Bar Tartine, Mission

Yesterday for breakfast we went on a hunt for the best poached egg. The hunt consisted of me doing doing some googling for poached eggs in the Mission. We landed on Bar Tartine and I'm so happy we did.  I've posted a few times on this blog about Tartine the bakery (see: here) but somehow, up until yesterday, I had never been to Bar Tartine. 

When we walked in I became almost overwhelmed with how much I liked the interior.  Before we had even touched the food I knew I wanted to come back because I liked the space so much.  It's kind of like... deconstructed elegance.  It's an amazing combination of classic (marble bar + mirrors), rustic (wooden tables and floors + antler chandelier), artsy (huge bouquets of flowers + eclectic groupings of artwork on the walls) and I love how high contrast it is  (white walls + dark floors + pools of light).

The menu was different than what we had seen online, which was disappointing because there were two poached egg choices that I had read about and was really excited to try.  While there weren't any replacement options, they did offer a side of two poached eggs, so I ordered that with a couple of slices of toasted Tartine bread.

I had high hopes when they put the eggs down in front of me.  I like the whites of the egg to look  fluffy and almost like balls of mozzarella, and these looked perfect. I fully expected when I put my knife in the yolk would ooze out, but it didn't - it was cooked pretty thoroughly inside.  Nevertheless, my undying love for the bread made it all ok and I enjoyed it well enough - though it wasn't the perfect poached egg I was looking for.

Kev's food, on the other hand, was even better than I expected and it also was made with Tartine bread so I was very  happy when he offered to share with me.

This was the Croque Provencal - gruyere, ham and heirloom tomato, topped with a fried egg, and it was so good. All of the ingredients they use are farm sourced and you can taste how fresh and flavorful it all is. One of the best breakfast dishes I've had in a long, long time.

My only complaint about eating here was the noise. Besides all the oohing and ahhing, we spent a lot of time saying, "What?" which gets kind of annoying.  Nevertheless, I fully intend to go back - and soon.

Bar Tartine
561 Valencia St. 
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 487 1600

5PM Fresh baked bread at Tartine, Mission

Last year I got really into the 7x7 100 Things to Try Before you Die list.  Tartine is on the list twice - for their morning bun and also for their fresh bread - specifically, a loaf fresh out of the oven. We live just a couple of blocks away from Tartine, and go there often enough, but somehow we had never gotten the bread. I'd always forget at 5PM, or I'd be walking by and it would be hours earlier, or more recently, wait in line for 20 minutes to find out that they don't bake bread on Mondays.

Yesterday though, the stars aligned and as we were driving home we passed Tartine at 4:45 and I remembered! And it was a Sunday, and they make bread on Sunday! We parked the car and I walked over, and of course there was a long line (is there ever not a long line?) and I waited and waited and then it was my turn and they handed over this giant loaf of bread, that was in fact still warm. 

So. How much can you really say about a loaf of bread? It's just bread right? This bread though really may be the Best Bread in the Entire World Ever. Super crunchy outside + chewy inside, with just the teensiest flavor of sourdough. Just look at it! You see all those crumbs? You cut into it and little crumbs start flying everywhere, which normally I do not like because I know I'm the one who is going to have to clean up those crumbs.  Yesterday though, I did not care. Fly crumbs, fly wherever you would like to go, I will be too busy enjoying my bread to care. 

Tartine, Mission

Remember when I said I prefer Tartine's bread, quiche and tarts to their cakes? Today we bought all three. I didn't take a picture of the bread because there is already this post.  The quiche and lemon tart are our other favorite things to buy there. The quiche is so light and fluffy - this time we bought the ham version, but the veggie quiche is just as good. They reheat really well too - it's a good thing to have in the fridge when you get home from work and are in no mood to make dinner (which for me is every night).  The lemon cream tart tastes as good as it looks and is well worth the wait in line.

Sunday Night Dinner: Four Cheese Risotto

Really this dinner was on Wednesday, but it seemed like our normal Sunday night dinner, so I'm posting under this category.

Tonia's cousin Sylvia and her two friends have been visiting from Italy and volunteered to make us (and teach me to make) four cheese risotto.  They are from Asiago, so it was going to include asiago cheese, but they couldn't find it so in its place was: Swiss Emmental, Parmesan, Gorgonzola and Pecorino.

We sliced the cheese and diced half an onion, then sauteed the onion with some oil and butter. If you want to do this the true Italian way, you must say, "bellisima!" many times throughout this process. 

Sylvia discarded the onion after it had been sauteed (I think to infuse the oil and butter with the onion flavor, but we had a language barrier issue so I'm just inferring that) and then added many handfuls of arborio rice and began the stirring, stirring, stirring process that makes risotto. 

We gradually added some beef broth, did more stirring, then stirred some more, then added some more broth. Finally we added our cheese ("Bellisima!"). If you're like me and you don't like Gorgonzola, you take your portion before that bit is added.

Sylvia and friends also bought us this lemon meringue cake from Tartine. This is one of those cakes I see in their display and wonder if it tastes as good as it looks.  I really liked the meringue and the caramel/lemon creme filling but didn't love the cake layers. I realize I may get thrown out of San Francisco for saying this, but I haven't been that impressed with any of the cakes I've had at Tartine. I'd much rather have a tart or some bread or the quiche. Ohhh the quiche. We'll save that for another day.

Grazie, Sylvia, for a lovely meal (and not minding me taking a million photos)!

Broder, Portland

I celebrated my birthday in Portland and we picked Broder to have my birthday breakfast.  It was definitely the right choice.  This place is fantastic - I can imagine that if I lived in Portland I would bring all of my friends here when they came to visit.

The space itself is on the small side (though fairly large if you compare to here) and feels very homey.  It seems like a lot of places we ate at had a similar feeling, as if you were eating in someone's house. I liked that - it felt very unpretentious.  

We got to sit at the window seats in the front which were open because it was such a beautiful day. Really, every day we were there was a beautiful day. Sunny, blue skies and 80 degrees is much nicer than San Francisco summer weather.

These strange looking things are called aebleskiver.  Since I can't pronounce that, I'm going to call it a Danish pancake.  These are served with two dipping sauces, and I chose the lemon curd and the ligonberry jam. The jam was good - but the lemon curd was amazing. It actually reminded me a lot of one of my favorite items at Tartine.  But back to the pancakes: they were such a fun treat! Maybe it's because I never had them before, but something about having these for breakfast felt a little celebratory, which was perfect since it was my birthday.  Also I now have it on good authority that Trader Joes sells aebleskivers as well, so I'll be needing to try that. 

This is the Swedish hash, or pytt i panna, if you speak Swedish. I am so glad that it tasted as good as it looked.  In the dish is potatoes, peppers, roast beef and ham, and on top of the eggs are pickled beets. It is the perfect savory breakfast dish. I could not get enough. 

Because we thought it might be nice to have something healthy, we also ordered the yogurt and granola parfait.  That's healthy, right?  I only had a few bites of this one, since I was too busy power eating my pancakes.  I really liked what I had - and Kev named it his favorite granola dish in Portland (we did eat granola at most breakfasts there). 

I know I've already showed you all of these dishes, but I thought I'd share picture of the whole meal together, so you can see how Broder appealed not only to my stomach, but to my general aesthetic sensibility. 

It was a great way to start what turned out to be our best day in Portland. We followed this meal with a trip to the Japanese Gardens, which I highly recommend if you are going to Portland, and then finished the day with a meal at Le Pidgeon. Stay tuned for that post!

Universal Cafe, Mission

It seems that no matter how many new (to me) places I eat at in San Francisco, I still haven't scratched the surface.  Every week I'll read about a place, or someone will mention a spot that I haven't tried, and then I go home and add it to my "Eat Here" Google doc.  Universal Cafe (like Bar Tartine) is one of those places that I somehow had never managed to try, even though people frequently mention how great it is. And so this past weekend, I headed there with the girls for breakfast.

This place is clearly popular, as we arrived there at 9:30 and even though it was raining out, there was a thirty minute wait.

We started with the beignets in a raspberry sauce (or were they doughnuts?).  They were good, but not my favorites - a little too cakey for me, I wanted them to be lighter.  The raspberry sauce also seemed a little thin. 

Heather and I both ordered the soft scrambled eggs with cherry tomatoes and mozzarella.

The eggs were cooked the perfectly and the tomatoes gave it a nice sweetness. The salad was good too -  fresh and crisp and perfectly dressed.  The coffee was also really good, and surprisingly, not from Blue Bottle, Ritual or Four Barrel, where it seems most of the rest of the city gets their coffee (they serve Equator Coffee, if you're wondering).

Sarah ordered the veggie burger which I think she liked.  I liked that it had a giant slice of heirloom tomato on top and lots of avocado

It was a solid brunch overall and I'd go back - though I don't know that I'd wait 30 minutes in the rain.


Universal Cafe
2814 19th St
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 821-4608

Commonwealth, Mission

I wanted to try Commonwealth because I can't stop reading about it. It seems like every local food site has had some mention of it since it opened a month ago.  If you've seen any of these articles, you know that the new restaurant is the product of Jason Fox (Bar Tartine) and Anthony Myint (Mission Street Food) and that it donates $10 from every tasting menu to local charities.  We didn't order the tasting menu last night though, and instead ordered a bunch of different dishes and shared them amongst the four of us.

Instead of bread, Commonwealth serves homemade chips with vinegar foam.  I liked that it was something different, but I'm not hugely into chips so this wasn't really my thing - I would have preferred some rustic bread and butter, but that's just me. 

We ordered a few different appetizers, but I only got a picture of the soup.  This here is the "summer squash, chilled soup, fried blossoms, shaved salad, vadouvan".  I liked the soup - it was refreshing and flavorful, but I didn't like the fried blossoms as much as I did at Cafe Des Amis.  We also ordered the tomato salad (nice, ripe tomatoes with olive, cheese and basil),  shisito peppers with goat cheese and the gnocchi (with corn, maitake mushrooms, sage, parmesan and truffle oil). We all loved the gnocchi and agreed that if we were to come back we'd all want our own - no sharing this dish again. 

We also ordered the halibut, hangar steak and the young hen with spot prawns in a chocolate-almond emulsion. I really enjoyed the halibut, which had a nice coconut flavor to it, and the hen, which was really tender.  The spot prawns freaked me out a little - I don't like seeing their eyes - but once we removed their outfits (love that phrase, thanks Britt!) I felt much more comfortable. 

For dessert, we ordered the White Russian (coffee ice cream, vodka gelée, raw milk mousse,  génoise cake) and the Cinnamon Mille-Feuille (cardamom marshmallow, chocolate ganache, and burnt honey ice cream). Both of these were really different and complex, and I really liked certain flavors but not others. The vodka gelée was like a fancy vodka jello shot, and I could have done without it, but I liked the rest of the dish.  I really liked the ice cream in both desserts as well, and it seemed extra cold and creamy.

It was a good meal, with some great dishes, but I didn't leave feeling as excited as I felt leaving Frances, for example. 

As a side note, here's a little behind-the-scenes shot from our dinner -  it was really dark in there, but thanks to some strategically placed candles (and some brightening in Photoshop) I was able to salvage a few photos.

Sunday Night Dinner: More This and That

Another Sunday, another random assortment of food for dinner. This time though there was a main dish, which was an herb crusted salmon from an old issue of Blueprint magazine.  It is ridiculously easy and quick to make and it's one of those recipes that you really can't screw up.  You can find the recipe here.

I also had some ricotta cheese left over from the penne frittata  that I didn't want to go to waste, so I was very excited when Smitten Kitchen posted this recipe for zucchini and ricotta galette.  This is much more complicated to make in that there are a ton of steps - but it turned out very well and I'd make it again. 

We also made a jicama salad that my friend Lex has been raving about - it's just jicama, tomatoes and green apples, tossed with lime juice and goat cheese (Lex had it with cotija cheese but I had goat cheese at home so used that instead).

And last but not least... yup, more tartine bread and a simple green salad.

(click on picture for better viewing)

Sunday Night Dinner: This and That

This was an untraditional Sunday night dinner. We invited a couple of friends over for what I have been calling "snacks".  It wasn't really intended to be dinner, since it was more just some stuff thrown together. I love these kinds of meals. 

I had made a couple of things earlier that day that we snacked on:

That is a cauliflower and carmelized onion tart, from Smitten Kitchen. I had made this once before, a long time ago and had forgotten about this recipe. I'm hoping that by posting it here I won't forget it again. It's pretty time consuming but the results are fantastic. 

I also made this penne frittata with basil and ricotta which I found off of Sunday Suppers. I love how the cross section of this looks. Kev insisted that it "tasted like Christmas".  I still can't figure out why that would be.  I think we all liked the cauliflower tart better - I'm not sure that I would make the frittata again. It was good - just not anything special.

Throw in some cherry tomatoes, avocado and the famous Tartine bread that we love and you've got yourself a meal. 

And if you're still hungry you can always make some (very rustic looking) ice cream sandwiches.