Hello everybody!

A while back I tweeted that my blog should be renamed “Watch Me WatchTooMuchRealityTV/DrinkTooMuchCoffee/Shop.” Not too much has changed. Despite my constantly running off to new adventures, from a thematic perspective, I’m a creature of habit. Ironic? Perhaps a little.

Which is why when my father’s most recent birthday rolled around, I had to take my family along for a return trip to Bar Agricole in San Francisco’s Soma neighborhood. I must say, it’s quite odd to wander around your old Saturday night stomping grounds in the daylight, on a Sunday. While it was quite a bit more of a low-key experience than my first visit, the food was still amazing.

We started with this pan-friend bread and puréed beet concoction that was delicious, and an odd mix of Middle Eastern and Easter European flavors. We also had the lamb special to share, which was obviously fantastic, since I didn’t even bother to stop to photograph it.

We ordered a few desserts to share, and they kindly brought us a plate of celebratory cookies as well! As you can tell, my father likes to close his eyes in every picture I take of him.

The dessert at the far left was a rosemary panna cotta with meyer lemon topping, and the ice cream to the right was a house made orange sherbet alongside avocado-tequila ice cream. Sounds strange, yes? But I firmly believe it’s impossible to make avocado not delicious.

My father’s a funny guy, and very much two sides of a coin, in terms of personality. Growing-up, he was full of the typical dad jokes and watched cartoons every Saturday morning. There was also the occasional telenovela, whenever he thinks no one is looking (he doesn’t speak any Spanish, mind you). On the other hand, he’s a wealth of information who collects non-fiction books, mostly on historical or current events, constantly watches or listens to the news. He enjoys wearing his pakol hat everywhere (the kind of Afghan hat that was described as “a tea cozy” in the movie Amélie) and is mildly obsessed with the squirrels that constantly uproot all the flowers he and my mother plant.  Despite having come to the U.S. for political asylum in the late 70s, he has a deep-rooted fondness for redneck jokes that I will never understand. Knowing all these things, my mother gave him both a squirrel-themed and redneck-themed card that made him laugh so much he started coughing at the dinner table. He’s a funny guy, my dad. We’re fundamentally very different people, which doesn’t make things easy, but at the end of the day we have a lot to learn from each other. I can teach my father about his iPhone, and he can tell me all about any historical event known to man. I kid you not. Trouble is, I don’t even know that much about the iPhone.

Luckily, we both can tell pretty good stories.

EVA♥