The Road Less Traveled

A friend of mine from my days in Ukraine who now lives in Carlsbad was kind enough to invite me to her home for the weekend.

My plan was to stop on the way in Temecula to get money (there’s a branch of my bank there) and to stop at In-n-Out, the best fast food hamburger in the country.  (If you think I’m exaggerating, talk to someone who grew up in California and then moved back East—9 times out of 10 they’ll tell you the only thing they miss is In-n- Out Burger.)

Anyway, as usual the best laid plans of mice and myself often go awry.  The merge of the 215 and 15 South brought the freeway speed from 85 to 0 in 10 seconds.  Thank God my ABS (Angel Braking System) was working.  After about 10 minutes of waiting in the exit lane for Winchester Road in Temecula and realizing I’d only gone half a mile while cars in the far lanes were going 40-50 miles an hour, I decided even In-n-Out wasn’t worth waiting that long for.  I thought I’d get off at the next exit (Rancho California), but alas, that too was a long line of cars that weren’t moving too quickly. 

It wasn’t until after I passed Rancho California that I realized why these two exits were so popular:  they were the last signs of civilization on I-15 for a good 15-20 miles.  Not that I minded the scenery—the rolling hills were green from recent rains and even the valleys shone brightly in the sunlight.  By the time I got to 78 West, though, I was ready to eat pretty much anything.  I had a problem finding a place to stop: each time I got close to an exit it seemed there was no place to eat, so I’d pass the exit.  Then as I was passing the exit I would see places to eat. 

This went on for several miles until I finally saw Panera Bread just before I got off at Vista Village Drive in Vista. Here’s where things got even odder:  I couldn’t find a place to park in the shopping center.  It was adjacent to the movie theater, and I’m guessing that many people were out seeing movies on a rainy Saturday afternoon. 

The funny thing about my life is that just when I think everything is going wrong for me, I realize that all of those wrong turns were just leading me to a new and unique right.  As I came out of the shopping center, I turned left and ended up driving into the heart of Vista Village (actually Main Street, parallel to Vista Village Dr. and accessible from Santa Fe Avenue).  It looked like a group of shops that were built in the 1950s. It was unexpectedly scenic. 

There was an Italian deli that looked okay, so I stopped and parked at the first space up the street I could find. I stopped at a bank for money, and then I walked into Piancone Bakery and Deli.  Looking at the jars of oil, bags of pasta, rows of Old World Bread, and sheets of cakes on the shelves, I knew I was in a real Italian deli.  For $7.99 I had a large sub sandwich on a ciabatta, a small cucumber salad, and Italian mineral water.  I don’t think I’ve had deli meat that good since I bought prosciutto at the airport in Rome.  The olive spread on the bread was a nice touch too, and I don’t usually like olives.  I didn’t have room for a cannoli (an Italian rolled dessert filled with a special sweet ricotta cheese concoction), but I enjoyed a large sugar cookie with green sprinkles for another 65 cents.  I was a little bit jealous of the locals who could come in there regularly for birthday cakes and catered meals.

15 minutes later I arrived in Carlsbad.  The rest of the day my friend and I hung out at her house drinking (tea and later wine), watching movies, eating homemade Indian food, and chatting. 
Sunday we did two things of note to travelers to Carlsbad. For lunch, we went to Lotus (on Pio Pico near Carlsbad Village Drive), a Thai restaurant voted the best Thai restaurant in Carlsbad. The pad thai was pretty good, but I really liked the fact that on Sunday I was able to get a good lunch special–shrimp pad thai, two fried won-ton (similar to small samosas), two tiny spring rolls, a small salad, and tom yum gam soup for $8.95.   After lunch, we drove down Carlsbad Village Drive through Carlsbad Village. We drove past Mariah’s Restaurant where we’d gone once before for brunch; they have over 300 varieties of omlettes. We drove to Ocean Street and then turned left to find parking. Once we did, we took a nice walk along the beach, talking about the costs of home prices and the possible eating disorders of the skinny runners on the walking path.

The capper of the day was on the drive back from the beach. While stopped at a red light, a man motioned to us to roll down our window.  My friend did and he shouted out, “I saw the In-n-Out Burger bumper sticker on your car. Do you know where I can find one around here?”
 

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 25^th 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 23^rd 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 11^th 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.