A celebratory trip!
Yes, it happened! At lonnnnnnnng last. After months years of searching, I have found the perfect little spot to open my restaurant (Wow! I can't believe I can use those 2 words - my and restaurant - together. I'm still in shock).
While this is not news to the close friends and local bloggers I've already told (I've known for a couple of months), the reasons I haven't shared my news on my blog sooner are numerous. I am hoping my motivations to keep mum will become apparent when I get a chance to share the entire saga in future Wild Ride postings. Even now, I feel it is best to not reveal my restaurant's exact location, as the current tenants won't be moving until the end of the month. What I will tell you is my as yet to be named restaurant will be located in a lovely San Francisco neighborhood, and the restaurant most likely won't be ready to open until the end of the year at the earliest. Believe me, you'll hear all about it soon enough, so please be patient.
The exciting news in the Sardine Tin doesn't stop with me. N has just as much to celebrate. She finished up her graduate coursework a couple of weeks ago. On top of that, she has now begun her new job as the Lower School Head of the school where she had been the Second Grade teacher for many years. Go N!
To celebrate our good fortune, we went on what may be our last vacation for quite a while (to Spain, natch). Contrary to the impression I've given to you IPOS readers, my life is not usually filled with so much jet-setting. This past year has certainly been the exception. In fact, up until our first trip to Spain 2 summers ago, N and I hadn't taken a vacation together in nearly a decade.
So, knowing the next few months years are going to be, to put it mildly, insanely busy for both of us (have I mentioned that we're moving as well?), we decided to make the most of this opportunity to thoroughly enjoy each other's company undisturbed and relatively unfettered by responsibility.
Our week and a half started with a bang: a dinner at the justly famous El Bulli. We bookended our visit to Ferran Adrià's dining fun-house with not one, but two meals at the tiny restaurant that, to our tastes at least, stood as the gastronomic highlight of this year's trip: Rafa's. We then continued to toast glasses of Cava at the Michelin 2-star restaurant El Celler de Can Roca in Girona and, further down the coast of Catalonia, at Joan Gatell, a mecca for pristine seafood in Cambrils. We switched to toasting Txakoli when we took an impromptu day trip to the Basque region (domestic flights are ridiculously cheap in Europe). There, we ate grilled turbot (rodaballo) at Elkano (see Pim's description of this seafood restaurant on the Bay of Bizcay in Getaria, a town you may recall I also visited last year).
The real highlight of this year's Spanish trip, though, was not the food. It was the company. I could gush on and on ad infinitum until you're gagging on your morning toast or afternoon chili dog, but I'll spare y'all and leave it at this: Thank you, N, for joining me on a fabulous journey and for continually reminding me that the best is yet to come!
Speaking of which, in the next few weeks, in between meetings with architects and contractors, I will attempt to squeeze in time to post more details about our trip (as well as progress on the restaurant front). To whet your appetite, I've added links in the right hand column to new FlickR photo albums of our meals at Rafa's, El Bulli, and El Celler de Can Roca. Buen provecho!
Food|and Drink|Restaurant|Opening Restaurant|San Francisco|Spain|Catalonia
