http://kolinateng.com

The difficult thing about this 100 foods list is filling in the time in between the eating. Luckily, last weekend there was the free admission to the SF MOMA. And this weekend, Reid and I decided to watch Avatar again. This is worth noting because this is the first time I’ve seen a movie more than once in the theater. It’s difficult for me to justify spending $10+ for a movie at the theater unless it’s a movie of epic proportions, like Lord of the Rings, Titanic, Matrix, etc. Avatar, of course, is our generation’s technologically-pivotal Star Wars, and I can justify watching it in the theater again only because there’s no way I would be able to watch this movie in all its 3D (and in IMAX!) glory at home, or maybe ever again.

Anyway, Avatar was just as exciting and epic the second time around. While most critics thought James Cameron delivered on 3D tech magic and the creation of a whole new world and failed to deliver on script and storyline, I really enjoy the story. Sure, it’s the superarch of Pocahontas, Dances with Wolves, and FernGully (in space!) , but that’s what makes it classic and timeless. Having read several articles about Cameron’s world of Pandora that he crafted so carefully, I wish he divulged more of that world in Avatar; I did come across one that describes what was cut from the original script, and I think those scenes would have given the movie a lot more background and depth. That aside, there was enough depth and character development that I became really engaged in the movie, even the second time.

With that plug out of the way, onto the food!

22. Vietnamese roasted pork sandwich at Saigon Sandwich: Sometimes the best foods are made in dark little stores, stacked to the ceiling with odds and ends of desserts that haven’t been touched in years, and owned by little old ladies that could pass for your own mother. Such are the women that made our sandwiches today, and the sandwiches were everything Vietnamese sandwiches should be: crunchy but soft French rolls, perfectly seasoned roasted pork, sweet pickled carrots, cilantro, and whatever mayo-like spread that ties it all together. Man, I love Viet sandwiches, and these guys put Lee Sandwiches to shame and will give my local favorite (and the lunch place for many a Cisco or Yahoo employee), Cam Hung, a run for its money.

87. Fresh spring rolls at Out the Door: This place is owned by the same people that run the reputable Slanted Door at the SF Ferry Building (which is also on the list). I’m not surprised that $8.50 will get you only 2 spring rolls here, since it’s kind of a fancy-pants place. They were pretty good, especially the creamy peanut dipping sauce, but $8.50 is pretty steep even for delicious Vietnamese spring rolls. $8.50 should get you about 6 just-as-delicious-if-not-super-delicious spring rolls made by Vietnamese moms. Or maybe 20 if you’re in Vietnam.

63. Meatballs with grapes at Aziza: Reid and I had planned to visit Aziza (thanks to SF’s Dine About Town deal) before we decided to tackle the 100 foods list, and the list conveniently has listed one of Aziza’s appetizers that we had never tried before. Could it be better than even the basteeya and the spreads? Or, heaven forbid, their lamb shank? How could we have ever missed the meatballs if they are THAT good? It turned out that the meatballs were good, but not mind-blowingly so; i.e., Reid has ordered the lamb shank for the past 5 (and now 6) times he’s been to this restaurant–THAT is what I call a good dish! In conclusion, go to Aziza, but order the lamb shank, and if you happen to be there in the right season, order the fig moscato cocktail. Amaaaaazing!

Conclusion for the day: Mom-made food is probably the best when it comes to simple, non-fusion ethnic food (though, ironically, Vietnamese sandwiches are technically a “fusion” food from the French colonization days). Aziza still awesome; get the lamb.

On Saturday, Reid and I set out to SF, prepared to be WOW’d by foods we wouldn’t have ever thought of trying on our own. We live too close to San Francisco not to indulge in the affordable luxury that is available to us. For efficiency, we decided that the SF Ferry Building Market and the Mission would be the two places to hit first, since we are most familiar with those. In order of appearance:

12. Porchetta sandwich at RoliRoti at the Saturday Ferry Plaza Farmers Market: Rotisserie pork loin, rolled with pork belly and spices and herbs, and covered in crackly pork skin on a spit for 4 hours. The bread roll is slathered with the juices from the spit, and the cut of meat is topped with sweet braised onions and tender greens. After a good 20-minute wait in line with growing anticipation, this sandwich completely satiated my appetite and set our expectations unbelievably high for the rest of day - I mean, this is a sandwich of DREAMS. It was a worthy beginning to our foodie endeavor.

91. Albondigas soup at Mijita: Beef and pork meatballs in a tomato based broth with vegetables. Coming off the high from the porchetta sandwich, this soup was sadly disappointing. It was a good soup, but it was no porchetta sandwich; it lacked any sort of Zing. However, the point of this whole exercise is to experience new foods and new restaurants that I wouldn’t have cared to even step into. If I ever want Mexican food while I’m at the Ferry Building, I will try the tacos and Quesadilla Mijita here; they looked amazing on everyone else’s plates. However, after having tried the aforementioned porchetta sandwich, I don’t imagine myself wanting anything else at the Ferry Building.

49. Ginger snaps at Miette: I had high expectations for these ginger snaps. Afterall, what’s not to love about perfectly designed tags, signs, and typography? Plus, Miette’s macarons are absolutely delicious - so maybe I had just missed the memo on their ginger snaps? I never cared much for ginger snaps, and upon the first bite, I wasn’t too impressed. However, you can taste real ginger in this cookie, and it is subtlely aromatic. The texture is interesting as well - it is neither very chewy nor brittle, but somewhere in between. After my 3rd cookie though, the flavor and texture both really grew on me. I probably would not buy another canister (because the price is a bit steep; $7 for 12 cookies), but they were good to try.

28. Gibraltar at Blue Bottle Cafe: This is apparently the name of a country, a brand of guitar, a candy, and so on. Supposedly this drink is named after the glass that it is served in. But basically, at Blue Bottle, this is a super small cross between a latte and a macchiato/cappuccino. The menu board does not explicitly note that you can order this, but indeed you can. I don’t have enough experience with espressos, lattes, or macchiatos (Starbucks doesn’t really count) to judge this drink, but I still think it was really good. You can taste good coffee when you taste good coffee, and this is good coffee.

40. Cheeseburger at Taylor’s Automatic Refresher: A cheeseburger is a cheeseburger, so when THE LIST says you need to try this cheeseburger, you should expect that this cheeseburger will blow all cheeseburgers out of the water. Sadly, it didn’t do quite that. It was a good cheeseburger - something like what you’d get at In-N-Out, but for 3 times the price - but on an egg bun. The egg bun WAS quite good though. But not 3x-the-price good.

35. Salted-caramel ice cream at Bi-Rite Creamery: Okay, I am an excellent judge of icecream, if not by the sheer amount consumed, then by… I don’t know, the love of icecream. No icecream is a hard sell for me, since the only bad icecream I’ve had was the 1-year-old freezer-burned icecream from my freezer. But this salted-caramel scoop of icecream was so creamy and so delicious, it tasted like I was eating caramel, but in an icecream form - which is exactly what I was looking for. I’d get this again and again and again and again…

21. Pizza margherita at Pizzeria Delfina: I’ve had this before, yet I looked forward to it as if I never experienced it before and was promised, as Reid put so cleverly in his Yelp review, “heaven on dough”.

In conclusion, our day of food was bookended by the two best foods of the day. I would return to order the porchella sandwich, the gibraltar, the salted caramel icecream, and the pizza margherita. 4 out of 7 ain’t bad, though I would expect to love every single item on this end-all-be-all list. Oh well!

Misc. notes:

• Too full to visit Hog Island Oyster Company (99#), Out the Door (87#), Slanted Door (#7), and La Mar (#47) which are all also at the Ferry Building.
• In the Mission, Tartine Bakery’s Morning Bun (#8) was sold out by 6PM. Also, we did not make it in time for their fresh loaves (#25), which come out at 5PM.
• The SF MOMA was promoting free admission this weekend for their 75th Anniversary exhibit. We visited the MOMA since AVATAR in IMAX was sold out at the SF Metreon (STILL, after 5 weeks!!!). I left feeling more cultured, but also biwildered; I don’t understand modern art, must less those of the vaseline scupture variety.

Okay, I take back what I said about not having new year resolutions. THIS is my new year resolution: I will be eating through 7×7’s list of 100 Things to Try Before You Die.

Look, I even made a Google map to help plan the strategy of my attack. Iwill need to strategize so that every trip to SFis optimized for money, time, and stomach space. It is not complete yet, but you can see that under each restaurant/location is the food I am to consume at each location; additionally, I am trying to identify each location by dessert/snack (coffee symbol), dine-in restaurant (fork and knife), casual counter food (burger and drink), and cocktail (martini glass not pictured).

Reid, who has already blogged about our endeavor, and I will begin at the Ferry Building this weekend with the cheap(er) foods, but in the meantime, I will satiate my appetite with au bon pain at the airport before I board my plan back to the Bay Area. Smell ya later, D.C.!

To celebrate Anthony’s 27th birthday yesterday, we went to the California Academy of Sciences Nightlife event in SF’s Golden Gate Park, catered to a 21+ crowd. Perusing science/animal/environment exhibits with a couple of beers and cocktails in hand is a pretty good combination of “hip” and nerdy, which is exactly how I would describe Anthony, albeit much more of the latter than the former. Now, I had visited the Academy when it first opened last year and spent a Saturday afternoon avoiding kids and tripping over strollers; yesterday, I spent the evening avoiding A-Z-N ricer boys and tripping over drunk wannabe-hipsters. I can’t tell which one is worse.

It’s pretty difficult to see any of the exhibits while navigating your way through so many people; at least with kids you can just punt them out of the way (just half-kidding; chill out). Additionally, mingling with new people isn’t really an option because it’s such a large venue and not designed to facilitate that sort of interaction. So, it’s probably the worst of both worlds, whether you’re trying to meet new people in a bar/club-like setting or trying to see the all the exhibitis. Luckily, I wasn’t trying to do either, so I had a really good time with old friends in an awesome venue.

Started off the weekend very nicely with an amazing Moroccan-Mediterranean Californian fusion dinner at Aziza in SF! The piquillo-almond spread on flatbread was especially delicious, and I can see why the lamb shank comes so highly recommended.

Headed to Local Kitchen & Wine Merchant shortly after dinner to meet Kim and company, and then to Kate O’Brien’s, where the entire bar busted out singing along with Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” - all kinds of awesome!

On Saturday, I attended (for FOURTEEN HOURS) the 17th Annual Chinese Martial Arts Tournament. As always, I regret not participating in the competition. But I wouldn’t have been able to compete anyway, since I haven’t trained since the the 16th CMAT last year and have virtually quit since then, due to changes in priorities and the frustration associated with the lack of drive and thus, the lack of improvement. Perhaps if I can pick up Wushu recreationally and just constantly remind myself that I can train without the competitive edge and simply for appreciation of the art.

In any case, Linda performed really well. I am amazed that she was able to recover from a torn ACL two years ago and train to compete again! Eric did very well, too; solid performances all around, and especially impressive in the advanced division of staff and broadsword - respectively, 2nd and 3rd place winner! WINNARRR!

Friends have really improved in the past year, and I was especially impressed with Evelyn, gold medal winner in Intermediate Female Changquan, and Ashley, who medaled in the Intermediate Female jianshu (straightsword) event!

In any case, tournament and afterparty were fun for the most part, nice to be reunited and it feeeeeels so gooood with lots of old faces! (Cookie for the person that can identify title and artist of that song!)