Broccoli & Chocolate

restaurants * food events * news

Review: The House

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Not like that mean doctor guy on TV, but like the teeny tiny little restaurant in Big-Plate-Italian*-dominated North Beach, San Francisco. The House. Grant Avenue just off Columbus. The location is unsuspecting. The website is underwhelming. The food is amazing.

Tuna rolly things. They don’t have a menu on their website, so you’re getting my best recollection of the dish names and components. Good luck!

I went for one of my four (yes, four) birthday meals this year. I went on my actual birthday. This was The Choice. It’s difficult to choose a birthday restaurant, let me tell you. “Angie, you know all the restaurants in SF, why don’t you pick?” Wait, what? Is there a sit-down Quizno’s in midtown**? No, seriously, I don’t know all the restaurants. I was looking on the SF Gate’s top 100 list and hadn’t even heard of most of the places. It’s sad, I know. And it’s exacerbated by the fact that I have a horrible memory. What I’m saying is, come birthday time, I’m on Yelp and OpenTable like every other idiot.

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Spain: We’re not just hungry, we’re Americans.

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I went to Spain in late August for a week with my friend Mala. We met up with four other people (only one of whom we already knew) in Valencia in the southeast of Spain, threw some tomatoes, then headed to Barcelona for a few days with just the two of us. It was rad. A whirlwind trip, for sure, but definitely fun and definitely worth all the flying (2 stopovers on the way there!).

Seafood paella in Valencia, Spain

You might imagine that we ate food while we were there. It was pretty much a main activity. Since I could type about this all day, and I have about a billion photos, I’ll give a summary below and then you can scroll through the pictures until the rolly wheel on your mouse breaks. Enjoy.

  • Valencia is not my fav. We did have some good food there, but the city is mostly either touristy and cheesy, or sorta run down and Hayward-esque. They do have a strange area with a bunch of rad buildings housing museums and the like, and a cool beach area that’s super touristy but still nice. And it definitely was an AWESOME place to rent an apartment with five other rad people. And provided good access to the aforementioned tomato fight.
  • Barcelona is rad. Super touristy in the main part, but it’s beautiful, has great restaurants and shops, a nice wharf and beachfront area, and lots to do. Def way better on the gourmet food front. Mala and I felt like we were home here.
  • When you order wine, you order “vino tinto” or “vino blanco” (at least in Valencia). It’s funny. There typically isn’t a wine list (again, at least at all the places we went), and I have no idea what kind of wine I’m drinking. You just choose red or white. I thought it was funny.
  • Tapas. They’re everywhere. Lots and lots and lots of tapas restaurants, all boasting their own form of paella, which I think are all exactly the same. We never found great paella, unfortunately, and ended up getting pretty sick of tapas pretty fast, sadly. But we still had plenty, and they were usually pretty good. Here’s  a typical tapas menu:

Tapas menu in Valencia, Spain

Ok, now for food.

Tapas Hall of Fame

Calamari. I know, I love calamari. There were often many types of squid offered on any one tapas menu, and I never could figure out which one was the one I wanted (above). Sometimes I got grilled (still good) or big onion-ring sized rings (not as good). The smaller pieces of fried squid (above) was my fav kind.

Bravas. These are fried potato pieces slathered in an aioli sauce. When they were good, they were really good.

Russian salad. It’s everywhere. We finally mustered the balls to try it. It was delicious. Apparently it’s common in many regions, but the Spanish version typically consists of: minced boiled potato, minced boiled carrots, canned tuna, minced boiled eggs, peas, roast red pepper strips, green olives, and mayonnaise. The weird breadsticks are just there as an obstacle, as far as I can tell.

Tortilla. Yeah, it’s not like a Mexican one. This is like a potato quiche. It’s really good. And, I find it funny that they make tortilla sandwiches. In case you want some carbs with your carbs. Totally yum though.

Those were def my fav tapas. We ordered them again and again, while also trying to branch out each time. We tried paella a variety of times, and it was good, but it was never great. So much so that I’m not even going to include it in this post, except as the cover photo to make you think I’m going to talk about it. Trickery.

Other Good Food

When we got to Barcelona, we immediately made reservations at a fancy restaurant. It was necessary. And delicious. Mala powered through a bout of food poisoning from the day before, and we bought the crappiest umbrellas known to man to handle the pouring rain to make it to this schmancy Barcelona restaurant. This is the tuna tartare. Totally worth it.

This chocolate mousse (from aforementioned schmancy Barcelona restaurant) was amazing. It was light and fluffy and made almost completely of air somehow. The taste was incredible. We were mesmerized.

We found a vegetarian restaurant in Barcelona. We almost ordered everything on the menu. Then we didn’t. This was a good decision. These fried rice balls were bomb.

Pasta from vegetarian restaurant: good.

Chocolate fondue from the vegetarian restaurant. Mala was excited.

And, for the season finale, Mala and I found a nice place to have a full English breakfast. I’m not sure if you can tell how much food is on that table, but we each had 2 eggs, potatoes, baked beans, a grilled tomato, grilled mushrooms, bacon, toast and jam, and a blueberry pancake. We ate every bite. (She ate my bacon, I ate her tomatoes and much of her beans.) The Aussies next to us were impressed. Because “we’re not just hungry — we’re Americans”. Booya.

🙂

Something Shiny

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Or tasty. Hi. I went to Spain. I’ve been stumbling over life trying to catch up with writing and other things I love. But I haven’t had time to sort my pictures, collect my thoughts, etc. So here — something shiny for you to look at in the meantime. I’ll be back soon… 🙂

French toast from Park Tavern’s brunch, North Beach.

Events: SF Street Food Festival 2012

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Ok, I didn’t actually go to the SF Street Food Festival this year. Yeah, fine, call me a jerk. Especially since they were so kind to invite me to the preview dinner last month. Which was awesome. But I went last year and, honestly, it was such a cluster that I wasn’t super excited to go again. Because I don’t like billions of people congregated in one area, not because I don’t like food, obv.

But, based on the preview dinner this year, I believe I would have liked much of the food at the festival. Here are a few of my favorite vendors who participated this year and the ridiculously delicious dishes they fed me a couple weeks ago:… 

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Products: Rewinery

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Update: Rewinery has closed. 🙁

So, I have a food blog. Hi, yes, this is it. Because of this, I sometimes get free stuff. Or get invited to food events. It’s kinda awesome. And while I never promise to write about any of these things, I will write about them if I particularly like them. And sometimes, you get a coupon for stuff too (see below).

Enter Rewinery.

Rewinery is a wine delivery service in SF. They have one wine on special at any point (they seem to rotate about every week or two) and you order two bottles (typically) for $30. It is then delivered to your door by bike messenger within the hour. Or, you can specify an hour in the future (not the past, sorry) for it to be delivered if you want to order for later…. 

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Review: Dosa

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Ok, I’ve been hearing about this place forever. I finally went recently. It was awesome, just like people (and the huge wait list) suggest.

They have two locations, Mission and Fillmore. I met Melanie way too late one night at the Fillmore location. We intended to go to SPQR, but were snubbed without a reservation*. So we got to Dosa around 9pm and I didn’t get home until midnight, so full that I thought I might explode. It was epic.

Dosa was full at 9pm on a Saturday night. And unlike SPQR, they were kind enough to put my name on a wait list**. We sat at the bar to wait our 30-45 minutes and then were kindly seated at a table for our 10pm dinner. Perfect!

Chutney appetizer. Four flavors! Good, but way too spicy for me. I could only eat one of them without crying.

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Eat it, 30.

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Hi, I’m 30. I don’t even think I’m going to go by my name anymore, just refer to me as 30. Since it seems to be important. You turn 29 and people are like, “eh”; you turn 30 and people say the following:

My boss: “How old are you?”  Me: “30”  Boss: “Wow, I thought you were older.”  (Yes, this actually happened.)

Dad: “OMG, you’re 30?!! That must mean that I’m like… 40…”

Sister: “Jesus.”

Birthday Card: “Wow, you’re OLD!”

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You get the idea. “What are you doing for your THIRTIETH birthday?! I did a trapeze lesson for mine!” “How do you feel now that you’re 30?” “Dirty thirty!” “Thirty is the new twenty!”

I don’t know how I feel about landmark birthdays.  I guess I don’t much care. I was 29 and 364/365 last week, the only change is a tiny fraction. Hardly worth mentioning, really. Regardless, I took this opportunity to eat good food for about four days. It was my birthday, I do what I want. These were my historic, amazingly memorable, landmark 30th birthday foods of choice:

Day-of Birthday Foods, July 5: Sens for lunch (thanks Jason!), The House for dinner (thanks Lita and Smalls!)

Lunch: Seared tombo tuna from Sens Restaurant

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Review: Bottle Cap

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Update: Bottle Cap is now closed. But, The Square is now open!

Yeay, North Beach! I’ll stop pretending like there’s some lack of good restaurants here. But still, the majority are Italian. And while I LOVE Italian food, it gets a bit tedious. And, if I had to pick a favorite type of food, oddly, it would be American. Stars and stripes, baby, I love me some sandwiches and burgers and mac and cheese.

And they have all three at Bottle Cap, but, like, in good form (Humboldt burger and grilled cheese as “smallish plates”; cheesy shells as a side). But, still, the menu is “American”, which basically seems to mean anything that’s not already claimed by some other culture or country. Or, it can also kinda mean a mesh of a bunch of different things. What a great idea! I love meshes.

Bottle Cap Restaurant in North Beach

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Review: Salt House

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All lowercase lettering. Sandblasted brick walls. Exposed steel mezzanine. High ceilings. You know this SF restaurant.

Ok, you probably don’t; it sounds like lots of others. For which we can all be thankful: there are lots of chic, modern, schmancy, yummy restaurants in SF, yeay! Love this city. Moving on.

Inside the salt house

Salt House (or salt house — upper case is so 2009) is another restaurant serving classy American fare with their own special spin. A summary of my experience:… 

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Review: The Plant

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It’s so sad to me when people hear the names of restaurants like Plant and say something like, “Ugh, does that mean there’s nothing good on the menu?” When did plants become bad to eat? Why do meat eaters have to eat meat with every meal ever? I digress (and kinda apologize; you do what you want).

Plant is not a vegetarian restaurant. It is sorta healthy-ish, doesn’t have anything deep fried, and doesn’t have meat other than seafood and poultry. In fact, their website tells me they serve: all organic produce, all free range poultry, and sustainable seafood. Sounds good to me. And yes, they do have many meat-less dishes and some veggie-adventurous items (tempeh, anyone?). And it’s great! I love this place.

Inside The Plant on Pier 3.

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