San Francisco Trip

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We’ve been back from San Francisco for a couple of weeks now, so we’re overdue for posting about our eating adventures there. We were there only for a little over two days, so we didn’t get to explore much but found plenty to enjoy.

Shortly after we arrived on a Tuesday afternoon, we went to the Ferry Building. Holly had been there before, but I had not. It’s an indoor market similar to our local Reading Terminal Market, only more posh. We wanted to sit out by the water for a late lunch and ended up at Hog Island Oyster Co. We shared a bowl of San Francisco Clam Chowder and a great salad with Little Gem lettuce, strawberries, fuji apples and hazelnuts. It was a lovely afternoon of enjoying lunch and some wine while sitting by the bay.

Clam Chowder at Hog Island

Little Gem Salad at Hog Island

However, as the afternoon progressed, it started to get chilly, so we migrated inside the Ferry Building and luxuriated over wine flights at the Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant. While we were there, Holly picked up a bottle of No. 209 Gin, one of her favorites from her west coast life.

Wine Flights at Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant

We hadn’t done much planning as far as meals went, so we went back to our hotel room to research a place for dinner. We didn’t feel like wandering far and found Colibrí Mexican Cuisine. One of our goals while in California was to get our fill of Mexican food, so we were easily convinced to give it a try. They have an incredible Tequila selection and make some inventive drinks with them. Unfortunately, they don’t list their drink menu on their web site, so I can’t get my facts straight, but their cocktails are excellent.

We began our meal by sharing the fish tacos. I had the prawns with a tamarind mole sauce with a corn cake, and Holly had pan seared duck breast in a delicious green mole sauce made with pumpkin seeds, tomatillos, nuts and spices.

Fish Tacos at Colibri

Fish Tacos at Colibri

Alas, Colibrí is a rather dark restaurant, so we don’t have much in the way of pictures.

On Wednesday, we went to breakfast at Sears Fine Food. Holly had the famous 18 Swedish pancakes which come with lingonberries. Another goal was to have as much seafood as possible, so I had the seafood omelet that was stuffed with crab and shrimp.

18 Swedish Pancakes at Sears Fine Foods

18 Swedish Pancakes at Sears Fine Foods

Holly then had to go to her conference, so I spent the morning in Golden Gate Park, primarily to go to the deYoung Museum but I also went to the Japanese Tea Garden. I found myself getting rather frustrated in the tea garden because it was overrun with barely supervised school children. It was certainly harshing my Zen. I decided to head back to the hotel to find a place for lunch. I actually wound up getting back around 2 and a lot of nearby places were closed between lunch and dinner, so I wound up back at Colibrí. We had dinner plans, so I just had the Pozole Verde. Colibrí also serves complimentary torillas with 3 different kinds of salsas, so it made for a nice lunch. I may have had a Tequila cocktail or two. I went back to the hotel room to wait for Holly to get done with her conference. By the time she was done, we still had a couple of hours before dinner and she was curious about the drinks I had at Colibrí, so we went back yet again. It was a nice reminder that we really enjoy good Tequila and that we need to get to Xochitl and Distrito more often!

After our afternoon cocktails, we met up with an old friend of Holly’s who took us out of the downtown area and to B Star Bar in Inner Richmond. B Star is a small and excellent Burmese restaurant. We shared several dishes, most notably the Tea Leaf Salad, the Samusa Soup, the Pumpkin Pork Stew and the Ox Tail with shiitake mushrooms and gai lan over mashed potatoes.

Thursday, we went to breakfast at Dottie’s True Blue Cafe. Holly had the Black Bean Cakes with eggs, grilled cheddar corn bread and home fries. I had the Lamb Merguez Sausage, Roasted Garlic, Tomato, Spinach and Goat Cheese Omelet. I also swapped out my toast for the grilled cheddar corn bread. Everything was delicious and the coffee was notably good.

Black Bean Cakes and Eggs at Dottie's

Black Bean Cakes and Eggs at Dottie’s

Lamb Merguez Sausage Omelet at Dottie's

Lamb Merguez Sausage Omelet at Dottie’s

For lunch, I had plans to meet an old friend, and conveniently, our lunch plans coincided with Holly’s lunch break at the conference. We met at Johnny Foley’s which is a fairly standard Irish Pub. It was good but nothing exceptional and nothing we can’t get at home.

We ended our trip on a high note at Pesce in the Russian Hill neighborhood. It serves food in a Venetian cicchetti style similar to our local C19 but with a greater emphasis on seafood. Holly and I really enjoy places that focus on small plates because we like to try a lot of things. We loved everything at Pesce, especially the Melanzane (Grilled eggplant, taleggio chesse, tomato-basil vinaigrette), the Cioppino, the Grilled Asparagus, and the Biscotti with Vin Santo for dessert. We’re still trying to figure out why we never see Biscotti and Vin Santo on the east coast. It’s not like there aren’t a million Italian restaurants in Philadelphia.

Grilled Asparagus at Pesce

Grilled Asparagus at Pesce

Melazane at Pesce

Melazane at Pesce

Biscotti and Vin Santo at Pesce

Biscotti and Vin Santo at Pesce

Although short, the trip was a success despite the fact that we didn’t plan anything. Our next big trip will be Chicago at the end of June and we’ve both been there a few times and know we’ll have a great time. Until then, all Philly all the time.

Cheese at Talula’s Garden

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We had some pretty incredible cheese plates at Talula’s Garden recently, and we thought we’d share the pictures with you.

Gusto! A Slow Food Study in Rare Italian Cheese

Talula’s Garden offers six different cheese plates that change with the seasons, and this time we decided to try “Gusto! A Slow Food Study in Rare Italian Cheese.” This plate was amazing and quite the treat. On the day we were there (it has changed slightly since then), it included:

Handmade Spring Ricotta (Cow, PA)
Langa La Tur (Cow/Goat, Piedmont)
Testun al Barolo (Cow/Goat, Piedmont)
Rochetta (Cow/Goat/Sheep, Piedmont)
Parmigiano-Reggiano Stravecchio (Cow, Parma)
Dolcelatte Gorgonzola (Cow, Lombardy)

We loved all of these, but here are some notes on our favorites:

Handmade Spring Ricotta (Cow, PA) – this housemade cheese was a light, fluffy, dream. Soft on the tongue, with just a hint of truffle, but not so much truffle as to overpower or overwhelm. I could eat this all day.

Langa La Tur (Cow/Goat, Piedmont) – OK, this cheese and I go way back. I hadn’t had it in a few years, so it was wonderful to taste it again. In the past, I’d called this “the ice cream of cheese.” Upon tasting it again, I don’t think I would use that descriptor, but it was still wonderfully creamy and decadent. It’s expensive and somewhat hard to find on its own, so it was nice to just have a little taste without the commitment of buying a whole round.

Testun al Barolo (Cow/Goat, Piedmont) – this one features a rind made from Nebbiolo grape must – need one say more?

In addition to the above, our bartender also prepared us a plate of three of his favorites, which included Délice de Bourgogne, an aged gouda, and a soft cheese made with dill that I didn’t catch the name of. All of these were wonderful as well, especially the buttery Délice de Bourgogne.

Although a little pricy, I highly recommend the cheese experience at Talula’s Garden. We would rarely have the opportunity to try, let alone buy, many of these cheeses, so it was certainly worth it in our opinion.

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San Francisco Trip

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Holly and I will be in San Francisco the rest of this week. She needs to be there for a conference and I’m tagging along for a bit of a vacation. We haven’t really planned much as far as restaurants to try, but I’m sure we’ll make some great discoveries. We’ve gotten a lot of recommendations from friends, which we really appreciate.

We’ve both been to San Francisco before. My trip was seven years ago and I recall not being particularly impressed. However, San Francisco was the last stop at the end of a longer trip and I think that by the time I got there, I was worn out and eager to get home. I’m looking forward to giving it a fresh look.

San Francisco!

I would like to keep up with blogging our food adventures, but I know that will be difficult since I’m sure we’ll both be plenty busy. If nothing else, we’ll do a wrap-up post when we get home. Even if we don’t write posts, we will probably be keeping up with our SuperPlus twitter and/or Facebook page.

Purveyor Highlight: Shore Catch

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Since we’ve been enjoying so much fresh seafood lately, we thought we’d take a post to highlight one of our favorite purveyors. Shore Catch, from Barnegat, NJ, is a regular at the Rittenhouse Farmers’ Market, and brings us a variety of fresh seafood from the Jersey Shore.

One of our favorite things to get from Shore Catch is their clams. Tom has a basic recipe for clams, which we vary a little bit each time depending on what we have available.

We also enjoy their scallops, which Tom has been known to sear up either for brunch or for dinner.

Shore Catch often has really nice cod, which we’ve used to make prosciutto-wrapped cod, or just simply baked with lemon and garlic.

When available, the mahi mahi we’ve gotten from Shore Catch has been incredible. Lately we’ve been making this with a piccata preparation and serving it over pasta.

We’ve also tried their flounder, which has been lovely, also prepared piccata-style and topped with fresh tomatoes and basil.

Shore Catch has plenty of other seafood choices, depending on the season, including oysters, squid, tuna, swordfish, and monkfish, but these have been our favorites so far. We’re thankful to have fresh, local fish so readily available!

Bacon Presse, Homemade Baked Beans and Eggs

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Now that winter is over, more businesses are returning to the Rittenhouse Farmers’ Market. One very welcomed return is that of PorcSalt, which produces local and sustainable charcuterie, pâtés, and terrines. In fact, they had been absent from the market for significantly longer than the winter. We don’t recall exactly how long but we do remember being curious about their products when we first moved to Philly in fall of 2011 and they seemed to disappear shortly after that. Luckily, one of our favorite local restaurants, C19, has used PorcSalt for their charcuterie, so we were able to sample some of their wonderful meats.

A few weekends ago, we went to the market hoping to get some bacon from them only to find out that it would be another week or so until they will have any. All was not lost, however. Among other things, they had a small package of bacon presse. I actually wasn’t entirely sure what bacon presse  is, but, well, it has something to do with bacon, so it had to be good. It’s more conventionally referred to as pressed pork. I looked it up later and found a good explanation of the process from Gordon Ramsey, PorcSalt describes there’s as “a small pressed slab of slow cooked heritage bacon, with sharp wine, thyme, garlic, and jus.”

Back in January when we were in Seattle, we had an excellent brunch at Local 360. Holly had fried chicken and waffles and I had pork belly, beans and eggs.

Pork Belly, Baked Beans and Eggs at Local 360

We decided to try the latter with our pressed pork. We also decided to bake our beans ourselves. I searched for a recipe but wanted something that needed a relatively short time to cook and I found a promising one from the Food Network.

Their recipe calls for:

1 large onion, diced
2 (16-ounce) cans pork and beans
3 tablespoons prepared yellow mustard
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup light brown sugar
4 tablespoons ketchup
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 pound bacon strips, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

Of course, I made some adjustments. I used a can of mixed beans, part of a large red onion, and our own homemade mustard. I cut way back on the sweet elements and used about an 1/8 of a cup of brown sugar and maybe 2 or 3 tablespoons of maple syrup. Of course, since we were having this with pork belly, I left out the pork.

This recipe calls for mixing everything together and the putting it in the oven at 350 for 45-60 minutes, which was much more acceptable than some of the ones I found that take hours.

Once the beans were done, Holly quickly pan fried the pork and I made some sunnyside up eggs.

Pressed Pork, Homemade Baked Bean and Eggs

One of the many things we love about going to the farmers’ market is that we don’t always know what we’ll come home with. Often something will catch our eye and we’ll bring it home not knowing what we’ll do with it, and, as in this case, we wind up making something delicious!