Farewell 2009

Little Star Pizza

Little Star Deep Dish pizza

(Spinach blended with ricotta and feta, mushrooms, onions, garlic)

Garlic Bread(Warm sourdough served with a blend of

butter & extra virgin olive oil and a bulb of roasted garlic)

I finally had Little Star pizza this weekend. Since Little Star pizza tops a lot of people's list of best pizza and one of my personal missions is to discover the best SF pizza places, I was really excited to try it out. I've tried their ordered slices before but that's not the same as eating a slice minutes after it comes out of the oven.

For appetizer we tried to Garlic Bread which really should be called Garlic crumb because you eat more garlic than bread. It's really good though. I want to try to make it myself, for obviously dinner for one nights. We ordered the house main dish - Little Star Deep Dish Pizza and it was good. Personally, I like thin crust pizza so deep dish is not my favorite but I wanted to eat their special so it was a deep dish night. I found that I really liked the crust but the veggies in the pizza could have been cooked more. Overall it was good. Not as good as Zachary's deep dish pizza in Berkeley but one of the best deep dish pizzas I've had so far in SF.

Zuni Cafe's Fried Eggs for Brunch

I finally tried Zuni Cafe today. I've heard a lot about this place and had been wanting to try it for awhile.

I found the ambiance really nice. Lots of light from the big windows. My food was good but not as fabulous I thought it would be considering all that I have heard. I was actually still really hungry after I finished this whole dish. Not sure why a plate full of pork, bread and fried eggs didn't fill me up. Perhaps the portion was small for my Sunday brunch appetite. I like to go back for lunch to try their signature chicken. They have a rotisserie chicken dish for 2 that everyone around us had ordered and anyone I know who has tried it has said its really good. It takes an hour to cook so you have to go when you are hungry enough to eat a whole chicken but not starving that you can't wait an hour for your meal to prepare at a restaurant. I don't know if this is possible for me.

Iron Cactus - this is not your Mission Burrito

Today I tried a new Mexican restaurant in SOMA -Iron Cactus.

I liked the restaurant's space...I wish I could say the same about the mexican food.

The interior is mostly from the recycled wood of the original creamery that had been there before. The iron panels mixed in with the recycled wood give the restaurant an authentic canteena feel.

I also liked the fact that they use naturally raised hormone free ingredients but the burrito I ordered didn't taste like an authentic Mission burrito that I had been craving for all day. My one and only motivation for running 4 miles this morning. Then again I was in SOMA and not the Mission so I should have known better. The fact that they have burrito bowls on the menu definitely should have been a clue that this would be a little bit different than the Mission. I shouldn't have been surprised to find lima beans, green bean and corn in my burrito when I didn't even order a veg burrito. I hate to be so picky about my burritos but the truth is I am. Having had so many good burritos in the Mission, I can't settle for lima beans and creamy guacamole.

The Burger Bar

On Saturday I finally tried the new Burger Bar restaurant opened by Hubert Keller in Macy's. The elevator to the 6th floor in Macy's was so crowded that we decided to take the escalator up. When we finally made our way through all the holiday shoppers, I was not surprised that there was a 30 minute wait for a table. Luckily, there were a couple of seats at the bar that we could eat at. I was so hungry that I couldn't decide on what I wanted to eat. There are so many different types of burgers to choose from, like the Surf n Turf Burger, the Nacho Burger. Everything sounded so good to my empty belly that I wanted to order half the menu. I decided on the Burger Bar sliders so I could try 3 different ones. I also got the sweet potato fries because the bartender said it was his favorite and I am a sucker for other people's favorite food or just a sucker for bartenders. The food came out pretty quickly, which was a good thing. However, I have to be honest (and as much as I wanted to love the food) it wasn't that great. The sliders were tasty. But when my friend asked me which one was my favorite, I couldn't tell because all three tasted the same to me- good but not amazing.The sweet potato fries were not as amazing as I thought either. They were too skinny for their own good. They barely had any meat on them to even dip in ketchup. I wanted to tell the bartender that he should try the sweet potato fries at Pacific Catch, because he has been clearly deprived of tasty sweet potato fries. I decided not to burst his sweet potato bubble though. The food was good but honestly not as good as I thought it would be considering all that I've heard, the wait and the price.