For my vacation out to central oregon, I connected through SFO. I got a nice surprise when I was upgraded into first class for my PHL to SFO flight. As you can see by my outstretched stump legs and the inability of the bottoms of my flexed feet to actually touch the divider, first class does not really matter to me, at least not comfort wise. I only get excited for it because of the free food. I’ve been reading this book called “Near A Thousand Tables” which is about the history of food. I highly recommend it!

The dinner choices were chicken quesadillas or pasta with mushroom sauce. Since I don’t like mushrooms, I went with the quesadillas. These really weren’t very good at all. The quesadillas themselves were pretty bland and the tortillas had gotten crunchy. The pico de gallo was the worst part though. They absolutely tasted like nothing. Nothing at all. It did not taste like tomatoes nor did it taste like onions. It kind of defied logic. But the saving grace was the warm oatmeal raisin cookie. Seriously, this might have been one of the best cookies I’ve ever had in my life. And it was on a flight. The flight attendant said it was a good cookie, and damn he was beyond correct.

So our flight to Redmond/Bend, OR actually got cancelled. They gave us the runaround for a very long time and delayed the flight for hours and hours until they finally cancelled it right around midnight west coast time, saying they couldn’t find a first officer. When the cockpit deplaned, two pilots got off. They totally screwed us. But with that cancellation came a free hotel stay and free breakfast vouchers. At least we’d be full on our flight the next morning. The food options at SFO are pretty darn good, especially if you go to one of the main food areas in the United terminal. Since it is airport food prices, the $15 actually doesn’t get you very far. J got a shredded chicken salad.

I tried to go as luxurious as possible, even though it was breakfast, and ordered the nabe yaki seafood udon at a japanese joint. The one thing you can count on in san francisco is the ubiquity of japanese food joints, even at the airport. The broth was a little bit on the bland side, but it was still damn good as far as airport food goes. I’ll take this over a sbarro pizza slice, any day!

F had sent us a link to a byob sushi place weeks ago, and we finally were able to make plans to check it out. A fairly newish spot, open since February, Fat Salmon is a sleek and modern place in Washington Square. The decor actually reminds me of Morimoto’s a bit, probably due to the waviness in some of the design elements. All of the furnishings are clean and white. On a weekday evening, the place was pretty packed. Since it was a byob, M brought along a japanese cocktail concoction. It was delicious and strong and had me at first sip.

I love the standard green salad with the ginger dressing that is offered by pretty much any and every sushi restaurant. But not all of the ginger dressings are up to par. I’m happy to say that the green salad here was one of the best. There’s even cucumber and green bell pepper slices and the dressing is zesty and amazing. And it’s a good sized salad. The miso soup is perfectly nice as well.

On the right, that slop of mess, is the Rolling Fire. It is a roll with shrimp tempura and cucumber, topped with broiled spicy scallop sauce and some imitation crab meat. And oh, it’s like totally spicy. Man, it surprised me. You can see that it’s sort of sitting in a red pool of firey oil. It’s still good, but it is quite the shocker. So be careful! On the left is Mr. Shiro, one of my favorites of the evening. It is eel tempura, avocado, crunch w/spicy sauce on the inside, topped with broiled spicy white tuna and tomato.

Here is the Dragonfly Roll, which actually does look like a dragon. It has shrimp tempura, cucumber, and spicy sauce on the inside, and is topped with eel, avocado, and eel sauce. There’s nothing about this roll that anyone could dislike. It’s great.

On top is the White Forest, my absolute favorite roll of the evening. It was shrimp tempura on the inside with spicy sauce (you could also get salmon tempura), topped with a heap of pico de gallo and our cream. It was like a sushi salsa roll, and I absolutely went crazy for it. On the bottom is the Lost Rainbow, with spicy crab stick, scallion, and masago on the inside, topped with tuna, salmon, white fish, ikura in sesame soy sauce, and cucumber. This would have been really good, but the ikura on top was super salty and it kind of ruined it for me. It overpowered everything when it could have been a nice compliment. So it turned out to be my least favorite roll of the evening. All in all, this was great food with great friends. Fat Salmon is a nice find. Their main thing seems to be crazy rolls. Their menu had dozens. So if you like a great variety of special rolls, then this is the place for you!

It had been awhile since E and I had gotten together for our sunday night dinner adventures. When she suggested banh mi at pho & cafe viet huong, you know I couldn’t say no! I’ve been to viet huong countless times, but have never had their banh mi. And E had never had banh mi before, ever, so this was going to be a fun treat. Since this was her first banh mi she went safe with the grilled chicken banh mi. It comes nicely wrapped in paper so that everything stays inside and does not fall apart. E was a big fan of her first vietnamese hoagie. How can you not like this? It’s really the best of east meets west.

It was hot, so I didn’t necessarily want hot food, and I found the thought of the stewed beef with bread intriguing. I thought it would be a banh mi with the stewed meat inside. Oops! It turned out to be a bowl of stewed beef (a la the same beef from pho bo kho) with a toasted baguette. Well, I didn’t mind this at all! It’s like taking all the delicious hunks of meat from your pho bo kho and eating that with an amazingly warm and crusty piece of bread. There’s tons of broth to dip the bread into or you can even make little sandwiches yourself. We also got a couple of smoothies, because it was so muggy out. E tried the avocado smoothie, per my recommendation, and she really liked it. I had strawberry and it was perfect in every way. Service was speedy and efficient, as usual!

Pho & Cafe Viet Huong
1110 Washington Ave # 2A
Philadelphia, PA