A little of this, a fair amount of that…

Eastside Road, January 7, 2011—

BACK DOWN TO THE CITY today, as we Bay Areans always refer to San Francisco, to visit some museum shows. A bit of pasta with duck ragout at a friend's press, where we dropped in for conversation: Andrew had made the ragout for a New Year's Eve dinner, and was using up the shreds. It's a delicious thing, duck ragout, and it reminds me to get a duck leg or two one of these days.

Then we stopped off for salads and a couple of samusas at a place we'd heard about on Clement Street. The chicken samusas were first-rate, filled with a dense shredded chicken-potato mixture and served with a piquant sauce. (Duck, of course, would have been even better.) I liked my simple salad: cabbage, lettuce, cucumber, onion, salt, vinegar. L's more complex salad, with all sorts of seeds, and chicken, and nuts, and fish sauce, seemed too busy; the oolong tea was delicious and bracing.
• Burma Superstar, 309 Clement Street, San Francisco; tel. 415.387.2147

Dinner at a bistro new to us, suggested by the friends who joined us. We began with fine butter-lettuce salad with a parsley, chives, and scallions, and a nice, rather subtle mustard vinaigrette; we went on to grilled top sirloin steak served with french fries, a little bit of lightly bound spinach, and maître d'hôtel butter. Dessert was a redesigned tarte “Tatin,” on a crackerlike pastry round rather than tarte-pastry, but with first-rate apples nicely caramelized.


Chablis, Brocard “Vieille Vignes,” 2008 (tight at first, then opening into a soft, fruity, but still serious wine);
Cornas, Chave, 1988 (perfectly mature, ready for a few years more, beauitful garnet, tobacco and violets in the nose, full body, nice finish — thanks for bringing it, John!)• Bistro Aix, 3340 Steiner Street, San Francisco; tel. (415) 202-0100