Round Table Pizza

Oh, for shame.

I wish I were kidding, but I'm not. Last night we had a $10, large, one topping pizza from Round Table. As pizza chains go, Round Table has some nostalgic value for me and has always been decent. So I should really cut them some slack. I'm painting the kitchen/dining room this week, and since painting each room is a multiple-day process the stove was out of commission for a few days. Tomorrow I finish painting the trim and Friday I hope to get to (or maybe even finish!) the walls. Cheer me on, faithful readers. This whole "paint my whole apartment by myself" idea is getting really old.

*image courtesy of Round Table

Bellissimo Pizza

Blogger continues to befuddle me. Stay tuned as I try to straighten out their ftp issues AND bring my remodel into its home stretch! It's going to be a busy week for me. Hence, relying on Bellissimo Pizza for dinner. Not a bad pie, I recommend it if you need delivery around Union Square!

Humphry Slocombe and Flour + Water

Girls' night out! After a nice (read: hungrymaking) workout with N this evening, we headed to the Mission to pick up her sister and have some good eats. Unfortunately, it was too dark for food photos, so use your imaginations!

By the time we were ready to eat, it was 8:30 and we were in danger of missing Humphry Slocombe's closing time of 9:00 p.m. Not to be deterred, we decided to change things up and eat dessert first. I had the McEvoy Ranch olive oil ice cream, which was super delicious with a strong citrus flavor and maybe tiny bits of orange peel in it. N had the hibiscus tea sorbet, which was zingy and refreshing but not tart enough for me. C had ancho chocolate, which was a really deliciously rich chocolate with just a hint of pepper. I also had a taste of the peanut butter curry, which was mostly just an extremely dense peanut butter ice cream. Tasty, but not something I could eat a whole scoop of. I think next on my list to try is salt & peppa, but I've been warned not to try the Jesus Juice (red wine + cola, ew!). For $2.25 for a very large "kids" scoop, I think Humphry Slocombe is a real winner. I'll definitely be back.

With cones in hand, we lucked out with parking right around the corner of flour + water, one of the newest pizza joints to hit the city. While the Margherita pizza had a great, smoky, crackly crust with nice dough flavor, the real winner of the night was the lavender smoked duck breast appetizer with fresh figs, pine nuts, raisins, and arugula. The de-fatted crust was super crispy, and the juicy duck was perfect with the sweet figs. The special of the night, a dumpling-like pasta filled with slow-cooked pork, was tasty but really heavy. It was probably not smart for us to order it after eating ice cream. Our very light dinner for three ended up being $17/pp after tax and tip, so all in all we had a lovely girls' night out for under $20 a head. Hopefully it won't be the last great meal of the weekend--here's hoping everyone else out there has happy eatings too!

Arzimendi Bakery

There are few things better than a good bakery! Today we finally made it to Arzimendi in the Sunset to try their pizza. The downsides to Arzimendi are that there's only one (vegetarian) selection per day, and there are hardly any seats.

The good things about Arzimendi are that the one flavor is usually pretty tasty, and you can buy a half-baked pizza to eat at home if you want. We were lucky enough to find a table outside on a rare sunny Inner Sunset day, so we enjoyed our arugula, red bell pepper, parsley, parmesan pizza there. It was good; the crust is nice and thin but could be crispier and taste a little more like wood oven. For my money, Arzimendi has pretty good pizza but makes the best scones and granola in the city.

Matchbox (DC)

I'm back in SF! It's nice to be home, and now I have time to post all the delicious things I ate in DC. You've already seen a few of the things from my trip, but now there will be better photos. I have to say, DC surprised me more than a few times this trip. Here's what I ate on 4/30:

M suggested we to go matchbox, and my first thought was "I like pizza, but how good could it be?"

OMG--THIS GOOD. This is their Fire and Smoke pizza ($15), which includes fontina, basil, and chipotle sauce. It's hard to describe why this pizza was so enjoyable. The combination of the charred cracker thin crust, smokey flavors from both the chipotle and wood oven, the particular texture of melted fontina, and the fact that the oven was twenty feet away really came together in pizza perfection. I would not be far amiss if I said it was the most impressive pizza I've ever had. That's right, A16, I would fly across the country for this before eating your pizza again.

To top that off, the spinach salad ($9?) was also delicious. It doesn't look like much, but the light dressing and slightly sugary toasted crushed nuts was really nice. The fried ball on top is goat cheese.

Later that night, we met H for drinks and wings at guess where. Obviously nothing of particular culinary interest here, but we watched some basketball and saw a drunk girl stand up on a chair and hula hoop. Stay tuned for my next day's adventure...