I went to Fresca Restaurant in Noe Valley to shoot the restaurant and some food.  Fresca is a Peruvian restaurant and all of the dishes are rich and flavorful.  They even have a fresh oyster bar and serve ceviche and a number of other fresh seafood appetizers.  In the process of shooting, I met the chef’s mother, who insisted that I stay for dinner after the photoshoot was over (yay I was so happy!).  As I was shooting some food, one of the dishes that caught my eye (and nose) was a big bowl of what I thought was paella.  It smelled amazing and it reminded me of this awesome paella that I ate in New York City last fall.

Anyway, after all of the photos were taken, the chef asked me what I wanted and I told him I’d love to try the rice/paella dish with seafood.  They brought it out to me and I couldn’t wait to dig in.  All I can say… PARTY IN MY FREAKING MOUTH.  This was a total fiesta de mi boca… the most amazing rice and seafood dish I’ve ever eaten.  I seriously can’t even describe it… maybe it doesn’t even deserve words?  All I can say is that it’s been 2 days and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

If you look closely at the photo, you’ll see that the dish is made up of seasoned rice, scallops, shrimp, mussells and calamari.  It’s also tossed with some peas.

I sat alone at the oyster bar and inhaled every last piece of rice.  All that was left were empty shells.  I can’t wait to go back and have it again (or try something new).  I’m really kickin myself for not taking a picture of my empty bowl to add to the Clean Plate Club gallery…

Fresca has 3 locations in San Francisco (Noe Valley, Fillmore and West Portal).  I visited the Noe Valley location.

3945 24th St
San Francisco, CA 94114
(415) 695-0549
www.frescasf.com

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Yesterday was a really cold day and I was dying to eat something warm and filling so I thought I’d give the Chili Up a shot.  I didn’t really want anything too heavy (like beef) so I opted for the chicken and corn chili, which was really rice and chicken, covered in sauce, covered in cheese, topped with a big handful of chopped red onion, cilantro and a lime.

Mmmm, doesn’t it look good?  Well it doesn’t taste good, that’s for sure.  This was the warmest blandest spoonful of grossness I’ve eaten in ages.  Frankly, it was like putting a spoonful of warm, tasteless mush in your mouth…. no flavor, only the strong pungent-ness of the cilantro and onion.

Five hours after I finished eating this dish I was still burping up onions and tasting them in my mouth.  Gross!  I dont know what was in this “chili” but I will never eat it again!!

Here’s a shot of Crocker Galleria from the top floor.

Lunch: thumbs down!

Chili Up!
50 Post Street
Crocker Galleria
(between Kearny St & Lick Pl)
San Francisco, CA 94104
(415) 693-0467

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I ordered the Charbroiled Prawn with steamed rice because I thought that it would warm me up withouth making me feel like a total load.

Take a second and try to count how many pieces of food there are on this plate.  1 Scoop of rice, 1 dish of fish sauce, 4 pieces of broccoli, 7 shrimp.  I’m sorry, but that is not enough food… not for $8.50 and not for a starving Kir… I gobbled up the shrimp and the broccoli pretty fast, and I was still really hungry so I ate the white rice which you know is soooo not filling in a “filling” way… *sigh*.  Will try something else there next time.

Oh yeah, the shrimp was good.  It was just sauteed with some pepper and garlic, pretty simple… the broccoli was lightly steamed.  The fish sauce was good and the rice was good too… cooked perfectly, not too soft, not too grainy and it had that nice popcorny smell.

I’m giving today’s lunch 2 stars because I think it wasn’t enough food, and it wasn’t oh so spectacular.  It was good but it wasn’t good enough for $11… but I will go back to try the garlic noodles – they smelled divine.

Perilla
510 Mission St
(between 1st St & Ecker Pl)
San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 777-1893
www.perillasf.com

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Being the white-bread American that I am (in a Korean body), I immediately scoured the menu for General Tso’s chicken, which was my ultimate favorite Chinese take out item when I was living back east in PA/NYC.  I am getting used to the fact now that most Chinese places out here don’t have it, and the ones that do confuse it with Kung Pao chicken.  So I settled on the “orange chicken” instead.

We waited quite a while for the food to come, and I ended up being the “lunch loser” since my friend’s dish came out about 10 minutes prior to mine.  Drrrr.

So when it finally came out it looked great.  A big healthy plate of steamed white rice and another big plate of the orange chicken…. see photos below.  The chicken was really good.  I really appreciated how it wasn’t breaded and fried to death — it was only lightly breaded, and the sauce was flavorful and thinner in consistency than the normal thick sauced fluorescent orange fried balls that you usually get at most Chinese places.  You could definitely taste the chicken.  The orange chicken chunks were in small pieces too so it was pretty easy to eat, no complaints there.

I had a fun time at Henry’s and the food was good too.

110 Natoma Street
(between 2nd St & New Montgomery St)
San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 546-4999
www.henryshunanrestaurant.com

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I ended up ordering a mini order of the chicken katsu which comes with the bbq sauce, a small scoop of rice, and a small scoop of macaroni salad. I also got a side of fries with gravy and a spam musubi. I don’t know what I was thinking ordering so much food… guess my eyes were bigger than my stomach!!!

So I started with the chicken katsu. It was really good, crispy, moist, the chicken was soft and bite-able… really good. Sometimes when i see chicken katsu I assume it will be hard since it seems kind of difficult to fry chicken without overcooking it, especially such thin slices. This chicken katsu was definitely tender and crispy.

The macaroni salad was also very good, the sweet kind. Didn’t really eat too much rice since there was a big mound of rice in the musubi and I had a whole container of gravy fries to try to eat too. I have to say that the fries were good but I’m not sure I would get the gravy version next time just because there was just so much gravy and it made the fries really soggy… and I can’t stand soggy things. So I ate a few off the top and on the sides and called it quits.

Last, the spam musubi. The first time I had spam and spam musubi was at L&L about 3 years ago. It was really good and I forgot how much I like it. Here are the pics:

There was a delightful burst of bbq sauce when I took a bit into this spam musubi.

I very much appreciated the holiday decor… it made the place really fun and exciting place to eat.

My vote: 3 fries!

L&L Hawaiian Barbecue
312 Kearny St
(between Bush St & Pine St)
San Francisco, CA 94108
(415) 956-2888
www.SanFranciscoLandL.com

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