SF #3: Good eats & good friends

Oh my god, the food.

The worst thing I can say about the food in San Francisco is that most coffeeshops get their pastries from the same bakery. That's it. That's my harshest criticism.

We had some Fine Dining Experiences and some totally normal moderately priced food, and it was all outstanding. Of course I demanded my Cocobang mere hours after I got in - we carted my bags to the pied a terre, I chilled out briefly, then we trundled off for Korean fried chicken. That was before I went picture crazy so you'll just have to imagine it. After that, I turned into That Food Nerd Who Takes Pictures Of Her Food.

Somehow when I went to SF in February I didn't eat crab, and the season closes at the end of June, so I definitely wanted to get some this time around. We had Vietnamese crab at Thanh Long. View this and weep:



With shrimp pâté puffs for a starter:


And molten chocolate cake for dessert:


Then Friday night we met up with G's excellent new friends. Unfortunately the guy is also named G, so I shall refer to them as a unit: G&AWS. Apparently G has shown them my blog, so, uh, hi yall! :D They are very compatible people - they also like to drink, curse, and eat really good food.

The menu was so inspirational I took a picture of it. God, I'm such a nerd. (Yes, Dad, that's $24 for a plate of fried chicken!)


In for a penny, in for a pound: here's the drinks menu. It was a wine restaurant and these were the only cocktails! I had a Bloody Maverick (yes, I ordered it because it had bacon in it) and a Cherry Bomb (A++ would drink again):


Butcher plate. We decided the green spirals were pickled fiddlehead ferns. The stringy green thing by the cauliflower was definitely a pickled ramp. The duck prosciutto was really amazing and I'm seriously going to try to make some soon.


The pressed pork was unbelievable. Porky and juicy and gooey, and the skin on top was potato-chip crisp.


Ice cream is The Thing in SF right now. We walked a block down the street to a moderately popular artisanal hand crafted heirloom locally sourced low fuel cost roof grown organic free range cruelty free fair trade equitable lovingly created made this way ice cream parlor. This is a scoop of salted caramel (!!) on a scoop of crème fraiche (not as earthshattering as I expected):


Saturday we drove around and ended up feeling a bit peckish in Sunset. I fired up Urbanspoon and there was a Thai restaurant with 93% a block from us, so we went there. It was a weird time of day and we were the only people in the restaurant, but they still served up the most awesome Thai dish I've ever had. Spicy basil duck - but deep fried. The basil was flash-fried and the duck was like duck cracklins - exploding fat and almost jerkyfied meat.




Sunday we went back out with the G&AWS for pizza. It's in North Beach, and there was an Italian festival going on, so we got excellent people-watching while we waited for our food. And waited. AND WAITED. The kitchen lost our order, so our late lunch ended up taking like 3 hours. That's ok, though - we ate calamari and drank (a lot) and talked and spilled drinks on each other. Eventually pizzas started pouring out of the kitchen for our table. By that point I'd forgotten I had a camera. After we'd gorged on pizza, the restaurant comped our desserts, so I forced myself to eat some breathtaking tiramisu and managed to squeeze in an espresso macchiato.

And Monday morning, as I was driving out of town, I found an empty spot on the street next to The Last Coffeeshop Before You Get On The 101 From Potrero. It was the last possible chance for SF to wow me. I got a handmade cinnamon orange roll to go with my latte. I don't know if I've ever had a handmade cinnamon roll that I didn't make myself. Amazing.

Yes, I gained 12 pounds in four days. I don't really care!