Asian SF (part 1)

I kept wandering around San Francisco thinking that it reminded me of Sydney; the bay is arguably even nicer, and the bridge even more impressive, but even better, there appears to be things to do in SF other than go jogging. But from a foodie point of view, Asian food was another point of comparison between the two cities. It is the Thai and Vietnamese food that I miss most about Sydney, and SF certainly was able to compete on that front.

Our first weekend started well with a visit to the Farmers' Market in the Ferry Building. Someone very clever decided to re-purpose this large cavernous space as a mecca for fresh produce, and the place was heaving with yummy mummies on the Saturday morning we went, just imagine if they scrubbed up Borough Market a bit and put it in Primrose Hill! It was almost too clean for me, but I loved to see how people revelled in the produce.

It was interesting to see that the emphasis of this market vs. Borough at home, which I think is a reflection of Californian vs. British strengths in food. In Borough Market, arguably the best things are the meat and the cheese, and whilst there seemed to be a healthy industry for these farmed goods in SF, it was definitely not quite to British standards. Most alarmingly, meat and fish is sold in zip-lock bags, all filleted and neat and clinical, no way you could have figured they came from animals. Interestingly, we read that Fergus Henderson was going to be guest-cheffing at a few restaurants after I left, not sure his cuisine would go down that well in SF to be honest.

On the other hand, the vegetables and fruit is the real star of the show in SF, and these are the things I'm craving now I'm settled back into cold, cold London. The oranges in particular were like eating sunshine, and strawberries so sweet it feels they must have injected them with sugar. No wonder they can have raw movement in California, one of the only places where raw food is glorious enough to shine by themselves.

But getting back to Asian food, Eugene sent me a list of his SF favourites, and bang on top of the list was Slanted Door in the Ferry Building. Fil tried his hardest to get me to try other stuff instead for lunch, but it looked too enticing! It is apparently one of the Top 10 grossing restaurants in the US (or California, I forget which), and you can immediately see why. The place was rammed on a Saturday lunchtime, and we were lucky enough to get seats at the bar after being told it would be a 90 minute wait for a table. The restaurant makes the most of its location with huge windows all along the harbour, and minimalist design, but ultimately I think the success of this place is down to the consistently good, fresh food.

We decided to test the place with some Vietnamese classics as well as some of the more funky things on the menu. I'd only been in SF for a few days at this point, and putting uni on the menu just made me want to try it. This uni was served with avocado, cucumber, and black tobiko, and was wild Californian uni:

The combination was really quite fabulous, loved the contrast between the crunchy cucumber and the creaminess of the avocado and uni together. The uni by itself wasn't anything to rival its Japanese cousins for creaminess on its own though, hence I guess the inclusion of the avocado to help it along. Sometimes these slightly Americanised 'sushi' dishes have too much stuff in them, but this really worked.

More traditionally, we also had their Slanted Door spring rolls and a Vietnamese crepe:

Both these dishes you see in almost every Western Vietnamese place going, but this was probably the best two examples I have ever tasted. Both dishes were incredibly light; the spring rolls laced with very thin slices of pork to give another dimension of flavour, and the crepe not only had the freshest ingredients, but floated in my mouth. The curse of Western Asian cuisine is to use substandard ingredients and cover it is cloying sauce as a disguise, but this was the absolute antithesis.

Our decision on Slanted Door was mainly because of our equal obsession with Asian soups, so we tried both their wonton soup and their beef pho:

To be honest, the pho is nothing to write home about. Indeed, Eugene told me off later for ordering pho in somewhere that wasn't a 'proper dirty Vietnamese place', and he is so right. The wonton noodle soup was pretty decent though from the one bite of noodles that I got out of Fil. The noodles had exactly the right texture, and also the prerequisite 'fairy liquid' taste you get from Hong Kong noodle eateries. However, we went to the sister Out The Door on my last day in SF and tried the same dish, and disappointingly there the noodles were all stuck together and the whole dish was swimming with MSG. Stick to the pork buns if you're going to OTD.

The other Asian place that Eugene recommended was The House on the corner of Grant Ave and Vallejo. This was a much smaller, family feel affair, and I loved the little homey touches they had. Their place mats I thought had the perfect combination of being cost effective and cute:

We were meeting two old friends for dinner here, so I couldn't really focus on the food, but their special starter of seared scallops with a miso ponzu sauce was by far the most successful thing we ate that night. I love that combination of saltiness and sourness:

The grilled seabass with soy dressing that everyone raves about, however, was only just ok. The seabass must be a completely different breed to what we have in England to warrant such a huge steak, but ultimately I found the flavour to be meaty but a bit bland.

The boys both had the special of grilled cod, the most interesting thing about it was the presentation:

Served with what was essentially a Californian roll that had been sliced lengthways, apparently this was really quite good as well as being creative.

With the higher proportion of Asian population, it is not surprising that the Asian food is of a good standard. We also went to the much heralded Yank Sing for dim sum, again, very high standards even though they don't seem to be able to make char siu buns properly. Still, we still managed to get tourist-trapped in Chinatown - we had decided to go there on an empty stomach lacking any decent recommendations, and relied on yelp.com to find somewhere to go. We apparently went to one of the best Chinese in America at Chef Jia's, according to some of the reviews, and I really should have known better when reviews praise a restaurant for its use of chicken breast meat. I should just trust my instincts and never eat in a Chinatown ever again.