Urban Vancouver

I just saw a Tiffany & Co. luggage tag on someone's suitcase, and I actually got excited.

- I may be mingin' poor since coming home from my trip, but I still felt that spending $20 on cheese at Costco was a good buy. A little good cheese makes a poor girl feel rich. And it's protein!
- I am so totally in love with these sandals I bought in San Francisco. I want to protect them to the best of my abilities. I already outlined my points of devotion in the Flickr caption, so I'm not going to reiterate them here.
-I'm not going to write about "The Botany of Desire" by Michael Pollan on my books blog because the library due date came up before I finished it and I couldn't renew it. But I didn't try harder to finish it because...it was kind of boring. I did get almost 3/4 of the way through it, though. I tell you this because it's my way of getting around to saying that I did write about another book recently, so click on the link to your right to get to my books blog. 

Okay, so this is just going to be a mega-post. And since I'm aiming to be a food blogger, I'm mostly going to cover the eating parts of my trip. If you're interested in the other parts, I suggest you head over to Brie's blog (after you finish up here, of course.) She's written a couple of amusing posts detailing our voyage. And we've all put up pictures on Flickr.


We were starving by the time we got downtown the first day and dropped our bags off at the hostel. The first reputable place we saw just so happened to be on my list, so in we went. Sears Fine Food, since 1938. It's decorated like a rather chic vintage kitchen, and I loved it. Looking at the website, I just discovered that it's now owned by Lori's Diner, a chain of 1950s-style restaurants that's so pervasive we just had to eat at one eventually. (It was all right.) I had one of the Sears specialties, 18 mini pancakes. Adorable.

The next day, Saturday, was the farmers market at the Ferry Building Marketplace, one of my most-anticipated destinations. It was a dream. Outside was crammed with stalls overflowing with fresh, local produce you just do not see here. Heirloom tomatoes, all kinds of squash, organic berries aplenty...I shared some strawberries and a clay jar of fresh yogurt with Sarah to offset the doughnut, truffles, and macaron I'd already had. There were also loads of stands where they were cooking any number of amazing things- sausages, crab, tacos, I can't even tell you.

Inside was like a checklist of places I'd totally heard of: Cowgirl Creamery, Acme Bread, Boccalone, Scharffen Berger. And then some new discoveries, the most pleasant of which was Miette Patisserie.


This is exactly the kind of bakery I'd like to have one day, baking, decor and all. It was precious and organic and delectable.


Organic cakes and giant jars of macarons? Just leave me here, please.


I read about Boulette's Larder on a website and thought it sounded great, and it certainly looked great. I tried snapping a discreet picture because I thought the baskets of eggs looked so lovely, and a staff member condescendingly told me not to take any photos, "please". Why, does it make the food taste less good? Or because you don't want me to blog about it nicely? Well, I certainly didn't want to blog about it nicely after that, and I didn't want to buy any anchovies either. Don't bother with this place. If they don't need tourists, I guess they don't need customers.


Saturday night was the closing cocktail party for the BlogHer conference, the nominal reason I'd gone, although I hadn't actually attended. The party was held in Macy's deparment store, progressing through different departments. It was really fun and we got to have different snacks on each floor. The highlights for me were mini French dips while lounging on a bed in Furniture, and unlimited macarons in Lingerie. Endless macarons! It's true!


The next day involved a trip to the Mission District, and while we didn't have any tacos (sacrilege!) or get to go to Tartine because of the line (tragedy!), we did get to go to the Bi-Rite Creamery. There was a line here too, but it moved fast. I had 3 small scoops of Mexican Chocolate, Toasted Coconut, and Salted Caramel. It was divine, although I'm going to go out on a limb and say it wasn't the best ever. But up there, for sure.


That night we went on a tour of Alcatraz (which I highly recommend) and afterwards went to In N Out Burger at Fisherman's Wharf. This was probably the most highly anticipated meal of the trip for me. It was awesome. They have a very simple menu- burgers, fries, sodas and shakes. Only 3 combo meals to choose from. It's very bright and clean inside. My burger and fries were hot, fresh and tasty. I totally need to go back.


At this point I need to mention Dottie's True Blue Cafe, where we lined up for over half an hour two mornings in a row. I think it's Brie's favourite breakfast place ever, and with good reason. Just check out the reviews on Yelp from devoted fans. Everything there is awesome. They have the basics, like eggs and sausage and pancakes and French toast, but it's like breakfast staples times 10. I don't know how they make them so much tastier than anywhere else. And then they have a specials board with creative meals like the one pictured above- that's eggs with black bean cakes, fresh salsa, hash browns, and grilled cornbread. And if that isn't enough, they have a case full of fresh baking, like totally irresistible-looking brownies and muffins. I managed to resist, sensibly thinking of the baked goods that lay ahead. Like...


This cupcake I had at Citizen Cupcake. This is a "Joe Cool", chocolate mint that is. It was perfectly moist and the lack of going overboard on icing was a refreshing contrast to our hometown cupcakery. I would have liked to make it to the mothership, Citizen Cake, but what do you do. Next time.


All right, Starbucks, I'm going to play into your hands and do exactly what you want me to. At the Macy's party we had samples of the new Starbucks smoothie, and I was impressed by the banana-chocolate flavour. It tasted just like the one I make at home, which for me is high praise indeed. My main problem with store-bought smoothies is that they never taste as good as the ones I make.

We got coupons for free Vivianno smoothies at the party, so before going to the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the museum on Tuesday morning, we stopped into Starbucks and each picked up an orange-mango one. It was really good! It was creamy and smooth and didn't suffer from any of the artificial chalkiness I find in most other smoothies. It was also a welcome respite from all the burgers and ice cream I'd been stuffing myself with.

Our last day we took a cable car...

Whoooa! The Powell-Hyde line is the steepest.

...to Ghirardelli Square, which is pretty touristy, but hey, it's all about chocolate. I had a $6 milkshake. It was really rich, and I felt sick after. BUT IT WAS WORTH IT.


Then we went home. Oh, San Francisco. I will have to come back sometime and eat everything I missed.

Why does everything seem intensely busy after you get home from a trip? I haven't had a minute to write, let alone a computer to write on. Kelly had my laptop to take to the Apple store for repair, but now I have it back and will be taking it home tonight to love and cuddle forever.

If I don't get anything written tonight, then I at least hope to get some pictures from San Francisco up. It was awesome. You know what else was awesome? The Dark Knight. Christian Bale is hot. Hang in there, buddies.

I'm going to San Francisco tomorrow, with my fellow girl bloggers Sarah, Brie, Erin, Zoe, and special guest Zoe's baby. The trip is for the Blog Her conference, but Sarah and I are only attending the cocktail party portions. For me, it's more for eating. Posting will be intermittent for awhile, but know it's for a good cause- my fun. 
Until then, there is a new post on my books blog (see link on the right) to tide you over. Hasta luego!

The Hiphopapotomus, originally uploaded by Jeffery Simpson.

Kelly and I went to Seattle on the weekend for Sub Pop's 20th Anniversary Festival, and it was Flight of the Conchords-fest. We went to a comedy show the first night, where Robin Williams sat 4 rows ahead of us, and saw 4 comedians: Todd Barry, who played the bongo player in an episode of Flight of the Conchords, Eugene Mirman, who plays the landlord, Patton Oswalt, who was the main voice in Ratatouille and is also on King of Queens, and David Cross (Tobias Funke, that's right!) It was all very hilarious.

The next day, after a nice brunch with Mr. and Mrs. Cakespy, we went to the end of the day-long music festival, where we saw Iron and Wine perform, as well as our whole reason for going, Flight of the Conchords. Since Kristen Schaal, who plays Mel (the fan), hosted the comedy show, we saw pretty much everyone from the show but Murray and Dave in 2 days. So awesome. I am such a geek. I mean, fan.

There are three new posts on my other blog, Fizz Reads a Book, so go check it out if you haven't already. The link is in the column on the right. 

Jonathan Richman (Vancouver) - You Can Have A Cellphone Encore, originally uploaded by Jeffery Simpson.

You see, Erin already blogged about going to see Jonathan Richman in Victoria, and she gave it the exact same title I was going to, but I'm all hung up on it and couldn't think of anything better to call it.

Kelly and I went to see Jonathan Richman play Richard's on Richards last week. It was lovely, but I liked the last time I saw him better. Maybe because I could actually hear him before. At one point during this show, he actually stopped and said the sound would improve when they turned the air conditioning off...which never happened. Personally, I think the sound would have improved if everyone else had shut the hell up. Did they not pay $20 to go because they liked him and wanted to hear him? Or did they just think it would be a nice place to go and shout at each other all night? I spent the whole night fantasizing about telling these jerks to shut up. You can hear all this gabbing in the video Kelly took of the encore.