A Different Time

I’m thrilled to be traveling to France and Spain in a couple of weeks.  After a long hard school year I can’t wait to relax in the country side and take in the sights, smells, and flavors of these beautiful places.  One of my destinations will be the town of Lourmarin in the Vaucluse area of Provence, where my grandmother lived the last twenty years of her life.  I’ve been thinking of her a lot recently, and when I saw this menu on the online site of San Francisco’s Paris Hotel Boutique I was especially struck by her memory.  My grandmother and I were very close–she would spend hours telling me the stories of her life, occasionally with a prop or two.  I hadn’t thought of it for years, but one of her favorite souvenirs was a menu card from one of her trans-Atlantic journeys on the Queen Elizabeth ocean liner when her grandmother took her to Europe as a young woman to get fine clothes in Paris and go to finishing school.

Nothing will match my beloved grandmother’s Queen Elizabeth menu card, but this one is pretty wonderful too:

Decorative French menu from the L’Hermitage Hotel, Monte Carlo, 1909

Click here to visit Paris Boutique Hotel.

Last Night’s Mission District Menu

• Improvised salad: baby romaine, radishes, and avocado with Meyer lemon vinaigrette (Meyer lemon juice, salt, pepper, sugar, good olive oil*)
• Minted asparagus with red onion (the original recipe, for green beans here)
• Sashimi-grade tuna steaks (what other grade would we consider?) dusted ever so lightly with wasabi powder and soy, sprinkled with black sesame seeds and seared in a grill pan
• Tomatoes vinaigrette, minus the oregano, recipe here.
• Some crusty country sort of loaf courtesy of Tartine (really wonderful)
• Xarmant Txakolina, my favorite white wine.  Produced in the Basque country.  I buy mine at Paul Marcus.  It would be a great public service if everyone was granted a case each May.  Honestly, it’s so amazing.  Transportive.  More information here.  

Eclectic and charming, as was the company.  A good night in San Francisco.  I might have to make a habit of it.  But who wouldn’t love San Francisco when perched at the peak of Dolores Park in a courtyard-facing pied-à-terre?

Welcome to the Best Coast DF!

*to be all Barefoot Contessa about it