Rhode Island 100 mile

…on Thursday, Sarah picked Ingrid and I up to head to their place in Sebastopol…with a stop in Santa Rosa for lunch and some beers at Russian River Brewing. Russian River is a very small brewery, but they produce some excellent beers, most of which do not make it outside of California. It was nice to try some of their beers straight from the tap…after lunch, we headed to gather some groceries and then it was onto Sebastopol where Sarah (and Simone) cooked us a great dinner. It was nice to just hang out and relax over some great food and wine. On Friday, Chris and Sarah were kind enough to let us use their car, so we hit some wineries in the Valley. Most do not open until 11, but we found a couple that opened earlier…little did we know that it was barrel tasting weekend- 30,000 wine enthusiasts were coming to flood the valley to taste wine futures straight from the barrel! This was both a boon and a bust for us-we wanted to try some wine, but we didn’t want to buy in to barrel weekend. Lucky for us, some of the wineries let us try some samples for free and we managed to check out three of them before we had to drop off the car. Friday night we were treated to another of Sarah’s great meals, this time some fish that one of her friends caught. We were joined by another friend of hers and had a another great meal while relaxing over some wine. On Saturday, they let us take the car again so we headed to the Wild Flour Bakery before going on some adventures. We had visited Wild Flour in 2006 and were amazed by their sticky buns (which are the size of a cross-section of a redwood tree!), so we had to go back and see if they still were as good. Well, they were and we added a couple of scones to our order to fuel us up before a couple of hikes. We drove to the coast and hiked along the shore and then headed north to visit the redwood forest with a quick stop at the Gold Coast Bakery for some pizza for lunch. We spent the last afternoon of our trip amongst the walking amongst the massive redwoods- a perfect end to our trip!

                                                 -Josh

…I had known that Ingrid would be spending all day Wednesday at the conference, so about a month before our trip, I booked a tour at Anchor Brewing for that morning. Most tours at breweries are pretty haphazard affairs, but this one wasn’t…you have to sign up for tour at a specific time (either morning or afternoon) and show up on time or you’ll miss out. It is well worth the planning, though because this was one of the most informative tours that I’ve been on. Anchor brews their beer in a way that was developed in San Francisco due to the lack of availability of ice when it was founded. The beer was cooled in large cooling tanks called “coolships” that were exposed to the nighttime air, allowing to for the beer to cool quicker than leaving it in other vessels. The brewery still practices this technique to an extent (in a climate controlled room) which was available to see (but no pictures)…

…here’s the outside of the brewery…all brewing is done in this facility:

The tour started in the bar area- the only beer available is what they pour at the end of the tour. You can sample each of their beers- here are bottles of all the past special Christmas beers that they brew. Each year they come up with a new holiday recipe (and new bottle label)- the tradition has been going on for 34 years!

Here is the immaculate brewhouse- everything was made of copper (usually it is stainless steel)…these kettles were imported from Germany…I don’t know how they keep them so clean!

…the 10AM tour got over about noon- by that time I was pretty hungry and headed over to Pizzeria Delfina for what would become the best meal that I had in San Francisco.

Delfina specializes in fresh pizza- all ingredients are laid out and ready to go- here are some spring onions.

Boxes awaiting to be filled for take-out.

…the accompanying accoutrements for my food:

…our friend Sarah recommended this tuna heart and escarole salad. It was tremendous!!!! I could’ve had two of these…

…and on to the pizza- probably the best I’ve ever had. Guanciale with spring onion, black pepper and panna. Very simple, but soooooo tasty…I’m still dreaming about this pie!!

…later that night we had our “fancy” dinner reservation at Coi…they specialize in local and sustainable ingredients presented in unique preparations. I had read mixed reviews on some of the food websites, but we decided to give it a try. They only offer a fixed 13 course menu in the dining room (you can order a la carte in the lounge)…Ingrid chose to do the wine pairing as well…while the dinner was OK there weren’t many standouts…service wasn’t anything special and we certainly have had better meals for the price. A couple of the dishes were fantastic (abalone, pork) but overall we have to put this dining experience towards the lower end of our scale…which is unfortunate because we had high expectations…

…coming up: on to Sonoma/Russian River Valley.

                                 -Josh

…if you guessed San Francisco/Sonoma County , you were right! Ingrid had a conference in San Francisco last Tuesday through Thursday and then we headed up to her friend’s house in Sebastopol for Friday and Saturday nights…I was able to explore the city when Ingrid was at the conference, and we both had some dining adventures when she was able…so here’s a rundown of Day 1:

We landed in San Francisco to a downpour around 11:30 in the morning…Ingrid knew she had to be at the conference at around 4, and we had an important stop to make, so we asked the taxi driver to stop at Dynamo Doughnuts on our way to the hotel…the mission was to try one of their bacon maple doughnuts (and some others, of course!) He obliged, and waited while I jumped out and got us some doughnuts…armed with the goods, he took us to the hotel and we sampled the treats…not as good as the Doughnut Plant in NY, but they were pretty tasty and the maple bacon was definitely the best of the bunch. They mix up the flavors on a daily basis, so maybe we just hit them on an off day. With little time to spare, we headed down (up? over?) California Street to the Ferry Building where the Farmer’s Market was being held. The market ended at two, so we had to hurry and we got a quick introduction to how hilly San Francisco really is. We made it to the market a half hour before closing and we were impressed with the ‘winter’ selections- especially the citrus. We picked up a couple of oranges for the hotel room and then headed inside for lunch at Boccalone. These guys specialize in cured meats and sausages- you can get sandwiches, simple platters or “cones” of their house made meats. I chose to get a three meat platter and Ingrid ordered their sausage sandwich. We ate at the little bar- everything was fantastic and well done. Post lunch, we wandered around the Ferry Building checking out the food stores and restaurants before heading back to the hotel. Ingrid took off for the conference and I headed over to Haight-Ashbury to check out the Magnolia Brewery. The walk was a little further than I thought, but well worth the trouble because I was rewarded with some excellent beers. Magnolia specializes in house-made European styles of beer and sustainably raised food offerings. The atmosphere was rather loose but service was attentive. I sampled their IPA, Saison and Schwarzbier-all were good, but I think I liked the Saison the best. I checked out the area aftwerwards and walked back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. Ingrid, myself and her students headed back to the Ferry Building for dinner at the Slanted Door…we had a little bit of a wait, but that allowed us to try some appetizers- one of them being an open-faced dumpling that was quite unusual in that the the dough was on the bottom with the ingredients spread on top…the dough was a little chewy…some us liked it and some didn’t. We were seated for dinner a little before our inital wait time was up – the menu was had a definitive Vietnamese influence- I settled on the flatiron steak with all of us sampling something different. Everyone enjoyed their meals and it was a great way to cap off our first day in San Francisco!

                              -Josh

Doughnuts on the counter at Dynamo:

Maple Bacon Goodness:

The next four shots are from the Market:

Hand-powered meat slicer at Boccalone:

The three meat platter:

Ingrid’s sandwich:

Magnolia Brewery:

The beer line-up: