We just got back from a long weekend (5 nights) in the SF/Bay Area. We’re looking to move to someplace sunnier than Seattle (vitaminD is important!), and SF/Bay is a good spot, for many reasons. It’s sunnier (although that can be said of most places in comparison to Seattle!), it’s got a good amount of jobs in tech, and since I was just laid off, that’s important. Also, it’s really good with dietary restrictions. They have vegan restaurants, GF restaurants, many GF/vegan places, too; many that aren’t at least understand and can accommodate this, so it’s easier to have a “normal” life. Moving sucks, though.

The places we ate:
We went to Millenium – and it is delicious!! Fancy-pants dining, but without worry – they’re vegan, and most of their dishes are GF, so it was easy to get something we could eat. And what we had definitely lived up to the hype. I would go there again!

Nature’s Express – a vegan “fast food” joint. They had GF chocolate chip cookies that were AMAZING. Like, the pre-GF/vegan me would have devoured these. Wahoo! AND they’re coming out with GF buns for their burgers and sandwiches so you’re not stuck with just the blanched collard green (which is good, but sometimes you want bready stuff). Easy and I’d say “charmingly adequate” food.

Bowl’d Korean Rice Bar – not vegan or GF, but has options on their menu and are really good about knowing what is in their food. Their house tea has barley in it, so when I mentioned GF, they immediately took the tea back and gave us a GF version. Their bowls are naturally GF (except for the soy, but they bring you tamari instead), and I ordered it without the egg and with tofu – super easy and very filling. The hubs ordered the bowl with the salmon, and enjoyed that, too! (Note, the salmon sauce has gluten, so he had to have it “dry.”)

Cafe Gratitude – pretty good for what we ordered! The reviews are mixed, so apparently it’s highly dependent on what you order and when you go… But it was good for us. It is a bit… well, hippy, but overcoming that, the tacos and salads were tasty!

Flacos – OMG YUM! Vegan, but not all GF (though their new menu highlights GF options clearly). They have a tamale that is amazing! We both had this in “plate” form, and it was good. The “hot” is actually hot!! Growing up in Texas, I got used to spicy, but the Seattle made me wuss out a bit – the hot here is actually mild. So I need to re-get-used-to actual spicy stuff…

I think that was about all we were able to get to over the weekend. Next time, though, we want to hit Gracias Madre and a few others. If you have suggestions, please leave them in the comments!

Other than food, we drove around a lot, looking at the various neighborhoods, where we might look to find a house that’s outrageously priced and unaffordable… We found a bunch! 😉 Trying to keep a level head and some optimism about all this. It took us a while and was a shock when we moved to Seattle from Texas, but we made it, and we’ll do it again in SF!

I’ll (probably) be posting a more thoughts-based post on our trip next; traveling is much harder now, and it’s still a bit of an emotional roller coaster, interacting with people and stuff… A lot of babble, so feel free to skip it. 😉