I had a few extra hours to kill before a critique group meeting in San Rafael, so I thought why not spend it hiking? Turns out, there’s a really cool state park I’d never heard of on San Pablo Bay. Just take San Pedro Road from San Rafael, and you’ll get there—the road is a
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The world of wine is huge. Finding a wine you enjoy often feels like searching for that proverbial needle in the haystack. If there’s one thing my recent Finger Lakes wine bloggers trip taught me, it’s that there are whole regions of wineries that wine writers like myself have barely heard of, much less sampled
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  Recently, I was invited by Justin of the Grapevine Consulting to come and check out Coastal Spirits distillery and their new Gin Farallon.  Pretty much everything about Coastal Spirits is new; Brad Plummer launched his first spirit, Vodka Farallon, last September. It’s already picked up a medal from the American Distilling Institute and is
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About two weeks ago, my first guest blog for Localwise went up! Localwise, you say? What’s that? Well, my friends, it’s a Berkeley-based start-up that’s essentially a classifieds board for local jobs. They began with listings in Berkeley and Oakland only, but after six months of operation, they’ve expanded to Alameda, Emeryville, and San Francisco
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La Bedaine is a tiny French bakery on the outside, but on the inside, it specializes in French cuisine that you can take home to cut a few steps out of dinner. That means vacuum-packed meals such as duck confit and coq au vin. For simple meanderers, such as myself, La Bedaine’s cheery yellow display
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At Bisou Bistronomy in the Castro, an impressive handful of Bay Area winos—oops, I mean wine bloggers—gathered to explore the wares of one of the newer importers on the block: Bliss Wine Imports. And we didn’t even run the other customers out of the restaurant until an hour into the tasting! Alleah Friedrichs and Erin
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It’s been a year since I undertook my quest to try all the mac & cheeses on 7×7’s list of the best in the Bay Area. I haven’t regretted a moment of this carb-slurping, dish-sharing, cheese-inhaling adventure. My friends, and long-suffering husband, who’ve joined me for most of these nights out, may hold different opinions… …Naw. Who
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For my sixth Mac and Cheese Night, the husband and I went a little upscale, heading to Paragon right outside AT&T Park. That picture reminds me that I wish we’d sat outside, but I had suspected it would get chilly so outside seemed the less desirable option. But it never did get chilly, and inside,
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When four, count ’em four, friends contacted me this week to make sure I was aware of this event, I realized I’d made a bit of a mac-and-cheese-tasting reputation for myself. This throwdown comes your way through the combined efforts of the SoMa StrEat Food Park and FunCheapSF, both great organizations with a goal of
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Fifth macaroni and cheese night already? And I’m not even sick of the stuff yet. I must say, though, that all this mac and cheese analysis has affected my standards. Let’s just say that a recent order from a fast food chain was NOT up to snuff. Bright orange sauce lacking flavor and overcooked noodles
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