Saturday, November 17, 2018
Day 10 of poor air quality due to the Camp Fire. Breakfast: leftover gumbo and spanish rice. House chores. Cut my hair, showered. Nap. Rode Muni to Embarcadero Station. Met Tony Q at the Hyatt for dinner at Harborview Restaurant (4 Embarcadero Center) which had just opened this week in the former Crystal Jade Jiang Nan space. A lot of the decor seems identical or similar to the previous space with seemingly fewer authentically expensive furnishings. Jasmine tea ($3). We started with complimentary pork bone broth with lotus root—delicious. Next was four pieces of ha gow ($8), perfectly plump with good flavor but one of mine slipped out of its skin—not sure if user error or poor wrapping or wrapper too thin. The half roasted Peking duck ($28) was an unquestionable disappointment. They had incorrectly left the bone in, making it very hard to eat with the accompanying pancakes. No knives meant I was biting chunks of meat off the bone then spitting back into my plate in order to wrap it in the pancake. Then while eating it I was frequently biting into and then removing bits of bone I had missed removing earlier. So terrible. Do not order the Peking duck here; you will be sorry and sad and your fingers will be greasy. Mu shu vegetables ($18, delicious) and an order of steamed white rice ($1.50) completed our order. No dessert. In the restroom the brown paper towels from a wall dispenser were incongruent with the elegant setting and made my experience seem extraordinarily cheap. I was glad to have tried this restaurant, but I do not anticipate returning. You can find Chinese food that is just as good for much less money. $38.09 each before a $5 tip. The lusher setting here does not make up for the other mistakes. Tip if you go: use the restroom upon arriving and again when leaving since it's a very long walk from the dining room to the restroom relative to other restaurants. Afterwards we wanted to go to the Castro. We walked down to the Muni entrance to check the arrival times (why can't they put arrival times on signs at street level like other cities?) and found they were horrible—32 minutes. Rode UberX to the Castro. Walked around a bit. It was still early for clubbing—8:00 pm—so after some walking we stopped at Castro Fountain for dessert. Tony got a slice of pecan pie with whipped cream. I got a scoop of coffee ice cream with a waffle cone. The bottom half of my waffle cone broke while I ate it. I am not sure if I am too strong or if the cone is thinner or weaker than it should be or something else. I didn't bother trying to resolve it and just messily ate the rest off the waxed paper wrapper. Both desserts were delicious. We walked in the Castro more, chatting along the way. We almost stopped at Blush! Wine Bar but decided it was too crowded and noisy. We instead got wine at Cafe Flore where it was essentially empty. We received very attentive, personal service, and finished around the same time they were closing. Next we walked pretty much everywhere in the Castro to barhop: The Cafe (where it seemed like it was Ladies' Night and we enjoyed the music and danced but only before the gogos appeared and then the music changed), 440 (where we spent only a few minutes), back to The Cafe to pick up my phone which I had accidentally dropped while leaving the coat check, then Lookout (where we spent maybe 60 to 90 minutes). Tandem shared Lyft to our respective homes. A fun evening. Patrick made a chocolate pie today.