This isn’t a particularly good photo so it certainly won’t support the high rating I’d give our dinner at the bar at the Bonny Doon vineyard’s cellar door in Santa Cruz. When we were having coffee at Verve Coffee Roasters I overhead a couple of locals talking about how great the restaurant was with a new chef and that they had a very cool community table idea. A bit of quick Googling we found they did a couple of sittings each evening, being Saturday we weren’t sure of our chances but as it was just out of town on the drive back to San Francisco we thought we’d call in hoping to be in time for the early sitting so we could get on the road for the 1.5 hour drive back.

When we got there the restaurant was fully booked but the greeter lady said we were welcome to do a tasting at the bar and try something from the limited bar menu – just a few items from the full menu. We looked at the menu and it might’ve seem limited to ordinary folk but for me it had the only couple of things on it I’d want anyway – pizza and potatoes.

Plus we love sitting at the bar. We got up on the stools and had a very knowledgeable chap run us through a wine tasting and bring us a selection of dishes from the menu. Roasted fingerling potatoes & aoili, some kind of speck, cheese & onion pizza and green salad with crumbled hazel nuts. Also I got to drink something non-alcoholic from the vineyard which gives them a huge thumbs up – they had some recently harvested grape juice – delicious!

Bonny Doon Vineyard, 321 Ingalls Street, Santa Cruz

Dan had to work today so we had a domestic day – got some washing done in the giant washer in the garage, took the dog for a walk and took a drive to Berkeley to try out a cafe called Local 123 that Bev & Dan like. These long summer days in California mean perfect bbq’ing weather – am getting rather addicted to sweet corn off Bev’s grill!

After our delicious coffee at Blue Bottle Ferry and meeting we had another meeting cancelled on us so we had the whole day to ourselves so decided to use the time to explore a bit more of the area south of Market Street and head over to Ritual Coffee which meant going on the BART.

SoMA is a little bit like the Auckland viaduct area perhaps – modern mid-rise buildings, most of them apartments with office space in re-fitted warehouses. Lots of tech companies in that area too – Yammer, Twitter, Adobe … It seems quite spread out in terms of living there – again like the Viaduct – park your car in the basement and drive to the supermarket or main shopping town and we didn’t see any good coffee anywhere – well, except for The Creamery on 4th that we already went to. Quite nice tree-lined wide paved streets.

We caught the BART over to The Mission area to go to Ritual Coffee and that was a whole other world. Shouty people hanging around the station exit, dirty streets and lots of run down shops with crammed neon signs for electronics, fix-its, massage, shipping and fruit. We’re told there are lots of great restaurants in the area but I didn’t feel all that comfortable there.

However we did find 2 of my favourite things – something orange …

… and a cat (snugged in a shop window of junk – fan belts, electric oven elements, dead insects and newspapers)

Back in town we wandered around Bloomingdales a bit and went on an errand for our Short Dark Friend and got some fruit and yogurt for lunch and by now I was craving non-restaurant food and didn’t need any more pastry!!

Then it was on the BART and back out to the ‘burbs to Bev and Dan’s place for 3 days. So excited to have Chinese in a box for dinner! Our first failed attempt was in New York when our order came in round polystyrene dishes so after everyone else had taken the fried rice they needed I ate it right out of the box. Just like on telly 🙂 And it was good Chinese too – the man delivered it right to the door in a white plastic bag with red characters on the front.

We usually avoid things that are too touristy when visiting a new city but we were feeling a bit disoriented here so decided to go on a hop-on-hop-off bus tour. Plus I had the brainwave that it would be a perfect mode of transport for a meeting we had in the Presidio – we’d been wondering how to get across the city and as far as I could tell the bus would take us right to the bottom of the hill. It did!

After a speed-breakfast at Little Bird 2 blocks up from our hotel we got on the bus at Union Square and settled in for a chilly ride around the harbour past the Ferry Building and Fisherman’s Wharf where tourists were already lining up for crab and gumbo and other fishy feeds. Our bus had hard plastic seats so we slid from side to side and bounced into mid-air as the driver barrelled through pot-holes as he did a lot (and later we discovered he couldn’t avoid as the roads in California are crap!) I had planned ahead and took a hat which I was rather chuffed about however when I caught the reflection of the bus in windows as we drove past it looked like a bus with a bright orange traffic cone on top!

The Presidio was rather affluent, hilly and beautiful and we went into salubrious Lucas Arts offices for our meeting with views of the harbour, Palace of Fine Arts and a little bit of the bridge. We chatted Xero for a while feeling quite important 🙂

Favourite stop on the tour was the Big Orange Bridge obviously. It was great to see it again and we were pretty lucky given there’d been rain the day before – our driver told us that 80% of the time he takes people over there it’s covered in fog!

We wandered up and down the main street in Haight Ashbury and had our worst coffee of the trip so far. That area isn’t really my kind of place, vintage shops, alternate people, beads and strange smells! The trip through the Golden Gate park afterwards was very cool though – much bigger than Central Park so that would be worth a long visit on foot some time.

Wandered around Union Square once back in town and begun to think that San Francisco is really an orange town – what with the Big Orange Bridge, the Orange Baseball Team (Giants) and the orange heart we found in Union Square.

Dinner was in the Ferry Building with our Xero investor contact – turned out he was back in town earlier than expected so suggested we meet him and his partner at a favourite spot of theirs – The Slanted Door. Vietnamese. That’s right people – I went foreign … well what are you supposed to do in that situation? Quick scout of the menu revealed a couple of vegetable things I’d cope with and luckily it was one of those places where you order a bunch of items and then everyone picks. So I feasted on vegetarian rolls (without mushrooms – and they were REALLY similar to the spring rolls we made), spinach, jasmine rice and asparagus (although the black wilty thing I took in one mouthful wasn’t blackened sage, it was some kind of mushroom so I had to gag quietly to myself and take a swing of cranberry juice!) It was a really trendy place, big bar and loads of waiting staff and we had a great time getting to know this couple as well.

Last night we went to Marlowe for dinner – was a bit of a blind date really. One of Xero’s investors who lives here wasn’t able to catch up with us due to being out of town so he introduced us to his good friends, one an ex-Kiwi, over email. They emailed us and suggested early drinks and dinner at Marlowe.

It was a lovely rustic dining room in the bottom of a brick warehouse-type building – dark wooden chairs and rustic wooden tables – some long shared tables, a high table with stools and a bar. I’d already checked out their website and menu and was pretty sure that Anna in the couple we were meeting owned the restaurant – turned out she did! She’s an ex-Kiwi, opening her 3rd San Francisco restaurant shortly so we sat at the high table drinking wine and eating the first of their specialties – fried Brussels sprout chips. I know … sounds gross right?! Actually surprisingly edible … the fleshy stalk bit tasted slightly vegetabley otherwise they were blacked and salty. The Mister was addicted – so Mother, there’s hope!!

We met a rather gregarious investor in the restaurant – a fairly rich man who owns planes and has been the CEO of various tech companies that I recognised – felt like rather a socialite! We were joined by James after a while, Anna’s husband, who works in tech so we chatted another hour or so before they had to take off and invited us to stay on without them and eat at the bar – we had a couple of their second specialty – the Marlowe Burger. OMG – really good! Not too big, nice moist meat, tasty sauce that wasn’t too spicy hot, and great fries with some skin still on. I couldn’t manage it all but we noticed a couple of plates going out with half burgers so maybe I could order that next time! Have to admit not quite as good as Shake Shack to my taste – just can’t go past the sweet potato buns and small meat patties.

They had one of those wall wine racks, wooden with slanted down holes in rows where normally wine bottles would slip in neck first – but they had lemons stuck in the holes – looked really cool but couldn’t get a photo without leaning all over people (we’re too new in town for that kind of behaviour) and it was quite dark. Only confusing part of the evening was when I went to the ‘Restrooms’ – I couldn’t figure out why the door was locked and huffed and puffed and shoved at it before realising it was locked … wondering why someone would lock the hall door through to the restrooms … later I discovered that was the bathroom, right there through that door, 1 toilet, so the’RestroomS’ sign was a bit misleading! When Craig asked for the check the maitre d’ told us that Anna had taken care of it – our mouths practically dropped open and we felt SUPER special – we’ve never met a restaurant owner who’s shouted us a meal at their restaurant – we’ve made it in this town!

We’ll definitely be back there when we’re in San Francisco again – somewhere great to take friends and family to feel like a local.

Marlowe, 330 Townsend Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 @marlowesf

Spent most of the morning at the bank and AT&T sorting out stuff we’d left running when we came back from New York. Using our Visa card here is still ‘out of state’ as far as the bank is concerned so we had to notify them we were here to avoid it being frozen! Bad news at AT&T – no pre-pay data but our existing US numbers that we’d put on a pre-pay card when we left New York still worked – bonus! Not that we using phones as phones much anymore! Thankfully the hotel has free wi-fi for the small pockets of time we’re there, and most cafes and malls seem to have it as well.

The weather began to clear and after a stop at Blue Bottle for our first City coffee (I’ve got a list and map of coffee stops I researched before we left!) we wandered up and down Market Street a bit, took a quick whirl around the Ferry Building, saw tourists waiting to get on a tram then wandered down South of Market Street where we were due to have early drinks and dinner at Marlowe as set up by a Xero acquaintance.

Saw this place ‘6 Flavor Coffee’ on our walk through SoMA – definitely not tempted to try that. Plus it reminded me of a drive through from the start of a bad teen flick.

San Francisco Day 1 – not really San Francisco but out in the East Bay in Pleasant Hill where Bev & Dan live. After a pretty turbulent flight neither of us got much sleep so hanging in the sun, going to the market and having an early dinner before early to bed should hopefully set us up for the week.

Bev & Dan’s new place is really nice – lovely sunny back yard, man shed and an awesome orange notice board that I wrote on immediately.

Off for some San Francisco exploring now that we’re installed in our hotel (that’s got orange ‘accents’ and a really scary magnifying mirror) – it’s raining today (Monday) but should be fine the rest of the week – first stop the bank and AT&T.

P.S. 2 great coffees so far from near where Bev & Dan live – Pacific Bay in Walnut Creek that we’ve visited before when we stayed with them – they have a ‘special’ order – 8oz lattes – staff well trained!