Boulevard heaven

Boulevard

It isn't a hamburger, it is an experience. Go to Boulevard, sit at the counter, have the best burger on a brioche bun of your life.

Enough said. http://www.boulevardrestaurant.com/main.html

Blue Bottle Breakfast

poached eggs

capuccino

I think to myself: how can they improve on coffee? And they do.

The Blue Bottle Coffee company is all over San Francisco, but the shop at 66 Mint Plaza is fun and modern and overlooks the plaza and the back of the mint. This is what Blue Bottle has to say about this location: http://www.bluebottlecoffee.net/

66 Mint Street, San Francisco M-F 7-7, Saturday 8-6, Sunday 8-4. We opened our Mint Plaza café in January of 2008, in the rear of the elegant 1912 Provident Loan Building in downtown San Francisco. In stark contrast to the old limestone-clad Mint just across the street, we’ve loaded this shop with our prettiest, most delicate gear: Perhaps the most compelling, is the five-light siphon bar, manufactured by the Lucky i. Cremas company of Japan – the first of its kind in the United States. Here we feature a menu of three single origin coffees which changes weekly. Next is the Kyoto-style iced-coffee apparatus, which produces a delicate, refined, fragrant cold brewed coffee. Last but not least is the one-group San Marco lever machine. Clad in glorious rounded copper, it was our first machine. We think was built in the late 1970s. Sometimes it breaks, and sometimes it breaks our hearts. An aura of doomed romance, frustration, and beauty surrounds it, which makes us think of youthful love. The selection of single origin coffees changes weekly. At the other end of the shop (and spectrum) is a thoroughly modern four-group La Marzocco GB5, with which we make our17 ft. Ceiling espresso blend. We grind and brew drip coffee individually on a drip bar of our own design. Desserts are made at the Blue Bottle Kitchen in Oakland. We have a small selection of high quality coffee makers, grinders and espresso machines for sale.

What a way to drink your coffee. You will not be disappointed.

San Francisco Ferry Building Farmer's market

pork sandwich at farmer's market rotisserie

oysters at ferry building fish market

Ok, it's Saturday morning. How to begin? Walk to the ferry building, get a cup of blue bottle coffee, and wander through the stalls, past the Massa Almonds, past Sciabia olive oil, past Ghandi to the very back to PRIMAVERA and have their chiliquilles. I think that is how you spell it. The BEST scrambled eggs with avocado, salsa, chips. I ate it so fast I did not get a photo.
Watch the sailboats drift back and forth under the bay bridge. Admire how the locals  juggle their purchases with trolleys that have multiple spots for hanging bags on either side. (BRING BAGS) listen to jazz floating out of the saxophone nearby.
Then gather yourself up to buy little gems lettuce, the sweetest carrots on earth, lavender, apples, goat cheese, tomatoes, the flowers! eggs, chicken, fresh fish, it's all there.
If you need kitchen equipment, go to Sur La Table, if you need books, the Book Stall is there, if you need a taste of France, there is Miette for darling pastries. Of course there is Heath Ceramics, and Cowgirl Creamery, and Hog Island Oyster Co., and the Wine Merchant, and the Slanted Door, and a google of other things you need to experience....the drummer outside on the plaza, the stalls selling jewelry and funky hats across the street, and of course the trolley home with all the heavy bags. 

Food - San Francisco

Eating in San Francisco is a joy. From the Saturday morning Ferry Building farmer's market to all the speciality stores such as Bi-Rite Market in the Mission, which fortunately is in the same block as Tartine Bakery where people line up around the corner 45 minutes before the country bread comes out of the ovens at 5 p.m.

Lunch at 54 Mint where the best Italian food is also reasonably priced, I mean $18.00 for a two course lunch of cream of broccoli soup & the ribbons pictured below. 

Heaven, absolute heaven.

Ferry Building

Sciabia Olive Oil

Tartine Country Bread

54 Mint Fettucine with mushrooms

Birthday Cake

It's a good one.
I'm inspired by Taste Spotting on the web. Gosh, there is so much to eat in the world. As you know, restaurant Angelini, on Beverly, a favorite. Marino on Melrose for very good food plus tablecloths and big leather booths to sit in and relax. Mario at the helm. Always good to be in a place where the lights are on, somebody's home and they take good care of you.
Ina Garten's coconut cake with cream cheese frosting.

Art - the movies - Potiche

Latest movie?       Potiche with Catherine      Deneuve. 

Latest book?         Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann.

Latest  art trip?     LACMA yesterday for Art & Music with Philip Glass. 

Latest play?       33 Variations with Jane Fonda 

Catherine Deneuve stars in Potiche at LACMA and here she is doing the Q & A afterwards. Lovely at 69, she is all woman. During the course of the movie her hairstyle changes as her character moves from "trophy wife" to Umbrella factory boss. From teased bubble to bouncy flip. Funny. Laughed all the way through. 

Books: Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann

There is a driving beat inside the sentences of this work that pull me forward, make me look, increase anticipation and joy and breathtaking wonder, again, the sentences, like feet across the tightrope, one sentence at a time. 
           Read this book and say Oh - MY - God. 




"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again."
                                                                         - William Faulkner

Art - Theatre

I love the way John Lithgow began his recent one man show at the Taper. He looked at the audience and said what are you all here for? All you eager faces out there? What are you doing here? You want to be told a story. And he went on to tell how his favorite P. G. Wodehouse story revived his ancient father when he went back to help the old man who had become so ill. He began to read him his favorite story and then he acted out all the characters for us, there on the stage.
Touching. Immediate. Bigger than life, yet simple and real.
Such good theatre happening in LA now. Last weekend it was Jane Fonda in 33 Variations. Wow, the precision of the acting, the inventive set and the words that flowed through me and made me think, which is what the theatre is for..thinking, feeling, all the colors of life

Food as ART, Campanile Restaurant

 Campanile, still as good as it gets.
Located in a sunlit Italian-style building built for Charlie Chaplin in the 1920's, it is a Hollywood landmark. Chef Mark Peel is right there watching over things, creating remarkable and innovative dishes. The lights are on and he is home.
From the bibb lettuce salad to the prime rib, which of course I cannot eat because the cholesterol is waaaaaay out there, so I eat the sauteed trenne with bolognese sauce & peacock kale & shaved parmesan. A bottle of red wine, of course. Dessert? Flourless chocolate cake, can't eat that either, but I do, I have to live. Ok, so when I die and go to the heaven that is MY heaven, I want to go to Claridge's, and eat the food that is from Campanile......AND Gino, and sleep on Anichini linens, and read the great fiction of the world, beginning with Proust, makes sense, I'm in bed, and it's MY heaven. Turner Classic Movies has to be on the flat screen with Bette Davis or Humphrey Bogart which I watch in my pegnoir set. Ah, heaven.

my LA

Here we are, driving the streets, with funny little things that appear. Cash cows, tiny cars, and the rhythm of a city that constantly moves east to west, north to south, and the tires are blowing and the hum of the motors is going, and whatever car you are driving is being torn up by the pot holes on Wilshire Blvd., constantly. Ever think about the dirt that accumulates in your house from all these cars?

Still....I love LA.