Today was my final full day in San Francisco and certainly one of the best. I tried to hit all the galleries I could and managed: SFMOMA, Legion of Honour and de Young Museum.

The food was equally spectacular:

Breakfast- Hollywood Cafe

Rated as one of the top ten places to eat by Tripadvisor, I was keen to check it out. Down near the waterfront, the tiny cafe is run by a friendly staff and serves traditional American brunch items. I went for the buttermilk pancakes and bacon. They were really good, not as upmarket as Mama’s or Sweet Maple, but no worse off for it.

Lunch – Boxed Food Company

Situated in the heart of the financial district, this is reckoned by many to be the best salad in the city and I’m inclined to agree. Their house ‘box chicken’ is fantastic. Good quality ingredients with some innovative combinations, the chicken was rubbed with a Provençal herb mix, the dressing used pulped apple and the sliced strawberry was an inspired choice.

Dinner – Slanted Door

As it was my last dinner in San Francisco, I wanted to make the most of it. By most lists, roundups and reviews, Slanted Door is the best restaurant in central San Francisco. It serves Asian fusion, pulling on San Francisco’s rich immigrant heritage, fantastic local produce and updating it for the 21st century. Reservations are notoriously hard to get, but a friend of a friend got a table so six of us headed down the the ferry building to see what all the fuss is about.

Starters
Spring Rolls – huge, juicy and with a great lime dip. Nom.
Pork Rolls – self assembly, with lettuce and rice noodles rolled in.
Rice Cakes – Sticky, sweet and very very good. The bitter soy was balanced beautifully against the rice.
Razor Clams – An unusual choice, but a good one. Lots of lemongrass lifted the salty flavours and the meat had just enough texture to hold up.

Mains
Chicken Claypot – One of their signature dishes, if a little 1970s Habitat ‘chick in a brick’. The meat was gorgeously tender and the sauce rich without being cloying. Combining a caramel with the more traditional asian flavours was great.
Shaking Beef – Generous chunks of beef fillet, marinaded and flash fried with lime and cinnamon. Incredible.
Scallops – A tower of scallops and a sweet honey/citrus sauce.
Snowpeas – Oriental mushrooms and mange-tout, just al dente.
Suba Noodles – Light, aromatic and very nice.

Desserts
Rhubarb Pannecotta with a Rosemary Granita – Rosemary and rhubarb?!? Just gorgeous. So refreshing, just needs a little semi thing to turn it into a full dessert, but an excellent palate cleansing pre-dessert.
Candy Floss – A great cloud of light fluffy sugar in the middle of the table on a stick. Great to share I’ve no idea what they did, but the sugar was much lighter and less sticky than the kind you get from a fairground – ultra-refined sugar?
Black Forest Torte – Great chocolate, great cherries, maybe needs a little more alcohol?
Lemon and blackberry tart – Another unusual combo, but it worked really well, great contrast between the creamy lemon mousse and the sweet blackberry mix.

Certainly one of the best Asian meals I’ve had – it shows how good fusion can be, but how carefully it needs to be done.

Today’s sightseeing was a bit of a nightmare, it involved getting incredibly lost, thankfully this was more than compensated for by the quality of the food.

Breakfast – Sweet Maple

Eggs benedict are incredibly popular in San Francisco, with umpteen variations offered by restaurants. On my host’s recommendation I ventured past Japantown to Sweet Maple. The friendly staff had me seated in seconds and I ordered their signature dish – dungeness benedict with a side of millionaire bacon. Dungeness benedict is essentially a scone, with wilted spinach, crab meat and a poached egg, drizzled with hollandaise and served with fried root vegetables. Millionaires bacon is an ultra thick slice of belly pork, cured and marinated in a spicy maple syrup before being fried and dipped in yet more maple syrup. Both were gorgeous. Sweet Maple is almost as good as ‘Mama’s on Washington Sqaure’ but without the ridiculous queue!

Lunch – Blue Barn Gourmet

Highly rated in the Lonely Planet, blue barn gourmet is situated down in the marina district. It specialises in organic salads and sandwiches. Their most popular special is their Cobber salad. Lettuce, tomato, croutons, chicken, bacon, avocado and egg. The dressing is a house special ranch. As a salad, it’s perfectly nice, but it’s just that – nice. The ingredients are great but it doesn’t do anything particularly inventive or exciting with them.

Dinner – Harris

America is synonymous with steak. Finding the ‘best’ steak restaurant in San Francisco proved a real challenge, with lots of conflicting opinions. I finally settled on ‘Harris’.

They offer a 21-day dry-aged steak in a sophisticate, but relaxed environs. Modelled on a stereotypical view of a London members club, it’s all dark oak and comfy armchairs. A pianist plays in the corner while the barman rustles up a stunning martini.

Ever wondered how to keep your Martini cold enough without diluting it with too much ice? Harris chill all the ingredients, quickly shake over ice in a chilled container before straining into a small carafe which is placed into a miniature barrel of ice, ready to pour as needed. Yum.

The steak itself was enormous, I went with a bone-in rib-eye, and it must have weighed upwards of 20oz. The plate is vast.

I asked for rare it it definitely came medium, but it was so good I couldn’t really complain. I’m writing a longer post soon about beef/steaks in general so the detail of what I thought will be there. But overall it was a great experience which I would heartily recommend to anyone visiting San Francisco.

Having finally made it back to San Francisco (via an unscheduled recharge in Sausalito) we set off in search of a light mobile lunch. The local store is Whole Foods. I admit that I have never ventured into their London store, but after having visited here I certainly will. Any shop that lets you make your own peanut butter, sells more flours than you can shake a baguette at and has every kind of Valrhona couverture available by weight is definitely worth a trip!

The evenings sustenance came courtesy of ‘Scoma’, one of San Francisco’s oldest restaurants and a waypoint on the tourist trail. Almost completely unchanged since the 1950’s, haute cuisine it is not. Compared with ‘The Girl and the Fig’ it offers a fascinating insight into where American cuisine has come from, and where it’s going.

Scoma sells seafood, the menu groans under the weight of fish, shellfish and every combination possible. To start I shared their platter, a mix of oysters, clams, prawns and crabs. All were fresh and delicious. The main was a fried mix of halibut, scallops and shrimp, served with a frankly odd side of pasta, rice and steamed veg.

Monday brought with it the chance to branch out on my own while my flat mate headed off to work – following the Lonely Planet, reinforced by his recommendation, I went for breakfast at ‘Brenda’s Soulfood’. On arrival the queue was reassuringly large but I was quickly seated by the friendly staff and the house special ordered. The ‘Hangtown Fry’ consists of an oyster/bacon/scallion omelette, grits and ‘biscuit’ (American for scone). It was incredible – oysters work superbly in an omelette and the biscuit/grits ensure you’ll have enough stodge to make it through the day.

Part way through a fantastic walk round three of San Francisco’s many hills I ducked into ‘Molinari’s’ to pick up lunch. It’s exactly what you think an Italian deli should be, family run, busy, loud and brash. The ‘luciano special’ sandwich was stunning, piles of Parma ham, buffalo mozzarella, sun dried tomatoes and lettuce all with a special sauce inside a fresh focaccia, then lightly toasted. It did not last long.

I cooked dinner for my flatmate, a simple steak with salad and potatoes, but it did give me a chance to sample the best beef available to the average consumer in America. I’m partway through writing up a post on beef in general so I’ll hold off on that. Whole Foods also provided a stunning bottle of wine, Duckhorn’s Duck Hunt Zinfandel. I’ve sampled this before at ‘Marcus Wareing at the Berkley’, but at almost four times the price. It’s a great little drink and a perfect example of how refined a Zinfandel can be.