Despite the many delicious and thought provoking meals I had in San Francisco, I feel like there are many more to be had. Despite that nagging feeling that I’ve missed something good, I can ease my mind by remembering that nary a wasted bite crossed my lips. Armed with a pile of suggestions from various San Fran natives, visitors and my wonderful hosts–who happen to be lovers of the dining world as well–I set out to the south for a few good meals.
Straight off the plane we were swooped up and deposited at the front door of the Alembic, where the hostess touted to us the new menu. Service was beyond stellar, with the very same hostess keeping us just updated enough about the status of our table during the hour long wait, stretching and straining to try to make us as comfortable as possible. Once we got our feet in the door, we began exploring the cocktail list, a combination of classics prepared with prowess and new inventions which certainly provided our palates with their own excellent adventures. I waited too long to write this post and now am unable to recall the exact names of each one, but nary a bad one in the bunch, and with four people ordering multiple drinks, we sampled quite the selection. But as a lover of the edibles more than the imbibables, it was the food that truly won me over. We started with the blackboard special, a salt and pepper grass shrimp appetizer. Like little tiny chips made of shrimp, these savory crustaceans had us inhaling them like fraternity brothers with midnight pizza delivery. High on the delight of a brand-new to us delicacy, we ventured forth into the menu. I would never allow any bone marrow or steak tartare to go unordered, so those were in. We tacked on a few pork belly sliders for good measure and ricotta fritters. While the bone marrow was delicious, I’m not sure there was anything particularly spectacular about it, in fact it might have been slightly underdone. That said, it still had all the wonderful features of bone marrow, the thick, rich, stickiness of meat, combined with the creamy, melty features of butter. The bread was crunchy and the perfect palate clearing foil. The steak tartare was another traditional preparation, this one perfectly executed. Even the picky eater in the group had to admit that the textures and tastes of this dish were nothing short of stupendous. The dessert was a bit of a let down, not because it wasn’t delicious (it was) but simply because we expected more of a breaded, fried ricotta fritter, while this was really more like a doughnut made with ricotta inside. As I said, delectable none-the-less.

The next morning we awoke and were escorted to the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market. I talk a little bit about everything I bought here, so I won’t say much except that I adored the wine bar. There isn’t much better than sitting down at the high tables at 9:30 am and sharing a bottle of sparkling rose wine with friends while people watching the crowds. Life is good.
Later that afternoon, sufficiently recovered from the morning to be able to eat real food, we ventured over to Richmond to stop in for a late lunch at Burma Superstar. Unprepared, I was unsure of what sort of stuff we would be getting. We started out with a pitcher of an actually rather lovely Sangria–a Burmese spin put on it with various unexpected fruits –always nice to find an average drink to have a surprise twist. For food we started with their apparently famous Tea Leaf Salad. I’d never had a tea leaf salad before, but once I stopped attempting to discern the flavor of the fermented tea leaves, gave up and embraced the salad as a whole entity, crunchy little tidbits and all, I found it to be curiously strong–though not at all like an Altoid–more that the flavor and the crunch really resounded and made a strong statement. “I am salad, hear me roar,” is what I imagine it saying, staking out salad’s rightful place at the center of the meal. The tableside mixing service was cute, though not exactly necessary. We moved through the menu, picking and choosing from a lamb curry, rice studded with raisins, and a tofu tower that tasted much better than the terrible name would imply. The flavors of Burmese food were not as unfamiliar, in general, as I would have thought. Having extensive experience in Chinese, Thai and Indian food, meant that it was not the flavors, but the individual dishes that struck me as original. For anyone who loves those cuisines, this is definitely a good way to go, as it is sort of a greatest hits mash up of them.
Later that night we headed to our big dinner at Nopa. This was chosen for the dinner spot after I had heard good things, my host had mentioned it was high on her list to try and a former local food critic called it the place to go if you could only pick one. I was sold. The menu, I will say, though, was not one that grabbed you, drew you in and forced you to come. It was more of a simple, oh that could be good, kind of menu.
Sitting at the bar, drinking cocktails, waiting for our reservation–wait back up, drinking more amazing SF cocktails, what is up with all of the amazing cocktails here?–We watched food coming out of the kitchen and I changed my tune a little from my original “meh” at the menu. One of those! I say, we will order that–it turned out to be a lovely flatbread. We ordered an array of appetizers, but I was sold after the first taste of the amuse bouche touched my lips. Diving into the menu, first up were the little fried fish, yes, actually called that on the menu, absolute treasures, making audible crunches as you broke through the outer layer of fried tastiness and releasing all the smelt flavor, a wonderful flavor to all the fish lovers out there. We split a few appetizers as our main and each small plain dish exceeded by so much the expectations set by the menu, that it was almost like ordering via random drawing. Think you know what a baked giant white bean will taste like? Think again. You call what you ate in the past cauliflower, no siree, this, my friends is cauliflower. Again and again, they showed us new ways to look at foods that I thought I knew. Was it transcendent? A meal I’ll never forget? No, I’ve already forgotten what that terrific amuse bouche even was–but it was a restaurant that made me re-evaluate presumptions I make about my food knowledge and what I order, and I appreciated that. Along with great service and delicious wines, it turned out to be quite a lovely dinner.
The next morning we woke up refreshed and ready–Okay, that’s a lie. After Nopa we hit up a bar and then a wine bar and we all woke up struggling to move most of our body parts–but I knew what the cure was. As soon as we were all capable of dressing ourselves (it did take a few hours) we headed out to dim sum. This whole trip came about because of the idea of going to dim sum. However, I did make the mistake of listening to the wrong person for the dim sum choice and while the dim sum was passable, it was not the dim sum I came to SF for. We hit up Ton Kiang, a favorite of my travel partner. As we sat, they put out the hot sauce. A tiny dish, with two parts, one filled with hot mustard and the other with an odd salsa like green sauce. I tried flagging for the kind I wanted and got a sriracha type sauce. No others. Dim sum without appropriate hot sauce. Hangover nightmare! The food was…well, it was anyways. They had some interesting looking stuff, but nothing really ever panned out well. Softshell crab? Yes please! But it was over breaded and underseasoned and just tasted like friedness with a lack of hot sauce. Other items were better, but the dumplings were clearly made without care in the pleats–nor in any aspect of creation. Soup dumplings lacked soup and in general it just fell flat. As we left, the purpose of our trip half failed and my travel companion feeling bad for making the recommendation, I told her, “Don’t worry, we had fun, we ate well, and now I have a wonderful excuse to come back soon!” 



Posted by thegastrognome
My tamales have always had a bit of an inferiority complex, small in stature and slightly misshapen. What they lack in size they make up for with their tiny hourglass shape, stained glass jalapenos and beauty of flavor. When I first learned to make tamales I tried to make the big, traditional ones, I tried to make the creamy banana leaf wrapped ones, and yet the tamales that made me most enjoy both the process of making them (and trust me, if you’re going to make them, you want to love it) were these little squirts. A mix between the Southern U.S. style shape and the Mexican style flavors and dough, it comes together as a wonderful balance of light, fluffy dough, thick rich filling and the tiny crunch of an embedded jalapeno slice, loaning both its flavor and its bright color to enhance the tamales.
Posted by thegastrognome
Now that my situation has been rectified, I must admit that I was committing a grave mistake by failing to visit San Francisco in the last 14 years. In the coming days, I do promise to attempt a deeper delve into the food I consumed while actually on my visit, but right now I’m already floating down memory lane by eating the fabulous foods that I brought back with me. Thanks to the luxury of traveling with a small insulated tote, I was able to return from my short trip laden with the fabulous products which I did not have time to eat while there.
Posted by thegastrognome 





Pomegranate Sorbet. That’s what it is, plain and simple. Both infused with and garnished with grapefruit mint from my garden. Not grapefruit and mint, but rather a mint that has a wonderful citrus-y tang to it.

A little close up of the sake cured salmon roe, for all of you food porn voyeurs out there. I don’t normally take pictures at restaurants, but with the loads of light in the room and the beautiful food, I knew I could do it unobtrusively and have them turn out beautifully. Besides, I was way classier than the group taking flash photos of themselves or the man sticking his giant SLR in everyone’s faces and meals.
Next up was a pizzeta, topped with two different preparations of tuna with caviar. This was very tasty, though B’s was slightly less well executed than mine. The soft boiled egg in the center and the wasabi sauce underneath did serve to remind us of the little touches that a fancy dinner like this employs to make things special, but over all, we still felt a little like we were eating pizza. Pretty pizza, but still pizza. I normally love albarinos, which was the white wine we were served with this, but I had to admit it was not my favorite.
This was a rabbit pave with rabbit saddle on top and a potato smear thing and some kind of sauce? Sorry, I’m trying to do this by memory because I stupidly cleaned over the weekend, by which I mean stacked all the loose pieces of papers flying around my room, assorted menus included and haven’t dug through them yet, because that would make it no longer clean. This was B’s favorite dish, I believe, and it was good. The texture of the pave was fabulous and the hint of sweetness to the sauce went well with the slight gaminess of the rabbit. I was dismayed to find some bone pieces in my pave, which was otherwise a smooth paste texture, but upon notifying the sommelier (who was serving us) things were handled with the utmost professionalism. Really, lets be honest, everyone makes execution errors, but when things are dealt with so well, it’s hard to hold it against them especially when they apologize with a tasting of muscats (the three muscat tiers, har har har) at your cheese course and by saying “this is because of the bunny bones”. Those little bits of slight lightheartedness was what kept the ambiance from being stuffy with formality (a problem, I felt, at Rover’s).
That squab, right there in the middle? Easily my favorite bite of the night. So rare, so savory, perfect texture, amazing flavor. Going clockwise, you get to the ‘faux gras’ which was basically a squab liver mousse. I loved it. I might have loved it more if it hadn’t been called something so close to foie gras. Then I wanted foie gras (but Gastrognome, you say, you always want foie gras! And you are right). At the top are that amazing spring combo of morel mushrooms and asparagus (tips only, ooh lala!), though I didn’t think the honey smear added much.
Um, lamb detritus? Yeah, forgot to take the picture before I started eating this one. In the bowl was a lamb and mushroom gratin, which, while quite delicious seemed a little out of season for the day. That said, had this been one of the much rainier days this week, I think it would have been perfect. As was the fabulous lamb in the front, with the herb pesto on it.
While the squab may have been my favorite bite of the meal, I believe this was my favorite course. The simplicity of it, combined with the matching of the flavors meant that it was more than just the sum of its parts. The River’s Edge Full Moon goat cheese there may well also be my new favorite cheese, stinky and rich, soft but with just enough structure. The ’samosa’ on the other side was nice, lightly spice and full of potatos and vegetables. This was followed by a buttermilk panna cotta that was a tasty little intermezzo, then we moved on to dessert.
The thing on the right was a hazelnut and chocolate thing that, as I recall, was described as being like a kit kat bar.Next to it was this lovely little cake that just melted in your mouth. It was unbelievably good, not too sweet, perfectly soft, almost a custard, but with enough bite to slice. It went amazingly with the crunch of the apples underneath. Then there was another dessert plate of little bites. They also handed us chocolate as we walked out the door. I was overloaded. But while I was full, I wasn’t so full that I was in pain, as I sometimes am after a dinner this long, which was nice. The dinner had been well portioned and well paced, so I felt good.

