Before exploring San Francisco’s Civic Center, I started the day with breakfast at a café in Hayes Valley, a neighborhood just across Van Ness Avenue from City Hall. I had a traditional American breakfast of scrambled eggs, crispy home-fried potatoes, and toasted levain. Well, the eggs and potatoes were traditionally American, anyway. As far as I can tell, levain is some foodie version of sourdough bread. And there’s nothing more traditional in San Francisco than sourdough bread.
I had lunch at the Asian Art Museum. So naturally I had something Asian. I got Shanghai chicken wonton soup, made with sugar snap peas, baby bok choy, ginger, shitake mushrooms, and chicken broth. It was a chore to eat. Ever since I had the bowl of chicken and noodle soup on my last night in Beijing at the place where no English was spoken, I’ve been trying to get another incredible bowl of Chinese noodle soup. I’ve been coming up short so far.
I have to say the berry pastry dessert I got looks more European than Asian.
I got Asian food for dinner too. It only made sense because I finished up my sightseeing for the day in Japantown. Dinner started off with the small salad and miso soup you always seem to get at Japanese restaurants.
For a starter I had yakitori–chicken skewers in teriyaki sauce. Having yakitori is one of my favorite memories of visiting Japan when I was in the Navy.
The main course was garlic chicken. It looks pretty good!
It wasn’t though. Dinner wasn’t very good. Later, friends told me that the restaurant I went to isn’t good. Of all the places in Japantown, I had to pick the bad one!
Of course the day wouldn’t have been complete without ice cream. After dinner I went to an ice cream place that prepares individual servings of ice cream individually. The process takes about 90 seconds. I guess it’s the ice cream equivalent to single-serving coffee machines. It’s sort of gimmicky. And speaking of gimmicky, I got one of their gimmicky flavors–cookie dough with pretzels and chocolate chips. The whole thing was a bit much.
Okay, so once I got past the levain, it wasn’t the best day of dining in San Francisco. But I’m not one to complain.
Yum! Yakitori!
Yum!