Lers Ros - Civic Center/Tenderloin, San Francisco

Dinner on our last day in San Francisco...

Sometimes people ask me why I open myself up so much on the interwebs when it often subjects you to trolls and stalkers and other kinds of bad juju. But when I had to walk away from just about everything from my old life except my parents and my children about 5 years ago, opening up on the interwebs in a number of ways often saved me from a sense of utter loneliness and disconnectedness.

pad kee mow with chicken

It was an opportunity to start fresh and often find comfort and healing in the kindness and camaraderie of strangers with whom I had no baggage and who had no expectations of me, or a need for me to be any number of things for them that took a toll on my psyche. People who accepted and understood me for the person I had partly chosen and was partly forced to become.

koong chae nam pla
(fresh raw prawns with chili, lemon grass,
a fish sauce/lime based dressing,
fresh mint and sliced raw garlic)

A small handful of those many kind strangers would become trusted friends - something I desperately needed after a long period of wondering if I could trust myself to choose friends anymore.

And one of those friends is my friend Maria, whom I met through chowhound and whom I got to know over a series of chowhound posts that diaried our daily meals and little tidbits of our daily lives. And then through a series of facebook posts that diaried even more of our meals and even bigger tidbits of our lives. And then eventually through almost daily communications of some kind or another where we shared even more of our lives, characters, and personalities, and where I often found myself feeling like a girl who had girlfriends again.

larb ped yang (duck larb)

So you can imagine how super fucking excited I was to finally get to sit down and actually share one of those daily meals with her on her turf. 

And since she knew I'd been craving some really good Thai food for the longest, Maria treated me and Dean to the best meal of our trip at Lers Ros. And we proceeded to have one of the best Thai meals I've ever had over almost five hours of great conversation and laughter and a little bit of Sauvignon Blanc for me, a little bit more of it for them. :)

koh moo yang
(grilled pork shoulder w. chili & rice powder sauce)

Each dish was beautifully seasoned and balanced and felt elevated in its preparation in a really clean, comfortable, casual, and unassuming environment that doesn't look or feel like it's aspiring to anything - which is really rare these days in a sea of restaurants that often look and act like they aspire to some kind of greatness and don't really deliver. And their menu is a wonderfully staggering selection of dishes you don't often get to see on a standard Thai resto menu.

pad kra prow moo krob -
stir fried pork belly with crispy rinds
and fried basil leaves

I can't recommend this place highly enough for really excellent Thai food, regardless of where you think you've had great Thai food before.

shinae

Lers Ros Thai
730 Larkin St.
San Francisco, CA 94109
415.931.6917
www.lersros.com

Ferry Building Marketplace - San Francisco

Lunch on our last day in San Francisco...


On our last full day in The City, we decided to head down to the Ferry Building Marketplace, which, if you've not been to San Francisco in a loooooong time, is the upscale foodie restoration of the Ferry Building that began back in the late 90s.

And it really is a nice little collection of food shops, specialty purveyors, and restaurants, albeit a little spendy, and well worth your while if you've never been, specially on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays when they have the farmers market going on outside as well. (Tuesdays and Thursdays are mini FM, Saturday the full one.)

The monsters each got $25 to spend as they liked at the marketplace, and Mads spent her first three bucks to buy Joey a bottle of this Original brand ginger ale that he discovered the other night when we went to dinner at Heaven's Dog, another $5 for gelato at Ciao Bella. Joey spent some money on white Balsamic and olive oil with which he plans to cook dinner for us when we get back home this weekend. 

Then we met up with my girlfriend Gen and her adorable baby Dio for some lunch, and since Mother Nature smiled on us today, we dined al fresco, with everyone picking and choosing what they wanted from the farmers market food stands.

And +Dean Robinson and I, while big fans of the Bay Area municipal transportation system, are really glad we opted to drive down to the Ferry Building on our last day here to minimize Grandpa related grumpiness and/or complications. :P

We were going to try to make it to the giant rock slide in Golden Gate park with the kiddos, but we're planning to meet up with some friends for dinner (our only chance to sneak away just the two of us during the entire trip), and we know better than to wipe ourselves out before then.


Full album of more goodies to be found at the Ferry Building Marketplace! :)

Now to sit back and chill on this comfy bed for a while.


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH...

Ferry Building Marketplace
One Ferry Building
San Francisco, CA 94111
www.ferrybuildingmarketplace.com

Sam's Diner - Civic Center/Tenderloin, San Francisco

Dinner on Day 3 in San Francisco...


So when we first arrived to the hotel on Monday after a longass drive with my parents arguing in the car on the very last stretch and everyone being incredibly frustrated with the Market Street NO LEFT TURN situation for what seemed like miles, we were first greeted by the incessant chattering of a front desk person who would not SHUT THE FUCK UP like a crazy tweaker person and then a bellman who would not SHUT THE FUCK UP but more like a cokehead. And I determined that afternoon that I would not listen to one fucking word either one of them was saying, least of all the bellman's restaurant recommendatioN, Sam's Diner being it.

But then last night, my mom got a hankering for fried chicken to eat with some of these pickled jalapeños she packed (to eat with her mobile ramen), and assuming that my dad was going to be going out to dinner with us, we wanted to find the closest place possible that served fried chicken. And Sam's Diner, right across the street from our hotel, was it.

And at first, we were just going to let my mom order her chicken to go to bring back to my dad whom she left in the room because she'd had enough of his bitching for the day and just get some crap at Burger King right down the corner, but there was something quirky and inviting about the place that made us decide we would rather sit down and eat there. 

I'm not sure what did it for Dean, but for me it was first the Korean Tacos special written out on the sidewalk sign and then seeing an actual Korean woman working the counter and what I think was an ensuing mild fascination that this woman was running a diner with a menu that was 99% All American Diner, but managed to incorporate a couple of little Korean inspired dishes to it. 

You may ask why I assumed that the Korean woman working the counter was the owner and not just an employee. I'll tell you why. Because she's Korean, and it's simply not part of the national character of Koreans not to be self-employed or at least absolutely abhor the notion of working for someone else. And even if they're not all that good at being self employed, they're usually even worse at being an employee. :P


Turns out I was right.



Yelp Review

And it appears her Korean tacos are a big hit with lots of people who've tried them. I can now count myself among them.

My mom's fried chicken and +Dean Robinson's French Dip were not necessarily stellar examples, but they were absolutely reliable.


But beware the incredibly slow service.


shinae

Sam's Diner
1220 Market St.
San Francisco, CA 94102
415.626.8590
www.samsdinersf.com

Wine Spectator Restaurant @ CIA Greystone - Napa, CA

Lunch on Day 3 of San Francisco/Napa

Let me first say that, with all the good restaurants in Napa, IMO you don't really want to go to The Wine Spectator @ CIA unless you have another purpose in mind like we did, which was to show Joey around the CIA in case he still wants to learn to become a chef five years from now.

There's better executed, more contemporary dining with more polished service to be had at these price points all over the area.

That said, the last time we ate there as a family was about 8 years ago when Joey was in kindergarten, and we figured it would be nice to take him back so he can see what a culinary school campus looks like.

On the menu today, verbatim from their menu:

- TODAY’S TEMPTATIONS: an assortment of small savory bites prepared by our culinary team

- CHARCUTERIE PLATE: house‐made head to tail charcuteries featuring Gleason Ranch Duroc Pork

- LOCAL GARDEN GREENS: apples in season, Sky Hill goat cheese, pistachios, leek‐whole grain mustard vinaigrette

- 5DOT RANCH MARKET STEAK: crispy smashed potatoes, mushrooms, Brusselssprouts, balsamic onions, blue cheese fondue for my dad and Joey

- BOUILLABAISSE: seafood, saffron, fennel, butter beans, olives, red pepper rouille for my mom

- BRAISED SHORT RIB w. french fries for Mads (She didn't want any of the sides that come with)

- SEARED BREAST OF SONOMA DUCK w. confit potatoes, root vegetables in season, spinach, fig‐red wine jus for me and Dean

- GARDEN VEGETABLE RISOTTO peas, mushrooms, squash, green beans, house‐made ricotta cheese for me and Dean

- CHOCOLATE LAVA CAKE and CREME BRULEE for dessert

And a shared half carafe of Bodegas Tempranillo (Paso Robles) for me and Dean. Not to worry, he drank the lion's share. :) (I might add that The Man and I both thought the wine too young and underdeveloped to enjoy in any context - very acidic, tannic, and astringent without enough sugar development to round it out - and we were disappointed that they would serve it at all.

And while I'll try not to get all pedantic on you dish by dish, I am definitely going to get uppity on you for a moment and say that there's a lot about the menu development, execution, and service at this place that really makes me wonder if that roughly 60k for 2 years of tuition and fees only at this campus wouldn't better be spent sending Joey abroad to travel and experience great food and perhaps learn how to beg effectively enough to get to wash dishes at a great restaurant somewhere and work his way up.

At this price point, from the outdated food concepts (not to mention the plating) to the not quite ready for prime time execution of said food concepts to the awkward service to the minimum 30 minute wait from appetizer to entree...

I mean, these people can't even spell prix fixe and it's a culinary school FFS.

So are you telling us not to eat there, Shinae?

For the money, YES. Yes I am.

But lucky for you, I took one for the team and warned you about it. :)


shinae


The Wine Spectator @ CIA Greystone
www.ciarestaurants.com/california-campus-restaurants/the-wine-spectator-at-greystone/menu/

Heaven's Dog - SOMA, San Francisco

Dinner on Day 2 in San Francisco.


When traveling with my dad, whom I've mentioned is not only diabetic but also falling victim to creeping dementia, we experience many moments of intersection between a real need to eat at regular intervals and an unreasonably dogged determination to eat something RIGHT NOW, but just not the thing my mom is offering him to tie him over until we figure out what to do about whatever the given meal. 

What appears to be a golden Lab
who just went for a swim,
hanging on the wall @
Heaven's Dog.
Food pics later.

And quite frankly, he can be a real PITA about it, putting my mom in not only a crap mood, but also between a rock and a hard place, especially when she knows that the rest of us just aren't that hungry because we ALL ate a late lunch, are exhausted from walking all over Chinatown, and are just generally not ready to do anything about dinner at the moment.

But that's what happened last night at about 6:30 when my dad decided he was ready to have a proper dinner. Adding to my mom's frustration is that there is a very short list of foods that my dad considers to be a proper meal, almost all of them Korean or some other kind of Asian food.

So let's just say there was a lot of shortness and snapping going on last night as I was charged with the task of finding a nearby restaurant that would be a happy compromise for all involved and that in the end, I chose this place that we spied on our Monday night apres dinner walk in a bit of a huff, and that there was a lot of pissyness to go around between me, my mom, and my dad on our short walk from the hotel to the restaurant. 

As it turns out, this place is Charles Phan's (of Slanted Door fame) foray into mostly Chinese-inspired cuisine, and everything we ordered was really well executed.

- the pork, shrimp and shiitake shumai
- steamed manila clams (very good for the most part but needed just a little bit of a citrus acid element)
- soy braised pork belly buns
- sweet sour spicy tiger prawns
- wuxi pork spare ribs
- tea marinated crispy duck
- wild mushroom noodles with what I think were shiitakes, oysters, and woodears
- sauteed pea sprouts with crispy fried shallots

It's nice to be able to take the kids every once in a while to a highly conceptualized restaurant and watch them soak up and even bask in the ambience. They both loved the food, and all the adults, even my dad, were pleased.

My only beef with the place is that between the older people and the younger people in our party, our server appeared to initially read us as people he didn't want occupying one of his tables (there was a lot of urban hipster chic going on among the clientele as you can imagine) and treated us fairly brusquely until it was apparent that we were going to spend enough money to be worth his while. Sometimes the people who work in these kinds of places forget for a moment that they're in the business of hospitality, but I do give him credit for turning it around in the end, for whatever reason.

Besides the really good food, generally minimal and sophisticated decor, interesting if somewhat conflicted ambience (Chinese food, paintings of dogs all over the walls, and American rock music in the background - not quite understanding the juxtaposition just yet), and an interesting beer, wine, and cocktail list are all reasons to give this place a go.

Heaven's Dog
1148 Mission Str. @ 7th
San Francisco, CA 94103
415.863.6008
www.heavensdog.com

Little Griddle - Civic Center/Tenderloin, San Francisco

Our lunch on Day 2 in San Francisco.


No one was particularly in the mood to eat in Chinatown today, so we headed back toward the hotel in search of something to eat and decided on this place that we've walked past a time or two in our neighborhood explorations.

Joey's Sweet & Savory, hold the 'maters.

It's funny the complicated mental calculus that goes on in your head when deciding whether to try a place you haven't researched - it's something about the name, and something about the font they use on the sign, something about the kinds of people who are already sitting down and eating there, and then of course whether or not the menu appeals to you.

And all those little factors about this place just seemed to assure me that we would at least have a decent, if not great, meal.


And it was way beyond decent, actually. The burgers here were exceptionally tasty and juicy, the beef was of really good quality, the buns perfectly soft, light, and slightly sweet and eggy, the cheese really creamy and cheesy, their house sauce really yummy, and their homemade pickles perfectly seasoned and crunchy.

Super cheesy tongue-wagging boiguh...

And Dean, Joey, our little burger connoisseur, and I all agreed that this place stacks up there with the best of the really good restaurant burgers we've had, and at an exceptionally good value.

Joey wants to make me promise to go back before we leave, but we are in San Francisco after all, and it's so many restaurants, so little time, so I told him I can make no promises.

A very strong recommendation if you're in the Civic Center/ Tenderloin area in search of a great burger (that actually comes with fries) at a really good price.


P.S. That dessert you see is an apparently brilliant use of day old doughnuts called the French D'OH!, which is cinnamon sugar dipped doughnuts, apparently griddled, then served with ripe bananas, strawberries, chocolate sauce, and really creamy real whipped cream.

P.P.S. blogger formatting can bite me. >|


shinae

Little Griddle
1400 Market St.
San Francisco, CA 94102
415.864.4292
www.littlegriddlesf.com