San Francisco
We ended our trip in
San Francisco. We stayed at the
Marriott Marquis. The location was good and I used some points so the price was right. The points I used were
British Airway Avios points. They are the worst points ever created and BA is the worst travel organization I have dealt with. A
free flight to London using points cost about $800 on BA.
The
NYT had a large article about a restaurant in SF called
In Situ. It is in the
SF MOMA. The place sounded interesting so we made reservations a month in advance. It was hard to get a reservation but we got it.
http://insitu.sfmoma.org/ The conceit of the restaurant is that the menu is composed of dishes from other famous restaurants. However the dishes are served without any input from you; served as written in the recipe. The waiters just take orders. There is no passion in the restaurant and the setting is very septic; the lobby of a modern museum.
We had 4 dishes.
Earth and Sea $14, potatoes, cucumber, coastal plants. From Coi in San Fran. It was good but not special.
Liberty Duck Breast. Thomas Keller , The French Laundry. $24. The duck was good but nothing special. I make duck much better as do many restaurants.
The Forest. $28. Quinoa risotto, mushrooms, parsley moss from Mirazur in France. This was very good and fascinating. The mushrooms are locally foraged.
Interpretation of Vanity. $16 Moist chocolate cake , cold almond cream, bubbles and cocoa from Mugaritz in Spain. This was awful and comic. The bubbles are tasteless and the dessert is the size of a thimble. The dessert was part of a tasting menu at the original restaurant and they have recreated it in ingredients and size. A ridiculous ripoff. Teuschers truffles at $100 per pound are cheaper and much much better.
The wine list was overpriced. The cheapest still wine was $52. The wines were precious and not familiar. I expect a wine list pricing to be in line with the menu prices and this wine list was out of bounds. This takes the fun out of a meal. We had 2 small carafes of wine. Nothing special and we were in the shadows of Napa. The wine list had 6 California wines.
All in all we did not enjoy our meal. There are no side dishes such as bread and just nothing to enjoy about it. It was robotic. Food and art need passion.
We had fun in SF being tourists.
Coit Tower. We arrived late so we could tour the lobby but could not go up the tower.
Chinatown
We t
We went to the farmers market at the Ferry Plaza on the harbor.
http://www.cuesa.org/markets It was loaded with vendors and the food was good. Some reasonable and some not so reasonable. Some vendors have full time stores in the main building.
The main building.
The line for this vendor's sandwiches was over 100 people long.
E went to the ocean side of SF and visited the
Cliff House.
http://cliffhouse1.reachlocal.net/home/index.htmlIt is an historic restaurant within a National Park. We did not eat but the views were great and it gave us shelter from the cold weather.
We took a boat ride in SF Bay. It was a beautiful day and the ride was great. We sailed under the
Golden Gate Bridge and then went around
Alcatraz.
Alcatraz.
We enjoyed San Francisco, It is a good walking city but it also has accessible mass transit. In many cities it is very useful to use buses and streetcars. I forgot to mention that we did take an
original SF Cablecar. It is pricey, $7 per ride, and we had to wait for about 30 minutes but it was fun and it is a must do in SF.
https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/transit/how-ride/how-to-historic-streetcars
I am still harvesting kale, tomatoes, lettuce, peppers and eggplant from my garden.
November and Thanksgiving are coming up. Lots of theater in November as well.I am really looking forward to Sweet Charity with Sutton Foster, off Broadway.
enjoy.
