(Clockwise from top) Mocha and toast with cinnamon butter from The Mill; cereal milk custard with Cinnamon Toast Crunch from Frozen Kuhsterd; Salted caramel and hazelnut ice cream with hot fudge from Bi-Rite. Basically, my neighborhood is the bomb.
In case you haven’t already figured it out, homegirl likes to eat.
Homegirl also likes to cook. Between cooking and eating, that’s a lot of food action going on, but hey, it’s not easy being hungry, and the competition for which restaurant will satiate this appetite is intense.
As the explosion of pop-up shops and food trucks show, bigger is not always better. These eateries are scrappy, and they do like E-40 says on his first album – be federal. “Big dreams, big ideals…” is the name of the game in the Bay Area; it’s the only way to stay relevant.
(L to R) Curry Up Now Food Truck (I know, I flaked on being adventurous with this one, but it’s so good!); various signs at the market; Budweiser beer stein; colorful parking meter maid – You may look fun, but you are still the devil inside.
The creativity of these dreams shined at the Treasure Island Flea Market this past weekend, where beer steins to merino wool socks to balancing wine barrels took the stage. It rained sporadically, but it was refreshing to explore the market in the misty air. I picked myself up this nifty sign for my room signalling one of the mottos of my life:
What’s YOLO?
I also had the pleasure of taking my roommate out for dinner at Martin Yan’s recently opened M.Y. China (Martin Yan, M.Y., get it?) You might remember Chef Yan from his PBS show, which is still on the air. His restaurant showcases Chinese street food in a classier setting, and it is pretty damn authentic, as my roommate declared, and I trust her, so you should too.
Knowing the sous chef doesn’t hurt either, as it led us to enjoy thrice the amount of food we would have ordered otherwise, leaving me satisfyingly comatose and our neighboring table aghast at how much we can eat.
(Clockwise from top left) Asian pear salad with goat cheese, walnuts, and shanxi vinaigrette; salt and pepper calamari; spicy seafood dumplings; squid ink snap noodles with seafood
This place is known for its noodles, so try to sit where you can glimpse the open kitchen and the cooks expertly slinging noodles. Our squid ink noodles with seafood were delicious – not fishy at all and not dripping with ink, as can sometimes happen. The noodles are delightfully chewy, a mark of being well-made.
Kung pao Dungeness crab with jalapenos and peanuts – I have now learned that I look like a trainwreck when I try to eat crab. If anyone would like to take me crab-eating be warned.
Rounding out the meal with dessert, egg puffs with chocolate, raspberry sauce, and whipped cream did me in. Apparently there is also a cake option on the menu, but don’t bother, because these are the real deal. Given my childhood obsession with eggettes (which I could nom on everyday if I had some condensed milk with them), I was ecstatic…or should I say, eggstatic.
On that pun, it’s clear that M.Y. China knows what its doing. It broke out of the clutter of mundane Chinese food and, like Bay Area music scene, it is hustling its way to the top.
Treat your game like the dope game, be more legal and claim more fame.
Wow this is some fantastic (and serious) eating!!! 🙂 And many of my favorites, too.