Bay Area Recap

I've been so busy lately that I haven't had much time to post, obviously. There's just something about working on a computer all day at a full-time job that really sucks the fun out of computing when I get home at night. Funny, that.

Anyway, I've been up to lots of stuff, food-related and otherwise. Since most of the stuff that falls into the "otherwise" category involves painting, unpacking boxes, and commuting, I won't even bother telling you about it.

Here are some of the food highlights of the past few months:

1) Discovering Fenton’s Ice Cream on Piedmont Ave. in Oakland, where they offer my own personal Dream Flavor: Coffee ice cream bursting with big Oreo cookie chunks AND cookie dough nuggets. It’s so wrong and yet so very, very right.

Fenton's ice cream.

2) Discovering Joe’s Ice Cream on Geary in San Francisco (close enough for us to walk there from our new apartment, which is key.) They have pumpkin ice cream, which I like to pair with hot fudge. Don’t knock it 'til you’ve tried it.

3) Discovering the joys of Clement Street in San Francisco, where we have already eaten Malaysian, Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, Thai, bubble tea, Turkish, Moroccan, hot pot, Russian (including my beloved strudel at the Gastronom deli), and pizza.

Hot pot, buffet style. Kinda scary, so thank goodness we were very drunk.

4) Eating at Dopo, a tiny place in Oakland, also on Piedmont Ave., where they made one of the best dishes I have ever had and then promptly whisked it off the menu, forcing me to call repeatedly, plaintively wheedling on behalf of the return of the nettle pennone bedecked with tiny meatballs and transparent shavings of lemon. It haunts my dreams and yet they won’t bring it back for me because they insist on rotating their menu continuously. “We have other great things,” they keep telling me. Phooey. I considered offering to wash dishes for a night in exchange for the recipe, but I wimped out.

Incidentally, I really blame Mrs. Delicious for my continual Dopo cravings, because she was the one that told me about the place to begin with.

5) Meeting ME and her husband for tea and a delicious tart at Modern Tea in Hayes Valley. ME is a very jolly person and you should certainly start reading her blog. At Modern Tea, we were exposed an extremely intensive tea training session; I like tea as much as the next humanities major, but my taste is more in the trashy PG-Tips-with-lots-of-milk-and-sugar vein instead of the hand-picked-by-monkeys-in-ancient-treetops variety. I don't remember exactly what I learned about tea that day, because the tart and conversation were too distractingly delicious, but I'm sure it was something important.

6) Speaking of tea, did you know that you can drink Thai tea warm? Yes, it's true! I had only sampled Thai tea in its iced, heavily sweetened and creamified format, but one particularly chilly night in the Richmond inspired my friend Rachael to simply order a steaming mug of it, served plain.

My eyes were opened. Warm, it has this uniquely round, comforting, spicy flavor that's overwhelmed when it's served cold, sweet and creamy. So pick up a box today and try it hot. I realize that for most of you, this will be an unpleasant prospect given that it's probably summer where you live and you're busy baring as much skin as possible while gleefully licking popsicles and tubing at the water park. Damn you all. For those of us living a few blocks from the ocean who are still wearing their parkas out to dinner most nights, a warm mug of tea sounds depressingly appealing.