Where to eat in San Francisco, California: flour + water

I will never understand why San Franciscans stand in line to eat at any restaurant, but it seemed to me that if you wanted to eat at a highly-regarded place in the Bay area, waiting for a seat was just a given. Everywhere I went, there was always at least ten people ahead of me and another twenty behind. In New York, we have a lot of dining options; a lot of them are mediocre, sure, but we also boast a lot of good eatings that there’s always another option if you can’t get in your first choice. Call me impatient but I found all the queues unacceptable in San Francisco. It didn’t matter if we woke up extra early for Tartine Bakery’s morning buns or opted to eat a later Vietnamese lunch at Turtle Tower–we waited in line.

We arrived at flour + water around 7pm and we were told by the maître d’ that the next spot for two would open up in the next two hours. We left and drove around looking for alternatives but of course, all our other options required the same kind of waiting. We ended up driving back to the same neighborhood where flour + water was. By 8pm, I walked in again and asked if the wait time has changed–we were seated at the bar in less than 10 minutes. Just like that! Now, I don’t know if it was because those ahead of us dropped off or if it was because of the holiday weekend, but trying for prime time worked at flour + water rather than at 7pm.

For appetizers, we started with the steelhead crudo with roe, pickled beets, lemon aioli and potato cracklings. It was an impressive combination of textures and tastes: the fish melted in my mouth like butter and the pickled beets had that perfect touch of tartiness.

The sardines salad had a lot to say with mâché, leeks, baby fennel, cauliflower, pine nuts and capers. I kept finding baby vegetables at every bite. I thought it was beautifully crafted.

We loved the crispy trotters shaped like chicken nuggets. The bitterness of the chicory and radicchio offset the richness of the trotters. I thought the squid ink corzetti was subtle in taste. It was definitely a notch down from the saltiness of the trotters with squid, fennel and some chili.

It was also the tail end of San Francisco Beer Week, so we opted for the beer ice cream from Humphry Slocombe which, thankfully, didn’t taste like beer. The honey was stronger than the beer flavor that it almost tasted like vanilla with a touch of lavender.

One thing that I will give San Francisco, though, is that none of the servers I dealt with were in any way sour or bitchy. It was always like: The wait is looking like two hours (smile). Yes, we can make sure that dish is gluten-free and we can substitute the scrambled egg with fried (smile). I never felt bad about asking for anything because I knew that they would be very accommodating. To me, that level of service was refreshing, even if I had to wait for it.

flour + water is at 2401 on the corner of 20th and Harrison Streets. There’s Homestead on Folsom Street for drinks while you wait for a table.

Related post/s:
San Francisco photos on Flickr
Where to eat in Big Sur, California

Where to eat in Big Sur, California: Deetjens Big Sur Inn

I imagined the healthy and organic produce we will be eating while in Big Sur when I was planning our trip there a week before I started my new job. I knew it was against the ocean and very far from Berkeley, but I didn’t predict a shortage of fresh vegetables and good home cooking. I’m still not sure of what I was imagining Big Sur food to be like, but I really thought it would lean towards the hippie and the more natural. In fact, we had a difficult time finding anything agreeable to eat during our two-night stay in Big Sur.

We drove 45 minutes away from our lodging and we must have stopped at all the restaurants up north short of Carmel. We walked in a few of them and checked out the menus but nothing was worth spending more than $20, much less sitting for more than an hour when we had to drive back on a dark winding road along the coast.

We had driven by Deetjen’s on our way up and I reminded the Dr. of it before we gave up our search for a nice dinner. It was nestled among tall redwoods and looked as charming and cozy as it probably did back in the 1930s. We walked in squinting to adjust our vision because low lights barely illuminated the wooden space. The maitre d’ tsktsked at us when we told him we didn’t have reservations, but he quickly seated us in the Bar Room anyway.

Our waitress told us that the soup special of the night was made of chanterelle mushrooms. I excitedly ordered a bowl of it thinking we had finally found organic Big Sur home-cooking. Unfortunately, I only tasted a mild shiitake flavor in the soup. A few minutes later, when the same waitress recited the specials to the next guests, we overheard her say shiitake soup, not chanterelles. She probably couldn’t correct herself after she saw our reaction to the mere mention of chanterelles, but I wouldn’t have ordered a $10 bowl if she had.

The frisée salad with poached egg fared much better and so did the cumin-crusted lamb chops and the seafood paella. Those three dishes made me less sour; a bottle of 2005 Fiddlehead Pinot Noir also helped put me in a better mood. I realized later that getting produce to that part of the coast was difficult and that alone added to the price of the food, but there’s no reason to break a girl’s heart by mistaking chanterelles from shiitake.

Helmuth Deetjen (pronounced dāt′yĕn), a Norwegian who settled in Big Sur before it became the hot spot of Old Hollywood trysts for its seclusion and privacy, bought several acres of land in Castro Canyon with his wife Helen in the 1930s. The couple welcomed intrepid travelers to their barn and built more rooms as the years passed. After their deaths, the Inn was added on the National Register of Historic Places by the U.S. Department of the Interior, and today is operated on a non-profit basis by the Deetjens Big Sur Inn Preservation Foundation.

Deetjens Big Sur Inn is located on the Big Sur Coast of California, between San Luis Obispo and Monterey, off of Highway 1 and just 30 miles south of Carmel. It’s 300 miles north of Los Angeles and 150 miles south of San Francisco. The sign in front of Deetjens reads Big Sur Inn.

Related post/s:
Deetjens Big Sur Inn photos on Flickr
I’ve had my share of waitresses mixing up to-ma-to from too-may-toe
Also our share of driving windy roads when traveling for food