Thai Food Mecca

As you all know, I have been on a salad quest. And of all the salads I've ever tasted, the Thai Papaya Salad may be my favorite. So one of the first things we did when we got to the San Francisco Bay Area was line up outside a nondescript Thai Buddhist Temple in Berkeley on a Sunday morning for what the locals (the foodie locals, that is) refer to as the Thai Church Social. Every Sunday, the local Thai community comes here to attend temple, cook, and eat. And anyone else in the Bay Area who is as devoted to food as to life, comes as well. You have to get here by 10 am or the line winds down the street. The first thing you do is exchange cash for tokens. Then line up for the food of your choice.

Unfortunately that's not the best hour of the day for a super spicy salad but I managed. This papaya salad doesn't look pretty on that paper plate but it was made to order by a delightful Thai woman in a mortar and pestle. She asked me to taste it several times as she was preparing it to be sure she was getting it spicy enough for me. And it was both spicy and delicious. The kids stuck to mango and sticky rice (black and white) but our foodie friends didn't hold back.

They ordered several plates of curry, stir fry, fried chicken, Pad Thai, and other delicacies. And we all picked away at anything within reach.

This crowd has the Thai Social down to a science and it was a privilege to be part of their Sunday Morning. They coordinate
(in a combination of Chinese, Swiss German, and English) who will get in what line via cell phone on the way over so that once the entire crowd has arrived, there is little but eating to be done.

To give you a sense of just what a food orgy this vacation is, I will tell you how the rest of this day went. After the Thai Social, we split up for separate activities: My family went for a train ride in the hills (I'll post about that later). Then 3 hours later, we regrouped to car pool and drive across the bridge. Once in San Francisco, we feasted on oysters at the Hog Island Oyster Company in Market Hall in the Embarcadero. And from there, we went to a friend's house where we ate some of the finest BBQed salmon, leeks, and other delicacies I've eaten in a long time.