We On Award Tour

When asked why I moved back to SF, I hardly know where to start.

There was the lack of density in the East Bay, and the distance between neighborhoods and commercial areas required more driving than I liked.  There was the lack of decent local grocery stores and the fact that so many local stores, even corner markets, closed so early. There were the deserted streets, how I saw more cats than people on my 10 minute walk to BART and BART was such a long haul and expensive to boot.

But the simplest explanation, and the reason that encompasses so many of the others, is that I realized the value of living close to the things I love.

During this first month back in the City, I’ve returned to many of the places and events I love in San Francisco.

We moved back right in time for our favorite outdoor music festival, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, and, of course, we stopped by Arizmendi Bakery while we were in the neighborhood.

We ate at Nopalito and bought books at Green Apple. We browsed the vintage furniture stores on Valencia Street. We saw Dave Eggers interview Nick Hornby at City Arts & Lectures. We got a Mariquita Farms mystery box, dropped off right across the street from our house. We ate a lot of ice cream.

Everything is close by now. After work one day, I picked up bread at Tartine (we’ve bought Tartine bread at least once a week despite the fact that our SF apartment lacks the counter space necessary for Tartine’s giant loaves). Then I picked up some groceries at BiRite, spontaneously popped into Pizzeria Delfina for dinner and still had time to catch a movie downtown.

And there are always new places to go, too. The Sunday Inner Sunset farmers market started while we were on the other side of the Bay. I got to Four Barrel Coffee at long last. A visit to Flora Grubb Gardens brought me to an area of the City I’d never been before. At Contigo, we found a friend from the farmers market manning the flatbread station and were reminded that SF can be like a small town at times.

It’s all here. And now, so are we.

Outer Ice Cream Triangle

Officially, our new SF neighborhood is Noe Valley, or maybe even Outer Noe Valley. But a more accurate name for our new neighborhood might be Outer Ice Cream Triangle (shown below).

View Larger Map

We are just a block or two off the hypotenuse that stretches from BiRite Creamery to Mitchell’s and it’s almost too easy to slip down to Humphry Slocombe.

Since we moved to Outer Ice Cream Triangle, I’ve had the pleasure of visiting each establishment and indulging in some truly memorable cones:

• Mexican Chocolate (Mitchell’s)
• Brown Sugar Yogurt (Humphry)
• Apple Pie (BiRite)
• Brown Sugar Ice cream with ginger-caramel swirl (Birite)
• Pumpkin Five-Spice (Humphry)
• Rosemary’s Baby (rosemary, pine nut and sea salt – at Humphry, of course)

(Now I know that list looks like complete gluttony, but a single does come with two flavors at BiRite and Humphry.)

If you are headed to Humphry Slocombe (you should be on your way already — did I mention that the lines are far shorter than BiRite’s or Mitchell’s?), other WholeHog-approved flavors include: Secret Breakfast (bourbon and cornflakes), Salt and Pepper, Salted Licorice, Rootbeer, Ancho Chocolate, and Peanut Butter Curry.

FiDi Lunch

Few people actually live in San Francisco’s Financial District; most, like me, just work there.

The whole neighborhood, if a place without true residents can truly be called a neighborhood, is totally focused on the work force. Most businesses are open only Monday through Friday. There are lots of banks and coffee shops, but few of the hardware stores and produce markets that are mainstays in most other areas of San Francisco.

A few restaurants stay open for dinner, relying on business travelers to fill tables, but lunch is the big meal downtown. Every block is peppered with lunch places that are packed at noon and closed by 3pm. There are many lunch options, but most are fairly crummy and almost anything will get old when eaten on a daily or weekly basis.

Only a handful of places downtown (Mixt Greens, Boxed Foods Company, and Sellers Market) use decent ingredients or even bother to change their menu seasonally, so I often end up walking down to the Ferry Building for better lunch options, like the new, super delicious Cane Rosso.

But as the lines at the new Thursday street food vendors at the Ferry Building show, there’s still a desire for new lunch options downtown. The work force is always hungry for something else and Boccolone, a cured meats purveyor in the Ferry Building, has one solution: a sandwich delivered to the Financial District on their ‘Salumi Cycle’.

That’s right: I can get a panini made with certified humane meat delivered just a few blocks from work on a bike (and I find out where the Salumi Cycle will be on Twitter). Only in San Francisco, right?

The Salumi Cycle conveniently tends to drop off sandwiches near downtown San Francisco’s many public spaces — providing both food and a place to eat to the needy FiDi masses.

In its 1985 ‘Downtown Plan’, San Francisco required that public space be included in any new commercial development so many downtown buildings now have a roof decks or a patios or courtyards available to all, but mostly populated (especially at lunch time) by the FiDi crowd.

Unfortunately, not all buildings make their public space known or easy to get to. (I’m talking to you Orchard Garden Hotel. I know you have a public terrace,that you rarely provide elevator access to, and yes, I’ve learned to take the one working elevator and take the stairs the rest of the way). SPUR, thankfully, provides a list and a map.

It’s a god-send to have a somewhere outside the office to eat or read or think. It’s depressing to eat at my desk and while my office has a kitchen, I avoid it. I’m not willing to interact with my coworkers on my lunch break.

If the weather’s nice and the Salumi Cycle is nearby, I like heading up to the public space at 343 Sansome (shown above). It’s a public terrace on the 15th floor, with half devoted to icky smokers, but the other half is all fellow lunchers.

There are views down Sansome street and between the buildings, you can catch sight of the Bay. Down below, the cars, buses and taxis and the people hurrying through the streets all look tiny. And work feels far away.

All the People that Come and Go

It’s tourist season in SF. They’re especially thick downtown, hesitating at intersections to consult their SF street maps and guidebooks or stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to gape up at the Transamerica Pyramid.

On the rare mornings that I out of the house early enough to go to Blue Bottle before work, I see them wandering through the unusually quiet Ferry Building, waiting for the other shops to open and looking oddly well rested. (I have to assume its lunchtime where ever they’re from).

When I’m having what is for me a typical morning — dealing with inept commuters on BART, dreading going into work and cursing the inevitable long line at Blue Bottle — it helps to see people who aren’t just going through the motions of their usual daily routine. In the midst of my own regularly scheduled morning angst, it’s a good reminder that travelers don’t need to rush, they may not have anywhere in particular they need to be, and they may even be able to start their day without coffee.

Of course, it’s not easy to travel or to be without the things that you rely on in your day-to-day life (like, say, coffee), but I appreciate the reminder of what it feels like to be in a new place, to have a whole day to create on your own schedule, to be so far away from your home that not even the time makes sense.

And the tourists remind me I will be one of them soon enough. In a few weeks, Mr. WholeHog and I head back to Italy, back to the Cinque Terre again to eat anchovies and focaccia, to swim in the Mediterranean, and, most importantly, to attend a good friend’s wedding. And after the wedding, we’ll spend a week exploring more of Southern Italy and some of Sicily.

In my usual, obsessive pre-travel state, the SF tourists offer more than a reminder that my own vacation is near; they also offer a real world example of what makes good and bad traveling clothes. SF is a real test of one’s packing prowess: you have to be ready for both the 70 degree sunshine we had a week ago and for the foggy, windy maybe 62 degree days we have this week.

The tourists give me a sense of what blends in, or what stands out in a stylish way rather than an “I’M A NOT FROM HERE” way. In SF, nothing says non-native quicker than clothing that features the American flag, although the acid-washed, pink denim jacket and cropped pants ensemble I spotted today comes close.

Rave: Bourdain in SF

Saturday, March 21st, was a typical Saturday for Mr. WholeHog and I: we went to the Ferry Building Farmers Market and lined up at Primavera.

I’d vaguely noticed a camera man as we walked back to Primavera’s stand but I didn’t think much of it. It’s not that unusual to see TV cameras at the market, often following a local chef or personality around while they shop.

But the man at the front of the line for Primavera looked familiar to me, even from the back: he was tall, long-legged, and thin. He wore jeans and a leather blazer. I elbowed the Mr., “It’s BOURDAIN,” I whispered.

At least, I think I whispered. I’m one of those idiotic people that gets a little batty in the presence of celebrity. For all I know, I screamed, “IT’S BOURDAIN!”. And then I started grinning foolishly and openly staring in my typical, ridiculous celebrity-sighting way. (I’m also a terrible celebrity spotter. Walking on Irvington Place in New York City, Mr. WholeHog said to me, “Did you see who that was?”. I guessed: “Patti Smith?”. It turned out it was Ric Ocasek, from The Cars.)

Picture from The Travel Channel

Seeing Bourdain was something special, though. I wasn’t just seeing the author of Kitchen Confidential at my farmers market, I was seeing Bourdain at Primavera, one of my favorite stands at the market. I was seeing someone I admire as a writer, sure, but more so as an eater, appreciating some of my very favorite food.

Primavera clearly has plenty of admirers at the market. There are lines nearly every week for their food. We’ve seen local chefs and food bloggers in line from time to time.  But maybe because Primavera is only available at the Saturday market or perhaps because Primavera is based out of Sonoma, not SF,  it gets surprisingly little attention from local media. (The SF Chronicle  remains sadly focused on the entirely mediocre La Taqueria).

So it was gratifying to me that Bourdain was there with his camera crew for No Reservations, his show on the Travel Channel. It initially gave me some additional confidence in his show, too: if he found Primavera in SF that means his finds in other cities may be just as good. (Although watching the San Francisco episode of No Reservations this week, I wasn’t impressed with the other places he went in SF).

I have to say that I didn’t wholeheartedly approve of Bourdain’s order. He went with the tamales — which are arguably Primavera’s specialty. Their website, after all, is Primaveratamales.com. Primavera’s tamales are terrific and worth trying, especially for an initial visit.

But as someone who eats at Primavera nearly every week, I know that the tamales are always on the menu, while the weekly specials only come around a once a month or,even a few times a year. (I’m still waiting for them to bring back the enchiladas with poached eggs Mr. WholeHog ate one Saturday when I was out of town in 2007).

At Primavera, you order whatever is under the chilequiles on the menu and above the tamales. It may be fish tacos, tlycoyos, panuchos, carnitas tacos, tacos al pastor, squash blossom and ricotta quesadillas. On the Saturday Bourdain ate at Primavera, albondigas were on the menu. Albondigas are meatballs. Primavera serves them in a tomato sauce with Primavera’s perfect beans and tortillas. When Primavera has albondigas on the menu, it’s like hitting the jackpot.

So it was a clear mistake to order tamales, even delicious tamales, when you have the option of meatballs. But you know, I’ll let it pass this time. It’s clear Bourdain will be back. He loves San Francisco, as he wrote in his take on San Francisco’s food.

Rave: Rainbow Grocery

The longer I live in the East Bay, the more I miss Rainbow Grocery.

I’d expected to miss my beloved little BiRite, but I figured we’d find plenty of alternatives to Rainbow. After all, Rainbow is an old school health food store, and I figured that by moving closer to Berkeley, I’d be closer to the country’s original health food stores, probably still run by aging hippies.

But I’ve been sorely disappointed in the East Bay’s grocery stores. Even the famed Berkeley Bowl left me cold. Sure it has a huge produce section, but I get my produce at the farmers market, and aside from produce, I found little to distinguish the Bowl from any other grocery store.

I do appreciate that many East Bay markets carry local foods, but they’re often priced far higher than San Francisco stores do (or even the farmers markets). Straus milk at the grocery store closest to our East Bay home is twice what BiRite charges (and BiRite isn’t exactly known for their low prices). They also charge $11 for a pack of Primavera tamales that we can get at the farmers market for $8.

Of course, I could try to go to a different store that charges less, but most stores close right around the time that I’m getting off BART. (This could be another post: why do so many places in the East Bay close so early? Grocery stores close at 7pm on weekdays (earlier on weekends!) and even many restaurants close by 9pm. Is this because the E.B. is packed full of families and kids are put to bed by 9pm? Please explain.)

Rainbow is different: it’s open until 9pm; it stocks lots of local foods and it charges less for them. You’ll find food from some of the same farmers that come to the Ferry Building Farmers Market: produce from Knoll Farms, Rancho Gordo beans (in bulk and cheaper than anywhere I’ve seen), St. Benoit yogurt  (again cheaper!), raviolis from The Pasta Shop (in bulk!), Primavera tamales.

Rainbow’s bulk section is unparalleled. You can get nearly any grain, legume, dried pasta, chocolate chips, olive oil, vinegars, tea, even salt in bulk. Their bulk selection goes beyond food, though: you can also get organic liquid soaps, shampoos, conditioners, lotions, and laundry detergent. It made it easy to make ‘greener’ choices. We brought home far less packaging when we shopped there. Our pantry was transformed from disposable to reusable. We threw out less, too, by simply refilling a container of hand soap, for example, instead of buying a whole new bottle.

If you haven’t been to Rainbow yet, a few words of warning: it’s not Whole Foods. It’s a basically a warehouse, the floors are concrete, the cashiers may have dreads and aren’t likely to chat with you, they don’t sell any meat, and it’s in an absolutely hideous location (South of Market, under the freeway) — a place I hate to walk or drive.  But you should go there. I mistakenly avoided Rainbow for years for exactly these reasons, but now I struggle to live without it.

Rave: SF Roof Decks

Things look different from above.

In San Francisco, both tall buildings and the city’s many hills offer a new perspective on the cityscape. I like to get to a new perch and try to orient myself. (This may be something I’ve inherited from my dad who loves climbing mountains in part for because it gives him a chance to re-establish where he is in relation to the natural world.)

A higher vantage point can also give you a glimpse into parts of city life that you can’t see from the street. When we visited SF when I was a kid, we took the glass elevator at the Fairmont Hotel and I was surprised to see that city dwellers used their roofs in the same way people in the suburbs use their backyards. From the elevator, I’d see people sprawled on chaise lounges on their roof. Some roofs had gardens on them, some had barbecues.

San Francisco museums are getting into the idea of using roofs in new ways, too. The DeYoung may have started the trend with their copper, hole-punched observation deck high above Golden Gate Park. But the new roof spaces at the Academy of Sciences and at SF Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) aren’t just about the view.

At the Academy of Sciences, the roof is alive.  The porthole-covered hills may look like something from outer space, but the wild strawberries and cheery poppies growing on the living roof will be familiar to any Californian. A gardener weeding the roof on the day I visited said that there are over 70 species of native plants just around the observation area.

Inside the new Academy of Sciences, I’m reminded of all the things I love and miss from the old Academy of Sciences, but up on the living roof, I’m dazzled. It’s eco-friendly (it cools the interior and recycles rainwater), it’s a fitting addition to a building that is housed in the middle of a park, and I like that the view here is what I consider ‘real’ SF — the places residents actually go, like the park and the neighborhoods.

The SF MOMA’s new roof deck and sculpture garden is in a far less green area of SF, downtown just two blocks of Market Street with views of some of the best and worst examples of SF architecture. It works as an art exhibit, of course, but the real draw, for me, is the new Blue Bottle cafe in the MOMA’s roof deck.

Blue Bottle coffee is worth seeking out and I doubt many visitors to SF sought out Blue Bottle’s Hayes Valley kiosk or were able to find their Mint Plaza cafe, so I’m happy to see them opening in places like the Ferry Building and the MOMA. We’ve got some crazy delicious coffee in SF, and if you visit and stick with Starbucks, you’re missing out on a vital part of SF culture. (I loved overhearing a woman take a sip of her coffee at the MOMA and exclaim: “This is strong coffee!”). You can also buy Blue Bottle coffee beans at the MOMA cafe — a perfect SF souvenir.

Blue Bottle was also clearly inspired by their museum location and this location sells slices of cake that echo works of art. We sampled a lovely raspberry cake with lemon curd, a delicious take on Thiebaud (shown above). The Mondrian cake is almost too clever to eat. But if cake isn’t your thing, you can also hit up some of SF’s best ice cream: the cafe serves Humphrey Slocumbe ice cream in a sundae and in an affogato.

When we move back to SF, I hope to make cake and coffee at the MOMA a weekly event. Mr. WholeHog happens to be a member so it’s easy for us to just pop in, but to me, there’s another benefit of roof decks that’s worth the cost of admission: no smokers.

{Apologies for the dark, iphone pics.}

I like to get to a new perch in the City and try to orient myself. Things look different from above. (This may be what I’ve inherited from my dad who loves climbing mountains for a chance to re-establish where he is in relation to the natural world.)

Or Maybe There’s No Obligations Now

And when it was all over, we had our life back.

It’s not that we’d necessarily abandoned the things we like to do while we were in the fog of wedding planning. We still went to the farmers market every Saturday. We dropped by 18 Reasons to eat Andante cheese, and found time to eat at much anticipated Nopalito twice. But it felt different. It was like being in school again, when your weekend didn’t really feel like free time because there was still homework to be done.

There was always something else we could be doing, should be doing, in those weeks leading up to the wedding, and so many of the things we did for fun were combined with wedding-related errands. Nopalito was close to The Other Shop, where we’d picked up some wedding decor. We justified going to 18 Reasons because we could also order a case of wine at BiRite.

But this first month post-wedding, our time felt ours again. There was so much we wanted to do that we packed our weeks full. (We were so enthusiastic, in fact, that we ended up with tickets for two different events on the same night.)

We went back to many of our favorite things: going to Blue Bottle’s first day in the Ferry Building to drink macchiatos and lust after their custom-made Heath Ceramics espresso cups. We checked out events like Pop-Up Magazine, and tried new sandwich shops that use local ingredients.

I even made it to a show, my first in at least a year, seeing Blitzen Trapper and Fleet Foxes at the Fillmore. Sitting in the Fillmore’s balcony, drinking beer with Mr. WholeHog as we waited for the show to start reminded me so much of the early days of our relationship. Our first outing together in SF was to see the Shins at the Great American Music Hall and over the years, we’ve seen so many bands together.

Mr.WholeHog has undoubtedly influenced my taste in music, coffee and even sandwiches, but he claims that I gave him a new appreciation for ice cream. And maybe I did, since he was the one to suggest that we go to Humphrey Slocombe one unseasonably warm Saturday.

Let it be known that had we lived in SF, I would never have let two months go by before trying a much-lauded ice cream shop (especially one that makes a salted licorice flavor). I still love my BiRite Creamery, of course, but anywhere that offers “Your Tin Roof Rusted” for $6, and has a sundae called “Hot Mess” is a place I want to frequent. Who doesn’t want a little personality with their ice cream, especially when their ice cream is so good?

Letter From An Occupant

Science may not back me up on this yet, but my own 10 year experiment has shown that SF landlords tend to be a little insane. I still need to do some research to determine if being a landlord in San Francisco makes someone who was once sane go a little nuts, or if one needs to have a touch of crazy in order to become a landlord in the first place.

On of the few positives of moving was getting away from our SF landlord. We lived just below him which, initially, seemed like a plus. He’d be there first thing if there was a problem and I thought having a landlord on the premises might help keep the building quiet. This turned out to be wishful thinking.

Our landlord was the problem person in the building. He stomped when he walked, he slammed doors and when he talked, he shouted. We cringed overhearing him berate a customer service people on the phone so loudly we could hear his every word in our dining room. “You people at HP are SO stupid!,” he screamed. “God you’re stupid. Where are you, in India?”

His relationships were turbulent and, at times, violent. He seemed surprised when we mentioned that we’d been bothered by a physical fight he had at 2am and unnerved to hear him screaming”STOP HURTING ME” and “PUT DOWN THAT KNIFE!”. I’d never called 911 before but I called them on our landlord. (The dispatchers were unsurprised, “Oh that house? We were there earlier today.”)

Any communication from him seemed like further proof of his unstable condition. We contacted him about a problem once and he emailed us that he wasn’t sure he could get to it right away because of his “heath and personnel” problems. We puzzled over this statement, ultimately realizing he meant that he had health and personal problems.

We arrived home one day to find the following note on his door: UPS Knock LOUAD (and yes, we ran to get our cameras.)

That said, he’s now a memory, a kooky character in our stories about our first home together. And despite his many heath and personnel problems, he was good at the landlord essentials: every year, he gave us a check for interest on our security deposit and a few weeks after moving out, we received our full security deposit back.

Another Reason I Love SF

Where else would you see this first thing in the morning in the heart of the Financial District?!