Category Archives: Fusion

10 Year Anniversary

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Simon’s lunch of mini corn dogs, carrots, raspberries, watermelon, and mini grapes.

Who wants to squeeze her cheeks? I can give her kisses all day long.

So can you imagine? It’s been 10 years since Ron and I said “I do”! We spent the day in San Francisco. Our first stop was Sushirrito. I had always wanted to try this place when we lived in San Francisco but could never find the time to get there. So we tried the Geisha’s Kiss:
Yellowfin Tuna (Hand-Line Caught), Tamago, Piquillo Peppers, Yuzu Tobiko, Lotus Chips, Namasu Cucumber, Butter Lettuce, Avocado with Sesame White Soya

And the Sumo Crunch: Shrimp Tempura, Surimi Crab, Shaved Cabbage, Cucumber, Avocado, Red Tempura Flakes with Sriracha Aioli

Happily eating near the Transamerica Tower. Fish was fresh, veggies fresh, tempura crunchy, rice nicely seasoned… nori was a little soggy but still yummy and worth the trip.

Ron made a massage appointment for us to Royal Thai Spa which was very relaxing.

Then we were off to dinner at Quince Restaurant for dinner.

We decided to try the 8 course tasting menu and some cocktails. Ron had the Quince martini made tableside and I had the Shrub Fumoso (Raynauld Brandy, Zucca Amaro, Shrub Tonic, Rhubarb and Strawberry Gastrique).

They served us some beautiful bites. Front bottom to top: watermelon, cucumber, rice cracker, and (I forgot but something with olive on the bottom). All delicious.

Then an amuse bouche made from peaches. So refreshing.

First course of big eye tuna with flowering coriander, seaweed, Dragon’s egg cucumber.

Excited to start eating.

Monterey Abalone with carolina gold rice, green tomato, and sweet corn. The abalone was very tender and sweet.

Creamy butter and fresh baked bread.

Ron had the Tagliolini E Oro with cocoa, razor clam, and charentais melon. Love the gold.

I had the “tortelli alla Cecilia Chiang” with caviar, smoked sturgeon, shallot. (Supplement $30 for this dish.)

Suckling Pig Tortellini with parmigiano reggiano fonduta. This inspired us to try making our own pasta at home, possibly with roast pig and fresh pasta sheets. Will let you know how that turns out.

Four Story Hill sweetbread with black truffle, gem lettuce, radish. The truffle slivers were sandwiched in between the sweetbread. Very rich.

Phil Paine’s squab with ruby beet, Knoll Farm fig, leek. Tender, juicy, and delicious.

Another amuse of apricot sabayon. Delicious meringue-like cookie on top.

Middleton Farm berries with yogurt, Mara Des Bois, Valrhona Opalys. Sweet berries with delicious crumble.

Complimentary chocolate mousse for our anniversary.

To many more years!! Love you hubby! (I know you read our blog…)

After dinner espresso. Love these cups with the little lids.

Beautiful little cookie platter too (coconut macaroon, a nut cookie, meringue, pate de fruit, and brandy truffle).

The server asked us if we wanted an after dinner drink and mentioned something called “Amaro”. I had never heard of it before and she said it was a neutral grape spirit that helps with digestion. Then she offered us a complimentary tasting of one that had mint and fennel. She served it in this beautiful hand etched glass and the spirit was delicious. Cleansing and very refreshing.

Then we even got a treat to take home. Some chocolate dotted with various types of nuts. No peanuts so we could share with Simon!

A wonderful dining experience. The server for the night was named Alexandra and she was wonderful. I just Googled her name and see that she is a “Captain” at Quince. She was very thorough, polite, and patient throughout the whole night. Definitely an experience to remember.

But we were eager to get home to see the kids. We had a lovely package at home that Simon helped us to open.

Beautiful roses from my dad for our anniversary.

Wow, 10 years!

Birthday at Conduit Restaurant

http://www.conduitrestaurant.com/

We went to dinner for Virginia’s birthday at Conduit Restaurant on Valencia St in SF. They very nicely accommodated our party in the cellar in the back of the restaurant. It was a bit warm inside but they are in the middle of installing ventilation.

We had cocktails and appetizers as we waited for the birthday girl since they had gone to Marine World in Vallejo to relive a bit of their childhood.

I ordered their “Nouveaux Noyeaux” made with Ketel One vodka, prosecco, stone fruit, and lemon. It had quite a bit of alcohol and I couldn’t really find the “stone fruit” flavor.. but that may be because I was looking for a melon-like flavor since I’ve heard cantaloupe called stone fruit before. But now I find out that stone fruit usually refers to peaches, plums, and the like with seeds.

I only photographed a couple of their appetizers but we ordered most of them on the menu. Here is the fig appetizer with blue cheese and argula. This was really light and delicious. The figs were very delicate but yummy.

Here is the hamachi appetizer which I don’t really remember, wasn’t as mouth watering as the fig salad even though hamachi is my favorite fish for sashimi…

We also had the watermelon, tomato, and cheese appetizer. Who knew watermelon and cheese could go well together? We also had the beef carpaccio which was pretty good as well.

After the birthday girl arrived, we ordered our wines.

One white:

One red:

I ordered their halibut roasted with summer squash and smoked tomato. The piece was a bit small for me but left me enough room for dessert so that worked out well 😀

Ron had the grilled salmon with lobster mushroom and hearts of palm. The salmon was a nice sized portion and the lobster mushrooms were very nice. It’s orange and is a bit crunchy and also soft.

After our dinner, we were all treated to delicious cupcakes! Virginia had one candle to make her wish.

We almost had enough for 2 per person.

This is a red velvet cupcake with white icing and sprinkles.

This is a lemonade cupcake with pink frosting. The straw is more of a decoration than a utility, no lemonade to suck up 🙁

Another red velvet cupcake but with chocolate frosting.

The yummy moist inside cake:

Afterwards we went for a drink closeby at Nihon, a Japanese whisky bar. We’d been there one time before but thought it’d be fun to try their other drinks. They have whisky cocktails, champagne cocktails, and LOTS of types of whisky. As cocktails go, I’d recommend the lychee mermaid and ginger indochine. I don’t know enough about whisky to say much…

A word of caution, the lounge gets busy in the evening so you may have to stand for a while before getting a seat on one of the couches or tables. They serve food upstairs so you can make a reservation for dinner.

A fun evening…

Conduit Restaurant
280 Valencia Street
San Francisco

Nihon Whisky Lounge
1779 Folsom St @ 14th St
San Francisco

Whaler’s Village and Lahaina Grill

Ron and I wandered over to Whaler’s Village this morning. You can walk along the beach and reach the shopping center so it’s quite convenient from our hotel. We just wandered through the stores, just to mention a few of our favorites:

Crazy Shirts
David and Goliath – shirts that “play on words”
Maui Toy Works

Afterwards we went to the food court downstairs, I ordered a tuna melt from Nikki’s Pizza. Nothing too special but well priced for tourist food, ~$7 including the fries.

Ron had the fast food Chinese.

We returned to our room for a nap before heading down to our resort’s restaurant Longboards and had our complimentary drinks.

I tried some mango concoction.

Ron had some passion fruit and strawberry swirl drink while reading a magazine.

The drinks were very sweet and didn’t seem like they had much alcohol added. Maybe because they were free?

For dinner, we went to Lahaina Grill. We figured we should have at least one fabulous dinner while we were on vacation and I read good things about this restaurant. Thanks to trusty Opentable, we secured a reservation.

The restaurant is the ground floor of a (former?) inn. It’s dimly lit with lots of interesting art pieces on their walls. Although it looks like it could be a fancy restaurant, everyone seemed pretty casual… should be no surprise since Hawaiians are usually pretty laid back.

Usually if the bread is good, then the meal should be good as well. I can tell you that this bread with the chives butter was delicious. The bread was warmed and the butter was soft and easy to spread. I hate hard butter.

Our appetizer:
THE CAKE WALK
Petite servings of Kona lobster crab cake, sweet Louisiana rock shrimp cake and seared ahi cake.
The two small red dollops of hot sauce went really well with the seared ahi cake.

Our salad:
WARM PECAN CRUSTED GOAT CHEESE AND BABY ARUGULA SALAD
Pears, roasted beets, Poha berry honey-mustard.
I think we’re really starting to like fresh goat cheese. Everything went really well together in this salad.

Ron’s main course:
MACADAMIA NUT SMOKED KUROBUTA PORK CHOP
All natural, organic American pork, Poblano chile and Dungeness crab golden potato hash, pickled red cabbage and apples, pomegranate demi-glace.
Really fatty but Ron liked the pickled red cabbage and apple compote thing. Hard to taste macadamia nut flavor but still a yummy dish.

Jen’s main course:
KONA COFFEE ROASTED RACK OF LAMB
Light coffee-Cabernet demi-glace, herb infused mashed potatoes.
A bit bitter but with some sweetness, just like adding sugar to your coffee. The lamb was cooked perfectly and the sauce was divine.

We were so stuffed, we couldn’t make it to dessert… so instead, finished off our bottle of wine and headed back for the night.

The wine we had was a cabernet sauvignon from Australia, named EVIL. We picked it for it’s unusual name and it turned out to be a pretty good wine. In general I have a hard time drinking red wines but I had no problem at all with this one. I’m shocked to find that this wine is only $11 a bottle online! But I guess we were in a nice restaurant and there’s always markup… it went well with our meal so I’m glad we had it.