Destination #27: Adventures of Chairman Bao's Truck

I woke up at noon on a sunny Monday… the start to my weird restaurant schedule weekend. I was starving after all those hours of sleep, so began searching on the Chairman Bao Truck twitter page to see where I could get me a pork belly Chinese bun.

Finding the Chairman Bao Truck is an adventure in and of itself. Unlike many of the food trucks around this city, the Chairman Bao Truck is a moving vehicle. The only way to find the truck’s current location is by going onto its twitter page that very day.

When I looked on the twitter page at one pm, a very excited and enthusiastic post told me that, “Chairman Bao’s Chinese Bun Truck is in Emmeryville at Hollis and 53rd until 1:30pm!!! Hurry up and get your bao buns!!!”

I threw on some pants, hopped onto the back of a friend’s motorcycle, and we sped in the sunshine, across the Bay Bridge, over the sparkling salty bay waters, into Emmeryville, and zoomed around the curvy neighborhood lanes, until… there it was!!! The most beautiful, communist red truck adorned with murals of panda bears and lord knows what else, sitting on the side of a quiet residential street.

That day, the bun options were braised chicken with pickled carrots and spicy mayonnaise, braised pork with pickled cabbage, and number thirty-two on my must eat or die list, pork belly with pickled daikon.

My motorcycle man and I ordered one of each. They come in a white compostable container, each one as big as a White Castle hamburger (with ingredients about two hundred percent better quality than White Castle food). The bun is like a fluffy taco soaking up the juices of the sweet and salty pork belly, which melted in my mouth with crispy outer bits. I was shocked to see that the neon yellow of the pickled daikon is a color that can exist in nature without carcinogenic chemicals. It contributed a refreshing crunch to the fatty belly.

After the first round, we ordered two more. I had to have another pork belly bun. I can’t imagine that would have been my last time at Chairman Bao’s Truck. I will search the Chairman out again in the near future.

Destinations #25 and 26: Chicken and Eggs

The last time I had an egg salad sandwich was in kindergarten when I lost a tooth in the soft wonder bread of my sandwich, staining the fluffy white a lovely red, and adding a little bloody spice to the mayonnaise-y egg. After that experience, I never particularly had a desire to eat an egg salad sandwich again…

But 7x7 magazine forced me to. Number fourteen on my list was the Egg Salad Sandwich at Il Cane Rosso at the Ferry Building. So I took Mom and Dad to this hoity toity spot and we sat outside by the bay enjoying lunch...

The saltiness of the anchovy garlic butter,and the tanginess of the melted aged provolone gave the sandwich a nice zing. The fresh mustard greens on top added a bit of a spicy crunch. It was still a nine dollar egg salad open-faced sandwich. I enjoyed about half of it before my kindergarten horrors began catching up with me.

This egg salad sandwich would not be the end of my birthday eating. It was March 29, 24 years since I popped out of Mama Guda's womb. I lead my family to one of the oldest and most well-known restaurants in the city, Zuni, for the roasted chicken with bread salad, number two on my list.

I had been warned that this dish takes an hour to prepare, and knowing that my father can't sit still for more than five minutes, I made sure to order the chicken as soon as we sat at our little corner table.

The presentation of the chicken alone is magnificent. If Picasso had done a painting of a roasted chicken, it would've looked like this dish: A whole chicken deconstructed, all body parts piled high on a large plate, blooming with fresh mustard greens, and the bread salad hidden underneath. Calling the bread a "salad" rather than stuffing is not a cop out. The cubes of sourdough are dressed in a balsamic vinaigrette and scattered with sweet currants and nutty pineolas. The dressing would've been overpowering for the bread had the chicken not been there to save the day.

The chicken is roasted for almost an hour over a wood fire, so the crispy skin and tender meat is hot and smoky with the most woodsy flavor. It tasted like a gourmet camping trip. Taking bites of this roasty caramel-y chicken with the acidity of the bread was a unique, and pleasing combination. I never order chicken when I go out to eat, because I generally believe that to be lame and boring. But this chicken was, I believe, the best dish we ordered at Zuni and well worth the shame of ordering chicken.

The meal was long and enjoyable, especially with a bottle of Quincy, a white wine recommended by our lovely waitress (which I described as pop rocks in my mouth). Although the rest of the food was not mind blowing, by any means, that chicken saved my egg-y day.

Destinations #23 and 24: Grease Me Up

My parents were in town visiting and I thought the perfect introduction to the city would be Balompie for pupusas… El Salvadorian food in a city full of El Salvadorians. So we ventured to number thirty.

I had never had pupusas before and don’t care to indulge ever again. I ordered two different types; a veggie pupusa and a sausage pupusa. I had no idea which was which as the “queso fresco” (fresh melted stringy cheese) was the majority of the pupusa. It’s basically a smaller, fatter quesadilla in a pita rather than a tortilla. That much cheese and pita in my stomach was enough to turn me away from pupusas forever. Thank goodness for the side order of pickled vegetables.
My poor mom, who ordered a sampler plate (basically a plate full of fried food) felt too sick to eat when she came to my restaurant that night.

For my next meal with Mom and Dad, I made the wise decision to take them to Ton Kiang for dim sum. I thought some clean Asian food might cleanse our systems of the cheesy fried heart-stoppers. Ton Kiang just added more greasy food to our repertoire.

I have been spoiled my New York dim sum where one's options are never-ending and some of them include blue bean soup (a soup that’s actually blue) and chicken feet. The dim sum menu at Ton

Kiang has 24 drawings of different shaped dumplings with descriptions beside them. It reminded me of my favorite book, “What’s Your Poo Telling You” with the graphic drawing of different forms of poo. The food tasted better, though (I’m assuming). Considering the entire dim sum menu at Ton Kiang is comprised of some form of fried dumpling, I had enough meat filled fried, greasy dough to make my stomach feel like a meat filled ball of dough. Shrimp dumpling, shrimp and scallion dumpling, sesame and bean ball, pork belly bun, chicken dumpling... all delicious, but eventually I could no longer tell the difference between one fried nugget and another. I did, however, very much enjoy the family style large round tables accompanied by lazy Susans and the tacky Chinese paintings on the walls.

Destinations #20, 21 and 22: Restaurant Hopping

On a lovely, rainy Thursday, I headed to the Ferry Building to eat some food. My plan was to eat lunch at one of my destinations. Luckily, the person who I was meeting for lunch is A) Not as cheap as I am B) Is just as food crazy as I am and C) An extremely beautiful man who could lure me to do pretty much anything. So I followed this extremely beautiful man on my first restaurant hopping experience.

We started out at the Roli Roti truck for the porchetta sandwich. Porchetta, I learned, is basically pig product wrapped in pig product. This particular porchetta was pork belly wrapped around pork loin then roasted on a rotisserie. When my sexy chef man friend and I ordered our sandwich, the Roli Roti dude sliced off a thick piece of meat, wiped up his meaty, juicy cutting board with our bread, and layered it with the pork and caramelized onion.

The porchetta had a crispy outer layer from the belly, with a juicy and tender loin inside. That salty pork with the sweetness of the caramelized onion was maddeningly delicious. The crusty bread made it a little difficult to eat, but it was all worth it for the explosion of flavor and texture.

Next, we headed to the back of the Ferry Building to Mijita for Sopa de Albondigas, Spanish for meatball soup. It was the perfect day to sit underneath the overhang on the back patio watching the stormy bay waves roll in while eating a bowl of hot soup. It tasted more like Italian Wedding Soup rather than the spicy Mexican broth that I had hoped for, but nonetheless, we had a lovely view while eating it (me especially).

To end our lunch, we ventured back through the Ferry Building to the front where the Scream Sorbet stand was. My food list advised me to eat a seasonal flavor. There were several intriguing options, especially their nut flavors, which aren't considered seasonal because nuts are constantly in season. I paired the almond saffron sorbet with white guava. The texture of their sorbet is so creamy, one would think some fatty dairy product to be one of the ingredients. My almond saffron tasted like almonds and saffron and my white guava tasted like guava. There's no other way to put it. The few ingredients in each sorbet give them the flavor that they're meant to have. My man friend still can't stop talking about his strawberry Meyer lemon paired with vanilla macadamia nut. I have been back to Scream Sorbet three times since.

After my restaurant hopping excursion, I felt that I had stepped up one extra notch away from the life of the dumpster diver... I felt like, not a normal human, but a super foodie human who could not be stopped. Because when you have so many options in a city full of food, why stop at one, or even two restaurants during a single meal?

Destinations #19 and 20: Curry and Cream

Before eating at Muracci’s Japanese Grill for number 16 on the list, I didn’t realize that Japanese curry existed. I’m not sure how authentic the katsu curry is, but it was delicious, and the culinary scene at Muracci’s was comical, so it was worth my trip downtown.

Murracci’s is a like a high-end fast food joint where the more serious Financial District San Franciscans eat during their five minute lunch breaks. Fast food, because, well, it comes out fast and only in to-go containers… high-end because there are little Japanese women cooking individual orders at lightning speed with giant woks in a miniscule kitchen. And like the Muracci pimp, a little Japanese man stands at the head of the line taking down customers’ orders and yelling them to his women in the kitchen.

Once Julia and my food emerged, we were lucky enough to snag one of the many two tables in the cramped space… otherwise we would have been sent out into the streets only to sit on the sidewalk watching wannabe New Yorkers rush around on their cell phones.

But we ate our to-go food in. My katsu curry consisted of a breaded and fried pork chop accompanied by the most beautiful golden brown sweet and savory curry and sweet little bits of pickled vegetable heaven. The pork was delicious. Why? Because anything fried is automatically delicious. That, and dipping it in my curry and pickled vegetables was a spicy, sweet, and refreshing combo.

After snagging a photo of the giddy women chefs and their pimp, Julia and I headed to Bi Rite Creamery to cool our palates.

As 7x7 commanded me to do, I ordered the salted caramel ice cream, number 35 on the list. After my slightly boring Humphrey Slocombe experience, I was hoping for something a little more note worthy. Humphrey Slocombe only reinforced my boredom with ice cream where I feel I must force myself through the last half of a cone. The salted caramel ice cream at Bi Rite, however, was exciting up until the very last bite.

Foods that try to be interesting either suck or are extremely successful. My Secret Breakfast ice cream was on the sucky side. Bi Rite’s unique ice cream flavors do not suck. The flavors explode on one’s palette and make a baby sized cone look sad and depressing. I decided that anytime I spot an ice cream flavor that involves salt, I will eat it.

Destination #18: The Perfect Burger

My favorite thing about riding on airplanes is flipping through the in-flight magazine and marveling at the photos of hamburgers. They always display a bright red center, practically bleeding the tender chuck juices. I’ve always dreamed of eating a burger that tastes as good as these look. I finally found that burger at Don Pistos.

When I realized that number 10 on my list was a hamburger, or la hamburguesa, from a Mexican restaurant, the only words coming to mind were: “Lame sauce.” Why would I ever order a burger at a Mexican restaurant, especially one serving the tastiest tacos in the city. One of my biggest pet peeves is a menu with no common theme. After ordering this hamburger, however, I couldn’t have been happier that Don Pistos had decided to put it on the menu next to the tacos.

I almost missed the restaurant while walking down the street. There is no sign in front and no address. I did a double take and realized this mystery door in the building’s façade was my destination. And let me tell you… walking into a place with no sign and no address made me feel really important, like I was in the know. I walked into a dark rustic dining room with a small bar, and candles lighting the space. It felt like a mafia hang-out, further making me feel like a very important person

7x7’s list, as well as the low price of the burger, are what prodded me on to order this thing. My plate came with a burger, a green chili pepper, and a quartered turnip… a sparsely filled plate. But, biting into my burger was how some people describe love… fireworks. The burger is the embodiment of those in-flight magazine hamburger photos: Tender, juicy, sweet and salty. The only condiment was Don Pistos’ house-made guacamole (also fantastic and made to order) and the buns (which are, in a word, perfect hamburger buns… soft in the middle with a shiny egg glaze on top) are baked at the French bakery right next door. The burger tasted like… bacon. This comes from marinating the chuck overnight in bacon grease, then grinding it the next day.

To put it simply, if food were sex, Don Pistos’ hamburguesa dipped in leftover clam and chorizo juice would be the biggest orgasm ever initiated.

Destination #17: The Last Restaurant on Earth

Nopalito is the San Francisco restaurant where chefs go to eat. The food is delicious and the story as to how Nopalito came to be makes it all the more special:

The older and more well-established Mediterranean fusion restaurant, Nopa, has a kitchen dominated by Latin American immigrants. A different group of employees is responsible for preparing staff dinner every night, so it is often comprised of Latin American cuisine. Some of the employees at Nopa claim that their staff dinner is often better than the food they dish out at service. (And that’s saying something considering Nopa prepares some of San Francisco’s top cuisine.) Nopa’s owners decided to help out their dish-washers and floor sweepers in opening up their own restaurant. And so came to be “Little Nopa” or Nopalito, my number 52 spot for their carnitas.

Although Nopalito has a consistent line out the door and a reputation almost as big, their food is not over the top. My carnitas are the perfect example of Nopalito’s execution. My nice, and very cute, waiter served me a ramekin filled with three hunks of pork. They were very lightly seasoned, and had no sauce. There was no need to mask the pure porkiness. I didn’t need a knife to eat my pork medallions. They literally fell apart at the touch of my finger.

Accompanying my hot, steamy meat (that’s what she said) was a housemade pickled spicy cabbage and carrot salad with green chile salsa, which was the perfect, light, fresh and crisp companion for the pork. I also received several housemade soft corn tortillas, which were warm, nutty and sweet. This food is authentic, yet refined and always fresh, while still maintaining the simplicity that good quality, fantastic tasting ingredients should have.

Nopalito is definitely a top one hundred San Francisco spot, and the carnitas were the perfect choice for the list. My Nopalito eating partner, Stephany, will go so far as to say if she had to eat at one place in San Francisco for the rest of her life, Nopalito would be that place.