A journey through the hilly streets and healthy culinary delights of San Francisco
I recently came back from a very busy long weekend in San Francisco. Do you ever come back from a trip feeling like you desperately need a detox or a hardcore workout to get back to your regular eating and exercising? I do, sometimes. This time, however, I didn't feel that way. Not only were we able to find plenty of diverse, healthy and delicious food options, we also stayed very active as we walked miles and miles up and down the hills of San Francisco for 4 days in a row.
It is not at all difficult to find unique places with nutritious and delicious meals in such progressive and health-conscious city as San Francisco. Regardless of the area you are in, after a few minutes of internet search you'll be able to find multiple options to satisfy any food preferences and cravings, including vegan, vegetarian, gluten- or dairy-free meals and a wide variety of authentic cuisines.
We were staying in the Noe valley / Castro area. Every morning for breakfast we wandered into some popular local spots with traditional variety of breakfast items such as omelettes, egg benedicts, pancakes, fruit and yogurt. We found that a lot of places offered some gluten-free breads or pastries. However, I'm not a pastry-for-breakfast type of person. My most common breakfast at home is a bowl of oatmeal or other gluten-free (GF) grain porridge. But in absence of GF porridge options during my travels I often opt for eggs. My favorite egg menu item is a smoked salmon omelette or an omelette with spinach, goat cheese and veggies and some protein like a chicken sausage.
We got much more creative with our lunch choices, though. Every day we were able to find some interesting places with more unique food offerings. Here are a few places we discovered that I would definitely go back to.
1. Namu Gaji
Namu Gaji is a Korean lunch place near Dolores park with delicious and innovative lunch bowls that are full of different flavors and textures. Most of their lunch menu items include some combination of white or brown rice, chicken or other protein, eggs, fermented veggies, sprouts and sauces. When we got in, the food on everyone's plate looked really yummy, which is always a good sign. I ended up getting a warm brown rice bowl with chicken, kimchi, seaweed and sprouts with some sort of teriyaki sauce (called 'Dosirak lunchbox'). And my husband got another warm dish with rice, ground beef and runny eggs, all mixed in a gravy sauce ('Loco moco').
2. Seed + Salt
This is a place in the Marina area that was recommended to us by a colleague. First of all, this place offers only organic vegan gluten-, dairy- and sugar-free meals. This being said, it offers a bigger variety of nutritious and delicious menu items than some traditional restaurants. I get really fascinated and inspired by people who open spots like this one. While they serve a limited niche of the population, they get so creative with the ingredients they use. We really enjoyed our collard green quinoa falafel wrap and a beet burger there. While neither my husband nor I are vegetarian, we didn't miss having meat at all as we got a full spectrum of flavors and textures in these meals.
3. Samovar tea lounge
Despite it's Russian sounding name, this place offers an extensive Asian-influenced menu with a variety of healthy and very creative dishes. The place itself is very modern and nicely decorated and has an amazing view of the Yerba Buena Gardens. I had a hard time picking a dish on their menu, though, as there were too many unusual but intriguing sounding options there. There were things like oatmeal porridge with kale and eggs, Asian smoked duck porridge, smoked salmon and egg bowls with some delicious sauces, and much more. My husband got a green tea soup with brown rice, vegetables, roasted butternut squash and seaweed ('Ochazuke Japanese Houjicha'). I got a rice porridge with smoked duck, peanuts, cilantro, ginger, Sriracha and tamari sauce ('Smoked Duck Jook'). While we both ordered the dishes we had no idea about, we really enjoyed our choices.
Overall, I am a big fan of the Asian-influenced cuisine for lunch. Recently I have been putting more emphasis on eating my carbs and starchy foods in the middle of the day and having bigger warm meals for lunch, while having something lighter, such as a salad or veggies and protein for dinner. I find Asian cuisine to be the easiest lunch option as it doesn't rely much on dairy, has good gluten-free carbs alternatives (such as rice or rice noodles), and is filling but at the same time not heavy.
Finally, our dinner choices were driven more by other criteria, such as location, ambiance, popularity, or picked by friends whom we were meeting with. So we had one dinner at a tiny but very popular Japanse restaurant in Noe Valley with outstanding variety of fresh fish options. The other night we wanted something more special, more of a date night place, so we went to a restaurant with live jazz music. Ironically, the jazz band performance never happened as the basement of the restaurant got flooded due to heavy rain and we were evacuated. So we ended up in a really awesome piano bar, called Martunis, popular among locals as well as visiting theater and musical stars.
I truly enjoy traveling. For me, trying local foods or finding unique restaurants wherever we go is a big part of exploring and getting to know the new place. I am very adventurous in eating and am open to trying new and unusual things that some other people won't. My colleagues, for example, still tell stories about me traveling to China while being 6-month pregnant and trying all the weird street food staples that many tourists would stay away from. But at the same time I am always mindful of what I eat. Eating junk food has never been an option for me. I would go an extra mile to find a place with some healthy options and more unique menus. And luckily, doing that in San Francisco has been a piece of cake. Or to be more specific, a piece of a gluten-, dairy, and sugar-free cake.
