Dinner at home: Prosciutto wrapped chicken, potatoes and asparagus

Last night we wound up doing some last minute babysitting, and were paid with a fantastic dinner. I forgot to bring my camera, so my iPhone filled in. 

Have you had the black olives from the olive bar at Whole Foods? They are my favorite.
(That's the chef with his striped socks on the striped rug).

You can't really go wrong with prosciutto, rosemary, cheese and butter.

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.

Spork, Mission

After living in the Mission for two years, we have only just discovered Spork. We've walked by it countless number of times, but had never eaten there. I'll admit I was put off because we had heard that it was overpriced. But we wanted to go somewhere new (to us) and walkable, so this seemed like a good option. And it was! (though I do think it was kinda overpriced).

 When you are seated, they give you a paper that tells you the story of Spork. Here it is in a nutshell: The space used to be a Kentucky Fried Chicken. KFC introduced America to the concept of the Spork. The people behind Spork wanted to "serve slow food in a fast food shell". The menu changes daily based on what is fresh and seasonal. Got it?

The first thing you are served are their "original pull apart rolls" with whipped honey butter. These are SO GOOD. The rolls are soft and hot and fluffy, basically everything you would want in a roll. We also ordered what is probably my favorite name of an appetizer ever: Cauliflower and Calamari Unite! I partly ordered this just so I can keep saying the name of it.  I love that the calamari was grilled and not fried, and it was a really nice combination of flavors - one of those dishes that you really want to get a little bit of everything on your fork at once - calamari and mint and chili flakes and lemon aioli. I only could have liked this more if the calamari didn't have their freakish legs. I just can't make myself eat those. Luckily Kev doesn't mind them.

Kev ordered the In-side-Out Burger: basically a tower of a burger with caramelized onions on top and what they call "smashed fries". I would not call those smashed fries - they were more like roasted potatoes: crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside and very, very tasty.

I ordered the special pasta, which was fresh sheet pasta with ground beef, mushrooms, red onions, and chilis. It was good - but I liked the burger better. I think there were just too many chilis for my taste. 

We followed up our meals by sharing the strawberry crisp, which was also really, really tasty. Our waiter was very nice and also let us taste one of the Humphry Slocombe flavors they had that day: chocolate covered potato chip, which was kind of weird but definitely good. 

And what better way to end a big meal than with an after dinner hamburger?

Spork
1058 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110-2427
(415) 643-5000

Nordstrom Cafe, Union Square

I debated if I should post this or not, because eating lunch at the mall is not usually something to write home about. But I seriously love eating at the Nordstrom Cafe. I don't know that I would make a special trip down to the mall just to eat here, but if you are out shopping and want a quick and reasonably priced meal, this is the place to go.

The picture above - that is the reason to go here. The French Onion soup is salty and cheesy and incredible. It really is one of the best French Onion soups I've ever had, and what I order every time I eat here. The french fries, which are great on their own, come with an amazing garlic aioli dip. We also ordered the chicken club sandwich so our meal would have some semblance of nutritional value.

The other nice thing about eating here is the view, which looks over downtown San Francisco.

Flour + Water, Mission

We had another early bird dinner, this time at Flour + Water. I'm not really sure how to get around having an early bird dinner there, because both times we have been there we've booked a table online and the only reservations have been three months out and at 5:30.  That's fine with me though because then it gives us plenty of time to get to BINGO. 

I'm not sure that the menu was designed to be shared as small plates, but it easily lends itself to that. There were four of us which meant we got to try lots of different things.  

That's the wood oven roasted heirloom beans with chili and parmesan and also the lemon thyme tagliatelle with braised chicken, citrus and pistachio. We all thought that the tagliatelle tasted kind of like really good chicken noodle soup pasta. I realize that the chef would probably not like to hear that, but we really meant it in a good way. Both of these dishes were great, and I especially liked the crunchy bits on the beans.

We ordered two pizzas - the top photo below is the mushroom pizza (way fancier name but I can't remember) with arugula added on, and the photo below that is a prosciutto pizza with more arugula and some chili. We like arugula.

Both pizzas were really good - though I don't think they are my favorite of all the artisan pizzas in the area (Pizzeria Delfina would be high on my list for favorites).

If you have dinner at Flour + Water, then you must also have dessert. And if you are going to have dessert, then you have to have the chocolate budino, which is incredible. A little pot of amazing chocolate, topped with sea salt and espresso-caramel cream. We also tried the blood orange & polenta upside down cake with clove cream. It tastes much better than it sounds - though not as good as the chocolate budino. Maybe we should have added arugula.

Delarosa, Marina

I think there should be a term for a meal between lunch and dinner - the evening version of brunch - because lately we've been into eating dinner way too early for people our age.  We stopped into Delarosa at around 4:30 and pretty much had the place to ourselves, which was a-ok by us. 

Delarosa is owned by the same people that own Beretta, though that is not something you'd know by the look of the place. It's kind of like if Beretta had an identity crisis and went from being the gothy kid with the raven tattoo to the preppy cheerleader. 

All of the seating is communal, which I'm not sure how I would feel about if we were there when it was crowded. At 4:30 though - no problem.  

That's the salty dog above - vodka, elderflower, grapefruit juice, salt - which was very refreshing. I love drinks with fresh citrus. The salad was incredibly simple but amazingly tasty - just arugula, fennel and shaved parmesan. 

We also ordered the margherita pizza with burrata and added on some prosciutto.  It really worked well together - the sweetness of the sauce + the saltiness of the prosciutto + the creaminess of the burrata. I thought that the crust wasn't quite as good as at some of the other artisan pizza places. Kev disagreed. We ate the whole pizza.

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.