This Ain't Your Father's Vietnam

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There are some things that have been written, and written, and written about - The Slanted Door is one of them. There is no shortage of people who have shared their blow by blow accounts about the intricacies of the night's experiences. If this is your sort of thing you can read here, here (called Yummo! *eyes rolling*), and here. They appear to be very detailed and photographed.

The Slanted Door, in case you haven't been, is a sleek Vietnamese eatery located on the water, at the Ferry Building. The Slanted Door is to San Francisco what Babbo (or Babbo's, as my boss calls it) is to New York City. The reservations are a pain, word among the city's visitors is out (and has been for quite some time), and the prices are commensurate with its reputation and locale. (Most people fail to factor in that a view of the water with the Bay Bridge twinkling in the background doesn't exactly come for free.)

The Million+ Dollar View from Outdoor Patio

As an appetizer we ordered the Barbecued Willis Ranch Pork Spareribs with honey-hoisin sauce which made my Top 10 Things I Consumed in SF list. These were perfectly cooked and had a nice crispy skin to go with the firm but tender pork lightly coated in the sweet sauce.

Still partially full from our lunch at Tony's Pizza Napoletana we opted for one more appetizer (Grilled Pork Sausage Stuffed Monterey Squid with cilantro, basil, chili and lime), and one entree (Cellophane Noodles with fresh dungeness crab meat). This squid was a very well balanced dish that knocked back the spiciness of the sausage and chili with the acidity of the lime and coolness of the herbs.

My least favorite was the muted flavors of the noodles and crab. There wasn't a whole lot of crab - but then again I didn't expect there to be at $18.

Is The Slanted Door worth a visit? I think it is - even if you only go there once. While the prices are not exactly cheap, it isn't prohibitively expensive. Location, views, and decor all cost money, and when you have packed house most nights it makes it that much easier to charge a premium.

The Slanted Door
1 Ferry Building
San Francisco, CA 94111
(415) 861-8032
www.slanteddoor.com

Tony's Pizza Napoletana

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There was a time that you could count on one hand the number of establishments cranking out wood fired Neapolitan pizza. In Peter Reinhart's book American Pie the only Neapolitan that is referred to is Pizzetta 211. [It should be noted when I took Reinhart's class back in June he said it probably wasn't worth the trip to solely try the pizza - they aren't exactly located in the thick of things.]

In Ed Levine's book Slice of Heaven, exactly three San Francisco pizzerias are mentioned (A16 which was closed for remodeling, the previously mentioned Pizzetta 211, and Tommaso's which didn't exactly get a ringing endorsement by Levine).

As I looked at the travel map that we had been compiling over the course of the last year, I found myself saying, "For a place that doesn't have much in the way of pizza, there sure are a bunch of pizza places on this map." Our first stop was going to be Tony's Pizza Napoletana.

Apologies for the lame picture. I accidentally erased the originals.

Tony Gemignani's restaurant is actually right next door and connected to Tony's Coal-Fired Pizza and Slice House. Between the two establishments he cranks out like five different styles of pizza (Classic American, Classic Italian, Roman, Sicilian, and Napoletana).

For me the attraction was that Gemignani had actually won the 2007 Best Pizza Margherita in the World Pizza Cup in, get this, Naples, Italy. He was the first American and non Neapolitan to ever win the award.

We arrived in San Francisco just in time for lunch...well....maybe the ass end of lunch. Since there wasn't a whole lot of eating going on during our morning flight, to imply we were starving when we landed would be an understatement.

We dropped our bags off at the the Le Petit Auberge and headed straight to North Beach (thankfully all downhill), to Tony's Pizza Napoletana. The restaurant ended up being about half a block from the hotel (Washington Square Inn), we stayed at the last time we were in SF.

The restaurant itself is certainly a casual place that welcomes both locals and tourists. The walls are lined with subway tile and the interior is tastefully decorated. There were thankfully no kitschy murals of Old Napoli painted on any of the walls. The restaurant is bisected by a wall, the wood fired oven and pizzaioli are on one side, the entrance and bar on the other. I would try to snag a table on the oven side of the restaurant.

As sacrilegious as it is, my wife is averse to pizza margherita. We wanted to order the truffle pizza but fell victim to the small window between white and black truffle season. They were willing to give us a pizza that was "truffle-esque" (sans truffles and instead drizzled with truffle oil) at a greatly reduced price. We instead ordered the New Yorker (muzz, hand crushed tomato sauce, pepperoni, sausage, ricotta, chopped garlic & oregano).

Since I lost out on the option to get the margherita I felt the abundance of toppings kind of overshadowed the dough. If there's one thing I noticed it's that Tony's garlic, whereever the hell it is from, brings the spice. I can't say for sure how much water I consumed that day, but the garlic was certainly whipping my ass all the way up to dinner.

The cornicione is texturally spot on. Each bite offers a soft pillowy mouth feel, with the light crisp that you would expect from being cooked in the high heat of a wood fired oven. My only criticism is that the dough hand a touch of blandness to it that I wasn't quite expecting.

My overall impression is that Tony's is certainly a worthy pizza destination. I found that the numerous pizza spots that I would stop at in the coming days would be as successful in putting together the total pizza like they did here at Tony's.

If you are putting together a pizza map (and I suggest you do), or even just a San Francisco eating map (which I also suggest you do), Tony's Pizza Napoletana needs to be put on both. I just wish I had more time, and stomach room to try the other four types of pizza.

Tony's Pizza Napoletana
1570 Stockton Street
San Francisco, CA 94133
(415) 835-9888
tonyspizzanapoletana.com/



Tony's Coal-Fired Pizza and Slice House
1556 Stockton St
San Francisco, CA 94133
(415) 835-9888
www.internationalschoolofpizza.com

The Anatomy of a Food Vacation

There was a time that my work space at home was nothing but piles of magazines containing endless bookmarks on places of interest for out-of-town dining or food related stops:

• Page upon page of torn out magazine articles with dining suggestions
  
• Hand written notes showing where to get your hands on the greatest chicharrones ever created
• Scraps of paper vaguely outlining the existence of an ice cream shop named after characters from Are You Being Served? - selling a most interesting flavor called "Jesus Juice"
• Whole sheets of paper listing "The 150 Perfect Places to Have a Beer"...and we aren't even getting into all of the minutia that can be found on my hard drive.
  

Everything has its place - and if it has to do with food and travel it was covering up my immediate living space.

I found that one of the biggest downfalls to pile making was the disorganization of it all. You've been hoarding this information for months, if not longer. The end result is a lot of piles: you've got a San Francisco pile (huge), an NYC pile (also huge), a Portland pile, and a miscellaneous pile of random places that were totally mixed together. So you're ready to head out of town to San Francisco and the week before you leave, you decide to start sifting through all of your Bay Area stuff. After ten minutes you've slogged about a quarter of the way through this insane stack of shit and decide maybe you should pack first. Realizing you don't really want to do that either - you choose to do the logical thing and go on Chowhound to look for more stuff.

The night before your flight comes. You've now decided that you'd better get it together and develop some kind of itinerary. Paralyzed by the fact that you have no idea where these places are in relation to each other, and that the weather forecast says it's going to be in the 80's (yes the 80's in San Francisco) for the next five to seven days, you realize you are screwed. You have no idea where the hell your going or whether or not to put your complete trust in the weather man and pack *gulp* lots of warm weather clothes. You decide to do the next logical thing - wing it. It worked in college, right?

Afraid that the weather man was playing a joke of LeBron Jamesian proportions, you pack as though it's not going to be in the 80's for the next seven days (It wasn't. It was in the 90's for a couple of those days). You spend the next seven days walking up and down the streets of San Francisco going to shops you really don't feel like going to and eating at places you really don't feel like eating at. Not realizing that nowhere in this town will you find air conditioning, you end up spending the better part of a week suffering from a severe case of swamp ass. It's on the flight home that you begin to kick yourself knowing your trip could have been sooooo much better if you would have been able to dislodge your head from your ass long enough to make a sensible itinerary. If only you had your act together.

My New Year's resolution was to get myself organized. It's September...just in time for me to make good on that resolution.

It just so happened that during a brief [and by brief I mean no longer than a 4 to 90 minute] workday internet interlude - I stumbled upon the almighty Google Maps.This wondrous little tool allows you to catalog all of those little places that you see during the course of your magazine or newspaper reading, television watching, or internet trawling. Any possible scrap of pile making medium can be put into a map, with any kind of theme, for any kind of geographic area, complete with notes on how you found it and links to where you found out about it.

Google maps was about to make my travels a whole lot easier...

Feel free to watch the tutorial here.

You can actually collaborate with other people on maps, as well. Regina and I pretty much added and subtracted stuff from the San Francisco map over the course of the last few months. All you have to do is give the person permission to collaborate and you're ready to go. Maps can also be made public or private. Often times people will ask me where to go in certain cities and I just email them a link to the map so they can see it.

Sunshine and 88

As our trip got closer we began to organize the individual stores, restaurants, and activities into more localized areas so we could spend a day or two in a neighborhood instead of haphazardly crisscrossing the city. This turned out to be a huge time saver because you could see just how close or far apart some of these places really were.

You can organize it anyway you'd like, but we decided to do ours chronologically (see the left hand column of the screen). We basically organized it by day (only downside - I wish there was a way to put a header in between certain areas to separate them by day).

The chronological order worked out great when I opened it up on googlemymaps on my iphone. While mymaps on the iphone doesn't maintain the different icons you use on your regular Google map, it does locate all of them on a map so you can use it to navigate to those locations. There's also another app I've been playing around with called UpNext 3d that has some promise...too bad I found it after the trip.

I realize that most people aren't as fanatical as I am when it comes to this stuff, but I think regardless of whether you're a zealot or not, Google Maps is the perfect vacation planning tool.

This ended up being our map for last week's trip. Most anything near bottom of the list, we didn't get to, or was closed due to renovations or a day off. With the exception of Hawai'i (which is pretty damn easy to plan for due to the relatively small number of restaurants), this was by far our most organized and enjoyable vacation ever.

I would suggest viewing the larger map since smaller one is pretty hard to read.


View San Francisco in a larger map

Our Monday in San Francisco

Monday was going to be our first full day in San Francisco. The night before had been a small taste of what the city had to offer. What can I say? After just half a day it was lust. Would I fall in love with this place. Would it displace the current love of my life NYC? Highly unlikely, but never say never.

We started our day where most first time visitors find themselves, Alcatraz. Much like the Statue of Liberty, I figured this would be the first and last time I ever go there. I was right. It was a very interesting place but it's like the Statue of Liberty or the Roman Coliseum, once you've been there once I think you check it off your list and move on. Very interesting histories, but do you really need to back for seconds?

After our visit to Alcatraz we went to the Ferry Building Marketplace. Wow. If The Rock is someplace you go one and done, the Ferry Building is on the other end of the spectrum. I could eat at that place every single day. Loaded with a fantastic collection of locally owned artisanal vendors (think Reading Terminal, Quincy Market, North Market, and to a lesser extent West Side Market), this market offers something for everyone.

We went to Boulevard for dinner. Located in the Audiffred Building near the Ferry Building, Boulevard has a very warm and homey interior. For the starter we had Dungeness Crab Salad. It was actually a light way to begin since we both knew that we were going to order entrees that were going to be a little on the heavy side. Her entree was the Berkshire Pork Chop which was wood oven roasted with Melted Sage & Butterball Potatoes, Pancetta Black Mission Figs with Huckleberries, Pinenuts & Chestnut Honey Erbette Chard, Roasted Pork Jus. I had the California Lamb T-Bone wood oven roasted mint, parsley & parmesan stuffing
Fresh Italian Butter Beans with Tomato, Herbs, Garlic & Arugula petite lamb sausage & roasted lamb jus.

For dessert we both had the Warm Valrhona Chocolate Ganache Cake. Wow. The whole dinner was very good. Some people complain that they think that this place is overpriced. It was about what I would have expected considering the location and the high quality of the ingredients.
The food at Boulevard is very solid. It's not a place that you're going to find a bunch of crazy starters and entrees. Some might even say that the food at Boulevard is "safe". That may be, but I think overall there's something for everyone here.

Boulevard
1 Mission St
San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 543-6084

www.boulevardrestaurant.com

Restaurant Gary Danko

Whenever I hear the name Restaurant Gary Danko I think of the movie Donnie Darko. In some ways I suppose it was kind of fitting. By the end of the night it may have actually had some similarities in terms of the bizarre behavior that took place during our dinner.

This was one of the first reservations we made once we decided we were going to visit San Francisco. As it turned out, it was also the first dinner we had once we arrived. Since we were staying at the Washington Square Inn in North Beach it was maybe a fifteen minute walk to the restaurant. Mrs. Dine-O-Mite and I arrived a little early for our reservation and ended up waiting about fifteen minutes to be seated.

The hostess takes us to our table which was a small table for two, sandwiched between another table for two and a four top. Once we sat down we both decided on the 4 course tasting menu.

First Course:
We each chose the Sweet Corn Soup with Dungeness Crab, Red Pepper, Créme Fraiche and Pancetta Biscuit. All I can say is that this dinner was over before it started. Hands down, right out of the gate this was the best dish of the night. I say this not because the other dishes were that bad, but because the soup was that good. Some seriously sweet corn and large chunks of Dungeness crab put this soup in the same league as the Jean George pea soup from last summer. If you get anything off of the Gary Danko menu, this would be it.

Second Course:
She had the Horseradish Crusted Salmon Medallion with Dilled Cucumbers and Mustard Sauce I had the Pancetta Wrapped Frog Legs with Roast Tomatoes, Garlic and Parsley Purées. I had never had frog legs before so I figured I’d give it a whirl. That being said, I think they were okay but I would have rather had something else. I can now check frog legs off the list. As for my wife, she really enjoyed her entree and that's saying a lot because she's not typically a big fan of dill.

Between the second and third course A pair of husbands and wives sit down next to us. My guess is that they spent too long waiting at the bar. The women (one in particular) were pretty crocked, the men weren’t drunk but were getting pretty loose with their comments. Anyway, the table next to them is getting up and one of the drunk women almost starts a fight with a girl in in the other party because she thought she was listening in on her conversation. You would have thought it was Friday night at the local watering hole.

Third Course:
She had the Herb Crusted Loin of Lamb with Tian of Vegetables and Polenta.
I had the Seared Filet of Beef with Potato-Leek Napoleon, Cassis Glazed Shallots and Blue Cheese Butter. What can I say? It’s filet of beef and lamb. Again, it tasted good but this was not ground breaking.

At about this time. a couple sits down on the other side of us...he’s dressed like he just happened to be walking by and decided to pop in, complete with computer bag. They get settled and almost immediately, he pulls a laptop out of his bag and puts it on the table. I thought it was a little strange, but whatever. I figured he’d check his email and put it away. Wrong. Instead, he puts the computer between he and his date so that they can both look at it at the same time. The staff is trying to take their order and put dishes down on this 3’x3’ table with a laptop in the middle of it. Since there were mirrors on the wall we could see they were looking at pictures they took of food. It was strange as hell, comical really. They barely had enough room on their table for bread and drinks, let alone the laptop and their camera...I guess they were posting on their blog in real time!

Fourth (and final) Course:
We both opted for the highly recommended Baked Chocolate Soufflé with Two Sauces. The server comes to the table and carries out a dramatic table side presentation where they puncture the soufflé and pour in the two sauces. It was probably the next best thing to the soup. I would highly recommend this dessert over the others I saw coming out. Actually most of the desserts coming out were soufflés.

Overall, I thought I got my money’s worth. Would I go back? Probably not. I think there are just too many other good, if not great places, to eat at in this city. The service was very gracious (even to laptop watchers and drunken wives), the ambiance was wonderful, I just don’t think it warrants a trip back. However, if you haven’t been there I would recommend trying it at least once.

Restaurant Gary Danko
800 N Point St
San Francisco, CA 94109
www.garydanko.com

Pizza My Heart

I really sometimes wonder about the things I read on Yelp. It can seem as though certain cities are more accurate (or more suited to my tastes) than other cities. Since the visit to Darby Dan's went so amazingly well, I figured we'd try another lunch time Yelp referral for the day.

Since the Monterey Bay Aquarium was the morning and early afternoon's entertainment we figured we'd try to find some nearby pizza-by-the-slice place. The goal was to not ruin our appetite since were had a much anticipated reservation for Passion Fish in Pacific Grove.

So where would our search through Yelp lead us?

We ended up going to Pizza My Heart, a chain of pizza places based in NoCal. Since this is the only one I've ever been to I don't know if they all have the surfer decor or not. This one did. The bright airy restaurant had a selection of 3 or 4 pizza-by-the-slice pizzas out front (a la Sbarro). Of course if you were hungry enough you could obviously order an entire pie.

Made from hand tossed dough, the reheated slices had a subtle crunch to them when you bit into them. Even though there was a little bit of crunch to them you could still fold them over. Good stuff. With a lighter but still very tasty sauce and a moderate amount of cheese the pizza was very enjoyable.

What I also found interesting about Pizza My Heart was that the side bar had a very wide array of spices you could sprinkle on top of your pizza. I can't say that I've ever seen that many spices for putting on pizza, before.


Overall I thought this place was a winner. It's one that I'd definitely go back to. Unfortunately, I thought this was going to be one of about three pizza places I'd try during our trip (A16 and Pizzaiolo were also on my radar), but it ended up being the only one. Like I told my wife, though, it gives us two more reasons to go back.

South SF, 17 Mile Dr, and Darby Dan's

I don't know how the rest of you feel about this, but my wife and I really love trying to dig up good places to eat. More often than not price isn't really as important as the experience. We had two spots to pick from for lunch that are close to San Francisco Airport. We narrowed it down to Darby Dan's and Little Lucca. I don't remember the reason we decided on Darby Dan's, but we did.

Darby Dan's Sandwich Co.
733 Airport Blvd
South San Francisco, CA 94080
(650) 876-0122
No Known Website

We get the rental car and head a couple of miles to Darby Dan's Sandwich Company for a bite to eat before we head to Santa Cruz. Now I remember why we picked it. I didn't want to drive out of the way to go to Little Lucca's. This was literally minutes from the airport.

Has anyone ever had "Dutch Crunch" bread before? Up to this point I hadn't. With the exception of the heavily sesame seeded bun at Primo's in Philadelphia, this is an epic sandwich bread. I think the best way I can describe it is a white type bread with a rice flour topping that crackles apart (kind of like old paint or varnish crackling). It gives you the crunchiness of say a french bread but the crackling exposes some of the softer bread underneath. At the end of it all, you end up with a crunchy yet less chewy sandwich.

The Crab/Shrimp Sandwich is served on Friday and Saturday only. Mrs. Dine O Mite opted for that, while I decided on the Darby Dan. My sandwich, The Darby Dan, was your typical italian hoagie type of sandwich (ham, mortadella, Italian Salami, and provolone). Not entirely exciting from outward appearances. However, the Dutch Crunch bread combined with the jalapeno relish, and garlic mayo launched this sandwich into the stratosphere. I've never had the bread or the relish in my life, but the two combined with garlic mayo was freakin' awesome.

Darby Dan's is the real deal. If you want a unique and awesome sandwich experience, stop by to or from San Francisco airport. You'll be glad you did. Next time I will have to try Little Lucca's just for comparison's sake. 

17 Mile Drive

We decided to check into the Jabberwock Inn (the bed and breakfast we were staying at). Really nice place perched on a steep hill in Monterey. I would recommend staying there. Clean, affordable, lots of amenities, and just an all around nice setting, as well as a view of Monterey Bay. After that we decided to do the majority of 17 Mile Drive. A winding road that laces around the perimeter of Carmel Bay through Pacific Grove, Carmel, and Pebble Beach. It's a neat ride but now that I've done it I don't think I need to do it again. There are some cool views, but I found the architecture in Carmel much more interesting than the coastal views from 17 Mile Drive. 

The Bad News Keeps on Coming ...and I could care less

For the past week things have absolutely sucked at my house. For starters, the rain that we haven’t had for the last month decided to finally come just in time for the weekend. The Buckeyes decided to pull the January disappearing act in the middle of September. The rain that had been coming straight down was now going sideways. We lost to the Steelers….AGAIN. Then the power decided to go the way of the sunshine and take a few days off. Sucks, doesn’t it?

Well, I suppose it would, if I were home.

You see, on Friday morning when the rain was still tolerable I was on a direct flight to San Francisco. By the time we landed the fog had burned off and there was sunshine. When the Beanie-less Buckeyes were getting pummeled I was wandering around Carmel. On Sunday, when the really nasty weather arrived on the North Coast, I was watching otters at the Monterrey Bay Aquarium. During the Browns’ brutalization, it was dinner delight at Gary Danko. Power outage? Well, that did suck because there would be some refrigerator fatalities when I got back.

For probably the next week or two we’ll be writing about our trip to the Bay Area. My guess is that some people probably won’t want to hear about things that exist on the other side of the country. I think more than anything I’m doing it to add to the body of things we’ve written about up to this point.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read about cool things to see or do. Then forget about them. That’s why I like to arrange all of my visits by city or neighborhood so that people don’t have to look through the entire list of blog material.

I think the other reason I do it is because we get a lot of our ideas from places like Zagat, Yelp, Chowhound, and to a lesser degree Urbanspoon. (I’m sorry, but when Steak on a Stone is voted number one restaurant in Cleveland, you really have to call into question the method by which the site operates). Methods aside, I think you owe it to these sites to add your two cents so that they continue to develop more reliable opinions.

I will say that I take into account the hyper critical nature of Zagat, the hip factor heavy Yelp, the hair splitting of Chowhound, and the ballot stuffing of Urbanspoon and attempt to formulate a list of places to go.

So in the coming weeks offer opinions, tell me about your favorite San Francisco spots.