the san francisco treat.

San Francisco. Cable cars. Hills. Winding streets. Full House. Rice a Roni. Fog. The Golden Gate Bridge. Mrs. Doubtfire.

A  lot comes to mind.

We didn’t ride the cable car, we didn’t eat rice, the weather was beautiful, and we didn’t cross the Golden Gate Bridge. But we did have fun. Three days, six restaurants, endless miles of walking, and a few sunburns later, we are back in Seattle and have a few photos to show for it.

…

Butter: part of a complete breakfast. We ate it in our pain au chocolat, it was an integral part of our shortbread, it announced its presence in the hollandaise sauce enrobing our eggs benedict. But as far as butter-laden breakfasts go, Tartine takes the cake. A relatively new french bakery in the Mission District, Tartine has lines out the door every morning. Even at 10:30 on a Friday. But the line moved quickly and the wait was well worth it. We ate every last crumb of the chocolate croissant, shortbread, and croque monsieur (hold the ham, sub heirloom tomato).

pastries

Lunch was the often forgotten meal of our trip. Lost amid 6-mile treks up and down the SF’risco hills, pushed aside for a late brunch, lunch was frequently bites of bread and nibbles of cheese stolen between walks to the museum and strolls on the Embarcadero. Except for Friday.

Following the rich pastries, cafe au lait, and tomatoey cheesy melty goodness, we hopped on the BART and headed across the Bay to Berkley, home of left-wing hippies, college students, Prius owners, and Chez Panisse, the mecca of local/organic food.

Nestled into a warm dining room with wood walls, picturesque views of green trees, and a dining room full of fellow food enthusiasts, we ignored our full stomachs and ordered lunch. Eric, a perfectly prepared pesto with heirloom tomato confit. Me, a thin pizza with amaranth and pecorino. We finished what we could, packaged the rest, and took a shady stroll down Shattuck Avenue and found the BART back bustling SF.

pizza

…to be continued…

a movable feast.

Ahh, summer vacation. Six weeks of medical school classes of dissections and biochemistry and arterial trees and metabolic pathways are over. And now I’m back to writing and eating and photographing and writing some more. Maybe being on vacation gets the blogging wheels spinning. Or maybe the fresh Pacific northwestern air kick starts the appetite and spurs me on a search for new and exciting food. Or maybe Seattle is the cure for my writer’s block, plain and simple.

…

The title of today’s adventures was “Lunch: A Play in Three Parts.” We started off with a drive downtown in the hopes of finding grilled salmon and couscous at Skillet, a lunchtime restaurant in an Airstream trailer. Arriving at the end of the noontime rush, we were left with two options: french fries or bust. We opted for the fries and talked the chef into whipping up a veg-friendly poutine, complete with fresh curds, herbs, and a creamy tomato-y sauce.

In search of substantive sustenance we drove a few miles north and tracked down the taco truck in Wallingford. A small tent pitched outside a stationary truck with a folding picnic table and 6 white chairs. Some were eating burritos with beef and drinking rice milk. We chose a quesadilla chica with tomatoes, cheese, and guacamole. We adorned our tortillas with a rainbow of salsas, varying in intensity and hue.

The third course of our elaborate luncheon brought us down the block a mile (via the Home Depot 15 minutes north) to a new ice cream shop. Flavors ran the gamut from balsamic strawberry to cardamom and salted caramel. The counter staff was constantly being pulled away from cashier duties to make fresh waffle cones by hand. All plastic cutlery and paper goods were compostable. And the ice cream was delicious. A perfect end to a great lunch that brought us from downtown Seattle to suburban Wallingford and back again.

patatas bravas?

I scream

save room for dessert.

After much fuss, two delays, one death, and one case of exhaustion Mitch and I finally had dinner last night.   Dinner, Part I, was my choice and a failure.  Druze food in Midtown Manhattan?!  What was I thinking.  So Mitch picked Momofuku and I dragged my butt there for the sixth time in two months and I went through the regular routine.  

I usually love routines (cereal and milk every morning, tomato soup every night) but this Momo thing is getting stale.  With only one vegetarian item on the menu and my favorite beer NOT on the menu, I’m getting tired of this dependable dinner destination.  But Mitch was not.  He ordered the rice cakes with shrimp and the pork buns.  I ordered the ginger-scallion noodles.  We both had beer.  He had the soft-serve ice cream (strawberry and sour yogurt twist with pralined pretzels).  We had good conversation.

On our way home we passed Artichoke.  The line was 10-deep and I had a craving to try something new.  ”Dessert?” I suggested.  And Mitch was game.  We told ourselves we’d wait five minutes, tops.  And after five we extended it to ten.  By twenty-five we were finally placing our order for one slice of artichoke pizza, sliced in half.  Hold the grease.  Or not.  

Creamy spinach sauce topped with cheese and dotted with artichoke hearts.  Almost caused sent this heart into cardiac arrest.  But hey, you can’t ever skimp on dessert, right?

 

dessert

Mea Culpa.

Forgive me father, for I have sinned. It has been weeks since I’ve posted and the guilt is consuming.

…

Well, folks, what can I say? Medical school just isn’t as interesting or sexy or blog-able as food is. But once in awhile they let the medical students out of the classroom, release them from their desks in the library, and permit them to meet friends for dinner at Thai restaurants on Union Square.

And here are the photos to prove it. Dinner was great, the company was better, but the restaurant was loud. It was comfort food, served up with some requisite mint leaves and bean sprouts and a sprinkling of crushed peanuts. It was nothing fancy, nothing unexpected, just good food.

napkin

noodles

pad thai

doogie howser, m.d.

Look at me now, I’m a seasoned medical student.  It’s been one full week of classes and already I’m a pro.  Riiiight.

Or not.  The summer is like med school-lite.  We take Biochemistry for three hours each morning and dabble in a bit of Gross Anatomy in the afternoons.  So far I can recognize the chemical structure of glucose and fructose and name all the superficial and deep muscles of the back.  I’m well on my way to curing the common cold.

But med school-lite still means that there’s time for food, cooking, and eating.  So stay tuned for updates from Momofuku (again), Gazala Place (never again), and everything in between.  

 <–homemade herbed gnocchi

and we’re off…

I am now officially a medical student.  So says one of the deans.  Not part of a program or research students for a summer.  Nope, full-fledged medical students.  

And why is it so important to remember that we’re actually officially medical students now?  Because in the rare and unfortunate case that one of us should get sick and wander into the emergency room, it’s important to announce ourselves as medical students to insure we don’t get lost in the shuffle. 

So, I am now officially a medical student now.  Don’t lose me in the emergency room shuffle.

weekday brunch.

Parking was a cinch.  The sun was shining, the spots were abundant, and parallel parking was unprecedentedly easy.  All in all, the perfect equation for a perfect weekday brunch in Brooklyn.

With four seats left in the restaurant we were seated immediately.  Two menus, two tall glasses of ice water, and five minutes of hemming and hawing over the menu and we had decided.  Cheese grits with satuéed broccoli rabe, a biscuit, and a tall glass of fresh orange juice for him, a biscuit and jam for me.  We played hangman on the tablecloth as we waited (I won with sphynx (yes, it’s an accepted spelling)).  And then we waited some more.  But the fellow diners were a, um, lively bunch and people watching amused us.  All in all, a perfect equation for a perfect weekday brunch in Brooklyn.

And then he reached across the table for his orange juice.  An innocent move in a perfect weekday brunch in Brooklyn.  Until I felt the water all over my lap.  Swiping the tall cold glass of ice water with his right arm he risked the perfection of our perfect weekday brunch in Brooklyn.  Games of hangman melted away, the tines of my fork were decorated with drips of water, but my jeans were most acquainted with the water.  Lots of it.  

But, as luck would have it, torrents of water did not destroy the perfection of our perfect weekday brunch in Brooklyn.  Brunch ruined it instead.  The cheese grits were fine, not great.  The biscuits were fine, not great.  The broccoli rabe was fine, if not too salty.  Brunch was fine, not perfect.  

But the sun, the great parking spot, the unexpectedly refreshing midday shower.  That made up for it.  All in all, a perfect equation for a perfect weekday brunch in Brooklyn.

a thousand words.

momo.

The place is crowded, the hostesses ooze “urban hipster” from each pair of thick plastic glasses, the waiters don’t hide their knowledge that they are, in fact, holier than thou. The cooks are scruffy, the music is loud, and the homemade soft serve ice cream machine is there because it can be.

But damn, those noodles are good.

Momofuku isn’t a place I go to be coddled or hugged. It isn’t a place to schmooze with friends and relax over some food and a beer. It isn’t warm or friendly or hospitable.

But damn, I keep going back for more.

…

I’ve been there for dinner, for lunch, when I was hungover, and when could have eaten a horse. I’ve ordered the rice cakes, the sliced hamachi, and different beers. But no matter the time of day, the amount of alcohol consumed the night before, or my fellow diners, I always order the ginger scallion noodles. It’s a religion.

And along with my loyalty to the bowl of deliciously greasy noodles, perfectly moist ginger, crisp scallions, and roasted cauliflower is my fear of Them. The aformentioned hipster hostesses and holy waiters, the scruffy cooks, and the managers who blast their rock. I am scared to step out of line, I am always nervous when asking for a fork, and I have never ever taken out my camera.

…until today.

So here’s a never-before-seen snapshot of my lunch at Momofuku. The photos were well worth the sneers and eye-rolls They gave me. Agreed?

distance makes the heart grow fonder…

seattle: 3,000 miles and 3 weeks away.  and now that i have some distance, what was my favorite meal?

breakfast at glo’s, hands down.  eggs florentine, smoked salmon eggs benedict…it doesn’t even matter.  it’s just good.  that’s all you need to know.