Mitchell's Ice Cream, San Francisco

For true, straightforward and fresh fruit flavored ice creams, there is no better place than Mitchell's in San Francisco. I've found myself driving all the way from San Jose to San Francisco at 10 in the night just to have an ice cream here. Apart from the standard flavors like Mango, New York Cherry, Rum 'n' Raisin, Lichee, etc. they have a bunch of unique tropical fruit flavors some of which you might never have heard of - Ube, Langka, Makapuno, Buko, Avocado, Halo Halo etc. My favorites are New York Cherry and Rum 'n' Raisin. If you like Cinnamon in your Chocolate ice cream, Mexican Chocolate is the flavor you want. Anytime during the day or night, be prepared to pick a number and wait anywhere from 10 - 40 minutes to grab your ice cream. Ice creams are astonishingly cheap and you can pay by cash only.

House of Nanking, San Francisco

After struggling for 20 minutes to find parking near Cha Cha Cha (Tapas joint) on Haight street on May 20th 2007, I finally gave up and landed up at one of my favourite restaurants in San Francisco - House of Nanking. This Zagat rated, hole-in-the-wall joint has several awards posted on its walls in terms of decor. If you google this place, you'll find several mixed reviews and some people call it "House of same sauce" but whenever I've gone here, I've always loved the unique taste of the food. Do not make the mistake of ordering yourself as the menu is too confusing and irrelevant. The owner-chef, Peter Fang is more than happy to order for you, all you do is tell him your choice of meats. Three dishes I can vouch for are Onion cakes, Sesame chicken and Spicy catfish. The wait is usually long at lunch and dinner hours especially on weekends. Don't get influenced by the negative reviews you see online, go there and try it out for yourself.

Bay to Breakers + Legion of Honor + no parking :( + House of Nanking + Golden Gate Bridge + Hagiwara Japanese Tea Garden + Mitchell's Ice Cream = A great day in San Francisco !!

Parsi Cuisine

Over the years, several people have asked me what Parsi cuisine is like and I've never had a very good answer. I recently came across this Parsi Cuisine page on Wikipedia that gives an overview of the cuisine - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsi_cuisine

Birthday Clebration & Mi Pueblo Taqueria, San Jose

I end up celebrating two birthday's every year - one is based on the Parsi Calendar and the other one, the Gregorian. While I think the Gregorian is a more accurate calendar, there is no harm in having two birthday celebrations ;-). The real point behind this blog entry however, is to talk about the cake we got for my first birthday celebration this year which happened to fall on 6th May. Thanks to my friend Prashant's colleagues at HP, we were introduced to Mi Pueblo Taqueria in San Jose in 2003 and since then, we've been going to this place for fulfilling our birthday cake needs. Mi Pueblo is a grocery store and Taqueria and they have a good variety of cakes in their store. The "Tres Leches" cakes are to die for !! They have a good collection of breads, cakes and their Flan is absolutely amazing. And the prices out here are unbelievable - the chocolate cake you see in this blog costs $8 and serves about 15 people. We'd also got a full sheet of Tres Leches for a party at work which cost about $75 and got over within minutes with people taking 3 - 4 helpings. If you're throwing a party, this is one place you want to get your cakes from. I also happen to have tasted their Burritos and Tacos and it was a revelation ! I did not know a Burrito could taste that good after having tried the burritos at Baja Fresh and Chipotle. The Mi Pueblo I frequent is located at the intersection of Julian and 5th Street in San Jose.

I would be doing an injustice to another very good bakery if I don't mention it here. Aki's Bakery in San Jose is another wonderful place to get your cakes. This bakery was run by a Japanese family for a few decades and has very recently changed management. I've had their fruit cakes - Mango Delight, Guava Delight and Strawberry Delight. Their Guava Delight has a very unique flavor and although I'm not a big fan of Guavas, I loved it.

So try these Bakeries out and post your comments here...

Koh Samui and the Monkey, San Francisco

My parents are visiting me for a month and so the next few weeks are going to be pretty hectic when it comes to eating out. We have a long list of restaurants that we weren't able to visit the last time they were in the Bay Area in 2005. So we started off with going to "Koh Samui and the Monkey" (http://www.kohsamuiandthemonkey.com) in San Francisco. I've been going to this place every few months and have found their food to be exceptional every single time. Their Thai cuisine has some unique flavors that I haven't found in other Thai restaurants. The decor of this place is very nice, good and friendly service and to top that off, they have an extensive Sake menu!! There is street parking available, but make sure that there is no game at AT&T park.

My rating: ****1/2
Highly recommended dishes:
- Bags of gold
- Satay Chicken
- Choo Chee prawns
- Steamed Salmon in Penang Curry sauce
- Green Curry chicken

If you're a veggie, there's no need to despair, they have a good veggie menu as well.

Couple of other Thai places I rate the same as Koh Samui and the Monkey:
- Bangkok 16 (http://www.bangkok16sf.com)
- Blue Mango (http://www.bluemangocuisine.com)

Kickoff !!!

Welcome to my blog. As my first foray into the blogging arena, I decided to start a blog on the eating out scene in the San Francisco Bay Area. For the last few years I've been maintaining a list of good Bay Area restaurants in my home directory at work. It has become customary (or so I've been told,) for people in my Business Unit at Cisco Systems to look for recommendations on restaurants in my home directory. But for the benefit of the few unfortunate ones who no longer have access to this list (one of whom suggested I publish it on the net), I decided to start this blog and publish my list here. I intend to write about my experiences at different restaurants and from time to time provide recommendations on restaurants, pubs , wine and beer.

Standard disclaimers apply... :)