Sightglass Coffee. Va Va Voom.

Sightglass is breathtakingly, heart-wrenchingly, staggeringly beautiful. 

I don't know if it's the side project of some infinitely wealthy dot com kid, or if they sell a bajillion dollars of coffee every day, but this is a cost-is-no-object shop. The ceiling soars 40 feet above the massive bar, criss-crossed with giant wooden beams. Enormous windows frame the front of the store and combine with expansive skylights to bathe the place in warm light. On the second floor there's what looks like a coffee tasting lab, a little steampunk and completely functional. There's taxidermied owls. There's a good size drum roaster. There are bags and bags of green coffee and roasted coffee, rows of tags on bakers twine, paper-bag brown bags and boxes. And it's not just that all these amazing details come together into a cohesive modern-rustic style - there's also a lot of open space - vast fields of hardwood floors on three levels, right there in the high-rent capital of the universe.

So, that's the first thing you notice when you walk in. Then you catch your breath, and set about ordering yourself some coffee. And mostly it's just about the coffee here. The pastries are delicious, but an afterthought - the teeny tiny pastry case is situated between the iPad/registers, easiest to peruse after you pay.

I ordered a macchiato - it was really good, but not perfect: the milk was not as smoothly textured as it could have been and while the coffee itself was lovely, it was not particularly complex. Ideally, you want a distinct start, middle and finish to the taste in a coffee. Sightglass coffee is good, but there's none of that tartness you get from some coffees on the first sip, none of the woodiness on the finish. Not bad, and certainly not unpleasant, but a little flat. I took home a bag of the Guatemala Cubito, tried several different brewing methods and found the same simplicity relative to what I've been tasting from Counter Culture, Cuvee and Handsome over the last few months. A lovely cup, to be sure, just not dazzling.

So - is Sightglass one of the best on the planet? In some ways, absolutely. I have a hard time imagining a sexier location for coffee. But in other ways, it doesn't reach the etherial, constant perfection you see from the very best places that do this. It's a relatively new entrant, and they are very very good. I don't doubt that they may well evolve into something mind-blowing, but for now, the big draw is the view.

28 people, 18 carry on bags, and dinner at Il Fornaio

Had a chance to get to San Francisco this week - barely there for 24 hours, but had enough time to realize, once again, that this is pretty much my favorite city on the planet. No other place I've been has more elegantly combined the urban chaos of a great city with an abiding love for the good life. I love that it's a city defined by bookstores, by wine, by food, and by living life outdoors. Can't do much better than that.

24 hours is, sadly, not enough time to do anything outdoors, or even stop by a book store, but it was enough time for some food and some wine. After an afternoon of meetings at the University Club in Nob Hill(itself pretty awesome), all 28 of us filed out, got into bat-out-of-hell cabs, and headed out to Burlingame for dinner at Il Fornaio.

Disclaimer: This place is a chain. I'm not generally a fan of chains, but this is not a huge one, and they make their own pasta. Sometimes you've got to make an exception.


The food was, honestly, pretty fabulous. And it was surprising in a couple of ways. First off, you expect food at an upscale 20-location restaurant to *look* amazing. That's the easy part - the garnish and and the color. In that respect, Il Fornaio fell a couple of notches short. The appetizer plate was pretty, but my pasta arrived looking absolutely limp and lifeless, with a few bedraggled shreds of basil as its sad adornment. The taste: out of this world. The pasta was silky and perfectly cooked, the sauce subtle and simple. Those draggles of basil were actually remarkably fresh and sweet, and worked well with the garlic and bite of the sauce.


The second surprise was dessert. This is a place that seems made for dessert. Italian desserts are about as good as they come, and places with a little capital can generally find some talent to throw around the kitchen. But the dessert that came out was actually kind of cloying and overpowering. The name escapes me, but the dessert involved cake, mousse, and berries alongside a puddle of vanilla bean and raspberry sauce. Individually, the items were pretty solid, but taken together, the balance was all off. Far too much mousse, far too much sauce, not nearly enough of the berries or the cake. In the end, it was pretty much a garnished tower of sweet chocolate mousse.

Overall, it was a lovely experience - not without it's blemishes - but Il Fornaio delivered in some of the hardest stuff, and effortlessly managed to make 28 people, all lugging various luggage, completely at home at one very long table.

Chuck's Dang Near Perfect Donuts

The measure of a donut place, in my opinion, is the cruller. This is the central failing of Krispy Kreme, the glory of Tim Hortons, and the sole redeeming characteristic of Dunkin. If you can do a cruller well, if you can balance the ethereally light with the deep fried and decadently sweet, you've got something right. Chuck's Donuts, in Belmont, has nailed the cruller.

This was a good thing, since my trip out to the bay area was not off to a great start. For one thing, it's a Sunday to Friday week on the road, with a red-eye on the return flight. Far too much time away from the Austin clan. The flights out here were long and arduous, my rental car was out of gas from the get go with it's low tire pressure warning blaring, and my hotel reservations were lost. The luck continued into the pre-Chuck's food experiences - I ventured out to find Lorenzo's Sandwich shop in Belmont for dinner (it was closed), checked out menus for a few places (weak) and after some wandering, ended up ordering a local, but sub-par pizza back at the hotel (Toto's is not all it's cracked up to be).

But this part of the country is beautiful, and makes it hard to stay mopey for long. I woke up this morning committed to finding something good. I'd passed Chuck's on my drive yesterday and decided it looked promising.

Immediately on walking in, you know you're in for some serious goodness. The place looks like it's been there 50 years, with worn paneling on the walls and 4 little tables attached the floor and each surrounded by 4 miniature bar stools, also attached. The effect is that the tables and chairs appear to have organically sprouted from the floor, like mushrooms. Off the the side is a window into the kitchen, which seemed low tech and in some disarray, but clean. But the main view walking into Chuck's is this almost obscenely voluptuous display of donuts.

And, just like that, this has been a good day. I've got a lot of work yet to get through tonight, but for the moment, I'm happily typing away in a quirky little San Mateo Coffee Shop called Bean Trees and looking forward to finding something tasty and cheap for dinner in the immediate vicinity. Tomorrow, I'm going for the sprinkles.