San Francisco Blog

If you want to squeeze in a quick meal on your way to SFO, or need a decent place near the airport for a lunch or dinner meeting, a good choice is Hung To Seafood (221 South Spruce Ave., South San Francisco). The food's good, prices are reasonable (see the online menus for details), there's ample free parking, the detour adds only a couple of miles to the trip from SF to SFO, and it's only four miles to airport.

Dim sum is served from rolling carts from 11:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. weekdays, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The taro dumplings are as standout, as good as I've had anywhere, including Yank Sing. Dinner is served daily from 5:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. (10:00 p.m. Friday and Saturday), and the menu focuses on Hong Kong seafood. (Thanks to Chowhound user scarmoza for the tip.)

As I noted a couple of weeks ago in my post about Beltramo's in Menlo Park, most Bay Area retailers specializing in hard-to-find wines and liquors are located in SF. There's one other wine shop / liquor store on the Peninsula worth a detour: Weimax (1718 Broadway, Burlingame). If anything takes you down to SFO, you're almost there. It's just a five-minute drive from the terminal, a couple of exits down 101.

Like Beltramo's, Weimax has a lot of hard liquor you won't see elsewhere. I first visited the place after a trip to Southwest France, when I was looking for a local source for La Vielle Prune, a delicious oak-aged plum brandy ubiquitous in the Dordogne region, and they were the only store I called that had it.

For years, local French expatriates and lovers of French food have descended on the occasional open-warehouse sales held in Brisbane by importer Made in France, aka Village Imports, aka LeVillage.com. That company's founders sold it last year, and have opened a retail store, The Gourmet Corner (873 N San Mateo Dr, San Mateo).

If you're a Francophile foodie, this new shop is worth the schlep from SF. It offers the best selection in the area of hard-to-find preserved truffles and foie gras products, as well as a wide variety of less luxurious French essentials such as dried mushrooms, vinegars, and sausages.

San Francisco is blessed with the lion's share of Bay Area retailers specializing in hard-to-find wines and liquors. For example, Arlequin Wine Merchant, Dee Vine Wines, D&M, Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant, John Walker, The Jug Shop, K&L, SF Wine Trading Co., and the Wine Club are all within the city limits.

Nevertheless, if you're in the Stanford / Palo Alto area, Beltramo's (1540 El Camino Real, Menlo Park) is worth a visit. The store has an exceptional array of hard liquor--six kinds of cachaca, four brands of Pisco, 20 grappas, 40 bourbons--and around 200 liqueurs, one of the broadest selections anywhere. There's also a big wine department with knowledgeable, friendly staff that can offer educated suggestions. The store's inventory is searchable on beltramos.com, so you can see if they've got what you're looking for before making a special trip. (Click the images for larger versions.)

The good news: Penzeys, the Wiconsin-based mail-order supplier of some of the highest-quality spices in the country, has opened a retail shop in the Bay Area. The bad news: it's in Menlo Park, so quite a schlep for most SF residents. The store's at 771 Santa Cruz (the main drag), about 10 minutes from 101 and just a few blocks from the Caltrain station.

I buy most of my spices locally, but a few of Penzeys' are so superior that I find them worth the trouble. On my visit to the new shop, I purchased a half-ounce bag of Turkish bay leaves and four-ounce bags of Tellicherry peppercorns, ground Vietnamese cassia, and powdered ginger. The total bill came to $17.94, the same as it would on the Web site, but I saved the $5.95 shipping. I'd also have bought a bag of whole cumin, but they were out, so that's a minus for the bricks-and-mortar approach.