Slutty Supperclub

aerial show in dining room

Yay for experiential dining! I finally got to SOMA's famous supperclub last night with Leo :). We got a groupon for it almost a year ago, and as with most groupons, never found the time. supperclub is basically a set price dinner + show experience that changes every night. You begin by sketchily lining up outside on the street until the doors open around 7:15. You are then led in to a disco ball filled, dark red waiting room where the hostess (a highly sassy drag queen) checks your reservation and escorts you in to the dining area. 

The dining area is a square-shaped, two story white room. All of the normal lights are off, and colored lights fill the space. Instead of chairs/tables, the walls are lined with bed-like sofas. You are seated in a row, take your shoes off and lay down against a pillow. There is a convenient bed tray for all your food and drinks. 

In the middle, a DJ spins loud music, and off to the side you can see an open kitchen where the food is prepared. You almost knock in to a trapese artist who is hanging in front of the entrance way. It is definitely one of those "we are def in SF/edgy global city" type establishments. The hostess was in giant hooker platforms, fishnets, and a see through shirt with pasties, and insisted that we all answer "SLUTTY!!!" whenever asked how we were or how our dinner was going. As she yelled out things like "raise your hand if you have a vagina!" and called the patron next to us "mr. german big dick," I had a great time imagining the result of a supperclub opening up in Salt Lake City ;D. 

opera singer

The first course was very delicious. It was a little pot of curry with sour cream. It was kind of weird because I've never had straight up curry sauce with no rice or meat, but somehow it really worked and was a unique and awesome appetizer. The show to accompany appetizers was a dude dressed like a satyr that went to the top of the room, leaned out of a sheet with a hole in it, and did an interpretive dance to images and the song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." So bizarre.

In between courses/shows, there was a lot of down time to relax and mingle. The performers came around and talked to you, and there was a lot of random stuff going on. The next course was a salmon dish. I'm not entirely sure what else was on it... but there was def some cream sauce. It was alright, but nothing too special. The act to accompany it was a random opera singer. I'm not entirely sure what she was singing, but she was quite good, and it was a cool experience because she walked around the room and would stand right next to you while she belted it out.

The biggest surprise came next, I thought that it was going to be dessert, but randomly, there was a second main course! This time it was some sort of "free range chicken" thing. I'm not a big chicken fan, but the sauce was good and I liked the shallots. The act for this course was the best, the trapese girl did a set of aerial gymnastics on fabric. Since Ken & I actually took some classes in that, I appreciate how hard it is, and really enjoy watching the cirque-de-solei esque action!!

Finally, my favorite course :O dessert! This was a platter of random foods- strawberries, choco lava cake, passion fruit whipped cream, and apple gelato. Mmm, super good! Wish we had 2 courses of dessert :). The show for this was the hostess doing a strip tease number that ended in pouring champagne all over herself.

With the groupon, we still ended up paying $50. All drinks are extra, and they obviously include tip and tax from the original total. Totally worth it for that price!! I don't know if I'd go spend the full price for it, but it seems like you can frequently find coupon deals. It's a very very good date place. Almost all the patrons were young and hip, and there was also an older Indian couple on their 17th year anniversary. They looked SO uncomfy at first (bet the dude wished he had planned sooner and just gotten those French Laundry reservations), but by the end, they were having fun. 

So yes, supperclub was a very fun time and I recommend you all go find coupons for it and take a date :) The whole dinner took about 3 hours, but it wasn't very busy... so that might be skewed down. Makes for a good night event. I love all these weird SF places. Just need to find some more!! (suggestions appreciated)

Strollin' Down the Boulevard

I always like it when my dad takes me to dinner because he picks the "hottest" places in SF. We definitely have different sources for defining hottest though... for me, I  like trying the new, weird & unique hole-in-the-walls, for him, it's all about the 10+ year renowned, Zagat rated, WSJ recommendations. I'm all about variety, so it's an awesome change.

For his bday celebration last night, he decided he wanted to try Boulevard down in SOMA by the Embarcadero. Last week, I had pre-emptively made reservations since I know this place fills up. I even had to call them in because their online service wasn't working. We were kind of late, so we called to warn them... but for some reason they had lost the reservations D: !! Luckily, they were very nice about it, and told us that they would make space for us.  Points.

The inside of the restaurant is very cute. It is dimly lit and supposed to be themed all Parisian style. I think the logo is loosely based off of a Metro sign. There are French looking show posters on the walls, and the ceiling has a really nice brickwork design. All the lighting fixtures are made of pretty blown glass as well.

We were both starving and ready to EAT :D. The bread was pretty tasty, and I highly enjoyed that they put salt (maybe even fleur de sel  :O) on the butter. For appetizers, I ordered a ricotta & nettle tortellini. As per fancy restaurant norm, it came with 3 small pieces. They were totally delicious though! I'm not entirely sure what nettle is (some black type of leaf), but it tasted really good in the cheesy parmesan sauce. The pasta tasted homemade and was the perfect chewy consistency. My dad ordered a weird calamari type dish. It had little tubes of Octupus filled with lobster and a couple fried anchovies. Weird looking but he claimed it was awesome.

fancy looking knife

My entree was the pork chop steak thing. It came out looking highly fancy, bone in and all. The meat on the pork was SOOO juicy, possibly the juiciest pork I've ever had. I don't eat a ton of pork though, so I'm no expert. I think my favorite part were the mini potatoes. They were skinned and so golden buttery delicious! My dad noted that you can usually tell you are at a good restaurant by the quality of the side dish veggies. True story. He ordered the California swordfish. I tried a piece and it was excellent! I really liked that the little cauliflower stalks on his were green. Weird colored veggies make me happy.

We of course had to get dessert. I decided to go with a really random thing: a honey pinenut tart. It basically looked like a gooey granola bar and had a very great honey taste to it. It was quite unique so it satisfied me. It also came with a little scoop of grapefruit rosemary gelato on a thin cookie which was excellent. My dad kept it simple by ordering the carrot cake. I thought his was alright, but not anything too memorable. He also ordered a strawberry cheesecake bon bon to split which was only mediocre.

 The wait staff was very nice, and although the food was quite pricey, I highly enjoyed the meal. It definitely will be an expensive dinner, but I would recommend Boulevard as a special occasion type place to check out if you are looking for something more traditional.

C is for Cumpleanos! Carlos! Chocolate! and Crumblesplosion :(

3 part cake batter

For Carlos's birthday party, I wanted to make a super awesome & amazing cake! In order to have it be a semi-surprise, at least in variety, I decided to try to find a recipe that combined two of his favorite flavors: chocolate and caramel. When I consulted with my baking skilled brother on it, he told me that our very favorite Baked cookbook had just such a recipe, the Sweet & Salty cake. This recipe was for a 3 layer cake with salty caramel ganache frosting. YUM!

mmmm all mixed!

They came out so well :)

When I quickly read the description, the cake seemed intensive but doable. I was so dedicated to making this thing awesome that I even finally splurged for a hand blender in order to make this thing totally perfect. I also had to get some round cake pans for the house. The recipe called for 3 8" pans. Bed, Bath & Beyond only had 9" pans... so I was lazy and decided to buy two of those instead. This could have been my fatal flaw.

ahhhh boiled over cream :(!

After some quick Safeway-ing, I started a little past noon on Sat. I decided to make the cake first, then follow up with the frosting. The cake itself took a very long time. All the ingredients had to be mixed separately and then combined. The problem was that it required 7 mins per item to combine, so time quickly racked up. As I say in every baking post (since I'm always conned in to this :p) I don't like chocolate cake at all. This batter was really tasty though, and I fully licked the spoons. I was planning on not completing filling the two pans since it had supposed to have been 3, but there was plentiful room so I did it anyways. In the oven for 40 mins they went.

burned caramel ganache WIP

I then looked at the recipe and realized I had made a big miscalculation. I realized that the "1/2 cup salted caramel" was different than the ganache frosting, meaning there were actually THREE different recipe items to prepare :(. I freaked out because I hadn't bought ingredients for the mix. Upon some inspection, I was lucky and found out that I had everything but sour cream, and some cursory internet searching taught me how to make a substitute from a few items int the fridge. Crisis averted.

very cooled cakes mmm

but it came out ok still!

I started first on the more intensive ganache. It involved making caramel, and then combining it with rich choco frosting ingredients. I don't know if you guys have ever tried to make caramel before, but it's really freaking hard >: |. You have to boil a corn syrup mixture for just the right amount of time. If you have it for like a minute too long or on too high of a temp, it will burn and completely harden on the bottom of the sauce pan. What made this trickier was that you also have to bring heavy cream to a boil and then let it cool for like 2 mins and then combine them and immediately pour over sectioned bakers chocolate. Of course I was doing this while the cake alarm kept going off... so basically I burned the caramel, boiled over the milk and didnt chunk the choco. Good times!!! I kept trucking and somehow the ganache came out ok. there was so much chocolate and cream that you couldnt taste the burned caramel. It was way too fluffy chocolately, but still good!

caramel attempt #2

success!!!!

The cakes themselves came out well and I left them to cool. Next, I attempted homemade caramel #2 for the inner sauce. I learned from my previous fail, and this time I made sure to not burn the caramel or overcook the cream. Mmm, a pot of boiling & delicious caramel a la Sharon! <3

look at these killer ingredients

how could anything go wrong?

By this time, I was feeling like a million bucks. Somehow, I had successfully prepared all 3 fancy ingredients! All that was left was to combine. It was like 4:00 by now, so the cakes were quite cool. I put the bottom layer on, caramelized it, ganached it, and moved on. :(. I was trying to be uber classy, so I started by cutting the rounded top off the second layer. Big mistake. For some reason, the structural integrity of the top layer was not there, and cutting the top was the final straw. As I carefully tried to flip it on top, the horror hit me. It was totally breaking apart. Being the brilliant one I am, I decided that putting tons of caramel and frosting on it would glue it together. Not so much. Quickly it all started crumbling to pieces. The more I tried to glue it back together, the worse it became.

AHHHHH!! note: this is after I cleaned it up a ton

Soon I had a giant pile of gushing, exploding mush on one side of the cake. It's hard to describe here, but there was a good 5 mins of me screaming profanities and crying and trying to fix the poor gourmet mess. I had to leave the room for awhile to calm down. When I returned things had settled a little bit, and I had to start excavating out the ruins of my poor cake. Choco was going everywhere (walls, ceiling, floor) I was grabbing it and dumping it by the handful in to the trash :(

piles of cake in garbage

Much mourning later, I decided I needed to salvage what I could, and used my artistic talents to pretend it was a C. It was mistaken for a PacMan.

final product. i tried to salvage what i could

All-in-all, the cake was totally delicious and amazing, I was just sad about wasting 5+ hours and like $50 on something that came out so crappy looking. Kind of want to try again :(

Dining in the Dark

For Carlos's bday date, I wanted to go somewhere super special. Ok... actually let me be honest. I wanted to go to a certain super special restaurant, and inserted his bday date as an excuse to splurge the $$$$ per person ;D

Last Wednesday I checked out the famous Opaque in the highly ghetto Western Addition portion of Hayes Valley. Opaque is an entirely pitch black restaurant. It is designed to simulate what it's like to be blind and having all of your other senses heightened. So freaking cool. I was very happy when Carlos was as excited as me about the surprise experience. 

You enter and immediately walk down stairs to a dimmed corridor. There you look at menus and pick your 3 course meal. After you decide, you are escorted in to the darkness by a legally blind waiter. I thought the route to the table was one of the coolest sensations of the evening. It's really crazy to just hold on to the waiter's shoulder and put full trust in his navigational skillz. We were very lucky and seated at a booth in the corner (or I assume it was a corner). When they say dark, they really mean it. You can't see ANYTHING at all. 

We had an amazing time just hanging out waiting for our various courses. You are started off with drinks and bread. I was happily surprised by how easily I was able to bring the food to my mouth. Being in the dark is fun because no one can see what you do... :) it makes it quite easy to prank your tablemate and move around the condiments. 

After the bread course, you are delivered a plate of 3 veggies & 3 sauces and given the challenge of guessing. It's actually surprisingly hard, and we got all of the sauces wrong. It's odd how much visuals play in to remembering what day-to-day tastes are. The meals were pretty good as well. I had a salmon curry dish w/ potatos, and Carlos got chicken w/ rice.The weirdest part about the entree was trying to use the fork in the dark. I think they delibrately put your food on a giant plate so that you keep missing. It's a bit unnerving because I kept putting the fork down, feeling resistance, and then bringing it to my mouth empty. So weird. 

I'm really glad we went on a Wednesday because it let us savor our meal more. Our waiter kept returning ready for our next course while we were only half way through the previous. Every time he walked up he would whistle or hum to warn you. During some of the breaks, I'd imagine how easily someone could approach you in silence... super creepy but I love freaking myself out.

The desserts were ok, but I wasn't a big fan of either choice. It was mocha pudding or chocolate cake. Both kinda gross :P. I was so excited about the experience in general that I didn't even care about the food though. It was just so neat to have an entire meal essentially blinded. It's crazy because you can hear other patrons in the distance, but it's hard to determine how far they are from you or how the restaurant is positioned. 

We milked the experience for as long as we could and didn't end up leaving until almost 11. I'm so so so happy we went. Although it was pricey, it was totally something I think everyone should do once with a date. It was a very intimate and fun experience that I'm very glad I got to be a part of. 

Highly recommend :D. Although! If you go in SF, be careful where you park. I grabbed a spot on McAllister (less than a block away), and when we came out we found the car behind us had its windows smashed in :S. Eeks.

#1 Zagat Rated in Cali! :o

potato pancake FAIL

Continuing my warp-speed job transition weekend, I accompanied mi padre to Sonoma for some drive-by touring. We started out getting breakfast in Healdsburg. My dad kept telling me we were going to some creamery, but once we got there, he decided he'd rather go to the cafe next door. I was excited at first because they claimed to have potato pancakes... but as per usual, it ended up being a mush of crappy hash brown things. sigh sigh. The homemade peach coffee cake was kind of crappy too :(. Now I'm reading reviews and see the creamery place was on the Food Network for being amazing. Lame.

Onward we traveled all around Sonoma checking out wineries and all the scenery. It was gorgeous out and quite a fun trip. It was highly epic as I freaking tried some champagne at one of the stops!!! :O. I didn't actually like it that much, but still, wow. Crazy. We ended up driving to the ocean and playing around on the beach while wasting time before going to Bodega Bay for dinner. 

#1 rated??

This is beyond bizzare, and I'm not even sure if it's a kink in the system... but for some reason the 2011 #1 Zagat CA restaurant is Terrapin Creek Cafe in BB. This place ended up being very tasty, but still, with cities like LA & SF competing, it blows my mind that the top dining in the state is in some rural coastal town. 

cute bread dishes

We had the earliest reservations (4:30) so when we arrived, the place was still getting set up for dinner. It is very family owned & oriented with the (highly attractive) husband waiting and managing, and the wife busy as the lead chef. They even had their baby hanging out while the prepared everything. It is decorated rather simply but with a modern flair, and there is a tiny patio which has a view of the water.

I was super starving and highly appreciated the bottomless 3 bread basket (which cost $1.50 >: |). For appetizers, we split a roasted beet salad and grilled octopus. Both were delicious!! Along with the beets, there was goat cheese, almonds, and some vinagrette. It was extremely flavorful and so fresh tasting. The octopus was also amazing. It was cooked to the perfect consistency and didn't have any sort of fishy taste that you usually get with calamari. I was very surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

grilled octopus

Next, for our entrees, I tried the meatballs and my dad got the sea bass. My dish was very different since I'm only used to getting meatballs with spaghetti, or at IKEA. I really liked it because instead of pasta or potatoes, they were served on a bed of tomato sauce covered pecorino cheese. I'd never had pecorino before, but it's a creamy, subtle tasting cheese similar to ricotta in consistency. The dish was super filling, but really unique and terrific. My dad's fish also tasted great, and he seemed to really enjoy it. 

Even though we were stuffed, we had to get dessert. I ordered the mini cheesecake and it was the star of the meal. I have never had such a perfectly prepared cheesecake. It was so incredibally smooth and creamy and was not obnoxiously cream cheese flavored. The graham crust was very buttery and crispy, and it came with a delicious raspberry dipping sauce which really highlighted the flavors. My dad's dessert was a little pot of choco-hazlenut with mini cookies to dip. It was a bit too rich for my tastes, and I think he was jealous of mine.

 

best cheesecake ever

It was a very incredible meal. I definitely think it should be highly rated; however, I'm not sure I agree it's the best in CA. I guess that's a very subjective rating. I have kind of ghetto tastes... haha I'd probably pick a fad place like Straw as my favorite :) that's why I don't work for Michelin

The Ishii Manor & More

Tri-Tip

Since I had the misfortune of having to start my new job at Sony the week after I quit EA, I decided it was necessary to make the most of the separating weekend. I had been wanting to go on a road trip anyways, so when Ishii suggested we have a date is Fresno, I was so totally down.

As soon as Carlos & I arrived at casa de Ishii, we were greeted by a (just woken) hungry Michael J. He is always good for food suggestions, and we decided to try "tri-tip" at the Meat Market, a local favorite. This place was a food stand in a parking lot with some seating. It smelled delicious outside as they were cooking the meat BBQ style on the grill outside. I had never had tri-tip before, but I really really liked it. It was kind of like what Arby's is supposed to be, a delicious, thick, meat-filled sandwich.

mmm manju booty- so many flavors!

Next, we picked up Tiffany and headed to "downtown" Fresno to go to my favorite sweet shop in the world: Kogetsu-DO. That may sound like a bold claim, but I seriously think the fruit filled manju mochi is like my favorite thing ever. I have not been able to find it anywhere else I've traveled (even Tokyo) despite much searching. This place is in a super ratty part of town and had been open for over 100 years. They make the sweetest, most tender mochi and fill it with every type of fruit and bean paste you can imagine. They are also the home of the giant mochi ice cream! Best part is, it's in Fresno meaning it's super cheap! $1.25 per item. Yummmmm

mmm Chunky Bread

Since we had nothing to do, we ended up driving and driving and deciding to hit up Shaver Lake (a nice body of water about an hour out of town). This turned out to be an even bigger adventure as apparently there are some serious climate changes as you drive up the mountain. It went from sunny and blue to snowy blizzard within like 5 mins!!! We stopped at a local shop because Tiffany had heard of their famous "chunky bread."

Fresh Chunky Bread :O

OH MY GOSH SO GOOD!!!!! Chunky bread is this weird, pieced out baked good that is like a cinnabon on crack. Each section is oh-so-cinnamon gooey delicioso! We were all floored by how amazing it tasted, and got conned in to waiting 10 mins for more to come out of the oven. We almost died in the icy conditions coming back, but it was totally worth it to try this local treasure.

Hmm... then we went to a Japanese tea garden, saw peacocks, and drove home. We hit a Del Taco on the way <3 but I don't think that's blog worthy despite my obsession with Del Inferno. 

Mainly just some mass win with the manju & chunky bread <3 Fresno forever!