Birthday dinner at Spruce

As evening begins to take hold along the San Francisco peninsula, the hustle-bustle of shoppers along Market Street slowly yields to those in smarter attire heading to various eateries and functions. As my birthday was a few days to come, I decided to throw on an extra snazzy layer, join the bourgeois crowd and head over to one of San Francisco's top restaurants: Spruce.

Irish coffee and random San Francisco wanderings

The suburb of Walnut Creek - a place I currently call home - is roughly 46 minutes by BART to downtown San Francisco. While this is a pitiful distance in the grand scheme of things; it certainly limits when I venture into the city, and what I do when I visit. BART only runs to 1:00 AM on weekday and Saturday nights, which means my nights are usually cut short. That 46 minute ride usually means, unless I get up extremely early, breakfast and coffee mornings in SF are not going to happen.

Given the situation, the sweet spot for visits is roughly 11 AM - 11 PM. As such, spending the weekend in San Francisco - despite being less than an hour from home - brings opportunities to do some things I normally wouldn't. The first, as I wake up at 7:30 AM to start the day, is to grab an Irish Coffee and breakfast at the renowned Buena Vista.

Irish coffee to start the day!
2017 The Buena Vista. San Francisco, CA

Irish coffee is a very simple concoction. Hot water is poured into a chalice to pre-heat the glass. Once emptied, it is filled three quarters of the way with piping hot coffee. Two sugar cubes are added, and the liquid is stirred until they are dissolved. A full shot of whiskey is added, and then lightly-whipped whipped cream is poured over a spoon so it layers beautifully over-top the drink.

Night in the Mission with Mission Chinese Food

Being born in mid-January on the same day as the late Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. has certainly provided some advantages. While I still wish our birthday, and our nation's holiday, was in the middle of April to serve as a buffer between President's Day and Memorial Day; it nevertheless provides an opportune time to take a well-deserved long-weekend after the commotion of Christmas and New Years. So for this year, after finding a $150/night special at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis, I decided to stay local a book a room in the city for the weekend.

Arriving Saturday evening, my first stop after getting settled into my delightful corner room, was to head up to San Francisco's notable Mission district for an extremely late (8:45 PM) reservation at Danny Bowien's Mission Chinese Food. But first I had some time to kill, and luckily for me, the Patriots were playing the Texans. Thus, en route to dinner I found a BBQ restaurant and whiskey bar about a block away from the restaurant called Southpaw BBQ.