Audiophilia's SFO/Napa/Sonoma/Carmel Fantasia (LONG)

Hey Gang! I'm going to add my review/thoughts in installments because: 1. I'm pissed! 2. I'm in the Biz Cent on a POS DEll (holy sht, u like these things?!!!) 3. I've done so much, that I want to add as i remember. Couple of things to start off. SFO Amazing city. Beautiful. Safe. Good shopping. Great setting, 2nd only to Vancouver for beauty. Loved: Alacatraz -- audio tour worth the price of admission. Botanical Gardens (thanks bmulford). Ameoba Music, B Bar. Lulus, Ferry Bldg, Jones st, etc. SF Meetup @ B Bar and Lulus. Great guys and gals. Theit prose on SF is the embodiment of their true personalities. PS -- erudite, cool. binge -- charm, leadership personified. bmulford -- thoughtful, bright. iammatt -- LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ More on him to come in a very special post! CHIPS, Comrade, et al, all wonderful too. It was a fantastic night, due in no small part to binge's fantastic organizational skills. Huge thanks, buddy. Napa: I'm in heaven. The views. The frigging wine. I'm a Cab lover. I'm in heaven. More on this later. Cyrus tomorrow night. The one disappointment: BOUCHON. (Sorry PS) Not the bakery, which is superb! Another fine restaurant (I presume) bites the 'corporate franchise' dust! CDN$500! Meh. Average entrees and really shitty wine list (and I ain't no snob). We even have way better in Toronto (Le SElect Bistro), and if you know my feelings about Blandsville, that's effing saying something. More to come. Loving the whole Northern CA experience. Oh, for you PC fuks, I genuflected at the Holy Shrine, 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino. LOL!! Pics to follow

I see the charm. I imagine the idea. Just the 'corporate' slickness has ripped the heart out of these places. The Wolfgang 'Pucking', if you please. Le Cirque, Cipriani, etc. The wine list sucked ass. How can you not have a $100 05 Pinot? 07s for $200, FFS! The choice was slim pickens. The 'frites' were pretty good tasting fries. No more. Sorry, buddy. Maybe my experience was singular. The place was ridiculously loud -- kids screaming. women shouting in baseball caps (even took a brief iPhone vid cause I wanted to prove the noise to my Canadian fiends). Jan's mussels were mixed with a sausage and was swimming in oil. Really bad. Good? Nice server, though nothing like top class serving. Nice martini and port. Cheese was okay. Lemon tart had great filling. Wish I could be more positive. If it was 2 bills, no sweat, but nearly 5 CDN! And our wine was only $120 US. We are not complainers. So, it had to be pretty bad to get this type of review. As for your rec, much appreciated anyway. We had the res before we met up with you, so we were going anyway. Cheers, a Edit: I should add that the flavour and texture of my pork belly entree was superb!

A quickie just for Matt:

Berkeley: Fascinating, architecturally superb and diverse, a vibe of great learning and erudition. I would have loved to attended there.

Stanford: Very lovely. Country club. Legacy Central. Nice palms. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

As for as your comment about more beautiful than Cambridge, you're off your rocker mate

Patience.

My reaction rant was in equal measure to Keller's hype, I think.

Just returned. Was an amazing time in SFO and even better in Napa for five days. Got to Cyrus. Sadly, Jan had a migraine. We thought the meds and the two hour drive would help, but even worse (blinding headache, nasea, etc) when we arrived. I went in and apologized. They couldn't have been nicer. Damn shame on our 25th, too. We'll find a nice place around here. Anyway, a few pics. I have a lovely composed shot of the gang. I'll need a consensus to publish Our night with the SF gang was terrific, BTW. All super people. Ms. CHIPS and Mrs. Audiophilia at Lulu A general shot of the gang an B Bar.

Moi aussi, PSG. We really enjoyed meeting all of you. We traveled a lot in the ten days. SFO, Napa, Sonoma, Carmel, San Jose, Berkeley, Palo Alto, Healdsburg, etc. We loved it all. Jan still laughs about Matt. 'What do you think about Canadians?'. LOL!