#30 Burger at Fish & Farm (2010)

I'm not sure what happened to the original #30 (Laughing Buddha cocktail at Cantina from the 2009 list), but I don't really care. First off, I'm not drinking alcohol right now, and second, I'm quite pleased with its replacement! Last weekend, JMc came to visit from sunny San Diego, incidentally bringing the beautiful weather with her, and we headed to Fish & Farm near Union Square to try the burger. We were not disappointed.

There are a number of burgers on the two lists, none of which we had yet tried. B and I really like burgers, but we try to limit our red meat consumption for health and environmental consciousness. Nonetheless, now we're very excited to try #38 Burger and fries at the bar at Spruce, as well as #40 Cheeseburger with sweet potato fries at Taylor's Automatic Refresher (both from 2010). At some point, I think we'll also plan to sneak over to #6 Burger with fries at Slow Club from the 2009 list, though I have to wonder why the 7x7 editors knocked it off the list in favor of some sort of Basil gimlet at Rye for the 2010 version.

But these are all future adventures; I want to focus on the present. JMc and I both ordered the burger, which came piled with secret sauce, grilled onions, and housemade pickles on an Acme roll. A large mound of parsley-tossed French fries completed the plate (as did a weird homemade spicy ketchup that JMc and I both did not enjoy; thankfully the restaurant had normal ketchup readily available).

Notably, the portions are quite large. We'd eaten a lot of appetizers (the gnocchi with smoked ham hock and peas was divine), but both JMc and I only ate half the burger. She saved her half for breakfast the next morning, and B ate my other half. In terms of other entrees, M's halibut was reportedly quite good, as was B's salmon.

I do like a restaurant that focuses on organic and sustainable ingredients, which Fish & Farm does, and I do like a good burger. Once our burger tour of San Francisco is complete, we'll be back.

#1 Roast chicken and bread salad at Zuni (2009 and 2010)

A few weeks ago, thanks to the largesse of our family friends S&T, we headed to Zuni Cafe. My mom has loved the cookbook for years, and I've had fond feelings for proprietress Judy Rodgers since finding out she is both a Stanford and Chez Panisse alum. True to the CP ethos, she uses beautiful, farm-sourced ingredients, often presented with minimal intervention.

The menu changes frequently, but one of the standards is the roast chicken and bread salad, which takes an hour (cooked to order) and serves two. S&T split it for dinner, but I'm counting it on the blog because B and I each had a drumstick that night, and we took home a little bit for leftovers. Honestly, the leftovers were my favorite part; I made a delicious chicken sandwich for lunch the next day! It's good chicken (though maybe not "good frikin chicken"), don't get me wrong, but it just seems a little silly to order roast chicken in a restaurant when it's so easy to make at home. I know that the bread salad is not as easy to replicate as the rest of the dish, but, surprisingly for this carbo kid, it actually wasn't my favorite part (though I loved the currants, pine nuts, and arugula that the bread was tossed with).

The rest of our meal was great: we started with some fritti misti (including a fried lemon slice—who knew how delicious that would be!) and an excellent Caesar. B's entree was lamb prepared four ways, and I had carne asada.

It's a little too spendy for frequent visits, but Zuni is a San Francisco institution, and we'll certainly be back. In the future, though, I'll plan to make my roast chicken at home.

#85 Pulled-pork sandwich at Roadside BBQ (2009 and 2010)

Two nights ago, I wasn't in the mood to make dinner. This was not related to a lack of ingredients in the house (I'd been to the grocery store, and we'd received our CSA box a few days before), but rather to laziness. Nothing more, nothing less. So, first I made a caprese salad with some fresh heirloom tomatoes and the lovely imported buffalo mozzarella from Costco, and then we scanned the list. We headed for #85 pulled-pork sandwich at Roadside BBQ.

How did we choose it? Well, the 2010 version has pictures of some of the greatest hits including this tasty-looking sandwich, plus A&K had been to Roadside BBQ not long before and enjoyed it, plus we read on the website that the proprietors also run one of B's frequent lunch stops, Pancho's. It seemed fated.

I ordered the pulled-pork sandwich, which arrived on a pleasantly firm ciabatta-style roll. I added extra Carolina vinegar sauce to the sandwich, and dug in. The pulled pork was quite good, but I wish the coleslaw, so prominent in the picture, had provided a little bit more texture instead of just color. B went for the brisket plate, which was also tender and tasty. Between those orders, we had three sides: the mac and cheese (disappointing, which I knew it would be, but B wanted to order it), the sweet potato fries (pretty good), and baked beans (delicious!). We were pretty happy that we had had a caprese app at home, because we needed some fresh veggies in our systems.

What stood out most was the service, especially for an order-at-the-counter-style restaurant. When deciding on sides, I asked what the potato salad was like (vinegar-y or mayonnaise-y), and was offered a taste. The "taste" was essentially a side serving!

All in all, I prefer Carolina pulled pork (really, who doesn't?), but Roadside BBQ is a moderately-priced San Francisco alternative.

#63 Meatballs with grapes at Aziza

April was a difficult month for me in the ICU at the county hospital. Little sleep, lots of overnight call in the hospital, sick patients. To celebrate the end of the month (and a return to normalcy for the month of May), B and I had dinner at Aziza at the end of last week. We'd been there once before with my parents, and remembered having a good meal. This time, however, we had a truly excellent meal.

We started with the flatbreads, seasoned and artistically served with three dips (roasted eggplant, tzaziki, and roasted pepper). Then we moved on to the signature dish, which A had warned me ahead of time wasn't always on the menu. Thankfully, the meatballs with grapes were available when we dined last week. Succulent roasted purple grapes alternated space on each skewer with similarly-sized, harissa-spiced meatballs. They were fantastic! B also had a burrata, avocado, and beet salad to round out our appetizers.

For mains, B had Wagyu beef, and I had delicious scallops. I don't think either was quite as good as our appetizers, but we enjoyed both. We finished with a banana dessert: banana crepe, banana-date fritters, and a creme anglaise.

Chef Lahlou definitely meets his goal of combining Moroccan-inspired cuisine with sustainable, local ingredients. Aziza is worth its Michelin star in my book!

#80 Apple fritter at Bob's Donuts

I have one more catch-up entry before I move on! It'll be short. Sometime in the last few months, B brought home #80 Apple fritter at Bob's Donuts. (Actually, I also ate #46 Chips and salsa at Papalote, but since B wasn't there, it doesn't count for the purposes of this blog.) His office is on the same block of Polk Street, so I figured it was time for us to sample their wares. The reason this post will be short is because I really don't have much else to say. The fritter was fine—good, even. But it was simply an apple fritter, nothing more and nothing less. I didn't think it was list-worthy.

Before I dismiss Bob's outright, I should point out that A&K say there are specific times, usually in the wee hours of the morning, that the donuts come out piping hot and are particularly fresh and delicious. I will have to plan a follow-up expedition for apple fritter, take two.

#88 Buckwheat crepe and a French cider at Ti Couz

B and I went to Maui at the end of March, on a really awesome trip with my family and B's mom. We snorkeled, and saw whales, and hiked/biked up Haleakala, and saw blowholes, and B crashed his bike on the way down Haleakala and broke his arm! Everything was great until that last part I mentioned.

We took a red-eye back on a Friday night, and, as red-eyes typically do, we landed early. At 4:45am, which was really 1:45am. We were both quite tired, as you can imagine, so we came home and promptly fell asleep. However, we managed to wake up in time to head over to Ti Couz in the Mission to meet B's sister and parents for lunch.

Telling us to order a "buckwheat crepe" is sort of a cop-out on the part of the list, I think. Every single savory crepe is buckwheat! I had mushrooms and cheese and tomatoes (delicious), and B had scallops. We also shared a simple garden salad, but skipped out on the cider because it was lunchtime and we were jet-lagged.

The meal was enjoyed by all. I can't wait to head back for lunch again! So many great restaurants around there; if only parking were easier in the Mission, we might eat out even more.

#5 Chasu ramen at Katana-Ya

Um, so this is embarrassing. I thought I took big gaps in updating my other blog, but this really takes the cake. I bet some of you thought that I had abandoned this particular project! (Not the eating out, of course, but rather the writing up of those delicious meals.) Since I've updated this blog, which has been MONTHS, they've even come out with a new list. It is suspiciously similar to the old list. Since I've already started with the numbers from the old list, I'll stick with that whenever I can.

B and I have eaten at several places from the list in the past few months, so I'll try to remember all of them. Most recently, last week we tried the ramen at Katana-Ya, a hole in the wall in the Civic Center/TL district. They're open way past my bedtime (1AM!), but we went at 7:30, a more civilized time to eat dinner. We were accompanied, as we frequently are to new restaurants on the list, by A&K and D&R. However, after having our name on the list for over thirty minutes, we were offered the choice of being broken up into two tables. The hostess couldn't tell us how long it would be for us to wait to be seated together, so D&R went to one table, and the rest of us to another.

We started with great gyoza (though the spicy sauce overwhelmed the filling) and a decent spider roll, though nothing to write home about. And then, on to the ramen! I must point out that A&K are ramen snobs. On their honeymoon last year, they went to Japan, and even what has been dubbed "the best ramen in San Francisco" apparently has nothing on the ramen from Tokyo. K got the "salty" broth, which he was disappointed by, and A got the "salty/spicy" broth, which she thought was reasonably good. They were both disappointed by the noodles. My miso broth was, I thought, better than either of theirs, and B liked his shoyu.

However, in terms of my Asian noodle soups, I really prefer pho. Why oh why is there no pho on the list? A question for next year's list, I suppose. In the meantime, if you're willing to wait a while, and you're interested in trying the best ramen in San Francisco, head to Katana-Ya.