Chinatown San Fran style

I can't believe I almost forgot about this. After our morning brunch and ice cream at Henry Slocomb's, we took a walk in Golden Gate park. We saw buffalo! We decided that all that moving around and animal watching and whatnot warranted yet another meal, and meandered on over to the Richmond. There we went to this amazing Chinese/Taiwanese restaurant where this lazy susan original footage was shot.

Last Days of Frisco

I was obsessed with the farmers' markets in San Francisco. Especially the Ferry Building one because they always had squash blossoms and this AMAZING quark cheese that tasted like cheesecake, but was apparently very good for you and probiotic and stuffs.


Mmmm...squash blossoms.

For one of my last days there, I decided I wanted to eat everything that I hadn't had the chance to eat yet, or wanted just one last bite of. Greg, Alex were good sports and accompanied me throughout. I ate so much that I wasn't hungry for about three days afterwards. For me that is really quite a feat.

What we ate:

1) Porchetta Sandwich












Roli Roti's porchetta sandwiches from the Ferry Building farmers' market. It's a serious sandwich, and my favorite sandwich anywhere. They use this wonderfully crunchy and chewy sourdough bread, heap on a giant portion of freshly roasted-to-perfection sliced porchetta, lovingly layer it with crisp skin shavings, pour secret delicious sauce with the fatty fat fat juices, and make it all very healthy by topping it off with some delectably complementary green stuff (pepper cress, apparently) and sea salt. This sandwich tastes like all the goodness of the world combined in your mouth while having a dance party.

Here is Alex eating just some pork knuckle, which they also offer alone:

It's the size of his face!

There is a funny French guy who runs the whole production. When I asked him how he got the pork knuckles so damn good, he leaned over and made me promise I wouldn't tell a soul. After I promised he whispered some Frenchie-English in my ear. Unfortunately I couldn't understand a word of what he said, so I couldn't break my promise if I tried.


After the porchetta sandwiches we shuttled ourselves on over to Russian Hill for some seafood at Swan Oyster Depot, where we had some yum yum oysters and other seafoody salty squishy goodness.




Freshly smoked salmon hurrah!





Then we decided we needed to wash down the salty sea taste with some donuts. They really love donuts in California, and they're basically on every block in SF. A lot of the donuts are sold by Chinese people, which I find interesting. Anyways, the donuts were really good, but for dessert we decided to have fish tacos at Nick's Crispy Tacos, a place that Greg and Alex really like. They do some variations on the traditional fish taco with crispy shells added to the softshell.






I've loved fish tacos since I first visited California as a tween. They are definitely one of those things that are just better on the West Coast (although Josh may beg to differ since his dad has started Dorado's Tacos in Boston, which is apparently awesome)


I had my first fish tacos in SF in Sausalito. The picture doesn't do it justice, but this taco was probably the best fish taco I have ever tasted. Lightly fried and succulent fish, with fresh fresh fresh cole slaw to top.


Needless to say, after this over-the-top (even for me) day of indulgence, it was necessary to follow up with a big giant "light" brunch at Alex and Jackie's.


Alex made "Dutch Babies." Despite the twisted name, they were delicious.




With lemon quark and lots of Kerry Irish Gold butter!!!

Remember when

I lived in San Francisco? It was nice. I ate a lot a lot a lot of food. I did some fun work stuff. I was often very very cold.

I basically had three friends: Jackie, Alex, and Greg, and I hung out with them a lot. Once Matt came to visit with his brother Jeremy, and we had a big brunch with my roommates (two very cool dudes, Neil and Zach) and their friends. We had it in our backyard, where there was a very fruitful tangerine tree, fresh lavender, mint, and lots of other California goodness.


Matt, Greg and Jackie


It was all West Coast sun and fun times and whatnot.


I basically got to have fresh cut favorite flowers for almost all of the summer!!


We had these avocados. Man. oh. Man.


And these tomatoes.


But the star of the show to me was definitely these slow-cooked eggs that Alex made. He and I both prefer our scrambled eggs cooked very slowly, but he goes to a whole other level. His Eggs are almost soup-like, and they are AMAZING. Seriously, you've never had anything like it.