Trip to Oakland / San Francisco

Jen and I took a trip to Oakland last weekend. Jen grew up in Oakland went to school for architecture at UC Berkeley, just north of Oakland. As cool as New York is, I can see why Jen is ready to move back to San Francisco - it's beautiful there! We started with Oakland/Berkeley, SF the next day, then to Sacramento to visit Jen's brother Lun.

Luckily, Jen and I travel well together because we like to plan our trips around food. We landed in Oakland late Thursday night, and had a midnight dinner at some hole-in-the-wall "ABC" (American-born Chinese) restaurant. I had some weird spaghetti dish with tomato sauce, mushrooms, and a pork chop on top. We also had fried salt&pepper prawns.

Friday we ate a greasy American breakfast at Ole's Waffle Shop in Alameda. Not to worry... I found this pic on the web and didn't actually ingest that much butter. Not on that day, anyway.

There's a coffee chain called Peet's over there - the coffee is like flippin' motor oil! Really good motor oil.

After checking out Berkeley - including the UC campus and Berkeley Bowl - we had lunch at the Alice Waters'Chez Panisse! Jen had this incredible spaghetti with octopus appetizer. The rest of the food was just right - not too flashy - and the restaurant is cozy and just what you expect from relaxed California. Here's what we had:

Bob's butter lettuce salad with creme fraiche and herbs
Spaghetti with octopus, red wine, and garlic
Haddock and clam stew baked in the wood oven with sorrel and aioli
Grilled Laughing Stock Farm pork leg with winter squash and cavolo nero (kale)
* We had dessert at Masse's Pastries up the street

The rest of the trip was more eating:

Mexican at La Fonda
Dim Sum at Peony in Oakland
Ice Cream Sundae at Ghirardelli
Salt & pepper dungeness crab at R&G in SF
Pyramid Brewery in Sacramento

Check out photos on Flickr.