For my last dinner in SF and for dinner with A and E, we wanted something different and interesting. J had told J about this spaghetti shack place that had amazing spaghetti with amazing meatballs. We were all intrigued. So we headed over to Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack in Bernal Heights to try some of this illustrious spaghetti. I read that there would be a wait, but I was optimistic. First problem was trying to find a parking spot. That took awhile. When we finally got there, there weren’t other people waiting. We thought we’d get to eat right away! Wrong! There was actually a huge table ahead of us, so we had to wait. We walked around a bit looking for other alternatives, then just decided to have some drinks at the bar. Eventually, we were seated.
Some complimentary bread while we looked over this simple menu. Although they do have a few other options, we were here for the spaghetti and meatballs.
A and E ordered the grilled polenta with sauteed mushrooms and mascarpone drizzled with truffle honey. Yum. I love me some polenta! J had never had polenta before. Or he didn’t know if he had ever had polenta before. He officially likes polenta now!
J and I ordered the arugula, pear, and crispy speck salad with blue cheese crostini and caramelized shallots. We didn’t know what crispy speck was. It’s bacon! This salad was practically perfect, as long as you avoided the blue cheese. :-)
Ok, so the spaghetti! We all got the spaghetti with meatballs. You get three ginormous meatballs. The sauce is a bit on the spicy side, which surprised all of us. One would think Emmy’s would want the diner to control the level of spiciness, but instead, Emmy’s just makes the sauce spicy. I like spice so I didn’t mind it. J would have preferred it to not be spicy, but he liked it anyway. These meatballs were quite good, but they were not the typical meatballs you would have expected in spaghetti. Normally, italian meatballs tend to be more juicy and made with egg and breadcrumbs and things like that. The thing that was unexpected about these were that when you would take a hunk off of the meatball, the whole thing would sort start falling apart. And you would see the ground meat marks in the meatball. As if it was just a plain wad of meat that was formed into a ball, instead of it having been combined with spices and breadcrumbs and egg and mixed well before being formed into a ball. It was just strange, but still tasty.

So the service… oh the service. Where do I start? Ok, so our server was nice, but he was a terrible waiter. He made two huge mistakes. First, he took our drink orders and completely forgot about it. We waited and waited and waited. And then we had to ask him about it. Then it dawned on him that he’d completely forgotten about it. Oops number one. Then next, he completely forgot to put in E’s spaghetti order. So J and I had our plate, A had her plate, but E was spaghetti-less. And we were all starving so we started eating, while he had nothing to eat. And again, our waiter was totally clueless that he had forgotten about it. So then awhile later he came over, apologized, and said he would take care of E’s drink. Remember, the drink that was part of all the drinks that he’d forgotten about? ~Sigh~ Eventually, E’s spaghetti came out. This was after the rest of us were pretty much done our meals. We’ll definitely remember this meal. Not necessarily for the food, but for the awful waiter!

It’s funny. I came all the way to Basel to work with one of my customers. There were 4 people I was working with, and not one of them was Swiss! we had a Brit, a German, a Croatian, and a Brazilian, but not one Swiss. After meeting up with my Brazilian colleague, we set off to find some food for dinner. While I was walking around some more in Basel, I had come upon this cool looking rock-n-roll type place on a little side street up a hill. We tried this place first and we couldn’t eat there because they were having a special event in the dining room upstairs. The only place we could hang out was the bar area and that was full and packed. So we moved on. It was my colleague’s turn next so we walked a little bit to another cool looking spot. We weren’t sure if they served food or not, so we asked. Although they did have a food menu, it was really just appetizers or steak. We really weren’t in the mood for either. So we tried again! We went next door to another place and they told us they had just closed the kitchen. Dammit. Were we going to get to eat tonight? The lady who had just rejected us kindly told us that the pizza place across the street would still have food. So we said ok, because honestly, we simply couldn’t take any more of this food rejection!

This is how we ended up at Centro. When we got there, the place was positively packed! And this made sense to me because even though there are so many other restaurants in Basel, apparently, it’s quite a challenge to actually eat in any of them! Centro is an italian joint. They have pizza and pasta and other italian fare. When we first looked at the menu, it was really hard to figure out what was going on. The dishes were named in italian and they were described in swiss german. Although it’s fine for me to figure out that lasagne is lasagne and that penne is penne, it was what was on them / in them that was hard to figure out from the swiss german. Eventually, I got an english menu and was finally good to go!I ordered the penne centro, which was penne with chicken and pepperoni in a creamy tomato sauce. It took forever for our food to come out. And we were both so damn hungry at this point. But it was totally worth the wait. I loved this dish! The sauce was perfect and although there wasn’t that much chicken, what chicken there was was perfect. I ate the whole thing. As in I cleaned the plate. Yes, I stuffed myself silly. And if there had been more, I would have eaten more, as it was an amazing pasta dish. I don’t actually recall pepperoni being in this, but I didn’t care. And it looks like a hot damn mess in this plate, but trust me, it was damn good. If I’m ever in Basel again, I would get this again!

On friday night, I had the honor of attending a lovely dinner party by R, teacher of young children and awesome dinner party thrower, extraordinaire. Can I just tell you how awesome his condo is? It’s just awesome. I love everything about it. When I dream about the type of condo I would like to have, it’s just like R’s condo. Damn him. Not only the condo itself, but everything he has in it. If he ever wanted to trade, I would totally let him have my house. Really. No joke.
A variety of delicious cheese and crackers, pate, nuts, and olives. Wait till you see what else he made for this party. And he made it all himself. And the crazy thing is that he said he cooks like this every night. How can anyone cook like this every night? I’d need an extra 4 hours in my day! My jealousy grows…
A couple more appetizers… Chorizo with a shallot, onion, and apple reduction. Um, hello, can we say delicious? And some type of shrimp based appetizer housed in adorable little red endive leaves. Again, delicious. Who has time to make stuff like these? And we all adored the human pincushion toothpick holder.

For the main course, R outdid himself. Slow braised short ribs with wine and an apple based sauce. It was super tender and so heavily flavored and amazing. It was served on top of mascarpone polenta. And served with some haricot verts. Again, can I ask, who cooks like this? I would end up eating at 1AM. Everything was amazing.
Just when you think you’re done, he laid these little puppies on us. Lemons filled with lemon curd, topped with lemon meringue. And at the bottom of these tasty little treats, crushed graham crackers. Unbelievable. Truly unbelievable. If all dinner parties are like this, please, please invite me to your dinner parties. I am an excellent guest. I will sing and dance if you ask. I will bring cake (like the mocha cake). I will help clean. Really. And as for R, he can invite me over any time. It was definitely a dinner party to remember. My stomach won’t ever forget it!