A Sunday Food Diary

Lou and I had a pleasant day of eating around San Francisco yesterday.

The day started off at home with coffee--Peet's holiday Blend--and Straus non-fat vanilla yogurt with a coconut granola from Rainbow Grocery and sliced banana. Over breakfast, I read Florence Fabricant's wonderful essay in The New York Times Sunday Magazine arguing that white wine makes for a superior pairing with cheese. Not only is Fabricant a wonderful writer, but I enjoyed the piece because it seems that Amanda Hessler, the dreadful Sunday magazine food editor/writer, has been banished from the pages of the magazine, thereby boosting the quality of the food writing immeasurably. Hessler used to write horrible stories typically reminiscing about some miserable cooking from the past (think laudatory pieces about jell-o molds or the like), and her columns were unfailingly uninteresting and uninspiring. I loved Fabricant's argument about white wine as much as the story she tells of her controversial effort to persuade chefs and wine and cheese enthusiasts to forgo red for white. It was a much welcomed bit of food writing in an otherwise food-free Sunday paper.

For lunch later in the afternoon, Lou and I walked into Tartine and waited for no more than five minutes (a record for customer service efficiency at Tartine), and then found a table for two (another shock) and before immediately being served (the hat trick shocker) two piping hot croque monsieurs. One was fromage blanc with sundried tomatoes and the other was turkey with roasted red pepper. Both of them were, of course, delicious. The fromage blanc croque was creamy and rich, while the roasted red pepper gave the turkey croque the zip it would have otherwise lacked. The Tartine croques are fantastic, and I especially love the crunchiness of the bread crust and the way the cheese burns and crisps on top.

From there, we walked up the street to Bi-Rite to pick out wines for our Wine Blitz case, including a bottle of 2005 Unti Segromigno, among others (I'll write more about the bottle of Unti we tasted Saturday night later). Then, after a drive around town and a little Christmas shopping, we stopped at Peet's for coffee. I had been craving a peppermint mocha, so I got my fix, and Lou ordered a decaf drip.

After some more Christmas shopping, we slipped into a showing of "Enchanted" at the Westfield Center downtown . After the movie, we finished the evening off with dinner at Out the Door, where we ended up sitting next to two friends, Jesse and Shawn. The food was good, if not amazing, and we ordered a chicken bun, green papaya salad, curry chicken and a grilled cod served in light tomato broth with onions and spinach.