Offbeat Eats

Our first morning in Marin County, Carol and I were hungry for breakfast, so I took a quick look at the internet (with Yelp being based in SF, there’s no shortage of reviews for places in the Bay Area), and found one place that had a very strong following just down the way from our hotel: Fred’s Coffee Shop in Sausalito. Heading down to Sausalito, Fred’s was pretty easy to find, it’s right on the road into town, well before you hit heavy traffic. So we grabbed an easy parking space and headed in. Three things were immediately apparent upon entering Fred’s: (1) This is definitely a popular place for both tourists and locals, (2) service was a bit slow. Everyone had that “we’ve been waiting too long” look on their faces, and (3) The grill guy was obviously good, and had quite an impressive array of good looking dishes going on the grill…

(Closed) Sometimes you just want a burger. Anyone that’s followed my Flickr feed knows that I have a weakness for a good hamburger. Indeed, I’ve got an entire set on Flickr dedicated to disproving a former coworker’s comment that “a burger is just a burger.” So, any time I’m traveling, I like to try out some of the local burger places, be it a chain (indeed, I can make claim having eaten at Fatburger, Habit, In-N-Out, and Five Guys all in the same 24 hour period) or an honest one-off burger stand. So, while Carol and I were wandering around before my friend Steve’s wedding, we found ourselves in Mill Valley needing a fairly fast lunch…

(Closed) My college roommate Steve lives in San Francisco in the Mission District. Just down the way from his house is a cool restaurant called Spork, made out of a renovated former Kentucky Fried Chicken (get the joke?). Both Steve and his wife Emily have said good things about Spork, so I was happy that I finally had a chance to try them out as part of the activities for Steve’s bachelor party…

For our last major meal in the UK this trip, my brother and his wife took us out to Zeret Kitchen in Camberwell, which is a nice Ethiopian place that Sophie discovered through work. I’ve always enjoyed Ethiopian food, and was lucky enough when I lived in Minneapolis to have several Ethiopian places to choose from. Unfortunately, after moving to New England, I haven’t seen one in ages. Apparently, they aren’t all that common in London, either, but Sophie knew about Zeret.

This July, my brother got married in London, and since his father-in-law is a member of the House of Lords, part of the wedding reception was held over at the Palace of Westminster (to quote a random tourist we overheard, “You know, that big place with the clock that looks just like Big Ben.”) It was rather nice, since we got nice tours of both Houses of Parliament, and got to roam around a completely empty and tourist-free Westminster Hall. The wedding dinner itself was in the Strangers’ Dining Room, the function room in the House of Commons apparently reserved for such affairs.

A visit to England isn’t complete without at least one trip to a good fish and chip shop (a “chippy”) for one of England’s hallmark fast food dish: the fish and chips. Most of our trip had us in London or inland Cornwall, but we did have one day in which we got to visit the south coast of Cornwall, including St Michael’s Mount, Penzanze, and Newlyn. The last of these, Newlyn, is a slightly gritty fishing village which still has a fairly active fleet of fishing trawlers and the like. And, right across the street from the harbour was Jewell’s Fish and Chips…

During last month’s trip to London for my brother’s wedding, Carol and I took a long side-trip down to Cornwall to visit with my sister-in-law’s family and visit some of Cornwall’s many scenic attractions (as well as learning the joys of barreling down narrow Cornish B-roads at 50 mph, a treat not to be missed…). And no visit to Cornwall is complete without at least one sampling of the hallmark of Cornish cuisine: the pasty.

One of the great joys of visiting England is the ability to enjoy the masterpiece of English breakfast cuisine: the “Full English”, also known as a “fry up”. Many philosophical discussions revolve around the ingredients constituting a proper “Full English”, but this is basically a dish built upon a combination of English-style bacon rashers and some eggs. However, bacon and eggs alone does not a “Full English” make…

One of the greatly unfortunate fact of life is that English cuisine still wrongly suffers from a relatively poor international reputation. I can’t count the number of friends and coworkers that, upon hearing that I was going to be spending two weeks in England, their response was, “I’m so sorry, I hear the food is terrible.” It’s terribly unfortunate, since nothing could be further from the truth. While there definitely was some justification for the stereotype of bad English food back in the 60s and 70s, the cuisine of England has definitely improved, and, especially in London, includes several of the best restaurants in the world. One of these is St John restaurant. The chef at St John, Fergus Henderson, focuses on doing classic British cooking done to high standards of perfection, with typical fare including such items as roast suckling pig, aged Scottish rib roasts, Grouse, and other high quality meats served with an excellent assortment of sides.

Some times the voyage is just as good as the destination… While in New Orleans, I wanted to make it a point to pay another visit to Willie Mae’s Scotch House. Since my last visit here in 2001, this place has been through a lot, including being featured in John T Edge’s Fried Chicken book, getting a James Beard American Classics award in 2005, and getting seriously damaged in Katrina later in 2005. Long respected as one of the area’s (and heck, the country’s) best fried chicken places, Willie Mae’s is well off of the normal tourist beat, being up in the 7th Ward on St Ann, and a healthy hike from our hotel…