poincaraux
10-24-2005, 01:10 PM
(Restaurants include Toronado/Rosamunde, Korea House, Red Room)
Flew out to the Bay Area for a bachelor party this past weekend. Knowing the guy in question, the standard bachelor party (vegas, strippers, etc.) would have been pretty anti-climactic. So, the plan was to rent a beach house and spend the weekend hanging out, drinking, kayaking, etc. OOT doesn't care about that kind of lame-o stuff, so I'll stick to the food for the most part.
So, I show up at 11:00 Friday morning. Other out-of-towners have various lame excuses and aren't showing up until later. Starting a bachelor party that late and completely sober isn't really acceptable, so the bachelor and I head out for the first great meal of the weekend: sausages from Rosamunde and beer from toronado (http://www.toronado.com/). I have the Merguez (spicy lamb) and duck sausages and he has the Merguez and wild boar. As usual, we let the Rosamunde folks pick the toppings. Beer-wise, we have De Koninck, Maredsous and a couple of Kwaks. This meal is fantastic, but it's time to go. We stop by his house and pick up a bottle of Deus (another great beer) and a Governator Ale (didn't drink this .. it's a funny bottle, but I don't think it'll be a great beer).
We meet the group and go to Korea House, where the bachelor orders for the whole table. He's been here often enough that he can order in Korean from memory. The waitress brings a stack of menus, he takes them all and puts them by the side of the table. She comes back 10 minutes later and says "didn't you get menus?" He says "yes, we're ready to order." She then tries to pass out the menus. He stops her and says "no, no, we're ready to order." She leaves. She comes back 5 minutes later and tries to pass out the menus again. He stops her again and convinces her that we're ready to order. The waitress is a bit amused by the white guy ordering in Korean. The food here was tasty. We had 2-3 of everything.
Now, it's time to head off to the beach house. This is all a surprise for him, so we run the whole thing as a scavenger hunt. The whole scavenger hunt is fun. At one point, we stop by a AAA kiosk where you can get maps just by sliding your AAA card through a credit-card reader. This is fantastically useful at midnight. At another point, one of the clues sends us to a Safeway where we buy some supplies for the weekend. Somebody wanted pudding, and the look on the checkout lady's face as she tries to make sense of a cart containing only a large quantity of alcohol and 24 individual servings of Jello Pudding is priceless.
Biggest mistake of the weekend: we allow someone to throw some horrible Anheuser-Busch concoction with beer, caffeine, guarana, ginseng and aged Chinese weasel piss. Oh man is this terrible. Four of us end up chugging these to spare the others. Don't buy this "beer" ever.
We stumble out of bed late Saturday morning, eat some food, play some Super Mario Kart and head off to do some sea kayaking. We spent 4 hours kayaking through Elkhorn Slough .. lots of fun. Lots of amusement as well, including when one guy fell out of his boat and ended up hip-deep in the mud (two of us showed up to rescue him quickly .. otherwise this would have been scary).
We eat some good fish at the Phil's fish house, play some more games and head out for the best meal of the weekend. I'm pretty sure the place was called the Santa Cruz Red Room. We hang out at the bar for a while and quickly find the best bartender: she's a shorter, cute brunette. She knows a lot about beer. She pours us extra-tall glasses of good Belgian beer. She wins. We did have to wait a long time for our table, though (our reservations were for 8:00 and we didn't sit down until at least 8:30). The bachelor and I do the best job of ordering food, so I'll ignore everyone else's choices. We started with the Osaka plate which had, among other things, a wasabi creme fraiche, caviar, seared uni and seared tuna. It was all quite good, especially the wasabi creme fraiche (a combination that I don't think I would have put together myself). We followed that with the tuna tartare salad, which was far and away the best dish all night. Tuna was perfect, spicing was great (including some cracked peppercorns), etc. Don't let the waiter put extra pepper on it. I had the Angus filet. It was good, but not outstanding. It went very well with the Unibroue (a good Canadian beer). He had the muscovy duck, which was better than the angus. They served it with celery root and fennel, which was a great combination. The entrees were good, but the appetizers and salads were better.
Back to the beach house, more drinking and games. The game-highlight of the weekend: we printed up a deck of cards for "Ex-girlfriend Taboo." There were some classic moments here. My favorite was when one guy picked up a card and began laughing hysterically. Another guy immediately guessed the ex-girlfriend.
Blah blah, more stuff. Verdict: beach houses are good. Good food is good. Good beer is good. Speaking of which, JW Lees 2004 Harvest Ale, aged in calvados casks, is another great beer.
Flew out to the Bay Area for a bachelor party this past weekend. Knowing the guy in question, the standard bachelor party (vegas, strippers, etc.) would have been pretty anti-climactic. So, the plan was to rent a beach house and spend the weekend hanging out, drinking, kayaking, etc. OOT doesn't care about that kind of lame-o stuff, so I'll stick to the food for the most part.
So, I show up at 11:00 Friday morning. Other out-of-towners have various lame excuses and aren't showing up until later. Starting a bachelor party that late and completely sober isn't really acceptable, so the bachelor and I head out for the first great meal of the weekend: sausages from Rosamunde and beer from toronado (http://www.toronado.com/). I have the Merguez (spicy lamb) and duck sausages and he has the Merguez and wild boar. As usual, we let the Rosamunde folks pick the toppings. Beer-wise, we have De Koninck, Maredsous and a couple of Kwaks. This meal is fantastic, but it's time to go. We stop by his house and pick up a bottle of Deus (another great beer) and a Governator Ale (didn't drink this .. it's a funny bottle, but I don't think it'll be a great beer).
We meet the group and go to Korea House, where the bachelor orders for the whole table. He's been here often enough that he can order in Korean from memory. The waitress brings a stack of menus, he takes them all and puts them by the side of the table. She comes back 10 minutes later and says "didn't you get menus?" He says "yes, we're ready to order." She then tries to pass out the menus. He stops her and says "no, no, we're ready to order." She leaves. She comes back 5 minutes later and tries to pass out the menus again. He stops her again and convinces her that we're ready to order. The waitress is a bit amused by the white guy ordering in Korean. The food here was tasty. We had 2-3 of everything.
Now, it's time to head off to the beach house. This is all a surprise for him, so we run the whole thing as a scavenger hunt. The whole scavenger hunt is fun. At one point, we stop by a AAA kiosk where you can get maps just by sliding your AAA card through a credit-card reader. This is fantastically useful at midnight. At another point, one of the clues sends us to a Safeway where we buy some supplies for the weekend. Somebody wanted pudding, and the look on the checkout lady's face as she tries to make sense of a cart containing only a large quantity of alcohol and 24 individual servings of Jello Pudding is priceless.
Biggest mistake of the weekend: we allow someone to throw some horrible Anheuser-Busch concoction with beer, caffeine, guarana, ginseng and aged Chinese weasel piss. Oh man is this terrible. Four of us end up chugging these to spare the others. Don't buy this "beer" ever.
We stumble out of bed late Saturday morning, eat some food, play some Super Mario Kart and head off to do some sea kayaking. We spent 4 hours kayaking through Elkhorn Slough .. lots of fun. Lots of amusement as well, including when one guy fell out of his boat and ended up hip-deep in the mud (two of us showed up to rescue him quickly .. otherwise this would have been scary).
We eat some good fish at the Phil's fish house, play some more games and head out for the best meal of the weekend. I'm pretty sure the place was called the Santa Cruz Red Room. We hang out at the bar for a while and quickly find the best bartender: she's a shorter, cute brunette. She knows a lot about beer. She pours us extra-tall glasses of good Belgian beer. She wins. We did have to wait a long time for our table, though (our reservations were for 8:00 and we didn't sit down until at least 8:30). The bachelor and I do the best job of ordering food, so I'll ignore everyone else's choices. We started with the Osaka plate which had, among other things, a wasabi creme fraiche, caviar, seared uni and seared tuna. It was all quite good, especially the wasabi creme fraiche (a combination that I don't think I would have put together myself). We followed that with the tuna tartare salad, which was far and away the best dish all night. Tuna was perfect, spicing was great (including some cracked peppercorns), etc. Don't let the waiter put extra pepper on it. I had the Angus filet. It was good, but not outstanding. It went very well with the Unibroue (a good Canadian beer). He had the muscovy duck, which was better than the angus. They served it with celery root and fennel, which was a great combination. The entrees were good, but the appetizers and salads were better.
Back to the beach house, more drinking and games. The game-highlight of the weekend: we printed up a deck of cards for "Ex-girlfriend Taboo." There were some classic moments here. My favorite was when one guy picked up a card and began laughing hysterically. Another guy immediately guessed the ex-girlfriend.
Blah blah, more stuff. Verdict: beach houses are good. Good food is good. Good beer is good. Speaking of which, JW Lees 2004 Harvest Ale, aged in calvados casks, is another great beer.