San Francisco is definitely one of my favorite cities in the country. It’s right up there next to New York (and Chicago, of course). I’d been there a few times before but never really got to experience the whole city like this time, and it was definitely before going raw so I had never been to any of the raw food restaurants there. The weather was the best San Francisco weather I’d ever experienced by far. They were having an unusually warm weekend—it was 15 degrees colder and rainy just one week earlier–so even the locals couldn’t stop gushing about the weather. We felt so lucky!
Day 1 coming into the city we decided to go to Café Gratitude for lunch. It was about 3 pm and we were ready for a real raw food restaurant experience (remember we were eating Trader Joe’s salads and Lara Bars the whole time in Napa!). We split the pizza and the enchilada entrees. The pizza was the best raw food pizza we’d had by far (with Las Vegas’ Go Raw Café trailing close behind). My bf loved the thickness and crunch of the crust. I can’t wait to make this pizza at home and am actually thinking of hosting a pizza making meetup with the Chicago Young and Raw Meetup Group in the near future (with everyone bringing some pizza ingredients to the meetup). The enchilada was just okay. A little too nutty/seedy inside for my taste.
We got the ice cream sandwich for dessert and this was one of our favorite raw desserts ever! I ordered the Café Gratitude book online yesterday morning from Amazon and I can’t wait to make it. We couldn’t decide if the best part was the ginger cookie or the chocolate ice cream–they compliment each other so perfectly!
After lunch, we checked into our hotel near Union Square. We stayed at one of San Francisco’s newest and “greenest” hotels called the Orchard Garden Hotel. This hotel was amazing!!! In addition to being LEED certified, the hotel is also SF’s first hotel to implement a guestroom key card that controls each room’s lighting and mechanical systems. So after opening the hotel room with our key card, we would place the card into a discreet box in order to turn on the lights and other room systems including air conditioning and heating. And when we left the room and took the key with us, everything automatically turned off, saving quite a bit of energy. You can read more about the Orchard Garden Hotel here. There were even trash bins for recycling in the room!
We checked out some live jazz at Fisherman’s Wharf that night and then walked over to North Beach for the rest of the night. Great night ☺
Day 2 we checked out the farmers market in the morning. This is a different type of farmers market than I was used to because it was in a poorer part of town so the shoppers I noticed were mainly ethnic minorities and were probably there mostly to save money on produce as opposed to the shoppers that go to farmers markets for the health benefits and hipness of it. I could not help but notice how cheap organic (or at least pesticide free) produce is in California! I’m a bit jealous! Apples were $1.49 per pound. Persimmons were $1 per pound. Wow. I also noticed a lot of foods I’ve never seen before, for example: bittermelon. What a weird looking fruit (or vegetable)!
After that we headed back to the Wharf to rent bikes for the day. Then we biked 8 miles or so to and over the Golden Gate Bridge and into Sausalito. What an exhilarating ride over that bridge! Beautiful sights all around, biking into the wind and along hundreds of other bikers (some tourists, some locals getting their Sunday exercise). It was an amazing experience. Sausalito was a cute little town to visit as well. It kind of reminded me of Le Cinque Terra on the Italian Rivera because it is a town right next to the water with lots of houses packed up in the mountains/large hills next to the water. We hung out there for a while and ate lunch. We happened to pick a place with an organic garden salad on the menu (I love how so many places in San Fran feature organic/local dishes on their menu!). Then we took the ferry back to the Wharf, watched a beautiful sunset, returned the bikes, went home and chilled for a while.
That night we wanted to go to the other Café Gratitude in SF but decided to go to Alive! instead since it would be closed the next day (I guess it’s closed on Mondays and Tuesdays). This meal was one of the best raw food meals I’ve ever had (next to AuLac). It was more gourmet than Café Gratitude with a rotating seasonal menu. I ordered the “King Trumpet Mushrooms, Capers, and Mendocino Sea Palms with Almond Cream Sauce.” Fancy huh? I just loved all the different textures and colors in this dish, most of all the mushrooms and sea veggies in a perfectly spiced sauce. I had some white wine with it that paired really well with it too.
This place is teeny tiny but they did have a nice outdoor patio in the back so we ate there. The only downside was that the lighting wasn’t very good, so although very romantic, we couldn’t see the beautiful meal that well.
Day 3 was Haight/Ashbury and the Golden Gate Park. We didn’t think too much of these areas, although Haight did have a lot of natural organic food stores, so we decided to head over to Gratitude for our last lunch in San Fran. This time we decided to split the nachos and hamburger (I know… it was a lot of heaviness, but it was SOOOO good). And we had the ice cream sandwich again for dessert. I loved this place. It has such friendly service and such a great vibe! I especially liked the board game and playing cards. “What are you grateful for?” is on all the plateware too.
I loved seeing how “green” San Francisco was. Emission-free buses. Recycling cans next to pretty much ALL trashcans. I heard that plastic grocery bags were no longer allowed but I actually did see them around so I guess that was not the absolute truth. Hopefully Chicago becomes more recycle friendly soon.
My favorite part of SF was riding the cable car up and down those amazing hills. Especially when hanging off the side or the back. It is SO much fun! I hope to be back there soon and I really hope someone opens up a Café Gratitude here in Chicago! I hear they’re franchising :)
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