Quintessential San Francisco

[MelGold]

I work with a small catering company. A client is having a San Francisco themed lunch party, and asked us to provide a sandwich/wrap option that is typical of the area. To be completely honest, we're stumped (we're from the other coast and keep coming back to Giradelli chocolate).

Any suggestions????

[marlena spieler]

crab and avocado on sourdough would be a very upscale and quintessential sandwich but many people are allergic (myself included).

burritos are very san franciscan (the mission burrito was invented there, ie the burrito). a bean and veggie burrito is very san fran.

whatever sandwich you serve should have a lot of salad ingredients in it: shredded lettuce, onions, etc. avocado of course. tomato.

jack on sourdough another local food combo. salsa, california loves a salsa, with some kind of interesting dips. an interesting salsa: corn, roasted black bean, anything with cilantro.

lately we've been into banh mi, the vietnamese sandwiches. don't know if they are more popular in san fran than in other places in the usa?

cold cooked asparagus with a zesty dip (its just coming in to california, probably its far too early on the east coast). or roasted little tiny new potatoes with a zesty dip.

good coffee: brew some dark roast good coffee. in california i would choose peets or graffeo, in new york, porto rico (and in britain, union roasters but thats another story, yum yum yum coffee!).

hope i've been a little bit of a help.

marlena

[marlena spieler]

ps:

the chocolate to choose is scharffenberger, divine chocolate that will make you swoon. its from berkeley, california (actually emeryville).

[Carolyn Tillie]

My first thought was how to recreate Cioppino in a sandwich...

For starters, it would have to go on sourdough bread but after that, it just got messy in my head.

[joiei]

Avocado, sprouts, tomato, sonoma jack cheese and 9 grain bread with garlic aioli.

[ludja]

Avocado, sprouts, tomato, sonoma jack cheese and 9 grain bread with garlic aioli.

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I was thinking along these lines as well. (Not that I think it is "quintessentially SF" but certainly CA...

A local (peninsula and South Bay) chain bakery (Le Boulanger) has a best selling sandwich called "California Fresh"-- it has

roasted turkey,

monterrey or sonoma jack cheese,

dijon mustard, mayo, avocado,

onion, lettuce and tomatoes.

It's very good. They serve it on a Dutch Crunch Roll but sourdough would work well too. If you went with this I would serve versions with and without turkey.

I like alot of marlena's ideas as well.

edited to add: if beer is being served, you could have locally brewed Anchor Steam; for non-alcoholic drinks could serve ginger lemonade.

Scharffenberger or Ghiradelli for chocolate desserts-- Ghiradelli may have more name recognition but I like Scharffenberger better. They both sell small squares of chocolate that could be put out as well.

Don't know how expensive it would be to get or what your budget it, but could get It's It ice cream sandwiches made in SF (v. close by) for over 50 years... (They're chocolate covered oatmeal cookies w/ice cream in the middle--coffee, chocolate, vanilla and mint).

Edited February 25, 2005 by ludja (log)

[MelGold]

Thanks everyone!