Day One
A. and I got back from a weeklong trip to San Francisco a week ago. It was our first vacation alone together since before Z. was born. We had an incredible time, seeing everything we could possibly see, exploring the city (the whole city, not just the areas that tourists go) and eating the most amazing food. I thought I'd use my blog to write up a food diary of our trip. We had a lot of restaurants and bakeries that we knew beforehand that we wanted to visit, and also found a lot of places while we were there. We ate a lot (and I had to take Pepcid and Tums round the clock to keep up since I don't eat anything close to this way normally) but we did so much walking up and down those famous SF hills that it kept the weight gain down to a couple of pounds.
We flew out on Saturday morning and got there by mid-afternoon SF time (our flight was late). We took an airport shuttle van to our hotel, The Orchard Hotel, a small boutique hotel on Bush Street near Powell, at the bottom of Nob Hill/the top of Union Square. Having never been to SF before I did my best to try and figure out a good location with the help of the internet and I think this worked out well. We bought 7 day public transit passes and were within a short walk of many buses, cablecars, subways and streetcars.
So after checking into our hotel and quickly unpacking we went out and walked downhill towards Stockton and Market Streets to the 3rd floor of the Virgin Records store to Citizen Cupcake (owned by the Citizen Cake people). We had gotten up very early that morning and had eaten very little all day and at this point is was about 7pm Eastern time, so we were both hungry. We shared a Lemania (a lemon buttermilk cupcake filled with lime curd and topped with lemon zest frosting) and Carrot cupcake (traditional carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, but done very well) and iced tea. They were small, expensive (close to $4 a cupcake) but very good, especially the Lemania which had the perfect blend of filling, cake and frosting. They offer about 3 different cupcakes each day from their 10 or so cupcake menu. We were able to get back one other day later in the week to try some different cupcakes.
We had made reservations online (opentable.com) for dinner that evening and brunch the next morning before leaving home. During our stay we used the hotel's front desk laptop to make other restaurant reservations. It was very easy and I found it much nicer to be able to look up the restaurant, see what times were available, click on it and be done with it rather than calling so we did that most of the time. That evening we had reservations at Cafe Claude, a French Bistro with live music a couple of blocks from our hotel.
We arrived a bit early so the French hostess sat us at the bar and the French bartender served us drinks while we waited for our table. We were seated by the time of our reservation which was also the time that the jazz trio began playing. The restaurant is small so the trio, which was at the other end of the bar, was in the same room as us, but the music was not too loud and we were able to have a conversation together (and also with the people next to us) quite easily. Cafe Claude also has outdoor seating on the sidewalk, complete with heaters, but we preferred eating inside.
With help from the people who sat to the side of us, who gave us their recommendations of what was good, we ordered from our French waiter. We split a Maison (house) salad, which had this wonderful mustard chive vinaigrette, which gave the soft butter lettuce a nice bite. Then we split the Pate Provencal, a pork pate with red bell peppers, olives and herbes de Provence, oh yum! A. ordered the Coq Au Vin, which had the most wonderful sauce reduction, very, very good. I decided to go with the onion soup. I should preface this food writing with the fact that while I love food and eat many different kinds of foods, in the protein area I get picky. I don't like fish or seafood and don't care much for lamb or most game meats like venison (and only like some preparations of duck) and because of the endometrial cancer I usually avoid soy products (the estrogen effects). So going to certain kinds of restaurants, like this, can limit the menu choices for me since many restaurants are heavy on the fish and seafood dishes. I wasn't in the mood for beef or pork (the pate was enough meat), and didn't want to order the Coq Au Vin, so thought the soup would work out well, and it did. Also, A. is the wine drinker, so I don't remember the names of any of the wines we drank during our trip. I do know he ordered a French red wine at the bar and it was good so I finished the last third of his glass while he ordered a new glass of the same wine. For dessert A. ordered the Tarte Tartin (upside down apple tart with caramel sauce and whipped cream) and I ordered the Moelleux au Chocolat along with some very strong decaf coffee (but very good) and the French owner of the restaurant brought our desserts to us and chatted briefly with us. Andy's dessert was good, but mine was incredible. It was a "soft chocolate cake" in a dish with a tiny side pitcher of creme anglais to pour over it. The chocolate cake was heavenly, it kind of reminded me of the inside of a really good but not cooked all the way through brownie, soft, dark and luscious, not too sweet but infused with chocolate flavor. The creme anglais was a nice contrast to the chocolate. Needless to say were VERY full when we left there and were kind of glad we had to walk uphill to get back to the hotel.
I will continue the culinary tour of SF day by day as I get a chance in the coming week.
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