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Wednesday, March 21

Lunch at Lanesplitter Pub & Pizza, 2033 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley. The Boyfriend (TB) and I shared a “small” vegan pizza. 15” is small?

• Neapolitan crispy, thin crust pizza with a red sauce, thinly sliced onions,double portion of mushrooms, and Lanesplitter’s own Notta Ricotta vegan cheese (made from Tofutti products)
• TB indulged in a Brouwerij Lindemans Framboise Lambic (raspberry Belgian style beer), which we’ve seen (and purchased) at various grocery stores in the Seattle/Tacoma area
• I had an Iron Springs Coffee Porter

Wednesday, March 21

We had rain in the early morning, then sunshine and warm temperatures for the rest of the day. Mid-morning, The Boyfriend (TB) and I hopped on AC Transit bus #9 on Shattuck and rode through North Berkeley, down to Berkeley Marina, and walked the entire length of the pier. Note: If anyone ever tells you to take a long walk on a short pier, don’t go to Berkeley Marina—it has a very long pier (which is a popular fishing spot).

Berkeley Yacht Club is located at the Marina. Funny, when I think of Berkeley, I think of hippies, not yuppies.

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Tuesday, March 20

A rainy morning in Berkeley. We stayed in our room until the rain ceased in the mid-afternoon. We bussed into Alameda so The Boyfriend (TB) could do some banking. (Don’t ask.) TB, a big fan of small, environmentally friendly cars, spotted a ZAP car parked on the street in front of O’Connell’s car dealership. We went in to take a closer look.
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After the Alameda errand, we took BART back to Berkeley. We walked several blocks from the Ashby BART station to Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Derby St. for the Berkeley Farmers’ Market. (See the Day 3 Food post for details.)
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Not much activity today, due to the rain.

Tuesday, March 20

Coffee from Guerilla Cafe, my favorite coffee in the area. The boyfriend (TB) had a soy latte, I had my usual iced Americano.

• Taste: Consistently excellent
• Portion: Standard espresso drink sizes; drinks come with double espresso shots
• Price: Average ($5.25 without tip)

We went to the Berkeley Farmers’ Market for dinner and dessert.

I had:

• Taquito plate and cinnamon tea (no caffeine) from Flacos; served with avocado salsa, rice, black beans, and salad
• Orange Cream pie from Alive and Radiant Foods
  
• I also picked up some cookies (future snacks) from Vital Vittles

TB had:

• Tamale plate and cinnamon tea from Flacos; served with avocado salsa, rice, black beans, and salad
• Dreamy Lime pie from Alive and Radiant Foods

Flacos:

• Taste: Very flavorful
• Portion: Just right
• Price: Moderate, $20 (excluding tip)

Alive and Radiant Foods, 1734 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley; 510-708-0787:

• Taste: Delicious, creamy, sweet but not overly sweet
• Portion: Standard piece-of-pie size
• Price: Expensive, $10 (excluding tip); worth it as an occasional treat
• Other: Some items contain honey, which not all vegans consider vegan

Vital Vittles:

• Taste: Yummy
• Portion: Two medium-sized cookies (1 oz. each)
• Price: In expensive, $1.25 for a two-pack
• Other: Some items contain honey

Monday, March 19

Late morning, The Boyfriend (TB) and I took BART into San Francisco, detraining at the Embarcadero stop. We wandered through the Ferry Building looking for a vegan-friendly restaurant. While we struck out on that, we saw lots of cute shops in the Ferry Building.

We also saw a crustacean jail.

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That’s just mean.

We then took an electric trolley to Pier 23. We walked through the park at Levi’s Plaza then up the Filbert Steps, in hopes of seeing some of the Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, or, as we sometimes mistakenly abbreviate, the Wild Paragraphs. (The birds are really cherry-headed conures.) We saw and heard a few of the birds flying overhead, but we didn’t see any roosting in trees.

We continued up the Greenwich Street Stairs to Coit Tower for a brief tour around the ground floor and grounds. We’ve both been to the top of the tower before and decided to pass on it this time.

Then down Kearny and over to Grant Ave. to stop at 101 Music, 1414 Grant Ave. I love this place. 101 Music has a terrific selection of various kinds of music, including classic soul—my favorite genre. They charge $10 per CD or 3 for $25. In addition to CDs, 101 Music has a large selection of records. For any youngsters who don’t know what records are, they’re old school, old technology, analog music on black (sometimes colored) vinyl discs, in various sizes—small-sized 45s (the number refers to the revolutions per minute, or rpms), medium-sized 78s, and LPs (for “long playing;” 33-1/3s), the largest size. Even 45s are quite a bit larger than CDs. Go ahead, Google “records.” I’ll wait.

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We also walked by I Dream of Cake, 1351 Grant Ave. Shinmin Li creates works of art in cake and icing; her designs are amazing. If you’re ever in San Francisco and like anything even remotely artistic, I suggest you check out I Dream of Cake.

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We saw some cool buildings, murals, and neon signs while getting lost in the Chinatown/Financial District area.

Late afternoon, we boarded BART back to Berkeley.

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Monday, March 19

Coffee from Berkeley Espresso, 1900 Shattuck Ave. (at Hearst), Berkeley. The Boyfriend(TB)’s soy latte was fine, my double tall iced Americano tasted bitter and burnt.

• Taste: Inconsistent
• Portion: Standard espresso drink sizes
• Price: Average ($5.90 without tip), cash only
• Other: Friendly baristas

No lunch to speak of, we munched on snacks we brought with us. We looked for a particular vegan-friendly restaurant at the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero, didn’t find it, and we realized later it’s closed on Mondays, anyway.

We stopped by a supposedly vegan-friendly dim sum place in Chinatown. I asked about vegan items, but either this place is no longer vegan-friendly or perhaps we had a language problem. It seemed that English was not the primary language of the employee I spoke with, and I don’t know any Chinese. The communication problem may have been a dialect issue. In the Seattle, we pronounce “vegan” as “vee-gun,” in the San Francisco area, it’s “vay-gun.”

We had a list of other vegan and/or vegan-friendly restaurants in San Francisco, but either had a difficult time pinpointing them on the map or figured we didn’t want to walk that far. (We could have taken a bus, I know.)

We finally found Cafe Venue on Leidesdorff Street … and it had closed for the day.

We went back to Berkeley and ate dinner at Cha-Ya Vegetarian Japanese Cuisine, 1686 Shattuck Ave. Partly because it’s so close to where we’re staying, mostly because the food is wonderful.

I had:

• Avocado nigiri* sushi
• Inari nigiri* sushi (seasoned tofu-skin pouch stuff with rice)
• #37 Vege-Tofu Curry soup. Pearl onions, celery, carrots, zucchini, tofu, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, sugar snap peas, kabocha squash and choice of udon or soba noodles in a mild yellow curry broth. (I love me some yellow curry. I admit it—I am, to put it politely, a yellow curry tramp. I’ll try just about any yellow curry as long as I know it’s vegan, and I don’t remember having a yellow curry I didn’t like.)
• Sho Chiku Bai nigori (unfiltered) saké
• #53 Pear Compote. Fresh bosc pear, lightly sweetened, served with vanilla soy milk and green tea sauce.

TB had:

• Portobello mushroom nigari* sushi
• #41 Kinoko soup. Shimeji, eryngll, portobello, and oyster mushrooms with choice of udon or soba noodles in a delicious broth.
• #48 Pineapple Chunks. Lightly sweetened and served with green tea and azuki bean sauces.

* Two large pieces of sushi.

The creamy, sweet nigori saké went well with both the curry and the dessert.

• Taste: Delicious
  
• Portion size: Just right
  
• Price: Moderate bordering on expensive, $46 (excluding tip)

Sunday, March 18

If you’ve read my blog before or chatted with me about the Bay Area, you probably know where The Boyfriend (TB) and I went for breakfast. If you guessed Fellini, you’re right. If you didn’t guess Fellini, you must be new.

Fellini Restaurant, 1401 University (at Acton), Berkeley. Omnivore-friendly cuisine, with several vegetarian and vegan options. Vegan items are cooked in vegan-only pans.

I had:

• Vegan Benedict, “Scrambled tofu and veggie Canadian bacon on an open-faced English muffin, topped with vegan Hollandaise, and served with house potatoes and vegan sour cream.“
• An iced Americano (espresso and water)
  

TB had:

Sunday, March 18

The Boyfriend and I walked to Indian Rock to watch the sun rise. This didn’t work out quite as planned, for two reasons.

First, the fabulous views of San Francisco Bay and the city skyline are toward the west. As you probably learned in childhood, the sun rises in the east. The rock does offer a good easterly view of the neighborhood—lovely houses and gardens—but the hills blocked any view of the actual sunrise.

Second, the fog that flowed in yesterday evening stuck around for the morning.

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After breakfast (see the Day 1—Food post for details), we decided to visit the Takara saké (rice wine) production facility. We had about an hour before Takara opened, so we meandered along a short stretch of Berkeley’s San Pablo Ave. to pass the time.

We arrived at Takara Sake USA Inc. (708 Addison St., Berkeley) shortly after it opened. (If you’ve ever had warm saké, you’ll recognize the aroma as soon as you open Takara’s doors.) “Takara” means “treasure from the rice paddy.” Takara produces the Sho Chiku Bai brand. The first character in Takara’s logo is “sho,” a pine tree, symbolilzing health. Next, “chiku,” bamboo, signifying prosperity. Last, “bai,” the plum, representing beauty.

We wandered through the saké museum, watched a short video about saké making and Takara’s history, and then indulged in a free saké tasting. Well, “free” is misleading. While Takara doesn’t charge visitors to sample the saké, TB and I both dropped quite a chunk of change to order saké and have it shipped to our homes.

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Thanks to my friends Christy and Les for the saké book they gave me a few months ago. I’ve read the section on the history of saké and how it’s made and I’ve skimmed the parts on specific brands and where to taste and buy saké. And, I must confess, I forgot to bring the book with me. Fortunately, the video we watched had useful information, and the tasting room staff are knowledgeable and helpful.

While it seems like we didn’t “accomplish” much today, we spent a lot of time walking—always a great way to see a city or neighborhood.

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Saturday, March 17

Today was a travel day—packing, waiting for the airport shuttle van, riding to the airport, waiting at the airport, flying, taking another shuttle van to our destination—so today’s post is all about food.

SeaTac Airport, lunch at Maki of Japan (located in the food court just past the security area for gates A through N).

• Plain steamed veggies (broccoli, carrots, celery, and cabbage) with steamed white rice.
• Taste: Mediocre.
• Portion size: Needs more veggies and less rice.
• Price: Moderate, $5.99 (excluding tip).

Kathy Casey‘s Dish D’Lish (located around the corner from the aforementioned food court, across the hall from Fireworks Gallery).

• Coffee (iced Americano with a bit of soy milk) and Sun Chips.
• Taste: The coffee tasted OK, nothing really to blog home about. The Sun Chips were good, consistently Sun Chips.
  
• Portion size: Generous for the coffee, the usual single-serving snack-bag size for the Sun Chips.
  
• Price: Cheap, $3.26 (sans tip).

Dish D’Lish had several lacto and/or ovo vegetarian choices, fresh as well as prefabricated foods. The Boyfriend had a salad with mixed greens, radicchio, dried cranberries, roasted hazelnuts, some sort of crumbly cheese (probably bleu or gorgonzola), and a raspberry vinaigrette dressing. Other vegetarian choices included breakfast sandwiches with eggs and/or cheese, muffins, and yogurt/granola/fruit cups. Two items appeared to be natively vegan, though it’s hard to know for sure since the labels on the prefabricated foods don’t list the ingredients: Zesty pukecumber (er, cucumber) salad, and fresh-fruit cups.

Dinner at Cha-Ya Vegetarian Japanese Cuisine, 1686 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley (510-981-1213). Delicious, as usual.

I had:

• #14 Ten Bou. Lightly battered and deep-fried atsuage tofu and veggie sticks, including yam, carrot, banana squash, and green beans. Served with tempura sauce.
• #19 Moon Garden. Steamed tofu custard with broccoli, zucchini, carrots, shimeji mushrooms (they looked like oversized enokis), kabocha squash, snow peas, and asparagus. Sprinkled with gingko nuts and soybeans.
• Kiku Masa Japanese saké.
• #49 Oshiruko. Dessert; slices of mochi rice cakes in a warm bowl of sweetened azuki bean sauce.

Served at room temperature, the saké went down smoothly. Pleasantly flavored on its own or following a bite of Ten Bou or Moon Garden, its dryness clashed with the sweet dessert. To get around that, I cleansed my palate with a couple of sips water and then chug-a-lugged more saké.

The Boyfriend had:

• #17 Hagetsu and #21 Taku-Sui combination dinner. Hagetsu: Portobello mushrooms combined with atsuage tofu, lightly battered and deep-fried. Served with kiwi sauce. Taku-Sui: Gyoza (potstickers), tofu, zucchini, napa cabbage, snap peas, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, and clear noodles floating in a flavorful broth. Served with ponzu (citrus and soy) sauce. Accompanied by miso soup, sunomono (cucumber and seaweed) salad, and steamed white rice.
  Plum wine.
• #52 Yellow Moon. Dessert; chunks of deep-fried banana topped with green tea sauce and sweetened azuki bean sauce.

TB also ordered some shiitake mushroom sushi. Somehow, the chefs missed this. Not a problem, as TB had plenty to eat without the sushi and enough room left for dessert.

Speaking of dessert: I don’t recommend the Yellow Moon after a deep-fried appetizer or main course; it’s too heavy. I had two bites of TB’s Yellow Moon—too much after my tempura.

• Taste: Wonderful.
• Presentation: Elegant.
  
• Portion size: Perfectly adequate, especially when ordering two or more items and/or a combo and/or when sharing.
• Price: Moderate edging toward expensive, $53 (excluding tip).

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