Saturday, April 3, 2004
I dreamt last night I was in a small grocery with a deli somewhere in San Francisco. I picked about 10 or so deli items and put them into my basket. However, after a few minutes I thought, "Why am I paying 6 dollars for a loaf of bread?" and put back all of the items except for a few, which I ate. I then went to the register where I spent several minutes explaining to the checker what I did and didn't eat.—Dim sum with Patrick at White Horse (415-665-9080, 937 Taraval Street). It's a small shop with about 4 or 5 tables. The dim sum was sum-good and sum-bad. The best part was that it was inexpensive: about $10 total for a meal for 2. The sticky rice was filled with mystery chicken (we couldn't identify which part of the chicken) and egg yolk and other wonders. It was much stickier than we prefer and not as flavorful as it could have been. The shau mai were big, but tendony. The char siu bau buns were delicious except inside they gave off a very distinct smell of white wine gone slightly bad—weird! The shrimp dumplings weren't bad enough to complain about nor good enough to praise. I was so hungry that the hot, hot tea burned my tongue. The egg cream bun was just okay—could have been creamier or richer-flavored. The decor is cringeworthy. The sign over the counter listing dim sum and prices was drawn on the back of old Chinese wall calendars and taped in place using 2-inch clear packing tape. I guess that's still a step up from duct tape, so perhaps I shouldn't be so harsh. A nearby light switch had the smudges and grime that you know only builds up after years of neglect. However, the seating environs aren't as bad as the place across the street and half a block down, which I haven't tried yet but we looked into on our way back to the car. Grocery shopping at Safeway. Patrick took a short nap while I did journal entries. Travis and Steve came over and picked us up. We drove over to the Lumiere Theater. We couldn't buy tickets right away, so we had lunch at Nara Sushi (415-567-1515, 1515 Polk Street). Patrick had salmon teriyaki and tempura. Steve had chicken teriyaki and tempura. I had the bento special with Cali roll, chicken teriyaki, and vegetable tempura. Travis had chicken teriyaki and gyoza, green tea with lemon. The service was neglectful. Back to the Lumiere, where we got tickets to see Shaolin Soccer, an over-the-top film with ridiculous cable fu stunts and special effects. We all liked it a lot, I think. Afterwards we drove to the Castro, returned a DVD, walked around, tried to get a seat at Flore but it was packed (as we expected), ran into BriKel on the way to Just Desserts. I had a chocolate eclair with a chai, Patrick had orange spice tea with chocolate cake and chocolate frosting, Travis and Steve shared a chocolate cake with white frosting. Steve drank a soy milk with hazelnut (we think). We can't remember what Travis drank. We drove back home and chatted in the living room listening to Kylie Minogue's Body Language. Patrick and I had planned to have pork chops for dinner, but after they left we both were so exhausted that we just went right to bed. It was a fine day.