One of the best perks of being a graduate student is the opportunity to attend conferences outside your hometown. The idea of course is to allow researchers and students to expand their knowledge in an area, learn a few things or two, network with other people in the field, etc. The ticket to the trip is usually some form of work you've done that's been accepted to be presented at the conference. And in rare instances, even that's not enough - the PI may not have enough money to fund your trip even if your work was accepted. In such cases, unless a travel grant is won or you fork over the money for the trip yourself, you are staying put.
As a second year graduate student, I do not have any amount of data that's presentable. Thus, I did not submit anything to the American Society of Human Genetics Conference. I also could not apply for a travel grant since I wasn't presenting anything at the event. So imagine my surprise when I found myself in San Francisco for the 2012 ASHG meeting! As it so happens, my PI is a wonderful person who had enough funds to take 2/3 students in the lab. I naturally assumed it was going to be my labmates, both who had posters they would be presenting. Strangely enough one of my labmates offered ME the ticket to SF since he was on a tight budget and he has already been to SF. I really did try my best to convince him he should go, but it was really hard to be genuine when he and I both knew I desperately wanted him to stay. In the end, he may have given the excuse that he was tight on money or whatever; I still maintain that he was just being nice to me.
Of course to my PI and other PIs, the whole point for students to attend these meetings is to learn and network, and all that other academic goodness. To my labmate and I, and other students, the trip is a paid vacation to explore a new city. Thus, my other labmate and I had the same flight out and so we spent our entire flight time planning out excursions to make our week in SF worthwhile.
My #1 priority on the trip was FOOD, naturally. The travel books boasted SF as a culinary mecca of sorts, and I was already salivating while on the plane there (that might have also been because air travels no longer offer meals, but that's another story for another time). I mainly wanted to try out as many authentic local foods as I could, and cheaply as I can get it, as food wasn't something we would get reimbursed for. Here is my culinary journey in gay SF:
The monstrous burrito from Zona Rosa in the Haight neighborhood. This thing puts Chipotle to shame and had me eating for 2 meals!
Free food at the ASHG dinner - steak sliders, buffalo chicken sliders, empanadas, pasta, and **vegetables**. I remember craving veggies because we hadn't had any fresh fruits or vegetables while traveling around.
Donburi and miso soup from Mifune restaurant in Japantown. The donburi was all right - not terrible but not spectacular. The miso was warming. But the star of the show was :
Tempura crab sushi. Crunchy, gooey, savory buttery goodness.
I read many reviews about the great Vietnamese cuisine in SF, and since I don't have access to anything like that where I live, it was imperative that I ate as much of Vietnamese food as I could on the trip. Though I didn't stuff my face every meal with Vietnamese food, I had a few Vietnamese sandwiches that still leave my mouth watering. Above: grilled pork with pickled carrots and daikon in a crunchy baguette, plus iced coffee - all for less than $7 at Latte Express in Chinatown. It was so good that I resented my stomach for being incapable of holding 2 sandwiches.
Yet another massive sandwich. This one is from Ike's Place in the Castro neighborhood. The sandwiches here all have funky names like "Jessica Rabbitt" and "Backstabber" - all topped with a "dirty sauce". I don't remember what this sandwich is called, but it had halal chicken in some tangy sause, topped with tomatoes and a delicious spread of avocado mix. It was not as glorious as the Vietnamese sub, but this was pretty tasty. Also kind of expensive. The Viet sub is still the most tasty and the best bang for your buck.
Members of our lab plus our adjoining lab were treated out to dinner by the head PI. This was the chicken fajitas at Chevy's. When they brought it out, I thought for sure they had gotten my order mixed up because they kept putting more and more food in front of me. I really did try hard to be impressive and eat all of my food, but again my stomach failed me. On a side note, their margaritas were served in these goblets that you could dive in for a swim.
La Boulangerie = French pastries + french gourmet foods = swoons in love. Literally I can smell Paris again when I walked in this place. I splurged this one morning and got 2 pain au chocolat (my must have, favorite, loves) and 2 macaroons: pistachio and almond. The pain au chocolat was buttery, flaky, sweetened with just the right amount of chocolate. It went great with a cup of coffee. And then there was the macaroons.... These were not the ordinary American macaroons that I've gotten at the grocery store; these were the real deal. And they cost a real deal too - $1.50 each. But boy were they worth the $1.50 - unlike macaroons I've ever had before, these were light, not overly sweetened, crunchy & fluffy at the same time, coconut-y but with the flavoring of the pistachio and almond coming through. Melt-in-your-mouth goodness.
Freshly baked loaves at the Fisherman's Wharf farmer's market on Saturday morning. I have a thing for bread - crusty pieces and chewy centers - they make me weak in the knees. While wandering around during lunchtime, I eyed many stands to gauge which one would be the winner. Of course I settled on the stand boasting these handsome loaves. And of course I knew it was a winner because the line for this stand was miles long... It had to be good.
I forget the name of the stand, but they had an assembly line of people working to prepare the orders. Their menu wasn't extensive at all, which I interpreted to mean that they must do these few things exceptionally well. So here is the first man in the assembly line: the Splitter.
The smell emanating from this stand was purely coming from the pounds and pounds of meat being roasted behind the counter. Looking at it now still makes me salivate. And yes, those are potatoes at the bottom, soaking in all the drippings from the pork and chicken above. So bad, but so good.
After the bread is halved by the Splitter it goes to the Slicer: the man who trims off a pile of roasted pork and loads it on the bread.
Next the Crackler, who I think has the most important job, slathers on the pile of pork a layer of chopped crackling. Crackling is delicious (fatty, but delicious) yet can be very chewy in large pieces, so it was his job to chop at it until it's mini-sized. He was going to town on that crackling with his cleaver that some of it hit me in the face! I was much amused at that, and even more delighted when he offered me a giant piece of fresh crackling as a token of "I'm sorry my pieces of delicious fatty pork skin crackling hit you in the forehead."
Finally, the Topper adds a heaping layer of cilantro, a layer of sweet caramelized onions, and covers it with the top half of the bread, and the Porchetta is a now completed work of art.
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| Isn't she a beaute?! Is this even real?! |
I could describe the explosion of flavors and textures that occurred on my taste buds when I ate this sandwich, but the picture does it pretty well already I think. Well worth the $9.50 it cost me.
Of course I couldn't leave SF without trying some Pho. I stopped into the Yellow Flower (?) in Chinatown after my Saturday at the Embarcado. Just me, myself, and a bubbling bowl of comfort food that night. This Pho wasn't bad at all, never like my mom's though. Very economical at $7.
One of the last excursions we took was across the bridge to the other side of town. We stopped by Sausalito for lunch at a Thai restaurant (one of the only restaurants/businesses to be open on a Sunday afternoon... WTH San Francisco?!) I ordered Pad See Ew and a Thai iced tea - pretty smokey and flavorful, no surprises to mention.
And that was the week I ate myself silly in beautiful San Francisco; I'm sure one or two more pounds came back with me, not including my luggages.
