“There may not be a Heaven, but there is a San Francisco."

First, I need to use full disclosure.  We failed out attempt to be eating all day.  A: That's not easy to do, you get full really fast.  2- It's expensive.  However there was some good sampling in the two days spent wandering around San Francisco.

I arrived first thing Thursday morning, and I do mean first thing, when you're flight LANDS before most people get to work, that's early.  Anyway, me and the brother headed to AT&T park for a day game between the Giants and Astros, but first we had to stop and grab a little lunch.  We wandered into Ironside a few blocks from the stadium, a place apparently well known for its Cubano sandwich.  In the interest of getting the most out of our food tasting experience, we also got a Grilled Snapper sandwich and went halvsies.

Pressed Cubano
Country ham, slow roasted pork, gruyere and pickles

Dude, let me tell you, this thing is delicious.  The bread to filling ration was maybe a little off (I hate when you have way more bread than filling, where's the fun in that)  But you can't beat the flavor.  Here's where my problem comes in though.  Normally the cubano is a $12 sandwich, because it was game day they knock it down a whopping $2.  If I'm paying that much for a sandwich it better be the best damn sandwich I've ever had.  And quite frankly it wasn't.

I think I've been a bit spoiled by living in NYC for a while and picking up deli sandwiches all the time that were far more delicious and far less expensive.  I miss NY delis.







Grilled Snapper
Jalapeno aioli, pickled onions, butter lettuce, cilantro, & thai basil, and of course red snapper......very tasty!

I wasn't sure how I'd feel about a fish sandwich, but actually it was really good.  Definitely a much lighter option compared to the cubano, but very flavorful.

But again, I have the same problem with this as I did with the cubano, $10.  Also this was especially disappointing with the snapper because it definitely was not particularly filling.

However, all that being said, if you are in San Francisco and going to a game, I'm guessing you'll overpay for any food in that area, so I would definitely say stop by Ironside and try the cubano.

And if not for the cubano, then for the tallboys of PBR that you can get with it.


There wasn't a whole lot of eating at the game, because quite frankly, I'm not made of money and any sporting event is going to bend you over when it comes to price on food and drinks.

There was plenty of beer, but it really hurts to fork over $10 for a very average sized beer.  I'm just saying.

While walking home from the game, we wandered into Boudin Bakery Cafe on Market St in downtown.  Grabbed a few more sandwiches.  This time we went with the Pesto Roast Beef and Chicken with Chipotle Aioli.  I think my brother just likes ordering things with aioli.

Both sandwiches were satisfactory, again nothing that really blew me away, but good.  And given the adult beverage consumption that had been going on, I'm guessing anything would have been good, so I'll just leave it at that.



That night we got talked into grabbing "exotic drinks" at the Tonga Room.  Which is now one of my new favorite places.

The Tonga Room - Making it Rain

It's like walking onto a pirate ship.  There is a small pond in the middle of the lounge, with a floating band/dj.  Also every few minutes it rains.  They have waterworks that make it rain over the pond.

Here's the deal with the Tonga Room, which I knew nothing about before going there, the whole point are these ridiculously colored rum drinks.  And they have quite a selection.  I started with a strawberry daiquiri but ended up drinking an extremely Blue Hawaiian and then something called the Bora Bora Horror.  It. Was. Spectacular.  Let me put it this way, every drink comes with an umbrella, how can you go wrong with that?  Answer: you can't.

So here's what we tried:
Hurricane: rum, fresh pineapple juice, oj, lemon juice and sloe gin
This is the only drink that didn't get completely finished, not a favorite.

Blue Hawaii: white rum blended with blue curacao and fresh juice.
I drank two of them, fairly quickly, that's all I need to say.

Zombie: I don't know whats actually in this so I'll just give you their description: "A mighty grog laced with dark rum, the classic potion to keep you under our spell"
It was OK I guess, I wouldn't order it again.

Tonga Mai Tai: dark rum with triple sec and fresh juices.  Since my brother ordered this I should let him talk about it.  But he only took one sip and then I had to finish it.  He's my younger brother, on the right side of 30, shouldn't he be outdrinking me 11 out of 10 times?  Feel ashamed little brother, feel very ashamed.

Bora Bora Horror: rum, banana liqueur, grand marnier mixed with fresh pineapple juice.
This drink wins the night, damn those were tasty.  Also they're served in a glass that watches you...creepily.

A word of caution, if you stay too long at the Tonga Room, you might decide to climb one of the masts and dive into the pool/pond in the middle of the room.  I know because I was probably about a drink and half from doing this myself.  I didn't ask specifically but I have to imagine this is frowned upon by the establishment.

Friday was meant to be our epic eating day.  However, that never really materialized, although we definitely sampled some good food.  Wandering along the Embarcadero, we came across a food truck tucked off on one of the side streets.  Food trucks always seem to be a good way to sample some really good food so we stopped, ordered, and waited.  And waited.  They literally took 30 minutes to deliver our one burger and what they call the "Double Whammy" which is potlatch dusted french fries and green beans all piled together.  If you happen to know what "potlatch" is, I'd love to know, it was really good.

After the excessive waiting (small bonus, free cookies while you wait, and they were excellent) we finally sat down to try it out.  Conclusion: the burger was average at best, certainly nothing spectacular and certainly not worth waiting 30 minutes for.  The double whammy however was awesome, whoever thought putting fries and green beans together is part genius.  Add to that their homemade ketchup which was delicious, with a little kick to it, and that was definitely a food victory.

 We made our way to the Ferry Building for what we figured to be a smorgasbord.  We stopped at so many different places I'm not even sure I remember them at all.  For those of you who don't know the Ferry Building is like a giant market of awesomeness, with some extra restaurants sprinkled in for good measure.

One of the first stops was Stonehouse California Olive Oil.  Which is pretty much just a bunch of super fancy but awesomely delicious variations of olive oil.  The best part? Free samples!  A few of the favorites were the Garlic Olive Oil and the Chili Olive Oil which had a fantastic little kick to it.

Next up was Prather Ranch Meat Company.  The guy behind the counter rambled on a bit about organic blah blah blah, if you've read my About Me you know that this is not a concern of mine.  My concern is how tasty is it.  We didn't try any of the meat, although they mentioned a Maple Whiskey Sausage or something along those lines that had my mouth watering.  But we did try their German Potato Salad and Southern Style Coleslaw.

The German Potato Salad is the first non-mayonaisse based potato salad I had ever tried, and I would certainly eat it again.  It is made with bacon, caramelized onions, whole grain mustard and sherry vinegar.  When I ordered it I thought that I would probably find the mustard a little overpowering but the vinegar really mellows it and of course when there is bacon involved good things happen.

The Southern Style Coleslaw was also really good.  It is made with sweet onion, shredded cabbage and celery seed mayonaisse.  And actually its flavor and consistency were more like a light salad than the kind of coleslaw I'm used to, but it also was very good.

There is so much to choose from in the Ferry Building that it can be a little overwhelming.  However I wasn't about to sit down and order a full meal at each place so I stuck to free samples and small side orders.  Fortunately the San Francisco Fish Company was selling raw oysters and clams at two dollars a piece.  Perfect for my little experiment!  If of course you like raw oysters, which I do.  I can't really explain why I like them.  If I'm being completely honest and disgusting, they kind of have the consistency of snot.  But if you put a little cocktail sauce or horseradish on it, they can be very tasty little niblets.



We finished the day by stopping at Coldstone (always a good idea) then hiking back up to the top of Nob Hill.  Let me say this, eating ice cream before such an endeavor is not the greatest idea in the world.  However, you have now down a little work towards burning off said ice cream.

We finished that night by letting the parents relax while we cooked a little dinner for them. (full post coming soon)  And just to get your mouth watering, we made hangar steak with a lime-garlic butter and corn cakes with a tomato-avocado relish.  Also this next post will feature my brother as a guest blogger, since he put together the menu, I grilled meat, which is kind of a specialty of mine.

Matthew has requested an opportunity to defend himself for the events that occurred at the Tonga Room.  Against my better judgement I'll allow it.  But from now on this is not a democracy, and I will rule with an iron fist.  

Post script: in which i defend my honor.

I started our tropical adventure with a Tonga Itch, which was comprised of vodka, rum, orange curacao & pineapple juice topped with grenadine.  It was quite delicious and definitely my favorite drink of the night, considering what happened next.  For the second round, I ordered the Zombie. Even though it didn't say so, i could have sworn it tasted like cranberries.  In addition, this was the strongest drink of the night from anyone's glass, a fact that both the author of this "esteemed" (read: bush league) blog and our friend agreed to.  I managed to force my way through it and be a good sport, so when it came time for the Mai Tai, I wanted nothing to do with the coconut vehicled treasure. Plus it kept raining inside, which made kept making me want to pee. Maybe what they say is true.