The Ritz

Due to popular demand*, I've uploaded the photos from our meal at the The Ritz Carlton in San Francisco.
(*ok, Louise ask me to)

(Please excuse the yellow colour and graininess of the photo, they were taken on my iPhone.)

We started with a couple of amuse bouche (mouth amuser).

A prawn.


This was amazing, you tapped the top of the perspex and cedar wood smoke came out, to help you enjoy the dish. It was yum.


First actual dish. Sahimi of live spot prawn. They came and grated the wasabi at the table. Totally different to the green stuff you get in the packs at Sushi Sushi.


Abalone on shitake mushrooms and chard with dashi broth.


Ayu (fish) with mango, red onion chutney, hearts of palm and cilantro oil. (Cilantro is coriander.)


Lobster with corn, baby onions, sugar snap peas and a cherry and white chocolate reduction. Probably the dish I liked best.


Hot Foie gras with spiced apicot confit, brioche, necterine juice with longpepper. This is the first time that I've had fresh foie gras as a main course and unfortunately I didn't really like it. I found that the texture was too squishy and a bit too creamy for my taste, and probably a bit too rich. I still managed to finish it.


Quail with pressed white peach, scallions, brown rice, 7 spice and ginger vinaigrette.


Beef ribeye with fava beans, morel mushrooms and sancho pepper reduction. Very mushroomy and beefy and delicious.


A shot of the dining room.


The palate cleanser between main and dessert. (Or to use American, between Entree and dessert.) The green was a Japanese leaf like basil made into a granita.


Dessert. Yum.


And the coffee nibbles at the end.


Photo of the menu, the chef was Ron Siegal.


A couple of shot of the foyer just outside the restaurant.

It was a nice night.

And one from yesterday.

Time lapse

The cloud looked amazing coming over the hills, so I took a time lapse video of it. please excuse the jerkiness it was all done by hand. ;)

More Napa

After the geyser had calmed down a bit ...




We drove around the corner to the Petrified forest.


These trees were knocked over by the geyser volcano exploding and were then covered in ash and pertified. Some of them are big.


Mind you it took a little while ... only 3.4 million years.


The wildlife is also bigger.


The house was built in 1915 and was in need of a renovation.


But the fireplace was unique.


We then kept wandering further up the valley, still in the extinct volcano.


We drove past Healdsburg and started on the twisty road along the river, which I think is called the Russian river, but I haven't been able to confirm this. We stopped briefly at the Hop Kiln winery, mainly because the building looked cool.


We eventually made it to the beach and stopped on the cliff for a look.


Alister seemed to think that the caravan park was a little close to the shore and he wouldn't want to stay there.


The view was quite pleasant and we saw a sign detailing the 30 mile walk along the coast, which looked to be a great walk.


We were also wondering if the picnic tables ever floated away.


Further down the coast we came across some prime beach front real estate.


There were half a dozen spots where houses had fallen into the sea.


We eventually made it to a town called Marshall, which is in Tomales Bay. My favourite oyster place has it's beds there. Unfortunately we arrived just after they had shut the doors. :(


Instead we went to the place next door and had a dozen of the best BBQd oysters I've had. I'm not normally a fan of cooked oysters but I had been feeling a little car sick and wasn't feeling like raw oysters. I'm glad I did as these were very delicious.


We stopped at a lookout overlooking Stinson's beach before turning inland and back onto the freeway.


And finally a familiar sight greeted us as we came over the last hill.


We were also glad we weren't going the other way.

Napa Valley and beyond.

Alister and I went for a little drive up to the Napa Valley. First the map.
After a foggy start we made it to Yountville in just under 2 hours.


We stopped at Bouchon bakery to have a snack and another coffee to keep us going. The pastries looked wonderful.


The croissant was too flaky, the dmac (double macchiato) was not the best but the pain aux raisins (raisin bread) was superb.


We visited the local information stall and recieved a 2 for 1 wine tasting ticket for one of the local wineries, St Supery's. (It must be a good winery, the winemaker is from the Barossa !) It was an old cattle ranch called the Dollarhide that was built in the 1800's and it looked very French and very pretty.








We kept wandering up the road and stopped for lunch at the Silverado Brewery. The beer was great, the food less so. The building was built in the 1800's and was very rustic.




I had the Dungeness crab cakes with fresh corn and cilantro lime salsa and avocado tomatillo sauce. The salad and sauce were better than the cakes.


I then had the pulled pork burger for entree with coleslaw, pickles and sweet potato chips. 1. Americans call the main dish, the entree and they call the entree, the appertiser. Weird. 2. Pulled pork is just slow roasted pork that has been pulled apart rather than cut. It is fibrous and stringy but very soft and delicious. 3. Sweet potato chips are very common over here. 4. The buns are usually too sweet, another thing the Americans love, they have a much sweeter palate.


After lunch we drove to the "Old faithful" geyser in Calistoga. The whole area is in the middle of an extinct volcano with the mountain ridges surrounding it the only remanents of the crater. This geyser is only one of three in the world that have a reasonably reliable gush of water and steam. This one blows every 40 minutes or so, it slows down a bit if there is any volcanic activity within about 500 miles of it and so is being monitored.




It starts by steaming a little


Then erupts into a towering jet of steam and water.


I managed to get a movie of it starting to erupt. You will have to excuse the camera clicking and the wobbliness, it's hard to hold two cameras at once.


Alaster even took a photo of me with the geyser in the background.


More tomorrow. ;)