Dinner in the city

Whilst Friday morning is set up as the dreaded pitch morning (starting the day with a bang at 9am!), this evening was the last chance that I would have to get into the city and see Charlie and Heidi whilst I am over here on this trip, so there was no way that I was going to cancel in favour of a quiet night of fretting at the apartment.

            Whilst we had originally planned to head to The Mission, the very best place for Mexican street food in San Francisco, the particular restaurant that Charlie and Heidi had picked out was unfortunately fully booked and unable to accommodate us, so Plan B saw us headed slightly further east to 25 Lusk.

            This was the sort of place that you would expect to find in the Meat Packing District in New York – a cool loft style building with a great wine bar to perch at and some seriously good food too!

Ignoring the shocking service (honestly, it must be bad, because I live in Singapore, and I always thought that was the gold standard for bad service!) it was a really lovely night.

            Having left the office before I really needed to at around seven (I had already spent way longer there than required!) I made my way over to the restaurant via shuttle and trust Bart, before propping myself up at the bar to wile away a good half an hour with a glass of red wine for company whilst I waited for the others to arrive.

            Eventually they rocked up, along with Heidi’s new friend Anna – another lovely English lady who lives just over the road from them and who has helped them settle down and feel right at home so soon after moving.  Once we were all gathered we made our way over to our table and started on a bit of a food adventure.

            To start with we shared a couple of starts – sashimi tuna, a crispy poached egg with asparagus and deep fried octopus, which was all fantastic! Next up there were huge plates of hearty, almost English style food – pork shanks, duck breast and lamb, layered over heavy gravies, risottos and grains. It was all incredibly delicious, and although we disappointingly didn’t quite made it to the desserts, they certainly looked impressive!

            As with Monday night, I was amazed at how quickly you can become accustomed to having people around you again. Having spent the last month adjusting to having new friends and only one familiar face to remind me of home, it feels incredibly strange to think that in the next few weeks I won’t be able to just ring up Heidi and Charlie and ask them to dinner…it’s fine at the moment because I’m so busy. But I have a feeling that if I wasn’t here for work and I was just on a little jolly to the States, that would probably be quite a sad thing to think about.