John Wise

After a rather short four-hour drive from our motel this morning, we’ve arrived here at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market at the Embarcadaro here in San Francisco. We need some gourmet supplies for our Thanksgiving dinner in a yurt up in Oregon.

First up was Far West Fungi. This brilliant little shop offers the greatest selection of mushrooms anyone is likely to ever find in the United States. We chose three varieties after being advised they would cook well on the grill; our choices were porcini, lobster, and trumpet. Next door, we picked up rosemary salt, and a few shops down, we nabbed a small package of garlic butter; these were to be used in cooking up the mushrooms.

Other mushrooms on sale were a hedgehog, black trumpet, cauliflower, yellow oyster, pink oyster, matsutake, blue foot, bear’s tooth, shimeji, lion’s mane, portobello, white, brown, enoki, and yellow foot. From the world of truffles, Far West carries Himalayan Truffles for $25 an ounce, Oregon White Truffles for only $12.50 an ounce, while the Winter Black Truffles go for $112.50 an ounce, and the White Alba Truffles were about $156 an ounce. The last thing we bought was a 3.5-ounce small jar of Truffle & Salt made of sea salt and Black Summer Truffle – a bit pricy at $24. If you too are a fungiphile, Far West will soon be offering mail order, and if you are in the area during an upcoming December, the Oakland Museum of California and the Mycological Society of San Francisco hold an annual Wild Mushrooms Fungus Fair, this year marks the 37th annual fair.

Another important stop here is at the Cowgirl Creamery. One word describes this place – Cheesy. Ok, one more word is required – YUMMY. We tried and bought the first four kinds of cheese, which were excellent. First off was Cowgirl Creamery’s own Pierce PT; I had wanted the Saint Pat, which is a whole milk organic cheese wrapped in stinging nettle leaves; sadly, this cheese is only available in the springtime. To compensate for the disappointment, our salesgirl offered the Pierce PT – lucky us as this was a 1st Place award winner at the 2006 American Cheese Society Conference. Pierce PT is washed in a Muscato wine and rolled in dried herbs. The next cheese was a goat cheese called Bucheret from Redwood Hill Farm made by Jennifer Bice, mmmm, buttery goat. The third was Lincolnshire Poacher from Neal’s Yard Dairy in Ulceby, Lincolnshire in England. This aged cheddar-like cheese is awesome. Lastly, we bought the Pepato from Bellwether Farm in Sonoma County, California. Pepato is a semi-soft cheese made from Sheep milk made with peppercorns.

At Acme Bread, we picked up a loaf of sourdough dark rye bread and were ready to venture into the city by the bay.

Chinatown in San Francisco is a world unto itself. Dozens of grocery stores intrude onto sidewalks, pushing lotus roots, dried mushrooms, ginger, Pak Choy, bok choy, and assorted unidentifiable fruits and veggies – even live chicken. Cheap shoes, trinkets, jewelry, fresh bread, and scores of regional Chinese restaurants line the streets. A cultural sampling of the world’s inhabitants stroll the streets; some visitors might be tourists, but the majority sniff, poke, browse, and shop with a familiarity suggesting they are local residents and for them these exotic sights and sounds are commonplace.

The architecture in Chinatown is distinctly Chinese; there is no mistaking that. Most signage is in Chinese characters. The best we Westerners can do is figure out the business from the service being offered beyond the shop’s door. This old man – a Chinese busker or street musician – squeaks out a tune on his erhu, trying to earn a few extra dollars. America needs more busking.

I thought this was the intersection, but I was wrong. Back in 1991, on Caroline’s first trip to the United States, I took a picture of her here in Chinatown; I thought it was under this sign. The photo I was thinking of was taken about 400 feet from here under the Stockton Street sign. Click here to see that image.

Another stop from that trip in 1991 was our first visit to City Lights Bookstore because, as literary nerds, pilgrimages to such places are mandatory. And should you wonder if we’ve visited Powell’s in Portland, of course, we have.

We’ve never parked in a fortune cookie parking spot until now; I’d wager this might end up being the one and only time.

There was no way we were going to leave San Francisco without a quick stop at the Ghirardelli Chocolate shop so we could split a hot fudge sundae; now, we are finally ready to get on the road. Our destination for the night is up at a Super 8 Motel in Willits, California, for the exorbitant price of $63 plus tax, but if I look at it as just 4 or 5 of these sundaes, I guess it’s not so bad.