Good evening guys!! I am excited to re-cap my second day in SF! This time, bright and early in the morning and ALREADY in SF! Yay! And what better way to start your morning in SF than to eat some yummy soul food for breakfast! Since it was just a few blocks away, I walked over to Brenda’s French Soul Food, San Francisco, CA to eat their famous beignets and grits! Thankfully it was a Friday morning so there wasn’t even a wait! But warning, on weekends the wait is easily over an hour! It’s an attraction for both locals and tourists because it is the #1 place in SF for soul food!

I love the cans they use to hold our napkins and utensils! Good job on re-using and preserving the environment! 😀

Crispy pork belly – poached egg, cheddar grits, spicy onion radish – this is one of their famous grits that is ordered a lot! In case you are wondering, grits look like mashed potatoes but they are coarse, grounded corn kernels and cooked with milk or water! These were topped with cheddar! Yum. The pork belly had a huge layer of fat but was cooked to a crisp so it was almost like eating a thick slab of bacon. I love the spicy onion radish because it gave a spicy kick. However, the poached egg was a disappointment because it was a bit too cooked so the egg yolk wasn’t runny 🙁

Craw fish beignets – spiced with cayenne, scallions and cheddar – These are to die for! I’ve been craving these since I’ve had them the first time years ago! And as I blog about it now, I want more.. I don’t think I could ever over-hype how good it is or get tired of eating this! Be careful though: it could be slightly messy to eat and only because some of the spices come off!

Look at the creamy, savory crawfishes on the inside! It was hot! The flour-y dough was soft and warm. The outside skin had a light crunch and spiced with cayenne pepper to give that spicy kick. The crawfish is so chewy and perfectly cooked; perfectly seasoned with Cajun flavors!

Now that I’ve eatened, I have food coma so I need and want coffee. And what is the Starbucks of SF?! It’s Philz Coffee! This is my first time ever going to Philz Coffee! I was utterly confused even with this sign that had clear instructions 😀

So there were three baristas at a counter that would call us up and ask us for our orders! Then while we waited for the baristas to make our coffee, we walked to the cashier, told him what we ordered and paid. Then we went back to the baristas to wait for our coffee! How do they even know we paid? Lol it’s like the opposite of Starbucks because the baristas start making our drinks before we even pay. haha

(left) Tesora – butter, nuts, caramel; (right) mint mojito iced coffee – minty, sweet, creamy

Tesora tasted like a caramel latte and I didn’t think there was anything special. Even with caramel, this drink wasn’t even sweet. However.. The mint mojito iced coffee lived up to its reputation.. Not only did it look cute, but it was so good! It had a “skinny” creamy texture and was sweet and minty at the same time! There wasn’t a strong minty taste, which I like and the coffee flavor wasn’t masked either! I would come back and order this again and again if I could! Also, each barista will always ask you if you want your coffee black, cream or sugar and light, medium or sweet! So whatever coffee you pick, they will also specialize it to how you specifically want your coffee to be like! Great customer service!

(left) So good – grapefruit, currant, raisin; (right) Ecstatic iced coffee – combo of Philz blend.

So good tasted good, but I didn’t remember too much about its flavors so nothing special there. However, Ecstatic iced coffee was so good!! It is a combination of all of their coffee blends into one coffee!! You know what? I think I might love Philz Coffee more than Starbucks.. Their coffee is just so good! When you drink their coffee, you can taste and FEEL the coffee bean flavors that were freshly brewed right on the spot! Not only that, but even the iced coffee still tasted good HOURS after! No such thing as watered down coffee!!! I think I fell in love <3

Now one of my most favorite places in SF is CHINATOWN and that’s where I went for lunch! This Chinatown is way more legit than the one in LA. It is older and is bustling with Cantonese-speaking Chinese in unspeakable volumes! I can’t even begin to describe how awesome this Chinatown is. I just love this place!! One of my favorite places to go to in Chinatown is called Delicious Dim Sum. I know, I know, the name sounds lame but it’s good and one of the few places that is good and not a tourist attraction in Chinatown.

So this place had one thing about itself that I thought was unique! A few years back, they would serve dim sum in these small, special plastic bags where the inside were specially “oiled” to put food in (kind of like the non-stick cookie sheets for baking)! So they put the dim sum pieces in these small plastic bags and you would hold the bag and eat directly from the bag itself! I like doing this while walking up and down the Chinatown streets! However, when I came back today, they stopped doing that 🙁 They just put it in regular to-go boxes now, but that doesn’t stop me from loving this place still! All of the dim sum steamed is bigger in size than compared to your traditional sit-down dim sum restaurants.

big pieces of shrimp and chive dumplings that were really tasty, juicy, and flavorful!

pork soup dumplings and I don’t know.. didn’t ask 😀

Since they didn’t serve the dim sum in plastic bags anymore, we found a shady sidewalk and at it sitting on the curb! The bottom right are “har gow” (shrimp). Top right is shark fin dumplings (WHAAATTT I THOUGHT THEY WERE BANNED)?! They were good.. I saw some clear, thin “noodles” of shark fin inside.. Don’t know if they were real or fake.. But it’s the closest thing to shark fin that I can eat right now since it’s been banned! 🙁 Sadness!!! But all of this was just $6! This place is also cheap 🙂 Cheap, good, and big! I love it <3

For dinner, we went to Woodhouse Fish Company, which turned out to be a popular place for locals to walk over to eat! This was located in a residential area and I saw a lot of locals walking over to put their name down and wait! I can see why people would rather do a lot of walking here than driving! Parking is insane in SF =X

crab cakes – crab meat cakes topped with spicy chipotle sauce and a side salad. These crab cakes were good but nothing particularly special! I feel like most restaurants serve crab cakes in almost the same way everywhere. Chewy and perfectly stuffed. It doesn’t fall apart easily. You can see the flaky crab meat in the inside.

dungeness crab linguine – squid ink linguine, smoked tomato cream sauce, caviar, garlic & white wine. This was actually really good! First off, the squid ink linguine was really soft, which I thought went well with its black texture and color. The tomato cream sauce was very creamy and had a rich tomato flavor to it. However, the tomato taste may be a bit too overpowering because it was slightly on the sour side and I couldn’t taste the crab or caviar! I just tasted tomato. 🙁

But my mood lifted because walking around along the streets, I stumbled upon a bakery that was actually still open! Wow!! Normally bakeries close really early, but this one was open until 9pm. And you know what else is TRULY AMAZING?! This place, called Sift Dessert Bar, participated in Cupcake Wars on the Food Network Channel and actually won 1st place on one of the episodes! WHAAAAATTTTT! These must be amazing cupcakes!

I got only one cupcake, which was beautifully placed in one of these “Chinese-like take-out boxes.” SO CUTE <3

pink champagne – moist raspberry cake topped with a champagne buttercream – And believe me when I say so, it was so unbelievably hard to decide which cupcake to eat for dessert. I finally chose one based off of what the workers said: this is the most popular cupcake!

When they said it was a moist cupcake, it was really moist! The cupcake dough was moist, soft, and chewy to bite into and eat. It felt so delicate when I bit into it. Not your traditional “harder” cupcakes. You can taste the hint of raspberry in the cupcake and it was mildly sweet! The champagne buttercream was very creamy and soft. To my surprise, I was able to taste the slight champagne taste! I was wondering if I was going to get tipsy eating this cupcake.. JK 😀

The next morning was a short day because it was time to drive back to LA. Before we started our long drive, we decided to make one last pit stop at Fisherman’s Wharf to get a last dose of fresh seafood. When it comes to eating seafood by the beaches or the bay, I tend to try to rely on what I observe in the stands versus Yelp. One stood out to me the most because of their heaping sizes of lobster and crab rolls! It is a bit more expensive, but they give big chunks of lobster and crab! I opted for the half crab and half lobster roll at Guardino’s.

They only had dressed rolls, which means that the seafood is “dressed” in a light mayo sauce (or whatever special sauce they make). I think this one was just straight up mayo with some light seasoning. The roll was huge!!! The bottom portion of the roll contained the dressed crab and lobster while the topped was just loaded with straight-up chunks of crab and lobster! It was $20, but totally worth it. From the two halves, I enjoyed the lobster portion a lot more! I actually couldn’t taste much of the crab! I think the mayo was too strong and masked the natural crab flavors. However, the lobster roll part was so good! The lobster still dominated in flavors and tasted really fresh! Next time, I am going to just get the lobster roll!

Warning: While it is fun to eat this in the SF sun and pier-y weather, be wary of the seagulls! They literally flock near you and I can see them make eye contact with me while I eat my lobster and crab roll. I know they want it.. I’ve heard of rumors where if you’re not careful, they will literally swoop in and snatch your food!!!! I was so scared while eating the entire time because at one point, three BIG seagulls surrounded me and all 3 were looking at me.. WAHHH! I ate my roll super fast.. 😀

And that concludes my SF trip! Thanks for reading guys 🙂 And I hope you guys try some of the places I’ve tried!! <3 <3