It was a Saturday morning like every other Saturday morning. I was sitting on the couch, drinking coffee and watching a popular travel food show when a slight grumble hit my belly. It was 10 am, and I was already hungry. Normally, at this time I would paw through the fridge and see what I could make for lunch, but not today. “There’s so much food in San Francisco I want to try,” I complained, “but the city is so expensive”.
“Why don’t you try all the places you want to try, but get an appetizer only?” suggested my confidant, “You could hit 10 places, and try 1 thing at each place.”
“It would have to be street food, and something small. What about 10 small bites, one of which we can’t understand the language (just point to item), and one that takes us out of our comfort zone” we discussed.
Okay, the rules were set! But where to start? A long time ago, when I lived in Southern California, I used to go to a shop called “Tous Les Jours” it’s an Asian bakery with a variety of baked goods. That would be the first stop on the way to the BART station. Tous les Jours, is located in a shopping center off El Camino Drive in Burlingame, CA. Upon Entry the store was just as I remembered it. The store was immaculate with beautiful pastries, both sweet and savory available. I chose to get the warm ham and cheese bread, while my confidant had a savory hot dog pastry. We shared the treats on the way over to Tiger Tea at the other end of the shopping center. Upon entering the shop we were hit with the wonderful aroma of orange and green tea. Tiger Tea is a Boba tea shop with a variety of flavors available to try. Despite the wonderful aroma, I chose Thai Tea because it’s my favorite and I can’t help myself. I also told myself that today was not likely going to be a “healthy food day” and to promise myself to try and make healthier decisions and commit to going to the gym tomorrow.
From there we headed off to the Millbrae BART station. We parked at the station, re-loaded our BART tickets, and headed to the train which was waiting on the station platform. Before long we were on the way into the city. We exited BART at the Montgomery BART station and headed North towards Chinatown. If there was going to be any street food, it would likely be there. Chinatown starts around California St and Grant St in San Francisco. That appears to be the main St in Chinatown. A block away we could see the signs begin to change as we walked closer to the area. Finally, upon arrival we were greeted with hanging lanterns across the street, street music playing on the corner, and beautiful Asian style lamps and architecture along the street. I took a moment to take the required selfie in the middle of the street before having a passerby suggest via hand signals that it was a poor idea.
As we walked down Grant Street, my attention was turned away from our food tour and more towards the shops as we walked. There was a gorgeous antique gallery on Grant St with incredible glass, marble, jade, and rosewood furniture. I carefully walked around the shop looking at all of the furniture, wondering to myself how it was possible that there was so much dead load in this building and simultaneously wondering if the structure was modified to accommodate the additional loads. As we passed by a rosewood and marble bed that looked like only one person had laid in the bed ever, I joked with my buddy that this had to have been a portal into Trump’s bedroom. Something this grand and never used could only have been one person’s bed. We continued our tour down the street checking out shops with lots of little knickknacks and touristy mementos. In our journey we found a small dim sum shop that sold pork pastries. The store was cash only, so we were careful in our selection as to not run out of money in the city. With a language barrier, we chose the pork steamed bun and knocked one app off our list. We both decided the language barrier was enough to call this “something we couldn’t understand” and moved on. The pork buns were HUGE. I would described them as sandwich sized. I easily could have gotten full on just one alone.
From there we walked down the street and ventured into a variety shop with lots of tiara’s, jade pendants, chop sticks, and miscellaneous things upstairs. Downstairs was a home store with beautiful dishes, games, and miscellaneous furniture such as bird cages. As we were walking around, we were offered to try some pear green tea. This was actually very tasty. I could picture myself drinking this tea around 3pm as the day was starting to wear on. While I wasn’t interested in purchasing the tea at this time, I would say I would consider it in the future. I’ve also decided that it was a new flavor, and therefore it counts as item #2 on the food list. We then decided to see what other teas were available by stopping off at a fancy tea shop and tasting their honey black tea (#3). This wasn’t as delightful to me, especially after seeing the price. Our journey continued through a variety of other shops such as an herb store, medicinal store, kite shop, and other knickknacks. After a few streets, we decided that Grant Street really wasn’t what we had intended to try on this journey so instead we headed over one street to Stockton St; stopping for some bottled water along the way. On Stockton St we saw a lot of crowded grocery bodegas and took some time perusing them for whatever flavors were available. We enjoyed the sights and sounds of local families shopping for the fresh fish, and vegetables for sale.
We stopped off at a local street stop and grabbed an egg roll (#4), which tasted exactly as we expected and also the realization that despite our best efforts we were running out of options in Chinatown. Normally when I think street food, or quick food I think of all of the options of dim sum available at a normal restaurant. I was surprised that most of the quick food places along our route were both cash only, and largely served the same items shop after shop. In an effort to gain more variety, we stopped in at a few bakery style shops to see what was cookin’ there but didn’t choose anything new to try. From there we walked around for a bit more until we noticed that we had run out of Chinatown to walk around. We turned a corner (twice) and headed back down south to see if we could pick up anymore Chinatown. When we discovered that we had seen most of Chinatown that we wanted to, we realized we still had quite a bit more of SF to taste… so we headed over towards the touristy areas along the Embarcadero to see what was cookin’. We walked down Washington St and over towards Pier 3 where we caught the Muni train up the Embarcadero towards Fisherman’s Warf.
Once we arrived at Fisherman’s Warf, I decided I had to have a sourdough bread bowl with clam chowder (#5). This was shared between the two of us. My buddy tried some Jones soda (#6), and I tried a local Pale Ale (#7) which was much stronger in flavor than hand been anticipated. The bread bowl was good, and the clam chowder was tasty as well. I was in a carb rich and happy placeJ. Following our more formal meal, we chose to walk up towards Ghirardelli Square for some ice cream. Along the way we stopped off for a glass of wine below the Argonaut Hotel. The Winery hosted local wines and the bartender was very knowledgeable about wines. He asked where we were from and offered suggestions based on our experiences. I had a sweeter champagne (#8) and my buddy had a local cabernet with a strong strawberry note (#9). From there we headed next door to the National Park Visitor Center which had a pretty cool museum area to read about the maritime life in San Francisco. This would have to be my favorite place on this trip so far.
After leaving the visitor center, we walked up the sidewalk at the San Fran Maritime National Historic Park past street vendors, caricature artists, and the cable cars until we arrived at Ghirardelli only to find the line to end all lines. I was not in the mood to stand in line. This, after all, is not Disneyland. I also told myself, that I didn’t NEED the ice cream I had always just seen the Ghirardelli sign and wanted to explore the area. So we turned, and headed towards Pier 39 where we went to find a sail boat to explore the bay. Unfortunately, after walking pier 39 we had missed the sail boat and didn’t want to wait around for a few hours until the next departure. Instead we hit my favorite spot whenever I would visit San Francisco as a kid. It’s a fudge shop at the end of pier 39 called “The Fudgery” It’s been in business since 1980 and I’m sure they’ve had different owners since then. To me, however, it’s always felt a bit like San Francisco when I get some fudge (#10) or salt water taffy from pier 39.
Our last stop in San Francisco before heading home was to grab a glass of cab from a winery, and some water. We met a gentleman from Seattle, who was working in San Francisco as a sheet rock foreman on some of the big towers. He talked about his experience, and why he was interested in visiting San Francisco. It’s always nice to see what other visitors think of an area before taking the Muni down the Embarcadero towards Embarcadero St BART station. When we arrived at Market St, we walked through a small Street fair in front of the ferry building. In the distance we could see emergency personnel. It became apparent that the first responders were addressing an issue at the BART Station. As we went to walk downstairs to the underground station, a passenger stopped us to let us know the station had been closed due to an emergency. We asked one of the firemen what was going on, and they told us they didn’t know what caused it, but said the “all-clear” had just come through and they would be leaving soon. When the station was re-opened, we walked downstairs and could smell the instantly recognizable smell of an electric fire. Within minutes a train arrived, and we loaded up to head back towards Millbrae station. On the way back to the car we reminisced about the journey and how we had walked further than we expected today. I also felt like ending the trip on a high note and decided that yes, I would like some easily accessible ice cream.
We loaded up in the car and decided to hit one last stop on the way home; JJ’s yogurt off W. Hillsdale in San Mateo, CA. The gentleman who runs the shop was SO SWEET! He made us feel very welcome and the ice cream was fantastic. I chose plain chocolate which put me in a delicious chocolate heaven. My buddy had strawberry which was pretty tasty too… especially when added to the chocolate.
What started as an idea of having street appetizers throughout San Francisco, has molded into a separate journey along the way. It was more of an exploration of what San Francisco has to offer, and what has changed since my childhood. Next time I would probably mix it up a bit. 10 items for one person was too much for myself for the day; although adding in beverages helped mix it up a bit. Next time, I’ll state that 10 items should be for two people. Even though we didn’t do too much research into the trip before leaving, I will say that traveling by feeling the pulse of the city was a pretty fun way of traveling. At the end of the journey, I’m happy to say that we walked 7 miles! Which, for California, is a pretty long distance. I had a lot of fun seeing everything from a new perspective. I would absolutely do this again.
