Friday, November 16, 2012

TRAVEL THOUGHTS: EATING FOR PURE PLEASURE

When on a trip with 2 hyperactive kids who take pleasure in repeating the lines "are we there yet? we're bored" and "let's go back to Disneyland or (insert any theme park name here)! Now!", you learn to ditch your carefully researched list of places to eat. You learn to grin and act as if greasy, highly salted, sad looking theme park food is the yummiest on earth. You learn that McDonald's has a wagyu beef burger, which isn't half bad, and Taco Bell has a Doritos taco, which is sooo bad ... for your waistline, that is. You memorize the room service menu because you're so bushed from theme park hopping you can't even muster the strength to eat out.

On a recent US trip our first few cities were all about the kids, the theme parks, the rides and shows. Towards the tail end of the whirlwind journey we got so zoned out and were looking forward to a long, scenic Pacific Coast highway drive passing by Monterey, Carmel-by-the-Sea, and ending in San Francisco, where THANK GOD THERE ARE NO THEME PARKS HOORAY! :)

On this part of the trip my painstakingly prepared list was whipped out of my bag so often, it acted as our road map of places to go. Out of about fifty places we were able to try quite a few. One beautiful morning I was determined to cram as much as I could down my gullet. I only had a few hours at the San Francisco Ferry Building Saturday Farmers Market, and I desperately wanted to eat everything in sight.

Of course I couldn't, and obviously I didn't, since I'm still here now, writing this corny blog, instead of trying to recover from a food-induced coma.

At Big Sur's Nepenthe, Monetrey cheese and two others plus quince jam and toast
Top: Crispy calamari with moreish fried leeks at Grasing's Coastal Cuisine
Bottom: Dungeness crab cakes with red onion cucumber salad and basil aoili.
Fish of the day: Salmon

Blue Crab Risotto- pearl pasta, spinach, asparagus, tomatoes, lemon sauce. Amazing!

My heart started to beat really fast upon seeing the summer sale sign
I could stay in here for days!

Stop the food porn first and smell the flowers...

and the fruits (heirloom tomatoes are fruits!)

and the organically grown baby carrots

the bunch of happy tomatoes

the bread display at Acme Bakery

...and back to regular food porn programming. It had me at "Tasty Salted pig Parts."

I wanted to hug them all!

I ordered the Mess Piggy on Day 1, and the Mufuletta on Day 2


My son loved his salumi cone.
 He doesn't eat ice cream, by the way. This is his "ice cream".

The pickled peppers of Mess Piggy I could snack on every single day

Why hello there, you sexy thing, you. Layers of tasty salted pig parts

Some refreshing sorbet action

Belgian style Leige waffle from Blue Bottle coffee
I saw them from afar, I inhaled their fragrance, I walked over hypnotized


Oh Roli Roti porchetta, you make me forget my name

This guy was happy to show me his "insides"

I stared lovingly at these babies while waiting for my order

I was happy. Very, very happy. I can't say anything else at this point.

Korean taco at Namu

Cooling mint tea at 4505 meats



I really had no room for their best damn cheeseburgers
after the porchetta, taco, ginger snaps at Miette and Humphry Scolombe
salted caramel ice cream. Really. REALLY. But what the heck...



Crab cake at Boudin, the corn relish on the side was the bomb!

The famous clam chowder in a humongous sourdough bread bowl
Cioppino, we got addicted to you in San Francisco. Tsk, tsk tsk. The best we had was at a small cafe in Little Italy

Nepenthe
48510 Highway 1, Big Sur, California 93920
(831) 667-2345
http://www.nepenthebigsur.com/

Grasing's
6th Street and Mission, Carmel
(831) 624-6562 
http://www.grasings.com/

Ferry Building Marketplace
http://www.ferrybuildingmarketplace.com/

Boudin Bakery
Pier 39, Space 5-Q
San Francisco, CA 94133
415-421-0185
http://www.boudinbakery.com/

No comments:

Post a Comment