North Beach Deja Vu

mini booths w/ paintings

Back when I was trolling Yelp for a good North Beach place to check out for my bday party, one particular restaurant, Tommaso Ristorante Italiano, kept popping up. I really wanted to go then, but they don't take reservations, and all the reviews said it got really crowded on weekends. I decided to queue it up on my lists, and finally hit it up for my last date night.

It's always fun going over to North Beach because it gives me the whole I'm so cool I freaking live in San Francisco and work at a video game company and life is awesome <:D feeling. Totally irrational, but it happens. This time I was geeking out especially badly because after 15 mins of looking for parking, I finally got a spot (90 degree angle space!!) that had an incredible view of TransAmerica building on one side, and Coit Tower on the other. Such good times

When we got to Tommaso's, I had this crazy flashback deja vu of being there with my dad back on one of my many college trips to Cali. As soon as we opened the door it was totally confirmed as I recognized the mini booths with faux Mediterranean frescoes on the walls. We had to wait a few mins to be seated, and then we got stuck in the middle of the giant communal table.

It was late-ish when we got there (prolly 8:45) and so people were starting to clear out. It was pretty ridiculous because the way the traffic flow went, everyone left the center table except the parties directly on either side of us :P. Truthfully, worse for them because both Carlos and I were still in our many bouts of loud coughing fit sickness. It was kind of annoying though, because it made everything REALLY hard to hear. I have trouble enough trying to understand his accent anyways, so adding on excessive ambient noise did not help at all. It was a whole lot of "QUE?!"ing all night.

lasagna

The food itself was decently tasty. I ended up getting a cheese pizza with garlic, and Carlos got some lasagna. I really liked my pizza and the small was more than enough food for two meals for me (even with someone stealing a couple pieces :P). The lasagna was ok, but not as memorable. There were a bunch of varieties of pizzas, so it would be fun to go back with a group and order several to split. 

Overall the meal was good, but the loudness of the room and crowdedness of our seating kind of put a damper on it. If I went again, I'd try to guarantee getting a mini-booth for privacy. I haven't been very many places in North Beach, but I have a feeling I'd disagree with the many reviews calling Tommaso's the best. It's good, but not omfh amazing.

Non-German Foods in Berlin

 

Throwback to Germany! Just remembered there were a couple posts I forgot to get out. Sigh sigh

Supposedly Berlin is like the "San Francisco" of Germany because of the huge variance of people and foods in the city. We actually ended up eating a lot of non-German meals, and it was interesting to see how they differed from American versions.

 
I tried a couple of Italian dishes in Berlin, and truthfully, neither of them impressed me much. Granted, we were going to cheaper places that probably weren't that great. I would think due to sheer proximity, the food would be more authentic than back home... But who knows.

The first was doomed for the beginning cuz we brought a freaking 11 month old baby with that had been dragged around all day sans much food. I don't want to go in to the graphic details, but Margaret had leave with it after attempting to very very messily feed it fettuccine alfredo. At that place, I tried a pizza. I thought i was getting a chicken parm pizza, but somehow it ended up with giant slabs of prosciutto on it. Stupid language barriers >: /. It was actually pretty good once I pulled most of the toppings off. The other pizza I had was from their fav local shop in Charlottenburg. I ordered it because it had egg and fresh mozzarella. I love egg pizza so it was promising. The menu mention that it contained spinach which I am ok with.... but they weren't kidding. There was seriously like 2 lbs of spinach on this thing. It was in giant piles on top and even baked under the cheese :( it quickly got to be that nasty seaweed consistency and I had to pick most of it off.  Was jealous that my dad's veggie pizza had corn on it though (Carlos!!). Overall it was just bland stilll.

In Schwerin, we ate at a supposedly Czech cafe, but it seemed to have a generic menu. I got some weird "hawaiin" steak dish that had a giant slab of chicken with ham, pineapple, and cheese on top. It was actually pretty tasty :) although pretty fake American seeming. The best was the "cake buffet" there :D unfortunately not the same definition as a US buffet, but still fun to pick a slice of super delicious cake from behind the glass. I loooooooved the one I got. It was a big slice of very sweet lemon mouse cake with a cookie crust. I normally really dislike lemon baked goods, but somehow this was total win and one of the best baked goods I had all trip.

I actually ended up with another hawaiin ish dish at separate place! Apparently pineapple is popular in Berlin. At Marg & Danny's fav place, I grabbed a "fried turkey curry on rice". I was super hoping it would be like the japanese tonkatsu curry... but of course it wasn't. The curry was more of a cream sauce with little to no spice :(. It was ok... But nothing special either. I had a funny highly European "hawaiin mango lime lemonade" there as well, which was just a soda with no lemonade consistency. Nick got an "indescribable in English" Bavarian dish at this place. I can describe it... it was a freaking dennys grand slam :p fried eggs on ham with breakfast potato. Not saying that's a bad thing :)

Grabbed a couple yummy deserts too. This one might be German... But oh well. To my suggestion, we hit up the cafe on top of my family's fav Berlinian choco shop. The shop itself was super awesome. It had a gigantic selection of gourmet chocolates in all shapes, sizes, and flavors. Brought back lots to share so hit me up ;). They even had huge choco models of stuff like the Reichtag, Berliner Dome, and the Titanic. Fun!

The cafe was awesomeeeeeee!! Had a really tasty raspberry mouse tart thing. My dad got a delicious passion fruit tart and Nick got an intense choco puff. It was such a cute date spot overlooking the cool part of dowtown and it made me wanna come back with people my age.

There also were tonnnnnnnnns of "eis" (ice cream) shops all around. I'm putting it here because we ended up getting gelato in the Potsdam station which I'll pretend is Italian. They were pretty similar to American gelato stops except the flavors were odd. I got a double scoop of marshmallow (amazing) and the intriguingly bright blue schlumpf (I think it was maybe cotton candy). Really enjoyed that :)

The aforementioned foreign sweets were among the best things I ate on my trip. Kind of sad... Haha

PROLLY CUZ I NEVER F-ING GOT MY KARTOFFELPUFFEN >:(

A Mission Staple

As usual, RDN was just Eugi and me this week. Once again, we were trying to go to Emmy's, but since it was Manu's pick, we are tabling it for hopefully next week. After like 5 more picks from the hat to find a non-Manu entry, we ended up with Pizzeria Delfina.

I was very excited to FINALLY be going to Delfina. I feel like it's one of those places in the Mission that you pretty much have to have been to in order to be considered local. Delfina is split in to two sections, a fancy sit-down Italian side, and then the pizzeria. I've never been to the fancy side either, but it's pretty pricey and seems similar to Farina where I have been.

asparagus & rice soup

The pizzeria side always gets long lines and has no reservations, so it's best to get there on an off time. Even when we showed up at 8:00 on a Monday, it was packed with a long waiting list. It does have some outside seating, but it was wayyyy too freezing this week to go for it. Plus there is always a giant crowd of like 20 people waiting for their table looming around you. Eugi and I had nowhere to be, so we put our name down and waited for like... 40 mins-ish before we were finally seated.

4 cheese pizza

I've seen some awesome pictures on Yelp about specialty pizzas they have with things like eggs and corn. Unfortunately, they didn't seem to have any of those that night. We were both kind of boring and he got a margherita, and I got a 4 cheese pizza. While you wait, they give you bottomless long, thin & crispy breadsticks to eat. They were ok, but I wish they had either had some flavoring, or there would have been some type of dipping sauce to spice them up.

Eugi also got an asparagus and rice soup as an appetizer. I only tried a bite, but I actually didn't like it too much. It had too much asparagus and pepper flavoring for me.... but, I think that was on purpose due to the type of soup :P.

The pizzas arrived really quickly. Due to the constant traffic flow, the place seems very ready to turn customers in and out. There is a full kitchen in view in the tiny restaurant, and you can see 4-5 chefs busy at work preparing the pizzas.

1 cheese pizza haha

Both of them were tasty! The crust was thing and soft with yummy sauce. I really liked the cheeses on mine, you could clearly taste the different types. Eugi seemed to enjoy his a lot too. I haven't tried enough of the staple SF pizza places to determine where this ranks, but it's definitely a great thin crust contender. wish we had gotten some other varieties of toppings, but I guess there is always next time. It seemed like you could get take out pretty easily, so I might try that since my house isn't too far.

My favorite part of the shop was a giant mural of SF painted on the wall. It was really neat because it used bright colors and a very stylized art type to depict the city. On one side was bright oranges and reds to represent daytime, and on the other were darker night colors. My only beef was that the sections were split by the TransAmerica tower and not the Sutro >: | that totally would have made more sense. 

half of the amazing SF mural

It didn't quite meet the expectations from all the hype I'd heard... but a good local spot to check out! Then go down 3 shops and wait in line forever at Bi-Rite ;p

Gold Medal Pizza

So stoked. I had the best dinner tonight :D. I hit up Zero Zero, the super trendy new italian/pizza joint in SOMA. You can tell from the outside this place is hopping. It's got a great atmosphere, all mood lit and two stories & two bars. It's definitely got the swanky- I'm cool & I know it vibe. The entire meal i was fixated on a bizzare picture that covered the back wall with a Pinocchio-esque puppet stuck to a pizza. If that doesn't scream hip, i don't know what does.

Anyways, FOOD!! Seriously, so great. For an appetizer, eugi and I split ricotta stuffed fried butternut squash in pesto w/ tomatoes. Quite good, it was tempura-ey and the tomatoes were an awesome pallet cleanser from the bold flavors of the squash. Only complaint was that the bowl had three. wtf. there are two of us!! Couldn't you at least give us an even number?? It's like when you go to dinner with 4 people and they give you 5 breads, someone's gotta be the douche and take the last piece.

Pizza Filer!

But the pizza completely outshone that. For the record, outshone is apparently a word because there's no red squiggle action going on. Bizarre. I knew we were in for a treat when our waiter brought the "pizza filer" to our table :). There was quite a nice menu. I got a white pizza with rosemary oil, mozzarella, parmesan, and potatoes and eugi got margherrita. mmmmm so freaking tasty!!! It was so light (meaning i didn't feel like crap when i horked my entire pie) and the flavors were so potent and fresh! Mine was incredible with some red pepper flakes to spice up the flavor and eugi's was classic amazing.

Up close and personal pizza

As if this wasn't good enough, Zero Zero is also known for their soft serve ice cream!! It's even build-your-own, so the waiter brings you a paper and pencil and you mark off what you want (unfortunately no fried egg). I got vanilla w/ caramel and toffee. The softserve was so insanely creamy <3 a very pleasant experience. they also had some neat "bases" for their ice cream like cinnamon waffle, but i'm too cheap to pay an extra $4 for one. Great great place. I'll be back to try more!

giant soft serve

P.S. the joke in the name is that the menu said "zero zero is the flour used in italy to make dough." so i asked eugi if it was fancy and he scoffed and said no, its the most generic brand there is. then i fantasized about there being an american restaurant named "gold medal" in italy :) hilarious to me and prolly me only