What better place to start than to document all the great food I enjoyed in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the best foodie towns in the country and where I recently spent a week on vacation. (Spoiler: Consumption of seafood was plentiful!)
Prior to the trip, I had appealed to Twitter for restaurant recommendations, and Alison (@azwers) was nice enough to send me a list of awesome suggestions from a local's perspective! I was surprised to learn that many restaurants were already booked solid (for future reference: make reservations several weeks in advance!), but I was able to get into some other great places nonetheless. It was from Alison that I learned about Sotto Mare in the North Beach (Little Italy) neighborhood, which is where we had our first meal in San Francisco.
Sotto Mare doesn't accept reservations for parties of 1 or 2, and luckily the wait wasn't too terrible on a Wednesday night, especially with a glass of wine in hand! To start, I had a small order of West Coast Oysters on half shell ($1.50 each), just because I couldn't resist fresh oysters! For a main course, Alison had specifically recommended the "Best Damn Crab Cioppino" ($41), an order of which is large enough for two people, so naturally R. and I had to get it. In addition to crab, the cioppino (essentially a seafood stew that originated in where else but San Francisco!) also included shrimp, mussels, calamari, clams, scallops, fish, in a tomato-based stew (recipe available here!). It was easily on of the best meals we had in San Francisco and with that, our trip was off to a great start!