Pollo Asado - roasted chicken with yellow rice

Chicharron de Pollo - marinated fried chicken chunks, with yellow rice

Ensalada de Espinaca y Remolacha - spinach tossed with mango, avocado, blue cheese, oranges, red onion, and toasted macadamia nuts served over roasted beets

Cuban restaurant with a lot of hype, but the food was solidly mediocre.

Finally found a place in Hoboken that reminds me of Philadelphia. Pretzel bread, BBQ ranch salad with fried chicken, and creme brulee french toast with bacon. The caramelization on the surface of the toast perfectly mimicked the hard caramel on the surface of actual creme brulee, and the inside was just as creamy and custardy. Kinda a miracle of physics. Molecular gastronomy ain’t got nothing on this french toast.

It’s my last night in San Francisco and it’s hitting me that this is the first time in years I’ve gone anywhere besides New York and Chicago for an extended vacation (in the schedule of the working world, four full days is practically studying abroad). I serendipitously got to spend most of the weekend with my friend Mary and her sister Liz, who happened to be in Cali at the same time, and we had some delicious eats: lunch at Rose Pistola, where I had a truly memorable antipasti of seafood-stuffed grilled calamari surrounded by lentil salad and rosemary aioli: 

Liz bravely ordered the capponada salad without knowing what it was: it turned out to include tuna, bread, and that gorgeous farm egg floating on top. The pesto tasted unbelievably fresh.

Mary had the acclaimed pizza, made in a wood-burning stove, with artichoke and prosciutto and green olives. The artichokes were strangely a little bland, but the crust was excellent.

Liz and Mary, who spent months this past year living in Paris, fell in love with a little North Beach bakery called La Boulange. You can see why.

We had a really lovely overnight vacay at Shelter Island (which is apparently the Brooklyn of the Hamptons.) The pictures largely speak for themselves.

There are very few things that make me as happy as eating dinner outside on a warm day. I’ve been known to veto perfectly good restaurants just because they don’t offer outdoor seating. Yesterday it was eighty degrees, and I had dinner outside with my friend Dylan at Petite Abeille, near my office.

Dylan had prix fixe appetizer-entree-dessert, which included a nice salad, two pounds of fantastic mussels in white wine and garlic sauce with belgian fries, and chocolate mousse that tasted like chilled, puddinged hot chocolate (just the right amount of salt).

I had this gorgeous and spot-hitting niçoise salad, with albacore, green beans, roasted red pepper, a delightful pickled tomato, fingerling potatoes, black olives, hardboiled egg and anchovies.

I know I haven’t been cooking anything lately…I promise to make up for it this weekend!