Saturday, March 10, 2018
Slept in. Rode UberX to Chinatown with Patrick. Brunch at China Live, our first time here. Not very crowded at 11:00 am on a Saturday. Our server was Tim/Timothy. Tea: 8 Treasure Tea (lotus seed, longan, jasmine pearl, hawthorne, goji, jujubee date, rosebud and rock sugar, $15 for a pot). We shared four starters: betelnut minced chicken lettuce cup ($18), Shan Dong shui jiao water dumplings, dipping sauce (Chinese New Year's red dumplings with scallop, shrimp, and pea tendrils, $16), Peking duck with kumquat glaze, traditional condiments in sesame pockets ($14 for 3 pockets), char siu pork crunch baked bun ($10 for 3 buns). Dessert: we shared two: coconut-rose cream roll ($8), banana and Valrhona Kidavoa chocolate cream puff ($8). Meal total: $100.43 before a $20 tip. Service was mostly very good. The dining area and chef stations are exquisite and luxurious. There were a lot of things on the menu that interested us but as we were only two diners it was hard to try everything we wanted. Patrick was impressed by the lettuce cups which were very fresh and all about the same size and seemed to have been neatly trimmed by craft scissors. The dipping sauce for the dumplings was spicy and subtlely smoky at the same time. The Peking duck pockets were my favorite. They were preassembled with everything you needed already inside, and the crunchy sesame pockets provided a new twist in place of the traditional soft bun. The baked buns were delicious but not that much different than you would get for much less money elsewhere. In the marketplace for myself I bought a youth medium Bad Pickles t-shirt design printed on a bright red t-shirt manufactured by Gilden that said "I'm all that and dim sum," and we also bought two five-spice chocolate chip cookies for his mom: 10% off your purchases with dining receipt. Afterwards we tried to attend Year of the Dog: A Lunar New Year Art Pop-up at the Chinese Cultural Center on floor 3 in the Hilton, but at 12:45 pm we found it closed for a lunch break from 12:30 to 1:30 and didn't want to wait 45 minutes for it. We walked to Embarcadero Station and rode a J train to 16th and Church then walked to his mom's, encountering Kerry on our way in. He was off to Whole Foods to get ingredients for dinner. We said hello to the dog Cafecito and then visited with his mom for about an hour. Walked to the Castro to pick up a few photos that Patrick had printed at Walgreens, then rode Muni home. We had encountered some light rain along the way. We didn't have umbrellas, but it was tolerable. At home, house chores: vacuuming, fertilized the orchids. Prepared to file taxes. Troubleshot problems with our Brother MFC-845cw inkjet all-in-one printer: paper jam, unable to print 30, and unable to print 50. My attempts to resolve the problem failed. The scanner still works as expected, though. Dinner at home with Patrick: Good Eggs coconut curry with cauliflower and almonds, red wine, sparkling water. Watched Star Trek: Discovery s1:e15 then After Trek #114 on CBS All Access with Patrick. We both very much enjoyed the season finale and the entire first season. Great job all around, Discovery crew!