Dave and the …….. 1st Annual Tour San Francisco

SHAVED CABBAGE FUJI APPLE SALAD with green onions, serranos & cilantro cumin lime vinaigrette

BABY SPINACH CORN EDAMAME SALAD with zucchini, red bells, cotija cheese & Meyer lemon olive oil

BLACK BEANS with chorizo & goat cheese

WHITE BEANS with jalapeños & a touch of allspice

FINGERLING AND NEW POTATOES roasted with jalapeños & sweet onion

NACHOS NOT! C CASA chips with our black beans, white beans*, or half and half, pico de gallo, goat cheese & chipotle aioli

GRILLED PRAWN C COCKTAIL with avocado and a spicy tomato cucumber relish

GUACAMOLE AND CHIPS with roasted corn relish

WHOLE CHILE CRUSTED CHICKEN

WHOLE HERB CRUSTED DUCK
After lunch we convoyed up to Artesa with our CEO — California Earl the Organizer.

We headed out of the parking lot for our first winery visit, Artesa. We went by the Wine Spectator Office in Napa to see if the Grande Ronde wines were on the porch –

 Click Enter picture for 360 degree view of Artesa.

Enter

The Model Bakery has been part of the Napa Valley culinary scene for 90 years at the original location on Main Street in St. Helena. In January 2008, The Model Bakery opened its second location at Oxbow Public Market which was convenient for the Dots, we could just roll down there to get some coffee and pastry before we started our winery excursion.The Dot from Stevens County was excited to learn we were going to a Model Show first thing but seemed a bit disappointed when he showed him the buttered buns, but such is life when you are on the road sometimes. And buns they did have — cinnamon morning buns, muffins, scones, freshly made English muffins (featured on the Food Network!), breakfast buns with eggs, cheese, jalapeno, sausage, bacon and fresh tortillas with chorizo sausage, salsas, eggs. We declined the chocolate “rad” cookies for the road trip. This is a good spot to pick up some bread and wander the market for cheese and charcuterie for a picnic.

We wandered up Silverado Trail. I had been to Conn Valley fifteen years earlier and my primary recollection of the trip was that I missed the turn and arrived late for lunch. I hate arriving late to lunch or dinner, get pretty disappointed about being tardy for breakfast and missing a scheduled wine tasting in Napa — that can bring you to tears.

We found the turnoff — more than an hour before our scheduled appointment so we continued up the valley. I like seeing the vines before they are in bloom, the stark vision of the vineyards in February knowing what the final result will be in October always amazes me. (Let alone what the finished product will be in six plus years when it is beginning to get ready to drink).

I wanted to show the dots Clos Pegase. The winery was just starting construction when I visited the Napa Valley in late 1984 and many people were criticizing the Shrems because this winery wasn’t modeled after a winery in France or Italy. The Shrems wanted a winery to build a winery that coincided their view of wine as an art form. They hired Michael Graves whose architectural style “evokes memories of a European ancestry” and having “timeless sensibility.” the winery is divided into two sections: one for production and the other for enjoyment of wine. We were too early to taste at Clos Pegase or visit its 20,000 square feet of caves. I’ve been here several times and attended special events in the Cave Theater.

As you look at the winery everything has a reason. The Oak tree divides the work and fun sides of the winery.

Below is a picture of the cave before a formal tasting for people in the wine trade and of course, the Pegase Thumb Sculpture.

It was time to go visit the Andersen’s of Conn Valley. We turned back on to the Silverado Trail. The Driver Dot was counting on the Navigator Adopted Dot to let him know when we came up to the crossroad for Conn Valley which he did shortly after passing it. Making a U turn on the Silverado Trail is never a good idea. In the summer it would be suicide but mid-week in February we were able to find a good turn around spot about a mile from our original turn. Conn Valley gives you a very different feel to the Napa Valley than you get driving up and down Hwy 29 and stopping at tasting rooms. Once you turn off the Silverado Trail you are only moments from being transformed into what the original wine pioneers probably saw in Napa Valley — old trees lined the road, the road has a mind of its own, twisting and turning like the trunks of the old trees. You have to have faith in your navigator (which 1 of the 4 did) and take the right fork in the road — we ventured off the slopes of Howell Mtn, missed the red mailbox marker we were told we couldn’t miss but continued on until I saw the Sycamore trees lining a driveway. You have no idea your are in wine country. It seems you just emerged from the trees and found a small farm that had realized it could grow grapes that would produce amazing wine so they dug a hole in the side of the mountain to keep it a secret and waited for people to find them.

We took the golf cart from the house up to the caves where we given a tour of the caves and then treated to a wine tasting.

Conn Valley Vineyard & Cave Entrance

      We started the great tasting tour at Conn Valley with their Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. She then tasted us out on their Pinot Noir, Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Blanc, Eloge and Right Bank wines. The tasting lasted an hour and then we toured the caves where we had a barrel tasting.  The tasting was $45/person but in the scheme of things I think we all greed that it was an amazing experience — the road, the vineyard plunked down in the mountain valley, the caves and hostess.

      The DOT tour was off to a good start. Now we just had to make it back on to the highway safely.  The winery is not open to public tasting because it is too busy (re: dangerous) to pull out onto the highway — we were to experience that fact shortly. “Now, Not Yet, Ok, Slow, Punch It.”  The navigator takes his job seriously and the ghost driver responded more to the cadence and volume than actual which words which was good because “Yipes!” isn’t as good a direction as some people think. As we drove back down Silverado road we noticed that people were beginning to wake up. A couple of construction projects, a few pruning instruments making music, one live wire across the road and a couple of frantic workers in the basket trying to shout orders to someone. We ignored them. We were headed to Black Stallion, one of those “boutique” wineries owned by a very large conglomerate. It is located in the Oak Knoll district (Napa has expanded its districts — when I first started going there in the mid 70′s there was Napa, Sonoma, Carneros, Russian River –now it seems every road has a different district attached to it. I think the minture wine districts hav become overkill but every winery likes to market their wine as something special; something  you have to have in your cellar. What wine cellar would be complete without an Oak Knoll or Dot recommended wine? That said, it doesn’t mean you can’t have fun tasting the wine and buy a little if you like it (and who doesn’t want a Dot recommended wine?)

      You read a lot about the rich history of California wineries but Black Stallion is about the new breed (pun intended). This winery was built in mid 2007 changing the former indoor equestrian arena and its 36 horse stalls into part of the production facility. The Indelicato family purchased the winery in 2010. The “Delicato” family of wines has been around for 85 years (bringing you a variety of wines including boxed white zinfandel). They produce annually more than 20 million gallons of wine a year.  In Grande Ronde terms that is “approximately” 8400 years of production.  In 1991 the winery and some of its employees pleaded guilty to altering records to support a massive fraud with its 1988 white zinfandel production — still tasted as good as a cheap white zinfandel, it just didn’t use zinfandel grapes in the production of the wine.  (This was happening while one of the leading wine writers in the country was proclaiming what a great winery Delicato had become.) I went into the tasting room with a little bit of historical prejudice. The wines were solid and we were treated well. It does make my mind spin — probably like their minds were spinning. The best way to show you have good wines is to go on the offensive, buy a winery in Napa, produce decent wines and hope people forget that large fine that was imposed on you 25 years ago. I am willing to do that once Grande Ronde produces the same amount of wine so look back at this blog in the year 2850 for any new updates.  I do think both this visit and the one at Artesa gave the Dots and myself a better idea of what Napa is about.  It is about the historical wineries, the large wineries, the devious practices, the amazing wealth and who we saw most of in our visit — the workers in the vineyards, pruning, using portable toilets, checking for vine diseases, keeping the grounds looking good. Napa is no longer just a ride up Highway 29 stopping at every winery — it is about choosing which wineries to visit among the 3000 wineries in the wine region — how much to pay for a tasting, which wines to cellar, which wines to buy just because you had a great visit.  All of those things are good and they are all parts of the Napa/Sonoma wine experience.

As with most of my trips it is necessary to stop at someplace the locals eat.  Well it was easy enough to find the wineries, finding La Taquiza wasn’t nearly as easy.

We drove around Napa looking for the taco joint which was located in the backside of a strip mall on the undowntown side of highway 29. If you wanted to get a salad you could go with the Mexicana (romaine, black beans, pico de gallo, panela cheese and ranchero chipotle dressing), Ranchero (romaine, grilled tomatoes, grilled jalapeno, roasted corn, green onion tortilla strips, cheese and chipotle dressing) or Pepita (mixed greens, avocado, toasted pumpkin seeds, red onion, golden raisins and honey-lime dressing).

But our informant at Conn Valley said to do the tacos — so tacos it was. The O Dot went for the Carne Asada — grilled skirt steak (must be a lot of classy dressing cows down here), black beans, rice, onions, cilantro guacamole and salsa.

The rest of the Dot Crew went for the fish tacos — California or baja style (it was easier to order both rather than make a choice so we did) fish, cabbage, pico de gallo and a special crema & salsa).  We could also get grilled octopus ceviche and Mexican Beers.  The locals were right. Great, cheap lunch to help settle your stomach down for the next wine tasting and where else can you get octopus tacos or oyster cocktel — that’s something to talk about.

We headed for our third scheduled tasting of the day. In the early 80′s I went to Caymus with the Bunz man. The patriarch, Charley Wagner, tasted us on wine and we met winemaker Randy Dunn who was just releasing his Dunn wines from Howell Mountain. When I asked Charley about restaurants in Napa he gave me the address of a barber shop and when I asked what it was like during prohibition he told us we were drinking the best sacramental wine in Napa. While we were drinking his cabernet he mentioned that he really loved his wife’s canned peaches. Caymus was no longer a little house — it had grown up into a very high profile winery.  From those sacramental beginnings the Wagners now have five different grandchildren making wine — some at Caymus and others in new ventures with other grapes like Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.  they’ve grown from 240 cases in 1972 to more than 65,000 cases. I was looking forward to revisiting one of the first wineries I had ever visited in the Napa Valley.

The Dots and I were doing the special sit down tasting at Caymus. We tasted the Belle Glos Pinot Noir (named after grandma, the peach canner), Conundrum and Mer Soleil in the public tasting room before we went into the private area which seated twelve people. Caymus is still the only winery to ever have been named the Wine Spectator’s “Wine of the Year” (1984 and 1990 vintages).

We tasted five wines and talked to Esiquio Plancarte about the history of Caymus. He worked in the vineyards, winery, played football on some of the great  St. Helena Academy teams, cut his hand on a Nebuchadnezzar of Caymus Special Select.

We returned to the River Terrace Inn to relax and get ready for our dinner at Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen.  Cindy Pawlcyn is a James Beard Award winning cookbook author and chef-owner of Mustard’s Grill. The historic building from the 1800′s housed a bordello in the 1920′s, a cooperage that supplied barrels to local growers and a restaurant called Miramonte. The two story house has seating up and down as well as a courtyard where a 100 year old fig tree guards over the restaurant.

We were in luck — February was the Month of the Pig. (I remember eating her Mongolian Pork Chop at Mustards ten years ago. I think the sign says something like “almost a million sold” and I think anyone who has eaten her pork chop with some shaved onion rings probably wants to include one of her restaurants on their return trips to Napa.)

We started out with the Stuffed Piquillo Peppers, cumin braised beef and charred tomato salsa. The Dots raised their forks in salute and then dove into the appetizer plate — I smiled inwardly, they were getting the hang of things. A few red dribbles on the front of their shirt didn’t slow anyone down.

Next I ordered an entree for the table –Incredible mushroom tamales, creamy grits, almonds and chard with Yucatan salsa. I like ordering an extra entree as an appetizer for the table especially when it seems to me it should be a side dish. The four wild boars sniffed out the truffle tamales and finished them.

I had the Black Pepper cilantro grilled quail, thai fried rice, green papaya salad and sweet chili glaze.

The fish dot went for the wood oven roasted duck, smoked ham hock, tomato & white bean cassoulet, citrus gastrique

Guy Dot ordered from the month’s selection a Pork Katsu with macaroni salad and sticky rice. I was glad not to see a plop of poi on the plate.

The ghost ordered Swordfish with eggplant tapenade.

For Dessert we had the mango parfait with coconut macaroon and huckleberry cobbler with French Vanilla Bean ice cream.

(It  is with sadness that I report that we should be there in May because the chef, Jim Leiken, is featuring naturally raised beef from Five Dot Ranch — we dots should be there)

We started Wednesday morning looking for Biscuits. Several local people had mentioned it was the place to go, the only drawback was finding it. Biscuits is a Southern diner with an emphasis on fresh with dishes like Big Mama’s Collard Greens with diced turnips and apples, Pap’s famous Fried chicken and Cindy’s Sweet Tea. As the name might suggest when you go for breakfast think biscuit. Cowpoke ones with country gravy or Biloxi Benny with open faced biscuit, country ham, collard greens, two eggs sunny side up and Tabasco Beurre Blanc or the Hotlanta Hash with bacon confit fingerling potatoes with sauteed peppers and onions, brisket with a sunny side up egg or the Bourbon Street Waffle with maple cream, caramelized bananas and spiced pecans.  Coffee here is dripped, you can get fried green tomatoes or four different relishes for your biscuits. Reasonably priced, good stick to your ribs (and bib) breakfast.

The Dots filled up their gas tank and headed up Highway 29 to Far Niente, our last scheduled wine tour. We had done a trial run(failed as we drove past the road and up the Oakville Grade) so there was no problem finding the road into the winery. the winery began in the late 1880′s when John Benson (a gold rush 49er) hired architect Hamden McIntyre (uncle of Winslow Homer if you are in to Art History facts. Winslow is thought to have created their first wine label because uncles always get their nephews and nieces to work for free — a tradition that should still be in effect today.) The winery prospered until 1919 when Prohibition closed its doors and it wasn’t until 1979 when Gil Nickel purchased the winery and vineyard.  During the three years of construction a stone was found carved in the building “Far Niente” in Italian or “without a care”.  1982 was the first harvest for the winery.  (For you history buffs a bottle of 1886 Far Niente Muscat was found in a private California wine cellar, believed to be the oldest bottle of intact California wine.)  When you drive in you are struck by the 13 acres of landscaped gardens. (Gil and his brother ran the second largest nursery business in the United States.) The driveway (Acacia Drive) is bordered by 100 Autumn Gold ginkgo trees. When you enter the winery you feel the canopy created by the towering redwoods, acacias, dogwood and century old cork oak trees.

We walked up the flagstone stairs from the parking lot to the visitors center. You can see pathways traversing the winery grounds, stone bridges crossing the ponds and a retaining wall that supports olive trees and a grounds that is home to Japanese maple, Japanese snowbell, lion’s head maple, chinese fringe and saucer magnolia.

Far Niente welcomes the Dots …. Tour

Our hostess (who had lived in Spokane in the 1980′s) greeted us and told us our tour would start promptly at 9:30 a.m. You could see the workers in the vineyards from the tasting room area and look out over the valley.

Old Time Selfie

In 1980 a sixty foot wine cave was built into the hill behind the winery. It was the first wine cave to be constructed in North  America since the turn of the 20th century. Today there are more than 40,000 square feet of caves.

Far Niente created Dolce in 1985 — a dessert wine that has its own life at Far Niente. Dolce is dedicated to producing only one wine — a sauternes like wine made from Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc. The Noble Rot (botrytis) turns the shriveled, moldy grapes into  “liquid gold.”

One of Italians was turned into stone and as Italian don’t like to waste anything they turned him into a fountain. Far Niente has a replica of this Italian fountain in their caves.

Besides being a gardener and winemaker Nickel loved to collect cars and often would ship                                      them overseas when he was visiting so he could drive them around (or send his wood boats over to float in.)

We left the car mansion and returned for our tasting of Far Niente wines.

In front of each person was a special selection of cheeses for the tasting.

We drank several Far Niente Cabernet Sauvignons, Chardonnay and Dolce. the Dots ate their cheese, ordered their wine and then posed for their group passport photo.

We were leaving Napa Valley — the viticultural education part of the journey was coming to an end. Now it was time to work on the consuming part of our education — OTR goes to San Francisco.

CLICK ABOVE TO HEAR OUR THEME SONG

If you’re going
to San Francisco
Scott MacKenzie

         Our first scheduled dining experience in Dine Out San Francisco Week was the Spruce.
We retraced our steps to Oakland, crossed over the Bay Bridge for the first time and looked for Presidio or Laurel Heights (someone will read and tell me why one person claims it is in one heights and another in the other heights or maybe they were both from the other haights.)  I heard our driver mumble that he was glad we had only one more day of driving as we screeched up a hill. When two of the Dots and I got out of the car I wasn’t sure we would see the captain again. (Then I remembered that we were going to lunch and figured he might show up. He might not tell us where he parked the car but I was pretty sure he would be there for the first course.)

     On the website the introduction to the Spruce is that a throwback to the old days when people would congregate with friends in the town square, trading gossip and laughter. If you look at Yelp or Tripadvisor most of the trading of information revolves around how expensive is which I would guess means that a lot of the “public” that gathers around Spruce drives Lexus SUV’s (if they could find a parking space for them) rather than Kia’s. I didn’t find any of the relaxing atmosphere that the folks at Spruce purport starting with their $35/bottle corkage fee. So why go?  The chef, Mark Sullivan, is self inspired. Passion seems to be his primary cookbook. He does seem to believe that one way to express yourself is through food. A philosophy that I believe in.  He has cooked in San Francisco, did a cooking tour through Southern France and Northern Spain. I had eaten at other restaurants he had been involved with like Cafe des Amis and 42 Degrees in San Francisco.

With fennel yoghurt, mache and onion balsamic streusel.

     A lot of the produce at Spruce comes from sustainable farms. SMIP Ranch in Woodside provides a lot of the vegetables surrounding the meals at Spruce. The beet salad was simple, lots of flavor and used the word streusel. What more could you ask from a dish than flavor, beautiful presentation and an eight letter word for your scrabble repertoire.

      The slow roasted beef short rib had red wine farotto, chard, carrots and horseradish veloute on tagliatelle noodles. Like all of the reviews that praised the dish for being tender enough to eat with a fork we found the same thing was true with our meal. Simple, served with tagliatelle noodles, the dish was full of amazing flavors.

     The dessert was a panna cotta sprinkled with dried fruits. They served complimentary macaroons (green tea, hazlenut and coconut). I had a cup of Viennese roast coffee. Here you get to choose your coffee and tea like a fine wine menu from Ethiopian, Yirgacheffe coffee with bergamot flavors to a Red Tea with cedarburg rooibos leaves. Makes you want to linger and read another mystery by Alexander McCall Smith about the No. 1 Ladies Detetective Agency in Botswana but the cost would be close to the National Budget so best to move on — and move on we did. Next stop — Santa Clara to watch the Zags.

BBQ in Santa Clara

   We checked our cell phones (four old guys trying to remember what some younger kid had told us to do). We determined we were somewhere between 45 to 300 miles to Santa Clara with an arrival time of 50 minutes to six hours. Looks good so we started down the towards the freeway at a clip of over six miles an hour. We were uphill from the entrance so we could watch cars practicing various ways to cross grid locked streets below us. Our driver practiced revving the motor as we descended from Presidio Heights towards Hwy 101.  We went through San Mateo, San Carlos, Palo Alto (twice) until we finally reached our destination, Andy’s BBQ where we were to meet an adopted DOT, Mark, for dinner before the game. One hour and twenty minutes, we were on time.

     The primary probelm we had Andy’s was that we eaten breakfast at Biscuits and lunch at Spruce and the menu at Andy’s looked daunting. We went for the combination platter of spare ribs, brisket, chicken, 3 types of link sausage (Polish, Italian & Cajun) and Pork Shoulder.  After all we were five BBQ experts and needed to have a variety of dishes to give the restaurant a fair review.  We added on sides of garlic bread, tossed green salad (must eat healthy), BBQ beans and had both original and spicy bbq sauce. We left feeling pretty deflated. The BBQ was very good, the cold beer a great accompaniment but we left boxes of food — this was not a typical Dots showing. Luckily the newest member of the group had a family of rabid eaters in Mountain House and Tracy which we were told later devoured our poor showing.  We plan to tackle this restaurant with only one meal under our belts next time.

The Bronco’s welcome the DOTS

The Game

January 29, 2014

     Just another easy game in Santa Clara where Zags fans are treated with the same respect relatives of the Christians were treated in ancient Rome. We had handled Santa Clara easily in Spokane and they had just been blown out by BYU and Portland.  First, they change the game from Thursday to Wednesday night. Who can play on the road on a Wednesday night? The game was close with Santa Clara having a slight edge throughout the game. With less than thirty seconds to go Santa Clara took a one point lead and we began our final play which was to dribble around the court, out of decent shot range and with our back to the basket.  With three seconds to go on the shot clock we threw a desperation pass to Sam Dower who calmly threw one up from behind the arc and it went “swish” tens of Gonzaga fans cheered as the Broncos called a desperate time out. Thousands of Romans jeered and a few lions roared as we meekly walked out of Leavey Center with a win and then skipped to our car. It was a great day. Mark left after Dower’s shot because he said he had a longer driver home. That proved not to be true.  At night it is very hard to see road signs. Our first error seemed was quickly noticed when we saw we were getting closer to Los Angeles with each mileage sign. We quickly exited, crossed the freeway and followed signs to San Francisco. We managed to see a sign that indicated we had missed Hwy 101 and were headed towards Vallejo. After an hour driving we realized we weren’t much closer to SF than when we left Santa Clara and now were on the wrong side of the bay as we all dug for bridge tolls — Mark arrived home about an hour earlier than we saw our first signs for the Dunbarton Bridge — please pay.  We parked the car in the Fairmont for our last night with a vehichle, had a bottle of Artesa and headed off to our bed while the swat teams began to surround the building.

Thursday in San Francisco
The Fairmont Hotel
First Night in the Fairmont

“Bonanza Jim” Fair struck it rich in a Nevada Silver in the late 1800′s and moved to San Francisco. His daughters decided to build a monument to him in 1902. The construction began but by 1906 the daughters decided not to continue the construction of the Fairmont Hotel and traded it to the Law brothers  for two existing office buildings. Days later after watching Enrico Caruso perform Carmen at 5:12 a.m. the great San Francisco fire and earthquake struck the city. As waves rolled through the city and buildings crumbled the Fairmont shook, but did not fall. (There was some internal structural damage.) Below ithe city was in ruins. Writer Gertrude Atherton watched from across the bay and wrote, “I forgot the doomed city as I gazed at the Fairmont, a tremendous volume of white smoke pouring out from the roof, every window a shimmering sheet of gold; not a flame, nor a spark shot forth.”  The Laws decided to repair the building hiring Stanford White, NY architect, to do the restoration.  Shortly after that he was shot by multimillionaire Harry Thaw and killed while eating dinner. Dinner was a riskier business in those days. The Laws turned to a female architect, Julia Morgan, first female graduate of Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. The first dinner to celebrate the opening was a banquet featuring 600 pounds of turtle, 13,000 oysters and $5,000.00 worth of French and California wines.  The Dots and I weren’t sure about duplicating the dinner but we were going to do our best to make sure San Francisco was holding up this tradition. We hoped to revive the Fairmont as they social hub with the Dots as the main attraction. (Preceding us was Teddy Roosevelt, President Taft, Rudolph Valentino and every president since Taft has stayed at the Fairmont — we were hoping that another president might come to visit while we were there.) During the depression the hotel went into an era of benign neglect and many of the rooms were filled with permanent residents.  In 1947 after being give a facelift by renown designer Dorothy Draper the Fairmont began to flourish again.  Entertainment became a big part of rejuvenation with artists Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Marlene Dietrich, Joel Grey and where Tony Bennett first sang “I left my heart in San Francisco.”  the Cirque Bar was the first bar to open in San Francisco after prohibition. Our duty as Dots extraordinaire was to revitalize this hotel and our first goal was to bring in a couple of notable guests. And we did!!

Coffee at the Fairmont

Dave and Gion get coffee at the convenient and elegant coffee shop in the Fairmont.

Mike and Gordon to this way to look for coffee, forgetting they had to come back from that way to bring the coffee to the rooms.

Getting Rid of the Car at the Wharf

Alcatraz

Golden Gate

Dots making points
to Dave at Science
Museum Golden Gate

We are Missing Being in Spokane in January

Haight Ashbury

Jammin in the Haight

Gordon and Gion are inside picking out a new wardrobe.

Gordon visits
Houses in Haight

Lunch at the Taj Compton Place

The Taj in Union Square

Starched white table cloths, fold your napkin if you leave the table, always pour water from proper side, remove silverware in an orderly fashion.

Dinner at the Slanted Door

Michelle Obama in town

I lost the Dots — they were at a special conference in the City

Lunch on Wharf with Geoff

North Beach and our Dinner at Firenze

Tartine

Mike Likes Our Lunch Stops

City Light’s Book Store

Don’s Welcome us to SF Campus

The Dons have an amazing basketball history. They’ve won three national titles — 1949, 1955 and 1956.  Bill Russell and KC Jones led them to titles while the team practiced at Kezar Pavillion or St. Ignatius high school because the Dons didn’t have a permanent home court. It wasn’t until 1958 when a fund raising effort enabled them to build the War Memorial Gymnasium. (Still boggles my mind that the back to back national champion practiced part time at a local high school gym. Those were the good old days. Makes you pine for the old kennel on the zag campus.)  The Golden State Warriors used the gym during the first few years of their entry into the NBA for some home games. The gym holds 5,300 people, quite a place in the late 1950′s, not so much now in the 21st century.

Flour + Water for Dinner

After the Zags win we took the bus to Flour + Water for our 10:45 pm dinner. (Lucky to get in so early, we had to wait twenty minutes after we got there to be seated.) It isn’t that easy to get to the Mission District but I wanted to experience a “pasta” tasting dinner under the guidance of one of new upcoming celebrity chefs, Thomas McNaughton.

Breakfast at Sears

Sunday Morning and No way to move my head it didn’t hurt.                                                                                    We followed our instinct and went downhill for food. (Always better than uphill.) Sears was founded in 1938 by Ben Sears a retired circus clown. The restaurant is located about a half block from the original location.

When we arrived we were seated in the basement next to a large table of girls who hadn’t gone to bed yet so they could still move their heads.  They had several bottles of champagne on their table. Their enthusiasm prompted the Dots to order our own bottle of champagne to go with a Bloody Mary.

Dollar Pancakes
Sears SF

Sears built its reputation by serving Ben Sears family’s secret recipe for Swedish pancakes — 18 dollar size pancakes at a time.

Headless Breakfast
at Sears
SF

Lunch in China Town

Mike Frucci and I explored China Town, North Beach and City Light’s Bookstore while Gion and Gordon shopped at the Macy’s Men’s Store and reserved a table for us in the Fairmont Bar where they rooted the Seahawks on to a large lead. With the game solidly in hand we hailed our limo to take us to the airport — The First Annual Dot tour was coming to and end.

Seahawks win Super Bowl!!

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