The Pings: Jon, Jenny, Elton and Rafa

My second most favorite stop on our trip was the Cinque Terre, a collection of five small coastal towns on the Italian Rivera.  The towns are part of a national park and are a UNESCO world heritage site.  They are built on steep cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and apart from the Rick Steve’s tourists, are relatively isolated from the rest of the universe.

Like Lauterbrunnen, there are no big sites, but a lot of great hikes and a ton of ambience.  We were lucky for sunny, breezy weather, and completed most of the hike connecting the five towns.  It was a bit of work and a lot more strenuous than expected, especially the route between Monterosso and Vernazza, but we loved the view of the olive groves and the sea.

Best of all, the Cinque Terre is known for it’s amazing seafood and pesto, and Jonathan and I enjoyed the best Italian food of our entire trip, including the best gnocchi in the entire world and an incredible squid ink risotto.

Jonathan and I spent an afternoon picnic at the Hog Island Oyster Company in Tomales Bay.  It’s located right at Tomales Bay, and is just really beautiful.

Tomales Bay is a couple of scenic hours north on CA-1, and we did the drive on the way up to Napa.   A picture of the Golden Gate Bridge and fog from our car…

Hog Island at Tomales Bay is the actual Hog Island oyster farm, so the oysters went directly from the ocean to our stomach.  They were super fresh and super delicious.

We made reservations a couple of weeks in advance and got our own picnic table and grill.  We bought the oysters (cheaper than the city: $12-15 for 12) and they provided the shucking knife, ice, gloves, lemons, hot sauce and tables.  We also brought our own plates and utensils from home and picked up some juice, wine, cheese and bread from Trader Joes earlier in the morning.

Our oysters pre feast.  We only bought two dozen because we had our super fancy French Laundry dinner later that evening, and didn’t want to fill up on the oysters.  We got a combination of Kumamoto’s (my favorite) and Hog Island Sweetwaters.

Shucking…

Jonathan taught me how to shuck.  I’m pretty good at it.  No major injuries…

Enjoying our oysters and view…

Our oyster shells post feast!

Another food post!

The French Laundry is Thomas Keller’s super fancy restaurant in Yountville, CA.     It’s super hard to get reservations (They only can serve 60-80 people a night, and only take reservations exactly 60 days in advance.  The reservations typically fill up within the first 30 minutes), so when we finally got them (thanks Visa concierge service!), we jumped at the opportunity.  The whole meal is 12 courses or so (That’s three and a half hours of food bliss!).   The picture above is me with the amuse bouche of salmon tartar in little ice cream cones and a puff cheese pastry.  I’m really glad that I got a copy of our menu before we left, because it’s a huge help with these pictures.

Our first course was the famous “Oysters and Pearls”.  It’s a “Sabayon of pearl tapioca with Island creek oysters and white surgeon caviar”.  Fancy.  It was rich and creamy and lived up the all of the hype on Yelp.

Followed by the “Moulard Duck Foie Gras en Terrine”.  It has a side of figs and honey and also comes with a trio of über fancy specialty salts, brioche, and two of the BEST, most delicious butters I have ever tasted.   The restaurant was so fancy, that the waiters actually replaced our brioche after five minutes with another place of warm toasted brioche, so we never had to eat cold brioche.    Yeah for super fancy, extra expensive three Michelin star restaurants!

Next we had a “Sauteed Fillet of Big Eye Tuna”.  It came with brocolini, lily bulbs, navel oranges and Nicoise olives.

And on, for another eight or so more courses.  Above is our cheese course, “Comte Reserve”, with bing cherries, truffle, and pecans.

Everything was delicious, but my favorite was the “Sweet Butter Poached Maine Lobster Mitts”.  The lobster was so tender and buttery, and I loved the lobster mushroom ravioli and corn three ways.

And of course I loved the sweet stuff.  We had the “Peaches and Cream”, the “Cremeux Aux Fruits de la Passion”, and various assorted truffles and chocolate covered macadamia nuts.

Overall, a delicious meal, and well worth the special trip up to SF.  It was definitely a once in a lifetime meal and Jonathan and I are grateful for the experience.

Jonathan and I spent a day in Berkeley, and visited our old dorm and apartments, and ate at all of our favorite college foodie spots.    Here’s a picture of Jonathan and I in front of Sproul Hall and our old freshman dorm, Priestley Hall at Unit 3.  We actually met at the security monitor counter behind us in this photo and my old dorm room is the second window on the first floor. 

Of course, a day on vacation is not a proper Ping vacation without a ton of food.  We ate breakfast at Noah’s bagels, a tub of cheese fries from I.B. Hogies (they layer the cheese and fries, so every fry is covered in fake melted cheese– It’s the secret to their artery clogging success and why Jonathan and I are such big fans), potato puffs from Gregroie, ginger spice cookies and hazelnut shortbread cookies from the Cheeseboard bakery, and a couple of slices of roasted cauliflower, pistachio, and campo de montalban cheese pizza from the Cheeseboard.  Yummy.

After feasting in Berkeley, we took a two hour break and met up with our friends Tom and Attitaya at the House of Prime Rib, where we all ate very large slabs of  prime rib.  (Also from Food Network fame, the menu only has prime rib on it, but it’s delicious.  It also came with generous portions of creamed spinach, a fully dressed baked potato, salad and Yorkshire pudding.   Yummy.)   We were so full after our day of cheese and cookies, but we enjoyed our prime rib and company so much, that we finished all of our meat and dessert off.    BTW, Jonathan and I are now on a diet.

So, I think our SF food post will need to be in multiple parts because of the shear volume of food we consumed in four days.  On our first day in SF, Jonathan and I counted twelve different things that we ate!

We started the day with a latte and a Liege waffle from Blue Bottom Coffee Company (it’s this delicious waffle with sugar put in waffle iron, so the sugar caramelizes onto the waffle…yum), and worked our way to a ham and cheese turnover and a cheese round from Acme Bread, a Salumi cone from Boccalone ( The picture above is Jonathan and his meaty cone.  A salumi cone has various pickled meat, ala Food Network fame, and was very tasty with an olive loaf from Acme bread.  I thought it was funny that the sign in front of the shop read “Tasty Salted Pig Parts”!), Mitchell’s Pralines and cream Ice Cream, Blood orange and Sicilian lime Ciao Bella Gelato (pictured below), freshly made fortune cookies from Chinatown, salt water taffy, a fresh crab sandwich at Fisherman’s warf, and rounded out our day with take out naan, chicken korma, and aloo palak from Nan-n-Curry.  And that was just day one!

Jonathan and I dove right into Peruvian cuisine and ate cuy, or guinea pig.  It’s a Peruvian delicacy, and since we can’t eat it in the states, we were happy for the opportunity to try a new food.   The meat itself, however, is a little tough and gamey, something like a less meaty rabbit.  It was a little disappointing, but we dug the presentation: Our guinea pig was served roasted with a tomato hat and sage leaf “ears”.

A picture of the cuy before we ate them.  They were super cute.

Jenny enjoying a cup of coca tea on the train ride to Machu Pichu.  The coca is suppose to help with altitude sickness.  I got a mild case of altitude sickness in Peru, and I appreciated the warm cup of tea.

Jonathan and I enjoyed a mango drink from a fruit stall.  I love fresh fruit drinks in foreign countries and Jonathan got a kick out of the very large papayas.  Delicious.

The very cute empanada stall at the Pisac market.  The ladies bake the empanadas in the wood burning oven.  They were hot,   sweet and crispy on the outside and savory and chewy on the inside.   I was a huge empanada fan in Peru.  Yummy.

Jonathan and I definitely are not food snobs, and we love trying new foods.  There was a ton of new foods in Thailand, and we probably gained a few extra pounds by eating our way through Thailand.

We primarily stuck to the street stalls.  I packed a lot of Cipro and Lomotil before we left, but luckily, we never got sick, and simply enjoyed all of the good eats.

We enjoyed various foods on a stick, including my favorite, the long potato chip on a stick (BBQ flavored) and Jonathan’s favorite, mystery meat with random catilagenous bits on a stick and whole chicken bit on a stick.  (I just looked through our pictures again, and I noticed that there are a lot of pictures of Jonathan with food!)

We ate a ton of different food at the night markets, but we also decided to splurge on one fancy meal in Bangkok, and visited a nice, small, but clean restaurant called Taling Pling.  It was definitely the best meal we had on vacation, and we highly recommend this restaurant to anyone traveling to Bangkok.

Jonathan and I enjoyed the food so much, we even took a Thai cooking course!   We took the one day course at the Chiang Mai Cookery School and learned how to make six different Thai dishes including Phad Thai, Tom Yum soup, green chicken curry, and a yummy water chestnut dessert.

Delicious!