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!

Nopalito's

Saturday night, the bf, fambam and some family friends of the bf, and I all decided to head to Nopalito's for dinner.

Now Nopalito's is a self-described "sustainable organic Mexican kitchen" located in Inner Sunset. Obviously, I love Mexican food, and so I was excited to try this place that looked nicer than your average taqueria.

We began with an appetizer of Totopos con Chile, which was a classier version of nachos, minus the beans, guacamole, and jalapeños. I know that was a lot of minuses, but it was pretty good! The chips themselves were coated in some sort of spice, which meant that you didn't really want (or need) the jalapeños for the kick.

For the main course, the bf and I shared the Tacos Dorados de Papa (potato taquitos), Panucho de Pollo al Pibil (some sort of chicken on top of a crispy taco that was filled with a black bean mash, topped with cabbage and salsa), and this shrimp enchilada thing (which I couldn't find on the menu, which is why you get the description rather than the actual name of the dish). The potato taquitos were the best - the outside was perfectly crispy while the inside had the consistency of mashed potatoes.

I didn't like the other two dishes - the panucho had pulled chicken, which I tend to not like anyway, and not only that, the way the pulled chicken was marinated was not very yummy. As for the shrimp, it wasn't very flavorful, and the flavors didn't mesh together very well.

I do love Mexican food, but I did not love Nopalito's. And this may be because I don't like "high class" Mexican food. When I think of Mexican food, I think of taquerias, and my mind wants taqueria burritos and quesadilla, which Nopalito's was most definitely not. It might have just been an issue of reality not meeting expectations, because the expectations weren't reasonable. Regardless, I don't think I'll be coming here again. 

California Pizza Kitchen Dinner

So tonight, the bf and I ordered food from California Pizza Kitchen (duh, hence the title). We had been recommended the restaurant by both his parents and my dad, so we figured that pizza + beer + Mission Impossible 2 would be perfect for a Sunday night.

This first pizza was the Tostada Pizza - it was a thin crust pizza, covered in cheese, black beans, lettuce, sour cream, and some type of salsa. I love thin crust pizza and Mexican food, and this definitely combined the two well. There was a little too much lettuce on the pizza though, so next time I'll probably go a little bit lighter on spreading the lettuce out.  

This was the Spicy Chipotle Chicken pizza. It came with a lime crema sauce, corn salsa, chipotle chicken and poblano peppers. This was also good, but the chicken (which was covered in adobo sauce) was a little too sweet for my taste. 

This was definitely a fantastic meal though, and the sheer variety of pizza on the California Pizza Kitchen menu means that I'll definitely be coming back.