From the Ledge

San Francisco is a city very close to my heart.  It’s the first city I visited during my first trip to the United States way back when so my initial glimpse of its skyline and harbor views, my inaugural sense of its smells and throbbing vitality are all indelibly etched into my memory, as only first experiences can be.  It has been a city of  joyous celebrations over the years:  of my college BFFs congregrating from everywhere in the world for Tina’s wedding weekend in 2003, a weekend full of memorable feasts (at Aziza and Ton Kiang, courtesy of Chef Mako) and uhmmm, memorable unmentionables (ahem, courtesy of SF-based Jojolah and me); of Filipino-style Christmases (including, one year, four Christmas eve dinners, or noche buenas, in one night) with Minneapolis-based BFF Tita Joey and John and the colorful cast of characters that naturally gravitate to their dynamic personas; of the last trip I took with both of my parents together.  San Francisco and New York City are the two places I try to go to every year to get away from Chicago in order to regroup and rejuvenate.  Despite the fact that it is, in my opinion, a theatrical wasteland, there’s a lot of other things that San Francisco can fascinate one with:  it’s a hot hub for visual art, design, world music, and cuisine.  It was the city’s thriving, one-of-a-kind food scene that I wanted to zero in and explore further during my most recent week-long trip.  And it didn’t disappoint:  from Burmese food to organic Bolivian to Michelin-reviewed dimsum palaces to exciting nights at two of the city’s hottest new restaurants (Perbacco and Zinnia), San Francisco demonstrated once again that it is the perfect city for collecting memorable culinary experiences.  I’ll be recounting the five evenings and four days I ate my way through the city in a series of blogposts over the next week or so, and I’d like to start the series with one of my favorite San Francisco experiences, culinary or otherwise, a walk through of the gourmet food market, the Ferry Building Marketplace. 

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