Christmas in the City

So the week prior to Christmas, Big Bad came down to my new office location to tell me exactly how much I suck as an attorney during my annual evaluation. He even wrote an oh-so-lovely page expressing his true feelings about me. Despite his scathing comments, I still received my final raise and final step approval. All things considered it was a little Christmas miracle. But miracles aside, I was so.very.happy to have a week off for our holiday trip to San Francisco.

Driving conditions were good and we had a beautiful drive through the Grapevine. As you can tell in my previous post, we made a short stop to play in the snow.

Our first destination was actually Napa in order to visit Eddie's sister and her husband. J&W recently got a puppy, Riley, and were also dogsitting another dog, Yorkie. With each other to play with, Jack and Riley were in heaven. Yorkie decided the youngsters were too wild and crazy and hid out under the table.

Sunday night we had dinner at Elements. There is a wall of wine in the restaurant, held in place by a series of open racks. Why am I mentioning this? Because I unknowingly brushed against a bottle and knocked it clear off the wall. It was just mere luck that I didn't cause a chain reaction and take out the entire bottom row of wine. So embarrassing. I didn't take pictures of our food, but if you ever check it out you must try the tuna carpaccio with nicoise garnishes, either the black cod or the salmon and the semolina cake with meyer lemon mascarpone. And is you are a Pinkberry fan you will love the apple tart with greek yogurt sorbet.

The next day W suggested that we take a tour of the Castello di Amarosa winery. It was a great tour for both wine drinkers (such as me and W) and non-wine drinkers (Eddie). Built by Dario Sattui of V. Sattui fame, the winery is modeled after an old European castle. Many of the materials were imported from Italy and Austria, with some of the bricks having been used in other castles. There was even a replica of a dungeon with all sorts of cool torture implements. Here is the dining hall.

Much of the castle is used for wine storage and aging. Overall, I preferred the Castello wines over the V. Sattui wines. There were a few misses, such as the merlot, but I walked out with three bottles (dry gewurtztraminer, chardonnay and the blended red "Il Brigante"). Even though there are over 100 rooms and several events are hosted throughout the year, the winery has no plans for on-site lodging.

My battery started dying on the tour and during the tasting, so I made sure to save my last shot for the exterior of the winery.

Monday afternoon we drove to my family's home in San Francisco and spent some quality time with my folks. The next afternoon I met up with some of my old PCX friends for lunch. I should have been at home resting since I had (and still have) the most miserable cold ever, but it had been way too long since I had seen my friends. We went to a casual sandwich and salad shop in the FiDi.

The food was quite good. But I completely forgot to take pictures since the three of us started gabbing right away and never stopped until we parted ways. I miss these flower named girls.

After lunch I set out for an annual holiday tradition. Along the way I caught glimpses of some SF landmarks. This is what I used to see every morning walking out of the BART station.

I took this picture to prove a point for tourists. You do not need to stand in the middle of the intersection in order to take a picture of the Chinatown gate. Repeat: do not stand in the middle of a busy downtown intersection for pictures.

Finally I reached my destination. For every year as long as I can remember, I have gone to Union Square to see the Christmas tree, the windows at Macy's and the ginormous tree at Neiman-Marcus.

When I was a kid, the windows at Macy's had the most elaborate displays. In recent years they have downscaled the decor for a very good cause. Partnering with the SF SPCA, the store now features adoptable shelter animals in its windows. There is always SPCA staff on hand inside to take care of all the animals' needs, as well as staff outside to collect donations for the no-kill organization. The doggie and kitty condos are all well decorated and stocked with toys and other comforts.

You can see Neiman's tree through the windows. The base is on the first floor and the tree goes up all the way to the glass topped Rotunda.

As much fun as I had on Tuesday, I paid the price for it that night. My cold got a lot worse. Blech. But I just reminded myself that being sick on vacation was still TONS better than being at work.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were fairly low key. Most of the time was spent with family, old family friends or curled up on the sofa. I needed to conserve my limited energy for Friday. In what has become a holiday tradition for me and Claire, we went to the Embarcadero Center for a little ice skating.

The rink is set up from November through January. I love skating outdoors.

The rink was crowded, the ice was bad and it was too early for the Bay Bridge and Embarcadero Tower lights to come on, but can one really complain about this? Winter in California rocks.

After skating we walked across to the Ferry Building & Marketplace. We picked up a gingerbread cupcake to share from Miette and stopped by Peet's for a cup of coffee. As we enjoyed our goodies at one of the communal tables in the building, we were highly entertained by the 50-ish woman at our table who was trying to pick up on a 60-ish married man. Her M.O. was to offer him her cookies. I kid you not.

By the time we finished our coffee it was time to meet FogCityDweller for our annual BFF holiday dinner. A few years ago we decided that spending time with each other over a good meal would be better than gift we could exchange with each other. This year we went to Beretta, a new restaurant that has taken over the location of one of our old favorites. RIP Last Supper Club. :-(

The restaurant was actually bustling, but we were the first party of the evening to be seated in the downstairs dining room.

Beretta has a creative cocktail list. On the left is FogCityDweller's Spiced Sazerac with spice infused apple brandy, sugar and orange bitters. On the right is my Acadian with rye, sloe gin, lemon, honey, absinthe and rosemary.

The antipasti dishes are definitely meant to be shared by no more than two people. Tiny but tasty. It's a good thing the three of us share so well. We started off with the meatballs in spicy tomato sauce. We also had zucchini parmigiana but I spaced out on taking a photo of it.

We shared the saffron risotto with osso buco. Delish. This was my favorite dish of the evening.

We ordered the spicy italian sausage pizza. The sausage was definitely spicy and the pizza tasted good, but Mozza's definitely has the edge.

We also ordered the mushroom and fontina pizza. This was a bland, boring disappointment.

Even more disappointing was the dessert menu. There wasn't a single thing that sounded appealing to any of us. And we love our sweets! Most of the offerings featured gelato or sorbetti which seemed so out of place for the season. Did not compute.

The remainder of the weekend flew by, filled with visits to more family friends. Eddie received a rapid introduction into the world of Indian hospitality. We had to have chai and snacks at every house we went to. Saying "no thank you" is simply not allowed. I was a bad wife and forgot to (a) forewarn him and (b) explain how to pace oneself for chai madness.

I could have easily spent another week in SF. There never seems to be enough time to see all the people I would like to see or to do some the activities I can only do in the City.

A final bit of SF randomness on our way out of town. Get it? :-)

Nopa? No Problem.

Friday the 4th of July was a long and painful day. Since I am not DIY-inclined whatsoever, pretty much everyone knew that Eddie would be doing the bulk of the work on the deck, but I still tried to help him out. But after helping to sand nearly half the deck and helping out with some of the painting, I was done. Kaput. Finished. My arm couldn't take it anymore. While Eddie continued on his quest for painting perfection I tried to not scream from the pain that radiated from my shoulder to my fingertips. No matter what I did or how I positioned myself it would not stop hurting. I even resorted to using Tiger Balm, which prompted Eddie to ask before we went to bed, "What is that smell?" Sexy, huh?

Much to my relief, I was a bit better by Saturday. I was still popping Tylenol every four hours on the dot, but I was feeling okay enough to head out for something I had been looking forward to for weeks: dinner with my closest friends FogCityDweller and Claire at:

www.nopasf.com

"NoPA" is local shorthand for the area of the city that lies north of the panhandle of Golden Gate Park. The restaurant Nopa is located at the intersection Divisadero and Hayes Streets. When my parents and brother first moved to the U.S., they lived in an apartment building just a few blocks away from this location. Back in those days, the neighborhood was cheap, somewhat dangerous and pretty undesirable. Now, however, the area has transformed itself into an up-and-coming hip little neighborhood.

Nopa has an extensive cocktail and wine list, but green drinks were all the rage on Saturday night. The colors are a bit muted in this picture, but my Old Cuban (rum, mint, sugar, lime juice and cava) on the left was nearly flourescent green, while FogCity Dweller's Elderflower Gimlet (vodka, lime juice and elderflower syrup) was a very pale green. There were many other green drinks on neighboring tables. A quick perusal of the spirits menu revealed that other cocktails featured green tinged liquers such as absinthe and chartreuse. So much green ..... and it was nowhere near St. Patrick's Day.

Since I'm still getting used to blogging, much less blogging about food, I wasn't entirely comfortable with taking pictures of all of our dishes. I'm sure I'll get over that eventually. :-) I can tell you though that all three of us thoroughly enjoyed our dishes which included goat cheese crostini, flatbread topped with fennel sausage and beet greens, cauliflower soup, a grass-fed hamburger with pickled onions, braised duck legs and a brown butter-chevre cake for dessert. Here is a pic of the "friendship fries" that came with my hamburger. After I placed my order, the waiter commented that having the fries available for sharing would make sure that my dining partners would be always my friends. I like to think that the many years of friendship the three of us have shared is based on more than sharing fries, but these really were damn good fries. We later learned that they were fried in rice oil which created a perfectly light and crisp french fry that stayed light and crispy. No greasy fingers!

After dinner we hung out at Claire's place for a bit. By the time I got home Eddie was fast asleep. I found out from my dad (who was waiting up for me) that Eddie had been painting until past 9pm! The man really was on a quest for perfection. Much of his best work ended up being on the underside of the deck, which I didn't get a picture of, but as you can tell by this 'after' pic, he accomplished his goal of a beautiful, protected deck.

Tackling the I-5

The husband, puggle and myself set out for San Francisco over the long weekend. My least favorite part of heading to SF is the long drive up the I-5. Not only are gas prices exceptionally high along the corridor, but there is little to look at. In fact, when I head up on my own, I almost always take highway 101 instead, for its scenic value. It really doesn't take that much longer than the 5, maybe a half hour at worst.

Luckily, Jack is easily entertained and loves riding in the car. He can't get enough of looking out the window.

The photo above was taken as we were traveling along the Peninsula. I think we were in Burlingame or San Mateo. Can you see the layer of fog and cloud cover in the distance? Those clouds were over San Francisco. It was a very welcome sight. After weeks of 90-degree+ weather, I was more than ready for cool air.

By this point in our trip (almost seven hours in), Jack had enough of looking at the cars whizzing by and hunkered down for a nap.

And here is the primary reason for our trip. We volunteered to paint my parents' newly reconstructed deck. This is the 'before': an untreated redwood floor and railings that were last stained and treated several years ago. Stay tuned for the after!

Friday in the FiDi

When I was in eighth grade, my class took a trip to Wells Fargo Bank and the Pacific Stock Exchange as part of our Junior Achievement program. Staying true to the nerd I was, I had a pretty strong interest in business, particularly the stock market at the time. It was the late 80s after all. Greed was good. After stepping foot inside of the stock exchange, it became a dream of mine to someday work there, wearing a goofy jacket and yelling “Buy! Sell!” on a daily basis. Little did I know that eleven years later, I would actually be working for the Pacific Exchange, Stock & Options (PCX). I wasn’t a broker, like I had imagined, but I was a surveillance analyst in the regulation department. I intended to work there just while waiting for my bar exam results, but even after passing the bar I decided to remain on as an analyst. I loved working at the PCX … at least for the majority of the time I was there. It was only at the very end of my time there that I was less than happy. Most of my unhappiness stemmed from an uncertain future at the PCX. The combined forces of 9/11, the implosion of the dot-com industry and the inevitable shift to purely electronic trading left the exchange on very unsteady ground. And when CEOs continue to get huge bonuses while their employees are denied raises or laid off, it does not contribute to a pleasant working environment.

One of the things I loved about working there was the location. The office is located in the Financial District. A ten minute walk in either direction and I could be at Union Square, Chinatown, North Beach or the Embarcadero. There are tons of cafes, restaurants, bars and shops nearby. There is also an endless supply of interesting people to watch. Don’t get me wrong, I did my fair share of bitching and moaning about BART delays, bike messengers acting as deadly weapons, weirdo perverts on the street and the flood of Marina-ites in the FiDi. Deep down though, I really loved the hustle and bustle of it all. I really am a city girl at heart.

What I loved most about my time at the PCX, however, were the people I met. My boss, Karen, was fantastic and everything one could want in a boss. I met some of my dearest friends while working there. Whenever I feel blue at my current job, I always think that the experience at PCX spoiled me. That if the people I met there were here instead, things would be much brighter.

Last Friday, I met up with two of my PCX cohorts, D and M. Technically, the PCX is now the NYSE, but that’s a boring story. Let’s return to the fun. I met them both at our usual spot: the parking meter in front of the building. It is entirely appropriate that the office is located on Bush and Sansome Streets, as bs’ing on that street corner was part of our daily ritual. Our fourth partner in crime (or regulation), R, wasn’t able to make it, which was a slight bummer. But I was still ecstatic to see D and M; I hadn’t seen any of them at all since my wedding over a year ago. I've always believed that your closest friends are those people you can pick up a conversation with right away, no matter how long you've been apart. D and M are definitely those types of friends. M received a well-deserved and overdue promotion last year and was too buried in work as a result to join us for lunch. So after a mini-catchup session with M (who is looking super fierce these days), D and I headed off to Bistro Burger for burgers, brie, mushrooms and frings. Over lunch we gabbed about anything and everything, including D’s upcoming wedding. I’m so excited for her! We also spent a fair amount of time reminiscing about some of the more colorful characters from our past such as our drinky ex-VP, the “little beady eyed guy”, some pervy security guy in a Kangol hat, my IT stalker and a certain rotisserie chicken loving broker.

After lunch D took me over to the trading floor. I was shocked when I walked onto the floor; it seemed to be a shell of the place it had once been. Back in 2000, on my first day on the job, the trading floor had been full of people, loud voices and flashing screens everywhere. Now there are only 2-3 companies still using the trading floor. There were maybe a couple dozen people milling about. As the closing bell rang, we met up with another one of the old timers from back in my day and chatted with him for a bit. We even saw the rotisserie chicken loving broker! I did my best to skulk past him; I was responsible for him being slapped with a rather large fine several years ago. I don't think he likes me very much. Then D took me back to her office where I hung out at her desk for a while, just as I often used to do. M, unfortunately, was still tied up with his gnarly project, but managed to get away long enough for one more lengthy chat down at the parking meter. Before we knew it, it was time for all of us to part. After hugs from M, along with a promise of drinks next time I’m in town, I walked with D over to the BART station. More hugs and promises to get together again soon ensued. Then D went down the escalator as I was left to ponder, “What if I had stayed at the PCX?”


From the BART station I walked over to the Ferry Building at the Embarcadero. The marketplace hadn’t been opened yet when I worked in the FiDi and I was itching to see what it is like. It’s filled with many yummy shops that sell many yummy things. It will take me several return trips to try out all the yumminess it has to offer. On this visit I tried gingerbread cupcakes and hazelnut parisian macarons at Miette and smores bites and fleur de sel caramels at Recchiuti. Raves for all. Raves for everything that Friday afternoon actually.

I Left my Heart in San Francisco

Tony Bennet was really on to something with his lyrics.

I'm a rare native of SF aka "the city". I say that natives are rare, because it seems like most people in the city are transplants from elsewhere, even if it was elsewhere within the Bay Area. Not only was I born in SF, but I lived within its city limits for 26 out of my 32 years. I still consider SF as "home" in my heart. Fortunately, Eddie knows about, understands and accepts my love for the city. So he doesn't have any problem with me coming up to SF to visit as often as I'd like. My parents still live up here and most of my closest friends are up here as well. As a result, I hate making whirlwind trips to SF because I need much more time than 2 or 3 days to spend time with the family, visit with friends and enjoy the various things the city has to offer.

This past week was the first time since Thanksgiving that I was able to come up to SF for an extended visit. The impetus was my dad's cataract surgery, which happened to coincide with the same week as his birthday, as well as Mother's Day. It's been a really wonderful week. The early part was taken up with visits to the doctor and running errands for my parents, but once those things were out of the way I was able to spend some time with friends and explore the city.

Five days down, two more to go, but I feel like I could easily spend another week up here. San Francisco really does hold a piece of my heart.