Don't Stop Me, I'm On A Lobster Roll
Or should this be titled "Sandwich, The Lobster Strikes Back?"
So this time out, I will omit the shameless MasterCard ad rip-off this time because everyone will think my life is far more extravagant or decadent than it really is. I'm not livin' "large" or "phat," more like medium or p-h-l-a-t.
Mira, la vida loca? No. Yo vivo la vida aburrido (boring). Budget-wise, I allow the family two big outings and unfortunately, I used one of them up on myself last weekend.
Nevertheless, lunch at Johnny's Hamburgers with the family? Fun and priceless. Not only that, I tried something I've never had before...a pastrami cheeseburger.
Dig it. If you read Robert Crais or Michael Connelly, their protagonists eat or meet characters that consume, pastrami burritos. Their novels plant the craving for the gastronomically different. Now I don't think the pastrami would work with beans and rice, but I can tell you that it works just fine with a cheeseburger and it's almost as good as bacon cheeseburger, just slightly different.
So after a nice lunch, I drove the Missus and Procrastinator Jr. over the Golden Gate Bridge and over Mount Tamalpais to look for waterfalls. http://www.marintrails.com/falls.html
Specifically, Cataract Falls. http://www.bahiker.com/northbayhikes/cataractfalls.html
I had Nikka Costa playing and the sunroof open because I was tired of winter and sixty degrees was just close enough to spring if you compensated by having the heater on. The directions in the two links above were decent, but the signage in the park leaves something to be desired. There are a lot of baby waterfalls and run-offs that can literally throw you off the trail. The main waterfall is something to behold, the jpegs on the two links above do it little justice and the falls literally roar in some spots.
The foliage was dense, it really added to the atmosphere but unfortunately, taking pictures up there was almost like taking pictures in the dark. More than half of the Missus' photos were no good because it was too dark and plus, she had to put the digital camera on "panorama" to keep the camera from focusing too much on the foreground. This gave too many of the pics, the blurry effect.
If you are going to take pictures up there, do it with a digital camera that reacts well to low light or go there closer to mid-afternoon. There's a dam not that far below from where we parked and it plummets to over a hundred foot down, providing quite a view. We did not however, see Tommy Lee Jones chase Harrison Ford over the edge.
So we went a different route than the one from where we came and it was on to Strawberry Village, a shopping center that is just smaller than a mall and is located just north of Mill Valley. I was surprised that I could remember my way through Fairfax, especially because I don't know San Anselmo from Ross but I knew the general direction to the freeway.
What was our destination? Emil Villa's Hickory Pit...or not. Strawberry Village was always Yup-scale but the Hickory Pit was a nice oasis to all of that. A nice 50's suburban-type of restaurant that serves suburban-style BBQ which I'm not exactly crazy about, but Procrastinator Jr. loves. Not my main reason to go there was, as Agent Dale Cooper said, "damn good pie."
We get there and Strawberry Village is more like "Modern Spanish Villa Pretentious Village." Gone are the rustic red tiled roofs and ivy covered facades and gone is the Hickory Pit. What the?... There's a Pasta Pomodoro in the spot where Emil Villa's was and of course I'm in denial like movie star that believes his own hype.
So I had to drive around because obviously they just moved to another part of the shopping center. We only got as far as the back before I decided to ask somebody to keep the blood pressure low and sure enough, another childhood memory gone. Worse yet, another tradition that I cannot pass on to Procrastinator Jr.
I always have a backup plan or least I pretend to. As I drove over the Golden Gate, I remembered http://www.cafemaritimesf.com/ because I never did get that lobster roll and I phoned for a reservation. The restaurant's decor is a mixture of Mediterranean, early 60's lounge and modern. Or least that's my impression.
Blue mosiac tile over the bar, white Med-er walls with a nice mural of the shore. Good jazz through the speakers, a little Sinatra when he could still sing, a little Tony Bennet, and a whole lot of classic jazz.
The Missus and Procrastinator Jr. had the beer-battered fish and chips. I split my crab cake with everyone and had a lobster roll, finally. Cue Fred Astaire's "Cheek to Cheek" when he croons "heaven, I'm in heaven."
It wasn't a whole lobster tail in a bun like I saw in "Sandwiches That You Will Like," http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=1403005 though I'm not complaining, it was mighty fine eating, claw meat and all. The best part of Cafe Maritime is their Kennebec fries, lighter than air and not oily. You'd swear they weren't fried at all.
I'll be back for another lobster roll next month.
So this time out, I will omit the shameless MasterCard ad rip-off this time because everyone will think my life is far more extravagant or decadent than it really is. I'm not livin' "large" or "phat," more like medium or p-h-l-a-t.
Mira, la vida loca? No. Yo vivo la vida aburrido (boring). Budget-wise, I allow the family two big outings and unfortunately, I used one of them up on myself last weekend.
Nevertheless, lunch at Johnny's Hamburgers with the family? Fun and priceless. Not only that, I tried something I've never had before...a pastrami cheeseburger.
Dig it. If you read Robert Crais or Michael Connelly, their protagonists eat or meet characters that consume, pastrami burritos. Their novels plant the craving for the gastronomically different. Now I don't think the pastrami would work with beans and rice, but I can tell you that it works just fine with a cheeseburger and it's almost as good as bacon cheeseburger, just slightly different.
So after a nice lunch, I drove the Missus and Procrastinator Jr. over the Golden Gate Bridge and over Mount Tamalpais to look for waterfalls. http://www.marintrails.com/falls.html
Specifically, Cataract Falls. http://www.bahiker.com/northbayhikes/cataractfalls.html
I had Nikka Costa playing and the sunroof open because I was tired of winter and sixty degrees was just close enough to spring if you compensated by having the heater on. The directions in the two links above were decent, but the signage in the park leaves something to be desired. There are a lot of baby waterfalls and run-offs that can literally throw you off the trail. The main waterfall is something to behold, the jpegs on the two links above do it little justice and the falls literally roar in some spots.
The foliage was dense, it really added to the atmosphere but unfortunately, taking pictures up there was almost like taking pictures in the dark. More than half of the Missus' photos were no good because it was too dark and plus, she had to put the digital camera on "panorama" to keep the camera from focusing too much on the foreground. This gave too many of the pics, the blurry effect.
If you are going to take pictures up there, do it with a digital camera that reacts well to low light or go there closer to mid-afternoon. There's a dam not that far below from where we parked and it plummets to over a hundred foot down, providing quite a view. We did not however, see Tommy Lee Jones chase Harrison Ford over the edge.
So we went a different route than the one from where we came and it was on to Strawberry Village, a shopping center that is just smaller than a mall and is located just north of Mill Valley. I was surprised that I could remember my way through Fairfax, especially because I don't know San Anselmo from Ross but I knew the general direction to the freeway.
What was our destination? Emil Villa's Hickory Pit...or not. Strawberry Village was always Yup-scale but the Hickory Pit was a nice oasis to all of that. A nice 50's suburban-type of restaurant that serves suburban-style BBQ which I'm not exactly crazy about, but Procrastinator Jr. loves. Not my main reason to go there was, as Agent Dale Cooper said, "damn good pie."
We get there and Strawberry Village is more like "Modern Spanish Villa Pretentious Village." Gone are the rustic red tiled roofs and ivy covered facades and gone is the Hickory Pit. What the?... There's a Pasta Pomodoro in the spot where Emil Villa's was and of course I'm in denial like movie star that believes his own hype.
So I had to drive around because obviously they just moved to another part of the shopping center. We only got as far as the back before I decided to ask somebody to keep the blood pressure low and sure enough, another childhood memory gone. Worse yet, another tradition that I cannot pass on to Procrastinator Jr.
I always have a backup plan or least I pretend to. As I drove over the Golden Gate, I remembered http://www.cafemaritimesf.com/ because I never did get that lobster roll and I phoned for a reservation. The restaurant's decor is a mixture of Mediterranean, early 60's lounge and modern. Or least that's my impression.
Blue mosiac tile over the bar, white Med-er walls with a nice mural of the shore. Good jazz through the speakers, a little Sinatra when he could still sing, a little Tony Bennet, and a whole lot of classic jazz.
The Missus and Procrastinator Jr. had the beer-battered fish and chips. I split my crab cake with everyone and had a lobster roll, finally. Cue Fred Astaire's "Cheek to Cheek" when he croons "heaven, I'm in heaven."
It wasn't a whole lobster tail in a bun like I saw in "Sandwiches That You Will Like," http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=1403005 though I'm not complaining, it was mighty fine eating, claw meat and all. The best part of Cafe Maritime is their Kennebec fries, lighter than air and not oily. You'd swear they weren't fried at all.
I'll be back for another lobster roll next month.
posted by Writeprocrastinator at 2:26 AM
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