We spent the afternoon in San Francisco yesterday. Bill got his mom some McEvoy Ranch organic olive oil at the Ferry Building Marketplace on the SF waterfront. Walking to the building from the parking lot, we saw a new restaurant that I want to check out soon. It’s called La Mar Cebichería Peruana and it looks fantastic. It’s at Pier 1½ and has indoor and (heated) outdoor seating facing the bay. Put that on the bucket list.
I always enjoy going to the Ferry Building. It’s a little food-lover’s paradise where you can get anything from caviar to hamburgers, seasonal fruits to dry-aged beef, modern kitchen gadgets to antique cookery, and seemingly everything in between. While there we also poked around Sur La Table, the Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant, and a handful of specialty food shops.
Bill got a wild boar shoulder from the Golden Gate Meat Company. It was pricey, at $26.99 a pound, but we were curious about how it would taste slow-cooked, so he bit the bullet. After getting the meat, we crossed the street and went to Williams-Sonoma at Two Embarcadero. We walked out of there with a jar of yankee pot roast braising base, a teddy-bear-shaped cake pan, a baking rack, and stuff to decorate the bear cake with.
Before heading home we stopped at bacar for wine and snacks. Bill had read about this restaurant some time ago. It’s a sleek, modern space done in dark wood, brick, and earth-toned fabric. One entire wall visibly spans all three floors and is covered completely with shelves filled with wine. Service was friendly and efficient. I had hummus and flatbrad while Bill had angus beef sliders. With the food, we each got a flight of four pinot noirs - two ounces each of pinots from Australia, California, Oregon, and France. I wasn’t really impressed with any of the four, but I think Bill liked the one from California. On our way out we talked to the bald female hostess, who shattered the illusion a bit by telling us that all of the bottles in the “wine wall” were actually empty.
Next stop, K&L Wine Merchants at Mission Bay. I was tickled to see a lot of different wines from Argentina - you may or may not know that the country my current obsession - but disappoined to see that most of them were pricey. Having seen firsthand how affordable wine is in Buenos Aires, I get annoyed when I see California stores selling most bottles of malbec for over $30. Anyway, I found a $19 bottle of malbec from Mendoza (the Argentine Napa/Sonoma) so I grabbed that. Maybe we’ll have it with the wild boar roast.