Mar 22, 2009

why i miss san francisco #1

ami thought i'd left early this morning but i was actually still snoring gently under a pile of sheets. so, around 11.30, we went to brunch at fattoush (a reliable standby) and then to the farmer's market where i tried a preserve made of nectarines and green almonds that was truly spectacular--it was just like saturdays used to be. it was misting gently, and raining, so i had no qualms about spending the afternoon sorting through email and listening to glenn gould playing the goldberg variations. around 4, i left for mission beach cafe to meet jon, by way of bi-rite (meyer lemon, brown sugar ginger caramel, ritual toffee). by the time he made it up from the peninsula, it was late enough that we deferred pie to try and snag a table early at minako.

patrick and marcela showed up 15 minutes after, and 45 minutes after that, we were seated--by now i know better than to ask why tables remain empty within while people stand hungrily without. lotus root kinpira, green beans in a sesame and miso sauce, fried eggplant cubes, miso paste marinated grilled mackerel, the spicy green roll, the fake eel and cucumber roll, hamachi sashimi with three mints (spearmint, peppermint, and yanagi tade, in a rice bran oil suspension), mackerel sashimi. and i still haven't had the 1969 plum wine that is in back, so clearly i have to return. after, we went back to patrick and marcela's to check on the caltrain schedule for jon and had some allagash barrel-aged musette, the schloss eggenberg brewery's dunkel doppelbock, and a bottle of year-old, bottle-conditioned mead that they'd brewed. this last was remarkable and head and shoulders above the other meads i've had: they made it out of cranberry, honey, pomegranate juice, tarweed and buckwheat honeys, and cardamom.

tomorrow, the sonoma artisanal cheese festival, followed by aziza.

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