Sandwich

First of all, some porn is good. To all the ladies, before you head down to the corner of Apoplectic Way and Outrage Boulevard to tap-dance on my head, read the whole post. Pervs looking for kink, it ain't gonna be that kind of a post. At any rate, it's shameless MasterCard ad rip-off time…

One 16oz. Berry Blitz at Jamba Juice
Cost : $3.95

A crab roll at “Fish”
Cost: $18.00

2.25 gallons of gas
Cost: $5.34

Bridge toll back across the Golden Gate
Cost: $5

Vacation away from self, priceless.

So everything is not love and happiness in the Procrastinator household, such is the case when you live with someone like me who has more issues than the back catalog of National Geographic and Time combined. What’s the remedy? Talking things over the Missus and the kid? Naw, too easy.

So I decided that in the immortal words of the Offspring, “I gotta get away from me.” I thought I would do it old school like my family did back in the day with the lower middle class version of a vacation. Drive up or down the coast, grab some food and stare at the beach. We used to go Hazel’s in Half Moon Bay and they made literally the largest crab sandwiches that you’ve ever seen.

Filled with crab and as big as hamburgers look like in print ads. I mean huge and if you went somewhere else for your crab sandwiches, you would go Michael Douglas out of “Falling Down” on them and say, “all I want is the sandwich just like the one in the picture.” So reminiscing put sandwiches on my brain and I’m sure that if there is some form of porn that we can agree about, sandwich porn is the best.

A friend at work turned me on to this DVD, “Sandwiches That You Will Like.”
http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=1403005

You’ll have to click the link to see just how many that they cover because I’m getting too hungry as is. Let’s just say that they go over just about everything served on bread in America.

One in particular that fascinated me was the lobster roll. Ex-Bostonian and current San Francisco cartoonist Keith Knight did a comic on this wonderful creation that I had yet to sample. Then the San Francisco Chronicle did an article almost a year ago on the Philly cheese steak and the lobster roll, including a nice recipe at the end for the latter.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/02/FDGV9B0QLC1.DTL

So I thought that I would grab a lobster roll at whichever of the two nearest restaurants in that article happened to be open along the way. Then I would hightail it to Stinson Beach.

I went down to Café Maritime on Lombard and called them up after I found parking. They were unfortunately closed, they are a dinner only-type of place or at least on Sundays. Not a problem, I went to Jamba Juice on Chestnut so at least I would have something healthy to drink.

Next on the list was Fish restaurant in the small upscale town of Sausalito just north of the Golden Gate bridge in Marin County. www.331fish.com It’s a nice little restaurant that believes in serving only sustainable seafood which is a nice antidote to over fishing the oceans. They had just opened up for lunch, I was the third customer through the door, I was all stoked, and…”lobster roll? We don’t serve lobster rolls.”

Thank you very much San F(expletive) Chronicle. But did they have a consolation prize? Hell yeah! A crab roll. We’re talking a fresh French roll, minced green onions and lots, and I mean lots, of crab. As much as Hazel’s once did, only not served on Wonder Bread. They didn’t have mayonnaise like Hazel’s either and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it could have been nice just to have a touch. Or maybe some fresh aioli, but that’s just me.

So they hooked it up quick in about the same time I contemplated whether fish complain about having to eat sushi all the time and "would they like us to drop a little lemon or tartar sauce overboard?" I’m all set and I just have to find my way out of Sausalito and over to Stinson Beach.

Sausalito hasn’t changed much since I've been there last, but it’s changed enough that I got lost and wound up in Marin City. I took Bridge Blvd. when I should’ve gone toward the 101 using Shoreline Highway. This took long enough that I decided to go to Muir Beach instead because I didn’t want the crab roll sitting there too long and spoiling next to the hot fries.

What a drive through Mill Valley and over the hill, and there’s nothing like an open sunroof and Nikka Costa to take you there. She’s kind of like Prince, kind of like Macy Gray without the cigarette and whiskey gravel, but she kicks ass in her own unique way. If you still haven’t listened to the album “Everybody Got Their Something,” you’re missing more than you’ll ever know.

Just at the apex of the ridge, there is a sign that says “Golden Gate National Area” and a doe was standing right next to it in broad daylight! Mount Tamalpais is one of the few places in the San Francisco Bay Area where the deer casually take their time fleeing all other creatures.

Muir Beach is nice little town and an even nicer beach, it would probably be named “Muir Cove” if it was in New England or some Native American cussword that they give to towns that only the locals can pronounce, like so many towns are christened in the Northeast. I’m not sure Muir Beach was in “Basic Instinct,” but it looks just like the area surrounding Sharon Stone’s pad. Monterrey pines, grass and moss-covered cliffs, purple and green hills, and the surf crashing on the rocks.

It’s just south of Stinson Beach where so many sharks nibble on surfers in the summer and contemplate why the seals there taste like human