San Francisco - Day 7 - Sears' Fine Food, Castro, Organic Market, Twin Peaks

Taken from private diary entry (written by Joanne from a 3rd person's perspective):

Wednesday 1/7/2009
Jason does some work in the morning. They then head to Sears' Fine Food for brunch. According to Jason, this place is quite famous and served very good breakfast.

#1

Sears' Fine Food. The Sears opened in 1938 at Powell and Sutter Streets. As legend goes, Ben Sears was a retired circus clown whose wife, Hilbur, inherited a Swedish pancake recipe.
The airy, dollar-size cakes quickly became the enduring certerpiece of Sears home-style menu.

#2


Joanne orders their famous pancakes with maple syrup and butter. Jason orders a big breakfast – consisting of scrambled eggs, bacon, hash brown and toast. Their food arrives. Joanne’s pancakes taste alright. She loves the butter that came with it. It was very fragrant. The interesting thing about the meal was the maple syrup. It was heated up! She never had hot maple syrup with pancakes before. She also loved the maple syrup because it was not too sweet and just the right consistency (not too thick). Jason loved his food. Joanne found his hash brown interesting. Her idea of hash brown were the Mcdonald’s type. Small sized. However, this hash brown was huge – the size was an equivalent of two slices of toast. Jason said that this is how hash brown was originally cooked – the Mcdonald ones were imposters. The hash brown was very tasty. The inside was soft and the outside was crispy. The bacon was very crispy – tasted like beef jerkey. Joanne is not used to the bacon because it was hard and dry. Apparently, bacon in America is always cooked like this, unlike in Australia where the bacon is slightly brown but still soft and juicy.

#3

Jason with his meal

#4

Eggs, bacon and hash brown

#5

Pancakes

#6

Heated up maple syrup

#7



Overall, they had a pretty good experience at the restaurant. It's easy to see why the restaurant is popular with both locals and tourists.

They then retrieved their car. Joanne drives in America for the first time. It was a slightly daunting experience because she was not used to driving on the right side of the road and she didn’t really know her way around. Unconsciously Joanne always swerved close to the right because she was used to being on that side of the road. But they got to their destination, Castro, safe and sound.

#8


They didn’t spend too much time at Castro. Joanne expected the street to be longer. Castro was a very nice area though. They past by Twin Peaks tavern, checked out movie times at the Arthouse cinema, entered a couple of stores. Joanne also got coffee from a coffee specialist café. They had hundreds of different varieties of coffee in that store. They also entered a bookstore but didn’t stay too long because it was all gay-related books (nothing that is relevant to Joanne or Jason). They also tried locating Castro Camera – the shop that Harvey Milk opened and operated it (and was also used in the movie set ‘Milk’) but couldn’t locate it. Joanne thinks that shop has been converted into something else.

#9

Castro

#10

Castro Cinema. Shows arthouse films.

#11

Bought a coffee with this coffee specialist shop

#12

San Francisco's first openly gay bar

#13

Castro Camera shop used to occupy this blue building

They then stumbled upon an organic local market. Joanne is thrilled because there are not many good organic markets in Melbourne. Also, organic food in Melbourne always blow a hole in your pocket. On the contrary, the organic food here is relatively cheap. For example, a pallet of organic strawberries cost only 4 dollars. (In Melbourne, ONE organic lemon may cost $2) Joanne found many varieties of vegetables, fruits and fungus that she never knew existed. For example, she saw pink mushrooms. It looked so pretty. She bought a packet of salad leaves with flowers. She never knew flowers could be consumed.

#14


#15


#16


#17

Variety of salad leaves with flowers

#18


#19


#20

Trumpet pink mushrooms

After the organic market, they headed to Twin Peaks. Jason has been raving about this place and have been wanting to bring Joanne there for the past few days. They drove there and Joanne is quite enthralled by the view. From Twin Peaks, you can see the entire San Francisco city. They view was absolutely breathtaking. They took numerous photos including some star jump shots.

#21

Eating a flower on the way up to Twin Peaks. It tasted quite nice actually as the nectar was quite sweet. However, Jason hated eating flowers.

#22

View from Twin Peaks

#23

Photoshopped

#23b

Photoshopped 2

#24


#25

Doing jumps. There were many failed attempts. Either bad photographer or bad jumper. I blame the photographer.

#26


#27


#28


#29



After that they headed back to the hotel.

They went out at 8.30 pm for dinner at a Malaysian/Singaporean restaurant called Malaysian Singaporean restaurant near golden gate park (Clement Street, between 9th and 10th Avenue, off Geary Blv). They order a nasi lemak, roti canai and chah keoy teoy. Joanne found out about the restaurant through some food forums online. Theres lots of raving reviews on this restaurant (it suppose to be quite authentic). Joanne was slightly disappointed. It’s okay, considering that its not Malaysia – kinda like Malaysian food in Melbourne. Can’t complain too much as her expectations were not that high in the first place.