after dinner sneeze

What have we here?  This is their “Savory Waffle”.  It looks pretty plain.  A waffle, some cheese, some ham, some arugula – no big deal.  Wrong.  It was a huge deal.  It was incredible.  A crisp waffle with a nice salty cheese, salty meat, and bitter arugula.  But the game changer was the hit of maple syrup, which instantly upped the entire dish.  The drawback?  I could totally do this at home – and I should do this at home … if only I had a waffle iron … so I guess until then I’ll just have to go back to Cafe St. Jorge.

These two dishes were my “other” options after the Savory Waffle – fortunately, k was on the scene and ordered the fruit waffle (foreground) and cinnamon toast (background).  Both were solid dishes and tasted pretty much as good as they seem (i.e. awesome!) … but neither could stand in the way of me and finishing the aforementioned Savory Waffle (seriously – that thing was gone in 5 minutes – not even sure if I gave anyone a bite).

Now that g and I live in SF, we had to join the SF “cult”.  Prior to coming here, g and I didn’t really do a whole lot of “outdoor activities”.  k promised us, “yea, when you live in SF, you go hiking a lot”.  The concept (“hiking”) was so foreign that I had to have k properly define the practice, because that sounded like a lot of work to me.  Apparently, my notion of “hiking” was more akin to “camping” (which I’m still against), whereas hiking was more like “walks in or around nature with subtle changes in elevation and no necessary additional equipment”.  That didn’t sound too bad.  I mean, we were still reluctant at the time.  After moving here … and seeing pretty much the same perfect-for-t weather every day (70 degrees, minimal humidity, gentle breeze), we decided to give it a whirl.  But rather than show you pictures of us hiking/walking around Half Moon Bay (which would consist of the usual obligatory photos of dramatic rocky shoreline this area is so full of), here’s a picture of what we ate.  I admit it: we fell victim to “Sam’s Chowder House”, a clear tourist trap complete with t-shirts.  But we couldn’t help it – someone else told us we “had” to go … so we did.  We skipped the chowder (who the hell wants to eat chowder when you’re sitting outside in the sun, on a wonderful deck, looking at a body of water, on a beautiful day?) and went straight for the above sandwich and salad, both of which were superb.  But a special shoutout to that lobster roll, which is undoubtedly the best I’ve ever had (warning: I’ve never had a proper Maine lobster roll in Maine).  The amount of succulent, perfectly cooked lobster was incredible – I swear it was like a whole lobster was dismembered and shoved between the buttery, soft roll.  I also liked that it was minimally dressed – so you weren’t going to be able to hide bland lobster if you wanted to.  This is an easy referral for our parents for their next visit: go for a walk, eat some lobster roll, life will be good.

The following weekend, we hiked at Tiburon.  Some hilarity ensued when I managed to lose my phone at Turtle Rock (short story: I was stupid, g was heroic), but it was fortunately recovered in time for lunch at Sam’s Anchor Cafe (that’s right, another Sam’s establishment, but probably unrelated to the one at Half Moon Bay – no t-shirts).  The menu looked fine, but what really spoke to me was their bone marrow special.  As you can see, it consisted of three key ingredients.  Bone marrow.  Crab.  Arugula.  That’s bait x3.  Could not have done it any better that what your imagination has put together (assuming you like roasted bone marrow) …

… or so I thought until we had this …  good gawd.  Bread pudding.  I forget the details.  I’m sure that there was something special  about it (cinnamon roll bread pudding?  french toast bread pudding?  chocolate chip bread pudding?), but both g and I blacked out completely when this hit the table, and when we came to, the plate was empty.  Completely blank memory.  Crazy.  The only evidence that we even ate the damn thing were the used spoons in our hands and dribbles of ice cream on our face.  I guess we’re going to have to try it again – and this time I might shoot a video as proof that I actually even ate it.

Ah, yes – for our final trick, we went out to see the SF Ballet at The Grove.  We got a great spot (which took some hunting) and had a wonderful Riesling-fueled picnic … right underneath the “no alcoholic beverages” sign.  You know … because we’re badasses.  To my untrained eyes (my dancing is a terrible, terrible travesty), the dancers were quite skilled and put on a very nice outdoor show.  g, with many-a-childhood-years of dance, agreed, hinting, “maybe we should see go and see a show?”  My response: I wonder if they’d allow me to bring my own Riesling … ?  By the way, when did leather/suede vests come into fashion?