San Francisco Day 1 (Friday)

A San Francisco Weekend

We decided to go to San Francisco to eat and be with friends. Our friends from Napa Joy and Brenda drove down and picked us up at the Oakland Airport. We planned to all stay with our friend John Carpenter at his Victorian house in San Francisco’s Haight Ashberrry area.

After they picked us up at the airport we went directly to eat lunch at Chez Panisse Café in Berkeley. We had a great lunch: Avocado and beet Salad, Pork Terrine, Tomato Carpaccio, Pizza with Rappini and Pancetta for desert we shared Meyer Lemon Cream Puffs with Carmel Sauce.
Wine: 2004 Grechante. The Acme bread was wonderful. We really enjoyed the beautiful restaurant and the great food.

From there we drove to Kermit Lynch Wine in Berkeley. Kermit was one of the first importers of wines from Provence in France and he has written several excellent books on wines. We bought a wine to take to John’s. Next door to the wine store is the original Acme Bakery. We purchased apple tarts, bread and cinnamon bread for breakfast.

We then drove across the Bay Bridge and headed to John’s house. On arriving we brought our things in and decided to take a walk in the Haight. It is still coming back. Don’t know if will ever be gentrified.

We met John’s friend Wade. He didn’t join us on our dinner expedition to Quince. The restaurant was highly recommended by Matt Molina and Nancy Silverton to us. It was very near to where we used to live in Lower Pacific Heights. We found the restaurant to precious for us. We had been told it has excellent pasta and made sure that we ordered several different ones. Most of the items on the menu were written in Italian without translation and were not descriptive of the item. We purchased one wine: Dirler Pinot Blanc and John provided to exceptional wines: both were 1990s. Leoville Las Cases, Gevrey Chambertin Les Cazetiers Christian Serffin. They were both fabulous to drink. The restaurant did charge us $50.00 corkage which was a lousy policy on there part, especially after we bought a bottle of wine.

We shared all of the dishes:
Sformato of corn and Chanterelle Mushrooms (sort of like pudding)

Pear Salad Pig’s foot, which was delicious and deboned very unusual.
Faro and Crab Salad
Agnolotti
Stradette
Spinach Cannelloni with Chantrelle
Garganelli with beef Ragu
Polpettone (meat balls)
Pork Loin, sausage, pork belly with red cabbage
Gianduja & Dark Chocolate mouse with armagnac cream cannoncini & Florentine

Quite a dinner! However a little to prissy for us. We like a more country feel.

We made it safely back to Johns and staggered to bed, wondering how we be able to face the rest of the weekend!