San Francisco - The Food Edition...

Normally, when I come up to San Francisco, I actually spend the majority of my time east of the city in Lafayette, visiting my buddy Chris. We may make an excursion into the city at some point but, for the most part, we stay on the east side of the bay. This trip was a little different, however. Chris entertained my photography jones to the nth degree, and I came away with some stuff I'm pretty happy with.

The trip started out in Chinatown after Chris collected me at the airport. I've been craving good Chinese food, and this seemed as good a place as any to have some. So, we drove into the city, parked the car, and set out to find some lunch.

Time for a quick public service announcement: For those who happen to have the iPhone 4s, don't tell Siri you want Chinese food while you're standing in the middle of Chinatown.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

We decided that House Of Nanking looked just about as good as anywhere else. Having never been here before, for me, it was a crap shoot. But we figured "What the Hell?" and walked inside.

House Of Nanking in Chinatown...

We were greeted by a pleasant young woman who handed us menus and asked if we'd like anything to drink. Chris and I both asked for tea. Within about a minute, an older Chinese gentleman walked up to our table and introduced himself as the owner and chef. He asked if either of us had any food allergies. When we each said "No", he relieved us of our menus and proclaimed "I'll take care of you".

This would be the moment that the verb "Bourdaining" came to be.

If you don't know, Anthony Bourdain is a guy who travels around the world, eating. That's what he does. That's his gig. He even has a television show in which you can watch him travelling around the world, eating. Now, how he got that gig is anyone's guess, but his television shows generally start out with a chef looking at him and saying "I'll take care of you".

I figured this lunch was either going to be profoundly good or monumentally bad. I didn't expect much in between.

The tea was brought to the table in tall glasses. I guess I'd expected small teacups because, well, that's how it's been served in every Chinese restaurant I've ever been in. But this was different, all the way around. The reason the serve it in a glass is because there's a large clump of tea in the bottom of the glass. At first the tea rests on top of the water. It then sinks to the bottom of the glass, and the most bizarre thing happens: The tea starts growing. Yep, as it sits at the bottom of the glass, a small... well, I can't even adequately describe it. It looks like this:

The tea leaves grow...

After the soup came a veritable parade of of amazing food.

The first dish brought to the table was a pork wonton soup. I was mildly wary, as I'd never seen a creamy wonton soup before, but I figured I'd dive right in. I am so glad I did. It was incredible. An odd thing about it was that there was the very obvious presence of cilantro, which is normally used in Mexican dishes. It worked well here, though.

Pork wonton soup. Amazing...

Neither Chris nor I are big fish eaters, but the next dish to hit the table was a garlic pan fried fish that was unlike any fish I've ever had. It was very, very light and broke apart if you used too much pressure on the chopsticks. Served on top of rice with spinach leaves, I could've made this the sole lunch dish.

Garlic pan fried fish. And, yes, I'm aware that there's a fork in that picture...

The fish was a prelude to what came next, which was a dish that wasn't even on the menu (hey, that happens when you're out "Bourdaining"). It was a beef over rice, but the beef had an almost bacon quality to it; it's very hard to describe. It was amazing. I'd love to know how it was prepared but, at the same time, I don't think I should know.

I don't know what it was, but it was amazing...

Now, we weren't at all sure when the food was going to stop and, to be quite frank, I was particularly interested as I was paying. But, I have to be honest, while it wasn't nearly the most inexpensive lunch I've ever had, it was also far from the priciest. It was also close to the top of the list in terms of, quite simply, how good it was. Peter Fang, the Chinese gentleman who told us that he would take care of us, did exactly that. He prepared a lunch which was pretty over the top for a Wednesday afternoon in San Francisco.

With Peter Fang at House Of Nanking...