Oh gosh, you probably want to hear about the rest of my San Francisco trip, don't you? Well, Saturday dawned ... hopeful. It was still dry, but menacingly gray. We woke up and did what we always do when we are in San Francisco on a Saturday morning. We got our butts down to the Ferry Building for Farmer's Market.
We started off with breakfast from Rose Pistola:
Egg sandwich + potatoes.
And some Blue Bottle coffee:
Completely worth the zillion year wait to get it. There's something extremely satisfying about getting a hearty breakfast and sitting outside on a log on a cold morning to eat it. It felt like camping, without having to do the actual camping part, which is a big plus.
We ate it all:
By the time we were done, there might have been one or two drops of water falling from the sky. We decided to deny that it was happening and visit the Farmer's Market.
I purchased a strawberry and rose geranium conserve from June Taylor, and we stopped to watch Elizabeth Falkner make some dessert. I do not have any pictures of that because I was sort of off to the side, but someone does, because someone kept walking right up to the table, putting their camera directly over the food and taking pictures! I didn't catch the beginning, so I don't know if someone told people they could do that but ... people, come on. I don't know if that was a food blogger or what, but it came off incredibly rude. It was blocking other people's view from the audience, and I could tell the chef was a little thrown off too. I've never seen anything like it, but I can tell that lady she did not win any friends by doing that.
Then we stopped to do a pear taste test. I did not know there was such a thing! But these nice ladies from the University of California pulled us over and let us do this test taste. First we had to rate several pears based on how attractive they were. As soon as I had to do that, I knew where this was headed.
After we rated the pears on looks, we got to taste them all and then rate each one on it's flavor and texture. Then we tasted them all again and put them in order of how we liked them. I found, to no surprise, that the ones I had rated the ugliest were my favorite. J. and I had different ratings, but number 412 was the favorite for both of us. I don't know how you would recognize #412 from the store, unfortunately. But we got to take one home as our gift for participating.
See? Isn't the Farmer's Market fun?
After the market, we went to visit our favorite Irish barmaid at Harrington's and warmed ourselves with Irish coffee and fire before making the trek back to our hotel. By the time we left, it was officially raining.
J. went off to his football game. I ... stayed in the room. I got hungry at one point and started to venture outside for food and coffee, but it never stopped raining. I chickened out once I started to get soaked and scurried to the market across the street and made myself an indoor bed picnic of fruit, cheese and Red Bull. So ... an uneventful afternoon/evening, with nothing really worth writing about. But I got a lot of reading done!
When the boys returned from their sporting event, I greeted them happily, relieved that I hadn't had to sit through the hours of rain (I've done it before. It sucks.) and we went off to Zuni Cafe for dinner.
This is such an excellent place to go when it's rainy and cold outside. It's all cozy and warm and we were tucked away in a balcony corner, simultaneously private and yet in the middle of it all.
I had a bresaola salad with persimmons. Bresaola is a cured beef and Zuni Cafe's is house cured and comes to the table in incredibly thin slivers that are also incredibly delicious. I have to say that at this point I do not remember my main course other than that it was fish. But that's okay, because I think what's noting is what I can remember, clearly, as being delicious: the house-cured bresaola, the shoestring french fries (a mound of them), and the pot du creme dessert.
I think those are all things that are generally around in some form, while much of the menu changes daily.
The set up of this restaurant is fun too, because it twists and turns around itself so that wherever you are, you feel like you are in a much smaller place.
And that was it. The next morning we had to go bye-bye. I miss you already San Francisco! Even if you had to be all rainy when I was there.
We started off with breakfast from Rose Pistola:
Egg sandwich + potatoes.
And some Blue Bottle coffee:
Completely worth the zillion year wait to get it. There's something extremely satisfying about getting a hearty breakfast and sitting outside on a log on a cold morning to eat it. It felt like camping, without having to do the actual camping part, which is a big plus.
We ate it all:
By the time we were done, there might have been one or two drops of water falling from the sky. We decided to deny that it was happening and visit the Farmer's Market.I purchased a strawberry and rose geranium conserve from June Taylor, and we stopped to watch Elizabeth Falkner make some dessert. I do not have any pictures of that because I was sort of off to the side, but someone does, because someone kept walking right up to the table, putting their camera directly over the food and taking pictures! I didn't catch the beginning, so I don't know if someone told people they could do that but ... people, come on. I don't know if that was a food blogger or what, but it came off incredibly rude. It was blocking other people's view from the audience, and I could tell the chef was a little thrown off too. I've never seen anything like it, but I can tell that lady she did not win any friends by doing that.
Then we stopped to do a pear taste test. I did not know there was such a thing! But these nice ladies from the University of California pulled us over and let us do this test taste. First we had to rate several pears based on how attractive they were. As soon as I had to do that, I knew where this was headed.
After we rated the pears on looks, we got to taste them all and then rate each one on it's flavor and texture. Then we tasted them all again and put them in order of how we liked them. I found, to no surprise, that the ones I had rated the ugliest were my favorite. J. and I had different ratings, but number 412 was the favorite for both of us. I don't know how you would recognize #412 from the store, unfortunately. But we got to take one home as our gift for participating.
See? Isn't the Farmer's Market fun?
After the market, we went to visit our favorite Irish barmaid at Harrington's and warmed ourselves with Irish coffee and fire before making the trek back to our hotel. By the time we left, it was officially raining.
J. went off to his football game. I ... stayed in the room. I got hungry at one point and started to venture outside for food and coffee, but it never stopped raining. I chickened out once I started to get soaked and scurried to the market across the street and made myself an indoor bed picnic of fruit, cheese and Red Bull. So ... an uneventful afternoon/evening, with nothing really worth writing about. But I got a lot of reading done!
When the boys returned from their sporting event, I greeted them happily, relieved that I hadn't had to sit through the hours of rain (I've done it before. It sucks.) and we went off to Zuni Cafe for dinner.
This is such an excellent place to go when it's rainy and cold outside. It's all cozy and warm and we were tucked away in a balcony corner, simultaneously private and yet in the middle of it all.
I had a bresaola salad with persimmons. Bresaola is a cured beef and Zuni Cafe's is house cured and comes to the table in incredibly thin slivers that are also incredibly delicious. I have to say that at this point I do not remember my main course other than that it was fish. But that's okay, because I think what's noting is what I can remember, clearly, as being delicious: the house-cured bresaola, the shoestring french fries (a mound of them), and the pot du creme dessert.
I think those are all things that are generally around in some form, while much of the menu changes daily.
The set up of this restaurant is fun too, because it twists and turns around itself so that wherever you are, you feel like you are in a much smaller place.
And that was it. The next morning we had to go bye-bye. I miss you already San Francisco! Even if you had to be all rainy when I was there.
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