Our North Beach food tour started at Caffe Roma. And according to our tour guide, San Francisco is the capitol of coffee...although I'm pretty sure that there are a number of other places that would disagree with that statement, particularly places like Ethiopia (where coffee was born).
Anyway, we got the opportunity to get up close and personal with Caffe Roma's coffee roaster, while our guide talked about the roasting process and his uppity (I can point that out, because I have them too) views of coffee and how long beans are good for, etc. It was an interesting experience as the whole time I was thinking about a documentary I recently re-watched called Black Gold (which I would highly recommend by the way). The documentary explains the coffee trade and the ways in which commodity prices, international trade agreements, and the mega large coffee buyers in essence make sure coffee farmers never receive a fair, living wage in exchange for their product. Its basic premise supports the consumption of fair trade products. Which is a great place to start thinking about change, but in my opinion not a place to stop (not that you really asked for my opinion).
Moving along....
Next we strolled through Washington Square, past St. Peter and Paul Cathedral, over to Liguria Bakery; they've been around since 1911. They had already sold out and closed up for the day. Supposedly they sell out every day around 10:30am! But, luckily, our tour guide has the hook up and had some secret key to allow us to get to taste the wonderful goodness that is their foccaccia bread.
SO GOOD! We had the mushroom and pizza kinds, and both were phenomenal!
Next up on our culinary tour, was another bakery. We got to go behind the scenes and get up close and personal with one of the largest ovens I've ever seen. I'm sure it was some kind of health/sanitary hazard to have us back there, but it was interesting none the less. That is until the oven got turned on and in a matter of minutes became about 150 degrees back there.
After inhaling too many carbs to count, we made our way over to Z. Cioccolato. We got to see them made some fudge and they gave us some samples too. Unfortunately, I've never been a fan of fudge. In fact, I think it's disgrace to the candy/sweets realm. The consistency is just disgusting and the taste is downright overwhelming. So instead I took a picture of all the taffy they had, wish we had gotten samples of this instead!
The only natural thing to do when you've had nothing of real substance is to get a fish taco, which is exactly what we did. The guide took us to Nico's Tacos. It was a nice to have a bit of protein. And, I do mean a bit. I could have easily eaten about 5 of these.
The show stopper of the day though was by far the cannolis. Umm, hello, I have been missing out on this for years! The place is Victoria Pastry Co. and they literally make the cannoli when you order it. It is fresh my friends. Crispy shell with sweat pastry cream and chocolate chips and dusted with powdered sugar. Unbelievable! This culinary indulgence was worth
And once you've eaten four pieces of foccaccia bread, one piece of sourdough, one biscotti, one fish taco, one blessed cannoli, and 3 mini slices of bread dipped in local olive oils, there will still be room for pizza.
There will always be room for pizza.
Especially, pizza that has sauce that is as good as the one pictured above from Cinecitta.
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