after dinner sneeze

We followed up 750wines with a return to Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen. My duck burger was probably the best burger I’ve had in the past year (I only wish it tasted a little more ducky) and chicken-topped salad put a smile on g’s face.  This was our last meal in Napa … except for the Kara’s cupcakes we bought on the way back to SF …

g had a weird dish called “sweet carrot and lentil salad, medjool date, and vadouvan curry crema”.  What actually came out was an assortment of like 37 different root vegetables and a few blobs of random textures … and g liked it!  i was also impressed – it was like something that we could have found at a casual version of Vedge.

because we brought a red wine (i.e. because kp brought a red wine), i started off with a wagyu beef appetizer … which was interesting because the broth and greens were fabulous, and the dancing bonito was a sight to behold (i took a movie on my iPhone, but for some reason can’t post it to this blog – you’ll just have to trust us) … However, this was probably the weakest of the appetizers as the beef preparation was less-than-superbly executed (the three slabs weren’t super-tender, lacked seasoning, and was somewhere in the medium-medium-well range).  consequently, this dish was kind of a fail.

buckwheat tagliatelle with bacon-braised suckling pig.  now this dish should be, in v’s terms, “all bait”.  But to be honest, it was a little underwhelming, as the pasta’s graininess was sadface-inducing – I would have taken a plain ‘ol barilla pasta because without the textural distraction of the buckwheat, I could have focused on the splendid oink-oinkiness of the rest of the dish … which was indeed everything that a pig-based pasta dish could be (i.e. heaven).

now g’s pasta, on the other hand (mustard cappellini, guinea hen ragu, savoy cabbage, mimolette cheese), was so ridiculously addictive that i think i had more of it than she had!  and to further blow your mind – it was not even the “best” dish of the evening – that would be kp’s (not pictured).  He had this lasagnette (which, when served, looked like a boring folded over crepe) and meatballs that were in-sane.  It hit you in the face with memories of 5-year-old you, the first time you ever had your own meatball to yourself on a fork, with wide eyes and a cheesy grin with your tongue trying to reach the corners of your tomato-sauce-covered face.  in-sane.

for this dinner, kp reached deep into his cellar, past the santa margherita everyday “date wine”, and over to the “special wine” row to find this beauty.  This 2002 Revana was “tots cray”, with a nose of “man” (leather, tobacco, musk), but then palate of plush dark fruits that slid smoothly across the palate to make you pause and savor.  What’s the secret to this wine?  Is it the terroir?  The deep “family” wine-making heritage? …

… nope!  It was the ringer that the proprieter hired to make his wine: Heidi Peterson Barrett, the “first lady of wine” who gave us a 2002 that far outclassed the Dominus 2002 we had a few years ago.  How great!  In retrospect, while the food was delightful at SPQR, it was the wine (and company) that made it truly remarkable.

Day 2 in SF started off with a trip to revisit Brenda’s French Soul Food Kitchen – we were back for the beignets!  And they were exactly like last time: one chocolate, one apple, one plain (that k demolished later with Blue Bottle coffee), and one crawfish.  And just like last time, it continues to completely ruin any other non-filled beignet ever, including those in NOLA.

the shrimp-n-grits was similarly fabulous.  Now grit-for-cheesy-grit, kp’s are superior, however, that bacon-tomato jam is crazy-addictive and should be sold in jars so I could put it on anything and everything.

After a day of shopping and parking (that’s a gerund for a new verb “to park”, which means “to relax in a park”), we went to a place called Ice Cream Bar – a cute little shop with frequent visits by cute little kids eating cute gigantic ice cream cones.  g and k got things like soup and sandwich or  something boring like that.  But not me – oh no – what you see above is a pb&j&b, where the second “b” is “bacon” (the waitress was totally unphased by my inquiry to add bacon to the sandwich).

That night, we went to Tsunami Sushi, which had some of the best fish we’ve had in a while.  While chirashi typically includes boring cuts of fish, Tsunami did it right with quite a variety, as you can see above.  I think my only criticism was that the rice (actually, the sushi rice used in all the sushi there, not just the chirashi) was a little mushier than I come to expect from a Japanese eatery.  But that’s ok – becuase after sipping on the Taketsuru 12-year, I didn’t care anymore – it was just as fabulous as it was in NOLA at Cochon (which reminds me: I have got to get me some of that!  Either that or splurge on the 17-year).  What are the drawbacks of the place?  Maybe the music is too loud for this aged 31-year-old’s ears.

Our last day in SF started at “The Mill”.  I have to confess that g and I are not cool enough to eat here (ok, g is, but I’m not).  Their main dish is “toast”.  No really – it’s “toast”.  And it’s toast that takes 10 minutes to prepare.  Like if you had someone brew a cup of coffee (like hipster-style, poor-through-a-chemex) versus someone making a slice of toast (e.g. above is “country” toast, with honey, salt, peanut butter, and apple butter), the toast would take longer to construct.  And yea – it’s some darned good toast – but come on people – it’s toast!

After a day of some full-contact, no-holds-barred shopping (g and I tore it up in the Mission and on Hayes Street), we went for some lunch.  After failing to get Mission Chinese (closed on Wed) and Ken Ken Ramen (for some reason not offering lunch), we went for the safe lunch at Absinthe on Hayes Street.  Great “pasta of the day” and a refreshing salad.  And, even better was that wine shop next door … which was the only source of Massican Sauvignon Blanc in the entire US (seriously – why the hell is it so hard to find?).

Now, I want to say that dinner at Bar Tartine, like the rest of our dinners, was also crazy-good.  But, I have no pictures!  We relied on kp for pictures and the flash makes them look a bit weird, so I’m not going to include them here.  Let’s just say that the menu looks boring-as-all-hell, with what seems to be an assortment of bread-related spreads, an assortment of pickles, and then a lot-lot-lot of vegetables.  Well let me tell you that despite the snooze-ville of a menu, these dishes were crazy.  Like the above was the “blue cheese and beet salad”: it was 95% blue cheese, 4% beet (two kinds!), and three leaves of lettuce – and it was off the hook.  Other highlights included a smoked salmon with cucumber and serrano chile jam that blew all of our minds, another dish that looked like ice cream in chocolate sauce but was actually smoked potatoes in barbecue sauce, and a green chile seafood stew that tugged at your heartstrings like an old-fashioned ciopino but had such a fresh zing to knock you on your ass.  Amaze-balls.

yea, we had some chocolate “salami” (almonds and cherries were the specks) and a currant-apple gelee (best petite four ever!), but really, by then we were so impressed with the rest of the food that we tuned out the sweets.  There was, however, a more savory dessert course with carob (n.b. no matter what the server said, it does not taste anything like chocolate), goat cheese, walnuts, and 18 other components, that when put together, hit the sweet, salty and savory much like that gruyere “s’more” at DiBruno brothers.  Bravo.  Did not see that oen coming.

this was our “find” of the trip – a bottle of 2012 Annia signed by the man Dan Petroski himself.  g did her “booyah” dance four times as we were exiting the store, as we were charged not a dime on top of the standard price (we have a crush on Dan Petroski … bigtime).