CAU Cambridge

I don't usually do restaurant reviews. Mostly because I don't eat out very much. I also find most restaurants pretty much the same, I enjoy the food but its not special enough to knock my socks off. Recently me, Sis and the Culinary Consultant headed to CAU Cambridge for a celebratory meal. And I have to admit I was rather impressed. I also apologise for having only a few pictures and them being bad quality, I only decided to write this review after all food had already been sampled and by that time I was so absorbed in the experience of eating that taking pictures was far from my mind.

CAU is part of a chain of restaurants inspired by Buenos Aires cuisine. And that, my friends, means meat. Not just any meat, very nice meat cooked to absolute perfection. There are vegetarian dishes on the menu as well, and while they were very nice (my Sis sampled quite a few of them), in my opinion there is no point in going to CAU if you aren't planning on having meat.

We started our meal with drinks and the bread basket which is served with chipotle butter while we were perusing the menu. The breads were nice and fresh, but I was a bit worried about the chipotle butter as I don't do spicy. However, it was very mild and perfect for me. In fact, I think I fell in love with that butter! It was so good, I had to restrain myself from using my finger to wipe off the leftover butter from the little ramekin when we had finished the bread!

Sis chose to have several of the small plates and sides, and the Culinary Consultant had one of the huge steaks with chips and causlaw (as the menu says, "it's like coleslaw but better"). But although I say it myself, I think my selection was definitely the winner of the night. Tapa de cuadril, thinly sliced beef grilled in a way I have never had meat before. It was the most tender meat I have ever had, I swear it melted in my mouth without chewing. Although the meat was thinly sliced, it was still beautifully pink in the middle of the thin slices. When I had my first bite, I just couldn't believe meat could be this good! I had my meat with crunchy, golden, beautiful (and triple fried) chunky chips and some more of the chipotle butter. Healthy? Not even close! Delicious? Understatement of the century!!!

In addition to the good food, the service was very friendly and relatively quick although it was a Saturday evening (but we dined right at the start of the evening, before the mad rush). The food was reasonably priced in relation to the quality, but certainly not a cheap meal. I will definitely go back, for some more of that lovely meat but also to try the CAU cornflake ice cream Sundae which I was sadly deprived of as my fellow diners didn't feel like having dessert. I watched a gentleman in the table next to us have it, and let me say, I just have to have one for myself!

Disclaimer, I have not been asked for, or compensated in any way for this review. It's just my opinion of a restaurant I thought was very nice.

 

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Hungarian delicacies

Street food on the day after the wedding... Sausage,
chicken and onion skewers and potatoes cooked in bacon fat.
Feel your arteries clog from the fat and salt.

I recently had the privilege to get aquainted with Hungary during a week long trip to attend a good friend's wedding. I was obviously intrigued about the local food and made sure to sample as many local delicacies as possible. To start with the usual disclaimer, I'm not being compensated by anyone to write this, all opinions are my own.

Our trip started with a few days in Budapest, filled with sightseeing and eating. Then we headed to Pécs in southern Hungary for the wedding, and from there part of the wedding party continued on to the wine region of Villány close to the Croatian border.


How to describe Hungarian food? Well, as my Hungarian friend put it, it's lots of meat with lots of fat and lots of salt. And I fully agree, it's definitely no diet food. I am having trouble doing the top button of my jeans after just a week, so any longer stay would probably have disastrous consequences. Also, being a vegetarian might not be as hard as it has been, but finding good vegetarian dishes is not very easy. I usually don't use any salt in my food, so I was also struggling a bit with the high salt content, be particularly aware of sausages and bacon, they will make you thirsty for a week. 

I'm traditionally not a big fan of cherries (apart from the
fresh ones), but the sour cherry and chocolate ice cream
was pretty awesome.

Hungarian main dishes are often slow cooked meats in the form of stews. There is pörkölt, which is what non-Hungarians would call goulash. A meat stew cooked with veggies and flavoured with paprika. The dish called paprikás is chicken cooked in a similar flavourful sauce, with sour cream added. Both of these can be found in pretty much any Hungarian restaurant and are simple but flavourful. The food at the wedding was a huge platter of cooked meats piled on veggies and rice, with deep fried potato dumplings and deep fried cheese to go with it. Again, very tasty, but you can feel the fat clogging your arteries. The culinary consultant had a huge grin on his face the whole evening.

The meat platter served at the wedding.

The amazingly delicious wedding cake,
raspberry and white chocolate.

One thing the Hungarians certainly do well is bread. Bread is served with pretty much every meal and its both crusty, soft and fresh. For a carboholic, it is pure bliss. I must have eaten loaves and loaves worth of that soft chewy bread, and its perfect to dip into sauces and stews.

Garlic soup with deep fried (yes, you read that right) bread.

Then the really good stuff. Lots and lots of bakeries. Just look for the sign saying Pékség (one of the very few words of Hungarian I managed to pick up during our trip), or follow the heavenly scent. Lots of baked pies and bun type of things with fruit and berries, apples and cherries being the most common I happened upon. Also, there are lots of cakes with walnuts or poppy seeds. I'm not quite sure what I think of the poppy seed fillings, it has quite a distinctive flavour. Mixed with fruit I liked it, but on it's own it wasn't quite sweet enough for me. The one thing most pastries and cakes have in common is that they are not overly sweet which makes the flavours of the fruit stand out much more. 

One of the most common cakes is rétes (strudel). Ooh, the strudel. Served warm with poppy  seed ice cream in a restaurant or still warm, eaten right on the spot from the bakery. In addition to the berry and fruit filled strudel there is one filled with a creamy soft cheese and raisins. So good!

Struuuuudel!!

I also tried out flódni, a famous multi-tiered Hungarian-Jewish cake with layers of walnuts, poppy seeds, apple and jam. I got mine from a coffee shop called Noé Cukrászda (Wesselényi utca 13). It was quite interesting, but with a bit too much poppy seed and walnut for my taste. But definitely worth a try, and it was very pretty.

One of my absolute favourite baked goods was chimney cake (kürtőskalács), which you can buy from touristy street vendors all over town for a few pounds. It's basically a sweet white dough rolled thinly, cut into strips and cooked wrapped around a hot metal cylinder and the outside dipped in cinnamon sugar, vanilla sugar, walnuts, almond shavings or chocolate shavings. It's basically a bun in a funny shape and its really good with a soft inside and nice crispy outside with the cinnamon sugar. The one I liked best was from a small coffee shop called Molnár's (Váci Utca 31, right next to the Elisabeth Bridge).

Chimney cake by the Elisabeth Bridge.

We ended up eating in rather touristy places in Budapest as we walked around town to see all the sights and pretty much stopped for fuel when we ran out of steam (or to get away from the rain). However, a few places did make an impression. A small butcher shop called Belvárosi Disznótoros (V Károlyi Mihály Utca 17) is definitely worth seeing and experiencing. The displays are brimming with meats and sausages, served with salads or fried potatoes on the side. A must for any carnivore.

The carboholic must place is the classic, and very fancy, cafe Gerbeaud (V Vörösmarty tér 7-8). Just pop in to admire the cakes, chocolates and macaroons or, even better, sit down for a cake selection and a huge glass of dark hot chocolate with whipped cream. Yes, it will cost you more than your dinner, but it's worth it.

The cake selection at Gerbeaud. Combined with
hot dark chocolate, it was pure chocolate bliss.

Last but certainly not least is the food market Nagycsarnok (IX Vámház körút 1-3). My love of food markets is no secret, and I loved walking around this one. Butchers, vegetable and fruit sellers and bakers. And quite a lot of touristy things as well, but who wouldn't love bags  of paprika powder with teeny tiny wooden spoons. We bought ridiculously cheap and delicious cherries for less than a quarter of the price we would pay back home, and berries seemed to be very cheap this time of the year as well. We also bought home a ridiculous amount of paprika powder and some goose liver. 

Selection of things to take home: paprika powder,
goose liver and Unicum, the most vile drink known to man.

The omnipresent paprikas.

Wishing cherries were this price in the UK
(less than a pound and a half for a kg)!

You can't talk about Hungary without mentioning the wine. We spent a day in the Villany wine region and got to see the wine cellars of the Bock winery as well as a tour of the actual vineyards of the Gere family winery. 

We also enjoyed a six course wine tasting meal at the Gere winery restaurant which was very memorable and enjoyable. Six delicious courses combined with very good wines. For a light drinker like me, it was rather tough to get through all those wines. Of course we couldn't resist getting a few bottles of wine to take home, we bought a rather expensive (for us) bottle of wine, and now we need some really special occasion to drink it. I really enjoyed staying in the Gere Crocus hotel, it has a lovely wellness spa, very friendly staff and the breakfast buffet was amazing, so a warm recommendation from me.

Pike sushi with cucumber gel, lime, cucumbers and
cucumber mousse from the wine tasting menu.

Another course from the wine tasting menu, grilled duck
liver and duck liver patee with rhubarb.

All in all, I had a great time in Hungary. It was weird travelling in a country where you don't understand a single word of the language, it was definitely a first for me. Even though I don't speak German, Italian or French, I can make out enough to identify words here and there as well as say a few simple sentences. But Hungarian is completely alien. Ironically Hungarian is one of the few languages related to Finnish, but I couldn't detect any similarities whatsoever. But it was quite funny going into a restaurant or shop, and have no idea what you are buying, just point and then taste to see what you got. And to be honest, most people did speak at least a bit of English, and most people working in more touristy places spoke very good English. And I'm not saying I'm expecting everyone to speak English, pretty much everyone I met spoke much better English than I speak Hungarian, so I have nothing to complain about. I'm just saying it's really weird to understand absolutely nothing. But it also leads to fun surprises. Like buying chocolate pralines from the amazing little chocolate shop called Cadeau and just pointing and then eating to find out what it was you bought. And before I finish, there is one non-food related place I just have to rave about, a teeny tiny paper shop called Bomo art (Régiposta Utca, some products are also sold in other paper and book stores in Budapest, and they have a web shop). They make the most amazing leather bound notebooks, calendars, photo albums and other bound books with papers they design themselves. You can also buy the papers and other paper products like post cards. I would have liked to buy everything in the entire store, the products are absolutely beautiful. But with very limited space left in the luggage after wine shopping in Villány earlier, I had to settle for one thing. So we got a beautiful leather bound guest book for the new place. I can't wait to invite guests so that we can start using it (well, after we have moved in of course...).

Holiday food

Street food at it's best.

Sun, glorious sun. I had almost forgotten what the sun looks and feels like. Luckily, I recently spent a week on Tenerife, and got a good glimpse of the golden warm godess. But hey, who really cares about the weather. Everyone knows that the point of a holiday is to learn about new food culture. And that I certainly did. Consider yourself warned, there will be no recipe at the end of this post. It is just an extended ramble about the things I ate. You would think this is an exhaustive list of everything I ate during the week, but it's not even close! I have added all the places I mention on a map which can be found here, as clearly most restaurants and cafés are not too big on having web pages.

Originally I wasn't quite convinced the Canary Islands would make a very interesting holiday, as to me they have always just been a tourist trap full of drunk Brits and Finns and lobster red Gemans. So me and the Culinary Consultant decided to aim our holiday to the estern side of Tenerife, which according to the guide books is the least touristy part of the island. We stayed in Santa Cruz, the capital, which was refreshingly low on tourists, and big enough to have a very nice selection of bars, restaurants and shops. It was also a nice base for exploring the northern and eastern parts of the island as bus connections were very good (and running very exactly on time, I was pleased to discover). 

Canarian food is different from mainland Spanish food, with Latin American and Arabic influences introducing more spices to the food. The main animal protein is goat, and potatoes (called papas) are very common. Obviously, also sea food is eaten a lot.  It turned out that finding real authentic Canarian food was not always very easy, as a lot of restaurants are Spanish style with tapas similar to mainland Spain. Not saying there is anything wrong with that, I love tapas, but I was hell bent on finding me some goat, and that took a few days.

So, lets start with the tapas. I love being able to eat a little bit of everything, and I could eat tapas every day. We arrived in Santa Cruz tired and hungry, late in the evening. We decided to head right to Tasca Tagoro (Rambla de Santa Cruz, right opposite Plaza de Toros), a tiny restaurant recommended by the hotel staff. We were greeted by a very friendly water who spoke very little English (something I consider a very good sign). He recommended we get the mixed tapas for two for €12. I thought that was €12 each, but turns out that was actually the price for the whole deal, including two beers! And the food was exquisite. The starter was a small slice of Spanish omelette, followed by a selection of deep fried prawns, seafood filled peppers, two different cheese tapas and a green soup type of thing which I think was made out of peas and a Parmesan type of cheese. The absolute highlight was a deep-fried small parcel of cheese, served with what I think was date syrup or sauce. I would have loved to just lick the sauce out of the bowl and the worship the empty bowl for the rest of my life. 

The other really good tapas place in Santa Cruz that we stumbled upon more or less by mistake was called Taberna el Cambullón (on Calle Alfonso Bethencourt, right off the Plaza de España). The lovely, hand written menu was in Spanish, so we ended up ordering random stuff as neither of us speaks a word of Spanish. Nothing like combining good food with the element of surprise. We started off with some cheesy croquettes, which were nice, and went on to have something called Morcilla de Burgos which I had no idea what it was and only ordered because the word caramelizada was on there. It turned out it was black pudding with rice and a crispy, caramelised top. It was absolutely delicious, possibly one of the most exquisite things I ate on the whole trip. When the little black bundles were brought out I was extremely suspicious, but any doubt I had about the choice of dish disappeared as soon as I had my first mouthful. It was a combination of not having any idea of what it was I was eating, together with the experience of eating something absolutely heavenly and very different from what I am used to that really elevated that gastronomic experience to new hights. I can't recommend the place enough. The service was also extremely friendly, and the other tapas we had were very good as well. Our meal, including very good bread, a glass of wine, a beer and four different tapas (of which one was whole meat) was just under €50 with tips.

The lovely Taberna el Cambullon.

The heavenly caramelised Morcilla de Burgos.

Then onto the more traditional Canarian cuisine. As I mentioned before, I had read about goat and potatoes. It turned out the potatoes were easy to find. More specifically papas arrugadas, the traditional Canarian way of serving potatoes. The small potatoes are boiled with their skin on in heavily salted water, which forms a salt crust on the skin. They are then served with a Canarian sauce called mojo which can be either green or red. The red one is made of peppers and the green has garlic and herbs, such as coriander. We had papas for lunch one day at a restaurant called Tapas Árcon (Plaza Concejil, Puerto de la Cruz). The papas and mojo were delicious (I'm running out of superlatives here...) but the prawns with mushrooms and garlic were rather uninspiring. As we didn't end up eating mojo anywhere else, I can't say whether the mojos were extraordinary or if they are similar everywhere (although my culinary consultant just informed me he thought the mojos at Árcon were better than at GOM, another restaurant we ate at). We also brought half a suitcase full of mojo to eat at home, so I will have a more extensive opinion on different mojos later.

Papas arrugadas with mojo at Tapas Arcon in Puerto de la Cruz.

We ate traditional Canarian fare at a restaurant called Mi Jardin (Calle del Valle Menéndez, Los Cristianos). I was convinced we wouldn't get anything but mediocre touristy food in the most touristy corner of the island. Los Cristianos is a place where restaurants advertise their cheap beer with the slogan 'even cheaper than ASDA'. Sigh. I didn't doubt for a second there had to be some good restaurants as well (after all, the locals have to eat somewhere...) but the trouble was finding them. So after chasing down the last reasonable suggestion in the guide book, which looked very disappointing, I was hungry and cranky. Luckily, the restaurant next door to the one I had just rejected turned out to have the two signs of a good establishment: real, green plants and a hand written menu. And on top of it all, they served goat! After a very good mojito, we enjoyed figs wrapped in cured ham and king prawns with garlic for a starter. Those prawns just might be the best damn prawns I have ever had, and they can't have been many hours out of the sea. For the main course I had goat stew and the culinary consultant had sea bream. My goat stew was very good, the goat was cooked for a long time and the meat, which I'm sure would be rather tough if not cooked correctly, was very tender and flavourful. The stew had a lot of herbs and tomatoes in it, along with good chunks of meat still on the bone, no doubt giving the stew a lot of extra flavour. I hadn't planned on having dessert, but we were talked into trying a local variety of creme caramel, which was delicious, and not too sweet. The whole meal, including a very good mojito each, ended up being a tad under €50 for two people, which I was more than happy to pay for excellent food, a very pleasant ambience and really friendly service. Conveniently, the restaurant was only a few blocks from the bus station, so it was with a very happy full belly we travelled back to Santa Cruz that night.

Amazing king prawns with garlic at Mi Jardin.

Goat stew. It took a few days to find, but it was worth the wait.

The last night of our holiday we decided to splurge a bit and dine in style. I squeezed into my little black dress, and we headed for Restaurante GOM (Calle Dr Guigou, 29), an establishment described in my guide book as 'one of the more upscale places in Santa Cruz'. The online reviews for the place were all positive, so we decided to go for it although technically it was a bit over the budget. And spoiler alert - I'm very, very glad we did. The restaurant serves traditional Canarian food with a modern twist. The atmosphere is elegant but relaxed. I'm glad I wore my LBD, but the culinary consultant, wearing a smart t-shirt and jeans was not out of place either. The menu was exciting and surprising. I ended up having gofio soup for a starter and black pork cannelloni with palm syrup sauce for the main. The culinary consultant had a selection of local cheeses with corn mousse and mojo for a starter, and ox with a sweet potato purée and black mushrooms for main. Before the starters, we were treated to small cheese croquettes as a greeting from the chef, as well as some delicous bread with three different toppings served in small containers looking like paint tubes. The contents were a olive oil based spread, a fish based pâté and a very spicy rabbit pâté. No need to say, the culinary consultant enjoyed himself playing with the food, squirting the pâtés from the tubes onto the bread. I really found this little extra surprise very classy and obviously tasty as well. I have to say, as good as my food was, this time the culinary consultant really hit the jackpot with his choices. The cheeses were exquisite, and the ox was cooked to absolute perfection. My meal was very good, but not quite at the same level of perfection. I did win with my dessert choice though (at least in my very humble opinion). That is for taste, but not for entertainment value. I ordered French toast with rum jelly and hazelnut ice cream which was perfection. The French toast was more like caramelised doughnut and the rum jelly was a pure shot of booze. Together with the sweet ice cream they formed a very balanced combination of flavours, textures and temperatures. The culinary consultant had prickly pear sorbet, which was prepared using liquid nitrogen right there next to our dining table, and the boiling liquid nitrogen mixing with the prickly pear juice was quite a performance. All in all, excellent food with some fun entertainment both in the form of painting with pâtés and boiling liquid nitrogen made the meal the perfect ending to our holiday. Admittedly the bill ended up at almost €80 (including a glass of red wine each) but the food (and the entertainment value) was definitely worth it.

Local cheese and the cool little tubes of mojo and pâtés.

Ox, cooked to perfection.

This is what you get if you mix prickly pear juice and liquid nitrogen. 

The end result, prickly pear sorbet.

The Canarians seem to like sweets. And my guide book informed me that the Canarian way of life involves snacking between meals. When in Rome... Snack we did. And there was no lack of places to do this. Ice cream, churros, cakes, pastries, fruit, candy. One thing I have missed while living in the UK is proper pick and mix. No problem in Santa Cruz, there are lots of candy shops. The ones I visited had a really big selection of candy. Not so much chocolate. In general, I didn't find any proper chocolatiers, but I guess the hot climate is not very compatible with chocolate. One thing the Canarios do right though is hot chocolate. Forget the bland milk and hot chocolate powder thingy, Canarian hot chocolate is so rich it's almost like melted chocolate. It's unbelievable!! And often enjoyed in the morning with churros, deep fried strings of batter which are kind of like the long and skinny cousin of doughnuts, but not quite. I thought churros were sweet, but in fact the batter doesn't seem to contain any sugar. They are served with caster sugar which you can sprinkle on them while they are still piping hot. Or just dip in the hot chocolate, which is thick enough to serve as a dipping sauce between sips.

Churros and chocolate.

There is no lack of cakes, pastries, buns, cookies and any other sort of baked goodies. My two favourite bakeries were Panderia Paraiso in Puerto de la Cruz and Pasteleria Diaz in Santa Cruz. Both had so many cakes I could spend a week there eating a new cake or pastry every morning, noon and night. But unfortunately there are so many cakes and so little time. Luckily the culinary consultant helped dispose of any left over cake so that I could pretend that I only had a little taste of everything... I think my favourite cake was a hazelnut and chocolate cake from Panderia Paraiso, as well as the small super cute pastries from Pasteleria Diaz which always disappeared before I managed to get my camera out to take a picture. Pasteleria Diaz also had a selection of flavoured olive oils, salts, jams, marmelades and chocolate pastes, a few jars may or may not have forced their way into my suitcase. I was helpless, trying to keep them out of my bag, but I think they snuck in there none the less. One jar might even have been dulce de leche, possibly the best thing on earth. In theory I bought it for baking with, but in practice I know all I need is a spoon and maybe an episode of Downton Abbey and that dulce de leche is but a memory.
Talking about dulce de leche, I have to mention leche y leche, coffee the Canarian way. A shot of espresso with a small splash of regular milk, and then a good helping of sweetened, condensed milk. Oh my god! I have never been a coffee drinker, but I have finally discovered how I like my coffee. Short and sweet. In my future home, which I will buy as soon as I win the lottery, there will be an espresso machine making those tiny shots of strong, bitter coffee, and a jar of condensed milk next to said espresso machine.

Pasteleria Diaz and a small fraction of their cakes.

Hazelnut and chocolate cake at Panderia Paraiso.

Ice cream. It's not like I only had cake. And buns. And pastries. I also had ice cream. With and without crepes. The place for crepes and ice cream is definitely Romana (Calle Villalba Hervás, 19), a garishly orange ice cream shop in downtown Santa Cruz. The lovely lady who seemed to own the place served us some super indulgent crepes with ice cream. Mine with dulce de leche and dulce de leche ice cream, the culinary consultant's were dripping with hot chocolate sauce and served with chocolate ice cream. As good as that was, our favourite ice cream place in town was Latte (Calle de Pilar, right on the edge of Parque García Sanabria). Not only was the artesan ice cream absolutely delicious, it was shaped as a flower with lovely ice cream petals around the cone. We sampled choclate (very rich) and Oreo (nice crunch) ice cream, as well as lemon (very tart, in the best way possible), strawberry (real strawberry, both in taste and colour) and mojito (with a good kick from the booze) sorbet. All were extremely good, I think my favourite was the strawberry sorbet which was dreamy soft and tasted like real strawberries. The one I should have tried but didn't get round to was a garishly blue smurf flavoured one. Having never tasted a smurf I'm not quite sure what flavour that was though.

Crepes and ice cream at Romana. 

Ice cream flower from Latte.

After such a long list of amazing places to eat all around the island (and there was quite a few more, including the most squid I've ever seen in one serving, the biggest loaves of bread I've seen, some awesome paellas from a street corner, and one or two glasses pitchers of Sangria), I have yet to describe my favourite food place. The food market. Mercado de Nuestra Señora de África. This is how everyone should buy their food. The meat from the butcher, the cheese from the cheese maker, the bread from the baker and the fruits and veg from the fruiteria. Right next to the butcher with everything from whole chickens and rabbits to pig's heads, trotters and huge red mountains of beef there is the spice store selling all sorts of herbs and spices imaginable. And the fruit stalls overflowing with ripe, huge red peppers, juicy sweet peaches and ripe bananas exploding of flavour just won't let you pass by without grabbing something. And the seafood section downstairs... All the fish you could imagine, and lots that you couldn't dream up in you wildest dreams. All sizes, colours and shapes. Tanks of crabs, lobsters and eels. If I only had a kitchen and could try them all out. We just walked around and around the food market, staring at all the food and spying on what people were buying. Then stopped by a stall to have a cheese covered pretzel to keep up the energy to people watch some more. Pop by the stall with dozens of different olives, sample a few and then take away a little box of green olives stuffed with whole cloves of garlic. Get a few slices or chorizo, and sit down to enjoy some instant tapas (take olive, take slice of meat, wrap olive in meat, shove it all in your mouth while sitting on a bench in the sun). Pop by the spice store to buy some honey, mojos and paella spice to take home. Pop by the bakery and buy a huge custard filled donut. Enjoy the custard drip down your chin while stuffing your face with said donut. People watch some more. 

I can't believe you are still reading. But thanks for sticking with me to the end. There is no doubt touristy destinations are full of bad, overpriced food. But with a little bit of research as well as some luck, you will find absolutely divine food at reasonable prices, served with a smile. I think I have a much more positive picture of the Canary Islands after visiting than I used to have. Goes to show you should never judge anything before you have tried it.

Sausaaaage... 

Instant tapas. Meat and garlic filled olives, enjoy in the sun.

 

Foodie party at the Frisco Bay

Before starting for real, I'll just warn you. There will be no recipe at the end of this post. This will just be word vomit all the way. So if that disgusts you, turn away now, and come back in a few days when I promise you there will be another recipe. Anyways, on to today's topic. I just came back after spending a few days in San Francisco because of work. I was really excited to see SF, as so many people have said wonderful things about it. Many have said that in addition to Boston, it's their favourite US city. And these are not just random people, but friends whose judgement I tust and value. So I was quite excited. Maybe it was a case of too high expectations, but I can't say I was particularly impressed.

Ok, to be honest, I did like the layout of the city on top of several hills. The steep hills make the city look great. As long as you don't actually want to go anywhere, at which point they are just a great annoyance. But I can't blame the city for the fact that I'm lazy and unfit. When I arrived, I was wondering why all runners looked so incredibly fit. After having walked up the same hills they seem to run up and down, it all started making sense though. I had a great walk around the city with a good friend, and as soon as I got past the crazy steep hills, it was really enjoyable and pretty. But downtown was quite depressing. Architectonically ridiculously ugly and dirty. And crowded. But many other US cities are crowded and dirty too, and it doesn't bother me too much. But the one thing which I found absolutely disgusting was the countless homeless people everywhere. I'm not a timid person, and I can't say I have been scared many times in my life. I like to explore cities on my own, and I'm not usually scared to walk around anywhere even late at night. Obviously I stay away from known dangerous neighbourhoods and use my judgement of where its safe, but I wouldn't say I have been scared many times in my life. But in SF I was scared, several times. It's not just that I think the huge number of homeless people reflect very bady on a society in general. But these people were clearly even worse off, having psychiatric problems and acting really irrationally. I ended up not wanting to walk around the city at night, even though I didn't even live anywhere close to where my guide book consideres to be the 'bad' part of town. I'm very lucky I have been out with gentlemen who have made sure I have gotten back home to my hotel safely. Well that,or I've been in bed by 6pm suffering from a severe but thankfully quick bout of food poisoning. However, even walking in the city early on Sunday morning was quite scary, not to mention all the weird people I ended up sharing a bus with early on Sunday morning. 

In general I don't consider myself to be a very compassionate person. I'm all for an individualist society, everyone making their own luck, being responsible of your own success and all that stuff. But I have also grown up in a true welfare state, where we pay a steep price in the form of taxes to take care of everyone in our society. That's what we do as human beings. And I do think in some things, the Scandinavian model goes too far. We shouldn't have to pay for some of the things we do. But for people to be able to have the tools to build their own success, we need to provide them with an equal opportunity to do that, in the form of free and equal education. And I'm happy to pay quite a bit of taxes to also make sure society will take care of people who are too sick to take care of themselves and to make sure they are not out on the street threatening law abiding taxpayers.

In general, I don't think politics should go on a food blog. But my trip to SF has really made me think about these things. Maybe partly because my first night there was election night. And looking at all those clearly mentally ill people out on the streets, I can't believe Americans were so close to *not* elect a president who wants to improve health care. Well, this is something I could write about at length and I have quite a few adjectives I would like to use about what thakfully turned out to be a minority of Americans, although only by the width of a hair or two. But I won't. Because there are food related things I want to touch upon. That might be a safer topic. And also something I consider myself to be much more knowledgeable about than politics. And endlessly more interested in.

So to be perfectly fair to SF, I think part of why my time there was so miserable was because of work. I have made it quite clear before, but I'm really unhappy with my current line of work. And I am going to start looking for something else soon enough. I was miserable sitting at the conference, listening to the talks. But there were good things as well. I got to see many of my wonderful colleagues from my old job back home, who I am lucky enough to also call my good friends. It was great to get to spend time with people I feel absolutely comfortable with and have such a great time with. And I did find a few things and places in SF that I enjoyed as well.

Some of the things I enjoyed included a walk across town with Friend, as well as my walk all through the rather extensive Golden Gate Park in my single minded attempt to get all the way out to the ocean. On our walk over the steep hills of SF, me and Friend half accidentally ran into several sights that were listed in my omnipresent Lonely Planet travel guide. Which of course means that they are worth seeing. It has actually become a tradition for me to get the Lonely Planet guide for wherever I'm going. And I like to scribble notes in the margins, adding nice restaurants and cafés which I have found on my travels. Unfortunately for most places, I haven't had a chance to go back so that I could return to my favourite haunts.

Honey Honey had a line out the door on Saturday morning.

Part of the menu at Honey Honey.

Talking about favourite eateries. This one was not listed in the guide, but was recommended to Friend by the hotel concierge. It was around the corner from our hotel, and I'm glad we only discovered it the day before leaving. You know how I lovelovelove big breakfasts, and I think the Americans have the whole breakfast routine down real good. Pancakes, eggs, French toast. Heck, throw it all together. And as you can see from the picture of the menu (which filled a whole wall), I could have come here every breakfast, lunch and dinner for the whole trip and still have things left to try out next time I'm in SF. The place is called Honey Honey and is located on the corner of Post and Taylor, only a few blocks from Union Square. Thumbs up! Together, me and friend ended up trying quite a few dessert crepes, with caramel and toasted pecans, with strawberry, and my blintz which was a crepe made into a parcel containing strawberry jam, ricotta, sour cream and orange marmelade. Talk about a sugar bomb for breakfast. The freshly squeezed orange and carrot juice were also really good. I guess it's a sure sign that you are in California when even the smallest cafe has a orange juice squeezing machine thingy instead of serving horrible canned juice. Another sure fire way to know you are in CA is the avocado. I'm used to avocados being these ridiculously expensive things which usually are hard as rock even if you buy the "ready to eat" kind. But not in SF, you could always have a burger, or sandwich, or crepe with avocado. And it was always great soft ripe silky smooth avocados. At one creperie, I was mesmerised by the crepe cook carving avocado out of the shells, over and over again. It was hypnotic. I could have stood there all day. He must have thought I was out of my mind, my eyes following his every move as he scooped that green soft flesh out of the shell. Oh mine, here we go again...

The Ferry building

The Ferry building from the inside

Another food experience I would have liked to expand on was the Ferry building. It is a beautiful old building originally finished in 1898 as the port building. Nowadays it's been converted to a marketplace where local shops sell their produce. There are artesan dairies, butchers, wineries, chocolatiers. And several restaurants which I didn't get around to trying out, but which seemed to come highly recommended and looked wonderful. This would definitely be the place where I would buy all my food if I lived in SF. And if I happened to be filthy rich.


Talking about chocolatiers, SF is the home of Ghirardelli chocolate. I am not an expert on American chocolates but just had an overall feeling that I can't remember ever having had very good chocolate in America. However, many of the food bloggers I follow go on about Ghirardelli and Scharffen Berger chocolate, so obviously I had to give them a try. And as I remembered, the Ghirardelli is not anything very impressive. In fact in my opinion it is at best mediocre (the dark ones) and at worst horrible (milk and white) and absolutely ridiculously overpriced. Scharffen Berger I liked more. But a particular favourite I found was the Dagoba chocolate, they had some good flavoured chocolates. The chai one was brilliant, such a balanced mix of spices but again, the milk chocolate was a bit disappointing. I didn't know this, but perusing the Dagoba site online, it turns out it's owned by Hershey. So I might stay clear of it in the future. But there is no denying the flavour combinations were great! Looks like it might be a bit hard to get hold of in the UK though. Amazon seems to carry a few flavours, but not the chai one. However, the price is absolutely ridiculous, the 56g bars cost £3.99 which currently seems to be $6.33, whereas I paid $3.50 for the bars I bought in SF. But in general, chocolate seems to be cheaper in the US, the Madecasse chocolate I bought a while ago I think I paid £4.99 for, whereas in Wholefoods it cost $4.99, which is about £3.14. When I got to the airport and realised my bag was almost 5 kg under the allowed weight limit, I just wanted to jump right back on that shuttle and go get myself more chocolate. One local chocolatier which seemed to be highly recommended was Recchiuti confections, located in the Ferry building. I didn't buy any of their chocolates as they were priced completely out of this world. I did however bring back a jar of their extra bitter chocolate sauce and burnt caramel sauce, so I will give them a try at some point. Now I just have to decide whether to eat them with ice cream, cake, waffles, pancakes, or just with a spoon... But right now I have to admit I have overdosed on chocolate, so I will save my sauces for later. Much later. I have always said I have no upper limit to how much chocolate I can take, but I was clearly wrong. One week in SF seems to be pretty much my limit. Although I bet by tomorrow morning I'm back to my sugary cravings. 

Ok, I know I have been going on and on and on. I still have a few other things I wanted to touch upon, but I'll do it very quickly. One of my favourite touristy spots was WholeFoods. Yes I know, I'm crazy, but I do love perusing grocery stores. And this one is definitely one of the more worthy of aimless wandering from isle to isle. I bought some absolutely delicious cream cheese made from milk from non-hormone fed cows, which after enjoying it with some bagels, I just ate on it's own.. Oh, and the all American apple pie. It was so ridiculously good, that I can't reveal how much I ended having in one go. Lets just say I wish ihan only bought one piece instead of... More. And I finally got to buy myself a jar of Biscoff spread, which seemed to be all the rage in all US food blogs earlier this year. So yes, I'm a bit late with that food fad, but I just had to try it out. I find it so funny it is marketed as European, but I haven't been able to get my hands on it anywhere despite some extensive googling efforts. And I also bought myself some pumpkin. You know, the canned pureed thing, which is used for pumpkin pie. I'm trying to remember if I ever had pumpkin pie. I think I had one many years ago in Boston when I happened to be there for halloween. Now I will certainly bake myself a pumpkin pie at some point, although I realise I should have moved on from pumpkin (aka Halloween food) to cranberries (aka Thanksgiving food). But since we don't have any of those food traditions over here (at least I don't with my Finnish heritage), I think I can cook pumpkin pie any time I want. I'm still surprised there isn't any pumpkin in any of the grocery stores over here, as I would have thought the UK and US food cultures would have some things in common, but pumpkin doesn't seem to be one of those. So I'm really excited to get to try it out. Other things I dragged across the pond was pancake mix and maple syrup. Things you can get here as well, but American pancakes are better. And buying maple syrup in the UK just seems wrong. Well, not sure if it's any less wrong to buy it on the west coast. At least I had the pleasure to drag my heavy suitcase across town and up the 50 stairs to my apartment.  

Last thing I wanted to say. SF is clearly a very environmentally aware place. I love it that you have to pay for plastic bags. It's one of my pet peeves over here when people can't be bothered to take their own bags for life with them when going shopping. And then they use at least 20 plastic bags for their 10 items of shopping. I mean, first of all it's ridiculous to have those really thin plastic bags which only hold a few items. But it's even more annoying when people can't put their box of crackers and bag of crisps in the same plastic bag. I would like to strangle them with their plastic bags. So every time a salesperson very apologetically informed me about the SF $0.1 bag fee, I just smiled at them and told them I think it's a great thing. And I do. The other thing I loved was that unlike the rest of the US, there were no styrofoam plates and takeaway containers anywhere. Everything was recycled cardboard. That made me so happy. So there were definitely some things we should adopt here in the UK as well. Back home, there has been a charge on plastic bag for as long as I can remember. And not a styrofoam container as far as the eye can see.

Ok, if anyone made it this far, thanks for reading, and like I said in the start, sorry for the lack of a recipe this time. I promise I will report on my experiments with pumpkin, Biscoff and Recchiuti sauces when that time comes. Although that time won't come until I can close my jeans again, so it might be a while. Until then, it's a good thing I have some old recipes in store.

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