February 17-19: San Francisco, CA
This was a great weekend. I left work at 2:00 p.m., stopped in my hometown for cheap gas and Auto Club maps, and head north on I-5. I was lucky to be heading north; the traffic on I-5 South was abysmal. I was stunned to see snow on the hills next to me as I went over “The Grapevine”. I arrived at my aunt’s house in San Francisco around 10:30 p.m., and was stunned again to see that gas in San Francisco was cheaper than in L.A.
The next morning, I headed out to North Beach (the traditional Italian neigbhorhood), where I met my friend Greg and his fiancee for breakfast. It was great having such an up-close view of the Transamerica building as I walked towards our meeting point (I believe I was standing on Stockton, but I can’t be 100 percent sure).
Greg and Cynthia had wanted to take me to Mama’s, a San Francisco breakfast institution. However, it was crowded and noisy and had a long wait as usual, so we ate down the street instead at Café Divine. I thought it was truly a divine choice. Inside it felt like a small European café, with a large marble bar and small dark wooden tables. The regular coffee was excellent, as was the asparagus and red pepper quiche. Cynthia and Greg were equally happy with their choices.
After lunch, I had planned to meet my aunt and cousin in Chinatown. However, it started to pour rain at their house and wouldn’t let up. That didn’t seem like good weather for them to be waiting outside for a bus, so I drove back to their house. I have to say that one needs a sense of adventure to drive in San Francisco as a tourist. There are many one way streets, roads that curve in weird ways, roads that are interrrupted by trolleys and cable cars and buses and parks and large buildings, frighteningly steep hills, and prohibitions from turning left (usually when you need to most).
Despite these obstacles, I made it home. The rain had lightened up, so from there we drove to 25th and Geary Street to check out the Russian shops. We didn’t bother going into the church, but I enjoyed seeing the golden onion domes.
The first store we walked in seemed to have products mainly from Poland (or at least, the language looked like Polish to me). Nothing captured my eye here, so we walked on down to 23rd and Geary where I found a real gem of a place: Regina gift shop. It was run by an older couple; I asked in Russian and the man said he had immigrated from Kyiv, Ukraine. My cousin fell in love with a stuffed penguin doll; it wasn’t traditional but not uncommon in Ukraine either so I bought it for her. I also bought a card that said “Shana Tova” (New Year) with Cyrillic characters written to look like Hebrew ones.
I thought speaking Russian would help us get a discount on the bigger items, but actually they said they were giving us a discount because we were Jewish. The woman sold me a small set of matroshkas at a 40 percent discount. My aunt bought a beautiful set of stones from Siberia at a 30 percent discount. They were lavender with a white marbled pattern. The owner said these stones used to be in the rivers of Siberia; now they cannot be found there. He said people by them at his store and take them back to Russia.
We said our goodbyes and went on to two Russian supermarkets. The more popular one seemed to be New World Market; the line to pay for groceries in that place was reminiscent of the old bread lines in Communist Russia. The place had a great collection of foods from around the Soviet Union as well as prepared foods I remembered such as: Korean-style carrots, Chicken Kiev, eggplant salads, and sausauges that have more fat than meat in them. We had no place to sit and eat the prepared foods, so I settled for a small bag of “Krasnaya Oktsabriya” (Red October) chocolates to bring back to my colleagues.
By the time we left New World Market, we were all pretty hungry. My aunt and cousin had a hankering for Korean food (they spent a month there a few years ago visiting friends), and I too had fond memories of Korean food from my 6 months in Korea, so we drove down to 11th and Geary streets to eat at a Korean restaurant they knew. It was really cold outside so I ordered a spicy tofu soup to warm me up. It turned out that didn’t work half as well as the small charcoal barbecue on our table used to prepare my aunt and cousin’s order of bulgogi (marinated beef). Although in Korea bulgogi is usually a cook-it-yourself meal, the waitress here took on the task of cooking the meat and cutting into pieces with scissors (Koreans do not use knives at the table). Eventually my aunt said she could take care of that herself.
After the meat was cooked, my aunt offered me some of the meat, which I wrapped up in a lettuce leaf with slightly spicy red sauce, steamed sticky rice, and garlic. If it weren’t for the rice, Korean food could be the original low-carb diet. I also chowed down on many of the “side dishes” served in small round white bowls for the whole table: spicy pickled cucumbers, yellow radishes, kimchi (pickled cabbage), and bean sprouts. Perhaps because the waitress heard us talking about our experiences in Korea and our knowledge of Korean words and food, she brought us a free plate of glass noodles with meat. Yum!
By the time we walked out of there, we were pretty stuffed. We stopped next door at the Seoul Market, where I bought some cheap Japanese curry sauce. I thought about buying Yu Ja Cha (citron tea), the Korean answer to chicken soup, but I couldn’t bring myself to spend $6 on a jar of tea I’d probably never drink often enough to justify the cost.
The next day I planned once again to go to Chinatown, but I got distracted by the signs for Japan Town which I’d never seen before. I had fun wandering around the shops, trying new Japanese foods, and buying odds and ends to make my home in CA feel more “Asian”.
After Japan Town, I drove 5 minutes away to the Jewish Community Center to see my aunt’s store, Dayenu. “Dayenu” is a Hebrew word which means “It would have been enough.” It’s also the name of a traditional song sung at Passover. I was impressed with the professional appearance of the store, and with my aunt’s good taste in art. I bought a card and a magnet here. I thought about buying a mazzusah (to put on the door of my home indicating that I’m Jewish); some of them were really lovely. But I didn’t see one that struck my fancy.
After visiting the store, I meandered back to the house via the Presidio, a former Army base which is now a kind of park. I found a part right on the bay that had a beach and a great view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alacatraz Island. I walked around until it got too cold. Then I started driving part of the 49 Mile Drive along the coast. I saw the ocean at sunset, which shouldn’t impress me being from Southern California, but Southern California beaches don’t have mountains and fir trees.
After that, I managed to find my way into and out of Golden Gate Park and back to my aunt’s house. It was only 2 days in San Francisco, but I felt like I had been around the world.
Tags: California, ethnic food, San Francisco, Travel, U.S.
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