Foodie A to Z and the Elusive U

Well, it's July first and we're officially halfway thru the year which means I've had six months to work on my Foodie A to Z “challenge” which was pretty much the impetus for this blog to begin with. If you've been tracking it on the sidebar this year you'd know that, by nearly anybody's standards, The Foodie has had a pretty spectacular half-year. All total, I've eaten at 23 Michelin Stars worth of restaurants with an average ZAGAT rating of 24.7 (and, yes, I did the math, time consuming as it was). And that's even with places like In-n-Out (21), Hofbrauhaus (20), XYZ (20) and, inexplicably, One Market (21) dragging down the average. Also, I went to a handful of brand spanking new places (The Bazaar, Luce, Gordon Ramsay, Palette Food + Wine, etc.) that don't even have ZAGAT ratings yet and would have likely moved the number higher.

Even more impressive to me, is how much of the alphabet I've destroyed! 18 of 26 letters down in six months, including some really difficult letters like E, G, J, X and Z. Sadly, even though I've run through 70% of the alphabet in 50% of the time allotted, I definitely have my work cut out for me. Most of the letters left are belong to places I never go to or are simply weird/rare letters, so they will be extra, EXTRA out of the way for me (which, of course, was the whole point of this exercise). So what's a Foodie to do?

Well, there's a decent chance we'll be going to Vegas later this month and, even if we don't, Labor Day and X-Mas are other “traditional” times for us to go to Sin City. Vegas tend to be less crowded with more bargains to be found in the off-season although, apparently, I now rate at the Hard Rock and get comped rooms even when they're at their busiest. Either way, that should leave more than enough time to hit up, at the very least, (N)obu , (R)estaurant Charlie or (W)ing Lei from the Michelin Starred set. Other potential Michelin non-starred targets include: (K)oi, (N)ob Hill (but only if r-e-a-l-l-y desperate. Seriously, going to a Michael Mina S.F. “themed” restaurant in Vegas when I'm practically a regular at his two-star namsake?!?), (V)alentino (although, if I really wanted to go there, I would have hit the o/g on my L.A. Road Trip) and (Y)ellowtail. This is where the letter limitation really starts to be a pain – The Vegas Michelin guide doesn't have a SINGLE entry for Q or U o_O. Frankly, I'm lucky that XYZ and Quince are in The City or I'd really be hosed.

Locally I've got more options – we simply have more places to eat in the Bay Area and, obviously, I spend a lot more time here (duh!), so I don't have to try and squeeze 6 restaurants into 2-night, 3 day weekenders. Sadly, the alphabet pwns me on the Michelin Star front even on the domestic front. There are no starred K, N, Q, U, W or Y's. Of the letters I need, only (R)edd and The (V)illage Pub rate stars. Redd's a no-brainer and, honestly, I had to go back and look at my OpenTable history because I couldn't believe I HADN'T gone there yet this year (for the record, we went there 12.28.08...so really late last year). But despite the lack of bonafide starred places, there are still plenty of good places to be had. (Q)uince is a no-brainer -it's just a little more out-of-the-way than I like to go- and the same can be said of (Y)oshi's in San Francisco which I find amusing that it rates MUCH higher than their original location at Jack London. The same is true the aforementioned (N)obu – the Vegas outpost has a star while the o/g has none. That's just plain weird, but I digress. A more likely candidate is (Y)ank Sing (the biggest, baddest dim sum place in a city FULL of great, authentic Chinese food) which I've really wanted to go to for a long time and this would be the perfect excuse.

The single ickiest, annoying letter has turned out to be one with a Scrabble value of...1??? Yes, the dreaded U >_< While it might be used (it that a pun? U-sed /shrug) IN a lot of words, it rarely seems to START them...at least for the names of restaurants anyways. The only starred restaurant in the entire U.S. with a U is (U)rasawa in BevHills and I already wrote that off. Waaaaaay too hard to get in even if you dismiss the uber-uber-price tag. Some day, yes - I'll want it for my culinary Bingo Card. This year, not gonna happen. Heck, I was lucky to get reservations at the bar at Sushi-Zo on a SAT night. So, if it's not a starred place, what else is out there? Honestly, there are only a handful of U's that would even qualify for consideration, so the choices are carpaccio thin, but (U)nbuntu seems like the likely candidate. Granted, I couldn't tell you the last time I went to a vegetarian place (i.e. never) and it'd take a t-r-e-m-e-n-d-o-u-s amount of will on my part to drive up to Napa and NOT go to one of the places on Washington Street or thereabouts, but it does make the michael.bauer Top 100 list and is the highest rated ZAGAT 'U' with a 24. My guess is I'll kill two birds with one stone and have SUN brunch @ Redd (which is beyond awesome, btw. Get the breakfast pizza and made-to-order "donuts" and you'll be happy the rest of the day), hit some wineries on the Napa side and then head to Unbuntu for a late lunch/early dinner. Yeah, I guess that's a sacrifice I'll have to make!

NOTE: The Foodie would like to deny the rumors that Michelin and ZAGAT Guides were harmed in the writing of this blog entry. There was no furious page turning, spine bending or a haphazard pile of dark red guides plopped two feet from my chair. And not once did I b|tch about Michelin's idiotic way of breaking S.F. Into forty-six different areas that are THEN broken down in alpha order which makes it oh-so-easy to find restaurant listings. None of this occurred. Screencap or it didn't happen!