After eating our way through all of New York’s sweet treats, we spent a couple of days in San Fransisco before heading home. This was our first time visiting the harbourside city, home to the cable cars and Golden Gate Bridge.
We spent a couple of days here riding the cable cars, exploring the harbourside and sampling some of San Fran’s recommended eateries. Here are some snippets of what we ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner!
Everbowl
This was our favourite place to eat breakfast before a day of sightseeing. Everbowl is famous for its customisable acai bowls, where you can build your own bowl with as many toppings as you like. You pay by the size of the bowl rather than by weight, so go crazy with the toppings! There are also predesigned bowls available on the menu.
When we went there were five different base flavours to choose from: classic acai, pink pitaya (dragonfruit), coco loco, blue algae and matcha. These were pre-prepared and scooped out like ice cream to form the base of the bowl. It looks like the flavours have since changed since we last visited.
Choosing the toppings is the fun part. There are so many possibilities (the full list is here http://www.everbowl.com/menu-new)! My favourite combination was the acai base topped with soaked chia seeds, peanut butter, almond butter, crunchy granola, banana, strawberries, blueberries and kiwifruit, with a sprinkle of coconut, flaked almonds and cacao nibs on top.
The matcha base is also really yummy – it tastes like an icy matcha soft serve!
Website: http://www.everbowl.com/
Fog Harbor Fish House
The Fisherman’s Wharf area has a fun, holiday vibe and it’s a great place to spend half a day. There are lots of shops, attractions and restaurants lining the waterside, and it’s also home to the famous sea lions which sunbake on marina.
This is the place to go for a seafood feast. There was one thing we absolutely had to try while in San Fransisco: Dungeness crab. It’s a species of crab native to Canada and the west coast of the U.S. The Dungeness crab season typically runs through winter and spring, and we were fortunate enough to arrive at the peak of the harvest.
We ate at Fog Harbor Fish House, a seafood restaurant perched up on the top level of the Pier 39 complex overlooking the water. It’s a great place to go for a romantic seafood date or special occasion.
The menu has just about every seafood dish you can imagine. There’s seafood cocktails, shellfish cooked in lots of different ways, oysters, fried and grilled fish, whole crabs, seafood pastas and seafood salads.
If you get too overwhelmed by the menu, you can do what we did and order the shellfish platter, which comes with half a crab, clams, prawns, mussels and fingerling potatoes, tumbled together and roasted with lots of garlic, butter and herbs. We added spaghetti to mop up all of the garlicky bits and seafood juices. This was the perfect way to enjoy the fresh, sweet seafood. You can bet we got right in there with our hands to tackle the crab. We ordered the platter for one, which was perfect for the two of us to share (as with many serving sizes we encountered in the U.S., this was a very generous portion for one).
The other thing we wanted to try was clam chowder served in a sourdough bread bowl. I love the theatricality of serving soup in a bread bowl – not only does it look great, but you also get the added joy of having lots of bread to dip into the soup! The clam chowder here is delicious. It’s a thick, creamy chowder speckled with lots of little sweet clams. There is a really wonderful seafood flavour to it. The sourdough bowl is the perfect accompaniment – it’s crusty and flavoursome and we can’t help but finish the whole thing.
Website: https://fogharbor.com/
Boudin Bakery
Boudin Bakery is an iconic bakery that is known for having some of the best sourdough in San Francisco. The original bakery is in Fisherman’s Wharf, but there are a few smaller shops dotted around the city. When we explored the flagship store, we couldn’t help but notice the scent of bread wafting through the shop.
I’d highly recommend trying the sourdough soup bowls here. Being the clam lovers we are, we couldn’t help but order the Clam Chowder. This chowder doesn’t quite have the depth of flavour as the one at Fog Harbor but it’s still tasty and filling. The bread is impeccable (I polished off the whole loaf).
Website: http://boudinbakery.com/home/
Ghiradelli Chocolate Company
This iconic chocolatier was founded in San Francisco in the 19th century. Ghiradelli Square in the Marina area is home to the original Ghiradelli Ice Cream and Chocolate Shop.
This is a great place for souvenir shopping, with a wide array of chocolate bars, mini chocolate squares and gift packs available at the chocolate shop. The café is the perfect place for an afternoon treat. There are lots of indulgent hot fudge sundaes on the menu, all made using melted Ghiradelli chocolate. If a full sized sundae isn’t up your alley, you could opt for one of their ice creams, shakes or a classic Ghiradelli hot chocolate.
We tried the salted caramel sundae with vanilla ice cream, warm caramel, hot fudge sauce and a sprinkle of salt. The hot fudge sauce is just divine – it’s thick and chocolatey and slowly melts into the cold ice cream. The sea salt helps balance the sweetness of the caramel sauce. It was tricky to try to get all of the layers together in one mouthful! The square of Ghiradelli chocolate on top is an added bonus. It’s a super decadent dessert which we shared between two – we were definitely in a sugar coma after devouring it!
Website: https://www.ghirardelli.com/
Udon Mugizo
The udon is made fresh in-house and served in a variety of ways at this quaint restaurant in the Japan Center Mall.
We ate here for dinner one night to satisfy our noodle cravings. There are so many different udon dishes to choose from. There’s hot udon, cold udon, nabeyaki (noodle soup served in an earthenware pot) and a collection of signature udons that boast ingredients like cream sauce and kobe beef. If you’re after something a little more, there’s also tempura and mini udon and rice bowl sets.
I love this hot-pot style udon soup. It’s filled with sweet kobe beef slices, enoki mushrooms, fish cake and a soft boiled egg. The dashi broth seems simple but is full of flavour. The noodles have a great springy texture and bite. This is the perfect heart-warming meal.
The Tempura Udon comes with prawn, eggplant, sweet potato, pumpkin and broccoli tempura. The tempura is delicious and has a light but firm batter.
Website: https://www.mugizo-us.com/
Flour + Water
There is no shortage of Italian restaurants in San Francisco. The puffy crust Neopolitan-style pizzas and creative pastas drew me to Flour + Water.
The restaurant is a warm, relaxed place to dine and the menu changes seasonally. I heard that you often have to wait to get a seat at the bar, but we planned ahead and made a reservation for an early dinner.
We ordered this salad after seeing it on a neighbouring table. It’s refreshing but hearty and has a great balance of salty, bitter and sweet flavours.
The bottom of this pizza is a little on the burnt side, but the crust is nice and fluffy. The mushrooms are hearty and I like the freshness of the shallots and cavolo nero. The only thing that we aren’t too sure about is the pecorino, which is quite chunky and a little too strong for our liking.
This is pasta dish absolutely delicious. The tomato ragu is laden with small pieces of octopus so that the texture is almost like that of a bolognese sauce. The sauce itself has the warmth of chilli and a lovely seafood flavour. The al dente buactini is the perfect vehicle for the sugo. Yum.
This is a decadent take on a chocolate pudding. The budino is deliciously rich and has the texture of a dense chocolate mousse. The airy coffee cream helps offset the richness of the chocolate, although there isn’t quite enough of it to last until the bottom of the ramekin. It’s a great way to end our meal.
Website: https://flourandwater.com/
Read more about what we ate on our U.S. trip below!
Maddie Loves Food 