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A what-yard?

by Cindy Fri 11 May 2012 Comments6

One of the perks of living in California is the abundance of scenic routes; having driven from San Francisco to San Diego via Highway 1 many years back, I can personally attest to the beautiful mountains, valleys, trees, and waterfronts that go on for miles. However, seeing as I’ve been living in cities ever since, I’ve become extremely averse to driving, and thus, opportunities to leave the city seem few and far between. So when my friend visited California two weeks ago, who were we to pass up a drive up to Napa?

For those who have no clue what/where Napa is, you should watch The Parent Trap (yes, the Lindsay Lohan redux) and jog your memory.

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Anyway! We were hungry (surprise, surprise), so we first grabbed lunch at Bottega:

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polenta under glass

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butternut squash caramelle with bosc pear, pecorino, crispy sage, brown butter emulsion and amaretti – poppy seed gremolata

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This was so amazingly good that you’re going to have to suffer through a second photo. Sorry I’m not sorry.

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Am I the only one who finds it kind of hilarious that there’s a Bouchon Bakery in Napa of all places? I had always associated the place with the very shiny Columbus Circle back in New York, so to see it in the middle of Napa was a bit of a pleasant surprise!

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Chickens from the French Laundry farms — cluck cluck!

Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, I took my friend around the city, where we went to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Japantown:

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…the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market, where we got a French toast and a halibut sandwich from Rose Pistola:

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…and — of course — In-N-Out. (I still prefer Shake Shack any day, but hey — I’ll take the next best thing if I can’t have my Shackburger-minus-the-tomato.)

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Anyway! On a related aside, I will actually be heading back to New York, my favorite city in the history of ever, the concrete jungle where dreams are made of, next Wednesday. I’ve missed that place something fierce, and I’ll probably express my nostalgia with my mediums of choice being retail therapy and eating ALL OF THE THINGS. It’s like performance art! Kind of!

And yes, I will be eating Shake Shack.

Filed under California Travel

San Francisco’s calling us

by Cindy Mon 30 Apr 2012 Comments5

I still have a boatload of Amsterdam photos to post, but I thought I’d take a little detour and instead introduce you guys to my (new-ish) residence, San Francisco. I’ve lived here for 9 months now, which is scary crazy, especially when I realize that I haven’t been back to New York in nearly a year, a fact that freaks me out to the point where I feel compelled to go back in May, because dear lord, have I missed that city something fierce.

Anyway, this past month has been super in that I’ve had quite a few college friends visit me, which means I get to play Tour Guide and shamelessly do touristy things in a very non-ironic fashion. And as much as I do love jetting off to new locales, it’s nice to have a good staycation every now and then! This particular one happened about three weeks ago in early April (see, I’m getting better at this posting-things-on-time business!):

George and I woke up bright and early to brave the hour-long line outside of Mama’s on Washington Square, a cute little brunch place that gets as much notoriety for the long line as it does for the amazing food. We got there around 9am on a Saturday (an extraordinary feat, if you think about it), and we still had to stand outside for a good hour before we were seated.

Spoiler alert: the food is actually REALLY, REALLY GOOD. And yes, worth the wait.

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I had the Dungeness Crab Benedict, which is — you guessed it — eggs benedict with dungeness crab. And spinach too! And HOLY SHIT is it good in that mouth-watering, brb-I-can-go-die-happy-now calibre of good. I’m usually not a brunch person (the thought of me waking up early enough to eat brunch is a completely laughable concept), but this? This is downright porn for the taste buds.

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George got the breakfast sandwich, and I might have been tempted to steal a bite off his plate if it weren’t for the fact that I have an extremely irrational dislike of tomatoes.

The weather was so nice that day that it was practically begging us to take advantage (hurr hurr) and do something that didn’t involve being a hermit and staying indoors. Not too hard of a challenge, right? Anyway, we decided to bike across this random bridge to Sausalito and Tiburon. Apparently, this bridge is really famous and tourists dig this shit:

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Once we biked downhill to Sausalito, we treated ourselves to ice cream at Lappert’s, where I got a pistachio cone.

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Biking to Tiburon was a relatively easy ride, though we were tempted once again by the allure of ice cream (what! It was a nice day!), this time at The Grass Shack Organic Ice Cream, where I got a honey lavender scoop. By the time we caught the ferry back to SF, our energy levels were basically feeding off of two ice cream cones. No lunch — just ice cream and breakfast that we had gotten hours ago. Yep — talk about a balanced diet.

Once we were back in SF, we went to Gigi’s Sotto Mare, mostly because George wanted to try the cioppino, which is rumoured to be the best in the city. He seemed to agree:

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Unsurprisingly, we passed out before 11pm that day. Now keep the old geezer jokes to yourself. šŸ˜›

The next day was relatively low-key, as our asses hurt from all the biking. Since I live relatively close to Japantown, we walked over to the Japantown Center and grabbed lunch at Maki:

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We then took a bus to Chinatown, where we checked out a bunch of the shops and bought some egg tarts, before I went to arguably the best concert of my life: Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel fame. Let’s just say that every single expectation I had was completely blown out of the water and I have been forever ruined into thinking other concerts will be just as great as this one. Hearing your absolute favorite song of all-time (and your absolute favorite album of all-time) live? That’s mind-blowing in and of itself. Also, the fact that he performed April 8th on April 8th? Priceless.

So, yeah. The verdict stands: it was a good weekend.

Filed under food Life