What I Did on My Summer Vacation - Part 3, Chinatown

In many cities across America, and other countries, you'll find a place called Chinatown.

San Francisco's Chinatown is the second largest in the US ( New York is the first) and perhaps the most well-known. It's a neighborhood filled with Chinese shops, restaurants, schools and home to to many of the 120,000 Chinese residents of the Bay area. They live in close quarters, multi-generational families, sharing an apartment and working at various local businesses. The kids attend Chinese school in the afternoon, learning culture and language, long after their regular school day ends.

The neighborhood is colorful, exotic and bustling. It's alive with the sound of various Chinese dialects and busy with Chinese of all ages shopping and socializing.

For a nine year old from Maine, it's just plain fascinating.

We took a walking tour with the lovely Linda Lee of All About Chinatown Tours. Linda grew up in Chinatown and has been leading tours for 26 years. She's full of information and lots of fun.

After a brief history of Chinatown, Linda got down important business - the food.

First stop was a tiny fortune cookie factory, located down a narrow pedestrian alley. Three Chinese women sat at workplaces, quickly grabbing hot, flat cookies from a belt, stuffing them with fortunes and folding the cookies before they could cool.

My daughter got a real kick out if it, especially when the owner (manager?) gave the group a big bagful of flat cookies to snack on. As the youngest member of the tour, Linda insisted that she carry the bag and frequently offer cookies to everyone.

Next stop was the food markets. We saw many things that were easily recognizable as food...

And some that weren't...

Linda also took us to a Chinese herbal pharmacy, where there were many weird and wonderful remedies for whatever ails you.

Dried lizard for your headache?

Hey, you never know.

And we had the privilege of visiting a Buddhist temple. Our timing was perfect, as a trio of Buddhist nuns arrived to chant noon prayers. It was magical to watch...

Of course the tour stirred up our appetite for Chinese food.

Linda recommended the House of Nanking for lunch.

And I can heartily recommend Linda Lee, for a great way to see more of San Francisco's Chinatown than the average tourist.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation - Part 1

The family and I just got back from our vacation in northern California. We had so many wonderful experiences, it's hard to know where to start.

There was the beautiful Japanese Tea Garden at Golden Gate Park.

The Chinatown walking tour.

The visit to our friends' vineyard in Sonoma.

All that will be shared in future posts. Today will be all about the Ferry Building, a must for anyone who loves food.

Who could that be?

I insisted this be the first stop on our first day. While Bob stayed in and did some work (these vacations don't just pay for themselves), I took the kids on the street car that runs along the Embarcadero, to breakfast at the Ferry Building. Before the Golden Gate and Bay

Bridge were built, this was the transportation hub of the city, ferrying millions of people across the bay.

Now it is foodie paradise, with stall after stall of artisanal foods that seem too pretty to eat.

We sat outside, enjoying a French breakfast at Boulette's Larder.

Yes, the food is overpriced and the service indifferent (authentically French I guess), but it was magical to sit outside on a sunny morning in the shadow of the Bay Bridge. The French press coffee was strong and dark. The eggs were deliciously creamy and my multigrain cereal came with an array of extras presented in small wooden boxes.

It seemed important to start the morning with something healthy, because after that it became a sugar free-for-all.

Recchiuti Chocolates

After you eat all that sugar, you know you need a carb to balance it out. So we stopped at Acme Bread, where each loaf tastes as good as it looks.

And what's bread without a piece of cheese?

And friends, all this was before noon...

We returned to the Ferry Building that evening for a fantastic dinner at The Slanted Door, an upscale Vietnamese place. Lucky for me, the whole family likes Asian food, as much as I do.

It's hard to say which we liked better - the pork spareribs in a sticky honey-hoisin sauce or the oven-roasted Manila clams in a dreamy broth laced with thai basil and chilies. Both were incredible. I had to arm wrestle my son for the last sparerib, and the daughter who claims not to like seafood suddenly took a liking to the clams.

I would have taken pictures of the rest of our dishes, like the Niman Ranch Shaking Beef and Caramelized Tiger Prawns, but the savages at my table would have left me with nothing.

It was that good. And by the way, the service was excellent too.

As a perfect ending to the meal, and to our first day in San Francisco, guess what was for dessert?

Mignardises.