sunday morning at porto's bakery.

a little sunday morning instagramming.

apple galette

red velvet cupcakes and flan

guava and cream cheese pastries

 parfait

a damn fine cheese roll. 

medianoche sandwiches for breakfast.

porto's bakery

various locations, including burbank

on the web

a walk around hayes valley.

just some photos from one of my favourite neighbourhoods in the city

bell'occhio, a curious shop filled with curiosities. there was a lady dressed like an elegant acorn in there, and i bought a hazelnut with a stiletto switchblade in it. the elegant acorn lady gave me moss from yosemite.

MAC Modern Appealing Clothing. fearless, gorgeous clothing and every day objects as art. loooooooove this shop, even though i can barely afford things in here. however, i have been shopping here since high school and still own every single item i've bought from here.

check out this martin margiela peacock feather cape. i mean really.

chester, the nicest dog i met in san francisco. it was lovely to meet you, chester.

the fatted calf charcuterie. a beautiful curated collection of cured and uncured meats.

true sake, the only sake shop in america.

bell'occhio

10 brady street,
san francisco, ca
415.864.4048.

MAC modern appealing clothing
387 grove street
san francisco, ca 94102-4418
415.863.3011.

the fatted calf charcuterie
320 fell street
san francisco, ca
415.400.5614.

true sake
560 hayes street
san francisco, ca 94102-4214
415.355.9555.

dinner at incanto, in which i finally meet....

(x-posted at my guammy blog)

one of my favourite blogs is ono kine grindz, which is based out of honolulu, but its author, reid, is a globetrotting kind of guy. we had made plans throughout the years to meet up in various corners of the globe, but finally managed to meet up for dinner at incanto, during a quickie trip to san francisco that i took with lovely miss yoony from another great food blog, immaeatchu.

incanto is the sort of restaurant that i wish was in every town--smartly casual and inviting, intimate and serious about its food. the menu is a market-dependent, with a rustic italian flare, and changes every day. chef chris cosentino is partial to offal and cuts of meat that most people would discard, but he manages to make the most of some of the most unusual parts.

even though we had to cancel our reservations and suddenly re-make them (hello highway 101! you have a lot to answer for!), the staff was gracious and accommodating, and we were seated in a cosy back room with only six tables (of which four were filled with other parties taking photos of all their food as well. and everyone was eavesdropping but pretending to ignore each other. ha. love this town.).

some of the things we ate:

porchetta di testa, a pig's head salami made by marinating a de-boned head in rosemary in garlic, then braised for an eternity. if you really need to know, there's a video here, but it gets a little graphic.

boccalone iberico di bellota lardo, nakita pear & mint: boccalone is the salumeria run by incanto's chef chris cosentino, and this is his version of cured acorn-fed spanish backfat. yes, lard. delicate, flavour-flavy fat. the sweet asian pear and sharp, herby mint was a wonderful complement.

foie gras, trotters & citron marmellata: yeah, i'm not gonna lie. this was as rich--even richer, actually--than the backfat, as there was nothing that really cut through the sumptuousness of liver, and slowly braised pig's feet. i'm suddenly reminded of that soap opera "the bold and the beautiful". because it was.

pulpo inzimino, cavolo nero & aioli: baby squid cooked in its ink, with black kale and aioli. although more delicate than the pig's trotters, this one also had bold, pronounced flavours with the sweet, tender flesh of the squid playing nicely with the mild bitterness of the vegetable and the unctuous aioli.

beef heart, sweetbreads, spinach & potato: i don't think i've ever had beef heart intentionally, nor sweetbreads, but this was a wonderful introduction. honestly, though, i don't remember their flavour apart from the rich jus, but the beef heart was tender yet with a slight chewiness, and the sweetbreads--that's thymus or pancreas to you--were slightly springy and fork tender.

for dessert we had goat cheese stuffed figs, honey & almonds and a darned tasty sticky toffee pudding & spice ice cream.

i wish i had something profound to say about it, but i don't. it is, however, what i consider to be the epitome of a great restaurant. and the food, the company, the surroundings, our crazy neighbour tables and conversation made for a great night out. mahalo, reid and yoony! hope we can do this again.

incanto
1550 church street
san francisco ca 94131
415.641.4500 ‎

trippin'!

yoony and i took a quick trip up to san francisco relatively recently...probably spent more time on the road than in the city, so yay for that, interstate highway and byway system. you own us.

my favourite place to stay in SF is hotel tomo. it's small, quirky, quiet, and if there's a big stonking earthquake, i feel like i have a slightly-more-than-infinitesimally small chance of surviving than if i was in a bigger hotel. i could be wrong, but i like being deluded like that.

tomo is in japantown, which may have changed since i was in high school, but doesn't really feel like it. it feels like a sleepy, comfortable pocket of the city with cobblestone streets and pedestrian walkways, stone courtyards and indoor bridges. it's not particularly noted for its culinary fare (hello benihana!), but it has some great bakeries and decent comfort foodie cafés that sometimes i would rather visit than whatever is culinary en vogue.

caramimi urged me to stop by at benkyo-do, a small diner and sweets shop directly across from tomo. check out the swanky website, which is lovely, but doesn't really does not convey the vibe of this little shop at all. it looks like it hasn't changed since....the seventies, at least, the sixties is not a stretch at all--but it is charming, tidy and light-filled. one half of the shop is a diner counter with a couple of tables and possibly half a dozen things on the menu board, and the other half is a sweets and snacks-filled counter with senbei, packaged sweets, and trays of freshly made mochi and manju. mochi is glutinous sweet rice steamed and pounded into a paste then molded into bite-sized treats that are sometimes filled with fruit or bean paste. manju are other sweet treats that are filled with bean paste, but made from a variety of different flours, grains, shapes and techniques. it's a sweet sweet shop, but very, very quirky, which of course, i like.

man, i want to tell you the quirky stories, i really do, but i feel like i might be banned from the shop if i do. so, let's just say if you go, you might walk out with a story of your own, along with some of the most tender, tastiest, freshest mochi and manju i've had. the age donut with red bean paste, dorayaki pancake with whole red beans, habutai white steamed mochi with red bean paste are very good, but my new favourite has to be the blueberry mochi, filled with teeny, tiny blueberries in a not-too-sweet goo that complements the glutinous rice nicely.

the mochi and manju are made fresh every day they are open (closed sundays), but often sell out way before the shop's 5pm closing time. take a moment to stop by.

benkyo-do
1747 buchanan street
japantown
san francisco 94115
415.922.1244

the don draper float

the don draper ice cream float: one scoop of don draper-flavoured ice cream--vanilla, bourbon, caramel and smoke--floated in boylan bottleworks creme soda. from the lake street creamery truck at the santa anita race track food truck festival.

at first it was like licking the inside of don draper's mouth after a hard day at the office and a liquid lunch--sweet and enticing, with a little bit of booze and ashtray for some dirty intrigue. but then it got a little intense and overwhelming and i began to regret having sucked him in. although he was the one who was kicked to the curb, i was the one who made the walk of shame after that rendezvous.

contents of my fridge.

what's in yours?

chung king debris.

it's not as spicy as the photo would suggest. also, possibly not as interesting in its pre-digested state. i do, however, highly recommend the eels with brown peppercorns. deelish.


chung king
1000 s san gabriel blvd
san gabriel 91776
626.286.0298

belle + sebastian forever.

it was literally a dark and stormy night. lightning was in the distance, and rain pouring sobering buckets on a drunken euphoria of the thought of belle + sebastian playing at hollywood forever cemetery, after a screening of "trainspotting." really? did i want to be doing this?

however, an $8 tarp from target, a long underused anorak (hello my boyish days!), and the luck o' the scottish (snort) got us to the graveyard in the nick of time, parking right in front, and prime seating for both the screening and the band.

miraculously, it was clear and mostly dry in the cemetery itself. the rains kept away the crowds and we got prime seating--better than an cinespia outing--and bundled up with a blanket and because--"picnicking is encouraged during the screening"--some provisions. now the thought of dinner during "trainspotting" seemed sort of unlikely to me, unless it included smack and lucozade, but we made due with a bottle of wine and a lot of chocolate and cheese. with the brisk winds and the wet chill in the air it was almost perfect scottish weather, in an almost perfect scottish surrounding, albeit with big palm trees and police helicopters buzzing overhead. seriously, though, if you ever get the chance, choose life, choose a career, choose a family, choose a big fucking television, choose to see "trainspotting" should it ever be screened in a celebrity cemetery because it is the perfect non-squalid surrounding for that film. i've probably seen it a hundred times, but not in almost a decade, and the film held up better than i would have ever expected.

and then to belle & sebastian. i thought that the show at the hollywood bowl was phenomenal, but this was something else in another league of awesome. intimate and engaging, casual, relaxed yet energizing, and with probably the best sound and sight lines of any concert i have attended. i know i've said it before but this was magic, pure magic. belle & sebastian bring it every time. magicians, musicians, morticians, storytellers, storm quellers, graveyard dwellers....

more photos here.


hollywood forever cemetery
6000 santa monica boulevard, between gower and van ness
323.243.2366.

special delivery

it may not be the most glamorous job, but delivering ice cream on one of the hottest days in los angeles might be the best.

the inevitable jitlada post, probably *not* the one you want to read.

yeah. i knew i'd get around to it. i haven't been to jitlada in maybe six years, and i remember liking it but not loving it. it was quite possibly before the current owners took over and transformed it into the internet-loved-and-hyped, southern thai cuisine palace that it is today. i hhhhhhhhhhhate hype but if a family-run business deserves it, then kudos.

i went on a saturday at lunchtime. jitlada is in a small mini-mall with an even smaller parking lot. saturday at 11.30 am still meant that there were several cars double parked in an already full lot , but there was a decent amount of parking on sunset blvd, albeit with meters. the place , however, was empty. almost. our party of six walked in and was met by two older gentlemen, one who greeted me in thai (?) and i think said "hello again." again? either i have a doppelganger, or someone remembered me from half a decade ago (i'm going with doppelganger). neither actually helped us to a table, but one of the handful of servers ushered us to a table in the back of a honey wood paneled, wood furniture filled room. two other tables were filled--one was a large group of buddhist monks, and the other a smaller table of young thai women in white, who were not eating. it soon became clear that they weren't there for the food, but to pray with the monks, who started their prayers soon after we sat down. lulling, mesmerizing. a real honour; a good sign.

the menu is massive, more type than photos, with a somewhat confusing numbering system--you will find several numbers repeated and they aren't in any particular order. there is a "regular" or "front" menu, and then two densely packed back pages with southern thai specialties. our nice waitress was very patient and amusingly (to me, anyway) so not thai. she did well with us jumping around the menu, and only needing the slightest of clarifications with our requests. she did not, however, ask us about our heat level tolerance, and i forgot to tell her. i actually found almost everything to be at a high, but acceptable level for the most part. can't say the same for the rest of the table (sorry). i did not read any reviews or order suggestions beforehand, mainly because i forgot, but then again, i don't really listen to anyone anyway. however, if you are interested, there are numerous reviews and suggestions under the glass at every table, and on the walls.

the service was good, not particularly speedy, but not slow. dishes tended to come out one at a time, rather than together. we started with soup from the southern thai menu in the back, no. 89 cucumber clear soup. it was exactly that, a clear soup with slices of cucumber, ground chicken, and cilantro, flavoured with ginger or galangal and lemon grass. no spiciness, and not overwhelming in flavour, but a nice way to whet the palate. simple, homey. one of my favourites of the meal. there was pad thai, which was okay. i'm not a fan, and i am especially not a fan of ones that come in a sallow sweet orange sauce, so allow me to ignore it. the other starch was spicy brown rice (no. 126 in the front menu), which i also ignored. i like fried rice, but not as a starch to a meal, and not as a side component a meal, but as a one-course dish. i did try a bit of this was good as such--chewy, not too oily and all the flavours one would hope to find in a fried rice, along with their signature heat. it would have been interesting to try this with traditional red rice, but i think the brown rice provides a better texture.

the water crest (kang kong or water convolvus) in a light lemon sauce (no. 9 in southern menu) was very good--crunchy, sweet, weedy. the sauce nothing more than the liquid from the crest from cooking, and a light lacing of lemon. despite the presence of several small dried thai chilis, there wasn't any heat to this as well. we also had chinese broccoli (kailan or gailan) prepared in a similar manner with cashews added on top. i found this to be slightly overcooked, but still tasty.

an apparently vaunted dish is the fried morning glory salad with shrimp (no. 91 in southern menu). i don't remember eating this. i don't even remember ordering this, or it even being on the table. maybe someone ate it all, it was so good. i should point out that there aren't that many vegetable dishes on the menu, and there are listings for both water crest and morning glory dishes. however, both signify the same vegetable, kang kong or water convolvus, or hollow vegetable.

crabmeat, pumpkin (kabocha squash), and long beans in a dry southern curry sounded better on paper than in execution. the crab meat was okay--restaurant service-quality canned blue crab perhaps--but still sweet, the kabocha and long beans cooked just almost to the edge of overdone. i believe you have a choice of curries for this, and the southern curry overwhelmed the flavour of the crab and pumpkin. this is a lovely idea, but pick a different curry.

kaeng kóp sôm tháwn, frog legs and santol fruit in curry (also no. 9 in the southern menu. ha! so be careful!) . now this is something i would order, did order. a coconut creamy, spicy yellow curry with a generous portion of frogs' legs and santol, a tropical fruit that is related to mangosteen. i was disappointed to find that the santol fruit used was the red variety, and not the velvety yellow variety i'm used to eating on guam and in the philippines. the difference is that the red variety has brown flesh and a mostly sour taste like a tamarind, whilst the yellow variety is white fleshed and has a more sweet-sour taste like its cousin mangosteen. i think the yellow variety would offer a more interesting contrast of flavours, but i liked the plummy-ness of the fruit in this. the frog legs were somewhat overcooked and not the best quality i've had, but yes, you can tell it doesn't taste just like chicken and thank goodness for that. the joint cuts left brittle shards of bone throughout the dish that were a slight nuisance, though.

not the most exciting of dishes, but i really enjoyed the relative simplicity of the fried red snapper filets with a cucumber, tomato and cilantro salad and sweet and sour dressing. everything was well balanced, with a lot of crispy textures playing against the moist flesh and soft tomato and the not overpowering sweet and sour dressing enhancing the vegetal elements as well as the delicate fish.

i don't remember exactly which dish this is, but i don't think it was on the southern thai side of the menu. it is a whole sea bass, fried, then smothered in what is generally known as a jungle curry, but i think is described as "wild curry" in jitlada's menu. i really loved the sauce on this--it's hardcore bitter, spicy, and tough--it really tastes like someone just went hacking through a thai jungle with a machete, picked up the detritus along the way and chucked it into a cauldron to simmer into semi-submission. i did have issues with the sea bass, however. we checked the market price on it, and this dish came out to almost $40 for the one fish, to which we consented; however, i seriously doubt it topped the scales at more than one pound, pound and a quarter, maybe. i was expecting something more substantial--not monster, but i found the size of the fish for the price to be unacceptable.

despite the issues with the seafood, i did enjoy the meal. i'm not entirely sure i would order any of the same dishes again, especially with so much to explore in the massive menu. maybe the water crest in lemon sauce, especially since there aren't very many straight veggie dishes on the menu. i'm not particularly excited about the menu's southern thai cuisine slant, like many people seem to be; it doesn't seem to be too far from what i can get in other places in los angeles, and it is definitely what i can find here in guam, philippines and most of asia. however, i do acknowledge that the chefs and cooks of jitlada do what they do well. i like the space--it's intimate without being too small, homey but actually one of the nicer decorated thai restaurants i've visited in thai town. the service is somewhat perplexing as it seems that the less help they have on hand, the better the service seems to be. everyone seemed quite pleasant, and even though i'm pretty sure it was different management the last time i was in there many years ago, there was a familiarity about them and possibly about me that made me feel quite comfortable in the space. i would definitely go back on a weekend lunch if it means so few people. it won't be my first or second choice, but definitely an option every now and again.

jitlada
5233 west sunset boulevard
hollywood 90027
323.667.9809.

thursday night market at yamashiro's.

i brought the wrong camera lens for the market, so there aren't any food shots for you (besides the gorgeous stone fruit. so good.) . but here's what you need to know: a few flower and produce vendors occupy a short row, but the rest is food, baked goods, bulgarini gelato, and liquor. yeeeeeah. a farmer's market on the grounds of a restaurant with a full liquor license means you can bring the family, do some shopping, eat some tasty grub, and wander around the gardens all whilst sipping a beer or quaffing down one a bottle of wine. full on hipster scene poolside (! yes! a pool! with a dj!) which means some bikini-clad women in search of duck confit tacos mix in with children dancing to a live jazz band.

parking: you can get valet parking from the restaurant; if you tell them it's for the market, it's $4. don't forget to tell them it's for the market or you'll be charged $7! there's free(?) valet parking and free shuttle down the hill at the christian science church parking lot at la brea and franklin, too.

the main reason to go, though, is this:




from griffith park observatory to century city, you have a true panoramic view of los angeles. priceless, with parking.

yamashiro's garden market,
thursdays from 5pm to 9pm.
1999 north sycamore avenue,
hollywood.
323.466.5125‎.

the golden era of the silver screen

diversion.

my new favourite diversion is the flickr group, guess where LA. g'wan over to see if you can figure out where each photo was taken.