Portland, Oregon Anniversary Trip

For whatever reason, for B and my 3rd anniversary (back in 2012), I decided I wanted to go to Portland! Don't ask what made me decide this, but I was thinking maybe San Diego or Monterey, but they were both too expensive to stay at for any length of time. Then I thought of how popular Portland was becoming, checked hotel rates, and they were so cheap! We stayed at a place called the Phoenix Inn, in Lake Oswego, about 20 minutes south of downtown, and it was really nice and totally within our price range. We drove and the hotel was right next to a gas station, which was always nice if we needed gas on our way in for the night, or out for the day. It was a very long drive, about 10 hours, I wouldn't recommend it if you aren't trying to save money like we were. But I figured, I've made the 8 hour drive to San Diego and back many times, so another 2 hours is no big deal. The nice thing was we were able to stop in to the Voodoo Doughtnuts that was way south of the city, and there was no waiting, unlike the downtown location.

I also decided that maybe this would be the right time to get my first digital SLR camera, so I bought that along with an additional lens, battery, case, so on. Some of the photos are taken with it, and they sure do look great!

Grain and Gristle - Burger

Grain and Gristle - Our first dinner once we got into the city, we stopped at little bar called Grain and Gristle for some food. We weren't super hungry because we stopped for lunch in the middle of the drive, so we split the burger and added a fried egg. Very delicious, great little place to stop by.

Voodoo Doughtnuts - Voodoo Doll Doughnut

Voodoo Doughtnuts - Bacon Maple Bar

Zero Zero Restaurant Review

Zero Zero is another favorite go-to restaurant in San Francisco with wonderful pizza, great brunch menu, and delicious drinks. Zero Zero is located near the Metreon in downtown and there are a few parking garages near there that aren't too expensive. Like so many other San Francisco restaurants, the have mostly staple menu items, and then a few others are swapped out based on the season. Some of these aren't on the menu all the time, and they do swap out one or two of the pizzas. Let's get to the food!

Roasted Cauliflower - If roasted cauliflower isn't one of your favorite winter vegetable dishes then I just don't know what you're doing with your life!

Piccino Restaurant Review

This is a special restaurant review because it's for one of my all time, (if not my absolute) favorite restaurants in San Francisco. I recommend anyone visit it because they are a very seasonal restaurant, using produce that's in season, and they change the menu everyday. I'm including in this post all of the photos, so far, of the food I've had.

I think one of the great things about Piccino is that if you don't have reservations, they usually have a seat at their counter bar seats, which are right in front of the kitchen, so you can watch them making your food. I find the counter seats are usually where I want to be sitting. They have regular tables, but I find them to be a little too dark at night for photos!

Another great thing is that they have a smaller cafe, where you can order coffee, or pizzas and sandwiches to go. It's right next to the main restaurant, so you can pop in there to grab lunch to go. I want to mention that unless you're getting a dinner second course dish, most of these are too small on their own, and you'll want to get a few menu items to share. Even if you get pizza, get about one for each person unless you're getting a bunch of other menu items. We usually just go through the menu that day and pick 3-4 menu items we want and share everything. They're very good about bringing extra clean  plates for each course.

Salads:

Pear, Pecan, and Blue Cheese Salad

Sienna Restaurant

I've been to Sienna Restaurant before for my birthday, and it was good! Overall, I liked it, so B and I decided to grab lunch here to try some of their other menu items.

We ordered the Toasted Ravioli as an appetizer. These were really good, and the sauce was perfect. A delicious marinara to dip them into.

More Homemade Pizza

Went over to a friends house, and we wanted to cook something together. Pizza seemed like a good option, since I've been making so much of it recently. It turned out really great because her oven seemed to get extra hot. Almost burned it, but pulled it out of the oven just in time. It was absolutely delicious! Just used some store bought pizza dough, covered with some jarred tomato sauce, added some spices like oregano and some salt, tossed on some store bought roasted garlic (I know, this was news to me that you can find roasted garlic in a store, and it was amazing. Perfect for pizza), fresh mozzarella cheese slices, some fresh basil and a drizzle of olive oil.

We cooked it for 8-12 minutes in a 500 degree oven. If your oven gets super hot like this one did, make sure to check on it every few minutes. Slice up and enjoy!

Pizza Bagels with Eggs

We still had some pizza ingredients in the fridge, which are handy to have by the way, so I grabbed some of the asiago bagels we had and decided to do a little pizza bagel with some eggs over the top. I also made some breakfast potatoes again, see my previous post for the recipe. For these bagels, I just toasted them with some grated cheese over the top, in the broiler. Then warmed the tomato sauce in a oven-proof pan, added some herbs and spices to enhance the sauce, like oregano, red pepper flakes and some additional cheese. Make a little well in the tomato sauce, crack the egg into it, and then cover the pan. You can either continue to cook this on the stovetop, or pop it in a preheated oven to cook. Then spoon the eggs and sauce onto each bagel half and enjoy! It's pretty messy and might be easier with a fork and knife!

Pizza Rolls (or Pinwheels)

We had some frozen puff pastry lying around in the freezer and I was trying to come up with something to do with it, while also craving pizza, and reading a recipe on the back that could easily be converted to pizza pinwheels. So that's what I did! These were really simple, I just added some of the ingredients we had leftover from making homemade pizza, and rolled it all up in some puff pastry, cut it, and baked it.

I'm just going to describe the process I used to make these, because I just loosely based my recipe on the recipe that was on the back of the puff pastry box. 

Thaw the puff pastry for about 30 minutes on a cookie sheet topped with parchment paper. Roll out so it's laying flat on the cookie sheet. Spread a thin layer of pizza sauce, tomato sauce or other sauce you wish to use. Sprinkle some garlic powder over the sauce. Add whatever "toppings" you want, in my case I used some prosciutto. Sprinkle with shredded cheese, I used parmesan and monterey jack, but you could use mozzarella, or another cheese. Top with fresh basil. Now tightly roll the puff pastry creation from the longer side. Cut into half inch slices. Place on your parchment covered cookie sheet and coat with a water/egg mixture, and then more cheese. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or so. Then, enjoy!

Homemade Pizza - 3 Ways

An easy thing to make for dinner is homemade pizza. It cooks quickly, you don't have to have a ton of ingredients, and you can buy pizza dough at the store. It's also an easy way to get rid of some pantry jars of stuff to put on your pizza, such as olives, artichoke hearts, anchovies!?, pizza sauce/tomato sauce, whatever you want.

A local grocery store, carries frozen and fresh pizza dough, so we occasionally grab one, freeze it, and then defrost it the day before I want to make it. At first, I was trying to top the dough on a cookie sheet, and then trying to move it over to a pizza stone preheating in the oven. It's impossible. You can flour it, put olive oil on it, but it doesn't matter. It always seems to be too heavy to move easily without just stretching out the dough. So I've learned to just get over it, and cook it on the cookie sheet. I cook these at 500 degrees, for 10-15 minutes.

This was before it went in the oven. Here are the ingredients in order I added them: olive oil, tomato sauce, red pepper flakes, dried oregano, salt, parmesan cheese, fresh mozzarella cheese, fresh basil, and half artichoke hearts. 

As you can see, the basil got kind of fried, so I recommend adding it in the last few minutes of cooking time, or just adding it after it comes out of the oven. This first style was very good, simple and classic.

Here's my 2nd way, ingredients were: olive oil, half pizza sauce, half garlic ranch sauce (bought from the store), red pepper flakes, dried oregano, parmesan, red onions, fresh mozzarella cheese, half artichoke hearts and fresh basil. As you can see, this is right around when our basil plant started dying, so there weren't many leaves to pick for this pizza.

For the 3rd way, I decided to split the dough into 2 pizzas. This one was, olive oil, pizza sauce, red pepper flakes, dried oregano, parmesan cheese, monterey jack cheese, red onions, tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese.

The 2nd half of the dough was all the same, just the garlic ranch sauce instead of pizza sauce. 

I really liked the ones with the garlic ranch sauce. I found it with the pizza dough and the store had some fresh packages of pizza ingredients, like pepperoni, pizza sauce, and the ranch sauce. I highly recommend trying to make pizza at home. It's so easy, and it turns out delicious!

Berkeley Adventure: Pizza, Food Trucks, and Beer Gardens!

B and I had another food adventure, and this time we went to Berkeley. The food truck event wasn't going to start until later that night, so we stopped by the Cheese Board Collective and got half a pizza to tide us over for the afternoon. They have a different flavor pizza everyday, and it's never the same, so you probably won't see this one if you went. It was a very simple, tomato, mozzarella, garlic, and red onion pizza. It was so simple and perfect, and I would highly recommend trying anything they have there. I was worried half a pizza wouldn't be enough for us, but it was just the right amount. We didn't really feel like paying for the whole pizza, as that was $20. 

As we waited for the food truck event to start, we headed over to the East Bay Vivarium to check out their reptiles, snakes, lizards, frogs, and turtles. When it was finally time for Off The Grid, we headed over there, and started scoping out the trucks. I wanted to try something from the Taco Guys truck and I got their pork taco with mango, and pickled cabbage. It had good flavor, but by the time I got to eat it, the tortilla was a little soggy. That was my own fault though.

I also ordered a couple drinks from the Taco Guys, I don't quite remember the full flavor profiles, but one was hibiscus, and the other was peach? I think. I just remember the light pink one was a little better. And they switch out their tacos and their drinks on a regular basis, so if you went they probably wouldn't have them anyways.

The last truck we tried was the Arki Truck. B and I shared a Works sandwich, which had fried chicken, cole slaw, fried potatoes, and spicy aioli on a torpedo roll. It was definitely a lot of food, and better to share it with someone!

For dessert, we ordered 2 beignets to share from the Arki Truck. Honestly, I think these were the stars of the night, The glaze was perfectly sweet, and even when they sat there for a few minutes with glaze all over them, they were still crispy and airy inside. Highly recommend!

We decided to end the night over in Redwood City, at the Gourmet Haus Staudt beer garden. I have no idea what the first beer I ordered was, because the glasses didn't always coordinate with the beer. I just told the bartender I liked wheat beers and he gave me something kind of fruity, which was ok. Not my favorite, but drinkable. B ordered a delicious Paulaner Salvator, and I ordered that as my second beer. It's now one of my favorites, and I've found it at BevMo. 

Everything was delicious from the day, and I can't wait for my next food truck adventure!

Napa Birthday Trip, Day 1

For my birthday, I decided on a wine tasting trip to Napa with B. It wasn't going to be just wine tasting, but also food tasting! I had picked out a few restaurants and wineries I wanted to try while on the trip, and we got to almost all of them. Which, was impressive for a 2 day trip! The first place we hit was The Boon Fly Cafe. I had heard about their amazing donuts, so obviously we had to stop by. We got there for Sunday brunch, and we started with some delicious cinnamon sugar coated donuts. They were quite small, but we shared an order of 4, and downed them with a gusto. 

I decided to order the Boon Fly Benedict, which had a deliciously spicy Jalapeño Hollandaise covering perfectly poached eggs, thick cut ham, all on some artisan bread. It was amazing! I had never had Eggs Benedict before (I know, where have I been?) but it was a great introduction. 

B ordered the Eggs in a Hole, which is his favorite. I make it for him all the time, and he said it was good, but not quite as good as mine. I was glad to hear he liked mine better ; ) 

For lunch, we stopped by V. Sattui Winery and got a sandwich, bread, their famous artichoke cream cheese dip, and their sesame noodle salad. We shared the sandwich, which was their spicy italian, and it was quite possibly the best italian sandwich I've ever had. We went on a hike, and then ate our food after we finished. 

Here was the sesame noodle salad, which I've had before at the winery, and it was delicious as always.

Since, it was the day of my birthday, I made reservations for an Italian restaurant for dinner. We ate at Bistro don Giovanni, which was right near our hotel. I have to give a link for the hotel we stayed at, because we were really happy with it. It was the Best Western Premier Ivy Hotel and the photos look just like the hotel, it was very nice, clean, complimentary breakfast (with make your own waffles, breakfast sandwiches...etc.).

So back to the dinner; I ordered the Orrecchiette with Spicy Sausage. It was absolutely delicious, but B and I definitely did some trading of our dishes.

B ordered the Margherita pizza, and it was probably one of the best I've tried. I managed to convince B to give me about half of his for half of mine. We had eaten lunch not that long ago, so we didn't want to much for dinner.

The winner of the show, was dessert. We ordered their famous "Bostini" Trifle. It had vanilla custard, chocolate cake, whipped cream, clear caramel and toasted almonds. Delicious! One of my favorite desserts I've ever had, and that clear caramel was the star of the trifle. 

Everything we ate from the first day was wonderful, and I highly recommend trying any of these restaurants!

Chicago Fire Pizzeria - Palladio

I had been meaning to take B to Chicago Fire Pizzeria, they had just opened a new location closer to my house, and I have been to their other location in Folsom. You may remember my other post from my last visit. Anyways, I didn't like the Caesar Salad at the other location, the lettuce was wilting and kind of brown, but the one I had at the new location was fresh, crisp and very tasty! I was glad I decided to try it again. 

I had heard of their Greek Fries, and since I love French fries more than all other foods combined, I had to try them too! They had great flavor, and they serve a wedge of lemon with them. I highly suggestion squeezing it over them lightly, it adds a nice tang to the fries. The small was perfect to share between the two of us, but if you have a larger dining party, you should probably get the large.

Since I had already tried their thin crust pizza and loved it, I had to know how their deep dish pizza would be. B also likes deep dish more than thin usually, so we just stuck with the classic Pepperoni Deep Dish. It was very good, but I didn't like the crust as much as I liked the thin crust. It was however very good as leftovers. We ordered a medium, so we could take home the leftovers.

I really enjoyed the new location, it wasn't busy, and our drinks were refilled frequently. I will definitely go back and try some of their other menu items!

Chicago Fire vs. Pizzeria Classico

In my hometown, there's a bit of a pizza competition going on. In Old Town Folsom, on Sutter St., there's two amazing pizza places right next door to each other. So, of course there's a fierce rivalry between the two: Chicago Fire vs. Pizzeria Classico. I've been to both of them and loved them each for different reasons, but decided to revisit them both in one week to decide which I like better.


Chicago Fire: At Chicago Fire, I ordered the small Caesar Salad. The dressing on the salad was too acidic and the lettuce didn't seem all that fresh. My mom and I shared a small Traditional Thin Crust Pizza, which was topped with fresh tomato, basil, garlic, olive oil, parmesan and mozzarella cheese. The thin crust pizzas are cracker thin and have a nice crunch to them. The pizza tasted like a margarita pizza, and was perfect with a little crushed red pepper sprinkled on it. The pizza was amazing, and as I ate at Pizzeria Classico, I was thinking about this pizza!

We also ordered dessert, which was an item our server recommended that isn't on the menu: donut holes with a chocolate and caramel dipping sauce. Sadly, they weren't as good as I had hoped, the donuts weren't light and fluffy, but instead dense and probably made from pizza dough. Another advantage to Chicago Fire, is that there are multiple locations, and another to open at the Palladio Folsom in November of this year. 


Pizzeria Classico: A couple days later I went to Pizzeria Classico, and I knew the thing to order is their garlic chips, which are basically cheese breadstick slices.

Garlic Chips, dipped in ranch, were amazing!

I've heard this is the one thing to order when you go to Pizzeria Classico, or the half garlic, half pesto chips, which I have yet to try. We decided on the Rosemary Garlic Chicken pizza with the thin crust. It's made with roasted potatoes, chicken, rosemary, garlic, and alfredo sauce.

I thought the pizza would have been better with some roasted garlic cloves on top and the alfredo sauce couldn't be tasted. It was an interesting flavor combination, but I thought there were so many ways to make it have more flavor, and be less tasteless. Definitely will order a different pizza next time. Our service here was also not as good as at Chicago Fire. There weren't many of people there at the time, but our server took quite a while to take my card to charge it, and another server was the one to actual process it. Instead, most of the servers could be seen in the kitchen texting or chatting most of the time. I would prefer the service we had at Chicago Fire instead of Classico.


The pizza at Chicago Fire is a little cheaper, and I definitely liked what we ordered at Chicago Fire better. I did like that Pizzeria Classico has so many interesting flavor combination pizzas, with names like Stinkin' Rose, Marky Mark, and Club Med. Classico doesn't really have the classic flavor combos on their menu, you would instead have to make it yourself. Chicago Fire has less of these interesting combinations, but they have the classic ones on their menu. They also have stuffed pizzas on their menu, which I'll have to try sometime. Classico has pasta dishes on their menu, while Chicago Fire does not. 


I think for now, if I have a choice, I'll chose to eat at Chicago Fire. I'll need to go back and order the exact same pizza to really figure out which I liked better. Also, I need to try and compare their deep dish pizzas another time!

Bay Area Restaurants: Cafe Borrone and Pazzia

B and I decided to do a day trip to San Francisco yesterday. We had it all planned out, we went to breakfast at one of his favorite places by his house, Cafe Borrone. I have been here several times now, and I love everything I order here. There's no going wrong with anything they have, and they change out some items on their menu every so often. Yesterday, we went with the belgian waffles they have and decided to share 2 different ones. I got the fresh berry waffle and he got the apple and pecan waffle.

I liked my waffle better than B's! 

This one was still good, but a little too sweet

We then headed to the Academy of Science in San Francisco, and poked around there for a few hours. Then we had tea at the Japanese Tea Garden, and ended our night hopelessly searching for a place for dinner. 

Jasmine tea at the Japanese Tea Garden

B had wanted to go to one of his favorite pizza places, and we got there and realized they were closed for renovations. So, we pulled up Yelp and found a place within walking distance called Pazzia. It was pretty good, albeit a little pricey. We shared a bruschetta appetizer and he ordered the margarita pizza and I had their pizza special of the day. It was a white pizza with arugula, prosciutto, and tomatoes. They give you fresh baked bread with olive oil for dipping, and balsamic vinegar if you ask for it. 

Bruschetta

My pizza after I once again forgot to take a photo before I dug in!

My only complaint about the food, was that the bruschetta wasn't salted at all. But after salting it myself, it was tasty. I actually enjoyed B's pizza more than the one I ordered, but I saw a few other dishes around the tables that I would go back to try.

There is limited seating here, only seating for about 50 people at any one time. I think if I was in the area, I would come back here, but I probably wouldn't make a special trip. So many other restaurants in San Francisco to try!

Homemade Pizza

One of the easiest ways to have pizza at home is to buy some pre-made pizza dough and slightly cook it, and then top it with your favorite toppings. I like using the pizza dough from Trader Joe's but any will do.

Here's the original recipe adapted from Food Network.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cooking Time: 20 min | Difficulty: Easy | Serves: 2

Ingredients:

2 Thick Strips Bacon, thinly sliced
1/2 large White Onion, thinly sliced

3-5 Dried Figs, thinly sliced

Kosher Salt And Freshly Ground Black Pepper
3 Tbsp Store bought Pesto
3 Tbsp Sour Cream

A Little Bit of Mozzarella for topping, fresh or shredded

1/2 pound fresh Pizza Dough
All-Purpose Flour, for dusting

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Cook the bacon in a large skillet over medium heat, stirring from time to time, until browned and crispy. Transfer to paper towels to drain; keep warm. Add the onion slices to the drippings in the skillet; season with salt and pepper. Cook until light brown and tender, 5 to 7 minutes. Taste for seasoning.

2. Combine the sour cream and pesto together in a small bowl and set aside.

3. Roll the pizza dough into an 8-by-14-inch rectangle on a lightly floured surface. Roll the dough around the rolling pin and unroll it onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Place in the center of the oven and bake for 8 to 12 minutes, or until golden brown.

4. Spread the sour cream and pesto mixture on the crust. Dot with the onions and some of the bacon drippings from the pan; sprinkle with the bacon. Top with the figs and cheese and bake again for 3-5 minutes.