Burger To Die For - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 3 - The Food

Continued from...

I Am The King Of Thai - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 1

A Fortunate Pilgrimage - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 2 Part I

It's a Small Small World - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 2 Part II

I had heard the name Napa for a very long time. I had envisioned in my mind a peaceful and secluded paradise a little ways north of the bustling city of San Francisco. I didn't start enjoying wine until last year on a train ride on Amtrak's Coastal Starlight from Seattle to Los Angeles. I knew only the basic names and understanding of wines and had been to one wine tasting trip prior in my life. I never thought I would visit Napa since I wasn't much of a wine person, but this year I finally made the journey.

(Napa Valley)

(Gaia Hotel & Spa)

Napa was beautiful, though busier than I imagined even for the winter time. Perhaps I was disillusioned by movies like bottleshock which my friend Kenneth made me watch before going. It did give me some names of wineries to visit during this trip. To avoid the high price tags of the hotels in Napa city and St. Helena, we ended up at Gaia Hotel and Spa Resort down in American Canyon. It really wasn't a problem since there weren't too much traffic during the winter season. Gaia Hotel was also a fully environmentally sustainable hotel in Napa which made me feel good booking the place. They named each room after something different from nature, though the interior I suppose were all the same as far as I can tell. Fortunately there wasn't a wall full of grasshoppers nailed to the walls inside.

(Harassing the cook will definitely result in smaller portions)

(Butter Cream Bakery and Diner's Kitchen)

With a full day's worth of wine drinking, I made sure we had a hearty breakfast before gulping down alcohol. We ended up at the Butter Cream Bakery and Diner in Napa City. It was an authentic 50's diner where a lot of the locals ate. I was certainly out of place carrying my huge Canon camera bag around with me. The dinning area was small and accommodated around twenty to thirty people along with another fifteen or so at the counter by the cooking stations. We opted for the counter since I always preferred the atypical dinning experience, where we got to watch the cooks in action making our breakfasts.

(Butter Cream Bakery and Diner - Small Breakfast)

We both ended up ordering the small breakfast which included eggs, toasts, hash browns and a choice of  ham, sausage or bacon. I never liked bacon and I am generally weary of sausages as they can be either really good or really nasty. I made the safe choice for ham with my eggs scrambled. The grill was in full view from where I was sitting. I was able to see how everything was cooked. The toasts were put through the toaster twice to brown them. The hash browns were cooked in mass and thrown in practically every other plate that was being served. The meat were cooked to order, as were the eggs. I had serious issues with the eggs as I had already blogged about in my earlier post Chopped Up Omelets Are Not Scrambled Eggs!!! Scrambled eggs are to be scramble both before and during the cooking process.

Aside from the badly made scrambled eggs, the rest of the breakfast were good and hearty. It had the taste of traditional Americana in them. The ham was slightly burned and not overly salty, which is a good sign. The hash brown had a crispy top with a mushy middle which was very enjoyable. In the end, diner food is just that, diner food. Very few diners actually stand out in my book; I absolutely love some of the dishes at Diner on Main in Alhambra if you are in that area. The atmosphere here was the real deal. An older couple who sat next to me were long time customers of the diner, and the waitress had a small catching up session with them on their winter trip to Montana. I was hoping for that kind of treatment but I found myself feeling more like an outsider as the waitress paid very little attention to me or my needs. I blame my Canon camera bag.

(Oxbrow Public Market)

(Oxbrow Public Market - Olive Oil Shop)

(Oxbrow Public Market - Tea Shop)

(Oxbrow Public Market - Live Seafood Shop)

(Oxbrow Public Market - Pica Pica Maize Kitchen)

After breakfast our first winery stop was for the sparkling wines at Domaine Carneros, which I'll review in a separate post. After some lovely European pastries and elegant sparkling wines to kick off the morning, we stopped by the Oxbrow Public Market to pick up lunch. It does seem like all I did was eat and drink during this trip; that is really all I did. I couldn't pass by an opportunity to check out a public market. For me, it gives me a sense of the people in the city and what their taste buds are saying. There were a good variety of foods and other shops in the market. It was also very nice to see the existence of a tea shop in the market, though it was a bit dead. I am a big fan of tea and I personally do not drink coffee; I do eat some coffee products on occasion.

(Pica Pica Maize Kitchen - Arepa Catira)

After circling the market, which was rather small, I decided on Pica Pica Maize Kitchen, which actually was one of the two choices for lunch based on yelp reviews. The other was Gott's Roadside Napa next door to the market. It was a bit difficult to figure out what to order out of the menu at Pica Pica as I'm not very familiar with Venezuelan cuisine. They did have the ingredients written out next to each name so I picked it based on what kinds of meat and assortments I wanted. I ended up with an Arepa Catira, which was sauteed chicken in their signature sofrito with cheddar cheese in a grilled corn bread. The market was full and there weren't any open tables, so we took our food to Fuller Park which was a few blocks away from the market. Personally it was more enjoyable sitting outdoors under a few trees in a quiet park eating the food than it was with people criss-crossing everywhere in a stuffy room.

The Arepa Catira was descent. I found the arepa to be too hard and rough against the meat and the cheese. The chicken and the cheese were well marinated and were tasty on their own, though there were just a bit too much cheese and not enough chicken. When they were bitten along with the bread, the thick texture of the bread destroyed whatever balance that was left and all I could feel in my mouth was the thick corn bread. Personally I almost wanted to pour out the insides and eat it alone with less cheese, and occasionally take small bites into the arepa to balance out the chicken and cheese. If it wasn't because of the soothing atmosphere of a green park, this would had been a mediocre meal at best.

(Gott's Roadside's Daily Special)

That afternoon we visited two other wineries, V. Sattui and Chateau Montelena, both of which were superb in their own right which I'll go into details in the next post. After a whole day's worth of wine and food, we stopped by Gott's Roadside up in St. Helena right on highway 29. I was so glad that I saw the place on my way up to Chateau Montelena, this place was amazing.

(Gott's Roadside - Wisconsin Sourdough)

As soon as I stepped foot in front of the counter of Gott's Roadside, I knew I was definitely in Napa Valley when I saw one of the specials for the day was Pillar Rock's Cabernet Sauvignon. Leave it to Napa to serve wine as a daily special next to a Chicken Tortilla soup and a Dulce de Leche Shake. I had enough wine for the day though so I only ordered the Wisconsin Sourdough. I saw on the menu that it had both mushrooms and in a sourdough and I didn't have to think twice. I'm a burger person and I make my own burgers from scratch with my own recipe, but this was seriously one of the best burgers I had ever had.

Unlike the Menage A Trios from Ike's, Gott's Roadside's Wisconsin Sourdough's flavors were all distinct and coherent. Though my intent was to take the burger back to the hotel to eat, I took a few bites before heading off. When the burger first entered my mouth, I could taste the juiciness of the medium cooked beef, the aroma and the sweetness from the mushrooms, the chewiness of the bacon, the tangy BBQ sauce on top distinct from the creamy mayo, and the cheddar, all squeezed between two crunchy sourdough bread slices. They all then blended inside my mouth forming one coherent divine burger taste that cried out to me to eat me and eat me now. I had to resist the urge to eat it all right there since it was still a bit early for dinner. It was just convenient for us to grab the dinner right then.

I also got to try some of their sweet potato fries that my friend ordered. I personally don't care for sweet potato, though I would eat it when the opportunity presented itself. I took a few pieces and they were delicious if you like sweet potatoes. They were fresh, well cut and the flavors of the sweet potato was definitely there.

Most people would opt for a nice sit down restaurant while eating in Napa. But we weren't really super hungry and my friend really didn't eat much to begin with. So it's certainly possible to find some good joints to get your taste buds all fired up in Napa. If you are ever in the valley, just be certain to stop by Gott's Roadside and give their burgers a shot. If you are a fan of red wines, be sure to grab a bottle while sinking your teeth into some of the best burgers money can buy.

Continue reading at...
Riesling, riesling, where for art thou my riesling? - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 3 - The Wine

Read more »

It's a Small Small World - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 2 Part II

Continued from...

I Am The King Of Thai - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 1

A Fortunate Pilgrimage - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 2 Part I

(Quickly's in San Francisco)

After the morning's pilgrimage to Golden Gate Fortune Cookies, we headed over to the other side of town to Swan Oyster Depot. It was a long hike, combined with the hills of San Francisco, my friend was having a little trouble pushing through. There were small restaurants everywhere and I wanted to walk into every one of them just to give it a try. But I stayed my course, pushing pass even familiar joints like Quickly's and their seductive boba milk tea, and finally made it to Swan Oyster Depot.

(Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco)

(Swan Oyster Depot - Seafood Window)

(Swan Oyster Depot Counter Seating Only)

My original intention was to get one bowl of clam chowder and then head off to Tu Lan. But there was a line in front of Swan Oyster. It wasn't a long line; there were only around ten people ahead of me. But the joint was literally a hole in the wall. There were only counter seating and the whole place accommodated around twenty seated customers at a time. Needless to say a short line of around ten people turned into nearly a forty minutes wait. My friend whose allergy was acting up decided she wasn't going to eat any seafood. Since the line was so long, she went off on her own to find something else to eat.

(Swan Oyster Depot - Bumping Into Friends)

It turned out to be a very small world. For forty minutes, I was standing behind a couple one of whom turned out to be an old college friend of mine: Mieko. It turned out that she was in town visiting relatives and this was their must-do restaurant. Upon their recommendation, I decided to order more than just the clam chowder and give the other seafood a try. Also this happened to be the only photo I took of myself during this whole trip.

(Swan Oyster Depot - Clam Chowder)

I am a big, no, colossal fan of clam chowder. I have had my fair share of clam chowder from all sorts of places I have traveled to. During my past visits to San Francisco, I had been suckered to the tourist traps of Fisherman warf. This time I was expecting something amazing. My reaction to Swan Oyster Depot's clam chowder was mixed. I was slightly prepared for this since I read a few reviews warning about the thickness of the chowder. It really isn't a chowder per se; it is far too liquidy to be be called such. It was more like a clam soup with similar ingredients as a clam chowder without the thickness. In fact it is closer to a Manhattan clam chowder in texture than a New England clam chowder. I personally prefer New England clam chowder, but to each his own. Let's just say this would never work inside a bread bowl.

The thickness aside, the soup was definitely not your cut-of-the-line clam chowder. Progresso's and Campbells' got nothing on this soup. The freshness of the clams came through the soup at an instant. Unlike most clam chowder where I would have to look for the clam and to very carefully find the clam flavor in the chowder, this one hits me in the face full force. There was no guessing that this was made with real clams. The rest of the ingredients almost became insignificant as they simply were there to fill up the texture of the rest of the soup.

(Swan Oyster Depot - Seafood Cocktail)

Every waiter at Swan Oyster were also food preps; they personally plated all the foods in full view of the customers. My friend and her husband ordered their usual, the seafood salad. The portions were definitely generous and it looked very fresh. But I wanted the dish that would allow me to try as many different things in the restaurant as possible, and not end up with a giant hole in my wallet. The combination cocktail did the job. It had a raw oyster, crab meat, a large shrimp and small shrimps inside the cocktail glass and cost just shy of ten dollars. This was the perfect way to sample a chunk of what Swan Oyster Depot had to offer.

I had very high standard for raw oysters, extremely high, despite only having ate my first one on a half shell one year ago; that was at Galveston in Texas. I didn't count having raw oyster shots since the alcohol drowns out a lot of the normal issues associated with raw oysters. I had been plagued all my life with stories from my parents about how awful raw oysters are, and how they had to spit it out when they were treated to free oyster at a rich friend's banquet many years ago. But when I ate the raw oysters at Galveston, it was absolutely divine. It was as if I ate a bubble of fresh water that bursted with flavors inside my mouth. Ever since, no other oyster had even come close. Swan Oyster Depot was as close as I had gotten since then. It had a burst of freshness upon entering my mouth, but there was still a hint of the nasty aftertaste that most raw oysters had when it's not at its freshest. I think the oysters at Swan Oyster Depot, or at least the one I had, was just past its freshness by perhaps a day or so. Sadly to say I would most likely never order that from Swan Oyster Depot again; let's just say my stomach cast the decisive vote later that afternoon.

However the rest of the cocktail was good. The crab meat and shrimps were all fresh. The cocktail sauce didn't completely over power the seafood, allowing the original flavors of the meat to still come through. This was definitely a higher grade than some of the trash served on the streets of Fisherman warf. But it also wasn't the best seafood I ever had. I doubt I would want to wait for forty-five minutes to have Swan Oyster again, but it may be something to grab to-go if I happened to be in the area and wanted a nice quick bite of some fresh seafood; all except for the oysters.

(Ike's at Lime - Menage A Trois)

I was prepped for Ike's after Swan Oyster Depot. I kept myself in check most of the day and made certain I didn't over eat. I managed to hike with my friend from our hotel all the way down market street to Ike's in the Castro district; it took a toll on my friend. I was ready to chomp down on a sandwich at Ike's. But little did I know there's an insanely long wait for it. Upon arrival, I approached the cashier by the door to place an order. Apparently I couldn't actually order until I first placed my name inside Lime Lounge on the "list." I got my name placed and it was over twenty minutes before I was able to place my actual order.

I asked the cashier what was the one sandwich I must have at Ike's since this is most likely the only time I would ever get to eat here. I had a feeling it was either going to be the Menage A Trois as so many have suggested on yelp or the Superman as my friend suggested. The cashier did recommend the Menage A Trois and that is exactly what I ordered. I asked him approximately how long it would take for my order to be ready. He told me it would be around forty-five minutes before I would be able to get it. I was free to roam about and return later. Apparently experienced customers knew that they could place an order on the phone bypassing the twenty minutes wait to place an order and then simply arrive to pick up their orders later. I found this extremely annoying for someone like me who had to wait nearly half an hour to place my order because I was dumb enough to actually stop by. This made absolutely no sense to me and basically turned me off from ever wanting to step foot back into Ike's.

Nevertheless knowing I had forty-five minutes to kill, and my friend was exhausted from the walk, I walked back to the hotel alone to pick up the car and return to Ike's to pick up the sandwich so that I could take it with me to Napa. It took slightly over half an hour for me to get back to my hotel and another fifteen minutes to get my car out and back over to Ike's. To my surprise my sandwich was still not ready. It took another five minutes or so for my order to finally come out of the back kitchen. I had never waited an hour and fifteen minutes for one single sandwich in my life. This better be the best sandwich I had ever tasted.

The Menage A Trios was good, but absolutely not worth the hour and fifteen minutes wait. I had a small portion of my sandwich as soon as I got it in my hands to make sure I got to try it at its freshest. I knew it was a sweet sandwich as many yelpers have reviewed it to be. It wasn't the sweetness that actually bothered me though, it was the fact that it tasted more like an orgy rather than a menage a trois. All the flavors were in a big giant jumble with one another and nothing was distinct from one another. Sure it was bursting like an orgy of flavors, but it was a mess. The sandwich was a mess. The honey, honey mustard and the BBQ sauce all fused into one sweet sauce that buried the fused flavors of the pepper jack, swiss and smoked gouda cheese as well as the chicken. Though it was good, it certain wasn't the best sandwich I ever had. In fact the Wisconsin Sourdough burger I got at Gott's Roadside the next day in St. Helena was far superior to Ike's messy orgy of a sandwich. I'll be talking about that one soon.

So the question is would I order the menage a trois again? The short answer is no. It was a good sandwich and if it didn't have a one hour and fifteen minute wait and preferential treatment for phone orders to deal with, I wouldn't mind having it ever now and then. I think if I ever returned to San Francisco and whomever I'm with absolutely wanted to try this place, I would still be willing to place a phone order and pick it up when it's ready. But since I'm so turned off by their unfair policy towards newcomers, I am not inclined to revisit this place by myself. It wasn't that good.

(Painted Ladies in San Francisco)

Ike's at Lime was my final stop in San Francisco and for the night. We were now ready to head off to Gaia Hotel and Spa Resort in Napa via the Golden Gate route. It was a beautiful day and I had a fantastic adventure in San Francisco. I was now ready for a change of scenery, a relaxed pace, and of course, some amazing wine.

Continue reading at...

Burger To Die For - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 3 - The Food
Riesling, riesling, where for art thou my riesling? - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 3 - The Wine

Read more »