Why I Love San Francisco

This past July, I went to San Francisco to visit a friend, and with every moment I fell more in love with this city than I already am.  Here’s why.

Natural and Architectural Beauty:

A gorgeous Bay day

Palace of Fine Arts

Coit Tower

The Golden Gate Bridge peeking out through the fog

All my 90’s kids will recognize these from the opening credits of Full House.  The Painted Ladies in Alamo Square are the epitome of the Victorian era homes in San Francisco.

The Ferry Building is one of the must-go places for me every time I go to the city.  Inside, you can find all kind of artisan food mongers, butchers, creameries, coffee shops, and restaurants.  It’s my heaven.  Turns out, the actually ferry leaves from here as well, who’da thunk it?

To me, the Transamerica building is the building that makes the San Francisco skyline. Well, that and the bridges.

Go ‘Murica!

The Food:

The food scene in San Francisco is so wonderful.  As I’m sure you’ve picked up by now, bad food is a deal breaker for me.  Luckily, San Francisco and I can continue our love affair, because this is the food mecca of the US. The plethora of fresh produce and locally made goods makes each trip to the farmers market or a restaurant a special treat, and actually makes you excited to eat healthy. Imagine that.  Like this proscuitto with almonds and piquillo peppers from Bar Jules in Hayes Valley. Okay, so maybe proscuitto isn’t healthy, but I’m willing to look the other way on this one.

Or their fantastic chocolate cake.  I couldn’t wait to taste the fresh whipped cream before taking the picture.

My fave in the city

farm:table is one of my favorite places to go in the city.  Their menu is different everyday depending on what’s fresh, and then tweeted to their loyal foodie followers.  Seating is limited in their tiny space, but if you’re lucky you can catch a table outside and enjoy a rare sunny day, an egg and bacon sandwich on a housemade bisquit, and a latte with a friend.

The perfect remedy for a hangover is this s’mores rootbeer float from Cole Valley’s The Ice Cream Bar Soda Fountain. Trust me on this one.

And the fruits and veg.  The variety here is amazing, and I will eat heirloom anything. 

Tomato love.

The Quirks:

All the things that make me smile.

Playing tourist with the lower Haight bunny

A ceiling made entirely out of wine corks. Genius!

Reppin’ my Indian brethren

Just like me.

Walking up these stairs was terrible, but beautiful at the same time.

Hey, book people, make sure if you’re ever in the city you visit City Lights.  It’s pretty great.

And the most important thing in San Francisco that makes me smile.  My amiga that I met in Spain, Casey.  She willingly brought my into her home, tour guided me around the city, and made sure that my body was always drunk or full of food.  What a good friend!

Early morning mimosas to kick off a day that almost killed me!

Oh yeah, did I mention we went to the Pride Festival the weekend after DOMA was declared unconstitutional? I LOVE SF!!

London Food Adventure

The last few days of my trip were spent wandering around London and enjoying London’s excellent food scene.

My favorite of the markets (of any market, anywhere really) was the Real Food Market at the Southbank Centre.  Near the London Eye, the Southbank Centre is a complex of art venues, and is really a great place to visit. It has a really awesome community garden.

The Real Food Market is held Friday-Sunday, and has everything from fresh produce, honey, curry cooking in giant pots, to locally brewed craft beer.  I feasted on the best roasted hog sandwich and a local lager.

This sandwich will haunt my dreams forever, because I doubt I’ll have to opportunity to slow roast a whole hog, and if I do, I know it won’t be this amazing.

The other amazing market I went to was Borough Market, one of the oldest markets in London.  Borough Market sold more gourmet type products, both local and global, as well as produce.  For a food lover like me, these markets both felt like little slices of heaven.

We also visited Chin-Chin Labs, a nitrogen ice cream place, which was absolutely phenomenal.  I had the peanut butter popcorn icecream with white chocolate covered potato chips and caramel pretzels as a topping.  It was too good to share, so us fatties each got our own.

 

And the irony is, after eating all of this amazing food, this is what I miss most from the UK that I can’t get in the US.

Haribo, it’s time to get your s**t together and bring Tangfastics to me. Because ‘Kids and Grown Ups love it so’… and I’m not sure which one I am just yet 🙂

 

 

 

 

La Sagra del Vino

Now that I’ve started talking about it, I can’t stop.  La Sagra del Vino (translates to The Feast of Wine–my kind of place) is my favorite restaurant in Rome, for sentimental reasons, the ambience, and the food. Let’s start with the sentimental reasons- and I may have told this story before, but bare with me here.  During my time studying abroad in Rome the first time (2008), we were brought here three times a week, something that was included in our program.  Then when I came back to study the second time (2010), my friend Kellie and celebrated my 23 birthday here.  Katie and I coming back to enjoy an evening together brought back so many memories and so many good feelings.

The meals at this restaurant are top notch; Italian comfort food at its finest.  As a starter you are brought delicious sun-dried tomatoes and olives (my least favorite food, but I get it, some people like them) with fluffy fresh bread.  Then moving on to the best bean soup in the world; I would literally give up a limb to have the recipe. There are many choices for your pasta dish, but I always go with the carbonara, which is incredibly rich with it’s thick pancetta, fresh eggs, and rich cheese.  Other options include cacio y pepe and oxtail, among others.  Meat dishes include oxtail, which is braised in a spicy tomato sauce and is fantastic, world famous meat loaf (no ketchup needed), liver, and occaisonally some delicious osso bucco. For dessert, there is only one opti0n- biscotti dipped in vin santo, a sweet white wine.

Carbonara

Eat Me!

There is nothing special about the appearance of this restaurant, but it is so quintessentially Italian that it makes up for it (plus the food is so good, so who cares what it looks like?).  The tables around you are filled with chatting and laughing friends, and you are treated as a friend of the owners rather than as a customer. The son of the restaurant, Valentino, is the liveliest of the bunch.  He remembered our group of study abroad kids, so he may or may not have given us a special customer price.  When we tried to leave a tip to make up for it he said, “Never tip a friend, this is home.”  I left the place in tears, because I truly felt at home.  This was my last night in Rome and I still have no idea when I’ll be back, but it was a pretty excellent last night.

To reach La Sagra del Vino, take the A Line on the Metro and exit Cipro.  Go straight up Via Cipro, left on Vaile delle Medaglie d’Oro, which turns into Via Marziale.  The restaurant is on your left at Via Marziale, 5, 00136 Roma, Italy.  Be polite and call for a reservation- +39 06 3973 7015.

Hungarian Paprikash Chicken

While in Budapest, Katie and I took an Hungarian cooking course at our hostel, where we learned to make Hungarian paprikash chicken, or chicken cooked in delicious paprika. We both agree, this is some of the best food we’ve ever had… but it could have been because it took so long to make. Imagine 5 people trying to cook plus one instructor… way too many cooks in the kitchen. Add a wine tasting, and it was pure chaos. We made this recipe for like 8 people, but I’ll give the recipe for a reasonable amount of people.

Before the class, they took us to the Central Market, easily one of my favorite places in all of Budapest, to pick out the fresh ingredients.

Easily the best kisser ever.

Katie grinding walnuts for a dessert that everyone was too drunk to eat. Whoops.

Our Swedish roommate, the lucky guy who got to hack that chicken up.

Hungarian Paprikash Chicken

Ingredients:
1 lb chicken (I recommend thighs), cut into pieces
3 tablespoons vegetable or olive oil
1 chopped onion
2-3 tbsp paprika (powder)
2 peppers, anaheim, red, or green would work.
2 cups chicken broth or water
1 cup sour cream
Directions:
Add oil to a dutch oven or large stock pot and heat over medium high heat. Add chicken and brown on both sides, then remove from the pan and set to the side. Add the onions and saute until tender. Return the chicken to the pot, and then add the paprika and peppers. Then add the broth or water until the chicken is just covered (you may have some left over, depends on your chicken peices). Bring to a boil, and then lower the heat and allow to simmer for 35-45 minutes until the chicken is cooked all the way through and the sauce has reduced. Upon serving, stir in some sour cream to bring down the spiciness, and enjoy over a plate of homemade noodles.

Tour de Berlin: The Food

Hello friends! Sorry I haven’t written in so long, it’s been a crazy, fun-filled couple in weeks.  Hopefully I’ll get caught up soon, but just be happy with what you get 🙂 For those of you who have emailed to see if I’m still alive- the answer is yes, but just barely!

Katie and I spent four very crazy and funfilled days in Berlin. Thanks to my friends Daniela and Megan, I was able to do, see, and eat everything a real Berliner should. So lucky for you, my dear friends, you get to live vicariously through me!

Daniela is amazing, and emailed me a google mapped out bike tour of Berlin, so Katie and I took two days to do almost everything on her list.  Some things I took pictures of, some things I didn’t, but I’ll go over the highlights. Maybe if you’re really nice to me, I’ll let you in on the secret map.  Anyway, Katie biked our asses off all over Berlin, and then we ate them right back on.

First for the food portion of this adventure. I swear we didn’t eat all of this in one day (the change in clothes and hairstyles is the proof).

Fassbender & Rausch:  Probably the greatest chocolatiers EVER.  They had the most amazing truffles, chocolates, and ganache-filled goodness.  They had a giant airplane made of chocolate.  It was plain great.  Try the passionfruit ganache, it’s out of this world.

Knofi: Turkish food- need I say more? You pay by the weight of your plate, giving you an incentive to save money and be skinnier.  I didn’t take that incentive.  The bean salad is worth the trip alone.

Oh, you know I love Turkish tea

Hamy:  Delicious, cheap, Vietnamese food.  The lunch specials are 4.90 euro.  I had the pho lunch special and a crazy delicious mango smoothie.  Note: this will cure any hangover.

My pho

Katie’s chicken curry

Me with my mango smoothie. SO good, why isn’t coconut milk in everything?

Kauf Dich Glücklich: Waffles.  Need I say more? Just do it.

Too. Freaking. Good.

Mustafa’s Gemuse Kebab:  Didn’t take any pictures because we were super exhausted (and full), but it was solidly the best kebab I’ve ever had.

Also of note was the Turkish market in Kreuzberg, on Maybachufer Strasse.  It’s only on Tuesday’s and Friday’s, and we were lucky enough to catch it.  We bought copious amounts of bread, spreads, bean salad, and turkish delights and ate them for dinner.  It’s not quite like being in Istanbul, but it’s about as close as you can get while staying in Berlin.

The Dogs

On my last night in Edinburgh, I followed a recommendation from my friend Joanna and went to The Dogs, a really awesome restaurant in the new town of Edinburgh.  I will go on record and say that this meal has made the top 5 best restaurant meals of my life.  That’s not an easy list to make.  The Dogs has a seasonal menu, but their sample menu boasts some amazing main dishes, such as ‘braised beef shin and cheek, with root vegetables and lemon zest’ and ‘braised lamb shank, horseradish and spelt stew, with fresh mint oil’.  But as soon as we saw the menu, we knew exactly what we wanted. Pork belly, sage and onion stuffing, with butterbean stew. PORK BELLY.  Only the most amazing cut of meat of all time. And that stew was truly delicious.

Pork belly for two, probably the most romantic meal ever.

So happy about that massive chunk of pork belly amazingness.

Seriously, if you’re in Edinburgh, please eat here. And then call me so we can talk about it. So good.

 

The Roman Baths and the Pump Room

Ancient Romans + Thermal Baths= Awesome.

My favorite emperor, Hadrian

The Roman Baths are the main tourist attraction for Bath, and the museum is really well done…and I’ve seen a lot of Ancient Rome museums/monuments/ruins over the years.  It’s a little expensive, but worth seeing.  Plus, you get a glass of the thermal waters which everyone says tastes bad and sulphuric, but I couldn’t taste it… I’m not sure what that says about me and my tastebuds.

After the baths I had brunch at the Pump Room next door.  Brunch, or a tea service, is worth it at the Pump Room if only for how lovely the room is, plus the live music.  The first half was the 3 peice seen below, the second half was a pianist.

These were good, but none are as good as Nana’s eggs benedict.

Demuth’s Vegetarian Restaurant

When my good friend, Mercy, recommended Demuth’s Vegetarian Restaurant to me, I knew I was in for a treat.  Mercy is the epitome of class and taste, so dining here was a no-brainer for me.

Mike’s Beetroots, cooked several ways, with smoked cheese soufflé, market greens, seeds, parsley root and a citrus peel puree

Date and pistachio wrapped in filo, fried and tossed in cinnamon sugar served with mandarin syrup and candied kumquats

Eat here.  I don’t care if you love meat.  Of course, meat is delicious.  But just eat here, I promise you wont regret it.

The Kilted Chef

The other night, while in Bath, I treated myself to a nice dinner.  Shocker.

Anyway, I stumbled upon this nice little restaurant, The Kilted Chef, and enjoyed their pre-theatre 3 course menu.

Sweet Potato Soup

Goat Cheese and Red Wine Risotto with Fried Asparagus…

…with basil oil!

Lemon Tart with Ginger Gelato

I was accidentally vegetarian, and it was really lovely.  The soup was spectacular, and I really love the idea of a red wine and goat cheese risotto.  It’s something I will probably play with an add to once I get to have a kitchen.

The food was good and the staff was absolutely lovely.  We spent about a half hour after my meal talking about my upcoming travel plans, as well as their previous experiences.  I would recommend this if you ever find yourself in Bath!

How I Gained 1000 Pounds in Cambridge

When in the UK, everyone wants more pounds, but they typically mean the currency and not the stuff around their middles that jiggles and makes them resemble the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters.  I, unfortunately, got rid of the former and added the latter.  But it was delicious.  Here is only part of my attempt to eat every peice of bread in Cambridge:

Indigo Coffee House:

Good food, amazing coffee, really sweet tunes.

Looks basic, but it’s delicious. Egg, cheese, and mushroom breakfast toastie.

MichaelHouse Cafe:

Set in a 14th century church, you can’t help but enjoy a long lunch here.  I went back twice because I liked the ambiance, and they have killer macaroons (that are gluten free).  Actually, I was able to get an entirely gluten-free meal here, which would be awesome if I were still avoiding wheat.  So if you have dietary restrictions or love macaroons, come to Michaelhouse!

Macaroons, I miss you.

Stickybeaks:

I also came here twice.  Once by myself and once with friends for brunch.  Both times were amazing and adorable.

Cute Latte

Rarebit mushrooms stuffed with goatcheese and spinach with an apple salad and a mixed bean salad. With a side of gluten free passionfruit cake. YUM.

Potato, rosemary, and brie tart with a mixed bean salad.

The Earth’s Crust at the Cambridge Market:

This may be the most important one, because the bread man, Derek, loves the younger ladies and I’m trying to figure out how I can get him to marry me so he can fill me full of bread every day.  Unfortunately, I think he’s more into my friend Joanna. Bummer (but good for Joanna?).  Anyway, I visited Derek often (everyday) and tried his lovely wares. And so should you.

I tried the apricot pastry, which was amazing because it’s fresh apricot, not re-hydrated dehydrated apricot, and the Eccles Cake.  Apparently, this is like a 300 year old recipe from outside of Manchester somewhere.  An Eccles cake is a delicious puff pastries stuffed with currants and cinnamon… Good lord I love carbs.  His muesli bars are also quite delicious, I wish I had stocked up on them for quick snacks during my travels.

That is all. Now that I have you all drooling you can take a break for a snack.