San Francisco

San Fran was a fabulous change as Seattle got colder and wetter.  We watched the forecast daily and as Seattle temperatures kept dropping past 5 degrees Celsius  the SF weather forecast predicted warm weather, sun and blue skies.

Our primary reason for going, touristing aside, was to visit Nuwan’s school friend Sat who’s completing a semester of her MBA in town. San Francisco is known for its foodie attractions, I read somewhere that it had more restaurants per capita than any other American city.  Sat is an established foodie, which made the trip even more exciting.

Her day plans for us were around food, e.g. on your way to this amazing Mexican restaurant be sure to check-out Chinatown.

Day 1

Our first day we started with a walk to the trendy Filmore area of SF. Sat met us at our apartment and we walked up and down the hills of SF to a chain of French Patisseries called Le Boulange. Le Boulange has great pastries, tea and coffee and chai that comes in a bowl.

Filmore has a great hill that you can walk to the top of and get a great vista of the bay. It was a beautiful day for a walk and Nuwan and I headed up to the top. Nuwan took photos and I stared at the steep descent nervously. It had steps on the footpath, to help you walk down. It was that steep. Needless to say, we walked back the way we came.

From the top of Filmore

Union Square

The Bay Bridge

We took a bus to union square and walked around while we waited for lunch time.  While waiting by the water for Sat to finish class we photographed the Bay Bridge and dear Facebook mistakenly tagged it as the Golden Gate. Whoops!

We headed to the Ferry Building for lunch, a must do for any foodie. It was clam chowder but a truly unique version. Light, with clam shells you could see and served by the water.  

After a wander back through town we ended up at Peruvian Restaurant for dinner.  Here I tried my first empanada and Nuwan and Sat tried some proper ceviche. Yumm!

Day 2

We started day 2 with a trip to the famous SF painted ladies, of Full House fame. The houses are directly opposite the Alamo Park and even on this particular day is full of tourists taking photos of the famous painted ladies.

The painted ladies...from Full House!

We headed to Chinatown from there, up another almighty hill or 5. Chinatown is full of intriguing shops and bazaars. There’s food everywhere and plenty of tea-houses.  We walked around for quite a few hours, taking in the sights and heading to a restaurant that I will refer to as the MSG duck palace.

Beautiful lanterns in Chinatown

Love is apparently around the corner. Maybe the fortune cookie knows something we don't?

 It’s famous for it’s crispy skinned Peking duck that is served with plum sauce and steamed buns.  It was delicious and after enjoying it I headed to the ladies room. The ladies room door was adjacent to the kitchen and always on the prowl for a cooking secret I peered inside. There was a chef slicing frozen chicken using a ham slicer but I was more intrigued by the 20kg bag of something dumped on the floor. I peered in further and saw the following words emblazoned on the bag.

Mono-Sodium Glutamate….MSG.

No wonder the duck was so delicious!

Getting ready for MSG duck. 

All around Chinatown they advertise for tea tastings and we decided to join the tea tasting brigade. We went to Tea Ren and learned about tea pots, tea funnels and tea needles. We also walked out with some Ginseng brew for Nuwan and caffeine free white tea for moi!

Nuwan and I spent the afternoon at a vantage point for the actual Golden Gate Bridge. It was lovely and sunny and in full of little children playing soccer.  I waited and people-watched while Nuwan wondered up and down along the water with his camera.

Dinner was at Nopalitas, an amazing organic Mexican restaurant that is always packed. The highlights being the delicious fish tacos Nuwan and I had developed a taste for and the amazing bitter dark chocolate popsicle I had at the end.

Day 3

During Niki’s visit to Seattle some months ago he regaled us with tales of a fabulous mens amenities shop called Nancy Boy. Nancy Boy is full of bath products, shaving products, creams and lotions for the man who is so inclined. Nuwan and I made a special plan to go there, just to check it out. I walked out with some bath salts only to get home and discover that our bath plug has gone walk about.

Nuwan did considerably more shopping than I. 

We went to Foreign Cinema for lunch that day, apparently a SF institution. We walked through the Mission District  and would have missed the place entirely were it not for Sat. A tiny entrance, a long hallway with a huge, beautiful restaurant at the end. It was all open air and perfect for the warm sunny day. We ate oysters (well Sat and Nuwan did) and drank delicious cocktails and mocktails. Nuwan had a Persian omelette and Sat and I both had braised pork with poached eggs. Delicious! And then there’s their famous caramelized bacon….wow!

Amazing oysters at Foreign Cinema. 

My lemon tart....mmmm yum!

At Dolores Park.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walked and eventually made our way to the Tartine bakery. It reminds me of Bourke St Bakery, with it’s ridiculous line outside. The line moves quickly though and we went inside and I got a lemon tart. Nuwan had their famous tres leches cake, a coconut chiffon layered cake. We walked up to the famous Dolores park and found a spot under the tree to people watch and eat our sweet treats.  The park was beautiful and packed. Sat and Nuwan ventured to the top and claimed that the higher you go the higher you got.  Intriguing sentiment.

We went to the famous Burma Superstar for dinner. Highly rated everywhere, it’s a tiny restaurant and we spent the night in there when the SF Giants won the play-offs. Unfortunately we were all full from a day of eating and we hardly had appetite and didn’t do the Burma Superstar justice. I must comment on the amazing rainbow salad which has something like ingredients and their world famous coconut rice. Though I must say Ammi’s kiribath is better.

Though we’d woken up to sunny days and blue skies every day since arrive in SF our fourth and last day was met with fog and clouds. Quite appropriate for our venture onto Alcatraz.

Since our holidays recounts are primarily around food I can’t help but recount the story of our delayed  arrival at Alcatraz. Nuwan had all the buses planned you see, we took the first one with little drama. We arrived at the bus-stop and watched as bus after bus passed us by. You see none of the timetables were for Mondays it seemed, so we ran up and down the road, tried unsuccessfully to call a taxi and finally ended up arriving with only 20 minutes till our boat left. This meant that the only place to grab some breakfast was the Alcatraz café. Perhaps the first sign of things to come were when I asked for English breakfast tea and the “barista” asked me to just grab the “Chinese Breakfast”  Errr….no thanks.

Alcatraz was, as you would expect. Dreary, depressing and full of conspiracy.  The fog made for a fabulous atmosphere and Nuwan and I walked through with our trusty headphones. There were speakers, much like the Yeoman Warders at the tower of London who you followed around as they talked of the 4 four men who escaped Alcatraz and were never seen again. You see they still don’t know how they got out.

Alcatraz Island 

Poor Nuwan :(

We headed back on the boat and wandered along Fisherman’s Wharf. We stopped at Pier 23 for a spot of crab….just one big grab to share between Nuwan and I. We made it all the way to the Ghirardelli Square for a dessert of Ice cream with milk and dark chocolate fudge. Admittedly I think they were both dark chocolate, but what do we know? We took the trolley back up the hill.... Nuwan decided to scare his poor pregnant wife by hanging out the window. 

Hanging off the edge

Tell me that isn't scary :S

We finished up our trip with a trip to DOSA, a chain of Indian fusion restaurants famous for their…you guessed it….DOSA.  We had the paper dosa, crispy and delicious with the duck vindaloo and rice. Yum! Definitely digging the fusion thing.

What a fabulous introduction to SF… thanks SAT!