Meat & Potatoes

San Francisco is a tourist destination. There are a bevy of reasons for this: its rich history (a.k.a. sinful past), its breathtaking geography, the abundance of Victorian architecture, its diverse neighborhoods, the dramatic daily Summer blast of fog, and its proximity to beaches, lava cliffs, redwood forests, and vineyards, just to name a few – all in a little town just seven miles wide by seven miles long - roughly the size of Grand Island.

But the number one draw in San Francisco – the thing the City is known for among all the cities of the world – is its food. Not only is the locally-caught crab the world’s best, the City’s incredible diversity has made it home to over 3,000 restaurants of every type of cuisine on earth - and in fact, beyond. Yes, beyond! That’s because, along with the infinite variety of food have come the world’s best and most innovative chefs crafting fusions of flavor so unique, they’ve become recognized worldwide as a singular, multi-faceted entity: California Cuisine.

But listen, San Francisco doesn’t do all food better. For example, even though some of the most upscale restaurants in town boast that they serve only Nebraska corn-fed beef, you will not find a filet of beef here that even comes close to a fresh-cut slice of angus "right off the ranch and onto your plate" like you’ll find in a Nebraska steak house. Nor will you ever convince me that there’s a catfish here that tastes as good as the ones my grandpa used to pull from the Platte and fry up in his kitchen. And, oddly enough, the Indian food in Nebraska (though there is little to be found) kicks the ass of the many MANY Indian greasepits in Frisco. Finally, the bottom line is, if its filled with cheese, baked in a dish, swimming in Ranch dressing, or smothered with gravy, Nebraska has San Francisco beat hands down.

So when I come home, I come home with a craving for the food Nebraska knows how to do – and does better than San Francisco. I want burgers. I want steaks. I want biscuits and gravy, potato salad, and jell-o. I want Runzas, cheese frenchies, and Godfather’s pizza. I want a hot combination hoagie from Da Vinci’s and an Amigo’s crisp meat burrito dipped in Dorothy Lynch dressing. And if I’m really lucky, I’ll get to have a meal at Harriet’s Danish in Dannebrog – perhaps sitting at the table with Harriet, herself. You can’t beat that. Not in San Francisco. Not anywhere.

That said, there's a fair amount of food to be had here that you just can't get in Nebraska - tons, to be precise. And when you come to San Francisco, I think you should come with a craving for the food you can't get at home - the food San Francisco does better than anywhere else in the world. Believe it or not, that still leaves you with so many choices, you have no need whatsoever to worry that you'll be stuck eating something weird.

But therein lies a problem, actually.

As hard as this may be to believe, when you live in a city with an infinite variety of food, an infinite variety of food inevitably becomes mundane. It is exactly like getting the most expensive cable TV package, with 3,000 channels to choose from, and finding nothing on TV to watch. Along with this comes a truly radical shift in your perspective that you hardly even notice, but promises to come back to bite you squarely on the butt when your relatives visit from back home. You see, when you become a San Franciscan, you completely lose your ability to determine what “normal” food is.

To San Franciscans, it is the most normal thing in the world to devour a big platter of open-faced mussels on a bed of ice, sucking them raw with a bit of Tobasco right out of their shells and into our gaping mouths. Udon noodles are like Mac-n-cheese here. And everyone eats raw fish caked with bright orange fish eggs, surrounded by sugared rice, and wrapped in a thin seaweed paper, then dipped in a salty brown liquid mixed with a green horseradish paste – and we love it.

Eel? Delicious! Squid? Of course! Why yes, I would like tongue in my burrito, thanks for asking! Are you going to eat that fish eyeball? ...May I? Why would anyone think that’s weird?

So guess what happened when my mom and aunt came to visit for a week over Halloween? Oh I’ll tell you.

I was prepared for a bit of hesitation and uncertainty over what can certainly be a challenging host of food options. I know my mom. The only thing my mom would rather have than McDonald’s is a can of chocolate Slim Fast. And my aunt had already admitted to me that she wasn’t a “trier.” So I had a list of ideas in my head that I thought were safe. Nothing “weird” or too spicy, nothing too out of the ordinary, but still highlighting the cuisine that can be found nowhere else but San Francisco. I was sure it was going to be a slam-dunk and I would open their palates to a delectable fantasia of flavors like they’d never before known which would, like magic, transform them into true culinary connoiseurs capable of rivaling any San Franciscan.

I was a fool, completely oblivious to the fact that I’d lost my ability to identify normal food. And I was about to learn my lesson. I asked, on their first night in town, “What would you like to have for dinner?”

In true Nebraska mom and aunt fashion, their reply was, “I don’t care. Whatever you want will be fine. It’s up to you.”

So, picking what I thought was the most normal and delicious food on the face of the Earth, I said, “OK, let’s go out for Thai.” I thought this was a sure-bet. There isn't a Thai dish on the planet that isn't delicious. I knew I was safe, because Thai food is always good.

Well you should have seen their faces. I could feel my flesh ossifying, and I knew that I’d be a pillar of granite if I didn’t look away quickly. But it was up to me, and I stuck to my suggestion with admirable, pitiable confidence. We went to Osha, a Thai restaurant in the Mission District. Go ahead, click the link. Looks nice, doesn't it?

Once we were seated, we opened our menus. And then the questions started.

“Well, what is all this?"

"How am I supposed to even know what to order?"

"What’s curry?”

I assured them that anything they ordered would be delicious – because Thai food is always good. That didn’t help them even a little. It became shockingly apparent that they did not trust me. In fact, I could tell by the looks on their frightened, pale faces that they were beginning to get suspicious. Perhaps I was actually trying to kill them.

So I looked over the menu and found the safest, most non-Thai of all the dishes – the dish that everyone who knows nothing about Thai food orders because it’s the least daring and most non-threatening staple of every Thai restaurant – the Praram ("peanut dish") with chicken. I suggested they order it, explaining it was a simple dish with a mild peanut flavor that they were sure to like.

“It comes on a bed of cooked spinach? Yuck!” my aunt commented with a twisted face of utter disgust.

“If you don’t stop it, your face will stick that way,” I warned her.

“You can pick the spinach out,” my mom said, “Let’s just get it.”

I ordered pumpkin curry with chicken and in the meantime, our appetizers arrived – salmon rolls and vegetable spring rolls – which I had ordered, figuring they could be sampled without any fears of commitment. Of course, I was kidding myself.

“Help yourselves,” I said, grabbing a salmon roll and dipping it in sweet sauce.

They clearly didn’t want to, but cutting the smallest crumb they could possibly balance on the tips of their forks, they each took a bite and, this time in unison, looked at me with faces depicting such horror and despair, you’d have thought they'd just witnessed the Abu Ghraib atrocities, or perhaps a performance by Philip Glass.

Of course, they got the one salmon roll that tasted fishy. I encouraged them to try another, but that wasn’t about to happen. Not in a million years.

Our entrees arrived, and they began to pick through the Praram (the one dish they were sharing between them). “It tastes like chicken in melted peanut butter,” they said, which is essentially what Praram is. I tried it, and it wasn’t the best Praram I’ve ever had. I realized the credibility I was so certain I would earn that night was hopelessly unattainable.

My pumpkin curry, however, was absolutely astonishing.

Next door to the Thai restaurant is a burger joint called Burger Joint. When we left, I asked if they wanted to stop there and get something, since they hadn’t eaten much. “No, no, we’re fine,” they said in true Nebraska mom and aunt fashion.

We made it home alive, and the next day for lunch we had eggs, hashbrowns, burgers, and fries – with American cheese, of course.

Score:
Frisco City Chefs - 0 ... Nebraska Picky Eaters - 1