The Castro, Mission District and Noe Valley

Camila responded to Penny's post but it doesn't seem to have been posted:

You should go check out the neighborhoods you never go to. Or maybe it’s just me that feels that I always go to the same places each time (union square, Chinatown, north beach, fisherman’s wharf). When i first wandered through the marina and the mission, I was like, oh, there’s so much more to see! Ha ha. I’d plan my day around where to eat...Tartine. Oh and that kenji Lopez alt guy has a “wursthaus” that he just opened but i think it’s in San Mateo...but right by BART it looks like.

http://www.wursthall.com/

Exploring the neighborhoods is fine with me, since we'll be staying in one: the Outer Sunset.  I've already suggested walking to the beach but I've also been intrigued by "Noe Valley", which is on the other side of Twin Peaks.  Unfortunately it takes about 50 minutes to get there by public transportation because you have to take 2 or 3 buses.  But we could combine it with the Mission District and The Castro, taking the Judah Streetcar (N) and walking down Noe Street and then left on Market to Castro Street.  On Noe Street we'll stumble across L'Ardoise, a French bistro, but it doesn't open until 5 or 5:30 pm.  There aren't many commercial establishments along the route but once we hit Market, there's Super Duper Burgers and across the street is Tacorgasmico.  It's hard to ignore the latter's name but the food and interior sound interesting.  Back on the other side is a seafood restaurant Catch but it seems somewhat pricey.

Turning down Castro Street at Harvey Milk Plaza, there's a Castro Ice Cream & Dessert that's really a tiny Turkish bakery with baked goods, tea, coffee, baklava, etc.  Looks good but no website, only yelp.

Quite a few clothing stores for men (underpants) but also Cliff's Variety Store.  Their website says they maintain a stock of hard-to-find hardware items so it definitely sounds like a place to browse or you can browse online at Pointy.  After this on Castro Street there really doesn't seem to be much more so we can walk east on 18th Street until we get to the Mission District.

About half a mile along 18th is Bi-Rite Creamery.  I wouldn't mind trying a few of their ice creams (black sesame and tcho chocolate?) or maybe one of their signature sundaes like Dainty Gentleman with honey lavender ice cream, hot fudge, blood orange olive oil & Maldon sea salt (which is from England, by the way).  Or we could make our own sundae for $8.50.

Then we'll roll out of the creamery and march on to Tartine Bakery on Guerrero Street where Fernando can inhale the sourdough aroma.   It opens early (7:30 am) so we can at least pick up some croissants but they say their bread doesn't come out until 4:30 pm and expect the loaves to cost $9-11.  Camila should be happy with this posting; it's all about food.

We are a couple of blocks southeast of Mission Dolores at 16th Street & Dolores.  I don't remember ever having visited it and how can we say we've been to the Mission District if we haven't been in the Mission?  There is both the old Mission Dolores and the new basilica (1918).  San Francisco Travel says:
"Most visitors head to Mission Dolores to get a glimpse of the oldest building in San Francisco, while those in the know go there to view rare art, listen to an acclaimed choir and see one of the most stunning rose gardens in San Francisco."
Unfortunately the choir sings on Sunday when we're in Berkeley but we can visit the cemetery and gardens and get a view of the city from Dolores Park, but that's back on 18th.

There is a Heath Ceramics tile factory several blocks east on 18th Street beyond Alabama which might be interesting because it has a retail store and a Tartine Manufactory for food.  I'm not sure how we fit this detour into our walk but at least we know it is there.

Now we must hurry to Mission Street or we'll never get to Noe Valley!  It appears that California foodies have taken over the food scene on Mission Street.  It used to be Mexican when we lived in Albany in the 70s but now it is "Gracias Madre" whose "mission is love" with "plant-based Mexican food" and which starts their lunch menu with a $9 Madre Green Smoothie (spinach, cilantro, mint, avocado, pineapple and sea salt), followed by a $15 Bowl Uno of tempeh chorizo, black beans, guacamole, brown rice and pico de gallo served on a bed of romaine and topped with nacho cashew cheese and pepitas.  You can't get more nutty Californian that that!  Where's the huitlacoche I'd like to know.

More famous is Mission Chinese Food,  offering dishes like Sichuan Carbonara, smashed cucumbers with tahini instead of garlic and chili oil, Kung Pao Pastrami and Chinese Giardianiera.  California is all into fusion food but I can borrow the Mission Chinese cookbook from the library.  There are lots of restaurants in the Mission District and we only have one meal to eat.  Perhaps we should save our appetite for Californios.  You can't get more cutting-edge Californian cuisine than that.  And then there's Foreign Cinema, specializing in oysters and Californian/Mediterranean dishes and located in a bright airy space where some amateur photos on Yelp have enough light to look good.

We already saw the Mission District murals the last time we were in San Francisco and there don't seem to be many museums in this area, except for the David Ireland House.  David Ireland was a "conceptual" artist.  (Is that the same as "installation art"?)  Hoodline has an article on the house: "Inside The David Ireland House, The Mission's Secret Art Museum."  I'm always looking for new decorating ideas, although I understand that his furnishings are rather sparse.

As you near 24th Street on Mission, establishments appear to be a bit more Mexican but there is also a Wise Sons Jewish Delicatessen on 24th Street where Papi may be able to find that pastrami sandwich he's been looking for.  He can also get a spicy horseradish michelada, a breakfast burrito with pastrami, a pickle plate of vinegar and salt fermented vegetables, and a Chinese chicken salad.

We need to pick up our pace now or we'll never get to Noe Valley, which we should reach if we proceed West on 24th Street for about half a mile from Mission to Church Street (we can take the #48 Quintara/24th St. bus if it passes by).  There's the Mission Branch Library along the way on Bartlett Street, in case we need to make a pit stop, and half a block north on Valencia Street there is the Arizmendi Workers CoOp Bakery, if Fernando wants another inhalation.  Finally at Church Street, we begin to encounter the upscale restaurants, home-decor boutiques, and chic clothing shops that characterize Noe Valley.  They also say to watch out for aggressive strollers and packs of golden retrievers.    If we take another detour and walk 5 blocks south on Church Street we'll run into the Omnivore Book Shop on César Chavez whose new titles page features food magazines I haven't even heard of.   I'd be up for one of their events on Thursday, June 7.  Elizabeth Minchilli, the author of Eating My Way Through Italy: Heading Off the Main Roads to Discover the Hidden Treasures of the Italian Table  is talking from 6:30-7:30 p.m.  She has a blog on Rome.

And if we keep going south to 30th Street, we'll run into that Sardinian restaurant, La Ciccia.  It's not cheap, especially if you order a primo, secondo and contorno.  But it is well recommended and Zagat says to order the Octopus Stew and the Spaghetti with spicy oil & bottarga.  Like many upscale restaurants it is only open from Tuesday to Saturday from 5:30pm to 10.  If we're lucky we can take the J Church streetcar down Church Street from 24th and back up again.   Or by then we might be ready for an Uber Lyft.

Another recommended restaurant is Firefly on 24th Street for locally sourced food.  But I have troubles with a restaurant that serves "bits" with "yummy spread", "apps" with "nut alerts!", and "GF cornbread for the intolerant".  There's also Peasant Pies on 24th: "Inspired by a favorite meal of 19th century French villagers, Peasant Pies® are filled with fresh vegetables, poultry, beef or seafood and baked in a crisp bread crust."  Now here is something we could take home for dinner.  There's another location on Irving Street in the Inner Sunset.  And I forgot to mention Mission Pie on Mission south of 24th that specializes in sweet pies.  But how would we carry all these pies home?

This is enough for this district.  What neighborhoods should we visit next?

Monday: The Japanese Tea Garden; Tuesday: the Mission

We had hoped to keep you abreast of our activities while in San Francisco but we are three days behind.  On Monday we rode the cable car down to Market and then took the #5 bus out to Golden Gate Park, hoping to get there before 9:30 am when the San Francisco City Guides tour of the Japanese Tea Garden began.  We were a little late but the group was still at the entrance when we arrived.  The Japanese Tea Garden is free from 9-10 am on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  The azaleas were out and everything was beautifully green and a real incentive for creating one's own Japanese garden, but I will have to change our walks from straight to winding.  Japanese gardens are also an incentive for pruning and training trees and bushes instead of letting them run natural and rampant.  I loved this place as a kid, probably because there was moss and ferns and water, something sorely lacking in Southern California.  We took lots of photos and they will eventually be added.

After the Tea Garden we walked over to the San Francisco Botanic Garden but we had to pay there, although I had thought it was free.  I guess they put up a fence in the meantime.  They have a fair number of interesting plantings although their "fragrance" garden was a disappointment, especially considering the number of fragrant trees we have encountered on city streets and the pink jasmine that is now in bloom here.  Unfortunately I cannot identify the trees but they are evergreens.  We only saw part of the Botanic Garden before we got hungry and went over to the Inner Sunset on 9th Avenue to eat at a Japanese restaurant called Kiki's.  We had the bento lunches:  Fernando had an unagi roll and fried dumplings, Penny had a California roll and tempura, I had teriyaki salmon and a California roll.  The California roll wasn't the greatest since they mixed the artificial crab with mayonnaise (I've never seen that before) and didn't sprinkle on any tiny red fish roe (I love those crunchy jewels).   Penny fell in love with the house tea since it was Gen Maicha, the Japanese green tea with roasted brown rice.

We had thought about going back to the Botanic Garden but the Beach Chalet was calling us so we took the Judah Streetcar, the N line, out to the beach.  At the Botanic Garden store I had splurged and bought a $3 SF Muni transit map which has been very helpful at identifying the routes and where they go.  Unfortunately when you get out that far in the Sunset the buses don't come very often and they don't stop at all on the Great Highway that runs along the beach.  I had to hobble all the way over to the Beach Chalet where we refreshed ourselves with a flight of their own brews, which I never find to be as good as my regular favorites.  But the murals of San Francisco were very pretty and always interesting.   Then we walked over to La Playa to wait for a #18 bus that would take us up towards the Palace of the Legion of Honor where we caught the #1 bus that runs into town along California Street.  Then we waited for the Powell-Mason cable car that took us home.

Taking all these buses really uses up time, and the cable cars don't come very frequently,  so we were tired by the time we arrived home and we took our nap even though it was late in the afternoon.  We'd had a huge lunch and so had a simple dinner of bread and cheese and a salad, and of course some wine, or was it beer?  Oh wait! maybe we had our second slice of pizza at Tony's, which wasn't as good as the first day.  On Monday and Tuesday nights, many of the North Beach restaurants are closed so there aren't many customers in the area and not much turnover in the pizzas.

On Tuesday we decided to do the Mission District murals so again took the cable car down to Market, walked over to Mission Street and took the #14 bus down to 16th Street.  First stop was the Redstone Building to see the murals inside but first Fernando had to buy a Chilean empanada at a little hole in the wall.  I'm afraid I only like the fried cheese empanadas and they don't do those decadent things here in the States.  The murals in Clarion Alley were interesting but more informal than the WPA murals of Coit Tower and not as nice as the Beach Chalet murals.   The ones on the Women's Building were more finished but it's always hard to take photos of things of the wall, especially when they are in the shade.  The Mission is interesting in the juxtaposition of very low class stores on Mission Street and gentrified housing a street over.  There was a community garden that I had to browse through, just to see what I could be growing here while my garden in Pittsburgh is frozen solid....

We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant, La Quinta, where all of the patrons were Hispanic.  Penny and I had a standard plate of beans, rice, salad and chiles rellenos.  Fernando had the daily special of pork ribs.  I think we should not have full meals but just a taco here and there because we were ready for a siesta when we finished.  We're only able to do a half day of activity at our age and then we are pooped, and we still had to navigate the bus system back to the apartment:  #49 north along Mission and Van Ness and the #45 up Union to Mason, and then walking the block and a half up the hill to our apartment.  We have a new appreciation for hills...

However, after our refreshing nap, we had to go out and hike the Green Street steps which are at the top of our block, and then down Jones to Macondray Lane, of "Tales of the City" fame.  That was really nice.  A lovely leafy walkway that we must take Susan and Rich to see.

From there we went down to Chinatown but these days, after having been to Hong Kong,  I'm always disappointed.  Plus the stores look a bit messy and perhaps in my old age Fernando's perpetual harping to get organized is having its effect.  Of course, since everything these days is from China, it doesn't have the allure that it once had.

While we were there we noticed billows of smoke coming up over the skyline from the direction of downtown.  My first thought was of the1906 fire that quickly engulfed the rest of the city and I wondered if we shouldn't evacuate.  But we couldn't find anything on our iPhones about the fire and we didn't hear any sirens and nobody else seemed to notice it so we went about our business.  No big purchases and we soon struggled back up the hill (one of many) to the cable car, which we took back home.  At $6 a pop, we have certainly recouped the cost of the 7-day MUNI passport.

After the Mexican lunch, we were only ready for a simple salad, bread and cheese at home.  And of course a bottle of wine.