Lunch Tuesday: California Recap
Posted May 18, 2010 3:06 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It’s been weeks since I ate in Toronto.
Contrary to what the last two Lunch Tuesday features would have you believe (Queen and Beaver and El Trompo) I’ve spent a good portion of May in California.
And goodness, did I eat well.
From burgers – In-N-Out, easily the best fast food hamburger I have ever had, plus the intrigue of a secret menu; and the house burger at Father’s Office in Santa Monica, washed down with a frothy beer – to a once in a lifetime dinner at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, the west coast delivered.
Also? You can buy booze anywhere, at almost any time of day. After all, it’s not like I had to go back to work.
That came in handy in San Francisco when I ventured down to Fisherman’s Wharf. Huge crabs wriggled in a glass tank, mere feet from a steaming steel cauldron. There were seafood salads and lobster bisques aplenty, all in once-gleaming glass cases smudged with greedy fingerprints, but I wanted that one.
“This one?” a man in blue work jacket asked.
Absolutely. He weighed the still-moving crab and from there it was quick flip into the boiling water. I paid while my lunch cooked oh so briefly, then took my meal and an Anchor Steam beer in a plastic bottle down to the pier.
I ate that crab leg by tender leg while watching boats come in and tourists walk by, chattering in a variety of languages. Then, when all was eaten and done, it was off to the Musee Mecanique, an arcade on the boardwalk. This wasn’t just any arcade – it was one man’s collection, a lifetime of penny-operated games from hand-cranked cinema to Ms. Pac Man and skee-ball.
In Santa Monica, I took my sandwich (Parma prosciutto) from Bay Cities Italian Bakery and Deli down to the beach with a bottle of wine. There was cheese, too, and convenience store chocolate bars that I hadn’t seen in Toronto, and a book, and then I had a nap.
There was excellent Mexican food, complete with the freshest avocadoes I have ever tasted – no surprise, really: as I drove from L.A. to San Francisco, I passed Dole and Del Monte farms and hand-lettered signs offering avocadoes at $1 a dozen – at Taqueira Can Cun; and plenty of raw fish; and really excellent wine.
But I’m back in Toronto now, and looking forward to next week’s lunch.
