Let them eat cake

Turtle Tower Restaurant is a small mom 'n pop place near Golden Gate park. Located on Geary Street amongst many other Asian restaurants, the building is not a particular stand out, but the taste certainly is. The types of restaurants in this section of Geary are purists when it comes to the type of food they serve. For example, a Japanese restaurant explicitly wrote on a sign: NO SUSHI. NO TERIYAKI. This was to keep out the riffraff i.e., those who are accustomed to Westernized restaurant offerings. 

The place we visited made the distinction of serving only Northern Vietnamese style food which means you are served your pho without mint, bean sprouts, or hoisin. My friend recommended that I try #6 the pan fried noodle soup with fresh rice noodles, beef, leeks and carrots. It was a combination of smokey, tender flavorful goodness in a bowl. Definitely worth having seconds and thirds, I should think.

One drawback is that the restaurant closes super early in the evenings. We were the last customers to order food and were rushed out of the restaurant at 8:30 pm. Still it gave us an opportunity to head to Hayes Valley for dessert.

Citizen Cake has been around for years and I came across Elizabeth Falkner on a Food Network challenge a few years ago. Most recently she was on Top Chef Masters competing against others such as Rick Bayless, Ludo Lefebvre, Hubert Keller, Michael Cimarusti, Roy Yamaguchi, et al.  She's the author of Demolition Desserts and I have looked forward to a visit to her shop each time I am in San Francisco. On this visit we sampled the following:

• Retro Tropical Shag - Genoise cake splashed with rum and an exotic passion fruit mousse, covered in vanilla buttercream and carpeted with un-sweetened coconut.
• Mocha Mi Su - Layers of cocoa genoise cake, mocha mousse and crème fraiche mousse. Finished with chocolate ganache and coffee buttercream. 
• Pineapple Upside-down Cupcake - A tropical treat: lots o’ pineapple chunks underneath moist buttermilk cake topped with a passion fruit frosting & coconut
• Carrot Cupcake - Our delicious carrot cake topped with cream cheese frosting and a marzipan carrot.
  

Oh my!

Punchlines

I am so sick and tired of everybody complaining about hangnails today.
Well, excuuuuuuuuse me. Listen sister, that's a lot better than having a bunch of co-workers sing barber-shop quartet about whitlows.