Only 20th Century Kids Will Remember - SF Day Trip Pt. 3 with @winnie.fried

Proving that I can finish something besides Netflix shows

So here we are - the finale of this series I was supposed to finish two or three weeks ago. Due to it being the day after Christmas, some of the places we hoped to tour were closed, namely the Supreme Court of California and the city hall. So the only thing we were able to do was find another place to eat and figure out where to go from there. During our walk there from Japan town, we walked by this restaurant called Little Gem. At first glance at the menu hanging in the window (big windows by the way), it seemed to be a mostly Asian restaurant, but when we sat down and took a better look, it turns out to be some sort of American-Asian fusion restaurant. So I sat down and ordered the veggie bibimbap, while my friends got some smaller options. Although I recognized the fact that the bibimbap was vegetarian, I was still a little shocked to see it when it was placed in front of me. How did I forget in the span of ten minutes?

Where's my meat??? 7/10 tho

A little side note about the restaurant - its beautiful. It's full of smooth wooden tables that are illuminated by tons of natural light spilling in from the huuuge windows. It's a very soothing experience, and the whole thing is just wonderful. There are even wooden number placards, and for some reason the whole wooden aesthetic just made my day so much better.

Bright natural light makes for good photos

Back to the veggie bibimbap - people know that bibimbap without meat is just basically salad with rice, but the choice of rice was pretty interesting. The purple/black rice was used instead of the customary white rice, which surprised me as it was my first time seeing it out in the wild. My mom usually substitutes brown rice for white rice, but occasionally she throws in the purple rice. I have a very poignant memory of my first time eating purple rice as a third grader, throwing a tantrum and trying to stage a revolt with my little sister. In the end we ate it and it was fine.

20th Century Café

So my veggie bibimbap was fine, but we decided to stop at one final café. We spotted the Kittea Café on Apple Maps, and walked over as fast as we could. Major letdown though, because I probably should've realized that I had to pay for time with the cats before I walked in and asked. So we hightailed out of there and decided to go to the next café we saw on our list: 20th Century Café. Yet another highly aesthetic restaurant, it had a quaint and delicate theme, with a lot of flourishes in the design. The spindly legs of the chairs and tables reminded me of a classic balcony in France, with the various curves and spirals in the feet and chair back.

We walked in and ordered a cake and an apple strudel to keep things simple. My favorite out of the two was the apple strudel. Maybe it was because I needed something that was more familiar to my taste palette - the sweet syrup mixed with the crunchy apple filling quickly brought a smile to my face. The strudel was crunchy enough to hold everything together, all in all a defining experience of the day.

"Flatlay is the best way to take food photos"

"ok"

You can find me on Instagram as @stumpyeatsfood and on yelp at theplumpcat.yelp.com. If you've got a restaurant recommendation or even a recipe that you think I should try, send it to me at ryanjchen2@gmail.com! Thank you for reading!