My first dinner at San Francisco was at Scoma’s by the Fisherman’s Wharf, it was a seafood restaurant highly recommended by our cab driver.
I have to admit, this place was a little touristy, but which place by the fisherman’s wharf isn’t? On the table the 4 of us had Clam Chowder, Lobster Bisque, Lobster ravioli, and a Hot Sampler Trio.
I heard about Sift Cupcake and Dessert Bar from a new friend that we were travelling with on our trip to San Francisco and Napa Valley. She saw them win an episode of Cupcake Wars on FoodTV, so we had to try it. This was basically our last stop on the way home to Vancouver. Good thing it was open at 10AM that morning. We actually also went to Bouchon Bakery at 8AM, so we dropped by to check it out and have a snack.
Shortly after telling my coworker I wanted to go to San Francisco, she quickly told me about what she recently saw on an episode of the Best Thing I Ever Ate, meat episode There was this thing called the Leg of Beast at Incanto (see video below). The caveat though is that the guy who said it was the best thing he ever ate is partners with the restaurant’s chef on Chef vs City. The video made it look so delicious though.
Our last breakfast stop in San Francisco was at Brenda’s French Soul Food. We’ve been wanting to go to this place for breakfast the whole time we were there, but every time we called around 10am there’d be at least an hour wait. On our last day there, we decided to just go at 8am, and we got our seats right away.
We were attracted to this place because we saw a big sign saying Pho Tau Bay, which is our favourite Vietnamese restaurant in Surrey. We found out later that the place was actually called Vietnam II. Our server was an older lady, and seemed to be in a really bad mood at first. Looked really grumpy, and when we tried ordering with the numbers, she angrily insisted that we read out the name instead. What’s the point of the numbers?
I’ve seen a lot of Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurants all over California, and maybe even a few in Mexico. Being pretty much a completely seafood restaurant, I was a bit hesitant to go in. I knew I only had a two or three things on the menu that I could eat. I went anyway.
Tartine Bakery was on my list of places to visit for breakfast/brunch, but we actually only got up early enough one time. We walked by Tartine Bakery by accident actually, and it was closing time. Since I only tried a couple small things I’m not going to provide a rating.
My first brunch in San Francisco was at Farmerbrown. This was one of the few breakfast restaurants we wanted to visit because of good ratings.
This place was clearly a popular place to be. It was not until we sat down that we found out that this was an all you can eat buffet bar. There was also a regular menu for people who doesn’t want the buffet.
I got a bunch of flak from my friends for this restaurant. With a name like Buckeye Roadhouse you’d expect a diner just off the highway that you’d see on Diners Drive-ins and Dives right? Wrong. What you have is almost a complete opposite. Sure it’s right off the highway about 5 minutes from Golden Gate Bridge. But what you also get is Valet Parking, more eldery people there who were pretty dressed up in sun dressses, and collared shirts. Kind of seemed like a place to go after church.
On our 1 hour drive to Napa, I had two places that I wanted to try. Thankfully my friends were up for it. The first stop was just 5 minutes away from the bridge. That got my friends worried that we’d be eating again 5 minutes after we left the first place. Luckily this was about 20 mins away, which we made into about 45 mins because we went for a drive to the Muir Woods.
Bi-Rite was one of the two Ice Cream places in San Francisco we wanted to try out. The other one was Mitchell’s. We unknowingly walked to Bi-Rite while doing a lot of exploring that day. We basically took a taxi from Tenderloin (where our hotel was) over to Alamo Square, then walked to Haight Ashbury for some shopping, then over to Castro, then through Mission, to our last stop of Incanto in Noe Valley.
On the day we visited Alcatraz I had an extreme craving for chowder, chowder in a bread bowl to be specific. So when we finally got back to the wharf after our 5 hour tour from the islands, I went to find my chowder in a bread bowl at Chowder’s.
