Happy 2011!

How did things get so crazy?  I flew to San Francisco last night after only  4 days back in NYC and now here I am on another journey.  The flight was fine, but then I got here I had a bit of a meltdown:  Citibank's systems were down so my debit card was declined and then the Internet in my room went out and well after two hours of dealing with shit I finally crawled into the very comfortable bed in my very quiet room here at the Serrano Hotel and slept like a baby.

Today I had several ideas about what I wanted to do but the two at the top of my list were both closed (Bar Tartine and Kabuki Springs), which in the end was just fine.  I had a great wander around the Mission and a great lunch at Luna Park (more on that later).

From the Mission I went over to Castro Street where I saw the possibly NSFW window in someone's apartment.  It was actually several windows, but I thought I should just post the PG one.

Any year that starts with New Years in San Francisco has to be good. There is still more I want to write about Puerto Vallarta which I'm hopeful that I will get to in the next few days.... but San Francisco is so distracting! I'm off to Oakland tonight for the first time to explore the food scene a little bit (whatever is open!) and hopefully have pizza at Boot and Show Service.

Hope you all had a happy, safe, fun and delicious New Year!  Thanks again for reading Urbanfoodguy.  I have a feeling this is going to be the best year so far.

On The Road

Our friend Audrey took this picture just before she left this morning on her way back to LA via Boston.  I've also packed my bags and am heading off to San Francisco for my yearly pilgrimage to to this great food city (really I think the best food city in the world). 

Friday I have a lunch reservation at Chez Panisse and I am so excited!  Otherwise the theme of this trip is eating on the cheap!  I see a lot of market shopping, Chinatown exploration and Mission Mexican in my future.  Stay tuned.  All aboard!

San Francisco Here I Come!

It has been almost 23 years since I was last in San Francisco. I am beside myself with excitement, I leave tomorrow morning.

I have made 3 reservations at Chez Panisse for the cheaper more casual upstairs lunch. The last one I get to share with Neil.

Neil Joins me on Saturday, so for the first five days I am staying at the rather notorious Becks Motor Lodge which seems to perfectly fine to me. I'll up date you on that later.

When Neil arrives I move into his conference hotel Kimpton's Drake. Definitely a little more tony. Although I have to say that if you are looking for a cheap and cheerful holiday San Francisco hotels are very cheap compared to New York, with lots of fine places to stay in the $125 range. I think the Y here is more then that!

Our friend Kurt sent m some links to different markets that I plan to check out.

http://ecologycenter.org/bfm/ a list of the Berkley Farmer's markets

The Ferry Buildings market

And my favorite the new Castro Street market which has a weekly featured product, this week it's watermelon described as: Summer refreshment with it's own carrying case!

Too funny those gay people sure do have a sense of humor (wink wink).