Farewell, San Francisco!

Tuesday, our last morning in San Fran, we found ourselves in yet another beautiful, sunny, warm day. We were itching for just one more culinary treat to satisfy our SF sampling, so we drove over to the Marina district for one lunch at Umami Burger.

Umami Burger

This preppy burger establishment is known for its use of savory flavors on its burgers, and for dressing them up a bit more than your average burger joint. They also recommend you not alter any of the burger toppings for each menu option. We split a burger and splurged a bit to split some truffled cheese skinny fries. It was a great lunch, not too much, not too little, though also not too memorable.

From there, we left San Francisco behind, stopping at the Golden Gate Bridge overlook and Marin Headlands for one last look at the city, the bay, and all of the greatness contained on that peninsula.

More Cool Spots in SanFran

One of the must-sees in San Francisco is the City Lights bookstore. Again limited by our parking meter, but this time with only 30 minutes of time. We stepped into the literary landmark independent bookstore, famous for progressive politics and beatnik-era poetry flourishing. The store felt like stepping into a sort of functional museum, with photos documenting much of the historically significant figures and events, and their relation to the bookstore. Transfixed by the thousands of book titles, which in this age of post-Borders Bankruptcy seemed like such a treat, we could’ve stayed for hours. But, our dinner date across town beckoned us. We left with only mental notes about the next books we want to read.

The dinner date which was the last on our agenda for the day was with Loren’s RISD classmate and fellow graphic designer, Jared, and his fiancee Shannon (also a RISD alum), in the super hip Mission District. Once we met up, we set off on what was to become a great night of long walks and good food. Ironically, it seems that we walk more when we’re in cities than even in National Parks.

The Mission

Dinner was near the Castro district, at a place called Starbelly, where Loren and Kristen shared a tomato soup and chicken dish - still a bit full from the ramen from the afternoon, but never able to pass up good food.

Tomato soup and grilled ham and cheese at Starbelly

Chicken at Starbelly

We even paid a visit to Hot Cookie, steps from the famous Castro Theater, for some cookie dessert. (Though, let it be known that the cookies were not, in fact, hot.)

San Francisco's Ferry Building

Our next mission was to visit the famous Ferry Building, which is an enormous indoor market filled with incredible vendors of all kinds. It is really quite impressive and we short-changed ourselves by limiting our visit to the amount of time our parking meter dictated: 1 hour.

A bit overwhelmed at first, we ordered drinks at Blue Bottle Coffee company, and then were set to see the sights.

Blue Bottle cappuccino and iced americano

The place is teeming with beautiful objects, some natural, some man-made, all photo-worthy. From Mushrooms, cheeses, charcuterie, breads, teas, coffees, ceramics, gelato, you name it, you can find it at the Ferry Building.

By the end of our parking meter hour, we'd only scratched the surface, but hurried back to avoid parking ticket number 2.

Ramen in San Francisco

Monday, Kristen did some much-needed laundry while Loren researched a bit for San Francisco’s best ramen houses. You see, we’ve recently become mildly obsessed with good ramen, the kind with homemade noodles and complex broth with flavor depth that keeps going and going... So, with a name in mind, we set out for Katana-ya Ramen, rumored to be representative of authentic ramen. We were totally stoked.

Fried chicken ramen at Katana-ya

Katana-ya is a hole-in-the-wall kind of place, with no frills. They had slightly more options on the menu than we were expecting, including different kinds of broth bases (soy, miso, salt) which we could order Light, Regular or Rich. Loren ordered the salt broth, rich, with bbq pork; Kristen ordered the miso broth, rich, with fried chicken.

While we were happy to eat the warm, cozy soup, it didn’t quite live up to our expectations. The biggest disappointment was the broth, which didn’t have the same kind of oomph we were used to. What can we say? Chef Erik’s ramen at Toki Underground in DC has set the bar high.

Brunch Village Sunday

We were all a bit slow to rise on Sunday morning, and by noon had barely gotten our names onto the Outerlands multi-page brunch wait list before they stopped accepting names. Knowing we’d have quite a wait ahead of us but not quite sure what we’d gotten ourselves into, we paid a visit to the nearby Trouble Coffee Company. (They didn’t allow Kristen to photograph the place... boo!) Not only with delicious coffee, Trouble has delicious-looking pastries, cookies, and the mother of all, texas toast.

Cinnamon Texas Toast and Coffee from Trouble Coffee Company

We sipped our gourmet blends and nibbled on buttery cinnamon toast just outside of Trouble at one of San Francisco’s Parklets, a section of parallel parking spots that have been converted into a mini-park. We love this idea: stores/cafes/bars/etc can petition for the city to purchase parking spots outside of their storefronts to turning the spaces into public mini-park. This one had beautiful natural wood benches, and was a perfect spot to enjoy our pre-brunch snack.

Mini-park in reclaimed parallel parking spot (aka Parklet)

That is, until we stepped into the General Store, which is possibly the coolest store we’d ever seen, with handmade knick knacks, letterpress cards, ceramics, terrariums, knitted goods, books, architectural magazines... it was so easy to get lost in the store, feeling inspired by all of the amazing objects on the display shelves. Kristen ached for her knitting needles, taking mental note of some of the excellent ideas on display at the store.

The General Store

Eventually snapping out of it and leaving without actually purchasing anything, which was a feat in itself, we perched just outside of the cafe for another hour or so, until we were finally called. It was sometime in the mid-afternoon by that point, and we’d probably waited about 3 hours, which was not unlike the “brunch village” skit from Portlandia. At least it was sunny and warm outside!

We sat down with reinvigorated appetites as the menus slid before us. Rather than OD on caffeine, Kristen opted for the hot ginger cider spiked with bourbon, which tasted like fall and got her feeling ready for the seasons to change already. She ordered the fried egg an open-faced sandwich with gruyere with a nice little salad as well. For Loren, eggs in jail (aka frog in a hole). Everything was yummy, and the we marveled at the decor, which included an indulgent woodsy touch and a fabulous swirly driftwood bar. It was dreamy.

Brunch table

Outerlands interior

After brunch, we continued to revel in the good weather, and drove down the street to the shore. We’re not sure how this could be possible, but it actually seemed warmer on the San Francisco beach than it did on San Diego’s beach. Maybe this SanFran beach was special: it was, after all, the site of the original Burning Man festival... so maybe the ghosts of burning man’s past keep the sands extra warm?

Is this San Francisco?

Sean and Ellen dropped us at the DeYoung museum, with about 20 minutes to spare before the museum closed (Sunday...). We were able to ride the elevator up to see the beautiful 360 degree views of the Golden Gate Park and surrounds on the upper deck – free and open to the public. Once we were kicked out, we decided to set off on what ended up being a pretty long walk through the park and out to the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.

DeYoung observation deck

While museums may have been closing prematurely on that Sunday afternoon, Haight-Ashbury was coming to life. We joined the crowds of people slowly moving past the flamboyant storefronts, adding to the traffic jams here and there to snap a few photos. When we realized we were short on time, we hopped a bus to head back toward Russian Hill, where we’d again meet with our hosts for dinner.

But first, we made a mistake and hopped off the bus a bit too early and found ourselves in the exact wrong part of the SOMA neighborhood, alongside junkies and homeless people babbling nonsense. Kristen was in full blinder mode and we walked with purpose to get the heck out of there. What can we say? San Francisco is a big city, so it’s bound to have some riffraff.

We made it home in time for the dinner party, which Chef Ellen (she’s a chef) had prepared for a group which all knows each other courtesy of the Pappas Group (Loren’s former employer). After catching up, we enjoyed a veg risotto with stone fruit salad, topped off with bread pudding and washed down with some beer and wine. We are still kicking ourselves that we didn't take any photos....

The Great City of Fog and Hills

Having driven from sunny Sonoma Valley, we were struck by two things upon our arrival into San Francisco: first, it was freezing; second, it is damned hilly! But few things could shake us of our excitement. We were, after all, in the city for which Kristen has felt a certain mangetic pull (despite never having actually visited).

Our friends Sean and Ellen have an apartment in Russian Hill, a super hilly neighborhood where parallel parking seems like such a gamble (do you over compensate for the hill and slam into the car up the hill from you, or are you too slow to accelerate and roll into the car downhill?) that the city has allowed for perpendicular parking in the hilliest sections. This perpendicular parking thing is a little strange; it seems like the car will just tumble over onto its side and then roll down the rest of the hill. Also, there’s the danger that when you open the door, everything in the car will just spill out, including you. Once we remembered how gravity works, we were fine, and we soon learned that the great hills offer great views of the city. As an added bonus, the hills also act as a buffer to keep riffraff out of the neighborhood (shopping carts packed full of personal belongings don’t fare well going uphill).

After we’d unpacked, the four of us set off on the bus to head over to the Marina, where festivities were under way in celebration of the America’s Cup, a set of world-class sailing regattas to be hosted in San Fran through 2013. Part of the celebration included a free concert by Dr. Dog, a music group with such a classic sound that they’ve been compared to The Beatles, and who Kristen and Loren have seen both at Bonnaroo and the 930 club. The music was great, and the people-watching was even better; armed with some sweet potato fries, we were set to enjoy both shows.

Free Dr Dog Concert

Our hosts, Sean and Ellen

By the end of the music, we were all a bit shivery - it had to be in the low 50s, no sun, full fog, cold breeze. (As a quick sidenote, we learned that the Fog of San Francisco has a name, Karl, and a twitter feed. Apparently, Karl can be kind of snarky and a bit flamboyant, and most city dwellers both love and hate Karl. Thought that was cute and funny.)

Foggy marina

It was time for a hot meal. After attempting but failing to get a table at not one but two different German restaurants, each separated by a ten-minute taxi ride, we decided German food was conspiring against us. So we walked to the nearby restaurant Absinthe, and enjoyed a very delicious dinner. We shared a French onion soup, stonefruit salad, and a duo of pork, and were lucky enough to sample some of our hosts’ dishes as well.

Dinner at Absinthe