*Top Eating

The Primavera stand at the SF Ferry Building market on Saturday continues to have one of my favorite bay area breakfasts (their addictive chilaquiles):

After visiting a long string of “fine, but not amazing” izakayas* in the Bay Area (Nombe, Nojo, Sebo, Oyaji), I’ve finally gone to one I love: Ippuku (in Berkeley): Negima (chicken thighs + leek, one of my “baseline izakaya dishes”): Shishito peppers: Chicken with ume (sour plum) and shiso leaf. Perhaps my favorite dish of the night: Gyu no tataki (very rare grilled beef), also a favorite: ...

I lucked into a special “summer pasta tasting” menu option recently, and it was one of my best meals out in quite a while. flour + water really is that good (especially their pasta). Every one of these pastas was something I’d happily order again as a standalone dish, but my favorites were probably the agnolotti dal plin (filled with hen and perhaps another meat or some pork broth? so rich…) and the rabbit francobolli with chanterelles & sage. ...

I don’t post about every meal I eat out– just notable ones. This Camino dinner certainly qualifies: Here’s the lamb hanging and twisting in front of the open fire, dripping juices into dishes of beans: Everything was great. David Lebovitz posted many photos and a long writeup (including musings on Chez Panisse kitchen history).

A few restaurant highlights from a recent trip to Portland (which also included beer tasting, biking around, and seeing a few friends, but I promised myself this wouldn’t be a blog that’s mostly long-winded stories about my day with only a passing mention of food): The Waffle Window(at 36th and SE Hawthorne): A waffle with sauteed mushrooms, spinach, roasted peppers, fresh tomatoes, and “marinated chevre”. The chevre had the consistency of a dense whipped cream and was a nice cool counterpart to everything else. Plus, look at that pleasing collection of colors with the blue-rimmed plate! ...