Kiss Seafood, SF

Kiss Seafood is a tiny little sushi joint in Japantown, with a counter seating 5 (maybe 6) people, and a couple of other small tables.  So, if you want to try this place, make a reservation in advance.  We saw a couple being turned away and felt sad for them.  The restaurant had a decent menu.

We decided to go with the chef's special omakase.

The food was good, and at a very reasonable price too.  I wouldn't say it blew me away, but I enjoyed their sashimi and nigiri might go back for their sashimi or sushi platters.  The husband and wife team were adorable and super nice.  I wish I stayed nearer to Japantown, so many Japanese restaurants to explore.

Dipsea Trail from the Pan Toll Ranger Station to Stinson Beach (and Back)

I don't remember the last time Lingon and I went hiking.  I think it has to be Machu Picchu back in August.  Anyway, I sort of quit (but not really) working out, but I do love hiking and wanted to spend some time in the lovely outdoors, so I found this hike from Refinery 29 with brunch spots (food is always a good enticer!) and Lingon agreed to go with me!  I chose a day that sky was supposed to be clear and sunny, and clear and sunny it was!  Freezing cold, but walking briskly helped a little bit.

We set off from SF, drove about an hour, parked at the Pan Toll Ranger Station for $8, and then started our hike downhill to Stinson Beach.  I started my Runkeeper a bit late, but here is the tracking stats down.  Really was not too bad.  The ground was for the most part firm and not dusty, a few puddles and muddy spots, and there was maybe a 15-min section of perpetual stairs.

The views that greeted us were amazing.  We could see downtown San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge peeking out from in between two hills.  The water was shimmering as the sun rose higher and higher in the sky.  Oh, what a sight!  I love the bay area!

We also encountered this cool tree which Lingon pointed out to me, as often I'm so focused on the destination that I forget to look at nature around me.

When we reached the town, we went to Parkside Cafe for brunch.  The website recommended the shrimp scramble and raisin French toast, so I got those both.  Lingon got the fish tacos.  The food had a Mexican flair to it, but everything was very fresh and delicious.  I highly recommend Parkside Cafe.  There is also a take out pizza place, and a bakery with all kinds of breads and pastries, if you do not want to sit down and have a full meal.

Then, we made out way to the beach.  I don't like beaches, but I felt I had to just go for a walk.  Of course sand got in my shoes boohoo, but I took it like a big person and shook it out.

The hike back was a bit more tiring as expected, but it was nice to get warm again.

Loved this trail, if you like hiking and want something not too strenuous, this is for you!

The Progress, SF

The sequel to State Bird Provisions, The Progress, opened a few weeks ago.  A friend of mine, Zito, who I got a few difficult reservations for before, asked me if I could get him a reservation at The Progress, thinking I had some special way to get reservations.  Really, my method is kind of lame.  I don't own bots who can read those security words or numbers, nor do I have any chums in the restaurant industry who can get me any reservation I want.  I do have a few people I could contact that could possibly help, but I've never really tried those leads before.  Anyhow, when I read about The Progress opening, I pretty much kept myself on the OpenTable reservation site, and kept refreshing, and VOILA!  I scored myself a couple of reservations (at bad times though), one which I gave away, and one which I decided to treat myself to a meal I thought I probably would not enjoy that much.  Now, I don't want to say I went to dine there thinking the food would suck - it is more of a I-went-to-State-Bird-twice-and-tried-to-like-it-but-didn't-so-I-think-the-style-is-not-for-me thing.

Anyway here goes.

The restaurant was behind a nondescript door that really could have been an office or something, but the street number corresponded with the address, so in we went.  I liked the design of the restaurant itself, tolerably well spaced, out, somewhat modern with a warehouse feel, with two upstairs dining areas.  We were brought to one of them.

The menu was family style, and the price for 6 items was $65/person.  Any additional item would be $10/person.  I'm a fan of family style dining, but the fact was you could not get more dishes and smaller quantities of food per person, which I'm quite into.  But fine.  Here were our choices, and we actually got both the desserts not checked off in the menu which was quite nice (they allow you to split only the dessert order).  The menu had a lot of words we did not understand.  For example, ridgeback.  So our friend Googled it, and came up with pictures of dogs.  Hmm.  We later found out it was prawns, and it became one of our selection.  Now, I had been intrigued by pig fries, from all the reviews on Yelp, thinking it was fries fried in pig fat, which really should have sounded disgusting but did not.  Later found out it was ears and cartilage and all that stuff fried to a crisp, and glad the table passed on that.

So, we got our food.  The lighting was poor, and for some reason I decided to photograph the squab with flash, so that one seems to stand out.  Well, to sum it up, many of the flavours seemed foreign, if I had to name it I would say Scandinavian.  Earlier this year, I went to Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and I can safely say I did not love the Scandinavian flavours of Iceland nor Norway all that much.  The Swedish Swedish (yes I meant to write it twice - Lingon likes to correct my writing for typos and misspellings and grammatical errors) food tasted better, though it was like reindeer meat which tasted like pork in cream sauce (how can that taste wrong?!) and salmon cake (layers of smoked salmon which was not foul like some other Scandinavian smoked salmon I have tasted, shrimp, etc.) which tasted like flavours of home that I'm familiar with.  Well, I did not like this meal.

It is not my style to be super descriptive about what I ate, and I think that's rather boring and takes a long time, so instead I decide to bore you with why I write what I write.  Lol.  Anyway, the squab tasted the best of everything, and I also enjoyed the super rich chocolate ice cream, particularly for the olive oil flavour, but everything else was...

(Thanks for the photo, Zito.)

Having said that, most of the table liked the meal better than I did.  The feedback was they would not make a special trip there, but if someone said he/she wanted to visit, they would go along and dine there again.  So, like I said, it probably is just me.  No thanks, Progress, or State Bird, our love affair is over.

São Paulo, Brazil

As the Brazil trip progressed, my sickness just felt like it became worse, running from place to place, being on planes, the constant walking.  But finally we were at the last destination, São Paulo.

We were on an evening flight and thus had a late check in to the Fasano, a super swanky hotel that comes with a hefty price tag, in the equally chic Jardins neighbourhood.  When we got to the room, we were brilliantly surprised - I had called earlier that day to try to make a birthday restaurant reservation for Lingon (yes, it was his big 3-oh), and I suppose they noted that down and gave us a cake and candles all around the room!  :-)  I suppose I would not have expected anything less for a restaurant of that calibre, but since we did not expect, we were surprised and super happy!  We were hungry and quickly devoured that cake, which had chocolate and some kind of nuts, and was SUPER tasty!  BTW, the Fasano also gives one free 15 minute foot massage to their guests per stay!  Extra perks!!

Someone we knew recommended Mori sushi restaurant, and since we did not know better, off we went.  Mori sushi had decently good reviews on TripAdvisor, and was in fact ranked around #80 at the time we visited it.  The recommender, let's call him Dan, said it was all-you-can-eat, which we don't normally like since the quality is usually poorer and in general we don't try to eat all we can, but since it was Lingon's birthday and it came from what we thought was a trusted source and it was a block or so from the hotel, off to Mori we went.  Mori does not take reservations, and when we arrived around 8 ish we were told we had a 45 min wait.  We knew that ahead of time, so fine.  Luckily we had that delish Fasano chocolate cake or we may have eaten each others' ears off.  When we finally got seated and got our food, we found it to be very mediocre.  I won't waste my time going into detail.  Here are photos.  Don't go to Mori.  Unless you are one who likes lots of food, like our friend Dan is.

The next day Lingon had to go to work, so I decided to go to a Patisserie Douce France near where he was to be dropped off, tolerably rated on TripAdvisor at #600.  He had recommended that before.  I got a quiche (which was not warmed up) to go, service was very slow, and it really just tasted very so so.  Again, don't go.

I walked to the cathedral, but got some bad news along the way, and did not enjoy the market experience, partly because of the bad news clouding over my head, and partly because objectively the cathedral was not all too wonderful.

For a super late lunch (in preparation for our super late dinner), I went to Santo Grao, a well-reviewed TripAdvisor cafe that supposedly had good coffee but of course I did not get the coffee.  I was craving beef and got the picadinho peri-peri, which is traditional Brazilian diced beef.  The beef was over cooked and very dry.  As to the coffee, I cannot comment.

Then, we went to dinner with some of Lingon's friends, at a Fasano-owned restaurant called Trattoria, which served either mainly or all pasta (I forgot a picture of the menu!!).  Everything was REALLY good and I think each pasta was decently priced at maybe R$70 or R$90.  I got the carbonara, Lingon got the seafood pasta, and his friend got some pork thing.  All.  So.  Good.  This is a BUY!  What really irritated me was that I liked my pasta so much that I saved half of it to go, but the server insisted he had no box.  On hindsight I should have asked for my food in foil, but at the time I was thrown so off guard and flustered that I did not think.  So off into the trash my food went.  :'(  Next time I'll bring my own damned box.  And I'm not kidding.

The next day, I had lunch at Pão de Queijo, supposedly a chain.  I chose it because of the healthy crowd in the tiny area they occupied.  I have no idea what I got, except they seemed like all deep fried food, felt really disgustingly unhealthy, and were super delicious.  Expect a heart attack.

I took another long walk, to the market this time, since Lingon told me I should get out for some (polluted) air.  The market was big, but I was not impressed, nor hungry.  I found a busy cafe that I decided to photograph in case anyone wants some idea of what was inside.


Lingon ended work early, so we took a trip to the best ice cream place, Bacio di Latte, in São Paulo, recommended by both a friend and numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 on TripAdvisor (sort of, there were multiple chains and I feel like 5 of them took up the top 10 spots on TripAdvisor).  I mean, just looking on the outside, it oozed chic.  The ice cream flavours were plentiful.  There were rather good looking people inside.  Oh, and the ice cream was great too.  Lol.  Lingon got a coffee which came with a free tiny scoop of ice cream which I also got to devour.  Nom nom.

Our last meal of the day, and the trip, we went to Maremonti, recommended by the Lonely Planet for their Napoli pizzas certified by the Pizzaiuoli Napoletani (based in Naples).  Honestly, they could have made up any certification name, and we probably would have still gone there anyway (suckers!) since Lingon is a pizza monster.  We got the margarita and anchovy pizzas, and both were divine.  We even had a bit left for take out, and it came in a very sturdy amazing box.  Highly recommend if you want pizza in São Paulo!

Overall, I found São Paulo to be a more of an eating place, mainly with good Italian food than Brazilian.  A bit disappointing for me since I would have preferred to eat good authentic Brazilian food in Brazil, but I was rather impressed by the Italian restaurants.  The Jardins neighbourhood was nice, probably a good place to live, but as a tourist I found little to do.

Belo Horizonte, Brazil

A super tardy write up of my day in Belo Horizonte, but better late than never.  According to Wikipedia, it is the 6th largest city in Brazil.  I was not too impressed - that is part of tagging along on a business trip - being stuck in business-like cities, but here were a few things I did around the city.

I have a thing for markets, so the first thing I did in the morning was to go to the mercado central.  The market had all kinds of things, including pets.  Yes, pets.  Smelly dogs, cats, rabbits, birds... As I walked (sprinted) through the pet section, I tried to hold my breath.  Towards the end of the pet section were some food vendors, and I really have no idea how they expected to sell anything that one would put in one's mouth being in such a smelly section of the market.

Anyway, I was told that the Minas Gerais region, where Belo Horizonte is in, is famous for food, especially pão de queijo.  I hunted for the least expensive one, and found a rather crowded cafe (which indicates quality, right?), and ordered mine.  Not bad, kind of like a popover, but smaller and more cheesy.

Next stop, I went to the parque municipal.  A brief respite from the sun and thousand cars, it had row boats, tennis courts and a small theme park including bumper cars, which made me think back to my childhood where bumper cars were all the ish.  <3

About a 15-20 min walk or so away, I found Praça da Liberdade - another park, much much smaller, but prettier.

I was told the main shopping area was called Savassi.  I walked around there and found nothing remarkable, but I wonder if maybe I missed the main streets.  They had a building called Shopping 5th Avenue that was rather drab.  I found a restaurant called Olegario and had lunch there, simply because it was a nice looking place where someone probably spoke some kind of English.  I ordered the salmon off the daily special menu, got an inedible salad as part of the meal (the dressing tasted like fermented vinegar if such a thing exists?), and treated myself to a petit gateau which Edward's work contact raved about and confirmed it was but a molten chocolate cake with ice cream.  So so meal.

So to sum it up, I did not fall in love with Belo Horizonte.  It was not the worst city to be in, but certainly would not be recommending anyone to go there!

Brasilia, Brazil

I took a day trip to Brasilia to follow Lingon on his work trip.  Brasilia is the country's capital, and was a planned city built to resemble an airplane, or hummingbird (according to Lonely Planet), or mockingjay (just kidding, I made this up since the Hunger Games is so popular now).  The divider that splits the city has what I thought would be a beautiful lush promenade to walk down to see the architectural works of the architect who designed this city, Oscar Neimeyer.  Unfortunately I was lacking a window seat, so I did not get a chance to get a bird's eye view of the city.

When we drove into the city, I felt that something was off about the town.  Everything was planned, everything looked the same - all the government buildings were carbon copies or each other, the blocks of shopping/restaurants looked exactly the same, so weird.  The promenade that I had imagined was a long grassy patch, but that's all it was - not many trees to beautify the walk or shade pedestrians.  And then there were the random quirky works of Neimeyer that were a stark contrast to the symmetry of the rest of the city.

Palácio da Alvorada where the president resides

Dragões da Independência (dragons of the independence), guarding the gates.  At first I was looking for dragon statues but when I saw the crowd of Guatemalan tourists surrounding these folks, I realised I was mistaken.

Congress

Cathedral

Bells next to the cathedral

Museum

Supreme Court with the statue of justice

I rose to international fame when these Guatemalan tourists at the presidential palace asked to take a photo with me.  Guess they have not seen many chinas in their lives.  Ha!

For lunch, I went to a churrascaria chain called Porcao, recommended by a few people.  I was told that the cut of choice is picanha, which I completely agreed with - it was tender but also had a delicious beefy flavour.  Yum.  The meal set me back R$107, after some kind of discount which I'm sure I had not deserved, with no drinks or dessert.  Oh how I love beef.

Pão de queijo (from the Minas Gerais region where Brasilia is NOT part of), picanha (belly good!), chicken hearts

Lastly, I went to Café Daniel Briand since it was highly recommended on TripAdvisor for pastries.  I ordered a 4 items, of which I ate one, the opera cake, and it was not bad.  Someone there actually spoke French, and I was glad for that since I could actually understand what I was ordering!

Brasilia is a weird city.  I'm so thankful I had a car that day to pass the time in, but there isn't much to do there really, except spend 20 mins driving down that street and taking photos of the eclectic buildings.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

A recent trip to Rio de Janeiro had us staying at the Fasano Hotel at Ipanema Beach.  A very strange hotel designed by Philippe Starck, many of the furnishings were rather strange and curvy.  A chair in the common area of our hotel room floor called Big Mama had the shape of a curvaceous woman.  Mirrors in the room looked Dali-esque - droopy and teary.  Our room seemed very small and basic and for the grand price of US$370, which did not included internet nor breakfast, seemed rather lame.  Plus they could not get their shit together and our actual check-in was 30 mins later than the stipulated check-in time.  If you have not already realized, I was not a big fan of the hotel, thus no photos.

The first order of the day was to visit Christ the Redeemer, or Cristo Redentor.  Lingon had been to Rio twice before and never visited, and that to me is a travesty.  I believe there are two ways of getting there, though I'm not sure which is the preferred method.  One is to find some transportation part way up Corcovado mountain and take a minivan up (my guidebook said R$25 but seems like prices have gone up since).  The second way, which is the one we did, was to get to Corcovado station and take a tram up for R$62 in the high season.  The tram leaves every 20-30 minutes according to the signs posted.  You can get timed tram tickets in advance here.  The ride up takes about 30 mins, and is rather slow and painful.  When we reached the top tram station, we had to climb a bunch of stairs, and as we made the approach we saw the statue of Christ the Redeemer.  Looming high in the sky, arms outstretched, what a spectacle!  It is one of those things that one has to see in real life to really appreciate the sheer size and beauty.  The 360 degree view of the city was amazing too.

We had our dinner at the hotel restaurant, Fasano Al Mare, which again to me for the high prices (about R$100+ per entree, I actually do not remember) was nothing too special.  The food quality was good, but very normal.  Again, no pictures.

The next day, Lingon went for meetings, and I set off for a walk to see Pão de Açúcar, or Sugarloaf Mountain, the other vantage point that one would visit when in Rio.  Along the way, I passed Ipanema Beach and Copacabana Beach  (including the famed Copacabana Hotel).  Since it was a Monday, the beach was not as crowded as it had been the day before, but still had a substantial amount of people.  I had expected the Copacabana Hotel to look old and run down, but when I caught sight of it for the first time, I was wowed.  The exterior was stark white, sign of good up-keeping in a rather dirty city.  The pool scene looked great.  I would love to stay there if there is a next time.

After a long-ish walk, I finally reached the base of the cable car station of Sugarloaf Mountain.  I think there are a couple of ways to get up.  One is to rock climb.  Forget about it, that was not for me.  So I shelled out my R$62 and bought a cable car ticket.  There are actually 2 cable lines.  The one from the base gets you up to the Urca hill, and then u take a walk around and reach the second line, and then get up to Sugarloaf Mountain.  Great views.

That night Lingon was tired, so we skipped dinner.  I had wanted to go to the House of Feijoada for the national Brazilian dish of Feijoada, but I think secretly Edward did not want to eat this dish so he just slept through dinner instead.  Free diet.

This ends our short trip to Rio.

Bird Land, Tokyo

Metroman found this one-star Michelin star yakitori restaurant called Bird Land - apparently the only such restaurant with a star - and asked us for dinner.  It turns out the restaurant is in the same train station place as the famed sushi joint, Jiro, that we had visited a few days earlier.

The restaurant is composed of a giant bar area, with a few small tables on the back side.  Since we were a group of 5, we were seated at one of the tables.

Each person had to choose from a set menu, either costing ¥6,300 or ¥8,400.  Lingon and I chose the smaller menu (some of the dishes were different too), while the rest seemed hungry and chose the larger menu.

The menu was as follows:
Today's assorted appetizers
Chicken liver pate (which we substituted and got some peppers)
Today's 8 kinds of yakitori (fillet on wasabi, liver, meatball, leg meat with green onion, others)
Sansho-yaki (teriyaki chicken with Japanese spice)
Oyako-don (chicken and egg on rice)

I did some reading before the meal and read in this blog that the chickens were "free-range Okukuji shamo (gamecocks), reared in the mountains of northwest Ibaraki prefecture".  I never thought I would be able to differentiate different kinds of chicken meat, but indeed the meat of our chicken was very sweet and tender.  We were also given a few free dishes like the grilled cheese because the other members of our party ordered the larger meal and I think they marginally messed up on the order.  Well good for us!

We had a couple of raw chicken yakitori pieces.  The only other time I had that was at a yakitori restaurant, Ippuku, in Berkeley, and I was not fond of the experience.  This time, for whatever reason, either the dish tasted better or my taste buds had evolved, the raw chicken was actually very delicious!  A scientist friend of ours said that one out of four people would get sick from raw chicken (sadly she was the one to get sick), and on our second experience trying raw chicken Lingon and I did not get sick, so I have therefore concluded our stomach is resistant to whatever bacteria is present in raw chicken!

During our meal, we saw rather funny activities like Jiro coming out to take photos with guests, Jiro taking off his shirt, closing the restaurant up and then walking briskly with a spring in his step out of the train station, and Wada-san, the chef of Bird Land, taking a breather outside the restaurant and swinging his imaginary golf clubs.

This was a cool experience, and was not all that pricey for a Michelin starred restaurant.  The chicken was really of very good quality, and I would definitely recommend for others to come check out the excellent yakitori of Wada-san!

Mon Cher Ton Ton (Teppanyaki), Tokyo

One of Lingon's work buddies who has lived in Tokyo for the past 20 years took us to Mon Cher Ton Ton, a teppanyaki place in Roppongi.  He said that back in the day, this was THE place to go for teppanyaki, and although many new yummy teppanyaki places have since opened up, he likes this place because it has an old school charm about it.

We ordered the "mon cher ton ton dinner" with kobe beef supplement for a little over ¥20,000.  The food came in multiple courses and was beautifully presented.  The beef, lobster and vegetables were cooked in front of us.  All the food was delicious.  I'm hungry thinking about it.

Otohshi, Carpaccio of Seasonal Fish, Teppan Grilled: Fresh Lobster, Top Sirloin Steak (Substituted with Kobe Beef) & Vegetable, String-Cut Vegetables Salad, Garlic Rice, Lobster Miso Soup & Pickles, Dessert, Coffee or Tea

Such a lovely meal.  Amazingly enough we did not smell when we left the restaurant.  What powerful vents they must have had!  I had a fabulous time though I'm not sure I would spend that kind of money on my own dime.

Donburiko, Tokyo

I had a sudden craving for oyako-don after seeing a poster with a giant oyako-don on it.  Oh the power of suggestion.  There is an area of Tokyo Station called Kitchen Street where Donburiko is, and at Kitchen Street there are many kinds of restaurants like tempura, sushi, etc.  I found Donburiko pretty easily, and it was the only one with a picture of oyakodon on its menu.

I went in and got seated at the counter and immediately ordered my oyako-don which arrived very quickly.  For those who are unfamiliar with oyako-don, it is a form of donburi which means rice bowl dish, so this one is pretty much a bowl of rice topped with egg, chicken and some sauce.  The name literally means parent-and-child donburi because of the ingredients.  The bowl came with a small bowl of soup and some pickled vegetables.

The meal was fast and delicious, and I think quite healthy too, for ¥1,100.  I would definitely go back again.  Such a convenient location with yummy food.