Spork!

One more restaurant - last night my bf and I went to Spork at 1058 Valencia (btwn 21st and 22nd). It is located in an old KFC, and they give you metal sporks to use with dessert. It's got a pretty small but fairly varied menu. I got the Alaskan Halibut which ended up being cod, which was pretty tasty, on a bed of gnocchi and shredded brussel sprouts and some sort of sauce. I liked it. My bf got the cauliflower and apple soup (tasty, very cauliflowery) and "The Other Italian Stallion", which was a pasta dish with Italian sausage that tasted fine but was not particularly inspiring. We got the "Elvis has left the building" dessert - a warm peanut butter cup with a sliced banana on the side, a scoop of vanilla gelato, all drizzled with a caramel sauce and salted peanuts. Not very big but very yummy. Overall, I liked it, my bf was less impressed. Apparently my sister loves this place...

Couple more restaurants

Trying to blog before I forget.

Tuesday, the bf wanted to do something more low key so we picked up Jay's Cheesesteaks. Jay's Cheesesteaks aren't what I'd call authentic Philly cheesesteaks - they come with mayo, mustard, pickles, lettuce, and tomatoes, none of which I expect in a Philly cheesesteak. But my pepper & onion cheesesteak minus the mustard and pickles was very tasty indeed. As long as you're not insisting on authenticity, and just want something greasy and yummy, I like this place.

Wednesday, we were going to try to do Dine About Town at Garcon but upon realizing that their pricing is just about on par with DAT pricing (ie you could get any appetizer, entree, and dessert on average for $35), we didn't feel compelled to stick with the DAT menu. The DAT menu was actually completely different than the regular menu - not one single item overlapped except the desserts, since you could pick any dessert off the regular dessert menu. I ended up getting the Atlantic Salmon in a pastry shell off of the regular menu, cooked medium rare at the waiter's suggestion, and it was delicious. Very very tasty, and the salmon was moist and nice instead of dry and almost sticky chewy like it often is. Loved the mushroom puree it was served on top of as well. I polished off my entire plate. Another of our party also got the salmon, without the mushroom, and said he enjoyed it, while my bf got the duck leg confit which he said was quite good as well. Service was fine, too, though for some reason we got two different guys both telling us what the soup of the day was and offering to answer any questions, but hey two is better than none! I'd go back. I'm liking the restaurants in the 22nd/Valencia/Guerrero area.

More food

3 more food places to blog about before I forget.

Il Borgo - 500 Fell St at Laguna. Uninspiring Italian food. My homemade fettucine in bolognese sauce was fine - chewy fresh pasta, kind of boring bolognese sauce. My bf got some sort of ravioli in tomato sauce. It was fine but nothing special. We probably won't go back.

Lolo - 3230 22nd St btwn Mission and Bartlett. Evidently it's a Turkish/Mediterranean-influenced tapas place (though it's really just appetizers and almost full size main dishes, so I'm not sure where the tapas comes in, except for them encouraging family style sharing). We quite enjoyed it - the food was interesting and good. We got the taco tropical (shrimp tacos) which were really tasty and interesting, the baked brie (which I think was actually fried) on some kind of fruity, slightly spicy, yummy sauce, and the pork chop with a kind of blue cheese butter on top that was really good.

The Little Chihuahua - 292 Divisadero btwn Page and Oak. Went here for brunch on Saturday. It's a Mexican place, with a brunch menu that had something I really wanted to try, the "Mexican French Toast". It's two pieces of flour tortilla, done french-toast style (dipped in an egg mixture and griddled), each wrapped around fried plantains and bacon, and served with maple-agave syrup. I think my bf and I could have shared one (though we both ended up finishing off our plates, so maybe not). I love fried plantains, so I quite enjoyed this, though there was a bit too much bacon for my taste after a while so I ended up pulling it out, while my bf found it odd to eat bacon inside his sweet brunch. The french toast-style tortillas were kind of like a mixture between a thin crepe and french toast. Definitely interesting to try (and I'm curious about their fried plantain and black bean burrito) but I'm not sure if I'd need to go again. Cute place, though, with good pico de gallo to go with their warm chips. My strawberry agua fresca was disappointingly watered down, but my bf seemed to enjoy his watermelon one, which was infused with bits of mint, more.

Food

I think I forgot to blog before about how I've started biking. My bf has biked to work for a year now, and is a huge advocate of biking everywhere and forgoing the bus or car. Not b/c he's super-green or anything, but b/c he doesn't have to wait for buses or deal with all the people on buses, and cars are too annoying to park in the city. He's been trying to get me to do it too, but I've been resisting b/c the last time I rode a bike, I was maybe 8, with a hand-me down bike with a banana seat, no gears, and no brakes. I tried riding his bike a couple years ago and almost slid into the bay (we were in Foster City on the trail, and yes that's an exaggeration) so I was very uncertain of the whole idea.

He finally talked me into it, though, and to make sure I stuck with it, bought me a bike for Christmas. The first weekend after getting the bike, we rode through Golden Gate Park both days of the weekend (after riding back and forth down the Panhandle for a while). The second weekend, we hit the streets and ended up biking to Sports Basement and to get ice cream in the Mission...and to get dinner all the way up at the Helmand Palace at Van Ness and Green... Totally wiped me out but made me a lot more confident of riding on the street. So, the next week (I think, I don't *think* I'm skipping a week) I found myself biking to work.

Except for one day last week where I was trying to follow my bf past two buses and a truck, the first bus started to pull out but stopped when she saw us, I shied away from the bus, and ended up getting caught in a cable car track and took a big spill on Market St, it's actually gone fairly smoothly. I ride with my bf always, which is good b/c 1) he knows where he's going and 2) he can signal while I'm not yet comfortable taking a hand off the handlebars. We've started taking Mission St to work the last couple days so I don't have to deal with dodging buses while cable car tracks loom to my left and freak me out. And I feel good that I'm getting some cardio in every day, whether I go to the gym or not.

Tonight, we were trying to find somewhere to eat dinner we could bike to. Being as how I don't bike uphill well at all, I was trying to keep it somewhere relatively unhilly to get to, which rules out most of SF =P. The Mission is flat from SOMA, though, so I found us Poc Chuc, a Mexican/Mayan place on 16th between Shotwell and S Van Ness that gets great reviews on Yelp. It was quite good! The food isn't presented in a way that seems in accordance with the prices and description in the menu - more like a plate of home-cooked food that doesn't look that elegant - but it was very tasty. By mentioning we found the place on Yelp, we got free fried plantains (yes!) which were yummy, though served with sour cream for some reason. So not necessary with the sweetness of the plantains. I got a duck dish served on a bed of Napa cabbage with tasty rice on the side, while my bf got a pork chop dish. In both cases, the dishes were just very yummy. It's funny,b/c the menu makes it sound like it's going to be another one of those midrange fancy-ish restaurants where the food looks pretty and might taste good, but it's not. I also got a really yummy huge horchata for $2, while my bf got a watermelon agua fresca he said was ok but didn't taste as fresh as the horchata. I think we'd very likely go back. Not the cheapest dinner but one of the better dinners we've had. There's some good food in the Mission.

2009!

Egads, I haven't posted in a long time. And it's 2009 already! Hm.

Well, some quick updates. Life since October, is it?

- First time ever I spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Years at home. As in, my own home, not my parents' home. I guess it makes it seem less like a holiday, but it sure beats going to work!

- Thanksgiving with the bf's parents in SF. Had the Four Seasons Thanksgiving buffet, which was fine, though I didn't eat any main courses. All appetizers and desserts for me. Also ate at Delfina in the Mission, which IMO is good but possibly overrated given how hard it is to get a reservation. The people in our party actually had trouble finding things they wanted to eat off the menu. Also ate at The House in North Beach again. I like the food there - the bf only likes the specials, evidently.

- When we weren't with the bf's parents, we stopped by the Bi-Rite Creamery at 18th and Dolores and discovered their ice cream is really really good. Very interesting flavors (my favorite is probably the Salted Caramel, though it combined with the Mexican Chocolate with salted peanuts was excellent), very interesting toppings (I love the caramelized graham crackers, though the peanut toffee was quite good if a little hard to chew after a while), and just downright yummy ice cream. Ended up having it for dinner the second time we went - and they remembered us from the night before! Gave us two stamps on our "buy 10 get 1 scoop free" card for the night before b/c they remembered us.

- We've gone out to eat a whole lot in the last 2 months, of course, but I can't remember where =P.

- Went to Jamaica the first week of January (Jan. 6-13). Had flight issues with US Air when they canceled our first flight from SF to Charlotte, rebooked the 6 people who were on one itinerary through Vegas 3 hours early, and rebooked me onto a SF->ORD->CLT->MBJ itinerary that would have gotten me in like 3 hours after originally planned. Because I didn't want to miss the pre-arranged shuttles from airport to villa, I rebooked onto a SF->ORD->CLT->MBJ itinerary that gave me a 41 minute layover in CLT. Oops. The ORD->CLT flight was supposedly leaving early and then sat on the runway for like 40 minutes and I ended up with a 20 minute layover in CLT. By booking it, I made my flight but of course my suitcase didn't. And my suitcase didn't arrive until late the next day. Luckily, my friends lent me spare shorts and short-sleeve shirt so I didn't have to wear my SF-winter jeans and long-sleeve shirt the whole time.

The trip itself was nice, though. We went for some friends' wedding - a low key affair without about 20 friends and family, total. They rented two villas at the Silver Sands resort, one of which slept 14 and was right on the ocean, the other only a door away. The villas came with house staff who cleaned and cooked for us, and would cook whatever we requested provided we provided them with ingredients. So thanks to some plotting by another friend, and a lot of leg work from my friends going to the fish market next door and going into Duncans, the nearby town, we were able to sample a whole range of Jamaican food. Jerk chicken and pork, of course, but also curried goat (which I liked a hell of a lot more than I expected given I hate lamb and gamy meats), oxtail, escovitch fish (red snapper, i think, prepared with vinegar and onions), another type of fish prepared with filets, lobster, conch fritters, corn festivals, johnnycakes, meat patties, and more that I probably have forgotten by now. They also made us desserts every night, so we had some delicious key lime pie, a lightly sweet coconut cream pie, rum cake, brownies, and chocolate cake. We even got to dine outdoors one night on tables they set up in the back yard, along with tiki torches and the beautiful full moon lighting everything up.

The villa also had a small pool off the main living area which our resident 18-month old loved splashing in, and a nearby swimming beach that stayed shallow very far out, with wonderfully warm, clear water to frolic in. We ended up not doing much of anything most of the time, sitting around the villa on our laptops, reading books, playing board games, watching movies, etc. I also spent a good bit of time becoming aforementioned 18-month-old's "enabler," the one he knew he could count on to pick him up and let him play with the light switches and electric fans endlessly. I guess I really am quite inclined to spoil children. I have to say though - he is really cute! Sigh... Anyway, on the Wednesday, we did go to Falmouth for their weekly flea market, reportedly the biggest market on the island. It was an interesting experience - not the least bit touristy at all, but instead clearly where the locals shopped for clothing, household goods, etc. There were aisles upon aisles of booths set up with all sorts of merchandise. Kind of like an open-air run-down mall. On Friday, I set up a trip to Ocho Rios and Dunn's River Falls via Silver Sands (having chosen Friday since there was no cruise ship in port that day). Ocho Rios itself was less than fascinating, especially since all we did there was walk to a Mother's Patties, have lunch, and walk back to the shuttle. The fern gully we drove through was more interesting though, having driven through the Pacific Northwest, not all that interesting. Though there were a lot of craft booths there, and I got a super-cute wooden crab with removable limbs there. Dunn's River Falls, though, was totally worth the trip. It was an activity entirely up my alley - don water shoes and start climbing up a series of falls in a river that spilled straight into the ocean. Playing in water, clambering up rocks, getting to slide down a natural waterslide or do a trust fall backwards into a deep pool of cool water... I loved every minute of it. Didn't even think the water was that cold, though others would definitely disagree. My only complaint is it was too short! 45 minutes flew by and we were at the top of the climbing area. Also a plus was that the guide we got didn't make us hold hands in a daisy chain like they typically do, so we were able to hold onto the rocks and climb at our own pace, more or less. All in all, it was a good trip. Very relaxing. And having the ocean right outside our window was beautiful. Oh, and the wedding was really nice too! =)

- For Christmas, my parents visited SF. My bf cooked Christmas dinner - delicious tenderloin roast with chimichurri sauce, green beans with walnuts in a maple/citrus glaze, baby arugula salad with roasted pears, cheese, and nuts, and a very dense, yummy chocolate cake. It was a huge hit, even with my parents who tend to prefer Asian cuisine. We opened a slew of presents (which quite overwhelmed my bf), played Lips, the new Xbox360 karaoke game, and just had a nice time together. While they were here, we also ate at R&G Lounge, which is one of the few places I'll go through the effort of eating crab b/c their salt and pepper crab is so delicious, Dragonfly, the Vietnamese restaurant my bf has declared just an overall good find b/c we've liked every dish we've tried there, it's not too crowded, and it's not too expensive, Kiji, the sushi restaurant in the Mission with quite yummy fish and rolls, and Esperpento, a tapas place in the Mission that turned out to be super-yummy. My bf said it was like a good, home-style tapas place - nothing too fancy or pretentious, just yummy comfort food, Spanish-style, which was all very tasty.

- Saw the Phantom of the Opera at the Orpheum. I used to listen to the soundtrack incessantly when I was like 8 or 10, but I'd only seen the actual stage show once, from stools behind the back row in Toronto. I'd forgotten how incredibly melodramatic that musical is. The Phantom I saw had a wonderful voice, but was a terrible overactor so it was hard to watch him (as opposed to listen to him). The Christine had a good voice and was quite pretty, but she was a little too Cosette-like in the quality of her voice at times, and I don't like Cosette. Plus, it's such a thankless role playing the head-in-the-clouds, terrified-half-the-time character of Christine. Raoul was fine, Carlotta was fine, Piangi had a weak voice but good comic form. I did like the Madame Giry, and Mssrs Andre and Firmin quite a lot though. We were sitting close enough for the chandelier to be right above our heads before it got pulled into the stage when it came down, but the effect was less than impressive, IMO. Too jerky, too obviously on ropes. Ah well. Now I know I don't need to see Phantom again - some good songs but far too melodramatic for my taste, no characters I can sympathize with, and several songs where you can't tell what the hell is going on...oh and several songs that go on too long. My childhood obsession with Les Miz has held up over time. Not so much the Phantom.

- New Years was a low key affair at a friends' house. Hot pot, good company, playing with aforementioned 18-month-old, Speed Racer, and catching the ball drop 10 seconds before it dropped. Oh and super yummy, way too rich dulce de leche cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory.

- Doctor Who Christmas Special - yay! New Doctor...er...yay? Sad to see old Doctor go. Warily giving new Doctor room for doubt...

And now I'm back at work. =)