One of my good friends from college came to visit this past weekend. Mimi is a couple years older than me and has always been like the older sister I never had — when I kept getting sick freshman year, she always brought over soup or jello to help me feel better, and she would frequently invite me over for yummy home-cooked Korean meals. After she graduated, I hadn’t had many chances to see her, and it’s even harder to meet up now that we’re on opposite coasts. The last time I’d seen her was over a year ago, at my wedding. This time, Mimi and her friend Cindy decided to take a trip out here for a little over a week to go hiking and camping around Yosemite and Tahoe, making stops at Santa Cruz and Monterey along the way. They arrived on Friday night and spent Saturday with us before embarking on the rest of their Northern California adventure Sunday morning.
I’m always uncertain about where to take friends when they visit the area, since for having lived out here for two years, I still don’t know the area too well, especially San Francisco. But Mimi made things super easy for me because she did a whole bunch of research and talking to Bay Area natives back in Richmond, Virginia before she flew out. When she got here, she had a whole list of places to go and things to eat before I even had to come up with suggestions. She’s been to the city before, so she knew the streets of San Francisco much better than I did!
We spent a good amount of time in both Berkeley and San Francisco on Saturday, making it a full day. It was fun being a tourist in our own city! Here are some photos…
Breakfast at Bette's Oceanview Diner in Berkeley
corned beef hash and cream scone... a satisfying start to the day.
pie in the sky: a giant pie hanging from the ceiling
reunited with Meems!
Indian Rock in Berkeley... never heard of it until Mimi told me about it.
Enjoying breathtaking views of the bay from Indian Rock.
The ladies on Indian Rock! (It was rough scaling that rock in a dress.)
Big thanks to Mimi for telling us about this place!
Cindy and Mimi meet Diesel for the first time.
Ice cream stop at Ici.
Enjoying refreshing treats from Ici... my current favorite is the raspberry lemon ice cream sandwich, flanked by gingersnaps.
Driving in the Russian Hills in San Francisco.
The zigzagging roads of Lombard Street. This was actually my first time there! I've always wanted to see it.
Visiting friends always want to stop by the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park.
obligatory Japanese bridge photo.
Dry-fried chicken wings from San Tung on Irving Street.
They were seriously the best chicken wings I've had in my entire life.
Shrimp and leek dumplings... delicious.
Spicy seafood noodle soup (Cham Pong) - pretty hot but soooo good.
Back in Berkeley, finishing off the day with bubble tea from Tapioca Express in downtown.
(See more photos of our Berkeley/San Francisco excursions on Flickr.)
Dan and I had a great time with the girls (although Dan only accompanied us for the Berkeley portion of our adventures), and we wish them a safe and memorable trip around NorCal before they return to the East Coast.
Last Saturday, we went on a chocolate factory tour at Charles Chocolates in Emeryville. My sister Miwa (who recently relocated to the area) is doing a research paper on cocoa and chocolate, so we went in the name of “research.” It’s confirmed for me that chocolates — not diamonds — are a girl’s best friend.
arriving at Charles Chocolates in Emeryville
the selection for the chocolate tastings. (from left: salted caramel, raspberry filled, peanut-butter filled, almond cluster, and lemon marzipan)
On Sunday, Dan and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary. While I was getting ready to go out to dinner, Dan surprised me with a beautiful bouquet of red roses!
lovely red roses from Dan
We then drove over to San Francisco and enjoyed some cocktails on the rooftop of Medjool in the Mission. It was a pretty clear day, and we got a breathtaking view of the San Francisco skyline.
Dan and I on the Sky Terrace of Medjool, overlooking San Francisco.
We then headed over to Foreign Cinema, which was only a couple buildings down, and enjoyed a delicious romantic dinner. It was our first time at the restaurant, but everything we had tasted amazing. We didn’t stay late enough to catch the movie showing in the courtyard, but the dining experience in itself was lovely.
It’s already been a year since our wedding back in Northern Virginia, and at the same time, it seems longer than that. Within just this past year, we’ve shared so many more memories together as newlyweds — experienced both happiness and sadness together; we’ve gained and lost along the way — but what matters is we did it together, and it’s true when they say that through it, joy is doubled and sorrow is halved when you share it with each other. But most of all, we cannot forget that we owe it to the love and support of our family and friends that we are here today, happily married and every much in love as we were on our wedding day.
The famous Berkeley Bowl is nothing short of a foodie mecca, garnering national coverage and regularly gracing the pages of newspapers like The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. We live only about a half mile away from its location on Oregon Street, and it is definitely one of the biggest perks of living in Berkeley. Some people travel several miles to do their grocery shopping here, because it seems to carry just about everything, including obscure international ingredients. I was psyched when I found that I could buy mostly everything for my Japanese cooking needs instead of having to make the hour-long trek down to Mitsuwa in San Jose. While the produce is the freshest in the area and the selection is unmatched, the shopping experience there is a whole different story and was the only thing keeping us from coming back every weekend. As the SF Gate reported, “The parking lot is a gridlocked swamp of road rage, a demolition derby of Priuses and rusty old Volvos vying for parking spots… The produce section is often described as the ‘Cairo of shopping carts,’ as dozens of very focused and aggressive gourmands fight over the purple potatoes and fresh water chestnuts. The checkout lines can be staggering, like something out of East Berlin.” The zoo that is Berkeley Bowl provides you with the most exhausting — although rewarding — shopping experience ever.
Berkeley Bowl was in desperate need of expansion with the shortage of parking spots and cramped aisles, and our prayers were answered with the opening of Berkeley Bowl West in early June of this year. Located near the intersection of San Pablo and Ashby Avenues, right off the freeway, it features a parking garage and double the number of parking spaces of the Oregon Street store, more checkout lanes, and significantly larger aisles and produce sections to accommodate the swarming crowds of shoppers. It also boasts a cafe, expanded kitchen, and community room where people can take a seat and immediately enjoy any prepared food they purchase.
Dan and I took a trip out to the new Berkeley Bowl West early last month when it had just opened, and we were super impressed! We’ll let the photos do the talking:
I commend you if you have gotten this far in this photo dump of a blog entry, and I hope you enjoyed our dorktastic photo tour. All hail Berkeley Bowl West, the new foodie paradise! We’re sure we will be seeing much more of you.
July is National Ice Cream Month, and what better way to celebrate than with a heavenly ice cream sundae from Fentons Creamery? Fentons was recently immortalized by the Pixar film UP, in the ending scene where Mr. Frederickson and Russell sit on the curb and count cars.
Fentons has enjoyed a long history of over one hundred years in Oakland since they opened in 1894, and is a favorite among the locals. The ice creamery is dedicated to preserving the tradition of creating ice creams and toppings batch-by-batch, scoop-by-scoop.
I indulged in my first taste of Fentons about four years ago when I was visiting Dan from Virginia, and loved it — although I couldn’t quite finish the ginormous sundae. We hadn’t gone back in a while but we finally had a chance to go for a second time with some friends last week. Dan and I got their cookie sundae, which features cookies n’ cream and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream piled on top of a chocolate chip cookie, and it was a heaping pile of sweet deliciousness. (and we were able to finish it!)
Megumi and I with Doug from UPwith my lovely lady friends!
Oh, how I love summer and all the yummy desserts that come with it — ice cream, gelato, sorbet, frozen yogurt… bring it on!
