Week of June 20th 2011: Off the Grid

During the Top Chef Tour, Chef Ryan Scott had mentioned his food truck which he basically marketed as "late night drunk food" and said that it makes a regular appearance at Off the Grid. OTG, as it's sometimes called, is a set time for a bunch of food trucks to gather in one location. There are a few of these around the Bay Area that organize on different days of the week but the biggest is Friday nights at Fort Mason.

So I grabbed a few friends and decided to check out Off the Grid and try Chef Ryan's truck.... which wasn't there. However, we still got a few other tasty treats.

 The first stop was Brass Knuckle. As you can guess, I pretty much was only in it for the name but luckily for me they had really amazing treats too. My friend Curtis got the Notorious P.I.G. ( a pork sandwich in a waffle) and I got the Raw DMC (a tuna tartar with crispy wontons) and both were amazing. The line was super long though and while we were waiting, my other friend was able to go to the Filipino food truck and come back with his food before ours had arrived. Luckily for me, he let me try his lumpia and chicken adobo. I actually didn't know that lumpia was the name of those little egg rolls but they were so fantastic that I made a point to track them down the next time I saw that food truck.

The only downside to Off the Grid is how crowded it gets. The lines were insane and after spending a good amount of time to just grab a beer and an empanada, we realized the lines weren't worth it. I really recommend trying Off the Grid because it's a great way to get a lot of amazing food in one place, but either go earlier or try to find one of the smaller outlets. I recently discovered a brunch Off the Grid at Valencia and McCoppin. Chef Ryan's truck was even there but unfortunately the breakfast offering just didn't sound as delicious. Either way, the food truck scene is a great way to get bite size tastes of foods from all over the country and world. Check out an Off the Grid and try a bunch of items from different trucks or, if you can't do that, you can always follow a particularly tasty looking truck on Twitter...

Week of June 20th 2011: Top Chef Tour

My love for Top Chef has been pretty well documented on this blog so you can only imagine how excited I was when I saw that they were doing a tour and San Francisco was a stop.

Fabio

The tour was basically two former Top Chef contestants doing a head to head cooking competition. The rules were simple - both chefs had the same main ingredient and then could choose from 10 other ingredients. They also were each allowed to bring 1 ingredient of their choosing. Basically, it was a mini episode of the show.

Ryan Scott

Me and my friends arrived and were excited that Fabio would be one of our contestants. Fabio was well known for being very Italian and very funny. He was constantly making jokes about other competitors and also about how self aware he was about his Italian charm. The other contestant was Ryan Scott and despite my love of the show, I just couldn't remember him. It turns out he went home relatively early in his season but now is budding on the San Francisco food scene. He's best known for his food truck and the brunch he used to do at Bruno's in the Mission (which apparently just ended last month...). 

The main ingredient that the chefs had to work with was salmon. This made me so happy as salmon is probably my favorite fish. I honestly cannot remember the 10 other ingredient. I think pine nuts may have been one of them and it looks like corn from the picture... Fabio chose Red Bull as his personal ingredient (after explaining it was because he got no sleep on his very early flight) and Ryan chose tequila (because "who doesn't love tequila?" his words, not mine). 

Both of the chefs decided to marinade the salmon in their personal ingredient in order to give it a tangier flavor and then garnished it with whichever of the other 10 ingredients they used. Although they had similar preparations, I think Ryan had a much better salmon. The audience agreed and Ryan won that round. Ironically, this was the second show of the day and Fabio had won the other.

Either way, it was very fun to finally get to experience a Top Chef competition live. It's one step closer to my dream of actually getting to be a taster for one of the episodes... 

Week of June 13th 2011: Osha Lounge

Around June last year, I was saddened to hear that my dear friend, Elissa, would be leaving me and San Francisco to become a New Yorker. While I was excited for her to start a new career and a new adventure, I knew it was going to be tough having such a good friend move away.

....But Elissa knew that too so she filled her last month in SF with lots of outings to her favorite places. As part of this, she asked if I wanted to get drinks with her at Osha Lounge. If there is one thing you need to know about Elissa, it's that she loves Thai food. One of her favorite places is the Osha Thai chain in San Francisco so when they opened a bar and appetizer cocktail lounge, she was on top of it.

Can't remember what these were...

Osha Lounge is a fun little bar. They have a great selection of fun cocktails. The two of us got mojitos and champagne cocktails. A big perk is that you can order anything from the restaurant menu. Both of us are huge fans of the Tuna Tower (a tuna tartar, mango, and avocado dish served with crispy wontons) so we had to get one to share.


I would really recommend Osha Lounge for a girls' happy hour or cocktail night. It is set up for people to easily sit around and chat while enjoying tasty food and beverages. As fate would have it, Elissa is visiting this weekend and we are going back to Osha Lounge tonight. Sure, the fact that this blog is 8 months behind is a little ridiculous but it does make for funny coincidences when things come full circle.

Week of June 6th 2011: Bay Area Brew Fest

The Bay Area Brew Fest is one of many Bay Area beer festivals. The good thing about this brew fest is that it always seems to fly a little under the radar compared to the annual Beer Fest. The tickets for this event were only about $25 for 4 hours of beer tasting. It's really a great deal and I recommend keeping your eyes peeled for it.

Do not buy this beer. It tasted as pink as the label.

We were particularly lucky because the deal that my friends and I purchased allowed us to enter the event an hour earlier. Our group and a couple hundred other people basically had free range of the event before the masses were allowed to enter. I do have to admit that the lines were a little crazy once the regular portion of the event opened but that hour head start gave us enough beer fuel to power through it.

Honestly, I don't have a ton to write about the Brew Fest. It was a good time with good friends. The highlight of the day for me was definitely the beef jerky booth. There were a variety of flavors that paired nicely with our beers. Rumor has it they are developing a bacon jerky... I think it's worth keeping an eye on.

Mmm Jerky....

Cheaper (than the big SF Beer Fest) beer festivals are always popping up around the Bay Area and tend to run for about $20-$30 (compared to the $70 of the big one). It's a great way to get out and try new beers while having a fun afternoon with your friends.

Week of May 30th: BFD

I was just thinking that I flew through the May posts and then I realized that I was exerting my new option to not write about each and every new thing... Don't worry, it will be worth me skipping over the boring stuff to get to the plethora of posts I have for July (I've been keeping track of what I plan to write about in the Chronological Archive tab so see for yourself).

BFD was the day after the CFA exam so it was basically the first real day for me to let loose. For those of you who don't know - BFD basically stands for "Big Freaking Deal" and it's big concert that the local rock station, Live 105.3, puts on every summer. On Cinco de Mayo, I had invited a bunch of friends to go to a Mexican bar and restaurant with me. Live 105 had a booth there and they had a pinata full of prizes. My friend, Oleg, got in line and since it was a few days after my birthday, I took it upon myself to cut him in line. Turns out - I pulled the last envelope with tickets so I invited Oleg to be my guest to the concert.

BFD was conveniently scheduled the day after my big CFA exam so I was excited to have a fun filled day planned. Oleg and I planned to meet up with my friends Filip and Dom as they had also won tickets on Cinco de Mayo. We got there early as I would recommend to anyone going to the Shoreline Ampitheatre. EVER. Always go early. One time I missed all of the opening acts of a concert because it took an hour to park. So our two cars got there early and missed a lot of the crowds. After enjoying some beverages and having a very entertaining encounter with a young man who was "too drunk" to go to his job as "alcohol enforcement" we decided to head into the show.

BFD is a festival style concert so there were tons of options to choose from. Luckily - the concert provided these temporary tattoos with the schedules for the three most popular stages. I thought this was pretty genius (until I tried to get it off before work the next day...). I didn't have much of an agenda so we just followed the crowd from stage to stage until it got closer to the main stage perfomances.

Since I was the most excited to see Snoop Dogg and Linkin Park (and super tired from my test the day before), I volunteered to go save some spots on the lawn area. Even though it was a few hours before the bands came on it was still packed. Luckily I was able to grab a spot and proceed gentley into nap land.

My friends joined me and woke me up just in time for Snoop Dogg... who was incredible. It was really cool hearing a lot of his songs that I used to listen to in high school. There's something a little nostalgic about that. Plus, he was just hilarious and cracking jokes the whole time. I also don't think there are many artists who can perform a sold out concert... in sweatsuit, but Snoop Dogg pulled it off.

I have always loved Linkin Park and they also did not disappoint. They had really cool black and white lighting that just looked amazing. It's also nice putting more of a face to the members. The singer has such an incredible voice and was so emotional with his singing which contrasted nicely with the rapper.
The rest of the band was also very talented and were constantly switching instruments to create the beats.

BFD was a lot of fun. I definitely am going to check out the line up for next year.. and maybe even stay awake the whole day.

Week of May 9th 2011: Bay to Breakers

Bay to Breakers was an event that constantly came up on my list of things to do each year, but the infamous race always fell a few weeks before the CFA exam and I just couldn't justify missing out on the valuable study time. However, I usually ended up spending the day moping that I was the only person in the city not taking part and decided that this year I would participate.

I actually only found out what Bay to Breakers was a few years ago when I was a senior in college, the first time I had ever heard its name was many years before that. Like many high schoolers, I spent my summers as a camp counselor. Our camp was known for having themed weeks - the best being Color Wars. Color Wars was something like the houses in Harry Potter - the whole came was divided into colors. They were encouraged to wear them around camp all week and certain activities would win points for your color. One year, the captain of the blue team had a shirt (he wore it most of the week so I think it was his only blue shirt) that said "I did not run in Bay to Breakers." All week kids would ask him what that was and he would respond with "I don't know - I've never ran in it." So, it was pretty interested when I found out it was a real event and kind of a big deal.

For those not in the Bay Area - Bay to Breakers is a race in San Francisco that goes from the Bay to the Ocean (Breakers) which is approximately 7.5 miles (12 km). It's well known for being a shorter but rather challenging course due to the hilly nature of the city. It is also well known for the number of people who dress up in silly costumes or themes during the race. It's estimated that about half of the participants are not registered runners, but simply participating in the festivities.

The 2011 enforced many new rules - no public drinking and no floats. As my first year participating, I didn't really know what this meant for me. My friends and I pulled together some random costume items and decided to head out anyways. I definitely think the best part of Bay to Breakers is just seeing all of the costumes that everyone dons. I love costume parties and Bay to Breakers feels like a city-wide one.

Also - here is Ryan. Ryan told me he wouldn't read my blog until I wrote about him. I always want to increase my readership so here you are:

I had a blast at Bay to Breakers and I'm glad my friends dragged me out to it. Even though many participants said it wasn't as fun with the new rules - I still had a great time since there was nothing to compare it to.