San Dong Best (Geary & 2nd in SF)

Regrettably I have just found out that San Dong Best has closed.

Been a few months since we visited our favorite Chinese restaurant on Geary. Perfect time to go, just after the Fungus Fair. Above is Lotus Root with Ginger.

Hand-made Pork, Shrimp & Chive Dumplings.

Xinjiang Chicken with Wide Noodle. Sometimes called Dan Pan Ji (Big Plate Chicken). Says it serves 2-4 People, but I gotta tell you, we both had ample helpings at dinner, then today for lunch, and there's a humongous portion still left. Apparently the original dish is Uyghur, and was mainly about chicken bones, which were leisurely sucked upon. These are bone-in chopped chicken pieces, and extremely spicy in terms of Szechuan peppers, plus you can see how the dish is festooned with red chiles. Pretty salty, though what hits your palette isn't just salt, but a mix of spices, including Star Anise, Cinnamon, Black Pepper, Ginger, Garlic--basically the greatest hits of Chinese Five Spices and more.

Beef Noodle at San Dong Best. Those are hand-pulled noodles, made in-house from scratch.

Note the ingenious fix to our teapot!

Definitive Lotus Root dish, sauteed with chile & ginger.

Cumin Lamb. Soulful and bright.

Beef Noodle Bowl, note the scissors, which is a great idea for cutting the very long noodles. Beefy chile stock, baby bok choy and luscious shittake mushroom.

For some odd reason, I seem not to have blogged about this great new Chinese Restaurant in Inner Richmond. They do great Szechuan, they do great pulled noodles and in-house dumplings, and mostly they do cuisine reminiscent of Shandong, the northern Chinese city near the Korean border. There's several other high profile restaurants doing this too, including San Tang, and all of those have been great as well. Every time we've been here, we've been blown away by their cuisine.

Eggplant entree. That's eggplant sauteed with onion, baby bok choy, mushroom & cabbage in a sauce that includes Sesame (Robin thinks Sesame Oil), and a meat stock, which to me tastes like a combo of pork and chicken. Let's not mince words: this is cuisine on a par with French cuisine as served in the US. 

A few shots of Robin wrassling with the in house made noodles.

You get the idea. This is Mutton Noodle, with a bit of cilantro & seaweed. Amazing. That bowl is more than enough for one person, and $1.05 less than ten bucks.

Finally, the Shrimp and Chive Dumplings arrived. Last shot: dipping dumplings in chile oil. Look at that texture on the dumplings. Juicy and hot inside!

Mycological Society of San Francisco 2015

We went last year, and I took photos, so in a sense, this is going to be more of the same. But I took a few extra shots of aspects of this gathering I find more important, plus the usual oddball suspects like this guy. I find myself fitting in rather well with these eccentrics.

Here's my new buddy Britt, editor of Fungi Magazine, doing a lecture on Psychedelic Mushrooms to a packed house. I met him in October at the Puget Sound Mycological Society meeting.

These meetings usually have great mushroom soups, and this year was no exception. Here's a lentil-based soup with mixed mushrooms (I didn't try it, but I'm sure it was great).

I don't think I got a very good shot of this station last year. These are the folks who collect and use particular mushrooms for dyeing. Here's a nice shot of that in process.

Several folks here had material on mushroom cultivation--some in the other room had growing kits for sale. Last year, Robin & I grew some Shittake mushrooms out back.

Probably the single most important booth at the entire show--these are folks at UC Berkeley who've long been studying the Medicinal benefits of particular mushrooms using both Chinese and Western Medicine.

Some mushrooms have anti-tumor properties & buffer immune systems? That's the head of these programs at Cal to the left. She's been studying this since the 50s.

And here's her book.

Fascinating to me that the lichen society folks attend these meetings too. It's not like mushrooms grow in a vacuum.

Toxicology. Seriously important.

And so is ecology. This all connects.

Mushroom habitat displays.

Mushroom vendors.

More mushroom displays, these with descriptive labels.

I've met this vendor before. Check out the Pink Oyster mushrooms!

Two more shots of mushroom displays.

One of the vendors next to Robin. A vinegar salesman. Well-crafted stuff, but nothing to do with mushrooms. Banana vinegar. 

OK, now we're talkng. Best culinary vendor at MSSF. Yellow Chanterelles.

Black trumpets.

Truffle butters and Porcini powder. Both of which sold out fast!

Some other amazing stuff. Shoulda bought some of this truffle oil.

But wait! Himalayan truffles?!?!

All's well that ends well. I bought one of these. 

Slow Food: Cannellini Bean Soup

This is perfect weather for a nice soup like this. Not very many ingredients: cannellini beans which I soaked last night, then put in the crock pot this morning while drinking my first cup of Joe. To these I added bay leaves, sea salt, whole green peppercorns, two lamb shanks (local source), and some beef marrow bones. Later, Robin added the white portion of a leek.

On the left you can see the vegetable side: sauteed steamed green leek, kale, garlic, sesame seeds, dash of tamari. I put bit of olive oil on mine.

After 14 hours of simmering, I was quite pleased with the result. Bone soupe is perfect with red wine.

Market Hall in Twitter Building in SF

So here's a place I've been hearing about for a while, and since I was near there after work, I thought I'd have a look around. Sorta like Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut. Security seemed tense today, what with the shooting in San Bernadino, and some strange incident nearby allegedly involving a concealed gun, with police swarming the area.

OK, so the whole idea of Kale Sausage is an abomination to me, but everything else here looks great. I've never seen in-house Mexican style Chorizo, but Robin claims they have it at Berkeley Bowl.

Very tempting oyster counter. Thankfully I wasn't hungry.

Huge cheese selection, with plenty of locals like Cowgirl.

Here's one we had in Washington, and you can find it here (I'm thinking Berkeley Bowl has Opals), but pretty rarefied.

You get the idea. The best of the best. Like Whole Foods, but even better quality fare, and slightly higher prices. Call me impressed. I doubt I'd come here from work very often (I like to "brown bag" it), but good to see what they've got going. Maybe some day after work it would be nice to return. Mid-Market is something of a food desert. I should mention: the line was fairly long (ca. eight deep) when I was there.