Emmy's Spaghetti Shack

For my last dinner in SF and for dinner with A and E, we wanted something different and interesting. J had told J about this spaghetti shack place that had amazing spaghetti with amazing meatballs. We were all intrigued. So we headed over to Emmy's Spaghetti Shack in Bernal Heights to try some of this illustrious spaghetti. I read that there would be a wait, but I was optimistic. First problem was trying to find a parking spot. That took awhile. When we finally got there, there weren't other people waiting. We thought we'd get to eat right away! Wrong! There was actually a huge table ahead of us, so we had to wait. We walked around a bit looking for other alternatives, then just decided to have some drinks at the bar. Eventually, we were seated.
Some complimentary bread while we looked over this simple menu. Although they do have a few other options, we were here for the spaghetti and meatballs.
A and E ordered the grilled polenta with sauteed mushrooms and mascarpone drizzled with truffle honey. Yum. I love me some polenta! J had never had polenta before. Or he didn't know if he had ever had polenta before. He officially likes polenta now!
J and I ordered the arugula, pear, and crispy speck salad with blue cheese crostini and caramelized shallots. We didn't know what crispy speck was. It's bacon! This salad was practically perfect, as long as you avoided the blue cheese. :-)
Ok, so the spaghetti! We all got the spaghetti with meatballs. You get three ginormous meatballs. The sauce is a bit on the spicy side, which surprised all of us. One would think Emmy's would want the diner to control the level of spiciness, but instead, Emmy's just makes the sauce spicy. I like spice so I didn't mind it. J would have preferred it to not be spicy, but he liked it anyway. These meatballs were quite good, but they were not the typical meatballs you would have expected in spaghetti. Normally, italian meatballs tend to be more juicy and made with egg and breadcrumbs and things like that. The thing that was unexpected about these were that when you would take a hunk off of the meatball, the whole thing would sort start falling apart. And you would see the ground meat marks in the meatball. As if it was just a plain wad of meat that was formed into a ball, instead of it having been combined with spices and breadcrumbs and egg and mixed well before being formed into a ball. It was just strange, but still tasty.

So the service... oh the service. Where do I start? Ok, so our server was nice, but he was a terrible waiter. He made two huge mistakes. First, he took our drink orders and completely forgot about it. We waited and waited and waited. And then we had to ask him about it. Then it dawned on him that he'd completely forgotten about it. Oops number one. Then next, he completely forgot to put in E's spaghetti order. So J and I had our plate, A had her plate, but E was spaghetti-less. And we were all starving so we started eating, while he had nothing to eat. And again, our waiter was totally clueless that he had forgotten about it. So then awhile later he came over, apologized, and said he would take care of E's drink. Remember, the drink that was part of all the drinks that he'd forgotten about? ~Sigh~ Eventually, E's spaghetti came out. This was after the rest of us were pretty much done our meals. We'll definitely remember this meal. Not necessarily for the food, but for the awful waiter!

Ramblas Tapas Brunch

Once again, we woke up super late. And I pretty much missed the festival goodbye brunch. But we still had to eat, so we headed out for brunch again. We thought about trying again for Boogaloos, but didn't want to trek all the way over there again, just to be disappointed. So we roamed a little bit closer and ended up at Ramblas, which is a tapas place. J had been here before for dinner and had liked it, so we thought why not? We were slightly concerned because we were the only people there. And it was about noon. We thought maybe this was a terrible idea. Luckily, after we showed up, more people started coming in. So perhaps this is a late brunch type of place.
J's Croque Senior - grilled jamon and manchego on country bread topped with two fried eggs with a spicy bechamel. It said it came with hash browns but when it showed up, it clearly came with fries. Quite misleading indeed.
So J actually mentioned this to the waiter, and he brought out some of this really cool potato hash for him. It came with an aioli that looks ok to the eye, but is secretly extremely spicy. It is apparently made with the potent ghost pepper, and damn, you can taste it! Despite the extreme spicyness, the aioli was beyond good.
I wasn't sure what I wanted so I asked the waiter for recommendations. One of his recommendations was what I picked, the Eggs Charles V - poached eggs on english muffin with some greens, jamón serrano, all piled on top of some potato hash, sitting in a pool of pimenton hollandaise. Whoa, was this recommendation on point. I love, love, loved this! Service was good. While we were apprehensive at first due to the dearth of customers in this place, we were both pleasantly surprised. Skip the lines at other over hyped spots and try the brunch here. It ain't pancakes or hash browns, but it's delicious and affordable!

Outstanding In The Field Feast - Foodbuzz Fest Dinner

The big event of the blogger fest (well, at least for me) was the dinner on saturday night. It was run by Outstanding in the Field. In their own words, "Outstanding in the Field is a mobile restaurant without walls. Our seasonal farm dinner events are organized as a celebration of place and honor the farmer and other producers of a region." Their dinners are typically held outdoors on farms, but being in SF, our event was held at a very unique location, the Greenleaf Produce Warehouse.

The table setups for their events are art installations in themselves. To accommodate all these crazy food bloggers, dozens of tables were lined up throughout the warehouse space. They used some of the warehouse's typical inhabitants as decoration.

Chef Dennis Lee of Namu designed the multi-course menu with wine pairings from Randall Grahm of Boony Doon. He was actually in the hospital this evening, so it was his team that created this fabulous dinner in a make-shift kitchen.

While we mingled, we were treated to appetizers of ahi tonnato on pain de mie with kochukaru (korean hot pepper flakes) and parsley. Despite the korean ingredients, this was decidedly not korean tasting... but still great!

They had shrimp chips laid out in baskets at every table. Seeing as how the chef was korean, this made some sense to me. But it amused me a bit, as this isn't exactly highbrow stuff. I could eat bags of these in one sitting, and well, I often do!

While still on the starter front, we got to munch on various pickled treats... broccoli, greens, kimchi, and yellow beans, amongst others. The kimchi was the only korean tasting part about these veggies. Everything was extremely... well... pickled! I love pickled anything, so I was a big fan of these veggies.

Next up was the only dish where we got our own servings. Everything else was family style. This is a mushroom dashi soup with a variety of fresh mushrooms. Now you know how I dislike mushrooms most of the time, but I tell you what, I ate all these up. This was simply delightful.

Onto the next dish! Udon noodles topped with calamari, cucumber, yellow tomato, and fancy greens in a browned butter ponzu reduction. I really thought this would taste korean-ish. And once again, nope! But this was another winning dish. I love cold noodle salads.

Next up was our only fish dish. Looks like salmon, but it was sea trout baked with dashi kombu, fried garlic, and japanese curry powder. All the flavors were quite mild. This was a deliciously simply prepared fish.

Up next was the mushroom risotto. This menu was heavy on the mushrooms! Made with fancy koshihikari rice, this was topped with crispy maitake mushrooms. Again, I enjoyed these mushrooms! As well as the creamy risotto. Let's be honest, I like pretty much anything made with rice!

You won't believe what I ate next! Brussel sprouts! These little beauties were roasted with ponzu fried garlic, guanciale, and bonito flakes. These muscles from brussels had soaked up the flavors and were beyond delicious. Shockingly enough, I'd say these were some of my favorite bites of the entire evening.

The final big dish was soy braised beef cheeks and oxtails with baby carrots and fingerling potatoes. As it was infused with OB Beer (korean) and doenjang (fermented soybean paste, korean style), I also expected this dish to taste a bit on the korean side. And again, not at all! But it was delicious nonetheless and super tender.

Dessert was a koshihikari rice pudding with cookie crumbles topped with Warren pear. It wasn't the most exciting rice pudding, but the cookie crumbles and the pear were amazing. In fact, the man who raised these pears was at the dinner. It doesn't get much cooler than that!

Kudos to Foodbuzz for letting us experience a dinner this amazing and special. It truly was a meal to remember for the rest of my life. And now that I know what the heck Outstanding In The Field is, I'll be sure to catch one of their regular farm dinners! You should too!

Craig's Place Brunch

After getting up super late on saturday and it being too late for me to make it to the tastings that I'd signed up for, we just decided to take it easy and grab some brunch. We were told to go to Boogaloos... so we trekked over there... and then came upon a list of about 20 names. So we kept on walking. After agonizing hunger set in, we ended up all the way back at Craig's. Which was so unfortunately near where we started. We should have just gone there first!
The breakfast burrito with hash browns (please excuse the particularly terrible photography in this post!). This was take 2. J h ad asked for no sour cream, and it almost seemed like they put extra sour cream in there. So they had to try and again and this time, they indeed left it out. Oh, and it was good!
I was totally hankering for pancakes so I got two pancakes, a coupla eggs, hash browns, and apple sausage. The sausage looks a little sickly, but damn, it was tasty! The pancakes were tasty as well. Basically, this was the breakfast I was really looking for. We were both quite satisfied. And we didn't have to wait one minute to be seated.

Craig's Place
598 Guerrero St
San Francisco, CA
(415) 355-9191

FoodBuzz Fest Street Food Fare

The kind people at FoodBuzz (--> I am a featured publisher!) held the inaugural FoodBuzz Food Blogger Festival in san francisco this year. That was my other reason for going out there for this trip. On the first night, they had a street food fare at the Ferry Building. Street food... Ferry Building... put them together and it's like a dream! There were tons of local vendors who let us grub on their fine grub. It was a nice variety as well, and everyone was super friendly. Even though we only ate little plates, I was beyond stuffed by the end of it. And yes, all this food was prepared on the site!
What's a trip to sf without tacos? Beef, of course!
The food above is not only completely vegan, but also completely raw. Scary sounding, I know, but surprisingly tasty. The cheesecake was good, even though there was a slightly funny this isn't real cheese taste. I still liked it!
The star of the evening... the porchetta sandwich from roli roti. What is it? Pork belly rolled into pork loin with crispy skin rotisseried the crack up, with fresh herbs, onion marmalade, and curly cress stuffed in between bread. Oh. My. Word. Yes, it is that delicious.
Delicious thin crust pizzas. Yes, the oven was there!
Freshly shucked oysters from Hog Island Oyster!
Mini meat pies! These ones were steak & gruyere. This was my second favorite of the evening!
Adorable little mini cupcakes of various flavors from Mission Minis. So cute and so tasty! You can even find these at whole foods in the sf area! Schmancy!
Freshly fried chicharrones. Ok, obviously, this wasn't an event for the health conscious.
Ok, here's one thing that was slightly healthy... vegetables! I had the beet salad which I loved. You heard it here people, I love beets! I love street food. I especially love it when it's within one confined area so I don't have to walk far between gourd stuffings.

Vietnamese In The Mission

J had been hankering for pho and we finally got a chance to have dinner in san francisco, proper. We went to Sunflower Vietnamese Restaurant the Mission, which is a unique restaurant, in that it has to entrances on two different streets. For whatever reason, we waked the extra 50 yards and went through the Valencia entrance, which was the one further away. It's your standard vietnamese place, with pho, rice plates, noodles, and stir fry dishes.
J got his pho hankering hankered. A nice big bowl. Excellent broth!
While I would have typically gone for a vermicelli bowl or a rice plate, I went buck wild and got a crepe instead. I love these things, but I order them rarely. I'm not sure why. It's a big ass crepe made of rice flour and coconut milk filled with sprouts, shrimp, and chicken. I think it's typically pork instead of chicken, but this one just happened to be chicken. Which I ended up preferring. Of the crepes that I've had in my day, this one was excellent, but the crepe itself was a bit thick and too well cooked. So it ended up being a bit too crunchy. Typically the are crunchy, but they're really thin, which this one wasn't, so the cruchiness doesn't become an issue. But in this case, with a thick and crunchy crepe, it was just a bit different. Still good though, don't get me wrong.
The plate of fixins that come with the crepe. You can make yourself little red leaf lettuce wraps by putting in hunks of crepe and then putting on nuoc mam and hunks of pickled daikon and carrots and cucumber. Delicious! The food took surprisingly long to come out (I mean for a vietnamese restaurant), but it was well worth the wait. The service was just fine and our waiter happened to be fabulously flamboyant! People must like it here, as it was packed on a weekday and there were people waiting.

Mifune Japantown

I walked like a fiend this day (as google maps calculated, about 6 miles... that's on foot people!!!) in light misty rain and rewarded all this hard work with some japanese food. Located in the Japan Center San Francisco, Mifune Don is a tiny offspring of Mifune, a japanese restaurant (duh) specializing in udon and soba. Whilst roaming japan center, there were so many restaurants I didn't know how to choose. I simply chose Mifune on the name alone. And simply because of the Mifune of Kurosawa movies. I'm strange, I know.
It's a teeny little lunch and take out spot, or so it seems. They do have these built in burners, so you can cook your own stuff. Hot pots and what not.
I wasn't in the mood for hot soupy noodles, so I went with one of the lunch specials, which was zaru soba and curry. The curry was just plain, no real veggies hunks and certainly no meat, but it was still pure delicious japanese style curry through and through.
For those of you not familiar with zaru soba, it's a cold noodle dish. You get a pile of cold soba noodles, which are buckwheat noodles. These are topped with some shredded nori. You get a little bowl of cold broth, soba tsuyu, and you dip your noodles in and then eat away. You can also season your broth with green onions, grated daikon, and japanese mustard, if you so choose. It sounds odd but it's quite delicious. Just ask my mom. When I was a wee lass, we used to have to go for weekly doctor appointments for her. And when we did, we would always stop for some eats. And even at my young age, I would eat platefuls of zaru soba. Who knew a little kid could pack in so much noodles? Not much has changed. I still love zaru soba!

This is a no frills place with simple and tasty food. It's all cooked by one dude in the little kitchen, and you can watch him do it the whole time. It's not a secret. The service is just fine. The prices are alright too. For a place selected on its name, it wasn't a bad choice.

Katana-Ya Ramen

After snagging a deeply discounted ticket for the show at the orpheum, I walked through some choice areas of SF for a coveted bowl of ramen at Katana-Ya. I had consulted yelp and it had gotten good reviews.
It's a teeny little place with a tiny sushi bar with 4 seats and a handful of small tables. It's definitely not made for big parties. And you will wait during lunch. They have ramen and udon and soba and tons of sushi, as well as other japanese treats. The menu was actually surprisingly large. I figured it would be ramen, ramen, and more ramen.
I went with the buttered corn ramen. Why? Because I was clueless, and the chick next to me ordered it. So I figured I'd give it a go. And plus, I love corn in just about anything. I got the soy broth, and you can order the broth is a certain strength. I did not indicate, so by default, I think they give you light. This is a big bowl with a good sized helping of noodles. And the noodles were awesome. The broth however, was a bit on a bland side for me. It definitely tasted pork-y, but there wasn't much actual flavor. It was underwhelming. But the noodles definitely rocked it. And the corn was great. Like I said, you could put corn on just about anything and it would make me happy. I haven't had enough authentic japanese ramen in my life to know whether this was good or not, but I was definitely a fan of the noodles and the value. Perhaps I would need to try the miso or the salt broths to know more. But it was definitely a good and hearty bowl that filled my belly plenty. But I certainly have a feeling there are much better bowls of ramen out there.

Katana-Ya
430 Geary St.
San Francisco, CA
415.771.1280

Heart Of The City Farmers Market

After dropping off my rental car, I roamed the civic center area before watching a show at the orpheum. I kept seeing people with shopping bags of produce so I figured there was a big grocery store around. Then I came upon this farmers market. Yes, it is smack dab in the heart of the city.
A variety of green squash type things and eggplant and such. You know, veggies.Potatoes of all colors!
And fruit too, here we have persimmons. I've never seen persimmons in a farmers market before. It's hard finding these in grocery stores even!
They have normal fruit too, like berries, berries, and more berries.
A table full of grapes! And a smiley posing vendor!
Cage free eggs!
Seafood too. Although I'm not sure I'd be brave enough to pick up fish at a farmers market. Am I that trusting?
And flowers too!
Along with the farmers market, there were tons of food carts. What a lovely thing to have in the middle of a busy city!

Burmese In Burlingame

I met up with A in Burlingame after cruising around Monterey and the south bay. Burlingame is another cute little ritzy town with a strip of shops and restaurants. We decided on Mingalaba, which is burmese. I've only had burmese, years ago, and don't remember too much from it. I think I remember that it was like thai food. The menu is a strange amalgam of indian, thai, and other asian cuisines. Which makes a helluva lot of sense when you look at a map of burma. It's a rather large country, with india and the bay of bengal on its left, and thailand and china on its right. We ordered mango lassis, and we all know that's traditionally indian/pakistani.We didn't really know what to order, so we picked the House Special Noodle with chicken. It was a flat rice noodle dish with coconut chicken, lime leaves, cilantro, yellow pea’s powder, onion, and fried thin noodle on the top. It comes unmixed and then the server mixes it in front of you.
And here's the result. We both enjoyed this a lot. I'm usually not into anything with coconut milk in it (like this chicken), but I still liked this. The one thing I absolutely did not care for was the lime leaves. I found them to be absolutely disgusting. They were sliced extremely thin but still gave off an extremely strong taste. Luckily, after realizing their awfulness, I was careful to avoid them.
We had to order something else so we just threw the dice and went with the Asparagus Spicy Chicken. This was pan fried chicken breast with asparagus, fresh basil, eggplant, fresh mushroom, and green chilies in a spicy sauce. This had a straight up thai basil flavor, reminiscent of many thai dishes. So if you're into that, you'll be into this. This also was not spicy at all, so don't let the name fool you. It's just a nice chicken stir fry dish. The asparagus were of the extremely fat variety, and I'm partial to the scrawny spears.

Service was fine, if not seemingly cold and robotic. But I think that was just the server's personality, or lack thereof. One could not describe her as warm and fuzzy, but the service itself was fine. And the meal actually turned out to be quite a bargain! On this tuesday night, the place was packed! If you're a fan of thai food, then you should definitely give Mingalaba a try. Heck, I can't stop saying mingalaba!