It’s been so long since we’ve updated this site, but with good reason: we have recently returned from our 3-week vacation in Hawaii! We were originally going to spend 2 weeks in Hawaii and then 1 week driving the California coast. That all changed once we actually got to Hawaii and realized there was no way we were going to leave it, so we changed our flight and spent that last week right where we were.

I’ll post some of our Hawaiian adventures, culinary and not, soon. But first, we did manage to spend 2 days in San Francisco and ate ourselves silly, so here’s some of those highlights.

Our plane landed there very, very early – around 6:30am. We took a taxi from the airport to our hostel, and thankfully, were able to leave our bags there. We wandered out into the early, gray, rainy, windy, freezing morning – quite the shock for two people who had just spent 3 weeks in the blazing sun. We were still wearing shorts and sandals, and got so cold that eventually we had to break down and buy sweaters.

We walked through Chinatown (which was almost all still closed), and managed to find some great dim sum snacks. Also saw some buckets of live frogs and turtles in some of the markets – definitely a little disturbing.

Our spirits brightened after walking towards Fisherman’s Wharf and finding a candy store with mounds of saltwater taffy in every flavour anyone could ever want.

We came across piles of sea lions barking at the next wharf, and learned it’s actually a sea lion hospital. It was noisy, and pretty adorable.

Soon after came what I have since dubbed Crab Alley. Restaurants, stands, carts…everyone was selling crabs and crab products. Sandwiches! Chowders! Whole crabs! We settled on sharing a crab sandwich, overflowing with crabmeat.

One would think that shrimp dumplings, taffy and crab sandwiches would be enough for breakfast, but we had to stop at the Ghirardelli store for a cup full of what I assume was just straight-up melted dark chocolate. Later on in the trip we returned for another cup, this time mixed with some coffee and Bailey’s, topped with whipped cream.

We ended the day (after a long walk and some beers on Haight-Ashbury) (and then some sushi in Japantown) with a dinner of salt-and-pepper crab in Chinatown.

The next day was a lot sunnier, so we took full advantage and set out on our rented scooter early. Chinatown and more dim sum was the first stop.

Afterwards, we scooted over to Market street so we could walk towards Off the Grid, a gathering place for food trucks to stop and sell their products. It can be found in a different location in SF depending on the day of the week. There were actually a lot less food trucks there than I had expected, but it was also a Tuesday. I imagine the Saturday or Sunday meeting spot must be much busier.

We ended up chosing to get a Filipino burrito from Senor Sisig – it was packed with rice, tomatoes, beans, sweet pork and a fried egg. While the rice was a bit underseasoned, the burrito as a whole was something I would eat again and again, even if it was too big and filling for the two of us to finish.

We also checked out a second food truck near Fisherman’s Wharf, as we weren’t about to leave California without having a fish taco. I found the sauce to be a bit too spicy for the (fried) fish, but overall – a great taco.

The last (mostly…getting back home was a whole other ordeal that landed us in the airport for 14 hours the next day, but we won’t talk about any of that food) meal we enjoyed there was some takeout from Memphis Minnie’s. We got a taster plate that included the prok ribs, the beef ribs, some pulled pork, a corn muffin, macaroni and cheese, greens and baked beans. We took this feast towards the bay, where we sat in the windy evening while someone played Stairway to Heaven over and over and over.

This was definitely a whirlwind tour of the city, and I’m happy we ended up renting a scooter, as we wouldn’t have been able to get to all the places we did otherwise. I tried to keep this mostly food-related, but here’s a few more photos from our 2 days in San Francisco:

Soli & The little yellow scoot

Golden Gate Bridge

Trolleys

Haight-Ashbury

Off Haight Street

Soli & Postcard Row

Chinatown

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