Lunch: Right before going to the airport, we tried to dine at Hard Knox Cafe () again. This time we were successful and the food was just as good as we remembered. Excellent fried chicken, rich and delicious ox tails, and fresh, hot corn muffins. The sides have never been their strong point and the rice was a little gummy, but the corn was pretty decent today.

Corn Muffins

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What I Ate: June 7, 2010 (Hard Knox Cafe)

Lunch: After church, we went to the Mitsuwa Marketplace (675 Saratoga Avenue, San Jose, CA‎ - (408) 255-6699) to eat ramen at Ramen Santouka ((408) 446-1101). I had the spicy miso ramen while Tina had the miso ramen, and we shared a bowl of pork and rice. Like last time, it was excellent. I still think it could be the best ramen I've ever had. Tina agreed.

Dinner: We met up with Dave and Rachel as well as Dave M. and Christina at Shanghai Flavor Shop (888 Old San Francisco Road, Sunnyvale, CA‎ - (408) 738-3003‎). We ordered a bunch of stuff that we used to get and as usual the Shanghai pan fried buns, the Diakon Radish Buns, and Red Bean Buns were the best.

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What I Ate: June 6, 2010 (Santouka Ramen, Shanghai Flavor Shop)

Today's meals were devoted to Chef Daniel Patterson.

For lunch we ate at Il Cane Rosso (1 Ferry Building # 41, San Francisco, CA‎ - (415) 391-7599‎), a quick serve rotisserie and sandwich restaurant created by Daniel Patterson and Lauren Kiino. Their chef, Douglas Borkowski is doing an excellent job at providing delicious "quick food".

Roasted Beets & Farro kale, feta, olive oil. Delicious if you like beets, but mostly farro (which tastes great with the beet juice, olive oil, and mild feta) with just a few pieces of beets.

Garlic-Roasted Potatoes. My favorite thing here - the roasted potatoes are good, the roasted whole garlic cloves are excellent, and eaten together, this simple dish is unbelievable.

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What I Ate: June 5, 2010 (Il Cane Rosso, Coi)

Lunch: Rachel, Tina, and I headed into San Francisco to have a dim sum lunch at Hong Kong Lounge (5322 Geary Boulevard, San Francisco, CA‎ - (415) 668-8836‎). We had a huge assortment of dim sum (first time I've over ordered at dim sum and was unable to finish all the food).

The good stuff that we had (roughly from best to least good):
Pork Siu Mai - one of the best examples of shao mai out there
Dried Shrimp & Shrimp Siu Mai
Pan Fried Chives Dumpling
Shrimp Dumpling
Pan Fried Tofu Skin Roll - stuffed with shrimp
Pan Fried Turnip Cake - had larger pieces of extremely soft and nicely flavored chunks of daikon in the wonderfully textured turnip cake
Egg Tart - a wonderful example of this dish - the custard is light and flavorful and the crust is thin and flaky
Coconut Red Bean Cake - this dessert was awesome; the first bite is a little strange as you get used to the dense coconut gelatin which mixes with the bottom layer of red bean custard, then it's hard to stop eating this dessert
Pan Fried Onion Cake - an interesting version of cong you bing where the outside of crispy and the inside was a bit gummy, but the whole thing had great flavor
Deep Fried Chives Dumpling - a beautiful round grooved round ball (king of reminded me of the sprials of the Guggenheim Museum) with a nice filling; a tad greasy
Steamed Pork Buns
Steamed pork dumping - a Shanghainese steamed dumpling (xiao long bao) what is okay
Water spinach - a bit bland, but not bad and had good texture
Fried sesame ball - an average example of this sweet fried dessert

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What I Ate: June 4, 2010 (Hong Kong Lounge, Dragonfly Restaurant)

Lunch: We drove to Woodside to visit Cliff and have lunch with Fanpop. We ate at The Village Pub (2967 Woodside Road, Woodside, CA‎ - (650) 851-9888‎) where the food was delicious, but had a few execution problems.

Tuna Carpaccio / Grapefruit and Fennel / Avocado The citrus paired perfectly with the mild fish and creamy avocado balls. Good appetizer.

Sweet Gem Lettuce / Shaved Spring Vegetables / Ricotta Salata Fresh sweet and crisp lettuce with shaved asparagus and other vegetables made this an excellent salad course.

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What I Ate: June 3, 2010 (The Village Pub, Old Port Lobster Shack)

Lunch: We arrived in San Francisco and went immediately to Hard Knox Cafe where we discovered a group of 30-40 high school or college age kids arrived just before us. There weren't even enough seats in the restaurant to deal with their whole party and after a few minutes it became apparent that we weren't going to be seated until after the entire group had been served. So, we headed across the street to Serpentine (2495 3rd Street, San Francisco, CA‎ - (415) 252-2000‎). But first, Dave Lu took me around the block to a somewhat secret kitchen based in the loading docks called Kitchenette (958 Illinois Street, San Francisco, CA) where we had to try their sandwiches. I got a fig wood smoked pastrami sandwich with caraway braised cabbage and onion, apple-ale pickle relish, and stoneground mustard which was absolutely delicious. The picture is a bit lame as we were rushing from Serpentine to Kitchenette and back.

After tasting the sandwich, I packed up the remainder so Tina could taste it and we could have our "proper" lunch at Serpentine. I had ordered the Seared California Yellowtail (frisee, arugula, cucumber, heart of palm, carrots, snap peas, and honey dijon vinaigrette). The fish came in a state that I wouldn't describe as "seared" but rather completely cooked through. The texture was tough and chewy with the fish breaking down into a mealy texture while being chewed. It was just overcooked to death. The fish itself had little flavor beyond the extremely strong lemon and pepper seasoning applied to the outside (not a surprise since the protein had been cooked through and through which generally obliterates the taste of mild fish). The salad wasn't bad except for the hearts of palm with were bitter.

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What I Ate: June 2, 2010 (Kitchenette, Serpentine, Plearn Thai Palace)

Lunch: I had a sandwich made of the leftover half sausage from Rudy's BBQ and the remaining half artichoke.

Dinner: We went to Austin BBGo (6800 North Lamar Boulevard, Austin, TX‎) to have some Korean food before going on vacation. They make an excellent seafood pa jun there.

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What I Ate: June 1, 2010 (Austin BBGo)

Dinner: After having fried green tomatoes at Uchi last night, we were craving some tastier fried green tomatoes. We went to Cherry Creek Catfish Company (5712 Manchaca Road, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 440-8810‎) where the only thing we think the only thing they do really well is the fried green tomatoes.

We both had side salad after the tomatoes. Some of the greens were wilted and not looking so good, but it did have an ample amount of chopped tomatoes.

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What I Ate: May 31, 2010 (Cherry Creek Catfish Company)

Dinner: For Tina's birthday (the day before, but Sunday worked out better for us), we went to Uchi (801 South Lamar Boulevard, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 916-4808‎) with Braden and Kelly.

Amuse bouche - cured strawberries, pickled rhubarb, and watermelon radishes. The amuses that we've had in the past at Uchi have showcased Chef Cole and Chef Qui's skill at balancing strong flavors. Unfortunately, we didn't feel this simple starter was a good representation of the food at Uchi.

edamame whole soybeans with sea salt, served hot. ($3)

crudo sea bass, orange oil, garlic and black pepper in a citrus vinaigrette. ($11)

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What I Ate: May 30, 2010 (Uchi)

I haven't done many wikipedia searches in the last couple weeks, but here is what I did look up.

May 19, 2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter_%28SSN-23%29 - The USS Jimmy Carter was the third and last Seawolf-class nuclear submarine built. It was commissioned in 2005

May 21, 2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaage - a Japanese fried meat. It is usually soy-flavored chicken

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Wikipedia - USS Jimmy Carter, Karaage, El Nino, Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Submarine, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands