u m a m i

Day 8 To Market, To Market We Went

Saturday morning bright and beautiful. California St Financial District. Where the cable car stops.

 

The Farmer's Market at Ferry Building. Where the local residents go for fresh produce and super good eats. Where the tourists like us go to gawk at the abundance and gnash their teeth deciding what to try. Where there is also a statue of Gandhi looking at all the market activities, huh? Non-violence towards vegetables and fruits?

Breakfast. Redwood Hill Farm Vanilla Grade A Goat Milk Yoghurt with Fresh Raspberries. And scrumptious peanut butter cookie sandwich. Gorgeousssss.

This gentleman from the White Crane Spring Ranch taught me a new word. "Biodynamic" farming, which he described as "beyond organic". His produce is grown high up in the mountains where the water and air are pure. Where herbs and vegetables turned out coloured as richly as Old Masters paintings. Picture on the right shows some bay leaf wreathes.

More herbs from his farm. Even the slugs grow fat and sluggy.

Lots of foods to sample. Looks more like a party spread.

Hmm, don't know what he was selling. Doubt it was anything to do with meat.

And then there was more eating. Tamales, which are like Mexican versions of our bak changs. Looks messy I know, but very tasty.. from left, Mole chicken, beef and pumpkin-cheddar. Mole is a kind of chocolate savoury sauce, wished there was more of it.

Crab cakes. With real crab meat bound with a little breadcrumbs. Unlike versions here which comes with icky surimi.

There are tables at one end set with plastic tablecloths to make it easier to eat on. These tables can accommodate quite a lot of people if everyone squeezes a little to make room for others. Unlike our oblivious Singaporean companions who insisted on hogging the entire table for our party of five. They ignored my suggestions to make space for other people. Even after I said it twice. Grumble grumbled to myself. We ate quickly and said our goodbyes.

Many more things to see, touch, smell, admire. Autumn collection. Amazing varieties of peppers. French beans. Cranberry beans. Brussels sprouts-a-sprouting.

   

Those are not grapes people, but potatoes. But don't they look juicy?  Pomegranates and pumpkins. We bought some persimmons and apples, just missed the last of the figs. Some stuff sells out fast.

 

Even salt can be interesting. Picture on left shows varieties of salts,  Himalayan, French, Volcanic and I don't know what.

Beautiful beautiful beans from Rancho Gordo- this stand is located in the front part of the building. At the front too is a stand that sells delicious yuba (the skin formed at the top of pot when soya milk is boiled) marinated in various flavours like ma-la and sesame.

When the sun got too hot and the vendors in the market started packing up, we adjourned to the building itself, where there are many specialty shops. Cowgirl Creamery for cheeses, too bad cheese is not so easily transportable by plane. A wild mushroom shop, home ofwildly expensive chanterelles and porcini and truffles. Beautiful iced cakes at one cake shop. Another shop glowing with copper pans.

Sur La Table, again. Back home now, I am still scolding myself for walking past that Microplane zester/grater. All the cooks on Food Network were using it, as were the waiters at some of the restaurants we ate at. But we got the other appliances of the moment, the most interesting of which was the silicon spatulae-TV cooks no longer stir with spoons or ladles nowadays, only silicon spatulae would do. I also got a silicon pastry brush. There was a version which can double up as a baster, but I found it too fiddly. Silicon Valley, full of erm, silicon... they sure have found plenty of new uses for it.

 

For lunch, we tar-powed a bento set from Delica RF1 to eat back at the hotel.  The bento box included simmered vegetables and a fat juicy scallop breaded and fried. I was also attracted to the Hijiki Salad with Soybeans like a bee to honey, this salad was sooo incredibly tasty and is likely very healthy too. Hijiki, another favourite. The yellow soup was butternut squash soup, a welcome taste of autumn.

After the lunch, sated and full, we settled on our comfy kingsized bed and watched telly. Mostly plastic surgery and food programmes. I like Rose Levy Beranbaum for her detailed instructions on baking (chill the dough!), Tyler Florence (pity he had to work with that silly Jack woman), Alton Brown and Rachael Ray (not too perky as some have said, just very organised). There was heavy emphasis on turkey dishes, Paula Deen even talked to hers, calling it Mr Tom Turkey, so funny. Emile Lagasse mumbles. And that evil horror Sandra Lee-switch channels!

That evening we were supposed to eat dinner at 1550 Hyde St. Pim recommended this too ( I e-mailed her for advice before the trip, and she very kindly gave some suggestions, thanks Pim!). But we didn't make it there.

Because my eczema was bugging me so much, and my skin was painful and itchy. The instructions that came with the loratadine said to eat only one tablet every 24 hours but I found its effects too mild. Already I have finished one bottle of lotion and the spray was as good as useless. I contemplated overdosing with the loratadine but husband, bless him, rummaged in his bags and waved something in my face-a small vial of Axe Medicated Oil. Eeks, I said, hesitating strongly. I have not used this oil for years. In my mind only little old ladies and lorry drivers use it, the former for all sorts of ills, the latter to dab on their nostrils to keep them awake during long journeys. Medicated oil has a lot of menthol, and it makes the skin tingle and burn. But I was already foaming at the mouth with frustration so it was worth a risk. At first there was no reaction, but after about 20 minutes, the tingling and slight burning sensation soothed and negated the itch while simultaneously calming irritation. Complete relief came within one hour. That night I rested well, not needing to wake in the middle of the night to scratch at some damn spot. What a little miracle. I will never doubt this humble oil again. Our forefathers were right. Axe Medicated Oil rules!

Day 7 Berkeley

John the van driver came early to our hotel to drive us back to San Francisco. We checked into The Orchard hotel again, but it was still early and our room was not ready yet. So we left our bags with the concierge and went out to jalan-jalan.

Picture above: locked out workers in picket line outside a hotel in Union Sq. This scene repeated itself in many of the big chain hotels. The lockout mainly affected hotels with unionised workers. (The Orchard was not involved in the dispute, well, because their workers are not unionised). Here's my understanding of events. It started in late September. Negotiations over a new work contract became stalled so union workers went on strike in four hotels. In retaliation, the hotels locked out the strikers, and expanded the lockout to other hotels and their unionised workers. Locked out workers started picket lines outside the hotels. Till now, the issue is not yet resolved though some workers have returned to work.

Back to our usual frivolous activities...

Husband and I walked to the BART station on Market St. The BART took us to Berkeley. We had intended to visit Telegraph St but Martha (lady at next table at Manresa from the night before) told us we wouldn't like it very much and had proposed that we checked out 4th St instead. 4th St is quite far away from the station and the route was not very interesting for walking so we waited for a bus. The bus failed to appear after 25 minutes of our waiting so we hailed a taxi. Good idea. The taxi carried us away from the dust and grime of University Avenue and deposited us on sunny 4th St.

 

First thing I saw was Bette's Oceanview Diner. I've always had the impression that it is in the middle of the ocean or at some ferry point overlooking the ocean. But I didn't see no ocean. What I saw were thick crowds of people inside and outside, so we put our name on the waiting list and waited for a table. We ordered the day's special of pumpkin pancakes and waffles because the place is famous for its pancakes. And we were disappointed. My waffles was not crispy at all. Husband's pancakes were slightly better and went well with poached eggs. Maybe we should have ordered something from the regular menu.

4th St is an upscale neighbourhood lined on both sides by "lifestyle" shops. Antiques, kimono-patterned bedlinen, beeswax candles, cutting edge-luggage, obscure books and more. The gourmet Pasta Shop Fine Foods is just as overachieving with its selection of many high-quality varieties of cheeses, chocolates, teas, oils, etc. We had an unfettered session of sampling and buying.

 

Then it was time for our lunch appointment. Like our friend from the night before this taxi driver also came from India, difference is, he has earned enough to have his family join him. I asked him about calling the Festival of Lights Deepavali and Diwali. He said both have the same meaning and explained that Diwali is the abbreviated version for the more formal sounding Deepavali.

He finished his explanation just before we arrived at our lunch venue. Chez Panisse Cafe. We noticed the tree first, then the restaurant. A very beautiful tree, its leaves form a wide canopy that seemed to 'protect' the restaurant. Maybe the tree is the secret to its longevity hehe.

Inside the cafe it was warm and cozy and packed with customers. The room has a Charles Rennie McIntosh sensibility about it, with the lines and geometric shapes of its window panels and light fixtures, which helped greatly to distract from the smallness of the space.

 

We were not exactly starving, so we ordered lightly. My Chicory Salad with anchovy, garlic and egg was perfectly balanced in flavours considering its assertive ingredients. Husband ordered the Local albacore salad with green beans, beets and black olives but I ate most of his salad. This is the second time I came across beets. The first time was at Arcadia restaurant in San Jose. I concluded beets can be very delicious, it helped that its colour is orange and not bloody red. What I could not get enough of was the french beans, which was the absolutest sweetest tenderest little beans I've ever had in my entire life. The beans made me begin to understand what Alice Waters has been banging on about.

For the second course I ordered another appetiser item. Crema di fagioli: Cannard Farm shell bean soup. Because I had read about Koon and Cannard in the New Yorker food issue. I felt very food-geeky right then telling husband this. Nice beany soup. But after the soup I started to feel chest pains! Could I be having a heart attack? I wasn't sweating or breathless and had no history of heart problems (touch wood). So I decided to take a walk down the street; if it was a heart attack the pain should get worse. It didn't. After walking for about 10 minutes, I started burping (discreetly of course, okay there was one big buster) and started to feel better. Alamak those fancy organic sustainable agriculture beans gave me Gas.

All this time, husband was not really paying attention to me because he was liking his Spaghetti with porcini mushroom and gremolata so much. It looked very simple, a few mushrooms dotted around the green-flecked pasta, like something I could have made for him at home. But the porcini was so voluptously intense and meaty it made all the difference to the dish.

Feeling virtuous from the salads and the soups, we decided to share a plate of Artisan Cheese  Selection for dessert Red Hawk from CowGirl Creamery in Monterey, Tome de Couserans from the Pyrenees and Roncal from Navaronne. Marvellous cheeses all of them. Our favourite was the Tome, but the Red Hawk came a close second.

We finished with espresso and tea. My husband declared that this place made the best expresso. All the places we've been to thus far have not come up to his espresso expectations. He likes it in a very tiny concentrated shot, thick but not burnt or overly bitter, and with the requisite crema layer on top. Many places used too much water. At Chez Panisse Cafe it was just right.

Martha had been so disappointed when we told her we were only eating lunch at the cafe. She urged us to eat dinner in the restaurant proper, but our calendar was already packed. If there is a next time, we will definitely have dinner here. The cafe was a good primer, showing how seemingly mundane dishes can be elevated with really good produce. The produce are the celebrities here, not the chef.

This area of Berkeley is also touted as the Gourmet Ghetto because of its profusion of eateries and produce purveyors. Right next door to Chez Panisse is a tapas restaurant and right opposite is a cheese shop called The Cheeseboard with its eye-popping array of cheese and breads. Along the nine-block walk to the BART station we came across many more places of indulgence, like Phoenix Pastifico and the 50-year old Virginia Bakery (does this mean this place is older than Chez Pannise?).

Our daily itineraries often read like non-stop dining marathon interspersed with bits of shopping and bittier bits of sightseeing. It was intentionally planned, some of these places require advanced reservations, but still, I could not shake the feeling that we were barely scratching the surface. There seemed to be hundreds more interesting things in this area that I haven't explored. Next time we'll have to stay a lot lot longer.

   

Later that evening, we took another of pim's recommendation and ate a wonderful dinner of lamb couscous at The Green Pizza. Remember A Cook's Tour where Anthony Bourdain discovered that in Morocco, all the good food is in private homes rather than restaurants? This would explain why it is so hard to find decent Arabic food outside the Middle East.

The Green Pizza in the Tenderloin district usually serves pizza. But the oven was broken and couscous replaced pizza on the menu. Mr Hakim the owner is a young student from Tunisia. The couscous was cooked by his mother who was visiting during the Ramadan period. Perfect timing for husband who has a perpetual nolstalgia for couscous because it was the staple food during his student days in France. The authentic home-style couscous was delicious and satisfying. The grains had been cooked properly so it absorbed the steam of the lamb broth. A big pile of the couscous was served topped with generous amounts of tender lamb and vegetables. By Makansutra standards, this definitely rated as "Die Die Must Try".

Day 6 SJ Lights! Egg-tion!

Note: Date stamp on my camera was not changed so 11th appears as 12th.. This is a post of Day 6. 11 November 2004.

I woke up very early that day. Could not sleep because of my travel eczema. I reckon it may be the hard water or the dry climate, but whenever I travel to a temperate country my skin gets uncontrollably itchy and I develop blotchy rash all over which then turns my body into a jigsaw puzzle of red wheals and flaky skin. When I was packing for my trip I noticed that my supply of anti-histamine tablets had expired, so I made do with only body lotion to counteract the problem. Bad idea. The eczema started the minute I came out of the shower on the first day and continued unabated until I returned to Singapore. Weird. If I scratched, the rash worsened, but if I didn't scratch, the itch would pester me.... so I was caught up in this itch-scratch-itch cycle which got so bad that on this day I woke up with skin so tight in parts I could not bend the joints. Which was how we wound up walking the streets at 6:00 a.m looking for Walgreens on Santa Clara Ave / 1st St, where I could get hold of an anti-itch spray and some loratadine tablets.

On the way back to the hotel we passed a coffeeshop with a neon lit sign saying City Bagels and Donuts. Ding. I persuaded husband to stop for breakfast. Instead of the cozy Italian cafe at Hyatt Saint Claire we passed by on way to Walgreens. Erm, are you sure? The Italian place should make a better cup of espresso he said. But bagels taste good, nd we are in the USA so we should eat bagels I said. Bagels then.

City Bagels and Donuts serves, what else, bagels and donuts. The smell of baking hangs appetisingly in the air. Cinammon bagels. Cheese bagels. Raisin bagels. Bagels with everything. Bagel-wiches, yummy sandwiches piled with so much ingredients it made eating messy and fun. Donuts... glazed, unglazed, some as big as my face, and they would even drill a hole in the donuts and squirt cream into it if you wanted. Coffee that came in huge thermos but indistinguishable in flavours, like the ones in Cafe Primo. I usually stick with tea, but husband likes to play around with Columbias and Sumatras.

The coffeeshop is owned by a warm and friendly Cambodian couple who came to San Jose 14 years ago. Their personality is all over the place. Pendant lights and the odd chandelier give the workmanlike space a homely glow. Spotlessly clean surfaces everywhere. Framed paintings of tropical waterfalls on the walls. Bamboo plants in Chinese ceramic pots on the counter. Wooden chairs for comfort. A welcoming place for busy office workers and people who have time to read a paper and drink a slow cup of coffee, like the two of us. We watched them pack donuts into large cakeboxes and I imagined the contents laid out on a meeting table, a la Twin Peaks. People remember Lara Flynn Boyle from Twin Peaks. My memories of the series was of their donuts and the fruit pies from the coffeeshop where the surreal characters meet. My friend and I were so inspired by the series we went to eat at an American restaurant in Hampstead, London where we discovered that the coffee was free flow and the waiter was a tall and handsome American. We giggled a lot that cold winter evening....Husband nudged me out of my reverie and we dusted the crumbs from our laps and returned to the hotel.

He met up with his colleagues who were packing up stuff from the previous day's event. Then, a spot of shopping at Valley Field, where he bought a remote-controlled spinning space-ship thingy for my nephew and I got a crazy-patterned top to wear to work. Our two hours whizzed by, and it was time again to jump back into the taxi and return to hotel for me, and to Santa Clara University for him. We waited for him, me and my eczema. Packed the bags, watched some more telly. Looked out of the window and saw the last of the Veteran's day parade. Scrambled to get the camera but was too late to capture any of the action. Managed to get a good shot of the city enveloped in the early evening light.

When the sun went to rest, husband returned and gave me a relieved hug. Our holiday could officially start.

First destination: Manresa restaurant in Los Gatos. Which I had read so much about eGullet and at Chez Pim. 15 minutes by taxi from our hotel. We sat by the window, it was dark so I could not see anything outside. Inside it was all warm and inviting with the cheery mustard curtains and the glow from the hanging onion-shaped light fixtures. We decided on the Chef's Tasting menu for the two of us, and settled in to enjoy the evening. Husband ordered wine by the glasses for himself while I, mindful of my sensitive skin, decided to stick with sparkling water.

First, a series of little tasty and amusing creations to prime our taste buds.

Petit Fours "Red Pepper-Black Olive" - bon bons of red pepper spicy and sweet, and black olives incorporated into madeleines. It must be fun to work in this kitchen.

Pomegranate Sangria - with orange juice. For once, I didn't have to decide whether to spit or to swallow.

Parmesan Churros - maybe a bit too clever for us. Husband said it was a little oily. The parmesan was very mild.

Citrus and Jasmine Tea Gelee - Very refreshing sorbet with bits of gelee infused with tea. If I complained that my palate was not cleansed yet, would they give me another helping?

The Egg - which generated so much discussion in eGullet. Every diner gets one. Looks like an egg, but tasted more than an egg should. The "egg white" was frothy on top, a little more creamy going down, then a fine layer of chives, and finally, at the bottom, an orange "yolk". There was sweet, salty.. and tart, the last flavour one would expect of an egg, but there it was. A sweet yet tart egg that melts in the mouth. We were advised to scoop it vertically, so that every layer is eaten in one mouthful, but I also had a lot of fun eating it by layers.

In between we were offered bread, which I didn't like very much for being a little too dense. Neither did the lady sitting to my right. Her name is Martha and she was in town for work. Martha and I got talking and she gave me lots of advice about eating in and around SF. Her favourite restaurants are Chez Pannise and Thanh Long for "amazing" Dungeness crabs cooked with a rich garlic sauce... I believed her about the crabs because she had that very ecstatic look in her face when she was talking about it, but we knew we would not have time to venture to that restaurant, no matter, Singapore has a very happening crab scene. I told her about Delfina and she agreed with me about the roast chicken at Zuni. Have food love will travel huh?

Trailers over, the action began.

Foie gras and Cumin Caramel. Looked like the Spanish creme caramel but tasted of velvety foie gras. Many places serve foie gras with a contrasting sweet sauce, but here they went all the way and made dessert. When foie gras came on the scene in the late 90's I ate a lot of it, but in recent years I've become so sick of it I hardly ever order it anymore, but this dish changed my mind all over again. Even husband who is no foie lover was similarly enchanted.

Next, Urchin with Saffron and Orange. All my favourite things in one bowl. Heaven. Husband cannot reconcile with sea urchin roe, so I ate his share. Double heaven. The dish is like chawan mushi with uni, but lifted out of its potential jelak richness with the zesty orange and shavings of kaffir lime.

By now the room was full of people. Husband thinks he saw a Singaporean or two in the room (other than us). The waiter came by and apologised for keeping us waiting, he explained that the kitchen was cooking for another party in a separate room. We didn't mind, I was feeling quite full already.

The next two dishes were scallops and Joh Dory. Husband said, "see, there is a logic here, we're going from melt-in-the-mouth to soft, and now we are starting to chew ..."

Roast Sea Scallops, Celery Root Mousseline, Meat Jus Vinai. This was my favourite dish of the evening. A big fat juicy scallop roasted to perfection and sprinkled with sea salt to bring out its inherent sweetness, and accompanied by the woodsy autumnal vegetables. I could eat this every day.

Husband was excited with the next dish. John Dory on the Plancha, Chanterelles with Savoy Cabbage, Chanterelle Sauce. I see in my notes that I have scribbled "octopus" but it didn't mention octopus in the menu. However, I am certain there was octopus on the plate. The fish itself was rather mild of taste, but it provided the perfect canvas for the nearly-crunchy and umamintense mushrooms. The fish may even have been cooked a little hard so that its texture came close to the mushroom's. Incidentally, I noticed that the dish was served with regular knife instead of a fish knife. Sometime at the end of the 20th century, fish knives disappeared from use. Whatever happened to them? Or is it just a British preoccupation?

After this course I went to the restroom. One wall was decorated with menus from other restaurants the chef had visited, all signed of course. And when I returned to my seat, my napkin had been refolded and placed on the table. I told husband about how in the book The Apologist by Jay Rayner, the restaurant critic character had this napkin test to gauge the standards of a restaurant. If the napkin was not folded, it indicated sloppiness. If folded into a swan, the restaurant had too much time on their hands. The best way is to fold it into a simple arrangement and placed on the table ready for the diner when he or she returned. I applied this test to all the fancy restaurants (i.e. every place that uses a napkin) I visited on this trip, and every place passed. Yar, boring isn't it. Husband was not very impressed with my little story so I told him that I thought the toilet paper in the restroom was not soft enough. He said, soft does not mean good quality. What do I know? I prefer soft......Maybe my brain was addled by all that rich food.

We were only halfway through. The next item on the chewy scale arrived. Chicken Wing Confit, Garnet Yam and Goat Cheese Gratin.  We both hated this dish. The chicken wing reminded us of chicken nuggets and the yam was just too sludgey. We ate very little of this dish.

The Roast Rack of Suckling Pig and Boudin Noir was much better. The boudin noir was very good in that intense gamey-organ way that I liked very much. The pig itself had such a rich and meaty taste husband and I were postulating that it couldn't be a pig, it must have been lamb. Maybe our eyes were deceived by its lambchop-like appearance. And like pim said in her review, what is suckling pig without crackling? I didn't think about it then, otherwise I would have asked if there were any cracklings in the kitchen.

The final dish was American Kobe Beef Bavette with Spinach, Bordelais. The meat was very tender though husband complained that the meat was oversalted. I was ambivalent. This dish was competent but nothing exciting compared to the earlier courses. I loved the fried puffs that came with it though, they tasted a little like fried gnocchi.

By this time, we were very full, and had to ask for a little break before dessert. Husband ordered an espresso and I had some tea to help make room for dessert. Sorbets were served, and some time later, the desserts (yes, plural) came.

Kaffir Lime Rice Pudding with Roasted Pineapple reminded me of a dish called "slurry" I once enjoyed at Felix restaurant in Hong Kong's Peninsula Hotel. Both were creamy and puddinglike, with coconuts for added richness and crunchiness. At Felix,the pineapple added what seemed like a very Hawaiian touch. But at Manresa, this pudding went east and the pineapple gave it a Thai flavour which was enhanced by the heady kaffir lime aroma. Lovely jobbly.

The Date Milkshake was even more magnificient. Dates can be too sweet eaten on its own, but here they blended it into a slurpy milkshake that came in a too tiny glass.

The final dessert was Bittersweet Chocolate Souffle with Candied Pecan Ice Cream. Husband and I are not very into chocolate right now, so this dish was wasted on us. It was perfectly fine, but we were too full to appreciate it. We called for more coffee and tea instead, and sat back to ruminate on our incredible dining experience. Every course prepared with great expertise and attention, coupled with impeccable service, everything just came together to make a very memorable meal for us.

Replete and slightly giddy, we stumbled out into the cold air. There was hardly a soul on the main Santa Cruz street, though the taxi that husband had ordered was already waiting for us. The driver was talking on the phone. This cab had a GPS system installed, which prompted husband to ask if GPS is standard issue in US cabs. The driver said no, he installed it at his own expense because he was not familiar with the area. Turned out he came from Punjab four years ago and was working at several jobs in before settling on taxi-driving. His wife and children are still in India and he had been talking to them just before we got into his car. To wish them Happy Diwali or Deepavali, Festival of Lights. Maybe next year he will return for the holiday. But for now, he was contented to exchange a few words over the mobile phone. And he was happy being in America. This land it seems, is still very much a land of opportunity. And innovation.

Day 5 SJ Workaday

Workaday for husband that is. Me, I had a whole day to myself. Mostly spent at the Tech Museum of Innovation, courtesy of free pass given out by the hotel concierge. I discovered

1. How to insert genes into cells. Helped a little boy follow instructions, from the interactive PC, on how to insert jellyfish DNA into bacteria to make the bacteria glow. Now I know what the lab rats in my former workplace get up to.

2. I am not just short, but short enough to disqualify myself from riding the G-bicyle. It is a bicycle set on a vertical round track. If you pedal hard enough you generate enough speed and momentum to spin on the track, and so experience G-force.. something like that. Thing is, one has to be at least 158 cm. I was not tall enough to get in. Truthfully, I was relieved. It was there, so I had to try it, but if I was not allowed to, no big shakes.

3. But I got on with the Segway just fine. It would make an even finer Xmas present....

For lunch, I went over to where husband was working at, and ate something from the buffet spread. Quiche, salads and cookie. We sure ain't in Singapore no more umami... where every other caterer in town fight and slaughter each other to compete for the business catering pie, laying on generous spread of curries, satays, prawn fritters bubur-cha-chas and maybe a whole roast goat.

There was only so much that could be seen at the Tech Museum, so the afternoon was spent watching Oprah. The day's topic was anti-ageing solutions. Wished I took notes, only remember the anti-wrinkle diet which advocated eating plenty of salmon.After Oprah, movies on the Hallmark Channel. I watched so much telly my bum turned numb.

Husband was attending a Gala Dinner with his team that night. As I watched him dress up I told myself I was getting myself a nice dinner too. I let myself choose between the Italian restaurant Il Fornaio at the Hyatt St Claire or the Arcadia at Marriot- because these two were the most fancy places within three blocks of my hotel, and I was in the mood for fancy. I settled on Arcadia because it serves modern American food, since I was in America, it made sense to eat there.

The people at Arcadia treated a lone female diner like me very well. Knew how to leave me alone, and when to look out for me in case I needed something. Though I walked in without a reservation, they seated me at a banquette table with a good view of the room. Pleasant modern setting. Comfortable seats. The room was quite empty at first and later filled up with suits and travellers.

Started with a big garden salad and nibbled on their three types of bread which came with three types of butter (dried tomato, anchovy & sea salt)- funny how the simplest, i.e. the sea salt, was the best. Main course of Kurobota pork tenderloin served three ways was more interesting. One tasted like char siew and another like US-style barbeque while I have forgotten the third way. All sweet and smoky, so the interest was in the variations of intensities and little foodjots, like a tiny piece of irresistably crispy outside, fluffy-with-bits-of fruits-inside apple dumpling. I liked the apple dumpling so much I had the apple beignet drizzled with calvados sabayon for dessert. My solo dinner was quite perfect.

OTOH, husband's dinner was very much an anticlimax. The food wasn't the point of the event, but even so, the meal ranked as the worst he had eaten on the trip. The first course of salad with goat cheese was laid out for God-only-knew-how-long before the dinner, so he dared not touch it. Main course had tasteless shrimp, meat of unknown parentage and a risotto, all of which did not appeal to him. Nobody stayed for the dessert. $250 per head and my husband came home hungry. The rest of his team had the same complaint, and they ended up eating a second dinner in the hotel restaurant. Husband stayed with me and  ordered a hamburger, which was way more satisfying. I continued to watch telly...

Crab and cake, not together though

I've got many pictures to post of the SF trip, but let's take a wee break to highlight some delicious snippets of my past week:

Garibaldi used to be my favourite Italian restaurant until I decided on a lesser-carb lifestyle. Though I may have given them up, they have not given up. The group is on expansion mode now, branching into catering and opening cafes around town.

We popped into their Italian cafe Menotti at Raffles City Shopping Centre last weekend, intending to have some cakes and tea. The menu is extensive and it was difficult to decide, but we were glad we decided on their ricciotti and bocconotti. The former is ricotta cheesecake, and they still make one of the best version in town. Why would anyone want to eat the yellow cement slabs masquerading as cheesecake elsewhere   perplexes me. The Bocconotti though, was another thing altogether. It was described on the menu as a cupcake. Certainly I was unprepared for a rich, very moist cake with the most tender crumb that dissolves in the mouth to leave little explosions of almonds and sugar, so very nutty it was. There was some cherries in there too to give a contrasting tartness. Usually I do not allow myself to finish a whole slice of cake, but this bocconotti, as soon as I finished one I wanted another. It was that good.

And last night, our makan group of 16 people had a most agreeable dinner at Uncle Leong at Ang Mo Kio. Forget the heat and crowds at Mellben, skip across the road and have a feast of crab beehoon, 101 permutations of Asian seafood dishes, and finish with more crabs, especially their signature Golden Sand version. It comes with a thick creamy finger-licking sauce and sprinkled with a peppery wheatgerm-like sprinkles. A good thing the dish came at the end, because people were too full to eat much and lucky me got to take home the leftovers.

Day 4 SJ Quilts and Guacamole

Remember the cafe in the Ernst & Young building opposite our hotel? It was already closed when we passed by it the afternoon before. Good thing it is open for breakfast. And the lunch options posted on the board look terrific too. The employees at Ernst & Young must be one well-fed lot. Who do not need afternoon tea breaks evidently.

Cafe Primo is bright and staffed by very warm and helpful people. We sat in a quiet corner to savour our breakfast over a copy of Mercury News, the local daily. Croissant and cappucino for husband. Toasted bagel with cream cheese and ginger lemon Tea for me.

Husband went off with his colleagues after breakfast. The San Jose Museum of Quilts was meant to occupy me that morning. On the way to the museum I passed some people ( the largest gathering seen yet, excepting our contingent) attempting to attach Mr Nutcracker's top to his bottom half. A few days later, they succeeded.

The museum, what a blardy letdown. I walked in expecting to see fabulous fabrics and go ga-ga over quilts, but saw what amounted to nothing. First, the exhibition space is tiny, only slightly larger than Cafe Primo. Second, the exhibition that week was the preview of pieces donated for an upcoming charity auction to raise funds for their new building.  Most of the pieces were amateuristic and poorly finished, I would be embarrassed if I were any of the quilters.

I finished my tour in supersonic time. The whole morning stretched before me, how was I going to spend it? There was nothing else to do downtown, and I was saving up the Tech Museum for the next day, so there was no alternative but to return to the hotel. At the Hilton, wireless internet access was available for the bargain price of $10.95 / day. But we didn't bring our laptop. The hotel's "solution" was to access via the TV, which is configured to connect to the Internet. So I subscribed to one day of service to check it out. It wasn't terribly interactive, I couldn't check in with gmail for instance, and it would have been very complicated to respond to the comments that people left on my blog during my absence. So near, yet so far.....

Husband finished his morning appointment and returned to the hotel. We had the whole afternoon off. So we jumped into a taxi which took us to Los Gatos. But not before I took a picture of the plane flying overhead. SJ Airport is nearby and our hotel is in its flightpath, planes fly by every five minutes.

Los Gatos is a very prosperous neighbourhood in Silicon Valley, and it shows. The "village" part of the town is lined with cafes, restaurants, antique shops, furniture shops, craft shops, banks and everything that the tycoons living in their humongous houses on the hills yonder could possibly desire. Like SJ, it is very clean and well maintained. And the drivers are so polite, they stop the car way before we reach the crossing, unlike y'know, in Singapore where cars speed up even when you are already walking on the zebra lines. The cars, we're talking fancy-wancy cars in this neighbourhood- there is a Ferrari / Lamborghini / Lotus dealership in this population of what, 135 people?

The sheer number of cafes, bistros, restaurants, pizzeria, bakeries, ice cream parlour et al meant we walked up and down for a good hour before deciding to eat lunch at Pigalle, a french restaurant. We decided on Pigalle because it had the largest number of lunchtime customers, and of course, a menu that sounded tempting enough.

It is a tiny cozy restaurant. The decor is very French with a mural of Parisian cobbled streets on one wall and other touches like charming lamp-posts and Paris street signs here and there. I could almost imagine myself in Paris. Without the cigarette smoke and dog poo.

The food was worth writing to Paris about too. I had a little garden salad but my spoon was constantly digging into husband's gratineed onion soup. The onion soup was as it should be, sweet, savoury, full-bodied, redolent of luscious caramelised onions, and accompanied by extremely cheesy toast that did not distintegrate until the very last drop of soup was slurped up.

 

Husband has this theory that one cannot go wrong with ordering pork in USA. It would always be very good, he says. I think he has a point. His pork chops with a dreamy-creamy-winey-appley sauce was a winner, and he was generous enough to let me have one piece to myself. The sauce was so good I would lick the plate clean if I could.

Husband also wanted me to mention that he enjoyed drinking with his most excellent pork chops, an equally excellent Mouton Cadet Rothschild Bourdeaux 2000. An under-rated wine, he said, it has a pleasing balance of oak and acidity with a hint of smokiness. 

But, ce n'est pas tout bon. I had ordered a green salad because my main course was to be the three-cheese ziti. The waiter even informed me that it actually includes not just three, but four types of cheese; besides the swiss, gorgonzola and goat listed on the menu, it also has cheddar. Four for the price of three! I rubbed my hands in gleeful anticipation.

What came was indeed very rich, if it was real-money-rich I would be living in the hills and driving a Ferrari. Unfortunately it had no taste. Not even salty. Just this flat fatty mouth-feel. I love gorgonzola, but I could hardly detect any taste of it. Even the goat cheese sprinkled on top had little sharpness. Well, too much of a good thing...

I comforted myself with creme brulee, no complaints there. And the prices were very reasonable e.g. $12.95 for the pork chops, good deal no? We patted ourselves on the back for choosing to eat here rather than The House of Green Papaya.

We spent a lovely afternoon exploring the shops. I was in the quilt shop most of the time, bought a big bunch of fabrics for possible future quilt projects.  And more stuff at Sur La Table. Everytime we stepped into a Sur La Table we bought stuff. And we came across many outlets: Santana Row, Los Gatos, Valley Field, SF, Berkeley.....

We left when it got dark, about 5:00 p.m. Husband had to go off and give a presentation at Berkeley. I stayed in the hotel room and watched telly all night. The Hilton TV had only about 10 channels, but I still had a hard time watching. I mean, at one point, I had to juggle CSI: NY, All New West Wing, the news, and one trashy yet riveting programme called Wife Swap, plus a documentary on Regency England. I was glued I tell ya.

For sustenance, room service Mexican Quesadilla with Guacamole and Fresh Salsa. I ordered the appetiser portion. The portion was very big for an appetiser. I valiantly finished three pieces, using each piece to mop up the salsa, jalapeno and guacamole. The guacamole was more-ish, probably made with Californian avocadoes, it was so creamy the sour cream was never needed. See here, I've taken two bites off the quesadilla so we can see the lovely Ms Guacamole.

Husband came back just after the end of All New West Wing. Poor him, he was given a dinner-box. Cookie, sandwich, drink. So boring he forgot what he ate as soon as he ate it. He popped downstairs to the cafe to have some beers and chicken wings with his colleagues and business partners. Me, I was too exhausted by my telly-aerobics  so I went to bed instead. Only two more days in SJ.....

Day 3 SJ City of Quiet

Downtown San Jose is very much like Singapore. It is very clean, and has many tall buildings. But we never saw any traffic jam in the five days we were there. And where are the people?

Walking through the city at 8:30 p.m the night before, we found ourselves the only souls on the road. But I attributed it to a Sunday phenomenom, after all our own Shenton Way is  quiet during the weekends too. Turns out it is quiet all the time. San Jose is a restful kind of place.

Not that we got much rest on our first night. The mattress was so soft the two of us ended up in the middle saggy part of the bed. I didn't sleep much and woke up with all sorts of aches and pains. And a hungry stomach. Our room rates did not include breakfast, and we weren't intending to fork out $10 ++ per person for hotel bread and coffee. Last night, when we were checking in, I asked the concierge where he normally eats breakfast, and he recommended Peggy Sue's. Thus our group, now expanded to eight people, made our way to the diner.

I've enjoyed my visits to American diners in other cities, where breakfasts means plenty of eggs, bacon and sausage, your food is cooked to order at the counter, the tables are formica and it would probably be bad luck to redecorate. My favourites, not that I've eaten in many, are Charlie's Sandwich Shoppe in Boston which introduced me to Corned Beef Hash (supremely good), Original Pantry in LA (my office coffee mug) and Becky's Diner in Portland, Maine (husband's office coffee mug). I haven't come across a diner I like in SF- Sears Fine Foods's pancakes are very over-rated, I don't believe the Dutch like their pancakes leaden; Lori's Diner is equally lamentable.

Peggy Sue's is supposed to be a 50's theme diner, perhaps inspired by the movie Peggy Sue Got Married, but it is really no different from the likes of Hard Rock Cafe and TGIF. 50's memorabilia is stuck all over the place like those ghastly pins TGIF's hapless staff have to wear. We ordered food at fast-food style counters and collected when it is ready. The food is served in huge quantities, perhaps to make up for the definite lack of quality. Our shared vegetable omelet with hash browns and toast were nearly inedible, I could only manage to swallow some toast with grape jelly. Everything seemed to have been fried in antique grease. The owner dropped by during our meal, pushing his young child in a pram. He was very friendly and looked fit and healthy. Does he feed his family crap like this?

 

Breakfast over, everybody had three hours to kill before the first appointment of the day. Naturally, we went shopping. To Santana Row. Very swish, Gucci here, Ferragammo there. The girls were very disappointed. Singaporeans prefer bargains, and Santana Row is very short on the bargain factor. Me, I seemed to have an affinity for stationery. Got a pretty notepad for my scribbles from one of the chi-chi shops, and then we spent the rest of our time looking at more stationery at MaiDo, an offspring of Kinokuniya Bookstores. Calendars, Pilot pens, ricepaper prints...they have this stamp card system where every $10 qualifies for a stamp, and we filled up one of these, and qualified for $10 more of free stuff. Instant 10% discount!

Husband's appointment was at 12:30 p.m, so we hustled into a taxi and returned to the hotel, where I watched telly and ate my lunch of salad and ham croissant bought from a cafe at Santana Row. Antique Roadshow came on. I really wanted to stay in my room and watch people's faces register impatience when the evaluator drones on about their pieces, and more often than not, disappointment that their family heirloom is not as valuable as they had hoped, but had promised to meet husband's colleague's wife in the lobby. We were going sightseeing.

SJ is not tourist-inclined. There isn't any major attractions for visitors who are not in town for work. I thought I will learn more about its historical aspects by visiting the Peralta Adobe and Fallon House. Both were closed for the season and only school groups are allowed. Undeterred, I suggested that we move on to nearby HP Pavilion. The weather was pleasantly cool but not chilly. We went through wide palm-lined pavements like the one above, and saw some old-ish buildings. The park benches look like those in my Sims 2 game, the EA office is probably nearby.

HP Pavilion was deserted. The lady guard dog at the entrance informed us that the building is not open to the public, though morning tours could be arranged. We left feeling dejected. Nothing accomplished after one hour of walking.

Then we got lost, and found ourselves along a dusty street housing among others, a meat warehouse and a place where you could buy barrels of gas. Off the beaten path. Finding our way again, we found ourselves in a small park with surreal metal insects. Since the park is near the Adobe building, we called it Adobe Park, but found out later that it is the McEnery Park. The McEnery name (of former mayor) is pretty big deal in SJ, because the Convention Centre is named after him too. Oh alright, the park is named after his son, but it is nearly the same thing.

The Centre for Performing Arts building (below) provided temporary diversion with its retro architecture.  The architect must have been a repressed baker. Again, no human activity detected. We had walked around aimlessly for the last three hours, so I suggested that we stop for refreshments. The building across from the Centre for Performing Arts is the Ernst and Young office. It has an attractive-looking cafe. Guess what? It was closed too, at 3:00 p.m. Only the trees with the golden leaves could hear our plaintive frustrated cries.

At that point, we could have easily crossed the street to return to our hotel. But we didn't give up so easily, we have travelled many miles to this twilight zone, and we were determined to do something, anything, that afternoon. One final hurrah then. Right at the top of our city map, there is a Ben & Jerry's. It meant another 20 minute walk on our tired feet, but we plodded on. We knew we had reached some epicentre of human activity when we saw the golden arches of McD shimmering in the cloudy sky. More like I could smell the rancid greasy fumes as we neared it, don't they earn enough to spend on decent grease traps? I held my nose and walked across the street.

Thank you Mr Ben, thank you Mr Jerry. Ice cream have never tasted so goood. It was quiet inside, we could sit on every chair if we wanted. Even the server was happy to see us, he gave us free cinema tickets!

Exiting the B & J sanctuary, I saw this. Were we at Disneyland?  The gate, it is pink-bricked with brown trimmings. Maybe the tourist brochure has not been updated. Not quite, it is only one of the entrances to the City of San Jose University. Bleahh.

OTOH, university means there are more people around. Which accounted for the relative proliferation of retail outlets in this neighbourhood. McD, Vietnamese eateries, dry cleaners, print shops, and oddly, bubble tea shops. We clapped our hands on seeing this Quickly outlet. Singaporeana.

That night, we were happy to report to our husbands that maybe we would not starve to death or suffer a Peggy Sue heart attack while we were in SJ. We felt like heroes showing them the way to not one, but two Vietnamese Chinese eateries. China Chen and Dakao at the corner of E San Salvador / 3rd St. They chose China Chen. The noodle soups staved off some homesickness, its fried rice was similar to our cze char back home and the fried chicken was fingerlicking good. It may not have been the best Chinese or Vietnamese food we've ever eaten, but it was perfect. To make it even more perfect, they finished with cups of thick sweet Vietnamese drip coffee and more B & J.

That night I slept very early. All the walking around the past two days finally overcame me. Zzzzzz

Boba sightings

Who is Boba? My makan friends have been pondering this question for a long time. Maybe we are getting warmer. Last sighting: Downtown San Jose

Day 2 SF/ SJ Revenge of the Chickens

In SF, daylight comes early in November. We knew this when I opened my eyes at 6:00 a.m. it was completely bright. We've had enough sleep so we got dressed, packed our bags for check-out, and watched a bit of telly. Ate the brownie from Tartine, very nice it was, all chocolatey and nutty. A banana and bottled water bought from the 24-hr Walgreens in Union Sq on our way home last night completed our simple breakfast. By the time we were done eating, it was only 7: 10. What to do? The only thing in our schedule was lunch at Zuni for 1:45 p.m.

So I looked in the map, and saw a few cathedrals in it. St. Mary's sounded good since it was in the general direction of lunch. I googled it and the website said the next mass was at 8:30 a.m. Alrighty, off we went. Walked in the opposing direction for a good twenty minutes before we realised our mistake. Eventually found ourselves on Ellis St and worked our way through the streets of The Tenderloin. The neighbourhood is grim, mostly of very old and ugly buildings with the streets occupied by pan-handlers. We hunched our shoulders and walked on by, looking straight ahead, feeling very out of place.

Eventually we reached a slightly less threatening street, and saw a banner saying "Welcome to Little Saigon". I remembered jotting down the address of a Bahn Mi shop and wondered whether it was open yet, so we searched for it. Saigon Sandwiches was indeed open, it was just a little before 8:00 so we had time for a sandwich. Roast pork sounded good, so we ordered a pork Bahn Mi to share. The sweet-smiling lady at the counter pulled out a pillow-shaped baguette-like loaf keeping warm in a little oven, and made us a sandwich with freshly sliced roast pork, cilantro, pickled carrots and a wonderful creamy dressing. The bread crust crackled on biting and unlike the chiam tao loti in Singapore, the rest of the crust was the perfect balance of crispy and chewy. The roast pork tender and juicy with a hint of char and seasonings of fish sauce and aromatics. The meat married harmoniously with the vege fixings. Every mouthful was eaten happily, why can't we get this in Singapore? Deli-faux-france will go out of business in a gulp.

Right, religious obligations. We swept the crumbs from our mouths, composed ourselves and walked on. St Mary's Cathedral is beautiful. On the outside it blends into its surroundings and commands sweeping views of the valleys and hills of the city. Inside it is grand, not old European-grand, rather, understated quiet grand. I wished I knew how to work my digicam to capture the detailed latticework on the spires, the magnificient organ, the wooden pews, the clean lines of the altar, the gorgeous stained glass windows, the light......awe-inspiring and inspirational is as best as I can describe it.

To add to our delight, the next mass was not on till 9:00 so we had plenty of time to look around, reflect, pray... It was also the first time I attended a Gregorian service. A group of monks sung the Gloria, the Creed, the Alleluia, everything else, completely in Latin. The readings, sermon and communion were conducted in English. Don't know whether I'll get struck by lightning if I complained about one thing though; the communion wafer was twice the size that we get in Singapore but it was so dry and tasteless it seemed to stick in my throat. After the service everyone was welcome to coffee and donuts in the hall downstairs which seems to me like a very neighbourly thing to do so we joined in. Didn't eat the donuts though I was curious about the taste, but I had already eaten twice this morning and planning to eat more later.....

Leaving the cathedral, we walked on along Gough Street. It was still early, and the streets were just waking up. Joggers, dog-walkers, and one or two homeless people still asleep. Passed a man brandishing a golf club, at least he seemed happy in la-la-land playing golf with scrunched up paper. Pretty soon we came to the second food stop,  Citizen Cake restaurant (corner of Grove/ Gough St). At 11:00 many people were there before us, tucking into Sunday brunch. We got a table and told the waitress we wanted some desserts and drinks. My citron presse reminded me of days in Paris, but I was not too bowled over by the Retro Shag Cake. It may have been the coconut, which I am not a fan of, or it was just too dry for my taste. We hardly touched it. The Rose Creme Brulee was more enjoyable for having infused the exotic rose fragrance right into every creamy burnt sugar bite, but again, I groused that it was too creamy and maybe even a little heavy. So we didn't eat much of our desserts. The souffle pancake was totally delicious though, a pancake that literally melts in the mouth, like you've eaten clouds. Actually we didn't order the pancake. The man at the next table was eating it, and he must have noticed my curious stare so he offered me a taste which I happily greedily accepted.

The restaurant was filling up fast, so we finished our drinks and left. We came to the corner of the block and was impressed by the elegance of the neighbourhood. Figures, since we have reached the theatres and civic area. I love the trees hugging the sidewalk, so grown yet so controlled. This corner cafe looks very French (forgot the name), and the rest of the shops around the area are also populated with art galleries and chi chi shops. Shopping time! Hmm, if I spent less money on eating out I would be able to afford more bling blings and antiques.

We meandered our way to Zuni, and although we took our time we still arrived too early. By at least an hour. Our table was naturally, not ready yet, so we waited at the shiny copper bar with a few drinks. I love the space. The ceilings are high, there are many odd corners which gives privacy without inducing claustrophobia, and the sun coming through the large windows make intriguing patterns of light and shadow on the stark walls and people within. Finally we were led to our table which came with a great view of the oyster bar and open kitchen. I can safely deduce that the Caesar Salad is very popular, the salad cook was tossing one every other minute. The last time we ate at Zuni we regretted not being able to try their famous roast chicken as it requires a wait of at least 40 minutes and we were rushed for time. This time round I was determined to have the chicken. From our table we also saw our fowl being massaged, seasoned and put into the oven. The chicken with bread salad is supposed to feed two, so we did not order anything else other than a side of string fries to munch on while we waited. The string fries looked better than they tasted. It was not crispy at all and a tad under-brown, perhaps the fact that they had to retune the fryer (as our waiter later told us) had something to do with it. Finally, the famous chicken arrived, looking very golden and appetising. Again, looks can be deceiving. We were really disappointed with this dish; the seasoning was way too subtle and the bread salad added too much heft. We struggled to eat even half the dish. The waiter was very concerned but we shrugged his worries aside, it was not their fault. We are used to the more robust flavour of our kampung chickens I guess. We ate at Zuni last year and much preferred their grilled Willis Ranch pork chop.

Lunch over, we walked to Mission Street. On our first trip to SF three years ago, we joined a day tour which included a short visit to The Mission. This time round, I wanted to see this neighbourhood on a sunny Sunday afternoon and try a genuine burrito. Our target was La Taqueria. The sun was out, and many people were out shopping and eating. There was much to see, smell and hear. Markets and grocery stores, discount stores, cafes, flower shops. Mission St doesn't specialise in pretty. Gritty, vibrant, colourful, even seedy may be more appropriate descriptions. Not many Chinese faces other than ours and the grocery store owners. Latinos outnumber Caucasians. I was disturbed to see men idling about on the pavements, they did not seem to be going anywhere. What were they waiting for? I sensed in the neighbourhood deprivation and resignation, but also resourcefulness and determination, it was a sobering reminder that life is tougher for some people. The gloom lifted a little the further we walked, helped by the sight of colourful murals along the way, and the prospect of reaching our destination.

La Taqueria on corner of 25th St looks very attractive from the outside. White-washed arches, red letters on the sign, black painted ornamental gates, and everything hyper-contrasted with the brilliant sunlight. The inside is also much nicer than I expected. Solid wooden tables and stools, framed certificates on the walls, non-stop queue of local customers, this place dispelled my initial impression that it is just another fast-food place. Here fast food does not mean junk food, although the cheese quesadillo gave me a fright. I could not eat more than a bite of it because it was just too bland and rich, I mean, it had white cheese inside and yellow cheese outside. But the beef burrito, I gave that full marks. Especially when I stopped eating the one seen in the picture above and ordered another one like it but with the tortilla toasted slightly. Then it was just right, because the meat and salsa came with so much juice which can easily render the whole sandwich soggy and messy. The beef was juicy and tasty and with the beans and salsa wrapped in my slightly-crisped tortilla and squirted with a ribbon of green chilli sauce, each bite was just very good and satisfying. Oh, another thing, English is not the first language spoken here. We missed hearing our order number being called initially because they shout the numbers in Spanish, but if nobody comes forward to claim, they will shout the number again in English.

This time we were really full. We decided to walk back to our hotel via Valencia Street. Valencia St is just parallel to Mission St but the feel is entirely different. Calmer somewhat. I remember poking into many of its antique shops. Not the French antique type, more like what husband would call the karang-guni (or scrap collector) stuff like 70's psychedelic lamps and old typewriters. Restored and refurbished, gran's coffeetable could be worth thousands. There were also other shops selling books, posters, videos, and ahem, Good Vibrations specialises in sex toys and literature. By the time we reached Market St though, I was became more tired as we have been walking around so much, and feeling cold so we gave up walking and cabbed the rest of the way.

The taxi ride revived us a bit and after a brief toilet break at our hotel, we went shopping again. Williams Sonoma has moved to a multi-storey building of its own, and they were selling French chestnuts by the jars at very reasonable prices. I also had to have a Krups Panini Maker, husband will have to figure out how to transform it for Singapore wattage. For husband, some shirts and new links from his favourite shirtshop at Thomas Pink. Then it was time to hurry back to the hotel to meet John the van driver.

I don't remember much about the drive to San Jose. It was dark and I was tired so I slept throughout. Woke up but dozed off again when we realised that he had driven us to the wrong Hilton, the one at Santa Cruz. Finally, just before 8:00 p.m. we checked into the Hilton Towers and Hotel in downtown San Jose. This was going to be home for the next five days. The Hilton didn't compare favourably with our SF hotel. Dark printed bedspread (uggh, flashbacks from too many episodes of CSI), a mixer tap that does not mix hot and cold water at all, limited TV channels (Food Network considered a Paid channel, @#%^&), no bathrobes, no room safe, bed too soft, no duvets..... But the organisers of the event, that husband and his colleagues were participating in, had negotiated special rates so I should not complain too much.

8:30 p.m. We were hungry again! A quick call to the others and we set out to explore the area. One of the party had arrived a few days ago to oversee some equipment, so he acted as our guide. We walked to San Pedro Square and our guide was relieved and quite excited that the Sonoma Chicken Coop was not yet closed. Actually, the staff looked dismayed that our party of six came just as they were about to close for the night. Some even looked mutinous. We ordered as quickly as we could, settling for a vegetarian pizza and a linguine with more of the same vegetables. I wouldn't say Sonoma serves lousy food, just that I am not really their targeted customer profile. The pizza was loaded with much vegetables, perhaps their typical customer don't necessarily order this item. Goat cheese was scattered way too liberally and generously. The huge plate of pasta tasted the same, goat cheese seemed to be their universal solution. The others enjoyed their chicken and steaks well enough though. Me, I had a twinge of regret for declining the waiter's suggestion to tar-pow our leftover Zuni chicken. Just a twinge, because I had already eaten enough for one day. Chicken overcame me in the end, but bahn mi and burrito ruled.

Picture above, display outside the Tech Museum. Balls are kept in continuous motion with a series of gears and pulleys.

Food on the Fly

SQ 015 flies from Singapore to San Francisco via Seoul. Morning flight. We woke up at 6 a.m. so that we arrived at Changi Airport by 7 a.m. Yawn. The flight was about 20 hours long so it was a good thing we flew Raffles Class. Husband had managed to accumulate enough airmiles to redeem a companion ticket for me, the only condition for this ticket is that I have to travel with him on the same flight, not really a hardship.

I don't know about other carriers, but Singapore Airlines food is pretty damn good. And there was plenty of it too. We were fed lunch during the Singapore-Seoul leg, and dinner and a touch-down meal during the Seoul- SF leg. And if we wanted, sandwiches, cookies and pot noodles the aircrew would provide them.

Before the meals, they would serve drinks, and to go with the drinks, they would serve satay. Satay seems to be SIA's default drinking food. If you declined their satay, the air crew will offer peanuts instead. Satay therefore is their predictable and popular choice. Sedap (delicious) too. Well marinated and mildly spiced,  with the sauce properly thick and peanut chunke-ty.

The stars of the menu, for me at least, were the salads served before the main courses. The somen salad with big prawns and ikura came with a zippy citrusy soy sauce. The tuna tartare was as good as any served on land though the colour put me off at first.

Main courses could be hit and miss. Above are some hits. On the left was my Corn Fed Chicken with Polenta Cake and Shimeji Mushroom in Noilly Prat sauce. This was only the second time I've eaten polenta and I really liked it. The chicken was juicy and flavourful and the sauce had unexpected depth and complexity (for airplane food anyway) but the portion was too big. Husband ordered cod for another meal and that too was almost as good as any decent land restaurant.

This was braised beef brisket, one of the "miss" dishes. Looks like braised brisket, tasted like boiled pipe rubber. I would award points for presentation though, what with the square rice and lone herb (sage?) leaf. There were other misses too, like Korean style beef kebab that tasted inexplicably musty, and very oily fried rice. I used to have a theory that it is better to order Asian type dishes on flights rather than Western ones because Asian food is harder to make wrong, but this time  my theory was proven wrong. 

In between the endless meals I watched some Hong Kong movies,  because I miss hearing spoken Cantonese. People speak Mandarin all the time in Singapore. Hong Kong movie makers seem to be stuck in a triad genre rut. Triad members can be bad, or honourable, like wuxia heroes, or so we are led to believe. Every other movie I watched seemed to have a triad / gangster / wuxia reference. One Night in Mongkok was enjoyable because Daniel Wu can just about carry a movie but the storyline was a weak mish mash of Infernal Affairs and Hero. Richie Ren and Kelly Chen in Breaking News gelled well enough to flesh out this amusing satire, but this movie also collapsed flabbily towards the end.

At long last, we reached SF. Arrived around noon SF time, as if we had only taken a 3 hour journey. This time round, US Immigration did not give me a hard time (as they did on previous trips, on account of my Malaysian passport), and we cleared Customs breezily. Very good, but my body was very tired, I had not slept  a wink during the entire journey. Husband's colleagues got us a van with a driver to take us to the city. The driver, John, is a Vietnamese and he was very chatty and friendly. Before he dropped us at our hotels, we arranged for him to drive us to San Jose the following day.

We had stayed at The Orchard Hotel (665 Bush St, at Powell St corner) during our last visit to SF a year ago, and it was lovely to find it just as clean and comfortable as before. Decently sized room, thick mattress, soothing soft contemporary furnishings, countless TV channels, Aveda toiletries, duvet (instead of icky blankets), bathrobes,room safe. Did I mention clean? Also, two blocks from Union Square but away from the main bustle. Very knowledgeable, alert and professional concierge, doormen and front desk staff. Even the room air-freshener smelled fantastic. I read somewhere that the owner is a Singaporean woman, which may account for the feng-shui touches in the lobby, like the fountain and bamboo trees.

We showered and went straight to bed for a nap. Forced ourselves to get up from the comfortable bed after nap so that we could finish the day and sleep at night to adjust to the time difference and avoid jet lag. Anyway I had to get out to fix my watch because I could not release the time dial and turn the clock to SF time. The kind man at the watch shop showed me how to work the dial (push and turn). I felt really silly for not knowing how to operate my own watch but  I bought it only a year ago and had not crossed any timezones since the purchase.

We had made dinner reservations for Delfina, so the doorman got us a cab to take us there. And to my delightful surprise I noticed that two doors away from Delfina resides Tartine. I've read about Tartine in e-Gullet, so I felt compelled to eat there. I know, before dinner, but we were half an hour early for our appointment. So we went in for coffee and, a bowl of brioche and butter pudding. Many strata above ordinary bread and butter pud, this came with caramelly roasted autumn fruits (pear? plum?) and tasted rich even without addition of cream or custard. But we refrained from eating too much and just picked it clean of fruit and chow-tar (charred) bits. And I ta-powed a piece of brownie for breakkie.

Delfina was very happening on Saturday night. Probably every night too, from the look of things. Luckily we had eaten, because we had to wait quite a while for our table. It was not too tedious a wait, because I stood near the kitchen and could see all the dishes coming out, and every table seemed to be occupied by beautiful shiny happy people. High ceiling, flattering lighting. The place has a buzz that few places in Singapore can duplicate, not even the likes of Ember or St Pierre.

We didn't order much but everything we ate tasted incredibly good, of its ingredients and the way it was cooked reflected sure techniques and confidence. Autumn lettuces with sherry vinaigrette for my vitamins and to assuage my guilty feelings, but it was a tasty way of repenting. Kuri squash sformatino with fonduta and "tartufi scapati" could be roughly translated as a squash flan with truffle-scented cream, I think, and this was a gorgeous dish. The flan was comforting and I don't know how squash is supposed to taste, so we simply enjoyed the buttery pumpkin-like texture and sweetness. The truffle cream, needless to say, was  sighingly good, so in the end we didn't know whether the flan or the cream was the point of the dish, not that it mattered since we polished the plate clean. For mains we had calamarata with mussels and savoy cabbage. Calamarata is a pasta shaped like calamari, it doesn't have calamari inside. Husband cannot resist anything that has mussels. Mussels also go well with cabbage, I discovered. Rib-sticking pasta goodness. With a glass or two of wine, our first evening in SF started on a most excellent note.

After the meal, the least we could do was to walk back to our hotel. It took us almost 1.5 hours, including a toilet break at a hotel along Market Street. Once our heads hit the pillow, we fell into a deep deep sleep.