Wes & Erica's Vacation Photo Album - San Francisco, CA (food) - August 2022

8 Tables by George Chen

Our vacation seems sooooo long ago... but I've been super busy with craft shows and custom orders (definitely not complaining!) and I've become way more active with my sewing club so I'm just now getting around to posting about our trip in August. I usually like to wait a couple of weeks before journaling so I can gather my thoughts and let it sink in, but I think this time I might have gone on too long and have forgotten some of the nuances & detail. Oh well, it'll mostly be pictures anyway. 

I usually bring a book on flights, but I switched to crocheting this time and it was so much better. I think my love of reading has been replaced by audiobooks.

Wes and I love to eat, and the food in San Francisco did not disappoint. We went to our first tasting menu, and it was a dream!! 😋 My first meal on our vacation was a bag of Cheez Its I got at the airport in Oklahoma, then we got breakfast at the Las Vegas airport (Wendy's and Leaf & Bean Coffee). Our first meal in San Francisco was at Goldilocks in the airport. Goldilocks is a Filipino chain restaurant. It was good... for an airport meal. My garlic fried rice was mushy and entirely too garlicy. 

Our first actual meal was at the Beach Chalet Restaurant at the Golden Gate Park. **Side note: I've always meticulously planned our trips... what to see & do, where to eat, etc., but this time, I just made a general itinerary. It was hard to pick restaurants in advance because there were just so many! I think the spontaneity made the trip fun, but I also think we missed out on some essential San Francisco eateries.😕** We spent our first afternoon walking around the Golden Gate Park and the plan was to just end up somewhere for dinner. At the end of the park sat the Beach Chalet. The restaurant was pretty upscale; we weren't dressed for it and we didn't have a reservation, but they seated us anyway. (Luckily, it was a slow weeknight.) They had their own brewery, but I was way too dehydrated from walking around to enjoy a beer. Wes got a Seal Rock Black Lager, and fish & chips. I got the mussels. They were really yummy, but I think I prefer them in a tomato-based sauce instead of cream. I ate Wes's coleslaw for him since he doesn't like it, and it was very different from what we have in Oklahoma. The coleslaw dressing was mayonnaise, like a thick flavorless off-brand mayonnaise. Everything else about the meal was great.

The next morning, we set out for Chinatown. We wanted to head out early to grab coffee but literally everything was closed until 10am. It was just before 9am when our Uber dropped us off. 😔 We wandered a bit and found a tiny coffee shop inside of a bank lobby. The owner was the nicest man in the entire city! He was the embodiment of a jovial Italian immigrant that you would see on a sitcom, but in a good way. He even said "fuggedaboutit" unironically. I ordered a macchiato and he warned me that it wasn't like the ones Starbucks makes. I accepted and Wes ordered his drink. When he brought it out, he had me try it in front of him and request adjustments. There was zero sugar in it. I didn't want to say anything (or admit defeat) since he was so nice, but he must have saw the look on my face because he took it back and added more milk and sprinkled cinnamon on top for me. Still not sugar though. He offered us brownies on the house as we were leaving. He spritzed Persian water on them, which smelled amazing. 

Lunch was at City View. I knew I absolutely had to have dim sum while in San Francisco. A majority of the dim sum restaurants didn't have dine in so that sort of limited our options. But, City View was so good and we got there right before the lunch rush!! The stuffed eggplant with fried tofu was my favorite. Wes really enjoyed the lotus wrapped sticky rice. We had to be careful not to order too much so I had to skip some of my usuals (no tripe or chicken feet this time around). 

I really wanted to snack all day while we were in Chinatown but our dim sum meal was so filling. The only snack I got was matcha ice cream. 🍦 OMG it was amazing!! It tasted like matcha, it tasted like vanilla, it was an awesome soft-serve swirl!!! 😍 Besides the tasting menu we had for dinner, I think this singular ice cream cone was the best thing I ate on vacation. Wes was going to get the pandan coconut soft-serve swirl but changed his mind last minute and just got a yuzu drink. 

I wanted to go to San Francisco for two reasons: 1. The Fantasy Couture exhibit at the Legion of Honor Museum and 2. the tasting menu at 8 Tables by George Chen. One of the food bloggers I follow called the tasting menu "the best meal of his life," and one of the food magazines I came across hailed 8 Tables as one of San Francisco's "most sought-after reservations." I wholeheartedly agree with both. 😀 This was my first experience with a tasting menu and it 100% did not disappoint. Literally everything about it was great -- the food (obviously), the building, atmosphere, staff, drinks and overall vibe! The meal represented a cozy & intimate traditional Chinese dinner. It was eight courses, all using local seasonal ingredients. We also got drinks (cocktail for me & wine for Wes) but I don't remember what they were. 

The first course was the "9 Essential Flavors" of Chinese cuisine according to chef George Chen, called Jiu Gong Ge. Our waiter explained each morsel to us, and I think we promptly forgot as soon as he walked away. 😂LOL My favorites were the right most of each row. The top right corner is a sweet pear, the center one is spicy eggplant wonton, and the bottom right corner is salty crunchy thing with caviar. Wes's favorite was also the pear, with the sweet stuffed date (top left corner) coming in a close second. 

We found out during the second course that we had to eat everything before the waiter would bring out the next dish. Our second course was Suan La Tang, a spicy & sour soup. I love soup but it isn't Wes's favorite thing to eat. He still had about 1/4 of his bowl left when the waiter came to collect our dishes. The waiter peered into his bowl and said, "You have one more bite," and walked away. 😂 

The seafood course, Steamed Monterey Squid, was my favorite of the night. It was also served on my favorite plate. LOL The squid's tentacles are fried and the rest of him is stuffed into a squash blossom. I liked the squishy surprise when I bit into the squash blossom, but Wes didn't like the texture. I've never had squid prepared this way before and really liked it. Steam and emulsify everything from now on!!

Next was more soup!! We had a Porcini Mushroom 'Dun Dan'. There was a custard at the bottom of the bowl that we scooped out and ate with the soup. The soup reminded me of the traditional Chinese medicines that my mom would cook in the crock pot and have me eat when I was sick as a child. I never enjoyed it then but I'm glad my taste buds evolved because this was delicious! The chicken is stuffed with some other sort of poultry and placed on a little grill to keep it hot. 

After the first four courses came the entrees. I was already starting to get full by this point. 😓 Our first entree was Lapsang Smoked Squab. Before bringing out our plates, the waiter brought out a box of knives and let us pick our own. I grabbed a beige one and Wes went with black. The square bit next to the meat is scallop and asparagus sticky rice. I think I liked it more than the squab. I love how artistically it was presented. I've never had squab before. 

Longevity Noodles came next. They were cooked with beef and vegetables in an XO sauce. I really liked the seafood dish but this one almost took over first place. Our waiter gave us a small glass of the wine pairing, a Melville Syrah, with this dish. He must have noticed we had finished our drinks but were too timid (or, let's be honest, cheap LOL) to order more. 🍷

I was so relieved when the waiter told us this would be our last savory dish. I was 1. getting extremely full, and 2. really wanting dessert. Wes liked this dish the best; Iberico Pork Char Siu. The pork was really really good, but I think the fried rice was the star here. I just noticed that this is served on the same plate as the seafood dish. Wes & my favorite courses both came on the same style of plates. How neat! Anyway, I didn't want to get in trouble for not eating everything but there was no way I could finish it, so I gave Wes most of my char siu.

Dessert time!!!! 🍨 Up until now, my favorites were the squid and noodles... dessert (Jasmine Tea Rice Pudding) quickly took the #1 spot. The rice pudding was topped with strawberry ice cream, bits of dragon fruit & strawberry, and jasmine foam. I've never had foam, but I didn't expect it to taste so much of jasmine. Our waiter brought us the wine pairing, Degeorgis "Sori del Re" moscato d'asti. The meal was everything I could want it to be and right as I thought it was over, our waiter brough us a second dessert! 🍭

🐉We got dragon's beard candies as our one last bite before the meal ended. Our waiter said they are stuffed with something different each night; the night we went was peanuts. Dragon's beard is another thing I had never tried before. It tasted like fancy cotton candy. What I liked most about this experience is all of the new foods I got to try. I told Wes that we are getting reservations to a tasting menu on each trip we take going forward!!

I'm not sure if it was because I was still stuffed from last night's dinner, or if the food was really blah, but breakfast at Brenda's French Soul Food was the most underwhelming meal in San Francisco. The selling point for us was their beignet flight, but they weren't even that good. 😒 It's one plain beignet, one stuffed with apples & cinnamon, and one with chocolate goo in the center. I got the biscuits and gravy; the gravy had way too much onion in it. There were gigantic pieces of (almost) raw onions littering my gravy! No thanks! 🙅Wes said his breakfast was good though. 

Our home for the week. The Courtyard Marriott was in a terrible location for Uber drivers. One of our drivers told us that he couldn't drop us off in front of the hotel because there wasn't a legal parking space to do so. 😑Annoying. 

The concierge told us about the restaurant on the first floor of the hotel when we first checked in. We had planned to have one of our meals there. It looked really nice, and the menu online looked decent but there were NEVER any diners in there. Our room faced a curious dive restaurant called Tommy's Joynt. At the last minute, I suggested that we lunch there instead of the empty hotel restaurant. Tommy's is a cash only, no frills, not very friendly, sandwich restaurant. It advertised all sorts of house-smoked meats. I got a corned beef sandwich and I think Wes got the brisket. It was very tasty but I liked the potato salad more. I've noticed a pattern of me liking the sides more than the main part of the meal...

Our flight out of San Francisco was at 5am so the plan was to eat an extremely early dinner, then get back to the hotel to pack and rest by early evening. The problem was that we've been eating almost all day and were not hungry at all for an early dinner. I suggested a sushi train so we could just get a few dishes and be in & out. We went to Hikari bullet train sushi. 🍣 I've had sushi train before but not bullet train. We ordered on a tablet and the food came out on a cute little conveyer belt. It was brought out on either a ship or a train. Our tablet flashed and made noises at us when the food was about to be delivered. Everyone else at this restaurant must have been regulars because I was the only one amused by this. The sushi was super good!

So there's all of the food pictures from our vacation. We did a ton of touristy stuff, so more blog posts to come!! I didn't take any pictures of our airport meals, but on our way back, we had a crazy long layover in Las Vegas. I discovered a Shake Shack at the airport!! Shake Shack is my favorite hamburger restaurant and there aren't any in Oklahoma, so it was a nice surprise to find one. We had breakfast there and also got coffee from Dunkin'. Our vacation fulfilled all of my foodie wishes. I will fondly remember our meal at 8 Tables for the rest of my life. My only regret is that I wish we had more time to eat in Chinatown.