Besides Cinco de Mayo, today was also Dong Ha’s birth­day and I told her that for my gift to her, she could pick any restau­rant in San Fran­cisco and I would go eat there and send her pic­tures. (To bor­row a phrase from Eataku, I would food­haze her.) She replied that she picked bo bay mon, or “Seven Courses of Beef,” and that my stom­achache would be her gift to me.

I toyed with the idea for a moment, and even looked up bo bay mon restau­rants in San Fran­cisco. I found two, Anh Hong and Pago­lac. Unfor­tu­nately, they are both pretty squarely in the Ten­der­loin, and I did not feel that risk­ing life and limb in addi­tion to test­ing my intesti­nal for­ti­tude was worth a joke.

Instead, for lunch, I went to Taco­l­i­cious:

It was pretty busy… I’m not sure if their lunch ser­vice was nor­mally like that, or if they were spik­ing in foot traf­fic thanks to Cinco de Mayo. I sat at the bar, and it was enter­tain­ing. The ladies to my right ordered some fancy drink that required the bar­tender to use a steplad­der to reach the top shelf and grab a bot­tle of what I’m assum­ing is spe­cial tequila. The guys on my left were already drunk when they came in, but that didn’t stop them from order­ing a pitcher of margaritas.

Started with chips and salsa and a “Mex­i­can Trai­tor” while I waited for the food. Noth­ing spe­cial about the chips and salsa, but the drink was mem­o­rable. It’s listed as dark rum, pineap­ple, and fresno chilies. The pineap­ple basi­cally com­pletely cov­ered the rum, but it had a great bal­ance of sweet and tart. The bits of chilies float­ing in the drink were sub­tle, with not quite heat (more like warmth) when you sip, but no lin­ger­ing pain or vine­gary after­taste like with most chili pep­per drinks I’ve had.

The tuna tostada was great. A fried tor­tilla base, chipo­tle mayo, smoked tuna, lightly fried onion flakes, a tiny bit of lime juice and pars­ley, and topped with some avo­cado slices. It was like a South­west­ern take on bagel and lox, and if Dong Ha wasn’t already sold with that com­par­i­son, the onion flakes def­i­nitely would have sealed the deal.

Sadly, the taco of the week was OK, but noth­ing special.

Then I went to Bar Crudo for dinner:

Exact oppo­site of Taco­l­i­cious. I read that this place gets crazy busy, but I was the first one there, and had no prob­lems with the service.

Started here with the Porter­house Oys­ter Stout. I think oys­ter stouts are quickly becom­ing my favorite type of beer.

The crudo sam­pler was inter­est­ing. (Shoot, I can’t remem­ber them all now, and the sam­ple menu is dif­fer­ent from today’s actual menu.) The arc­tic char (upper right of my pic­ture) still had a horse­rad­ish crème fraîche, wasabi tobiko, and a sprig of dill. The fish on the bot­tom right (I think it was fluke) had lemon and lime juice, lemon zest, and thin sliced basil. The tuna in the bot­tom left was done fiesta style for Cinco de Mayo — topped with what I think were capers and roasted bellpep­per bits, and over a creamy sauce that tasted of pep­per­jack and had pureed tuna in it. The but­ter­fish on the upper left had bits of aspara­gus, beet, and some­thing tomato-​esque on it. All four were good, but I think my favorite would actu­ally be the fluke. It was the sim­plest one, but the fla­vor was light and perfect.

The oys­ters were just OK. Decent for $1 Happy Hour, but too small to really enjoy.

The seafood chow­der was incred­i­ble! I thought it was going to be clam chow­der, but no. It had three types of fish, mus­sels, shrimp, squid, pota­toes, and big chunks of bacon (which I left behind). The best part was the broth, though. super rich, thick, and creamy. It was eas­ily the best part of a good meal. The server told me after­wards that the chow­der can become quite addic­tive, and that he actu­ally avoids learn­ing how to make it so he doesn’t blow up. I can believe it, I def­i­nitely plan on com­ing back for more chowder.

Oh, and of course I got some bread to go with the chow­der and dunked heartily. I am my father’s son.

Finally, I went to Bi-​Rite for dessert again after my NERT class:

Got the Berry Sun­dae this time. Best one yet. Again, I take after my par­ents and really love the gin­ger ice cream. The berry com­pote was he per­fect sweet­ness and the gin­ger­snaps added a great crumbly crunch, too.