August 29th, Eat Real Festival

A quick run down of what I ate yesterday at Oakland's Eat Real Festival.

A Prather Ranch slider, with radiccio, carmalized onions, and aioli; served with a Corn salad that was delicious once I ate my way through too much arugula.

From Kung-Fu Taco truck, A nun chuk chicken taco and a Lemon curd mo chi ball, mo chi excellant, lemon curd bland; but the taco was excellant!

A forgetable Tinga tostada along with a very tasty Pork tamale.

Two sisiq tacos, both spicy, one pork one beef (All philapino) Kat liked them more than the Kung0fu taco, but I preferred kung-fu.

A Onion pancake and four pork bao's, bao were average, pancake was excelleant with a peanut sauce.

Then we drank some beer.

Then I had a Porchella sandwich, with carmelized onions and herb salad. It was quite excellant!!! Too bad i was pretty full at this point... (Service at the Rolly roti truck was terrible!!! The lady taking the money actually, when I asked her to cut the sandwich in half, actually asked another helper, "Do you know how to cut the sandwich in half?") Anyways, it was a long line due to poor service/expediting...)

Then we drank some more beer.

Then we went into the farmer market and had some fruit samples.

Then some watermelon

Then some wine

Forgot to Post, didn't forget to eat

I never forget to eat, but I often forget to post...
Anyways, last Saturday I went out to Salthouse in SF with my parents and Kathryn for a nice family dinner.
We started out with Oysters on the halfshell. Served with lemon, mignette and cocktail sauce. Paired with a caraff of Chardonnay from their cask. (Salt house has 3 wines on tap now, the Chardonnay, a Cab, and a Syrah. I think?)
For my appetizer, I ordered their Yellowtail tartare. Beautiful and fresh chunks of yellowtail, with celery, fennel, and grapefruit. The yellowtail was great, with the crunch of celery and fennel, back by a nice a sweetneess from the grapefruit. I say the yellowtail was great, but the dish was not. It was ok. I felt like the dish missed something, a collection of carefully diced ingrediants that just needed one more thing to bring them all together. A nice kick of spice would of done it for me, or maybe a complimenting herb?
For my entree, I ordered their braised shortrib, which came accompanied by a spring medley of vegatables perfectly cooked. When I order a braised dish, I generally expect a fair amount of sauce, am I wrong? Well, the rib meat (Removed from its bone) was properly cooked, but came with the tiniest tablespoon of sauce created from the rib braising liquid. Enough for about half the meat and none of the vegetables. Sad...
But their desert offered was worth the missteps, a warm Rhubarb with shortbread and poppyseed icecream. The dish came in a shallow soup bowl (Something for salthouse to consider with their braised rib, I want enough sauce to warrent a bowl, which you already have.) with the shortbread cookie, cut in a poppyseed flower shape, floating like an island in the midst of a sea of warm rhubarb. Perfectly placed, so the scoop of poppyseed icecream would be save and sound aboard the cookie, protected from the warm rhubarb until I was ready to scoop it up!