Otom

Otom is right down the street from us. It is the little sister restaurant to Moto, the molecular gastronomy heaven. Moto's tasting menu runs $110 per person for 10 courses or $175 per person for 20 courses. Which is why we were dining at Otom instead.

This was our third dining out experience in a row at a nice restaurant that had a child there. I'm still puzzled who wants to take a small kid to dinner at 9 pm at a nice restaurant? I hope this is not becoming a new trend.

Otom has some fancy cocktails that we started with. I had the Scarlett O'Hara with St. Germaine, lychee, raspberry puree, grapefruit, and Gruet. It was wonderful. Not too sweet but still fruity, just how I like it.

The Husband had the Brave Rooster with jalapeno-infused 10-Cane rum, muddled cilantro, pineapple syrup, and lime. Normally I'd think a drink that tasted like jalapenos was gross. This was was very good. With the cilantro and lime it was very refreshing and there was a definitely pineapple aftertaste.

My next drink was the Morning Dew. It had Plymouth gin, honeydew-cucumber syrup, house sour, prosciutto powder, and watermelon foam. I wasn't the hugest fan of this drink. It tasted like I was drinking a garden. The cucumber was a little overpowering.

The Husband had a Roses are Red, Whiskies are Blue which contained blueberry-infused Rittenhouse rye, orange curacao, orange juice, bitters, and rose water. He seemed to like it. I don't like whiskey, bitters, or orange flavor so I wasn't a fan.

My last drink was a lychee martini with 10 Cane rum, Soho Lychee Liquor, Lychee syrup, and house sour. It was good but nowhere near as good as the Scarlett O'Hara so it was a bit of a letdown.

I started with the BLT as an appetizer. It had caramel braised badon, smoked tomato jam, and romaine puree. It was perfection. Definitely the best part of the night.

The Husband had the shrimp with watermelon, heirloom tomato, and thai vinaigrette. The interesting part was they had managed to cut the watermelon and tomatoes so that just looking at it you couldn't tell which was what. So there was both red and yellow tomatoes and watermelon and you didn't know until you tasted each piece if it would be tomato or watermelon. It was a little disconcerting to try a piece of what I thought was tomato and it was watermelon. And then the next piece that I thought would be watermelon was tomato.

For my main dish I had the potato chip gnocchi with maytag, parmesan tuile, champagne grapes and pine nuts. The parmesan crust that came with this was delicious. The gnocchi were very light and matched very nicely with the sweet flavor of the champagne grapes.

The Husband had the skirt steak with heirloom tomato panzanella for his dinner. The steak was very good although wasn't really anything overwhelmingly special. The Husband doesn't really eat green things either so I ate most of his panzanella and it had a nice light dressing on it.

We also had a side order of macaroni and cheese with truffles, bacon, and white cheddar. It was amazing and only second to the BLT as our favorite of the night.

Definitely another culinary hit in the Fulton Market/West Loop area.

San Francisco - Day 4

I had intentions of walking everywhere today dancing through my head. I was quickly reminded that this is no flat Chicago. We started in the Mission District with Mission Dolores. Then walked over to the Castro neighborhood. Then headed towards Haight-Ashbury after stopping at Buena Vista Park. If you'd like a workout hike up to the top of the park for great views of the city. I wished there was an escalator. By the time I'd hiked up to the top I was too sweaty for a picture. We're going to need a personal trainer and a year's worth of training if we ever decide to hike Machu Picchu like we've been talking about.

















At this point we'd had enough walking for the day so we took a bus over to Alamo Square to see the Painted Ladies, otherwise known as the houses in the intro to Full House. Honestly this was quite disappointing. There were only 6 or so houses and while charming, not worth a separate visit. We saw adorable houses all over the city. It was nice to see where Uncle Jesse and Danny Tanner lived.

We had lunch at the Woodhouse Fish Company which was a great lunch spot for seafood. I had the clam chowder and crab cakes and The Husband had the giant lobster roll. The lobster roll was definitely the star of the show.




We only had a little bit of time before we had to go back to the hotel so we hopped on the bus and decided to take it all the way to the Pacific Ocean. It was way too cold to actually get in the water and too windy for anyone to go to the beach and enjoy themselves, but I wanted to say I'd seen the Pacific on what was my first trip to California
.

San Francisco - Day 3

e rented bikes to bike over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito. We used Bike and Roll. There's a 10% discount if you book in advance on the internet. We walked over to the location in North Beach from our hotel, grabbing breakfast at an Italian place on the way.

The bike path was crowded with lots of other bikers. Make sure to bring water with you even if it's not hot. We made that mistake and had to wait until we got to the Golden Gate Bridge gift shop and by then our out of shape asses were dying.

It's about 10 miles from where you pick up the bikes to Sausalito. We learned we are not in shape. We had to walk our bikes up several hills. The serious bikers in their spandex blew past us. I'm sure they were laughing at us. At the end of our bike ride our butts were extremely sore.

We had a great time though. At first the bridge was covered in fog. Then halfway over the bridge it disappeared and we could finally see the other side. Then we biked along the shore in Marin County where we got some great views of the city and the bridge.

We were famished by the time we got to Sausalito so we decided to go to Scoma's since it was the first restaurant we saw. I had a bowl of the clam chowder which was the best I had all weekend and then the dungeness crab salad sandwich which was decent. The husband had a cheeseburger. In reality we should have looked around town a bit more to find something a little more casual for lunch.

We high-tailed it out of there to make the next ferry back. Good thing too. We were exhausted and it was a very long process of waiting in line for the ferry, loading the ferry, the ferry ride, unloading, returning the bikes, and walking back to our hotel from Fisherman's Wharf.

After taking a long nap, we headed out to dinner at Tropisueno per a recommendation from our concierge. Originally we had been planning on going to a seafood restaurant but after lunch I was tired of seafood.

We were able to walk from our hotel to dinner and it's also near Union Square. There was also almost a crisis as they told me they don't have strawberry daiquiris. Or anything with fruit. They had a drink menu that sounded delicious, except everything was made with tequila. And I hate tequila. The waitress had the bartender substitute another liquor for tequila in a fruity girly drink and I was happy. If you are a tequila lover, their margarita and drink menus were excellent.

We decided to just get a bunch of appetizers to share between the two of us so we could try some different things. We had guacamole which was pretty good but a little too spicy. Then the tostada de camarones. It was good but messy to eat the hard shell. We also had the chicken flautas which were delicious. And finally the molotes de papa y chorizo which was also very good. All in all a solid restaurant.

After dinner we headed to another wine bar, First Crush, in the Union Square area. Something about the decor was just too clubby and dated so the ambiance was a little off. But I enjoyed a wine flight of champagne and The Husband enjoyed one of the red wine flights. All the wines they carry are California wines and are probably easy to find in a store. We also had a cheese plate that was pretty good.

It still wasn't very late so we decided to head up the street to another concierge recommendation, the Starlight Room in the Sir Francis Drake Hotel. Our concierge made it sound like this was a great place to just grab a drink and look at the view as it's on the top floor.

Oh no. It's more like a nightclub. An old time nightclub with guys working the door in tuxes and people going in wearing fancy dresses. And a cover charge. Honestly not sure what our concierge was thinking suggesting this place as we were wearing fairly casual outfits of jeans and nice shirts as we asked his advice before leaving for dinner. Definitely not our kind of scene.