- Restaurants
The restaurant gods may have turned against me.
After missing out on Chez Panisse's re-opening by a few days when I was in Berkeley 10 days or so ago, I booked a table for lunch for Monday, July 1st... only for BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit, the light rail system that links San Francisco to Oakland, Berkeley and other communities across the Bay) employees to go on strike at 12:01 that morning. From a cursory look at the transit map, I figured I would have to take a ferry and two buses, which would have probably eaten up my entire day. I had to cancel the reservation.
On July 2nd, I tried going for lunch to Swan Oyster Depot, on Polk Street, an eater.com recommendation... only to find out that they close every week for the week of July 4th. All was not lost as a local couple sent me on my way to Cheese Plus, north on Polk Street (also in the Nob Hill neighbourhood), a deli known for its sandwiches. They were right: I had a 'Willie Brown Bird', basically a smoked duck breast sandwich, which was as amazing as a smoked duck sandwich should be.
I had dinner that night at the Wayfare Tavern, downtown on Sacramento Street. A relatively new restaurant, the Wayfare seems to want to emulate old time taverns/steak houses, with wood panelled walls, leather chairs, etc along with a menu that is built around more traditional fare (e.g., steak, rack of lamb, burgers steak tartare, even devilled eggs) that could be called American. I had eaten at a similar restaurant in San Diego ('The Cowboy and The Star'); in both cases, the crowd was fairly young. (I have also noticed other similar, all relatively new, restaurants, featured on eater.com, especially on the West Coast...) I wonder if this is a bit of a trend, with late-20 and 30-somethings looking to capture a 'Mad Men' type experience, with classic American food, rather than fusion-type or even molecular cuisine. (I had made the same type of comments in a review of Hy's Steakhouse in Ottawa, but I would not consider Hy's as part of any trend, as it just seems to not have changed its approach in decades...) Either that, or it is the result of a bit of a general lowering of expectations vis-à-vis 'fine' restaurant dining, where patrons are not generally looking for new experiences but to eat familiar fare.
- San Francisco Opera
I attended the closing performance of Mozart's Così Fan Tutti on July 1st at the San Francisco Opera. The War Memorial Opera House, which opened in 1932, is a classical opera house, with the house appearing broader than deeper, with seats on a slow semi-circle. The production was solid, with great performances all around. They set the opera in a resort town, I am guessing on the Mediterranean, in the early 1900's. The sets and costumes, while relatively simple, aptly reflected that. It was almost quaint watching members of the chorus, or, more likely, production staff dressed as members of the chorus, manually move some of the stage elements, given my most recent opera experience was the technically brilliant Ring Cycle at the Met in early May.
My issue is with the opera itself. I have now seen it produced three times (if you include a University of Ottawa production...); it really is an overblown and rather long rom-com, with mixed identifies, disguises, triangular relationships, etc. For me, it starts to drag a bit in the second half...
- Vistas
On the afternoon of the 2nd, I took the ferry to Sausalito, in Marin County, across the Bay from San Francisco. The ride crosses the Bay and provides great views of downtown San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and Marin County. As for Sausalito itself, well, yawn... Some pics:
Random Comment:
- I ran into a woman from Minneapolis on July 1st, probably the next best thing to running into a Canadian...
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