Review of Vicoletto

So tonight, the new grads of Airbnb all went out to dinner at a relatively nice place because it was San Francisco's Restaurant Week! We went to a place called Vicoletto in North Beach.

We all ordered the 3 course fixed price menu. The upper left corner is the appetizer, which was mozzarella burrata on top of arugula and tomatoes. It was really delicious burrata, although there was a little too much olive oil on the dish which made it feel greasy. The arugula also didn't taste great with the other two ingredients. I would probably give it a 5/10.

The next course is in the upper right corner, and unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the dish. Fortunately, though, after a quick google search it looks as though this pasta isn't on the normal menu. It was a vegetarian pasta, with ricotta cheese stuffed inside the little pasta balls. The sauce was creamy and a little nutty, but delicious.  8/10

Finally, the last (and biggest picture) is the chocolate lava cake and vanilla gelato. Hands down the best part of the meal. This lava cake was different in that rather than the lava being hidden inside the cake, you could actually see it from the top. So when you took your first bite, you got a little bit of lava with the cake, and you would see the lava gracefully falling over the side of the cake, just like an actual volcano. 9/10

I'm unsure if I would come back to this place during not SF Restaurant Week, because it was a little pricey, but it's definitely worth a visit. 

Rainbow Grocery Experience

First off, apologies of the lack of posting, things have been crazy for the past six months.

Anyway, the other day on my wonderfully curated Facebook feed (no really, 90% of the ads that I see are actually relevant to my interests) I saw an ad for an article regarding how an NYU student was able to eliminate most of her waste. Clicking through on the article, there was a video of her describing her process and showing how she was able to fit all the waste that she had generated over the past two years in one mason jar. Which is amazing. The amount of garbage I generate on a daily basis could not fit into a mason jar. And so I decided to read some of her tips on how to cut down on waste.

One thing she mentioned was trying to purchase things in bulk (pasta, lentils, etc) because a lot of stores that sell things in bulk allow you to bring your own containers, which helps cut down on all of the plastic packaging. I decided to try and find a store in San Francisco that would allow for this, and I stumbled upon Rainbow Grocery (http://www.rainbow.coop/). I visited the store on Saturday, and was blown away with the number of things that you could buy in bulk. Everything from lentils to pasta to all different types of oil to soap and lotion. It was amazing. Granted, I didn't have a lot of containers to put things in, and I was afraid that the process by which I was filling my containers up was wrong (according to their video, you're supposed to weight the empty container and then put a sticker on it with the weight of the empty container and the unique number of the product), so I only filled up two containers (one with oil and the other with soap), but I was impressed with the amount of products available for bulk shopping. The plastic bags that you could use if you didn't have your own containers were compostable though, which made me feel a lot better about using them.

Price wise, this was fairly comparable to TJs and Whole Foods (365 Brand), and bulk shopping is supposed to be cheaper (if you're actually buying in bulk, which I was not), which is the icing on top.

10/10 I would visit this place again!