Sad thing was that I had to work on Friday. The good thing was that I got to meet up with Sandy by 3:30 and give her these lovely flowers on behalf of my parents.
As well as a mini Scharffen Berger Cake, yum!
Friday night we headed out to the Slow Club for her birthday dinner. We met up with her friends Kelly, Rachel W., Rachael G., and Jamee.
The six of us enjoyed our cocktails immensely, while waiting for a table, then enjoyed some great fries with aioli among flatbread, burgers, fish and chicken. Then, I 'sneakily' (Sandy totally saw me doing this) told the waiter it was her birthday, and she got an extra special treat!
Hey, doing that sort of thing is basically mandatory in my family.
After dinner we headed to Wish, a nice, lounge bar. Turns out my roommates were there as well!
Yes, we were silly.
I hope Jamee doesn't mind me posting these, because I found them to be hilarious!
After that, we tried out Bruno's over in the Mission. It was ok, not the best club I've been to for $10, but it was just fun to dance with each other.
Saturday was a slowwww start, but once Sandy and I got some coffee from Philz and had some amazing cinnamon raisin bread (it has molasses in it!) we were on our way out to Sonoma to meet up with the ladies. But first, we had to stop at Viansa, one of Sandy's favorites.
Apparently they don't carry their wine on the east coast either, so she treated herself to a bottle to bring back with her. Plus we shared a caprese sandwich and glass of wine.
They had a great porch, like most of the places we stopped, overlooking the grape fields.
Cool latticing
Our next stop ended up being way out of the way, but we didn't know that at first. It was Domaine Carneros,
known for their sparkling wine. We stopped just to split a glass of their rose.
oh, and stick our feet in their plush grass!
It was beautiful there
Then we made it to the Lodge at Sonoma, where we spent the night (thanks Mike D for the hook-up!) Sandy and I found Rachael, Rachel and Jamee sleeping by the pool. After they got up, we rallied and headed out to catch one of the films at the Sonoma Film Festival.
We got in to see Elvis and Anabelle. It was pretty good, a little predictable, but the father character, played by Joe Mantenga was awesome!
Dinner ended up being at Maya, and I have to say their top shelf tequila-jito was delicious!
Sunday, Rachael G. and Jamee headed out early to catch in some SF sites before they flew back east, while Sandy, Rachel W. and I hit up The Girl and The Fig for brunch. (yes, a lot of this weekend revolved around food and drinks!) We had a very, uh, haughty waiter, who liked to talk slowly and deliberately, but with a very strange and snotty air. They had this amazing fig spread that they had samples of at the bar. So when they brought the bread out, I decided to go 'sample' it for the table and bring it back for our enjoyment. When the waiter came over he said something to the effect of 'I've never seen that done before' to which I retorted 'well you should put some on the tables then, it's delicious!'. My other memorable interaction with him was when he told us our cheese plate would feature bleu cheese, and seeing the look on our faces asked if that was ok. I then told him I thought it tasted like crap, so he immediately went to change it to a triple cream something or other, which ended up being the most delicious cheese on the platter.
On our way back to San Fran we stopped at Cline for one last sampling.
It was a good one too, Rachel and I both bought ourselves a bottle.
Unfortunately for Rachel, but definitely fortunate for me, she left her bottle in my trunk! I hope I can pass along some of her good karma in return!
Then, since it was such a gorgeous day, we stopped at a lookout over the bridge before crossing over into the city.
After we made it back to my apartment, Jeremy head over, and we all got dinner at Pacific Catch and ate out in our 'zen' garden before heading to Cafe du Nord to see Georgie James perform an acoustic set. The two openers, The Old-Fashioned Way and Tempo no Tempo were great, and they both had various and unexpected instruments. Tempo no Tempo debuted a string quartet that very night.
I will leave you with the links to all the photos from the weekend. First, Sandy's Birthday Night out, and second Saturday and Sunday from Sonoma to San Francisco.
