Long story short, I’m up against a blog post deadline and ran across this beauty sitting in my drafts…was just waiting for all the pictures to get uploaded. So here it is…a long awaited food diary from a family trip to San Francisco!
I love to travel…and when I travel, I do love to experience the local fare. I recently visited San Francisco with my family. If you’d like a glimpse of one of my “foodie adventures”…then read on. This was not a “healthy foodie adventure”. I repeat, not a “healthy foodie adventure”.
We had a total of 3 days (2 full, 2 half). The premise of this trip was for my mother to see Chinatown for the first time. My Mom could and would eat Chinese food every day, for every meal. Us kids, not so much, so I made sure our dinner plans were varied.
On the first night we had a magnificent meal at Lao Table. My sister and I were planning the meal, as we agreed to share entrees during the trip, which really worked out well! But, before we started ordering, this dim sum-like cart rolled by with server introductions.
Well yes, I WOULD like the seaweed and papaya salad dishes!
The seaweed had an awesome texture and almost smoky flavor. It was different than the Japanese style crispy seaweed I usually eat. The papaya salad was tasty, with lots of peanuts!
Then my sister and I shared a crab curry dish on fermented noodles, which sounds intriguing, but the noodles just tasted like thick rice noodles…the dish was DELICIOUS.
The dessert pictures on Yelp were probably what pulled us in to this restaurant the first night. Mango sticky rice with a ‘side’ of a mango shaved ice. We hardly made a dent in it, but had to try it! It was also, delicious.
I am an early riser, so was out early the next morning in search of good coffee and good pastries. Enter, Mr. Holmes Bakehouse.
They were quite tasty. The bourbon sticky bun was probably my favorite, followed by the twice baked pear/Nutella croissant. The corn flake cookie and filled donuts were good.
For lunch, my Mom picked out a place outside of downtown, once we learned that the best Chinese food would be outside of Chinatown. Oh, right, my bad. Mom did good, holy wow was Lime Tree good!
Well of course I forgot to take a picture of the Poh Pia, which were these fresh spring rolls wrapped in a super thin crepe-like wrapper, with this awesome chili sauce. I could have hurt myself eating those, but I had to save room.
I got the Singapore curry noodles with shrimp….YUM YUM YUM! Then my Mom ordered this other noodle dish with shrimp and mushroom and this smoky type oyster sauce, along with her Hainan Chicken. Everything was delicious. This is probably the meal where I ate the most. But I had to save room for Italian later!
Ok, so dinner tonight was Barbara Pinseria in North Beach. This place was just too adorable. We were seated at the cool ‘window’ table which had us sitting right between where two streets meet. Loved it.
I was definitely going light tonight after the lunch I had. My sis and I would split a small butternut squash/kale salad and a ‘Pinsa” with burrata. Pinsa is this style of pizza from Rome that is made with a dough which goes through a long fermentation. It is so tasty. This place did not disappoint.
I was kind of thinking of passing on dessert, but we ended up getting the chocolate cake and pumpkin panna cotta. They were really good together!
And the next morning…off to find different coffee and pastries! I started off at Sightglass in SOMA. The place was super cool and open. Even though I planned breakfast somewhere else, and was only supposed to get coffee here, I still got a peanut butter cookie and a chocolate raspberry scone, just to taste. Yes, I actually just had a couple of bites of each and sadly never got to the rest. The PB cookie was a little to candy-like for me, but the scone was on point.
After the coffee, it was over to Vive la Tarte. This place was everything I thought it would be. I ended up get a savory, nutritious, breakfast salad. Best breakfast salad EVER! I’m going to have to re-create this one at home. Avocado, yogurt, beet hummus, greens, cucumber, falafel and toast.
I brought home an orange blossom/za’atar, almond, and chocolate croissants. I sadly only was able to try a couple bites of the orange blossom/za’atar. So good. I’ll be back someday. Just too much food. Get here if you visit San Francisco.
That night we hit Colibri Mexican Bistro. I think we were getting tired, and tired of eating by then. I ordered sopes and a side of portabello mushrooms and nopales. I think I like the side of veggies the best!
Ok, so last food item. I was up early once again for one last coffee/pastry pairing. Jane’s on Larkin was such a cute place, with such nice counter service, and some amazing looking pastries. Their savory breakfast selections also looked really good. But one thing was interestingly tugging at my foodie curiosity. The biscuit with butter and blueberry jelly. I mean this thing was LOADED with butter and blueberry jelly. I love chunky butter, haha. So I just went for it.
This was the BEST biscuit I’ve had in forever. I am so glad I don’t live close to this biscuit. I would eat it everyday.
Ok, we’ll that’s it! A long weekend of family and food :-)
If you’re heading to San Francisco and are interested in any of the places I mentioned, drop me a line if you have any questions! I always love to hear from you all.
-M