In addition to a good conference week, it has been a great food week here. Monday night I went to the Thirsty Bear, which had moderately interesting beer (the ESB and Maibock were quite good, but the Märzen was weak) and good tapas (marinated anchovies and small portions of hangar steak).
I took a quiet night on Tuesday, but last night George took me to a neighborhood sushi restaurant that was to die for. The proprietor served us three rounds of sushi, each more special than the last—flying fish, butterfish, yellowtail, and “pencil fish” sashimi, followed by a round of unusual nigiri (the Japanese suzuki particularly was excellent), wrapped up with a round of phenomenal inventions. The two outstanding options here were the Alaskan King Crab Remix, a bundle of crab in a thin wrapper topped with salmon (I think), and nigiri-style Kobe beef that was seared under a blowtorch and that simply melted in the mouth. George, if you can remind me of the name of the place I’ll be eternally indebted.
Afterwards we tried a few glasses of wine at the California Wine Merchant, including a surprising Rhone blend from one of the Sonoma wineries and a Zin/cab sauv/merlot/cab franc blend called Paraduxx that was just outstanding. We ran into an old friend, Chris McCall, there and had a relaxed, civilized time. (In fact, it’s been Old Home Week here, what with my Microsoft friends and Wahoo Kurt Daniel, who now works for SWSoft on their virtualization product, on the expo floor.)
Tonight: I’ll try the Zuni Cafe, a food institution I’ve meant to visit for a long time, then head to the airport for my red-eye, which should be a rude awakening. Maybe I can con United into upgrading me for free again.