Food, Love, Spirits, Cuisines and Movies (For Santhi, 1)

That was only a week ago. In Downtown SF.

Well i can talk about food in this country a lot. You know one thing, Shanti (let me spell your name that way, please). If you think in the USA, perhaps the first image or  idea that will come to your head is Gigant Cheesburgers and KFC and Starbucks. And of course, here they are, all of them. Don´t forget that Starbucks began in Seattle and you can find burgers all over the world (not only in the USA)

Just to remind it here is a pic. I think you know it:

This is Oakland (everytime i go there i love it more and more, jajajaja)

But, i can tell you pal´ that San Francisco, Berkeley and the Bay area in general is and incredible place for eating. As i always sayt to everyone you can have a continental breakfast, have lunch in a Thai style and go for dinner in the latest in japanese cuisine. By the way the best japanese in Berkeley is this:

oopppp. This is not, but this is a really special place. As you can see in the pic is a misture of the Iranian and Italian Cuisine. And i can assure you that that idea works. That is one of the ideas that difine SF, its diversity, the idea of a huge melting pot all around. Awesome. This place is awesome (if you want to take a look at its web site here it is:

http://www.i2squared.com/.

I´ll give you just a few main courses.
-I remember taking one day a LAMB SHANK. Pure fusion. Braised for 6 hours, served with pearl pasta, topped with artichoke hearts, saffron yellow split peas, tarragon, tomatoes and red wine sauce. And it was only 15 bucks (dollars in slang. #The explanation is bellow). But you have other things. E.g. for vegys.
-VEGAN/VEGETARIAN CABBAGE WRAPS. Another example of fusion cuisine. Fresh dill, tarragon, parsley, cumin, rice, cinnamon, wrapped in cabbage leaves, with a house-made tomato chili pepper sauce.
o this is amazing too
-ROASTED FISH IN PARCHMENT PAPER. Pan seared fresh catch of the day with small red potatoes, sundried tomatoes, nicoise olives, artichoke heart and a light chili cream sauce.

I remember tasting two good glass of wines there. Well, wine is really, really, really, really expensive. Prohibited, forbiden NO TRESPASSING AREA, and i´m not kidding. Just a glass of wine -a very normal- one is about 7 bucks- and a normal bottle of wine could be 35-40 bucks. You all know what i´m saying, don´t you????
But i remember tasting two good wines there. Red wine. Montepulciano d´Abruzzo Umani Ronchi, Tuscany. 8 bucks/31 bottle. And the second one was incredible: Shirah, Francis Ford Coppola (i love that type of grapes). And that name send me to San Francisco. To this place:

This is Francis Ford Coppola´s restaurant, in SF.

You (all of you) have to go there someday. If you love good wine, good italian food and of course his movies is completely mandatory. But if you are really hungry or you like to taste a good weird-busy-lively Chinese restaurant you only have to go to the opposite sidewalk and there is House of Nankin

I´ll continue this stories about food, movies, music, and love. Don´t worry, Shanti. This is only the beginning, my old chap (do you remember that old commercial on the TV? jajajajajaja.)



#. Buck. "As the preferred slang term for what Washington Irving called 'the almighty dollar,' buck in all likelihood sprang from buck skin or buck hide, a commodity of exchange, and metaphorically a loose measure of value, in Colonial trade with Native Americans. ('He has been robbed of the value of 300 Bucks, and you all know by whom', this 1748 quotation comes from the Ohio River Valley, and is cited in Mitford M. Mathews's A Dictionary of Americanisms.) The earliest undisputed example of buck in the precise sense of 'dollar' ('mulcted for the sum of twenty bucks') has a Sacramento provenance, and dates back only to Gold Rush times. Although the Forty-niners may well have popularized this new sense, traders at outposts east of the Continental Divide were probably already using {it;} the scanty written records of vernacular speech of the time preclude certainty. Unlisted in early slang dictionaries, buck seems not to have gained national popularity until the 1890s, a good example of the slow dissemination of slang in the days before radio, television, and the Internet.
Also from the mid nineteenth century comes sawbuck, a term synonymous with 'sawhorse,' whose connection with the meaning {'$10} bill' was provided by the Roman numeral X that used to appear on {$10} notes. The X apparently called to mind the crossed wooden supports of the sawyer's sawhorse, on which logs were cut with a bucksaw, no pun intended. These bills were sometimes also called just Xs before the Civil War, when a dollar was a dollar, a sawbuck had many times its 1990s purchasing power, and {$10} bills must have been a comparatively impressive sight."

PS. Of course the copyright is not mine, you can understand and forget my sin jajaja.