Judy and I love San Francisco. Although not RV friendly there are a few RV parks to the north and south of the city all of which are only a short shuttle, Uber, or ferry ride out. Once in the City there are busses, cable cars, and much of the city is easily walkable.
We usually do a day in which we graze our way through Chinatown. There are dozens of Chinese delis, small restaurants, and shops with strange spiky fruits. We just point at the display cases containing odd looking things to eat, or so I hope, and then take a nibble. Most turn out to be really tasty and even so-so ones are edible. The Asian soft drinks on the other hand are much more of an adventure. I expected then to be over sweet but did not expect the chunks of stuff hitting my tonsils resulting in a gag reflex. Quietly hiding my gag I handed the offending soda to my son saying,
“Wow! Try this one, it’s really great”.
He suffered the same syndrome as I did and then refused to talk to me the rest of the day.
Chinese meat markets are really interesting. Live turtles, reddish dead chickens hanging by their necks, and unrefrigerated gelatinous mystery meats. Judy points out one of these and whispers what the hell is that. A very short and shriveled Chinese gentleman started yelling “tuddle, tuddle, tuddle” while pointing a finger at us then jerking it toward the street with every “tuddle” iteration.
We quickly left the store and only later realized he was answering Judy’s question by pointing at the bin of live turtles.
Judy and I have a fondness for chow fun. This is a chicken or beef dish which uses fat, gummy rice noodles. Our favorite Chinese restaurant (Lee’s Wok) has the best we have ever eaten. We have been going there for 30+ years watching this family own eateries children go from toddlers to wait staff. While in San Francisco we tried and failed to purchase fresh rice noodles. No one seemed to understand what we were asking for. We told our waitress at Lee’s Wok about our problem. She pulled out a business card and wrote in Chinese something to the effect that “these dumb round eyes would like to purchase chow fun noodles. Please help them as they mean well and are good tippers.”Carried that card around in my wallet for about 2 years till we got back to SF. Pulled it out in the first grocery store in Chinatown to more blank stares, some mutterings in Manderin Orange or some other dialect, and a wave down the street to the next store selling food like materials. After about 5 of these move on to the next place results we finally found a store where they actually had rice chow fun noodles, but they were dried. Judy made the mistake of asking one of the staff
“How do you cook these?”
The lady that was helping us had no idea, but one of the other staff did. Only problem was she did not speak English. For the next five minutes we were regaled with a back and forth conversation in Chinese followed by a broken English translation as these two women yelled and I mean YELLED at each other across the store. The conversation that went something like this:
扴果笑山卜木火火
She say boil water
口廿卜火女木火 口廿卜火女木火
Put noodle in water
日尸田手廿竹月女 戈山土月弓女木尸田水口日 卜廿土口山火尸木土竹十大中
Stir
:卜火土
Take out of water and dry on a towel.
On and on this conversation went with animated hand gestures, Judy asking more questions filled by more yell talking. While this was going on a and elegantly dress Asian American quietly walked up behind us and whispered in perfect English
“They have no idea how to cook them”
I somehow managed to get my quaking body out of the store before I broke down in laughter till I cried. God, I really love Chinatown.
We now make our own chow fun noodles due to watching YOUTUBE videos. They are relatively easy and the specialty flours can be purchased online or at an Asian market. Some of the larger Asian markets even have fresh noodles. Forget the dry ones they suck and we never did figure out how to cook them up to Lee’s Wok levels of goodness.
From SF to Monterey is a relatively short day on the now straight and cliffless highway 1. The closer you get to Monterey, the more likely you are to find two of my other California classics, calamari and artichokes. The Monterey area is where they grow and catch the best of each. Go into any restaurant, bistro, or bar anywhere there and have the best squid you have ever eaten. You can get it fancy or simple; it doesn’t matter where, as it is just as yummy even when it is listed as “hockey pucks” on a sports bar menu. Artichokes are a staple at every fruit and vegetable stand in the area, where they sell them at different prices for different sizes, the bigger the better. A little bread, cheese, wine and artichokes dipped in garlic butter is about as good as eats get.
Just to the east, is the Salinas Valley. It is amazing how hot it can get there in the summer which makes it perfect for growing garlic. The town of Gilroy is the garlic capital of the world. We stopped at Garlic World where they sell everything garlic. I would suggest that you skip the garlic wine. There are some things like spam and ovaltine where the flavor is forever etched in your mind. Garlic wine is one of these. At Garlic World we bought garlic, a garlic press, and some elephant garlic which we roasted and spread on bread for an appetizer, then barbecued some t-bones smothered in more garlic. It was warm that night so we left the door to the MSP open. Got up the next morning with our eyes burning from the garlic we exhaled in our sleep. Climbing down from the cab over bunk I swear the scent got thicker as exhaled garlic breath is heavier than air, which probably explains why the Italians never made a significant advance in aeronautical engineering. Years later whenever I went into the MSP on a hot day, you could still smell it.
Just south of Monterey is Carmel. Kind of fun to visit and the only place I know of where you have to pay to drive down a street to look at houses. But we had a lot of fun walking around going into “Ye Olde (fill in the blank) Shoppes” looking at curios well beyond our budget and thanking God that the kids were all grown as the “you break it you buy it” rule would have put us in debtor’s prison.
On Highway 1 south of Carmel the road turns into the cliffs of death again so we did not drive very far before we turned around and headed east to the relative safety of Highway 101, then reluctantly headed north and home. Someday we’ll catch that section of Highway 1 from the south end as it looked like a lot of fun, and you never know, there just might be a snake pit somewhere in that section of my unexplored west.
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