Nommable!

Hello, Nommable readers! My name is Rose and I’m a foodie. (“Hi, Rose.”) Tea has very graciously invited me to share some of my food adventures with you.

I live in New York but right now I’m in California, staying with friends in Mountain View (about 40 miles south of San Francisco) and jaunting all around the Bay Area. My trip has involved several entertaining adventures in food, some of which I remembered to photograph so I could share them with you.

I’m allergic to dairy products. California understands this concept. That’s why Amici’s, a pizzeria in Mountain View, offers Daiya vegan “cheese” at no extra charge. They didn’t even blink when I asked for meat on my veganized pizza. Look at that pizza! It looks just like a pizza! In New York I’d have to go to a special vegan pizza place to get fake cheese on my pizza, and then they’d throw me out if I had the temerity to ask for sausage and bacon.

Unfortunately, Daiya is made with tapioca starch and tastes rather sweet. I grew up eating real cheese, and when real mozzarella tastes sweet, that means it’s gone off. This makes it rather difficult for me to enjoy Daiya. I ended up picking all the tasty meat bits off of the pizza, eating those and the crust, and discarding the rest. Oh well.

I used to live in San Francisco, so when I come back to the area I always go to visit my old haunts. One of those is Higher Grounds, a crêperie tucked away in the Glen Park neighborhood. Their crêpes are superb, stuffed with cheese and onions and spices and any manner of tasty fillings. I thought about having a crêpe and suffering through the dairy effects, but in the end I just couldn’t make myself do it. Instead I had a spinach and ham* omelette. As you can see, it is stuffed completely full of tasty goodness. The salad has a lovely tangy vinaigrette and the potatoes are boiled before being pan-fried in oil over a very hot flame. This photo does not do justice to their perfect crumbly/crunchy friedness.

* Actually a spinach and mushroom omelette; the fabulous owner/chef was looking at the wrong order slip when he made it. He apologized profusely: “You came all the way from New York and then I make a mistake!” I reassured him that it was the first mistake I’d ever seen him make.

My partner, who can and does eat just about anything, had a puttanesca crêpe. I think that’s a dollop of sour cream on it. Whatever it was, he devoured it gleefully–after giving me the tiniest bit of crispy crêpe edge to savor along with many happy memories of breakfasts at Higher Grounds. Even now, nearly six years after we moved away, the place still feels like home. It helps that the owner remembers us and greets us heartily even when it’s been a year or more since our last visit. Now that’s customer service.

Stay tuned for my next post, in which I forage for greens in redwood country.