(mid-Richmond) Pastries lost and found, a neighborhood tour

It’s come to my attention that I need to post a more upbeat entry. The good news is that I can do that.

A few weeks ago there was a bridal celebration dinner for Ria in the mid-Richmond district of San Francisco. I was a few minutes early. So, I wandered around the looked at the shops. One shop had a sign reading “sausagerie” or whatever the word is in English – they make sausages. I love sausages; so, I went inside.

It was a little deli, and 2 old men hunched in front of a TV that was about 2 inches by 3 inches and was spewing a language I didn’t recognize. There was sausage behind the glass. I wasn’t really going to get any sausage, or maybe I was, but I didn’t want to interrupt their viewing. So, I left for the bridal dinner, which was at this Thai place with amazing decor.

Yesterday, I met Julie and Sultan at the Ferry Building. The plan had been to take a ferry to Marin and hike. But Julie was a little sick and worried about the commitment and all the cold air. I checked with Cowgirl Creamery for my friend Emily’s Twig Farm Cheese, but they were out. Alas! Julie mentioned dim sum, and for some reason I told them the story above. We headed for the mid-Richmond for a self-guided neighborhood tour.

It was time for my feeding, but Julie would not let me get a donut. Soon after, we found the Russian Bakery and bought way too many baked goods. (How I feel about baked goods is no secret.) But they wouldn’t let me eat them until after lunch – dim sum. I admired the dish on another table, but it turned out to be chicken feet, and that was a bit too much for us. I don’t think there was a white person in there, besides us, and we had to wait for a table. But the food was delicious (even without ordering the chicken feet). The lunch was also unbelievably affordable; Sultan said “we’re stealing our lunch!”

Sultan wanted to dig into the pastries right away, but we told him he had to wait until we got a coffee in GG Park. Along the way, there was an open house that, of course, we had to take a look at. I love to poke around in people’s lives, and see what it looks like from the inside. Around 20th Ave, we had trouble finding an entry into the park and ended up “hiking” along the side of a freeway eventually entering at the Rose Garden.

The last and only other time I’ve been to the de Young Museum since its reconstruction was at night, when it first opened and people could visit any time, and for free. That time, we went about 10 PM, and the line to get in was even longer when we left at 1 AM. But I never saw the gardens during the day, and with my limited rub-off knowledge of landscape architecture, I thought it was super cool. They had rows of pitasperum tenuafolium (sp?) just like Grayson and I had planted at the house on Benvenue. The magnolia trees had only purple flowers and no leaves. Everything was in rows and forming patterns and textures at a human scale but with variation brought about by good design as much as nature.

We got beverages at the café and enjoyed our Russian pastries there. If we were anywhere near that bakery again, I would have gone back for 6 more. The light poured thru the café windows nearly crossways and the colored light fixtures did their best to compete. Is that a perfect enough happy ending? We, and especially Sultan, were united with pastries…. I think so!