Pizzeria Delfina
The temper tantrums and crying fits kids have when they are two or three are categorically different than when they are older. At five they actually have something to cry about. Vida has been plagued lately by a dream in which a mummy comes and eats your heart while you’re sleeping. I think it started with an older kid at school talking about it. For quite a few nights she has been brought to tears with the thought of it but more interestingly she gets upset because she can’t stop her mind from thinking about it. Just telling her there is no such thing as a mummy doesn’t work. Plagued with obsessive thoughts in my own childhood I’ve tried to give her strategies to fight off the mummy such as telling her that one of the Power Puff girls, namely Blossom, could easily blast the mummy into outer space. That worked for one night but we’re still working it out.
When Vida gets upset it quickly escalates into a level of frustration that I have never seen in her before—way worse than anything when she was smaller. I think it’s the pressure of the long school day—when she gets home she just can’t keep it together anymore. Small things such as not being able to do a game on the computer, losing a game or not getting her snack fast enough turn her into a five year old demon. I spent one entire weekend last week in complete frustration at not being able to anticipate what she needed in order to not crumble—not to mention the risk of me crumbling in the process.
After a week of this I was a bit terrified to bring her out to eat with A and her friends. A, as she would readily admit, has limited patience with children. Small outbursts of misbehavior light up the portion of her brain shaped during the more tormenting moments of her own childhood. We had a plan to go to Pizzeria Delfina and I was tempted to find someone to watch Vida rather than risk outrageous behavior in public. But, I miss her after not seeing her all day and I didn’t feel like farming her out.
It was a beautiful November night and we decided to sit outside. There were heat lamps but we didn’t even need them let alone our coats—this is when global warming comes in handy. We sat Vida down with a menu and a pen and she solicited our attention with one of her favorite games. She has a word in mind, usually “Vida” or “Sara,” and we have to guess the letters. This kept her going until some salads arrived. We had a warm calamari and garbanzo bean salad that was delicious and we scammed a few bites of warm olives with lemon and A’s tri colore salad. Our first pizza came and I grabbed as many Margherita (plain cheese) pizza slices for Vida as I could before unwitting adults ate the only thing that would appeal to her. We also got a pizza with Broccoli rabe that was fantastic but I can’t remember what else was on it or the other meat pizza we ordered. I guess the beer went to my head.
There were tons of kids inside of the restaurant not to mention the parade of mothers and children shopping Bi-Rite and Tartine. There were mothers begging, cajoling and threatening children into, out of and away from cars up and down the street. Witnessing a whole street of people negotiating with their children made me feel better about the recent travails with Vida. It’s sometimes hard to figure out what normal behavior for children is, until you see lots of people with the same issues. Vida was being an angel as far as I was concerned—A had a minor complaint in that she was spitting her root beer back into the glass with the straw.
Restaurant Total: 189
Crazy Sushi Manivanh Little Star Pizza Osakaya
An old friend of mine is notoriously cheap and always looking for ways to save money. Cheapness and hip-ness are intertwined in all his restaurant recommendations. According to his ethic it’s bourgeois to spend any more money than necessary on going out to eat unless it’s somebody else’s money. When he told me about Pakwan on 16th Street a few years ago he said it was unbelievably inexpensive. But since his recommendations are linked to the ephemera of trend they can take on aura of urban myth. As soon as I walk in the door it’s always too late—the restaurant has already become too successful and raised its prices accordingly. I decided that I should start my own trends and try more restaurants as soon as they open.
I was saddened to see that the Vietnamese restaurant Elephant Bleu had gone out of business. The people who owned it seemed like they tried hard and I had eaten there quite a few times—my only complaint being the tiny portions and some questionable hygiene. I once went there with Vida and there was a piece of meat crawling with ants on the ground beneath our table. It was hard to eat under those conditions and I never went back.
I hesitate to try restaurants with “Grand Opening” signs. Those signs usually stay up for years—typically until they go out of business. Occupying the former Elephant Bleu space, Crazy Sushi seemed too good to be true offering “happy hour” sushi prices. We arrived one evening a few minutes before six and the happy hour menu was nowhere to be seen. I asked the waitress about it and she looked at her watch and got us the happy hour menu.
We were started out with a small bowl of salad—I always start a meal happily when something free arrives. When our sushi arrived I was very pleasantly surprised—Vida gobbled her avocado rolls while I dug into a fantastic vegetable tempura roll. All and all the Happy Hour sushi was a hit.
That weekend we also went to Japantown to see Howl’s Moving Castle with Ra Ra and S. Vida had a hard time not talking during the entire movie but enjoyed it thoroughly. Afterwards we headed to Kinokunia Center for dinner at Osakaya. It was a fairly typical but pleasant Japanese restaurant. Vida loved her teriyaki salmon and I ate light with tempura.
The following week we went to a restaurant voted “Best of San Francisco” by the SF Weekly, Manivanh on 24th Street. It was supposedly one of the most underrated restaurants in San Francisco. I think there are good reasons why its not better known. The food wasn’t bad and the atmosphere somewhat interesting, but the service was perfunctory if not surly. We had an interesting shrimp spring roll that was in the shape of the shrimp but when we asked for fried rice with chicken instead of prawns we were given a lot of attitude—and the rice had chicken but also the prawns I said that I didn’t want. When I tasted the prawns they had that muddy taste that bad prawns can have.
We also went to Little Star Pizza with Anne for Ra Ra’s birthday. It was also highly rated and raved about by a co-worker of mine. But once again the service wasn’t pleasant. They refused to let us sit before Ra Ra had arrived even though it was clear that Vida was uncomfortable standing. We assured them that we would all order at the same time—that seemed to be the issue. The salad was huge and fantastic but I felt bad because I had forgotten that salad was off of Ra Ra’s menu when I ordered it thinking we could share. A few months ago I made Ra Ra a salad with greens from the garden and blue cheese. Something she ate made her have an allergic reaction in her throat and she was so uncomfortable and frightened she had to leave. We don’t know what caused it—both Vida and I ate the salad without any problems—but it put her off salad indefinitely. We ordered the deep-dish pizza that Little Star is famous for as well as a plain cheese thin crust pizza for Vida. Both were delicious.
Addendum: Dinner with Vida has obviously taken a back seat to the rest of our lives. It has taken months to actually write about these restaurants. The chronology is correct but the passion attenuated. The details just don’t come to mind easily since it’s been so long. But not writing about these restaurants has stalled the project. I need to move on even if I write a few perfunctory stories.
Restaurant Total: 187
