Eating in San Francisco - Day Seven

Friday- Day Seven

This was our last full day in SF and we decided to try and do some of the things we didn't get to during the week. We started the day early and had another breakfast at the hotel breakfast buffet. We went back to our room and called Z., we hadn't spoken to her since Sunday. With the time difference we never seemed to be in the hotel room when she'd be awake. While she had a great time with her grandparents and barely missed us I think she was glad to talk to us and we sure were glad to talk to her. I told her about our previous evening's tomato meal (even tomatoes for dessert!) and got the expected eeewwww response.

So we did a typical SF tourist thing and got on a cable car and headed up to Lombard Street (the crooked street block) and then walked over to North Beach to take the bus into Chinatown. There we did some souvenir shopping for Z. We got her a Chinese paper dragon (only it was made of plastic), a small resin dragon statue (she's into dragons these days), and two Chinese kid's books (one was a coloring and sticker book and the other was a Chinese character practice book). Back on the bus to SFMOMA to get some gifts for A.'s parents and then back on the bus again to go back to the hotel and drop off our packages. We had really wanted to eat at the famed Zuni Cafe but hadn't gotten around to it yet so we called to see if we could get a lunch reservation. They didn't have anything till later in the afternoon but we were told that if we got there soon we could probably snag a table in the bar pretty easily (which served the full menu).

So we walked down Powell Street to Market Street and took the subway to the Van Ness station and walked a couple of blocks to the restaurant. We were able to get a table by the window on the Market Street side in the bar without a wait. I ordered a burger (I had read in numerous places that they had one of the best burgers in the city made with freshly ground local Niman Ranch beef) with gorgonzola cheese and heirloom tomatoes on rosemary focaccia. Oh my was it good, one of the best I've ever eaten (and I'm not sure why exactly, but I guess it was the right combination of everything). We also ordered a side of their french fries which was this HUGE plate of shoestring potatoes. I am a bit of a french fry snob and will not bother with a fry that is not excellent and while we didn't eat even half of this gigantic plate of fries, it was really hard to stop eating them, they were really good. Besides the fries A. ordered a skirt steak with purslane and cranberry beans (he liked the purslane and was intrigued to hear that it was a weed we had growing in our own yard back home). We skipped coffee and dessert because we had a special destination in mind for that.

After leaving Zuni we walked across the street to Flax Art and Design. I have gotten their catalogs for years so was excited to get to go to this big art supply store. It was wonderful, so much better than any of the art supply stores around here and we had fun browsing. I bought some watercolor pencils (the kind without the wood) that I have been wanting for a while now but hadn't made it to a store that carried them.

From there we walked down Valencia into the Mission District and made our way to 18th and Guerrero to the tiny bakery without a sign called the Tartine Bakery. If there was one place I wanted to go during our trip it was this bakery and I was not disappointed. It was busy but the line was still inside the doors. We oooed and aahhed at all the sweets in the case and decided to order a coconut cream tart to split and eat right there and also a couple of small cookies (a Scharffen Berger double chocolate cookie and a Mexican wedding cookie with walnuts) and a Frangipane croissant to take with us. Miraculously we got a table and drank our lattes and tried hard not to make too much pleasurable noise as we ate this orgasmically good coconut cream tart. It had a 4" flaky pastry shell covered in chocolate and caramel with a light cream filling (real cream, not a custard) with giant flakes of coconut and chocolate shavings on top. (Later that afternoon at the hotel we ate the cookies and croissant. The cookies were good but the croissant was up there with the tart, really, really good- flaky with this wonderful almond & brandy sweet filling.)

Definitely needing to walk this off a bit we headed over to the Mission Dolores Park and walked around before catching an electric bus that became the subway towards our hotel. We rested for a bit, figured out where we wanted to eat dinner that night, made an online reservation at the front desk, started packing as we were flying back home the next day and then rested a bit more before heading out for dinner.

We took the 30 bus to North Beach and walked to Citizen Thai and the Monkey Bar. We ate in the Citizen Thai part of the place, (the Monkey Bar featured Bangkok street food while the restaurant served a more extensive Thai menu). It was a really good meal, one of the best of the week! We started by sharing the Fried sweet corn patties (Vegetarian)- crispy corn spice with curry paste served with cucumber salad (I'm pasting the descriptions directly from the website menu). It was delicious! Then we split the Crying tiger salad- spicy lime tossed with grilled sirloin beef, crunchy cucumber, and mint which was also wonderful. Then we had this really amazing dish called Meing Kum- here's the description from the menu: "Mieng Kum is a favorite Thai snack that fun to eat. Each platter comes with a portion of chopped peanut, roasted coconut, fresh lime, ginger, onion and chili. To eat : Put a little of each ingredient on the leaf, top with sauce, fold and enjoy." We had never had this before and wow, it was one of the most interesting taste combinations we'd ever had. Really, really good! When we got back home I started checking online menus at Thai restaurants to see if any served this and found one place that has something similar (they call it Meing Gum). We haven't gotten there yet, but hope to try it soon. Then we split the Marinated duck breast with green tea noodle, which was good but probably my least favorite of all the dishes we had that evening. The final dish was this truly wonderful Pumpkin curry with chicken (it also had pieces of zucchini and pumpkin) served inside this beautifully carved green pumpkin with a side order of jasmine rice. The Pumpkin curry had this wonderful combination of smoothness from the coconut milk and heat from the curry. Since we'd had already had enough dessert for a week already that day at Tartine we skipped dessert and shared a pot of green jasmine tea instead before heading back to our hotel for our last night in San Francisco.