A Day of Food in SF

It’s been a while since I’ve done a non-fitness related post, so I thought I would share a day trip that I recently took to San Francisco. If anything, it was more like 3/4 of a day. We got there Thursday evening and left Friday before lunch. Wish we could have stayed longer…there’s so many good food places in SF. I was on a Yelp-bookmarking spree! There’s always next time, haha.

Anyway, for those of you who don’t know, I’m pretty local to SF…like 40 minutes away (when there’s no traffic). We definitely should have taken CalTrain. Leaving during rush hour on Thursday was not a good idea…and parking in SF is expensive and impossible (especially on those steep hills). We didn’t even end up using the car when we got there…we just Uber-ed everywhere. So…next time, CalTrain it is haha. It actually probably would have been faster considering all the traffic that we were facing on the way there.

I forgot to bring my camera….so these are all pictures from my phone. And the majority are of food (surprise, surprise).

We got to the hotel around 4:30pm. The room was super pretty, and the view from our room was amazing! The weather was absolutely perfect that day. We stopped by the hotel literally just to drop our stuff off. I had a list of bookmarked places that I wanted to try and we didn’t have that much time before dinner! First stop? Chinatown!

I haven’t been to Chinatown in ages! We went to try this boba place called Plentea. Honestly, the reviews on Yelp weren’t that great, but their cute jars caught my attention. Yes you can keep them if you want, but we didn’t want to haul it around with us the rest of the day so we just gave them back. I still don’t know how they have so many jars that they can afford to give every customer one…The drink itself was alright..nothing special. I got a Matcha Latte and it just tasted like milk…The boba wasn’t the best I’ve had either. It was a little too chewy and the texture didn’t feel very smooth. So…I probably wouldn’t recommend coming her, unless you’re on a mission to get one of these jars haha. I definitely should have opted for Boba Guys instead.

The second place in Chinatown that we tried was called Dragon Papa Dessert. They’re known for their “beard” candy. The texture is super interesting. The inside filling is made out of ground peanuts and it’s wrapped with this special sugar that has a string-like texture. It’s quite messy to eat, and the sugar strings end up sticking to your lips (hence why it’s called beard candy). It is tasty though! I’ve never heard of this candy before, but apparently it was traditionally served as a royal snack back in ancient China.

Dinner was the next stop! The restaurant is called Chapeau, and the food was amazing!!! I was stuffed at the end of the 3-course meal. I think you HAVE to get either a 3-course or a 4-course meal. They don’t price any of their items individually. I went with the 3 course: french onion soup, sea bass with oxtail, and a chocolate cake. Everything was delicious!! The french onion soup was probably the best I’ve ever had, and the sea bass was amazing as well. The oxtail wasn’t as tender as I was hoping for, but the mashed potatoes that came with the dish complemented it nicely! The molten chocolate cake at the end was made perfectly! The chocolate inside was just the right molten texture, and the flavors went so well with the rum ice cream.

And that pretty much wrapped up our night!

So…the next morning, I didn’t wake up early enough. We were supposed to head out to Mr. Holmes’ Bakehouse at like 8am but we didn’t leaven until 10. For those of you who haven’t heard of Mr. Holmes’, they specialize in cruffins, which are like croissant muffins, with a delicious filling inside. Their flavors change daily and they post all their flavors a week ahead of time on their Instagram. Anyway, this place has their marketing DOWN. They purposely make a very limited batch of cruffins. Literally JUST cruffins. Everything else they keep baking throughout the day. So, needless to say, after waiting 45 minutes in line, the cruffins were way sold out by the time I got to the front. But since I was already there, I decided to pick up some of their other pastries. You need to buy 6 to get a box, so I picked out 6 different pastries. The one that REALLY stood out to me was their jalapeno strawberry brioche, which is the one that I’m holding up in picture in the upper right. SO GOOD. Spice and sugar have never been blended so perfectly!! Definitely getting more of these next time I go back. And hopefully next time I’ll make it in time for the cruffins too.

More food from breakfast at the hotel…I feel like this post is getting super long, though, so I won’t elaborate, haha. The food from the hotel was ridiculously expensive but not good at all. I’ll leave it at that. I definitely recommend venturing out in SF for all meals as opposed to eating at the hotel. Brenda’s French Soul Food is next on my list (for brunch).

After breakfast/brunch we started heading back home. We stopped by San Mateo for ramen on the way back. IT WAS SO GOOD. I don’t know how I was able to finish everything…we were literally eating non-stop since morning. But man, this place was good. It’s called the Ramen Parlor, and I highly recommend checking it out! It’s different from most ramen places that I’ve tried, but I really liked the texture of the noodles, and I opted for a mild spice level, which actually packs quite a kick in the soup!

Thanks for reading! I realized when writing this post that all we did in SF was eat, haha. But we came across a couple of great food places, so it was worth it! 🙂

XOXO,