Food Crawl Part 3: Oakland and Berkeley

For the third installment of food crawl, we headed over to the East Bay. Heather planned this round which was great because she knows all the good places to hit in Oakland and Berkeley. We were supposed to start at Bakesale Betty's, but they ran out of chicken sandwiches before we got there (at 2:15 - they close at 3).  Big huge bummer. Especially because we must have only just missed it because we saw  plenty of people unwrapping or just starting their incredible looking sandwiches.

So instead, we walked down the road and started at Burma Superstar.  I had never attempted to try Burma Superstar because I've been intimidated by the lines. If you feel the same way, I highly suggest you check out the Oakland location at about 2PM because it was empty. We ordered the  tea leaf salad and rainbow salad and you should too. 

This is the tea leaf salad, and the leaves really do come from Burma (or so says the menu).  I loved the presentation of the salads at the table - they arrive with all the components segregated to a section of the dish and then the waiter (very quickly) goes through all ingredients and then tosses it table side. Besides the tea leaves there are tomatoes, lettuce, peanuts, fried garlic and a whole bunch of other stuff. It tastes like nothing else I've had before and I loved those fried garlic pieces. 

I wanted to try the rainbow salad when I saw that it had 22 different ingredients.  How can you pass up a salad that has 22 ingredients? I wish I could remember what was in it besides noodles (4 different types) more fried garlic, tofu, papaya, pepper, fried onion and 11 other ingredients I now can't remember. I actually liked this salad better than the tea leaf salad. All the different textures and flavors came together to make a really distinct and fun dish. I believe the menu called it "a party in your mouth".

Our next stop was over in Berkeley at Vik's Chaat Corner. This place is part grocery store, part restaurant. The restaurant is no frills: order at the counter, sit at tables that are reminiscent of a high school cafeteria, and eat your food with... biodegradable sporks.

At Vik's we ordered a couple of mango lassis and a veggie kathi and then tried to figure out how to eat the kathi with the sporks.

The four of us quickly devoured both the drinks and the food. The kathi (which is only served on the weekend) was really nicely spiced and flavorful and the lassi would have been perfect to drink with it if I hadn't finished it before the food arrived.  I also liked that nearly everything that was left when we finished eating - plate, cups and sporks - were compostable and the restaurant has a big green bin to allow you to do just that.

Next up on the agenda was the Imperial Tea Court, also in Berkeley.  They have a huge variety of different teas and also a decent selection of food. We decided to try a white tea and an herbal tea as well as some veggie dumplings.

Imperial Tea Court allows you to experience different types of tea service, and we chose the Gaiwan tea presentation.  Both teas were really mild and subtle and though it wasn't my most favorite tea I've ever had, I really enjoyed the presentation of it as well as just hanging out and talking with my friends over tea.

Next up on our list was ice cream. We drove over to Ici in Berkeley and waited in line and debated which flavors to get. We were only going to get two, but we couldn't decide between them all and in the end picked three: toasted almond, chocolate caramel and orange rosemary toffee.

Ici is another shop I would love just for the design, but the ice cream really holds up. My favorite of the three flavors was the orange rosemary toffee - three flavors you wouldn't think to put together but tasted amazing. Everyone else picked the toasted almond chocolate almond as their favorite, but really everything we tried - including the flavors that we sampled before ordering - were great. I have to say, I much prefer Ici to Humphrey Slocomb, and I think it's pretty comparable to Bi-Rite Creamery.

After ice cream, we decided to take a little digestion break and headed over to the Berkeley Rose Garden which is now in full bloom.

We wandered around here for awhile, building up our appetites for our final stop, Boot and Shoe.  Boot and Shoe is a pizza place and the sequel to Pizzaiolo (the name is held over from the former tenants of the location).  We hung out for awhile in the bar, drinking sparkling rose, while we waited for a table.

The bar is tucked away in the back of the restaurant and after awhile we decided to stop waiting for our table and commandeered the back corner of the bar and started ordering food.

This is the farro salad minus the burrata but plus the ricotta. I only had a small bite of this one - at this point our group had grown to six - but I liked what I tried.

We also ordered a couple of pizzas: potato, pancetta, fontina and rosemary and a margherita pizza topped with arugula.

I loved the potato/pancetta combination but wasn't overwhelmed by the margherita.  The atmosphere was fun and I liked the weird paintings on the wall and I would totally go back to hang out there. 

This food crawl was the super-sized version of our previous food crawls and a really good time. Thanks Heather, for picking out such great spots. Now, when can we go back to Bakesale Betty?


(for restaurant addresses and phone numbers, click below)  

San Francisco Food Crawl Part 2: The Mission

After a fun - but rained out - first attempt at a food crawl, we finally settled on a date for round two.   This time we decided to keep it all walkable, so all of the places we went were in the Mission. I like the idea of doing a food crawl by region anyway - San Francisco has so many different neighborhoods with great food, plus it's a good excuse to keep doing more of these crawls and exploring different areas of the city. 

Our first stop was The Monk's Kettle. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I like a good font and logo, and this place has both.  Even though they are known for their huge variety of beer - both on tap and in bottles - we were there specifically for the giant pretzel. And since our group was bigger this time (we lost one person, but gained three, for a total of seven) we decided we needed to order more food at each place.  

On the left is the mac and cheese made with house-made cheddar ale sauce and toasted bread crumbs.  We didn't love the mac and cheese - it was ok, but we all wished it were a bit heartier (the non-vegetarians were specifically mentioning it'd be much better with bacon).  The pretzel lived up to it's reputation. It's served with stone ground mustard and more house-made cheddar ale sauce and it is so much better than the pretzels you get from street carts. 

It's a little bit awkward going into a restaurant with seven people and then telling them you aren't really there for a meal - just to try a couple of things. Our waiter totally went with it and was very sweet about having us taking up a whole table.  We definitely could have eaten more there - and I fully intend to go back to try the lobster pot pie - but we were pacing ourselves for the rest of the day. 

Round two was easy enough to get to - across the street from The Monk's Kettle is a Pakistani/Indian restaurant called Pakwan.  We stopped in here quickly to get some chai to go.  I have to admit that I am used to the American-ized chai from places like Starbucks and Peets.  This was so much more subtle and not nearly as sweet - and at $1 a cup, it's also a way better deal. We took our chais and headed down 16th Street to our next stop, Balompie Cafe. 

So this place is tricky to find if you're like me and rely on Google maps, because Google maps will tell you it is on 18th Street and Alabama.  Ignore that, because it isn't there. We were lucky because as we headed down 18th Street we happened to find it in front of us (it's at Capp, between Mission and Van Ness, if you're wondering). 

There are a few locations of Balompies, but this one is the oldest one. The 7x7 list tells you to go to Balompies #3 (in the outer Mission/Bernal Heights area) but that wasn't walkable for us and really, I don't know how necessary that is because we all loved the papusas here. We ordered three different types - bean & cheese, zucchini & cheese and the loroco con queso, which was "native Salvadorean vegetables & cheese". Are you seeing the cheese theme here? Our group was comprised of cheese lovers, so we were all very, very happy.  Each order comes with two papusas and costs $2.50. I really don't know of a cheaper meal than that.

This was my first ever papusa, and I am now a big fan. Usually if we want cheap eats in the Mission, we go to one of the many taquerias in the neighborhood, and I'm so excited to have a new option. We all left here talking about how we want to come back.

Next up on our list: Dynamo Donuts. By the time we got there - around 2pm - they were sold out of all donuts except the cornmeal rosemary cherry and lemon thyme. I was slightly disappointed because I had wanted to try the spiced chocolate donut. Once we tried these two though I didn't mind missing the chocolate - they were both incredible.   The owner was also there and very friendly: he told me that on any given day they have about 7 - 10 different varieties, and that the spiced chocolate is not one of his favorites. The most popular donut, which they have daily, is the maple glazed bacon apple. I guess I'll have to go back for that one too.

He also took me out back to show me the patio that they were just finishing getting ready to debut - it opens tomorrow!

Our group had dwindled by this point, but our group of four persevered and headed back up 24th Street to Humphry Slocombe.

They are always so nice there and let you sample all of their crazy flavors. I tried two that I would never want to have a whole cup of - golden beet safron sorbet and thai chili lime sorbet. The beet one really tasted of beets, probably not something you'd really want for dessert. The chili lime was surprising - at first I didn't taste much, and then it really gives you a big chili punch. 

In the end, we picked three: Secret Breakfast (cornflakes and bourbon), Balsamic Caramel and Chocolate Smoked Salt. We were too late to try the Harvey Milk & Honey Graham Cracker ice cream, which was only available today, for Harvey Milk Day.   None of us liked the Balsamic Caramel - too much balsamic, not enough caramel. We all liked the Secret Breakfast but our favorite was the Chocolate Smoked Salt.  

We left there full but not yet done with our mission: we had one last stop, at Anthony's Cookies. 

I'm not sure if this is true in all cities, but I love that in San Francisco you can find, in walking distance from each other, shops that specialize in just donuts or just cookies.  I wouldn't think that would be a sustainable business model, but Anthony's has been around since 1997 so they must be doing something right. We ordered three different types: Cookies and Cream, Toffee Chip and German Chocolate.  Much like with the ice cream, the one we liked best was not the one on the 7x7 list: the toffee chip was the hands down winner. We all liked the cookies and cream and none of us liked the German Chocolate,  which didn't really have much flavor.

Though we could have followed up our cookies with pie from Mission Pie or cupcakes from Mission Minis, we decided to call it a day here. We walked three miles, spent about $15 each and consumed more calories than those three miles could possibly offset. What a perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

(for restaurant addresses and phone numbers, click below)

San Francisco Food Crawl Part 1: Ferry Building

Last year, a co-worker told me she had gone on a food crawl with some friends. This was the first time I had heard of a food crawl, which is basically like a pub crawl but with food - so obviously way better. I had been wanting to do my own version ever since I heard about it, and so after about a hundred emails trying to figure out what date works best for 4 people, we decided on this past Sunday.  We picked a bunch of places (mostly based off the 7x7 100 Things To Eat List) where we could go as a group of 4 and order one item and share it between us, which would allow us to try lots of different things before we got full. 

We started out at the Ferry Building, at Mijita. They are on the list for their Albondigas soup, which I learned when I ordered it is actually meatball soup. This was a slight problem because two of our four are vegetarian. They ordered something else, and Brittany and I shared the soup.

It turns out that Mexican meatball soup tastes a lot like tortilla soup - the flavors to me were really similar, plus meatballs. It was good - but I don't know that it would be on my top 100 things to eat list. The two of us made a small dent in the giant bowl before we called it quits and got ready to move on to the next stop, Miette.

Remember when I said I'm a font snob?  Miette's branding has the opposite effect on me that Philz Coffee does. Everything about this place - the logo, the packaging, the displays - makes me want to buy something. How could it not be good when it looks like this?

We managed to only buy the one thing on the list: gingerbread snaps.  They had a good crunch to them, but again, I'm not sure that of all the amazing things at Miette that this one would be at the top of my list.

Our last stop at the Ferry Building was supposed to be Out The Door (for their spring rolls). We showed up and found this sign: 

And.... that was it for the food crawl. We hadn't accounted for the fact that it would be pouring on Sunday, the kind of rain that would not be fun to roam around the city in, looking for food. Instead, we headed to my apartment, ordered pizza and watched the Devil Wears Prada.   It worked out though, because pizza + movie + your girl friends is high on my list of 100 things to do (many, many times) before you die.