Category Archives: places

Bilbao!

Guggnheim Bilbao

I’m in Spain! Bilbao to be precise.

The museum restaurant, the Guggenheim Bistro was surprisingly good.

Squid + Fideua
Baby squid, ink and fideua

Raspberry Icecream
Raspberry ice cream, yogurt and “crispy stones”

And some of mom’s dessert —
Tiramisu
Tiramisu!

A main, dessert and drinks for €18.

The museum itself was mostly meh. :/

Tapas at Luzia

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It was 11pm and I needed dinner… Luzia was nearby, so I thought I’d give it a shot. They have a huge menu — from burgers and pasta to “tapas” and pizza. The pizza we tried wasn’t bad, though the crust was more of a crisp tortilla than what I expected from pizza dough.

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Other than what’s pictured below, we also ordered the potato omelete (meh) and the fried artichokes (not bad, but on the oily side).

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Tuna sashimi over corn “pancakes” (I think they mean chips) with avocado & some other stuff — pretty tasty!

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Pizza with cheese, arugula, bresola — not bad, but not quite a pizza.

Conveniently located, but once again, nothing spectacular.

Dried Meats

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Jamon iberico.

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Dried tuna? (I didn’t know this was a thing. But apparently it is!)

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Some razor clams, in butter. Just because. Lunch, or the meal that loosely filled the role of lunch yesterday was at a Ciudad Comal. Razor clams, fried fish, veal and some desserts. Not bad, but nothing spectacular or particularly interesting.

Barcelona: Market

After doing no updates for weeks due to too much homework, I’m on vacation!

I’m currently in Barcelona adjusting to jet lag and eating way, way too much… Including,

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Caviar out of the jar with a wooden stirrer, because I’m classy like that. (And too lazy to find a spoon)

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Our haul from a trip to the market. Figs are super cheap, 3 euros for a kilo, so we got half a kilo.

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AND JAMON. EVERYWHERE. SO MUCH OF IT.

so tasty.

Duende

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the menu!

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jamon de cordero=cured lamb leg+green almonds+pickeled green strawberries

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pebrots farcits=stuffed piquillos+lamb+currant+cumin+pine nuts

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canalones=black trumpet mushrooms+spinach+engish peas+mint

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fideua=toasted fideos+duck+wild nettles+olives+balsamico

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tcho dark chocolate tart

I think of all the new restaurants I’ve tried lately, I enjoyed Duende the most. For example, the lamb ham wasn’t particularly interesting… But the flavor combination with the almonds and strawberries was unique. The canalones and fideua were both on the large size, portion-wise, but both delicious.

I can’t wait to come back. Actually, reviewing these pictures is making me super hungry. :< I guess I could drive up to Oakland now

Foraging


It’s the season for foraging! Fields of wild mustard (above), clumps of wild radishes (second below) and if you find a well shaded patch — miners lettuce! (the reddish leaves below are too late…)

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I took a second foraging class lead by Kevin a couple weekends ago with my parents. They had a lot of fun and we foraged (on private land!) wild radishes, mustard, cleavers, miners lettuce, mallow, chamomile, thistles and cardoons. April is definitely a better time to go foraging than June (when I took the last class). Wild plums aren’t in season, but all the interesting leafy things are!

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Disposable Film Fest

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This weekend, Patrici and I attended a film making workshop as part of the Disposable Film Fest 2013. We watched a bunch of videos and had a group project! I expected the workshop to be much more quackery… but it was pretty fun. As usual though, I took more pictures than I did video. Surprise!

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It was hosted by the Bold Italic at their office in San Francisco. Their lobby has a cool sign. Unfortunately, my lens was not wide enough to capture the whole “San Francisco.”

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Our shoes, because we’re silly like that.

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We got some Schulzies bread puddding after lunch. That stuff is delicious. We tasted some samples and settled on the caramel, with chocolate chips. I should work on making bread pudding…

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After the workshop, I had time to kill and walked around the area and stumbled upon Smitten Icecream. Their blood orange and pistachio shortbread icecream was amazing. Their ice cream making gizmo is pretty neat too… but the liquid nitrogen smoke plus the glare of the happy afternoon sun makes for some pretty bad photos.

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So here’s my icecream, as I hold it, standing in a corner. It’s a good thing San Francisco is far away or I’d eat more of this and end up ice cream-scoop shaped.