Food, fun, and music

It seems like recently I have weeks where nothing happens, and then weeks where I have three nights in a row of plans (which, for me, is a lot).

Tuesday night a couple friends, my bf, and I met for a belated birthday dinner for my bf. We decided to go to One Market, right by the Ferry Building, for their Dine About Town. The restaurant is quite big and airy, and has a nice feel to it with big windows that overlook the ferry building, and big tables with long benches in the booths. Yelp claims it's "dressy" but we didn't feel out of place in our jeans. Three of us went for the DAT menu, with two of us getting the exact same thing - spring vegetable mix salad, braised Berkshire pork spareribs, and fresh strawberry/grand marnier trifle. The third one got the black bean soup, skatewing, and the trifle. My bf decided to do something different and got the duck breast off the regular menu, and, I think, the Valrhona Organic Chocolate Tart for dessert. My bf loved his food - the duck breast was excellent - good texture, great taste - and came with a vanilla sweet potato puree he loved. My friend and I both liked the spring vegetable salad, which consisted of asparagus, carrots, peas, beans, and other spring vegetables, I believe steamed, and in a balsamic vinaigrette. The pork spareribs were good, though in my opinion nothing exceptional. The dessert was excellent - layers of strawberries, grand marnier-infused cream, and a kind of spongy cake, that was all very tasty. The black bean soup my friend got was poured into a bowl with calamari, lime, and cilantro in the middle - it looked really thick, like a black been puree. He said he liked the spring vegetable salad better, but I'm not sure if that meant he disliked the soup. The skatewing was evidently good as well. My bf says he'd definitely go back.

Wednesday night, we met another group of friends for dinner at Foreign Cinema at 21st and Mission, again for Dine About Town. And again, my bf didn't get the DAT option. I did, getting the Marin mixed lettuce salad (yummy and fresh but nothing special), the salmon (buttery and lemony, and quite good), and the lemon creme brulee (which I traded for my bf's apricot crisp, which was disappointing but largely b/c I don't think I like apricots). My bf got the lamb (I think), which he said was fine. Several of our friends got the fried paprika chicken (at least one of them not realizing it was fried chicken) which I hear was very tasty (though $18 fried chicken had better be good!). We sat indoors, rather than outdoors, so we didn't get to see the cinema part of the foreign cinema. The restaurant was charming enough (we sat at a large wood table rather than a white tablecloth-covered table like smaller tables) and the food was pretty good.

Thursday night, we went to see Hairspray at the Orpheum Theater. My bf and I first stopped at Bossa Nova, a Brazilian restaurant at 8th St and Minna, only a block and a half from the theater. It's a cute place that I almost walked by, b/c they don't have any signs that stick out and it's not large. It's got a nice airy feel to it, though, with windows bringing in the sunshine and the door open to let in the breeze (it was a nice day). I think the Bossa Nova is more about the drinks than the food - extensive drink menu, smaller dinner menu - but the food was quite good. My bf got the flat iron steak "grande" plate which was very yummy with a great texture to the meat. It came with potato wedges that were quite flavorful and crispy, which was nice. He also ordered a side of fried plantain chips, but expected something different than plantains fried like potato chips (we've had too many fried plantains in Costa Rica that were not fried into dryness). I got the small plate of the ribeye on two skewers with 3 sauces (mango, green tomato, and bell pepper - I liked the mango the best). The flavor was good, and some of the pieces were nice and tender and yummy, but others were extremely chewy and hard to eat. The flatiron steak was definitely better. I also got a side of chicken croquettes which were in the shape of Hershey kisses (but larger), and had fried exteriors I couldn't stab my fork through, but were quite yummy to pick up, dip, and eat. Overall, we liked the meal and thought the food was well done.

Seeing Hairspray was a great deal of fun. I didn't know much at all about the musical going in - I knew it was John Waters, and had some iteration of movies to musicals to movies to musicals in its history, and had a man dressed up as the mother, and a "plus-sized" girl as the lead who wanted to dance, but I didn't know anything beyond that. Not the music, not most of the plot, nothing. The show was excellent! It's been a long time since I saw a musical in the old tradition of song and dance - usually these days it's heavy plotting, lots of dialogue, or maybe sung-through but without the dance (like Les Miz). I was blown away by the cast - they must be exhausted night after night! It's not a large cast and they're on stage practically every song, energetically dancing and jumping and twirling and singing. The music was great, the comedy was fun (with cute little character moments and nuances that enhanced the comedy), the performances were excellent (especially the girl playing Penny, Tracy's best friend, Sharon Malane - who was comedically perfect, always bringing something to the scene even when she was in the background), and the dancing was incredibly energetic and always on. I enjoyed a lot of the singing - Taylor Frey, who played Link the love interest, looked like a very young Ben Affleck but with much better moves and a lovely singing voice, the woman playing Motormouth Maybelle (whose name I didn't look up) had a commanding presence in her rallying song, and I thought in general the vocal performances were very smooth. My one issue was that Tracy is supposed to be an excellent dancer but she didn't impress all that much, particularly in front of that highly energetic cast (especially Link/Taylor, who seemed to put twice as much energy into every dance move), but she led the cast nicely and the rest of her performance was good. The show was a lot of fun and I'm very glad I went. Little piece of advice for people who may go in the future though - 3rd row center orchestra are great seats, except they're almost *too* close - you can see the makeup, and the forehead mikes, and stuff a little too closely, and it's harder to keep an eye on the dance as a whole as opposed to the individual dancers who may actually be looking directly at you while they perform. But how can I complain about getting such good seats? That was a fun night at a theater, and I highly recommend it to anyone.

Oh before I forget, I finally got to Frjtz's in Hayes Valley after it reopened. I've been wanting to go there for a while since I think I like Belgian food, even though they basically just have Belgian fries. Reading the Yelp reviews, people kept talking about getting hairs in their fries, which didn't make any sense to me but sure enough... We'd been eating fries for a while and then I stopped to take a closer look at one, and discovered these curly black hairs fried into the side of the fries. Gross..and strange. Every other fry I picked up after that had the same. I'm not convinced it's human hair, because how could anyone shed *that* much hair into the fryer, but I don't know what it is. Maybe the fries aren't peeled all the way and it's the bits of roots that start growing out of older potatoes, shriveled up in the frying oil?? Who knows. It did put my appetite off for the fries though. Which is fine, I keep ordering fries thinking I want them and I keep not wanting to finish them - the Frjtz fries were nothing special. We got two dipping sauces - ponzu ketchup and the smokey honey-mustard. The ponzu taste was way too strong in the former, and it wasn't a very good ponzu, while the mustard part of the smokey honey-mustard was too strong for this honey mustard-loving, regular mustard-hating girl. Disappointing. My food was better - I got the Velasquez sandwich, which was basically an open face sandwich on a thick slice of foccacia with lots of prosciutto (almost too much in places), mozzarella, roasted pineapple (so yummy) and roasted pepper mayo. Quite enjoyed that. My bf got a savory crepe, I forget which one, and seemed to like it. I really want to try the dessert crepes though - there's a roasted pineapple one, a caramelized apple one, and a roasted pear one, all of which look really really good. We were too full that day..maybe sometime in the future I'll come back for crepes but *not* fries.