Eating in and Around San Francisco Day 3 Half Moon Bay

Yesterday we drove down the Pacific Coast. We saw the ocean, some surfers, and thick blankets of fog rolling off of the hills. 

It was beautiful! Then we ate some beautiful food. In a coastal town called Half Moon Bay we walked around the shops (I bought an apron and matching oven mitt at a cute kitchen shop called Toque Blanche) Then we ate dinner at Pasta Moon.

We started dinner with an antipasta of lightly battered romano beans, parmesan cheese on top, that we dipped in a light lemon aioli. This was a fantastic dish. Not heavy or greasy, and the aioli was very good and complimented the beans.

Then I had a sweet corn soup. I liked the one from the CIA better, it had a much purer flavor. This soup was enjoyable, but had more going on. It had some vinegar in it which I am not sure I liked. 

I should have ordered the fava and pea salad instead.

It had mint and cheese, and was very light and fresh tasting. A great summer salad.

For my entree I had Tagliatelle Jumbo Prawns, Sweet Corn, Roasted Red Peppers, Garlic, Speck, Lemon, Parmesan, Cilantro. This was good, but I think it needed a flavor boost. I still enjoyed it. 

Jake had Linguine Rare Pan Seared Ahi Tuna, Garlic, Capers, Oil, Cured Olives, Red Pepper Flakes, Anchovy. This pasta a great punch of flavor. 

Also, the bread was made in house and they had two varieties served with oil and vinegar that I could not stop eating! We also had an Italian wine that we all really enjoyed. What I liked about their wine list is that they have a description and tasting notes for each wine. So if you are not familiar with the nuances of different Italian wines (like me) then you can read the notes and make an informed decision. I picked our table's wine based on the fact that it had a good Wine Spectator rating and an intriguing description. We all liked it, and I wish more restaurants would include these descriptions. 

For dessert I had a Meyer lemon parfait.

A little too sweet for me, but a good lemon flavor. Jake had an affogato, which is espresso poured over vanilla gelato.

I should have listened to Jake's aunt and uncle when they told us how amazing the butterscotch pudding is there. I thought, how great could butterscotch pudding be? Well since they insisted I taste it (several times) I understood that it can be amazing.

Unlike this photo, which is blurry. What can I say, I was excited to eat dessert! It was thick, and such a great butterscotch flavor. Totally unlike artificially flavored pudding. 

Overall a great experience. I would recommend the romano beans, a salad, the tuna, and the butterscotch pudding for an amazing meal!

Eating in and Around San Francisco Day 2 Napa and Sonoma

Today our adventure in California continues. We drove to Napa Valley, bordered by mountains on both sides. It has the advantage of having the bay on the southern border, so at night we wet, cool air rushes right through the valley and helps cool the air down and give moisture to the vines. We toured Mondavi's winery. 

These are cabernet sauvignon grapes.

We learned a lot! We got to taste the grape varietals right off of the vine.

 We saw the barrels of wine aging. 

We then got to taste three wines. We tasted their 2007 CHX Napa Valley Chardonnay. It was very good. It had notes of vanilla cream, pears, and key lime pie. ( I got that off the tasting notes, to be honest. My palate isn't that refined!) Then we tasted a 2007 Napa Valley Fume Blanc. I liked this one a lot, it had citrus and floral notes and a nice mouth feel. 

The third one was a Cabernet Sauvignon, which I learned is the most grown grape varietal on the Mondovi estate. This was a 2007 Carneros Cab, a little pricier and it was nice to taste but not my favorite. (Very tannic). We bought a Pinot Noir there that isn't available in Pennsylvania, and are excited to try it!

For lunch we went to the CIA-the Napa Valley branch of the Culinary Institute of America. We sat at the counter of a round open kitchen.

It was a great view.

Sweet white corn soup with basil oil. I had this as a first course. It had a lovely, pure fresh corn flavor and was absolutely fantastic.

Jake's first course; Burrata- Creamy fresh mozzarella, local heirloom tomatoes, olive relish. The creamy cheese went well with the tomatoes and olives.

Watermelon and watercress salad with ricotta salata, pine nuts, and lime vinaigrette. The cheese in this dish was fantastic.

Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi with baby zucchini, patty pan squash, romano beans, cherry tomatoes, with yellow tomato au jus. I don't even like plain zucchini and summer squash that much and this was delicious! They made the gnocchi by putting the dough into long cylindrical tubes, steaming them, and then cutting off pieces and pan frying them. We got to figure this out  by watching them cook.

Here I am with some of the CIA chefs!

We had dinner at a restaurant in Sonoma called "The Girl and the Fig" Unfortunately, my camera battery died so no food pictures. But it is a charming restaurant, with delicious olives and a nice variety of cheese, both local and from France.

Eating in and Around San Francisco Day 1

My husband and I are on a week long vacation in San Francisco! We are lucky to have his aunt and uncle showing us around and taking us to some great places to eat! I am excited to eat my way through the various cuisines here. As much as possible, I will be chronicling what we eat here on this blog.

On our first day, we drove to see the redwood trees in Muir Woods. What an experience! After that we had dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Tiburon called Guaymas.

The entrance and bar of Guaymas.

Here is my entree- three different kinds of tamales. A chicken one (kind of dry, not my favorite) a pork one (which was tasty) and one with plantains and cactus, which had a different type of corn filling. It didn't taste like masa harina, but it had actual pieces of corn and tasted sweet. The chips and salsa here were great. 

The salsa had a good roasted flavor. 

Jake's ensalata con pollo with cactus and a jalepeno dressing.

The view from our table. The land you can see is Angel Island.

Making sopes at the restaurant.

For dessert we stopped at Cavallo Point Lodge. It is a hotel now but used to be housing for soldiers. Here is the outside.

As you can see, it is very close to the Golden Gate Bridge! Great location.

There is a restaurant there, and a bar called Farley Bar that we sat in. 

We ordered three different desserts, coffee and I had a prosecco. Here are the desserts.

A "Brown Cow" which is a rootbeer cake with a marshmellow custard on top, with sassafras ice cream. This was one of the best ice creams I have ever tasted.

Strawberries and Champagne, actually had three different versions on the theme. A Mcevoy olive oil pound cake with strawberries, a buttermilk panna cotta with pistachios and strawberries, and strawberry sorbet with a champagne granita. All amazing.

Malt Chocolate Macaroon. A chocolate lager mousse, with malt chocolate ice cream. A bit too rich for me. 

The expresso and sugar cubes. 

A lovely spot to relax, and the regular bar food looked amazing as well. Next, wine country trip will be chronicled!

Effie Ophelia Brunch

So today the husband and I decided to try a really cute looking restaurant that is in Lancaster City, very near to us. The menu emphasizes fresh and local food, so that piqued my interest. And the fact that it looks so darn CUTE! See above. Notice the large window-there is actually seating there, like being right out on the sidewalk. And below, notice cute pillows.

There is my iced coffee I started out with. You could pick what kind of sugar you wanted (I choose raw sugar of course) and they bring it out on a little dish! Fan-cay. And I of course dribble my cream on the table.

Effies has a Sunday brunch in the summer only. They use whatever fresh produce they can get their hands on. Many things on the menu used heirloom tomatoes, even a bloody mary mix with heirlooms. Local bacon and goat's cheese. And berries!

Berries, like in my blueberry and cream stuffed French Toast. My confession is that for a long time, I was not a French Toast person. Bread with a layer of milky-egg cooked on it? No thanks. But I will eat it if it is made well. And this was the best durn French Toast I ever had! They used hunks of real (i.e. not sandwich/Wonder) Italian bread, stuffed with cream cheese and whole, fresh blueberries. Then grilled so the outside was crisp, not a layer of milky-egg. With cream cheese and real maple syrup....I'm drooling and I just ate this today!

Close up of the magnificent French Toast. Ooh la la

And this is the husband's BLT with heirloom tomatoes, local bacon, lettuce, mayo on organic whole grain bread. With home fries made with white and purple fingerling potatoes. The picture is a little blurry, I was in a slight hurry to start eating! Note cute toothpicks in sandwich.

I have another food confession, I don't really like melon. Which includes cantelopes. I know, I'm weird I guess. But they had this cantelope granita for dessert which sounded light and refreshing on a summer day. So I thought I'd give it a shot. And I liked it! It came topped with frozen champagne grapes! I've never had a granita, and the texture is really interesting. Light and fluffy, not the texture of things you leave in your freezer too long, which I previously imagined.

I would highly, highly recommend you go here. The brunch entrees are about 8-12 dollars. I am pretty eager to try dinner here soon. It is a BYOB, and I also suggest getting a bottle of local wine from the Red Rose Wine Tasting room in the Hagar Mall near Central Market off of King Street.

Cape May Eating

My husband and I spent a four-day weekend in Cape May, NJ. I love all the gingerbread Victorian houses, outdoor mall, restaurants, sunset beach...I definitely prefer Cape May over my childhood beach, which is Ocean City, NJ. I mean, Ocean City is a dry town!
The more I like cooking (and eating of course) the more food becomes one of the more important parts of vacationing. So here is our quest for good (not overpriced) food on our trip.
DAY 1
Lunch
Drove into Cape May hungry, and found ourselves at the Island Grill. Caribbean-ish food. I ordered a black bean and shrimp salad. It had mango and avocado. Also got french fries on the side since I was hungry, and the salad wasn't that big. The husband had a Cuban sandwich with pulled pork, ham, and pickles along with sides of coleslaw and pasta salad.
VERDICT
Hmmmm not sure. The Cuban sandwich was tasty. And a large portion. For 10 dollars, pretty good stuff! My salad, also 10 dollars, was pretty good, but nothing to write home about. The shrimp just looked like defrosted pre-cooked shrimp. And the french fry side was 4.50!! I don't know if I would bother trying again.
Dinner
We had planned to visit the Godfather.....the pizza place. I ate the best white pizza I have ever had in my whole darn life there!!! We were there last summer, walked to the location this time and it was gone!! Alas, we were sad and so hungry.
So we walked to the Washington mall and found Stumpo's, a small Italian place. I had a shrimp ceasar salad and the husband had a margharita pizza with olives.
Verdict
Again, I'm in the middle. My salad was pretty darn good. The shrimp was grilled and flavorful, the dressing and croutons were made in house. But I only got 4 small shrimps in the salad, which was 15 bucks. The pizza was good, but not great. What I did really really like was the basket of little garlic bread nubs, so buttery and garlickly! I could have eaten mostly those for dinner. The entrees seemed overpriced here, as I learned many places in Cape May are. I mean, 20 bucks for a pasta dish that doesn't even have meat in it??
Day 2
Today we skipped lunch, since we ate this for breakfast at our B&B:
Eggs Bene-Chip (named after the owner, Chip) Fresh fruit Zuchinni bread Potato pancakes
This was at the John F. Craig house, if you are interested in a good B&B in Cape May I highly recommend it!
Dinner:
We had my birthday dinner at the Merion Inn. This place has a early bird/night owl special: three courses from a selected menu for 18.95. When you look at the fact that most of the entrees alone are over 20 bucks, makes for a good deal. We had the patio to ourselves too!
Verdict
I say thumbs up! First course: Jersey clam chowder-tasty. Second course-Fresh Jersey bluefish with eggplant caponata and the Merion potato cup (like a twice baked potato!) Dessert: Jersey white peach pie with almond oatmeal dessert!! The husbands entree was a steak (of course) stuffed with artichokes, pine nuts, and sharp provolone cheese-whoa. I almost wished I had ordered that!
I also had a Fume Blanc wine (which I learned is just another name for Sauvignon Blanc) I was a little disappointed....I was expecting a smoky flavor but it still went well with the fish.
Day 3
Another full breakfast at the B&B, including berry cream cheese stuffed French toast that I would love to make at home here sometime.
Dinner
The number 1 rated restaurant in Cape May on TripAdvisor.com is George's Place, a small Greek place that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. We got in for dinner, and it is a narrow place with all booths, but still managed to look nice and not diner-y. We also brought a wine to have with dinner.
Verdict
BEST MEAL EVER! Well at least in Cape May and probably the best restaurant meal I've had in a long time. This place was first of all much cheaper than most other nice places in Cape May. Our entrees were about 12 bucks.
Our appetizer had hummos, tzatziki, olives, a huge hunk of feta cheese, another cheese, and grilled pita. As you can see, it was a big portion. The humoos was amazing. It made me realize maybe I have been making my own hummos a bit too thick. The feta was so good....I like feta but I have never had feta that was just so darn tasty.
My entree was the 6-pepper tuna with greek salad. I was surprised at how delicious the salad was! I have eaten Greek salad before, but this was just bursting with flavor....must have something to do with that great feta. The tuna was also packed with flavor, and just a little spicy! I loved loved this place.
Does anyone else have some food recommendations for Cape May? I would like to try one of the pricey-fancy ones sometime, but only if I know it will be worth the money.