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wwcitizenLast night friends of ours, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mindplay and trckfckr took us to the Than Long restaurant in the Avenues. Without a car, it's a pain in the ass to get to, but it is accessible with the N MUNI line (which you can pick up from Market St. in the Castro).
The restaurant is very busy for being so off the beaten track, but mostly the patrons are locals. For apps we had calamaris, fried spring roll with peanut sauce, and softshell crab. Matt absolutely loves softshell crab, and I'm learning to like it; for years, I've hated it, but it might be that I'd never had good ones until I met Matt. He is, after all, a Cancer, and would know crabs!!
Than Long has fresh dungeonous crab, and the best dungeonous crab I have ever eaten. They make the crab in a few different ways. Three of us got the regular roasted crab, and I got the drunken crab, which is made with sake and bourbon; my sauce was not as buttery as everyone else's. For a side dish, we ordered the garlic noodles. We didn't care how badly our breath and burps would smell later - those garlic noodles were succulent.
The other fun thing last night was tasting an Anchor Steam Beer. Wherever I travel, I try to taste the local beers - I especially love local microbreweries, which are sadly becoming rarer. Microbreweries were trendy in the late 80s and 90s. The Anchor Steam was very tasty, though a little heavy for accompanying the very tasty. I actually ended up not drinking the greater portion of my beer till after I had cleaned out the crab shell completely. Although we had one crab apiece, Matt and I totally could have split another one, but I'm glad we didn't.
The restaurant has a secret kitchen, which contains and protects an old An family recipe that many people have tried to steal without success. There is a red door that's for "Employees Only" in front of what looks like the kitchen where everything else is prepared; the crabs and noodles are prepared in the sealed, secret kitchen. When the main chefs (who are the only people allowed in the secret kitchen behind the closed door) prepare the crabs, they push them through a little closed sliding window to the other cooks who then finish the plating and serve the food. Then the chefs close the little window again - so no one sees into the secret kitchen.
We left there quite happy. The Than Long crab restaurant is at the top of my list for anyone visiting San Francisco and we'll definitely go there again when we come back (if we get a hankering, we might go there a second time this week).
We found out about other crab restaurants and saw a bunch of crabs at the Fisherman's Wharf late yesterday afternoon. That area tends to be very touristy, but one restaurant we heard about called Scoma's is off the beaten track and hidden from tourists in that same area. Apparently, Scoma isn't visited by that many tourists, but has been open since the late 50s/early 60s. So, we're heading there for lunch and then taking a bus tour of the Golden Gate bridge. After that, we plan to go to Lombard St. and knock around Nob Hill and maybe Chinatown. Looking forward to another day of good food and sight-seeing!
mindplay and trckfckr took us to the Than Long restaurant in the Avenues. Without a car, it's a pain in the ass to get to, but it is accessible with the N MUNI line (which you can pick up from Market St. in the Castro). The restaurant is very busy for being so off the beaten track, but mostly the patrons are locals. For apps we had calamaris, fried spring roll with peanut sauce, and softshell crab. Matt absolutely loves softshell crab, and I'm learning to like it; for years, I've hated it, but it might be that I'd never had good ones until I met Matt. He is, after all, a Cancer, and would know crabs!!
Than Long has fresh dungeonous crab, and the best dungeonous crab I have ever eaten. They make the crab in a few different ways. Three of us got the regular roasted crab, and I got the drunken crab, which is made with sake and bourbon; my sauce was not as buttery as everyone else's. For a side dish, we ordered the garlic noodles. We didn't care how badly our breath and burps would smell later - those garlic noodles were succulent.
The other fun thing last night was tasting an Anchor Steam Beer. Wherever I travel, I try to taste the local beers - I especially love local microbreweries, which are sadly becoming rarer. Microbreweries were trendy in the late 80s and 90s. The Anchor Steam was very tasty, though a little heavy for accompanying the very tasty. I actually ended up not drinking the greater portion of my beer till after I had cleaned out the crab shell completely. Although we had one crab apiece, Matt and I totally could have split another one, but I'm glad we didn't.
The restaurant has a secret kitchen, which contains and protects an old An family recipe that many people have tried to steal without success. There is a red door that's for "Employees Only" in front of what looks like the kitchen where everything else is prepared; the crabs and noodles are prepared in the sealed, secret kitchen. When the main chefs (who are the only people allowed in the secret kitchen behind the closed door) prepare the crabs, they push them through a little closed sliding window to the other cooks who then finish the plating and serve the food. Then the chefs close the little window again - so no one sees into the secret kitchen.
We left there quite happy. The Than Long crab restaurant is at the top of my list for anyone visiting San Francisco and we'll definitely go there again when we come back (if we get a hankering, we might go there a second time this week).
We found out about other crab restaurants and saw a bunch of crabs at the Fisherman's Wharf late yesterday afternoon. That area tends to be very touristy, but one restaurant we heard about called Scoma's is off the beaten track and hidden from tourists in that same area. Apparently, Scoma isn't visited by that many tourists, but has been open since the late 50s/early 60s. So, we're heading there for lunch and then taking a bus tour of the Golden Gate bridge. After that, we plan to go to Lombard St. and knock around Nob Hill and maybe Chinatown. Looking forward to another day of good food and sight-seeing!
