PacBell Park

[Suzanne F]

He Who Only Eats will be in San Francisco soon, and will be going to the game at PacBell on 8/19. He needs to know if there is anything decent to eat at the stadium, or if he should eat outside before or after the game. The only place a search here turned up was Acme Chophouse.

His favorite restaurants in SF are Zuni and Tadich Grill, but he hasn't been there is many years. And he gets bored with steak. But he's a good eater. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

One other thing: he'll be with a colleague whose idea of a good restaurant is The Olive Garden. But I don't care as much about him as I do about HWOE.

[Gary Soup]

21st Amendment is a brewpub with, ta-da, CUISINE. Its' a short walk from Pac Bell park. And if HWOE likes the beer, he can continue drinking it at the Park (they have it on tap).

Personally tested, personally approved. Trust me, I wouldn't jive a baseball fan who likes good food.

But he'd better be rooting for the home team!

21st Amendment

[Gary Soup]

PS: Tell him to leave room for the Gordon Biersch Garlic Fries at the Park, or he'll be sorry (they have a commanding presence).

[Stone]

Slanted Door is fairly close.

[tanabutler]

A man I'd trust with my very tongue and tastebuds, who lives in San Francisco, says this:

"Are you kidding? A dozen good restaurants within a short walk, some right

there. And the food concessions are varied and great at the park itself. I

love South Park Cafe, three blocks away.

"Then there's Momo's, the Paragon, Infusion. A few blocks away is Bacar, one of the coolest spots n town. Fringle. Bizou. Delancey Street. Towns End. The Slanted Door. Palomino. How's that?"

Let me say of this man that he has traveled the world, owned his own vineyards in Napa, and he cooks dinner every single night. And does all the shopping. He lives in San Francisco, and he knows good. I'm doing everything in my power to lure him here. So yes, technically these are second-hand recommendations but again—I consider him to have perfect taste.

I do hope that helps. I hope I'm going to use this information when I go to the Braves game in a couple of weeks.

[Stone]

Fringale is good. I've never been to Delancey Street, but it's an interesting place. It's run by a "shelter" that offers jobs and training to ex-cons. The food is supposed to be great, and it's a great cause. They also run a moving business, which I've used. Great people.

I'd skip Palomino-- nothing great for the price. A holdover from the Dot-Com bust. Bacar is a little stuffy, but supposed to be good.

[Suzanne F]

Thanks for the suggestions so far. Please don't stop.

For the record, when he was growing up, HWOE bore the stigma of being a Brooklyn kid who loved the Giants. And one of the things he plans to do when he gets to the park is kiss the feet of the statue of Willy Mays, his all-time hero.

[mcdowell]

Fringale is good.  I've never been to Delancey Street, but it's an interesting place.  It's run by a "shelter" that offers jobs and training to ex-cons.  The food is supposed to be great, and it's a great cause.

I lived directly across the street from Delancey Street for most of 2001 & ate at the restaurant weekly. Very good food, very well executed.

And, as Stone said, very good cause. These guys doing good work. It's not just ex-cons, but also ex-homeless & ex-druggies. High-end halfway house, and you'd never know it from the exceptional service.

[bloviatrix]

Thanks for the suggestions so far.  Please don't stop.

For the record, when he was growing up, HWOE bore the stigma of being a Brooklyn kid who loved the Giants.  And one of the things he plans to do when he gets to the park is kiss the feet of the statue of Willy Mays, his all-time hero.

One warning about the garlic fries at the ballpark - If HWOE has meetings the next day, he might want to stay away from them. They're mighty intense.

[Nancy Berry]

There's a very good bbq (yes, real bbq, not grilled stuff) place in the park downstairs behind the bleachers. I like their pulled pork plate or the smoked brisket plate.

I really like the Cha Cha Bowl (grilled chicken, black beans and rice with pineapple salsa & habanero hot sauce) at Orlando's near the bleachers and the Arcade.

I also like the chili dogs on the Promenade level (guilty pleasure) and the grilled sausages on sourdough rolls with sauerkraut or peppers and onions at the Say Hey grills.

The garlic fries' quality is variable -- make sure they're hot when you get them and eat them right away -- cold garlic fries are quite unappetizing.

Also, the warm glazed walnuts and almonds at stands in various places in the park are really good.

[eatmorepesto]

We ate at Delancey Street not too long ago, and if I hadn't known, I wouldn't have known. The food was good, and the service was very attentive.

[alanamoana]

LuLu is within walking distance of the park (on folsom between 4th and 5th? 3rd and 4th? been a while, i used to work there and next door at Azie, now in nyc), just got a fairly positive write up in the chronicle. tasty food and good wine list. not too expensive and fairly casual without being burgers and fries before the game kind of food.

yes on bizou

21st amendment has great burgurs and some good specials (good beer, shouldn't be ignored)

acme chop house was supposed to be getting help from tracy des jardin, so i'm not sure what that means, only that she has a good name in the bay area and it is connected to the ball park

[chasmartel]

Does anyone know anything about Maya on 2nd Street -- at Marathon Plaza? Maybe its because I just made reservations there for tomorrow night, but it seems conspicuously absent on this thread.

[alanamoana]

Does anyone know anything about Maya on 2nd Street -- at Marathon Plaza?  Maybe its because I just made reservations there for tomorrow night, but it seems conspicuously absent on this thread.

i've heard good and bad about maya, but that was a year or so ago when i was living there. i guess you'll have to report back to us after your dinner

[Suzanne F]

HWOE flies out this morning, your suggestions (all, not just the ones at the park) in his bag. Thanks, all.

[Suzanne F]

HWOE's Reports:

On Monday night's attempts to find dinner, on the order of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie:

Tried dragging Stu to Zuni.  Got a cab driver who said, “Zuni Café, great place,” & treated us as if we knew something, not just as tourists.  But when we got to Zuni, it was closed.  Cabbie asked if we’d let him suggest a place.  We said sure.  He said if you love Zuni, you’ll love Absinthe, in the gentrifying Hayes Valley (not far from Haight Ashbury, & north of Zuni’s neighborhood).  Cabbie said save room for desert at Citizen Cake down the street.  I said I’d heard of Citizen Cake (from you).  He dropped us across the street from Absinthe, so we couldn’t tell ‘til he was gone that it’s closed Monday.  A couple a blocks down was Citizen Cake—also closed Monday.  We ended up at an Italian place called Caffe Delle Stelle at 395 Hayes across from Absinthe.  Not bad, but I think I could have done better than the tonne special I ordered.  Didn’t expect something labeled as “Ahi” would be breaded.  But the olive tomato dressing on it was tasty.  I think Stu did better with a dinner salad (though it looked like he ate out the chicken & left the best parts).

And on Tuesday night:

Oh my, oh my!  What a game we went to tonight.  Barry Bonds hits a walk-off homer into McCovey Cove in the 10th!  Now I’ve seen exciting HRs live by the Godfather, the Father, & the Son.  We ended up getting great burgers & drinks at the 21st Amendment Brewpub before the game.  Great meat on the burger, topped with good cheddar, cooked onions, & a couple of very thick & meaty slabs of bacon.  Their Red Beer was really good & their IPA really great—especially if you like it bitter.  We did not order or eat any of the garlic fries at the ballpark, but we still tasted them all night.  They—or at least their smell—are ubiquitous at PacBell during a game.

Again, thanks to all for your suggestions.

[JFLinLA]

This week's LA Time Food Section covered this very topic. It's in the 8/20 digest here with a link to the full article.

[Suzanne F]

Here's the remainder HWOE's report on the remainder of his time. I should warn you, he knew I was going to post it here.

My set-aside time on Wednesday (8/21/03) for exploring a new thing or change or two in SF since I was last there about 10 yrs ago started out inauspiciously when I looked up the hours of the Museum of Modern Art to find out it is closed on Wednesdays.  That continued the theme from Monday night, when the first 3 restaurants my colleague & I tried to go to were closed.  But I found that an Asian Art & Culture Museum that had just opened last March was open.  As SF ought to have great Asian art collections, I headed to the Civic Center area to see the new museum.  On getting out of the Muni station, I saw the controversial main library building that opened a few years ago, so I checked it out.  Nice and open & airy for a visitor, with its central atrium & open stairway, but I can see what the critics said about all the space for air that leaves less space for books.  Good to hear noise and spirit from the kids’ floor.  I then went to the Asian Museum.  It’s clearly been designed into an old building—one in the same grand style, and probably from the same era, as the nearby City Hall and Opera House.  So I asked at the desk what the building used to be: “The Public Library,” was the reply.

The collection Asian is great.  Not just great “stuff” (which can wear me out quickly) covering thousands of years from all the disparate parts of Asia, but also sculptures & paintings from many eras & countries, well organized by various religious, political, & cultural themes.  Also a Japanese tea ceremony house, and a few modern era exhibits of paintings & sculptures providing interesting contrasts with the old stuff.  One piece from 2000 by a student of Noguchi was a boulder cut and shaped into an approximate hemisphere about 18” to 2’ in diameter, with the flat-looking side up, set on the floor in a contemplative alcove.  The top side is polished, and has a hole in middle with rocks and some leaves in inside.  Here’s the neat part of that piece: The boulder has a tiny pump hidden inside at the bottom to pump water ve-e-r-ry slo-o-owly through the hole in the middle up to the top, which isn’t really flat, but very slightly concave.  The water collects on the top surface until it fills it and stays there, until a little rim of liquid at the outside edge builds up just high enough to break the surface tension.  But the force of its breaking the tension is so slight that the water does not fall straight to the ground, but clings to the outside of the curved part of the boulder as it trickles to the bottom and collects to be pumped back up.  The whole effect is one of perfect equilibrium, with the whole piece looking perfectly still until you look carefully and see an ever-so-gentle ripple in the thin layer of water on top.  It’s okay to touch the boulder’s curved part to feel that it is continuously wet.  They also have a room where, among other things, working artists demonstrate their craft.  A woman was weaving Japanese silk when I passed through.  But the best part was undoubtedly the special exhibit of colorful Indonesian rod puppets, mostly from Java.  They have some of these upstairs in the permanent collection space, but they have a special show on the main floor of many more puppets going on now.  As the puppets have been made and used for hundreds of years—and still are today—it was neat to see the same mythical character as made a hundred or so years ago next to a modern version, which they had on display for several characters.  Not a huge difference over the years in the look of the puppets over the years (though construction methods may have changed) as they have kept traditional designs.  They had video of parts of performances done in front of gamelons in performance (you know I like gamelons), and conversations with puppeteers/performance leaders (who generally inherit the role from their fathers) and even with a youngster learning the art.

Finally, here’s what I expect you’re most interested in: My food on Wednesday.  I’ll skip the morning coffee & bagel.  After the museum, I was getting hungry but too early to start some later afternoon/early evening eating & drinking before catching my red-eye out of Oakland.  I saw a farmer’s market on United Nations Plaza in the civic center area.  Wandering around that made me even more hungry.  I couldn’t resist when I saw a stand full of small & medium sized beautiful red tomatoes.  Of course back in NY, the farmer’s market tomatoes have not been too good at $2.25/pound.  In this SF market, they were 50 CENTS/pound.  I gathered up about a half pound’s worth, gave the man a quarter, and that was my “late lunch”: a half-pound of the best tomatoes I’ve eaten this year.

Then I wandered into the nearby Hayes Valley district to see how that re-developing neighborhood was doing, and stake out my pre-airport eating.  Hayes Valley may have been gentrified—or perhaps is still gentrifying, but it seems to have worked out well.  I don’t know what the neighborhood looked like before.  But the coffee bars, restaurants, wine stores, antique shops, etc., that have settled there seem to fit nicely into older buildings so the place still feels like a San Francisco neighborhood, and not so much like a tourist trap.

I found the restaurant & bar Absinthe on Hayes & Gough, which our Monday night cab driver had recommended as a substitute when we found Zuni closed (but Absinthe was closed Monday, too).  It starts serving dinner at 5 PM, which would be great timing for me to catch my flight home.  It was still only about 3:45, so I went 2 blocks up Gough to Grove to Citizen Cake, and killed time admiring all the amazing-looking baked goods they had to offer.  They start serving dinner at 5:30, but you could café-sit there with a drink or coffee and bakery goodies throughout the afternoon.  So, I figured I’ll do dessert first.  Some of their most interesting items (e.g., a peach lemongrass tart) looked liked too much to have before a big dinner, even if I call it “dessert first.”  I settled on sampling their house-made ice cream and sorbet.  They sell “ice cream sandwiches,” which are any of their ice creams inside two of any of their drop (not filled) cookies.  I went for the vanilla bean ice cream between two ginger-molasses cookies.  As I’m not usually a plain vanilla guy (I thought that would be the best flavor available for the ginger cookies that really called to me) I also got a side order of the Santa Rosa Plum sorbet.  The ice cream sandwich was messy, with the ice cream squishing out from between the cookies.  But no matter.  It was on a plate with a spoon & fork, so I didn’t lose a bit.  It was delicious—I guessed right about the contrast of textures &  flavors in the ginger cookies & vanilla ice cream.  The sorbet tasted more berry-like than plum-like.  Maybe the added sugar overwhelmed the plum tartness.  But it tasted great, so I didn’t complain.  I had a good cappuccino with these treats, which came with a nice, crisp micro-biscotti.

Then back to Absinthe.  It was only 4:45 so I sat in the comfortable (to me) bar area, where I ended up having dinner—it didn’t seem worth moving when dinner hour started at 5 PM.  I thought I’d look over the menu over a drink, but they had not yet printed the day’s menu.  I asked for a Lustau fino sherry that I had noticed a bottle of on the bar on the way in.  The server didn’t understand, and brought a drink list, which did not include that sherry.  She then went for help from another server and the bartender, ascertained they did have it, and brought me a glass.  It was room temp, not chilled.  Oh, well.  I decided not to ask for the bartender to shake it with ice which would water it down a little (they should keep their fino in the fridge), and looked on the bright side: If I let it sit until my ap comes, it won’t get any warmer.  At about 5:10 the day’s menu & wine list arrived and I ordered 3 oysters from a nice (but pricey) selection, a chilled cucumber soup, and duck confit for my main course.

As I was alone, I did not study the full wine list.  I focused on the page of wines by the glass & page of half bottles.  I was tempted by some Zins in halves that I had not tried before, but Zins are so high in alcohol these days, and I did not want to be knocked out only to wake up to make it to Oakland Airport and then not be able to fall asleep on the plane.  So I asked my server about a Fritz Pinot Noir they had by the glass.  She said it was a nice mild Pinot Noir.  I said, “Hmm … that might be overwhelmed by the confit.”  So she suggested an Italian wine they had by the glass, which had “more bite.”  (It didn’t hurt that it was $2 cheaper than the Pinot Noir.  She was interested in my dining pleasure more than upselling me.  That $2 would go into her tip if I liked it.)  So I went with the Italian, a “Solyss” made from the negremono grape, from a label called “Puglia.”

The oysters were 1 Hog Island & 1 Myagi from Tamales Bay up the coast about an hour from SF, and 1 Malaspina from British Columbia.  They came with a “champagne” mignonette sauce that was wonderfully mild.  I love the sharp tangy flavor of mignonettes, but they too often make it hard to taste the subtleties of a good oyster.  This mignonette had the right tangy flavor and a little sharpness, but was mild enough so the distinct flavor of each oyster came through.  I lucked out in oyster flavor & texture contrasts.  The two Tamales Bay oysters were very briny and firm.  In between each of those, I ate the sweet, softer Malaspina from BC.  Even with the room temp fino sherry, this was a good start.

The chilled cucumber soup was refreshing, and like the mignonette, mild.  Just what I needed after walking around town on the only hot & sunny day on my trip to SF.  It felt creamy without tasting rich, so my guess is they used a mild-flavored yogurt in it.  It had lots of slushy-chunky cucumber pieces in it, so it tasted like cucumber, rather than yogurt or cream.

The “mildness” theme ended, most appropriately, when the confit arrived.  I love an intense confit, but over the last few years I’ve had too many timid ones.  This one was INTENSE.  A few bits were salty, as expected, but mostly, it tasted like CONCENTRATED DUCK.  And with really crisp skin.  And lots more meat on the legbone than most duck confits I’ve had elsewhere.  Yumm!!!!  It came with cooked Italian plums which also had intense flavor and added the fruitiness I like with duck, which made up for my not having a Zin.  The Italian Solyss wine may not have worked so well with a regular roast duck, but it had a spicy “bite” that was great with the intense confit (the server gets the $2).  Also on the plate with the confit were arugula and “landais” potatoes, one of those Lyonaise -like potato concoctions almost like a flat Napoleon, with about three flat crispy layers with soft, creamy, oniony layers in between.  Again: Yumm!!!!

As I had dessert first at Citizen Cake I should have been finished at this point.  But I had to at least look at Absinthe’s dessert menu.  Well, that confit dish wasn’t so filling after all, and I had thought about a peach tart at Citizen Cake.  So I fell for Absinthe’s peach tart with blueberry crème fraiche sorbet.  That was a good choice.  The fresh-and-tangy tasting peach slices were on a puff pastry crust, the crunchiness of which contrasted wonderfully with the softer peach.  The “sorbet” was sweet blueberry, tart, and creamy all at once.  As I was still concerned with being able to sleep on the plane, I bypassed my usual espresso for what they called a “Ginger Twister” tea: a mild but flavorful infusion of Australian ginger, orange, and lemon.  It went well with the peach tart.  By this time, I had forgiven them the room temp fino, and felt this was a great dining experience for my last meal on this trip to SF.  The only thing that diminished it was that you were not there to share it with me (and to enable us to try more dishes).

So what was the high point of this 2 1/2–day trip to SF?  That our conference presentation went so well (the reason for the trip, after all)?  That I had a great grilled Octopus at Scala’s Bistro in the Sir Francis Drake hotel on Tuesday afternoon?  The Indonesian rod puppets and other neat stuff at the Asian Art & Culture Museum?  The amazingly thick, delicious, and hoppy (bitter) IPA at the 21st Amendment Brew Pub on Tuesday evening?  The 21st Amendment’s 2 thick, smoky, flavorful slabs of bacon on top of the Nieman Ranch hamburger with cheddar?  The treats I described above at Citizen Cake?  My terrific dinner at Absinthe?  No.  It had to be being at PacBell Park Tuesday night to watch the Giants’ Barry Bonds, playing with a heavy heart after taking time off to be with his seriously ill, probably dying father, hit a walk-off “splash” home run into McCovey Cove in the 10th inning to beat the despised Atlanta Braves.

Well, you know I have a soft spot for the Bay Area from having lived there for a while in my youth.  And you’ll get to visit SF for a conference in the fall, without me.  I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.  But one of these days, I hope we get to visit SF & the Bay Area again together.

[badthings]

Oh my, oh my!  What a game we went to tonight.  Barry Bonds hits a walk-off homer into McCovey Cove in the 10th!  Now I’ve seen exciting HRs live by the Godfather, the Father, & the Son....

Now I'm jealous.

[marie-louise]

Thanks for sharing that, Suzanne. I love hearing the impressions of visitors-good or bad.

Edited to add-Barry Bonds dad died a couple of days later.

Edited August 26, 2003 by marie-louise (log)