I was in the Bay Area a little under a year ago but I still have stuff to blog about so here goes. This blog post could also be re-titled "some dishes that were too spicy for me but that I feel compelled to write about anyway because anyone with a normal tolerance to spice would love them". Shall we start at Source? Lets! This bright and airy spot in SoMa claims to be a multi-dimentional dining experience, I have no idea what that means but I know I liked it there. On our first visit I ordered the Mac & Cheese vegan style and Nick ordered the vegan Da Bronx Pizza.
The mac had the most spot-on perfect texture of any mac I've ever eaten in a restaurant. It was thick and creamy and bubbly and had the right sized macaroni noodles and everything. If it wasn't for the fire raging in my mouth I'd have adored it. As it stood Nick got to eat most of it whilst I chugged water and nibbled on his delicious pizza. The mozzarella style cheese on his pizza was perfect and I loved the richness of the marinara base and the fresh basil scattered on top. This was an excellent choice and something I ordered again after discovering that they definitely couldn't make me a mac with just the mozzarella cheese.
We also tried a delicious chocolate dessert that I think was a variation on a twinkie. I dunno, I've never eaten a twinkie, whatever it was I liked it!
We also went just before closing after a gig one night for hot dogs and fries.
This was a pretty decent dog but I probably wouldn't consider it to be a must order at Source. Get the mac and cheese, or maybe a dosa, I saw them being delivered to other tables a couple of times and they looked amazing.
Another must eat spot when visiting San Francisco is Gracias Madre, I fell in love with the place as soon as I set eyes upon it from across the street. There's a gorgeous mural and they have some wonderful outdoor space. We started with homemade lemonade and agua fresca which were both wonderful.
I'd actually never tried agua fresca before this trip but now I know I'll be ordering it whenever I see it. We obviously wanted to order everything having left it way too late in our trip for a return visit to be possible so we settled in for a feast and ordered four things to share, the potatoes with nacho cheese, the Gorditas, one Tamal and the Taco plate.
Everything was amazing but the two plates that had the right level of spice for me were the Tamal which was steamed and filled with zucchini, onions and garlic and the triple taco plate. The taco's were my favourite, I loved the cooling cashew cheese, the perfectly cooked and spiced beans and the fillings we had chosen were spot on. The plantain filled taco was both of our favourite, we'd thankfully pre-empted that and ordered two, and I really enjoyed the seasonal greens too.
Obviously we couldn't skip dessert and we went with one chocolate cake that was lightly flavoured with cinnamon and came paired with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce and one Flan.
Flan is not something I ever thought I'd enjoy, the idea of it brought back flashbacks of the horrible cream caramels my brother loved when we were kids but I'd heard so much about how amazing this dessert was that I insisted that we order it. Every beautiful mouthful was a revelation and I will happily eat good flan like this as often as people want to make it for me. The chocolate cake was amazing too and neither of us could pick a favourite, sharing spoonfuls back and forth until the desserts disappeared.
It was such an amazing meal and one that I still think of regularly. I would encourage everyone to visit, just don't order the Gorditas if you're sensitive to chilli!
