Making a break from the desert for a few days and headed to a wedding in Lodi, CA Jonathan and I flew into Oakland airport Thursday evening. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate an 1.5 hour direct flight home after living on the East coast for about 9 years.
Friday morning we hopped on the Alameda ferry headed to the city. By about 9:30 the ever present fog was already burning off which is always a good sign for a day in San Francisco. We didn't go in with any concrete plans, our biggest priorities were picking up a re-sized anniversary gift and making a stop in Chinatown to try out a much anticipated Chinese food restaurant. Upon debarking we spent a little time checking out the ferry station full of stores we cannot afford and had some burnt coffee and bland pastries. Certainly not the way I like to start my day, but we were on vacation, no worries. Time to wander.
Not seeing anything that knocked our socks off on display at the SFMOMA we toured the museum store, found plenty to buy but managed to walk out empty handed. It takes time to build such willpower. It just so happened that across the street was the famed Yerba Buena Gardens. We walked about, enjoyed the view, but apparently missed out on a labyrinth in the park. We have no idea where this was located, but the short snippet in the airline magazine on our trip home mocked us for not seeing it. Since that our lunch destination was another neighborhood over we started for Chinatown. The restaurant we were headed for is not listed in any prestigious top 10 lists or even Zagat rated, but, thanks to PBS, after watching a re-run of a 2008 Bay Area Backroads with Martin Yan (Yan can cook, so can you) we knew we had to try Sam Wo's.
The sign blends in with the gazillion other signs in Chinatown, but luckily Jonathan spotted it and made our way in. The front door leads right to the kitchen which is on the ground floor. Not knowing where to go we stood for about 30 seconds before getting scolded to go upstairs. We ascended the tiniest little staircase ever to get to the second of three floors. A table was pointed out to us, a window table at that, and menus were hastily slapped down before our waitress skittered off. The room fit a hand full of tables and had to be around 10ft wide by 20 feet long which included a tiny wait station complete with dumbwaiter elevator for food delivery. The wait for the food wasn't too bad, but this was no rapid/friendly service place. Jonathan ordered a combo noodle dish with a little of everything and I ordered the bbq pork with broccoli dish on flat noodles. Delicious. Again, this is not award winning cuisine but both dishes were rather tasty, super cheap and undoubtedly would have been fabulous drunk food. Apparently Sam Wo's is quite popular for meeting this very need and remains open until the wee hours of the morning.
Bellies full and sodium intake accomplished for the next 3 days we again started wandering the city. On the hunt for a new copy of Atomic Ranch we ended up in a rather nice neighborhood to find an Architectural book store. The two people who apparently worked there were akin to airline attendants click clacking away at the keyboard as if you didn't exist. Eventually when one acknowledged are surely bothersome presence we learned that they did not carry our lowly Atomic Ranch magazine, then returned with flash like speed to their assertive typing. To add to the strange factor the "music" playing was darn near silent except for the occasional harp string pluck and a strange noise that can be perfectly replicated by closing one nostril and humming in a strange pitch, ever so gently for about 2 seconds. Yeah, it was a special place indeed, and on that note, it was time to head home.
Just thinking about that meal makes me a little tired so I'll have to continue with the remainder of our trip tomorrow. Stay tuned, but keep in mind Credence used the term "stuck" in his song "Stuck in Lodi again" for a reason.
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Friday morning we hopped on the Alameda ferry headed to the city. By about 9:30 the ever present fog was already burning off which is always a good sign for a day in San Francisco. We didn't go in with any concrete plans, our biggest priorities were picking up a re-sized anniversary gift and making a stop in Chinatown to try out a much anticipated Chinese food restaurant. Upon debarking we spent a little time checking out the ferry station full of stores we cannot afford and had some burnt coffee and bland pastries. Certainly not the way I like to start my day, but we were on vacation, no worries. Time to wander.
Just thinking about that meal makes me a little tired so I'll have to continue with the remainder of our trip tomorrow. Stay tuned, but keep in mind Credence used the term "stuck" in his song "Stuck in Lodi again" for a reason.
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