definitely need at least one more wine to taste – it doesn’t even need to be a third cab – they could just pull from Alexana and give us a glass of Riesling to start as they talk about the winery.)
2) Back Room Wines: This wine bar and retail shop is fun place to go. It’s kind of like a cross between Moore Brothers, a Starbucks, and your favorite pair of jeans. It’s a bunch of casual guys who know a lot about wine. The owner is a little awkward, but for small-production wines by some up-and-coming Napa talent, it’s hard to beat ’em. However, I really wished that they had more of their “fancier” bottlings on tap – inspire me to drop some dough! Given the atmosphere, I don’t think this is a place I would recommend newbies to go, though, as to most, it’d come off as little more than a boring wine shop. Grade: B+
would you sell your soul for a beignet?
t says: g and I found ourselves in San Francisco (and Bay Area) recently, and, like our last trip to Cali, we made sure to go around and frequent delicious restaurants and cupcakes. But rather than bore you with every single thing we ate, I will instead tell you about the awesomest thing we ate. On the Saturday morning before leaving, g and I wanted to get some brunch. Unfortunately, the places we remembered from our research for our last trip were primarily Sunday brunch spots. The Ferry Building could have been had, however, we did it once before and we were taunted by g’s cousin: “Don’t do that again – you’ve already done it once – do something else!” We pulled out the iPad and started googling “Best Saturday Brunch” and limiting our scope to within walking distance from our hotel. A place called “Brenda’s” popped up, and it felt like a place I had heard of before. Boasting “soul food”, it promised to offer a little something different than we were used to.
When we arrived, we promptly put our name on a giant chalkboard that allowed us to see where we were on the waiting list. As far as two-top tables were concerned, we were fourth in line. We secured some seats in the waiting area (g does not like to wait standing) and cast hungry eyes in the general direction of the diners. The specials on the board in the dining room included Bananas Foster French Toast and Pork Belly with Brussels Sprouts and Grits … simply put: I refused to go anywhere else.
Now, I could tell you all about how the French Toast was delicious (but honestly, Cochon, in the hayday of the Elvis French Toast does it better), and how the watermelon iced tea was very refreshing, blah blah blah. But really, the dish of the meal was our first dish:
four beignets, lined up in a row
When we ordered them, we figured they’d be tiny, kind of like Talula’s Garden’s beignets. They were not. Seriously, one order of Beignets would have KO’d both of us had we finished them (we saved some to go for later). The three powdered sugar ones consisted of the following: plain (i.e. unfilled), apple-filled, Ghiardelli chocolate-filled. The last one, which did not have powdered sugar on it, was “crawfish-filled”. Don’t believe me? Look for yourself.
get in my belly!
The crawfish one was delightful. Chunks of seafood in a delectable sauce of creole spices all inside a perfectly fried crust. Sooo good. It was like some sort of seafood stew but shoved inside fried dough. But as good as it was, it was only second place in my book because that chocolate one haunts me to this very day. It has single handedly ruined beignets for me. The chocolate tasted exactly like Ghiardelli chocolate chips (trust me, I’ve eaten enough of them in our chocolate chip cookies to know). It was powerful and rich and wonderful. It made my bananas foster French Toast seem kind of “boring” in comparison – that’s how good it was.
g, who’s a sucker for doughnuts, was similarly in heaven. I’m not sure which one was her favorite (maybe the apple one), but I can tell you that by the time we were leaving, she was adding Brenda’s to the short list of restaurants we absolutely have to eat at the next time we’re in town (actually, “the list” only includes Kiss Seafood and Kara’s Cupcakes so that’s pretty impressive!).
Long story short: go to Brenda’s for brunch – the beignets are worth the wait. That’s right – it’s a brunch spot worth waiting for – a g&t first!
Napa/SF: Day 5
t says: Alrightie-then. Our third-to-last day!! We started off our Saturday in SF as every single guide-book to SF suggests: Ferry Building Market. We hiked on over to check out what is apparently the combination of a food mall and an outdoor farmer’s market. Overall, it was a rather interesting food-centric attraction, however, I’m not sure if it was the end-all be-all of awesomeness. I was expecting something that could not be described by words – but there it is – I described it. Now, I will say that if we had more time in SF, like if we were visiting some friends and cooking a meal together, then yes, the Ferry Building would have been far more fun because we could have indulged in shopping for the various produce and meats and things … next time …
As we walked around, we got kind of hungry. But we had an inside tip: cm told us that we had to go to Blue Point Oyster Company for their New England Clam Chowder. It was going to be unlike any clam chowder that we had ever tasted and would completely blow our minds. So we were ready to have our minds blown … except that we couldn’t find it. There was a “Hog Island Oyster Company” – but surely this is not what he had meant because aside from “Oyster Company”, the two names bear zero similarity. Perhaps this was some sort of imitation and Blue Point was the “real deal”, while this one would suck. So, we decided to skip it and instead went for what I felt was a somewhat oxymoronically named vendor:
There was this stand there which was run by a small army (family) of Spanish-speaking people (minus the two thin white girls who gave you your food – not sure if they were somehow related, or just the hired eye-candy). There was a line about 6 people deep. And every book on SF food kept talking about chilaquiles – we had never had one before, but we figured this would be a good place to at least find one representative sample. It was actually quite delicious. The combination of egg, tortillas that were fried and cooked in some kind of tomato-based mixture, beans, cheese, and sour cream. Simple, satisfying, and fried – what a great way to start the day.
So, where to next? Fisherman’s Wharf of course! We got on a cable car, took our seats, and waited as more people boarded. Then, alluvasudden, a group of “kids” came on and said …
Girl: “Hi – we’re here for a college trip doing a scavenger hunt. One of our missions is to get people on a form of public transportation to sing our dorm song.”
Girl: “It goes like this – ‘When I say ‘Who’s house?’, you say C’s House … Who’s house-”
Disgruntled passenger: “SHUT UP”.
Yea, that’s right. The anthem ended right then and there. You see, there was a rather disgruntled passenger on board. She had been cursing at random people (including the voice of the car operator) just before the kids had come on. She did not appear to be a tourist, rather, an SF local. Judging by her appearance, I’d say that she was one of SF’s homeless population, but maybe she was just really really unkempt. She apparently did not want to join in the dorm song. Thank goodness. I didn’t want to sing it, either, but she gave us all a reason not to not say a peep. We rode in complete silence from that point on … except for the random shouting at fictitious people from the disgruntled lady.
We rode the cable car the 4 minutes it took to get to Fisherman’s Wharf and realized that there were a lot of tourists there. We simply wanted to go just to say we went, but we really didn’t know what else to do. So we did what all tourists do … we booked a tour of the city! It was some of the best money we spent on the trip! The tour took us all throughout SF (including Golden Gate Park and the Bridge and Presidio and a bunch of other places all around the city) on a converted cable car. Our guide had a sense of humor and kept altering the route so he could avoid traffic … but then, because of construction, he’d have to double-back and just go the original route, anyways. The result: a bonus hour of touring! But it was great because it gave us an overall view of the entire city and exonerated us from having to spend the time to get to and visit places that would have been interesting for approximately 15 minutes (looking at you, Presidio). Definitely a great tour, operated by Grayline, but not that double-decker bus one.
After the tour, we felt obligated to eat some Dungeness crab at the Wharf – so we did. We went to Tarantino’s … for no other reason than we saw an open door and suspected that there was proper seating (i.e. a calm lunch vs. the chaos of the Wharf). Actually, the place turned out to be a fairly relaxed atmosphere to enjoy lunch with nice views (on the second floor) and rather dated decor. I had the crab and clam chowder soup and g went for the crab salad sandwich. Nothing super-remarkable about the food, but for what we wanted, which was a quiet place to break away from the madness that is Fisherman’s Wharf, it was splendid. It was also pretty reasonable as far as the cost of Wharf food is concerned.
Next, we set out for Ghirardelli Square. g and I have an honest question to ask anyone who is contemplating taking children to Ghirardelli Square. Why/How would that ever be a good idea? There’s absolutely nothing good about it for your family. It is packed – there’s no room! There’s really not much to see/learn, as it is a giant sugar-filled tourist trap … meaning that children will turn into absolute animals covered in chocolate and ice cream, therefore driving their parents insane. Couple all of this with the obligatory price increase of visiting/eating in a tourist trap, as well as dealing with the children running around that aren’t your own … To quote my mom, “This is not a vacation.”
But wait … why did we go? Two words. Kara’s Cupcakes. Yeah, that’s right. I found me some more Fleur de Sel chocolate cupcakes. I bought one to eat there (and a banana caramel one for g – she’s not into super-rich chocolate like I am), and I bought two more to take back to the hotel [for me … for later … when g’s asleep]. They … were … so … good. Just yesterday I had a Brown Betty’s PB and Chocolate cupcake (and some of the Red Velvet cupcake), and it’s just no contest: I miss Kara.
We eventually got back to our hotel (we took a cab back – a cab that was accosted by someone else who wanted to hail it who didn’t realize we were sitting in the back, so he just thought the cabbie didn’t want to drive him) and relaxed/recharged. Dinner was coming …
We went to Kiss Seafood for dinner. This place is run by the absolute cutest Japanese couple. Go ahead and call them up right now and listen to the answering machine with the husband on it – it’s so cute! But man is his place tiny. It fits like 12 people, total. Actually, when we got there 5 minutes before our reservation, we were told by the lady that there was no space for us. g mistook her and thought that she had meant, “oops, we’re overbooked for tonight – get out”, but I understood that she actually meant, “could you occupy yourselves for 5 minutes and come back?”. And that’s what we did. Unfortunately, there really isn’t much to do in that part of Japantown at 8pm – so we just walked around the block and looked at the houses. We contemplated picking up some wine, but knew that it wouldn’t be the right temperature for dinner. Darn.
We returned to Kiss Seafood and our table was ready. We didn’t score a seat at the sushi bar, which would have been cool (so we could watch the husband do his sushi thing), but we did enjoy how we could see the entirety of the restaurant. It was tiny, bright, open (you could see into the “kitchen” behind the sushi bar), and it was absolutely 100-percent spotless. g remarked that if my parents had a restaurant, this is what it would be like. Nothing flashy – just minimalist, and clean. I noted that if my mom ran a restaurant, that that’s the way it would be … dad would somehow manage to stick “Native American heads and vintage coke machines” in it (inside joke).
How was the food? Well, I went for the omakase, while g went with the sushi (she was a little full still from lunch and her cupcake). Now, I didn’t just go “omakase”, I went for their premium omakase, which included toro. The fish we had was absolutely sublime. It has actually made me a little snobbish about sushi lately – as places that I used to think were “pretty good” before are now under the “only ok” column. Yes, the other food at Kiss was very good (and a unique experience, including this one concoction that was layered from top to bottom with a scallop, a broth, an egg custard, and some kind of poached fish), and the omakase was a wonderful experience, from the pickles in the beginning to the orange slices at the end (this place doesn’t do dessert … thankfully, I had a cupcake at the hotel, so I was ok with that), but it was the raw fish that demonstrated supreme deliciosity. If there’s a next time, I’m getting one chef’s special sushi platter and one chef’s special sashimi platter, because the raw fish there was the most mind-blowing raw fish I’ve ever had (up there with that one piece of eel sushi I got from Morimoto. The toro was obviously delectable – there’s something about the fattiness and the taste that you just can’t really get in another fish. But, there was one sea creature that tasted even better [to me]. Baby sea bass. That’s it. Baby sea bass. Nothing fancy. But it was creamy and mineraly and fishy (not in a bad way) and clean, with that perfect amount of give as you chewed – it was that ideal of piece of fish that other fish want to be. I had it once as sashimi and once as sushi throughout the meal. So good. Actually, it was so good that it wins the “t’s San Francisco’s Best Bite Award”, as it was the single best bite of food I had on our entire trip.
All in all, this was another superb day of our trip. We got to see the city, taste something new, taste something obligatory, and taste something old done extraordinarily well. Fantastic!
Napa/SF: Day 4’s End
t says: So, for dinner on our first day in SF – how to choose? how to choose! We knew we were going to be tired from our trip, so I wanted a place within walking distance from our hotel near Union Square. That said, I wasn’t exactly going to go for something I could get anywhere (lookin’ at you, McDonald’s). So I took a poll. No, not on adsz, rather, on a fairly active kitchen cutlery forum (nerdy, I know) which is full of food-centric people, including chefs and ex-chefs. So when I asked where in SF I should eat, one of the recommendations was to go to a restaurant called “Sons and Daughters”. It was brand new (well, it’d been open for a few months) and it was recommended that they have great food and a hard-working, humble chef. So I booked the reservation and off we went!
9/2010, Friday Dinner, Party of 2. Now, I was told that reservations would be difficult to come by on a Friday night. Undeterred, I got one. We showed up for our 8pm reservation … and it was empty. We were the only ones there. It was a small place with a very dark atmosphere and we were alone. It would have been a great place for a somewhat romantic date, given the intimate setting, however, romance is replaced with spookiness if you’re the only ones there. I had a flashback to L2. It was weird. We figured, “well, maybe they just do dinner late in SF”, crossed our fingers, and stepped up to the host/waiter.
We were given the option to sit anywhere we wanted, so we selected a table that was by itself – no chance of sitting next to unfamiliar people. We were seated and given menus. We were told that they offer a multicourse tasting menu for under $50 – that actually sounded like a deal! BUT – we just weren’t starving enough. Nanking had filled us up. So we ordered two main dishes and an appetizer. Enter the problem … some three weeks later, as I write this to you now, we realized that we have completely forgotten two of those three! Actually, we forgot even more than that! Let’s go through what we remember …
So, our waiter was very … absent-minded. But not goofy-absent-minded, just kind of blank. He was there physically, yes, but whenever he spoke to us, he stared off into space. It’s hard to get excited by the food if the server doesn’t engage you. Then, after we ordered, he seemed a bit disappointed! It was like he felt that we weren’t going to get “the full experience” because we didn’t do the tasting- either that or we couldn’t afford the full experience – I’m not sure. He actually started to walk away before I could place our drink order! That, too, was weird. It was as if he assumed that we also weren’t getting drinks because we cheaped out on dinner. But we did – so ha! g ordered a glass of sparkling rose, and me, a still rose (I wanted something cold – it was hot outside, but I didn’t want white). We placed our order, and off he went.
The first thing that came back was an amuse bouche. Apparently, it didn’t blow us away because I can’t remember what was in it! I do recall some sort of little gelatin balls that tasted of cucumber. I remember it being refreshing, but not super-surprising knock-my-socks-off.
Next, we were given some of their beet soup, “on the house”. I guess we ordered too little and they didn’t want to see us go hungry. That was nice of them. But we remember the beet soup. It was funny because as we looked at the menu earlier, we decided it was too hot for soup. And here we had it … Also funny was that g had been just confessing that she just hasn’t had enough beet to decide if she’d be “in” to them. Well, she definitely got enough beet here. The soup was profoundly beet-y and very rich. Her verdict: “Well, I only ate a little of it – as much as I could mix with the creme fraiche – I’m just not that into beet.” She hit the nail on the head, I think, as the soup was almost overwhelming with the flavor of beet – it needed some zing or some playfulness or something (even some sort of herby bread!). It just wasn’t the kind of thing you really want a whole bowl of. For the night that we went (i.e. a warm one), I suspect it would have been better if it was a little shot glass (or maybe a double-shot glass), but certainly not an entire bowl, and maybe chilled would have been interesting.
When they took away the bowl, g looked into the open kitchen and said that she saw the chef ask about why there was so much left [on g’s plate – I did quite a number on mine]. The server explained that we said we thought it was good, but just weren’t famished. Apparently the chef had a momentary look of distress/panic/sadness. But then he put his game face on and got ready for round 2. When g told me this, I felt a little bad about the soup incident – we really didn’t mean to send the wrong signal – but I totally dug that he had noticed … of course … we were the only table there, so it’d be hard not to …
Round 2 was the appetizer we ordered. I can’t remember what it was. g can’t either. Darn. It wasn’t bad, whatever it was. We more remember that by this time, we had not yet received our wine, which was peculiar. It became funny when g told me that she had watched while the wines were poured and set aside, but they just had not yet come to the table. When we told our waiter, he looked disappointed in something – I’m not sure what – and he said he’d be right back. But he didn’t come right back. By this point there were a couple more tables filled, so maybe he didn’t want to just swipe the drinks that were ours and deliver them? I don’t know. Our drinks did appear, eventually, right as we received one of our entrees – the mystery one. g’s recollection was that it was some sort of meat – lamb tenderloin perhaps? Once again, good, but not good enough to remember details.
We then received the squab. The squab, we remember. There were actually two pieces – a breast and a leg. I know the leg was prepared confit, but I’m not sure about the breast. The squab was excellent. Now, I won’t lie and claim to be an expert on the preparation of pigeon, however, I can say that the meat was tender, the skin was crisp, and the jus was excellent. Yes, there were probably accompaniments, but squab, itself, was clearly the star of the dish and I liked it quite a lot. I don’t know if g was turned off or not by the foot of the squab that was visible on the plate. We actually heard the table next to us say something like, “yea, it looks like a wizard’s wand” when they got their squab … people say the darndest things …
We did order dessert as well. But, unlike the kinds of things I normally would order for dessert, we ordered something that g wanted for dessert. We went for the cheese plate. Once again, the cheese is not going to be something we actually remember, but I would not be surprised if it was the testun al Barolo sheep’s cheese that’s still on the menu (it actually sounds familiar). It was accompanied by nuts and some sort of fruit. It was absolutely fantastic. This combination was the most profound mix of flavors we had all night (it’s a shame that they probably can’t take too much credit, themselves, on making the cheese). It was even better than the cheese course at Ad Hoc.
As we paid our bill and got up to leave, I noticed that the place was packed. Really, there was not a seat left! It was amazing to see how the place filled up from being completely deserted when we arrived and being a loud, buzz-filled restaurant when we left (it was Melograno-on-a-busy-night loud). Good for them!
On our way out, I held the door for g, and we were approached by our waiter. He said, and I quote, “Yea, you better tell you friends to make reservations soon … our Bauer review comes out tomorrow.” I responded, “Ok – will do!”. We had no idea what he was talking about but figured that Bauer was some sort of food critic. Interestingly, he assumed not only that we were local but also that we had friends. How presumptuous of him! We went home that night and looked up Bauer to confirm he was indeed a food critic. We predicted that this place would get pretty good marks for food – maybe 3 out of 4 stars, max, if for nothing else than creativity (the menu had requisite fancy items like foie and squab and sweetbreads), but if our waiter was waiting on Bauer, they’d be screwed – he just didn’t have the polish to pull off the “awesome local shnazzy restaurant”. In the end, it turned out that our waiter lied, though – the Bauer review didn’t come out the next day (we checked) – it came out the day after. And you know what – he had similar feelings that we did: Good food, young/spotty service.
Conclusions: I’d go back to Sons and Daughters and give it another whirl – but this time, I’ll go hungry. Also, g and I apparently get an F for blogging because we couldn’t remember more than half of what we ate. Oops! What’s interesting is that although I kept every receipt from our trip – this is the only one missing! How weird! Better luck next time …
Napa/SF Recap: Day 4
t says: So … our last day in Napa … I remember it was kind of sad! But, on the bright side, it was like we had a whole second trip in front of us! So, we packed up Mustang Sally (for our last voyage), dropped by Bouchon Bakery for some breakfast, and set out to do one last thing in Yountville … For some reason, we just couldn’t figure out precisely where The French Laundry was. We drove by the address numerous times but just couldn’t find it! We kept seeing dressed up people walking in the area but we couldn’t figure out which door they were entering. Well, this morning, we found it!
It turns out that the sign was really low to the ground – so low that Mustang Sally’s doors got in the way (we were low-riding … yea … we’re gangsta). Mission accomplished! Some day, Mr. Keller. Some day …
Next, we set our GPS for Sausalito. Why Sausalito? Well, if you remember from Day 1, I had sinned against g … You see, I promised g when we first arrived that I’d take her to Sausalito via the Golden Gate Bridge. But, when we put in Napa as our destination, it took us over the Bay Bridge and a boring highway that, to be honest, reminded me of route 55. g was not amused. Her mom hyped up Sausalito as the best place in the world [to live]. And, what I didn’t know, was that g was really in to Full House and wanted to go over the Golden Gate Bridge just like at the end of the opening sequence. (g says: not just go over – go over in a convertible. With the top down. Singing the Full House theme song in my head.) Result: I was going to get us to Sausalito and the Golden Gate Bridge if it killed us (or Mustang Sally … we got the extra insurance).
Actually, getting to Sausalito was easy as pie. Mustang Sally’s sense of direction (i.e. GPS) was spot-on. And it was beautiful. Not bad for the second-most-expensive county in the US …
We dined at this peculiar little fried-food place that was run by Asians. The receipt claims it was called Fish and Chips. Guess what I ordered? Fish and chips. (g got the mini-burgers). Apparently, in Sausalito, you are allowed to serve food without having a restroom for customers to use … How odd. Maybe it was just them being mean. On the other hand, the fish-and-chips was actually quite good! And it wasn’t just hunger talking, because I had a Bouchon muffin as backup, in case it sucked. g’s burgers were unremarkable burgers … just miniaturized. As you can see, neither of us remembers what the place was called, but it’s not like we’d actually go back to that same place in the future – there are lots of little cafes and pizzerias in the area, but we were short on time – Mustang Sally needed to be back by 12:30!!
So, we came, we saw Sausalito, and now we had one more lion/dragon/ogre to slay (a liodragogre!) … the Golden Gate Bridge. So, I present to you now … the world’s first ever slain liodragogre …
Mission 2 accomplished!
We returned the car and set out to get to downtown SF from the airport. It would have been easy to get a cab, but we wanted to keep it real … so we took the BART. This was our first reality check that San Francisco, although it’s sometimes painted as a city in which it rains gumdrops, is a city … like every other city … and like every other city, they sometimes do stupid things … like put fabric-upholstered cushions on mass transportation systems … Who does that? First off – it’s gross. On a NY subway, where they use nothing but hard surfaces, I still know the subway is gross, but at least I feel like I am making as little contact as humanly possible. But in SF, when you sit down, you feel the cushions mold to your body, essentially giving you a warm hug of sweat and microbes. True, soft seats are on chartered buses, airplanes, Amtrak, etc. But I have never run into a seat as gross-feeling as the ones we sat in that very day. Second … they look ugly.
Ok, so we got to Union Square, hiked a few blocks north, a few blocks west, and voila! we arrived at our destination: Hotel Beresford. I really didn’t have any issues with the general appearance of the hotel or our room. Things seemed in order and reasonably clean (e.g. I wasn’t afraid to lay on their sheets or shower in the bathroom). But, later on, when I was using the internet in the lobby, someone came in looking for availability, and his girlfriend took one step in and immediately said “Oh no – we are NOT staying here – it’s like a creepy hotel from a horror movie.” I’m not exactly sure what horror movie she’s talking about … It wasn’t a run-down, seedy motel, it wasn’t an abandoned, palacial mansion, it wasn’t even dark! I stand by our choice (not that I’d do it again). There were some issues, however …
1) No A/C … which is ok except during a SF heatwave … which was occurring while we were there … but it’s nothing compared to a Philly heat wave, so a fan is good enough to compensate …
2) … except that our fan jumped off of the dresser we put it on (we were watching tv, we heard a crash, and the fan was on the floor – no idea how it happened) – but it was replaced with a gigantic box fan, so that’s ok …
3) The lack of hair dryers in the rooms – but we got one from the lobby.
g interjects: Oh, really? That’s it? Allow me to complete the list:
4) The bathroom smelled like sewage on random occasions.
5) The shower was GROSS. I had a serious problem with that one. Showers (especially small stall showers) should be spotless in every hotel every time. Period.
6) They must have bought their dressers from a yard sale because all of the drawers were broken. If you opened them more than 2 inches, they fell out of the dresser and ontop of you. This was difficult for me because I actually unpack at hotels and use the drawers.
7) The remote control for our tv was on its last leg. Buttons worked 1 out of 10 times they were pushed, on average. And the channel up and down buttons were completely kaput. This would not have been too much of a problem except that most of the channels consisted of that awful tv snow, and the channels that did work were far apart from each other numerically.
8) The free breakfast? Free for a reason. Really bad. I don’t think I need to go into detail.
End rant.
t says: whoa whoa whoa there! I believe that the bathroom smelled like raw sewage because our neighbor had a super-foul bowel movement and it worked its way through the ventilation. That’s my working hypothesis.
The shower wasn’t gross! The shower we had on Cape Cod was gross. I’d say that this was a step above dorm room showers!
The dressers sucked – I forgot about that. I don’t unpack completely at hotels – I live out of the suitcase, so this didn’t affect me.
I unfortunately cannot defend the tv or the free breakfast …
Ok … so we unpacked … one of us was a little happier than the other one of us. But we put the hotel behind us and got down to the first order of business: check out Chinatown. It was nearby and it was too late in the day to take a bus tour of the city. The thing is … we didn’t know precisely where in Chinatown we should go – we just saw the letters on a map, but that doesn’t mean that the entire area is a great place to visit. Well … we were unlucky … we ran into real Chinatown far before tourist Chinatown. What’s the diff? Real Chinatown has a lot of Asian people around (I daresay Chinese people, but I don’t know if they were all Chinese), including very slow walking old ladies and stoic, loogie-spitting old men. Kind of gross. But we eventually did get to tourist Chinatown, which was full of … white people. All those caucasians were walking around, taking pictures, and generally getting in the way. It was fun to see all of the stores peddling their trinkets and restaurants advertising their dim sum. It was in Chinatown that I found out my new favorite way to take pictures … I like taking pictures of people taking pictures!
We were hungry but were unsure which one of the restaurants to go to – there were so many! Then we turned the corner, and I recognized a name. cm and drb both recommended the place and we just happened to find it (seriously! I know that cm won’t believe me because I did so much planning for the trip). Here it is:
How was the food? Take a look for yourself:
I’ve heard that this place is not so authentic. But who cares – the food was as delicious as everyone said! The above picture used used to be pork dumplings in black bean sauce and some kind of other fried appetizery shrimp dumpling dish (we had dinner plans that night). It was great!
I’ll finish off Day 4 at my earliest convenience …
after dinner sneeze 