Thursday, April 14, 2011
Breakfast at home: organic lowfat vanilla yogurt with country pumpkin granola and fresh, diced organic granny smith apple. Rode the bus to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work. Small web edit to profile numbers. Began compiling web redesign exploration meeting notes for WCWG. Web steering lunch with Leslie K, John K, Ed C, Eric D. We talked about html email, calories, gut bacteria, Gowalla, Maker Faire, my idea for a software product that is responsible for what appears on the screen in a live meeting, Star Wars, tauntauns, sleeping bags, REI. Joel's computer caught a virus recently. Tran did most of the format and rebuild. I was needed to handle the things that DLS does not cover in our agreement. Installed PharmAdMIT 2011 and KeePass. Set up printing. (Windows 7 does not have drivers for a Xerox 6200DP and took an annoyingly long time to let us know that.) Reconfigured permissions in PGP, kicked off whole disk encryption. Continued compiling web redesign exploration meeting notes for WCWG. Created and staged an animated favicon for our website, sent it to Eric and Susie for review. Installed PharmAdMIT 2009 and 2010 for Joel. Will picked me up at work. We decided to eat out tonight. Dinner at Outerlands with Will: levain toast with herbs, roasted garlic, and olive oil ($2.50); roasted beets with wild greens, house-made ricotta, sherry dressing ($8) for me; delta asparagus with smoked pork shank, spring onions, pea greens ($12); root beer (I think $2.50) for Will. Service was excellent. We got a table just before the restaurant filled, within minutes about 10 people waited for the next 20 minutes. We were surprised to find only 9 items on the food menu; this doesn't count the 3 desserts on the chalkboard. There is a large beer menu (but we did not have beer). Levain toast is served thick and hot. I tasted a bite of Will's asparagus. It was perfectly cooked and excellent in flavor and consistency. My beet salad was salty, but I think it was meant to be. I need extra salt in my diet, so I didn't mind, and I thought the saltiness was perfectly matched with the rest of the flavors and textures. I could not identify the greens in my dish, so I asked the server who also didn't know but found out for me: oxalis and miner's lettuce. I was particularly taken with the miner's lettuce, which I had never eaten before and which I found particularly beautiful. Will thought the portion sizes were too small for the price, but I found the portion sizes to be typical of higher quality San Francisco dining. For dessert we shared a coffee and chicory chocolate tart which was served with a dollop of whipped cream and a brush of very thick caramel ($7). The dining room is almost entirely covered in wood. In fact, there is far too much wood for my taste. I love using wood indoors, but this is overbearing. To me, the dining room is a perfect example of using one kind of building material too much. The staff is very efficient and friendly. To save staff time, a large bottle of plain water sits on each table, and you're given the materials for the place settings instead of having them set for you. Excellent food, excellent service, unusually small food menu. I guess because there are so few food menu items, the pricing jumps awkwardly at the $12 mark. Here are all the prices of the food menu items: $2.50, $8, $8, $8, $9, $10, $12, $20, $24. The more expensive entrees are yellowtail ($20) and short ribs ($24). Underdog at 1634 Irving Street has about a quarter of the space and over 3 times as many menu items. I guess the small menu at Outerlands is its biggest disappointment. This is physically a small place—perhaps seating for no more than 25 people. If the wait here is too long, nearby Thanh Long is probably the next best choice.