Leaving California

We had an open day on Friday and decided to drive into the city and have lunch at Hunan Homes, the grammatically incorrect, but delicious Chinese restaurant I've been going to in the city ever since my dad first moved to the bay. We had to shuffle naps around so that we wouldn't have a complete meltdown on our hands by the time we got seated for lunch and then we were on our way. Ritual Roasters was on my list to hit up while in San Francisco and a friend recommended Philz Coffee to me as well, so before lunch we went to both.




Philz is supposedly the highest ranked coffee 'chain' in S.F., but it was pretty bad. The people were friendly, the environment was nice, but my cappucccino came out looking like old bubble bath water and they put a sprig of something green in it - mint maybe? Weird. But smart, I guess, if you're serving up crappy coffee. Neither of us finished our cup. From there we drove to Ritual Roasters and had the good fortune to show up right as they were doing their weekly cupping. They had five coffees available to taste - on the table they lined up 5 large jars of roasted coffee, and in front of each jar were three bowls. The practice is to take a tasting spoon and loudly slurp a spoonful from each bowl. The reason they allow three bowls for each coffee is to ensure that an acurate taste is provided in case one of the batches has a bad bean in it. If one tastes different than the other two, you have a better idea of the actual taste.





The first one was Las Delicias, Colombia, the second, Finca Fernández, Cup of Excellence Honduras #8 (cup of excellence is an honor given to coffees submitted to a cupping challenge that is the best of the crop from farms world wide, it's then sold at auction for high prices), then two Brazilians and finally an AMAZING Ethiopia Gedeo that blew them all out of the water. It had notes of lemon and bergamot and the lady next to me was talking about lavender and lilac notes too. I asked what she did at the shop, because it was obvious she belonged there. Turns out she was the owner, Eileen. So inspiring to see women running these nationally recognized coffee roasters!!!!



A girlfriend of mine from high school had offered to meet up if I got into the city, so we ended up picking her up and taking her to eat Chinese with us. Kathy Kurtak. She is an architect and moving to Columbia in NYC for her masters in June. She was always brilliant and kind and it was good to catch up with her. Lunch was fantastic, as always - the honey walnut prawns were the show stopper, as always.

After lunch we headed home and laid low. There's only so much excitement these little people can take in a day. Saturday we spent just puttering around and packing up the van so that we could get back on the road Sunday morning. And on Sunday we met up with Rasha, Tim and their kids for breakfast at Joy of Eating in Vallejo before leaving to head north.