Five of a Kind Beats a Full House

I love "my girls." Whenever I go out with this group of friends, I feel elegant by association. All four of these friends are tall, blonde, and beautiful. I, on the other hand, am squat, dark-haired, and "interesting looking." Despite our differences, we joke that we are really five of a kind.

I went out with my girls this last week for a dinner at cozy yet elegant restaurant in North Beach, San Francisco's equivalent of Little Italy.

Beforehand, we stopped by for drinks at the Salt House, a new restaurant in the Financial District of San Francisco. There, we shared conversation, sipped on frou-frou cocktails, and nibbled on plump and briny olives that had been accented with a delicate touch of citrus zest.

Afterwards, we strolled over to North Beach to my beau's favorite restaurant, The House, an intimate eatery that was recently featured in Check Please, Bay Area!

There, we laughed, gossiped, ate, and laughed some more.

First, we shared three appetizers, including ahi tuna tartare with oven-roasted nori chips. The tartare was sandwiched between the blistered and crackly chips, and the chips jutted outward like daggers, lacerating and impaling the supple pile of tartare. The tartare was moist and jellied, and had captured the earthiness of the sesame oil and the intensity of the sinus-clearing wasabi paste.

As each eye-popping dish was laid upon the linen tablecloth blanketing our cramped table, we took turns pivoting and swiveling the plate around so everyone had an opportunity to appreciate the artistic beauty in each dish.

Our other two appetizers include white shrimp and Chinese chive dumplings and a towering Maine crab cake with pickled ginger remoulade, daintily sitting atop of bed of roasted scallions. Crowning the apex of the steep crab cake mound, was a tough yellow sprig that stood proudly like a flag for a sovereign nation. The crab cake was made with the silken blend of mayonnaise and shredded crab. The roasted scallions that accompanied the crab cake were bronzed and caramelized on their exteriors. The roasting process amplified the flavors of the green onions, and the crisp scallion skins provided the perfect bite to match the flavor.

Both the crab cake and the tartare were paired with a diminutive pile of sweetened caviar beads, which playfully popped inside our mouths with each nibble.

We each ordered different entreés. One of my girls ordered the sesame soy glazed salmon in a bonito sake broth. The salmon came with a small bowl of rice ornately decorated with sprinkling of bonito and nori flakes.

Another ordered the Niman ranch pork chop with pomegranate currant sauce. Although I didn't have an opportunity to taste it, I admired the outstretched petals of cabbage and greens that blossomed outward from the chop, elaborately drawing attention to the protein component of the dish. Pomegranate kernels were strewn across the plate, like a strand of broken pearls, forlornly spilled upon the ground.

Unfortunately, I didn't sample either their entreés, but I shared 1) the grilled sea bass with a garlic ginger soy glaze, garlicky sesame egg noodles, and haricots verts and 2) the black cod in a sake miso reduction with lobster roll with another one of my girls.

Although the sea bass came with a small ramekin filled with soy sauce and grated tendrils of ginger, I found that the flavor of the sea bass had such a depth, that I hardly needed to pay attention to the sauce at all.

The sea bass and the black cod shared the same ambrosial attributes. Both of the luscious fillets were cooked on the rare side, and the exteriors were perfectly seared, sealing in the juices and the moisture into every flake within. The fish was so velvety and buttery, I honestly believed it melted in my mouth.

The sesame noodles were also wonderful. The rich soy flavors had penetrated the into the thick and chewy core of the noodles, and I slurped them down with ease.

For dessert, we shared the coconut crème brûlée with passion fruit, mango tapioca pudding, and the chocolate truffle cake. I have no words to describe how delicious the truffle cake was. Rich chocolate. Gargantuan scoop of ice cream. Overflowing volcano of caramel sauce. Oh. My. Gawd. It was dense, stick-to-your-tongue gluey, and oozing with sweetness.

The crème brûlée was average with other upscale or mid-range restaurants, but the brittle candy crust was too substantial for me. The hard candy lodged into the crevices of my molars and my candy-coated teeth felt like I had prematurely gnawed on hard candy tootsie pop before I was close enough to the center. Furthermore, I couldn't detect the coconut in the dessert, and the passion fruit had not permeated throughout the custard as I imagined it would. Rather, it appeared and tasted as if passion fruit syrup was carelessly slopped on the top of the crème brûlée.

I only had a taste of pudding, but I don't remember being overly impressed or disappointed.

Overall, the meal was wonderful and I was more than satiated.

The House fuses familiar Asian flavors with familiar Western textures but manages to augment both in such a way as to create an entirely new cuisine. I'd say The House serves the best Asian-fusion of any Bay Area restaurant I know. Also, the breathtaking presentation of each dish is not only artwork in and of itself, but it showcases and draws attention to the complexity and dimension of each bite.

Did I say that five of a kind beats a full house? I'm not so sure if that is really the case in poker, but I am positive that the next time I want great fusion food, I'll go "all in" for The House.

The Steps of Rome Lead to North Beach

The best late-night dessert place in the city of San Francisco is the Steps of Rome Cafe in North Beach. Even if you're a confused tourist aimlessly wandering the neon-lit streets of North Beach (San Francisco's equivalent of Little Italy), you can't miss the quirky Steps of Rome. You'll hear and see the rowdy, belligerent restaurant crowd over a mile away. The best and most "quirky" part of the restaurant, is that if you come in the restaurant with a bridal veil (even if your not a bachelorette), you'll get star treatment--treatment even better than those commercials promoting Celebrity Cruise Lines. The waiters will eagerly flick the restaurant's light switches on and off, slap their muscled thighs while belting out unintelligible Italian ballads, and increase the deafening volume on the music blaring through their eardrum-piercing speaker system.

The twenty-something, fobby, cocky, and energetic Italian waiters are Italy's equivalent of state university frat guys and they look like European soccer players who are in the midst of a heated, sweaty soccer game, frenetically trying to balance trays of food and drinks in their mottled, grass-stained jerseys. Their heavy accents and inherent Italian flirtatiousness are addictive to anyone with an iota of estrogen pumping through her (or his) bloodstream.

Best of all, the heart stopping desserts are titillating to even the most staid of taste buds.

Their tiramisu is the one of best I've had at any restaurant. The Italian "pick-me-up" is carpeted with a luxurious dusting of cocoa powder, and is made with a soft spongy cake saturated with a rich and pungent-flavored espresso. The "icing on the cake" is literally a milky, creamy, thick, and cloud-like mascarpone cheese and whipped egg mixture.

If you come only for dessert, ask for their "special dessert menu," and wink at the waiter if you want something extra special!

Spare the Stinking Air

These past two weeks the Bay Area has had Spare the Air for three business days in a row!!

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of "Spare the Air," it is a Bay Area program funded by the federal government where all public transportation is provided for free, in an effort to curb the release of noxious vehicle emissions at a time when the ground-level ozone (smog) in the atmosphere reaches unsafe and unhealthy levels.

Last Thursday, Friday, and this Monday were all "Spare the Air" days, so my best friend and I rushed to take advantage of the free public transportation with a culinary tour through North Beach (San Francisco's equivalent of "Little Italy") and Chinatown.

For North Beach, we planned on eating ridged waffle cones filled with thick, chilled, creamy, and viscous strawberry gelato and the small amaretto liqueur candies cloaked with a powdery desiccated coconut--you know, the kinds that are like a gourmet-version of a soft Tootsie Roll? Also, there are Greek places hidden in San Francisco's Little Italy, where you can get honkin' Greek pitas stuffed with grilled lamb and dressed with a fresh and cooling tzatziki (a yogurt, cucumber, and mint sauce).

At San Francisco's famed Chinatown, we planned on scarfing down crispy Portuguese-style egg tarts at the best place to have egg custards outside of Portugal (and Taiwan), a hole in the wall in San Francisco's Chinatown. There, we relished the buttered, flaky crust and the warm and soft custard centers--smooth centers that are silkier than freshly whipped cream, but with enough resistance to provide a snappy gelatinous bite. "San Francisco's Chinatown is a tourist trap," you might say. However, I disagree. Take a jaunt a mere block to the parallel streets, and you'll find where the locals hang and eat.

The main object of this post, was our dinner stop for our tour: the notoriously delicious restaurant, The Stinking Rose.

We started with the pillowy-soft garlic focaccia rolls, which we broke open and smothered with "garlic rose relish," a simple pesto made with olive oil, crushed cloves of garlic, minced parsley, and tart vinegar (vinegar which brings out the hefty, meaty, and pungent flavors of the garlic). Every three seconds, I would open the transparent plastic lid to the relish jar, repeatedly dunk the serving spoon, and retrieve heaping ladles-full of the garlic + olive oil concoction so that I could smear it over the bread.

We also dined on a monstrous mountain of creamy mashed potatoes, potatoes that were colored with a garlicky pesto that had been mixed and folded into the thickened mash.

The entreé of the evening was the sizzling iron skillet of shell-on shrimp with blackened edges, iridescent shelled mussels, and golden roasted garlic cloves. The skillet was served with an elegant drizzling of a soy sauce blend and a dipping tin teeming with melted butter. The open mussel shells beckoned my greedy fingers, and the shells acted as little bowl repositories that held pools of melted butter and briny seafood liqueur. After cracking open and slurping up all of the shellfish in the seafood skillet, my mouth emitted the most noxious emissions known to man: garlic seafood breath.

As I saw the green fumes emanating from my open mouth, I realized that in my gourmet quest, I had inadvertently defeated the purpose of "Spare the Air" day.