Eating My Way Through San Francisco - Day 1

Wow is all I can say!  San Francisco was so much fun.  I had a blast sightseeing and eating my way through the city.

We arrived on Wednesday afternoon and hopped on the BART to our Union Square hotel - Hotel Monaco. We were lucky enough to be upgraded to one of their king suites.  It's a nice hotel with a marble staircase in the middle.  We dropped our stuff and headed out to grab a quick bite.  We didn't put much thought into it and walked a few doors down to the Center Stage Deli.    This place didn't call itself by any of the buzzwords I mentioned in my previous post, but we had some pretty decent sandwiches here.

Our next stop was at Fisherman's Wharf.  It's a pretty touristy area, and I'm not into buying souveniers I'll later throw out, so we made our way through there pretty quickly.  At the end of the Wharf is Pier 39, which is home to hundreds of seals!!  While they were fun to look at, they sure did smell like rotten fish baking in the hot sun.

From the Wharf, we made our way over to Ghiradelli Square.  We had our free sample of chocolate we were off to Buena Vista Cafe.  In doing my San Francisco restaurant research, I read about the famous Irish coffee at Buena Vista Cafe.  I knew I had to try it. 

This is an interesting concoction of whisky, coffee and whipped cream.  The secret to making the whipped cream float is using it right past its expiration date.  Apparently, you're supposed to sip this thing slowly....we didn't know that.  Let's just say, this coffee has some KICK, but I won't be running back for seconds!  I'm not a fan of whiskey, so this was a little to harsh for my palate.

Now that we were buzzing from our coffee and drunk from the whiskey, we decided to take our first ride on the cable cars.  It was a lot of fun hanging off the sides of the car watching the streets roll by.

For dinner this evening, we went to Tropisueño for some Mexican food.  We were still a little jet-lagged and we weren't starving, so we had a huge bowl of tortilla chips with salsa and a few appetizers as our dinner.  It was the perfect amount.  The tortilla chips were fresh, light and airy. 

For our dinner/appetizers, we had Platanos Fritos:

Fried sweet plantains served with seasoned black beans and Mexican crema. These were delicious!

We also had some Tacos al Pastor: Two soft tacos with grilled marinated pork, pineapple, onion, cilantro and salsa.  I really loved the pineapple in these.  They added just the right amount of sweetness.

And we topped it off with Crispy Flautas:

Crisp corn tortillas filled with chicken tinga, topped with salsa verde and finished with crema. YUMMY! 

Tropisueno's prices are really good.  This was the perfect hidden gem to finish off our first day in San Francisco!