Starbelly, Castro

It's nearly Halloween, which means Summer has finally arrived in San Francisco.  Hooray! We decided to take a walk to enjoy the weather and also get some breakfast at Starbelly. 

(Ok, that isn't exactly true. Kev wanted Eggs Benedict at Le Zinc's outdoor patio. I needed a new blog post and we had already covered Le Zinc so we thought: where else can we walk to brunch that I haven't already blogged about? That is how we wound up at Starbelly).

There is this great outdoor patio, but it was all full when we got there. It emptied out as we ate. 

Some coffee and scrambled eggs for me. That is one giant piece of toast.

Sunny side up eggs for Kev, with  what they call sausage. To me it was more like a spicy slider. Call it what you will, it tasted pretty good!


All in all - a decent breakfast. Nothing revolutionary, but a convenient neighborhood place. Even better if you can snag a table outside.

Piccino, Dogpatch

Sorry for the lack of posting, but mostly it's because we haven't gone anywhere new in awhile. Finally this weekend we tried a couple of new places, including Piccino, over in the Dogpatch. We had tried to go there last weekend but were thwarted by a street festival of people dressed up in crazy clothes.

I immediately loved the look of this place - tons of wood, white and completely light filled. Very helpful for taking pictures, too.

I ordered an Arnold Palmer. It came with simple syrup since they don't sweeten the tea or the lemonade.  We got some marinated olives, too.

We didn't order any pizzas, even though it seems that is what they are known for.  Instead we got the white bean soup, which sounded like something I would make at home (but tasted way better).

 

We also got a poached egg over a semolina gnocchi. I'm still not clear how this was a gnocci - it reminded me more of a potato pancake, but with semolina. The flavors were great - egg and olive and zucchini and basil. Very savory and different than a normal, breakfast-style poached egg.  The parmesan cracker was a nice touch too.

Extra bonus: they are located very close to CalTrain, so if you are just visiting San Francisco from one of the surrounding areas this might be a good option for you.