San Francisco, Part 2: The Food!

One thing I am definitely looking forward to with this West Coast move, all my misgivings aside, is... the awesome West Coast produce!! I got just a little taste of it on this recent trip when my friends Steph and Ping, who were kind enough to let me stay with them in Sunnyvale for the weekend (and use all their paper to print out copies of my credit report, ha ha), took me to the Mountain View farmer's market on Saturday morning. After growing to love the admittedly rather tiny market at Borough Hall in Brookyn, this was like hitting the big leagues. At least three rows of stalls, with about 20 stalls per row, greeted us, and I immediately went weak-kneed for the fruit samples -- my god, it was like I had NEVER tasted a peach before! Or a strawberry! It was incredible. I had to rush onto the Caltrain into the city, but not before buying two delectable, altogether perfect white peaches to eat on the way. Steph and Ping bought three pints of strawberries, which we enjoyed later as well.

The other thing I'm really looking forward to in SF is... awesome Asian food!! This particular weekend, Steph and Ping took me to Orenchi, a ramen shop in Sunnyvale, and Fatima, a Muslim-Chinese restaurant in Cupertino, where I had "knife-shaved" beef noodle soup:

Yeah!

Seattle, Part 1: Lunch in the International District

July 4th weekend, Chef K and I flew out to Seattle for a friend's wedding. Happily, I got to see another Seattle-based friend -- my college roommate, Angelica! Since I'd only been to the city once before, Angelica graciously showed me some of the sights around town en route to a delicious pho lunch in the International District (aka Chinatown). The restaurant we went to, Green Leaf (I think), had these ridiculous throne-like chairs with armrests in the shape of captain's wheels. Totally awesome and bizarre!

Afterward, we meandered slowly back to Angelica's office via Uwajimaya, a big Japanese grocery store here, and the attached Kinokuniya bookstore. Not even in San Diego have I ever seen an Asian supermarket so clean, so big and so neatly organized, with such over-the-top theme decor! Scratch that -- any supermarket. Every aisle seemed to hold a new treasure trove of amazing Asian foodstuffs, and the produce and sake selections were superb (Angelica's dad is quite a fan of the latter, I hear).

Here is an overall shot of the store. See the paper lanterns and fake wisteria vines?? And you can just make out the gigantic paper dragon sprawling over about 10 aisles in the background.

Plus I just have to include this pic of geoducks in the seafood section (eww!):

Dinner at Tan Tan

You know what was so exciting about dinner tonight? We stumbled upon a totally amazing place completely by accident.

So, I got a top-notch recommendation for a Mexican restaurant but Kaii and I were both feeling like Asian after five straight days of hardcore Southern food, so we asked around and found out that the Asian part of town is in Bellaire.

We just kind of nosed down Bellaire Boulevard and waited until we saw Chinese characters and then drove around a couple strip malls to see which places were full of people. Lo and behold, we found Tan Tan -- a monster Vietnamese/Chinese place easily the size of seven normal restaurants, all lit up with neon and mirrors and with fake trees inside. And completely packed. SO Asian! We knew we had come to the right place.

I had a seriously revelatory wonton noodle soup. Kaii had some Vietnamese dish that was chicken, pork and egg over rice. On top of that, we shared a plate of double-fried noodles with shrimp (cooked perfectly) and Chinese broccoli. Omg so good.