{"id":85,"date":"2007-03-19T09:25:39","date_gmt":"2007-03-19T16:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/?p=85"},"modified":"2007-03-19T09:25:39","modified_gmt":"2007-03-19T16:25:39","slug":"spring-in-the-san-francisco-bay-area-day-2-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/?p=85","title":{"rendered":"Spring in the San Francisco Bay Area, Day 2\u2014Food"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0in\"><font color=\"#008080\"><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\"><strong>Monday, March 19<\/strong><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0in\"><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">Coffee from <strong>Berkeley Espresso<\/strong>, 1900 Shattuck Ave. (at Hearst), Berkeley. The Boyfriend(TB)&#8217;s soy latte was fine, my double tall iced Americano tasted bitter and burnt.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">Taste: Inconsistent<\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">Portion: Standard espresso drink sizes<\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">Price: Average ($5.90 without tip), <em>cash only<\/em><\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">Other: Friendly baristas <\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0in\">\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0in\"><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">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&#8217;t find it, and we realized later it&#8217;s closed on Mondays, anyway.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0in\"><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">We stopped by a supposedly vegan-friendly <em>dim sum<\/em> 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&#8217;t know any Chinese. The communication problem may have been a dialect issue. In the Seattle, we pronounce \u201cvegan\u201d as \u201cvee-gun,\u201d in the San Francisco area, it&#8217;s \u201cvay-gun.\u201d<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0in\"><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">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&#8217;t want to walk that far. (We could have taken a bus, I know.)<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0in\"><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">We finally found Cafe Venue on Leidesdorff Street &#8230; and it had closed for the day.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0in\"><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">We went back to Berkeley and ate dinner at <strong>Cha-Ya Vegetarian Japanese Cuisine<\/strong>, 1686 Shattuck Ave. Partly because it&#8217;s so close to where we&#8217;re staying, mostly because the food is wonderful.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0in\"><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">I had:<br \/>\n<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\"> Avocado <em>nigiri*<\/em> <em>sushi<\/em><\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\"><em> Inari<\/em> <em>nigiri*<\/em> <em>sushi<\/em> (seasoned tofu-skin pouch stuff with rice)<\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\"> #37 Vege-Tofu Curry soup. Pearl onions, celery, carrots, zucchini, tofu, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, sugar snap peas, <em>kabocha<\/em> squash and choice of <em>udon<\/em> or <em>soba<\/em> noodles in a mild yellow curry broth. (I love me some yellow curry. I admit it\u2014I am, to put it politely, a yellow curry tramp. I&#8217;ll try just about any yellow curry as long as I know it&#8217;s vegan, and I don&#8217;t remember having a yellow curry I didn&#8217;t like.)<\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\"> <span style=\"font-style: normal\">Sho Chiku Bai <\/span><em>nigori<\/em> (unfiltered) <em>sak\u00e9<\/em><\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\"> #53 Pear Compote. Fresh bosc pear, lightly sweetened, served with vanilla soy milk and green tea sauce.<\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0in\"><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">TB had:<br \/>\n<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">Portobello mushroom <em>nigari*<\/em> sushi<\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">#41 <em>Kinoko<\/em> soup. <em>Shimeji<\/em>, <em>eryngll<\/em>, portobello, and oyster mushrooms with choice of <em>udon<\/em> or <em>soba<\/em> noodles in a delicious broth.<\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">#48 Pineapple Chunks. Lightly sweetened and served with green tea and azuki bean sauces.<\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0in\"><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">* Two large pieces of sushi.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0in\"><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">The creamy, sweet <em>nigori<\/em> <em>sak\u00e9 <\/em>went well with both the curry and the dessert.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">Taste: Delicious<br \/>\n<\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">Portion size: Just right<br \/>\n<\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Arial, sans-serif\"><font size=\"2\">Price: Moderate bordering on expensive, $46 (excluding tip)<\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Monday, March 19 Coffee from Berkeley Espresso, 1900 Shattuck Ave. (at Hearst), Berkeley. The Boyfriend(TB)&#8217;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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,27,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-san-francisco-bay-area","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.isitfridayyet.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}