I'm still not exactly sure how much to reveal on this thing but I would like to share a few of the terrific places I was lucky enough to visit the other weekend in San Francisco.
As I love to eat and eat well, quite of few of my happiest memories are of meals and snacks shared with dear friends. SF is bursting at the seams with both great food and more recently great friends, so it is the perfect place to go and eat.
Here are my brand new favorites:
Mission Street Foods. Look this place up. It's located on Mission Street between 18th and 19th. It is a restaurant that takes over another restaurant. I know, none of what I just said seems to make sense but let me explain. On Thursday and Saturday nights the Mission Street Food team takes over a little Chinese restaurant (which I believe is called Lung Chen). As I understand it, there is a different menu every time, created by different chefs and sous chefs of the city. The wait staff are all volunteers (from other restaurants) and the proceeds go to charity.
I was instructed by a friend that only groups of 2 or 4 are accepted and to show up early. We did, arriving at 5:45 to get in the line outside (It opens at 6). As a result we had a fantastic and inexpensive meal. Menu wise, it was favorite dishes night and the waiter instructed us to order one of everything of the 6 (or was it 8?) savory dishes, so we did that too, ordering additional plates of our favorites - the duck fat fried rice and the steak with transcendental shell beans. It was so much fun. One of my dining companions brought a terrifically huge red zinfandel and we received little tea cups with which to drink our inky-red wine. The dishes aren't huge but they are decent sized and for San Francisco it is a really good value. Plus, the proceeds of our meal went to the food pantry! To see what the menu will be when you go, look at their handy blog: blog.missionstreetfood.com/
Trouble. Trouble is actually a teeny coffee shop located on Judah in the Sunset District near the beach. It's called Trouble but it's more like a lifesaver remedy. They have a special called the damn house($7). The damn house consists of : a cup of their fine coffee, a fat slice of buttery cinnamon toast and here's the best part, a chilled coconut with a straw and a spoon. I went the day after a dinner party that was a little bit too much fun with my friend Matthew and our achy hangovers. Afterwards, we felt worlds better; better enough to enjoy a walk on the beach. Now I find myself thinking about the damn house everyday and how nice it would be to revisit.
I also visited Four Barrel for the first time which is gorgeous but it's been there quite a while so you probably already know about it. It's a coffeeshop / roaster on 14th + Valencia. It's a wonderful place to sit and draw.
The friends I visited just moved into a beautiful new place in the Haight, so we cooked a lot in their big sunny fantasy kitchen. They made terrific fish tacos the first night, dredging talapia with flour and then battering it in beer whisked with flour, salt and pepper and deep frying it. There were several homemade salsas, a simmering pot of black beans, a beet salad and guacamole. It was all phenomenal.
Another night I rubbed salt, pepper, cayenne and chili powder into thick neiman ranch pork chops and made the Korean style slaw that Jean and I invented (cabbage, garlic,sesame oil, soy sauce, sesame seeds and green onion- I'll explain it better some other day). We cut the pork into long strips and browned it in olive oil. Then we fried up leftover corn tortillas and made Korean pork tostadas in homage to the recent Korean taco craze.
Meanwhile, I'm hungry. More on prints next time...
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