San Francisco Exotic Food Crawl: Russian Food at Cinderella Bakery in Richmond

The only Russian dish I have ever had in my life was beef stroganoff, which my late uncle used to make on occasion. I was actually in Australia when Australian MP John Murphy actually complained about the small portion of beef stroganoff his wife was served in the parliamentary cafetaria during a Parliament session. He was subsequently forced to apologize after being criticized for using the House of Representatives as a platform to lodge his complaint. I am pretty sure that the news barely made a blip around the world, but the Australian media actually had a field day with it.

My best friend and I decided on Cinderella Cafe because it seemed the most affordable option in San Francisco for Russian food. We figured that with lower menu prices, we would be able to try more Russian dishes between the two of us.

Cinderella Cafe is located on Richmond in the heart of Little Russia in San Francisco and is staffed by friendly Russian servers. I ordered the golubtsy with a side of buckwheat kasha and blinchiki with sweet cheese filling for dessert while my friend ordered the borscht soup and pelmeni.

The food did not take long to arrive. Golubtsy is a cabbage roll dish stuffed with rice and meat served with a tomato vegetable sauce and blinchiki is a thin Russian pancake akin to French crepe. The blinchiki was served with a side of raspberry jam and sour cream. They were both delicious.



Golubtsy



Blinchiki

I have always hated beets all my life. I feel like they taste like dirt and can't for the life of me imagine why anyone would voluntarily eat them. My best friend had no such qualms. I was prepared to hate the borscht soup, which is basically beet soup, but found myself loving the hearty taste. It wasn't until later that I realize that the soup actually had a tomato base rather than a beet one, which might explained why I actually like it despite the fact that it contains beets.



Borscht soup



Pelmeni

Her pelmeni was a meat-filled dumpling that came in a clear broth and it was served with sour cream on the side. Sour cream seems to be the cream of choice with Russians. The pelmeni was reminiscent of Chinese food, akin to Chinese dumplings, which shouldn't actually be all that surprising considering that Russia and China are neighbors.

As far as I can tell, the Russian food here is authentic and very affordable. Since then I have dragged another friend there to try the baked goods here. My best friend and I hope to come back one day to try the other Russian dishes we didn't get a chance to partake during our first dining experience here.

San Francisco Exotic Food Crawl: Afghanistan Food at De Afghanan Kabob House in the Tenderloin

De Afghanan Kabob House. Little niche tucked between two other buildings.



Some nice Afghan-themed artwork on the wall, which is painted a deep red.



Combination Kebab



Manti

It is one thing to decide that you are going to do a San Francisco exotic food crawl. It is quite another thing to try to decide where to even begin. There are literally hundreds of cuisines that my best friend and I had never tried before! Where to even start? One day while I was on the San Francisco State University campus, I spontaneously decided that we would try the exotic cuisine of the first friend I see. Of course that friend turned out to be of Afghan descent.

And that was how we ended up having Afghan food. I asked her and another Afghan friend for dish recommendations. Armed with said dish recommendations, I began Yelping for Afghan restaurants in San Francisco. I decided on De Afghanan Kabob House because it looked to be the most authentic Afghan restaurant in San Francisco.

The restaurant is rather a small one, tucked between two other buildings and right across the street from Tommy's Joynt. The walls are painted a warm shade of red and there are interesting Afghan-inspired pastoral paintings decorating the wall.

The complimentary bread we got, which was lightly brushed with some sort of oil, was delicious. We ordered the manti as our appetizer because one of my other Afghan friend recommended it. It looked like Italian ravioli and frankly tasted like Italian ravioli.

We also ordered the combination platter to be shared between the two of us. It came with three kinds of meats, a minced beef patty, tandoori chicken, which tasted like Indian tandoori chicken, and a beef kebab. It also came with two different kinds of basmati rice, one white and one yellow. Honestly I couldn't really tell the difference in taste between the two, but both rices were very fragrant and nicely flavored. In Afghanistan, rice is considered the king of the meal and special care and attention is always taken in cooking it. The dish also came with a side of salsa and salad which felt slightly out of place but provided a nice spicy punch to the meal.

Overall, we were very satisfied with our meal; I have gone back there once more with my partner in food and another time with my visiting relatives. The food was consistently good both times. I would really highly recommend this restaurant if you are interested in trying out some Afghanistan food.

San Francisco Exotic Food Crawl: Shawarma from SF Wraps on Kearny Street

Cross-section of a shawarma



Falafel.

To be honest with you, the only reason I was even remotely interested to try shawarma was because of The Avenger's after-credit scene where they go have shawarma at a still functioning shawarma joint after saving New York City.

So it made sense that it would be the second food item I wanted to try on our San Francisco Exotic Food Crawl. We decided on SF Wraps on Kearny Street because it was close to the movie theater where we were going to catch a screening of Chef. You can check my review of the movie here.

After the movie, we were famished, and headed over to SF wraps to get the aforementioned shawarma. I was disappointed upon checking out the menu to find out that the ingredients for shawarma at this restaurant were hardly any different from their ingredients for gyro, which I've had before.

Shawarma is a Levantine Arab dish consisting of meat wrapped in a piece of pita bread (a kind of Arabic/Mediterranean unleavened bread). I suppose you can call shawarma the Arabic version of a Mexican burrito. I am sure the Arabic world in turn refers to burritos as the Mexican version of shawarma or some such. Such is the way humans think when we try something new; we use a familiar frame of reference to make sense of the unfamiliar. Shawarma is very similar to the Mediterranean gyro. In fact, both the words "shawarma" and "gyro" refers to the way the meat is cooked, rotated on a spit like a rotisserie. Both of us ordered the shawarma to take back to the apartment to eat.

I decided to order some falafel too since I never had those before either. Falafels are a popular Arabic street food consisting of ground chickpea and/or fava beans shaped into round patties and deep fried in batter. Being made of chickpeas and/of fava beans, they are high in protein and are often served by themselves on in a pita wrap as well. As such, they make a good alternative for vegetarians.

The portions for the shawarma were kind of generous, although it was mostly filled with assorted vegetables and there was hardly any meat in it. What meat that was in it did not seem to be all that fresh. The falafels were terrible. I am pretty sure this is not what good falafels taste like. I think they were overcooked and as a result, tasted so bitter that even dipping them in the yogurt sauce provided did little to improve the taste.

All in all though, the both of us got to try shawarma for the first time, so at least now we can proudly say that we know what shawarma is, what it looks like and what it supposedly tastes like. Hopefully we get to try better ones on a future date at a different place.

Anyway, next up, Afghanistan food from De Afghanan Kabob House in the Tenderloin!

San Francisco Exotic Food Crawl Post: Puerto Rican Food at Parada 22 in Haight-Ashbury

San Franciso Exotic Food Crawl Post: El Salvadorian Pupusas At La Santaneca De La Mission On Mission Street

Pupusas from La Santaneca, located in Bernal Heights on 3781 Mission St.

"Where are you off to?" I asked a friend one evening. "I'm off to get some pupusas for dinner," he replied. "Pupusas? What is that?" He gives me an incredulous look. "You don't know what pupusas are?" And so he turns to his computer and Googles pupusas for me. Apparently they are an El Salvadoran dish consisting of homemade corn tortilla with fillings in them, often a blend of pork, cheese and beans. Pupusas have different names based on what fillings they have. The ones I mentioned, which has cheese, beans and pork are called pupusa revuelta. He then proceeds to teach me how you are supposed to eat them. He grabs a piece of scratch paper and then proceeds to fold it into some origami shape to try to show me visually the correct way to eat a pupusa. To this day I don't know if this is how El Salvadorans eat their pupusas since my friend is not El Salvadoran himself, but here goes:

Use your knife to draw a cross on the first layer of your pupusa. Peel back the layer to reveal the pupusa filling (your choice of bean, cheese and/or pork) and then you proceed to dump your red sauce and coleslaw that comes with your pupusas onto the filling layer of the pupusa. Afterwards, you cover the pupusa back with its first layer, and then you can start eating your pupusa with a fork and knife.

My best friend and I got a chance to try pupusas a couple of days after the Subway fiasco. After our Pirates of the Caribbean, I mean The Lone Ranger screening, we headed to La Santaneca instead of La Santance de la Mission, which was the place my friend recommended, because the latter was already closed by the time we got out of the screening.

The place was nondescript, rather bare-bones with minimal decor. But the waiter was really friendly, which made up for the restaurant's spare decor. The wait for 4 pupusas was rather long, seeing that it was pretty late and there was hardly anyone in the restaurant but us.

The pupusas came piping hot and I proceeded to show my best friend the supposedly correct way to eat your pupusas. The pupusas turned out to be really delicious and quite filling. Two pupusas per person filled us right up pretty nicely. The total bill came to $10 including tax and tip, which made the meal really affordable.

As so, our San Francisco Exotic Food Crawl began with the unassuming-looking but absolutely scrumptuous El Salvadoran pupusas.

About two years after our very first pupusas, we finally had an opportunity to try pupusas at the place my friend recommended, La Santaneca de la Mission, located on 2815 Mission St. Maybe it was because one's first time having pupusas is an indelible experience, but I found that I prefer the pupusas at La Santaneca to the ones at La Santaneca de la Mission (I know, it can be confusing with both of them having similar names and being located on Mission St.), even if the decor of the former was more warm and inviting. My best friend got a different filling this time. She decided to get loroco filling for her pupusa. For the uninitiated, loroco is a edible flower found in Central America. It is an important source of food in both El Salvador and Guatamela, and can be commonly found in dishes like pupusas. The loroco added an interesting flavor profile to the pupusas with a taste reminiscent of asparagus.



Loroco

What I especially love about this food crawl of ours is that I believe food is the window to a country's soul and culture, and in researching what to try next, I find out a lot about a country's culture that I wouldn't have known about in the first place. Case in point, I wouldn't have known that an edible flower called loroco existed or its economic importance to countries like El Salvador.

Next up, shawarma.

San Francisco Exotic Food Crawl Post: Origins

The Subway restaurant we dined at, located on 1500 Fillmore St.

This month marks the third year-anniversary of when my best friend and I started what we called our San Franciso Exotic Food Crawl, in which we try an unfamiliar dish from a cuisine we've eaten before or a new dish from an "exotic" cuisine each time we dine out in San Francisco. "Exotic" meaning that we would not be dining on the usual suspects of ubiquitous cuisines like Chinese, Indian, Thai, American, Mexican, Italian and Japanese, not unless it was a unique dish we had never tried before.

This 2-year and ongoing food journey was completely unplanned and the genesis of it all came about rather organically. It all started when we were looking for someplace to get dinner after watching a movie in San Francisco. We were supposed to watch The Lone Ranger together, but couldn't get seats, so she ended up watching Monster University, a prequel to Monsters Inc., while I went to see World War Z because she was too chicken to watch a horror flick with me. You can check out my review of War War Z here and my review of The Lone Ranger, which we got to see a couple of days after we couldn't get seats, here.

For some reason my best friend wanted Japanese food, and like total idiots, we drove to Japantown, which is possibly the worst place in San Francisco you can go to to get authentic Japanese food. I finally had enough when I was looking through the menu of one restaurant and it featured sake on sake sushi. As in sake alcohol on sake the fish. Baffling and as far from authentic Japanese food you could get. We ended up driving to a Subway restaurant and my friend, who once worked in a Subway restaurant during her teenage years, ordered a footlong Italian BMT to be shared between the two of us. We sat down at a public park to have our food, and it dawned on us how pathetic and sad it was that we were having Subway sandwiches for dinner in a city known for its diverse cuisines.

There and then we decided that this would be the last time we ended up eating at a chain restaurant when we dined in San Francisco. And so the San Francisco Exotic Food Crawl was born.

It's one thing to determine such a thing, it's completely another thing trying to figure out how to even start. Where do we even begin? And inspiration landed on my lap through another friend.

Check out my next post to read about the first restaurant we hit on our San Francisco Exotic Food Crawl culinary journey.

Now You See Me 2 Short Movie Review

Now You See Me 2 has a plot that is more incomprehensible, implausible and baffling that its predecessor. Had no idea that was possible. Nevertheless, it entertains well enough, and one does not go to a popcorn movie like this for a scintillating plot, even when the foregone conclusion could be glimpsed from a mile away.

Canny (financial) casting of Daniel Radcliffe and Jay Chou, which should conjure up extra ticket sales from Harry Potter fans and the entire Chinese-speaking market.

3 out of 5 stars for me.

Me Before You Short Movie Review

I am not generally a fan of the tearjerker genre, but since the movie was adapted from a bestselling book and starred Emilia Clarke and Sam Clafin, two actors who I enjoyed watching on Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games movie series respectively, I decided to give it a shot. The movie is a lot better than I expected, and actually quite funny.

Emilia is as different from her role as Khalessi as can be, but one wishes that she got to use a wider range of expression besides expressing either profound joy or abject sadness, like a maniac bipolar yo-yo.

By the end of the screening, I could hear people around me sobbing or see them wiping their eyes with their tissues, which made me feel like a monster because I wasn't one of those weeping into their Kleenex. Same thing happened at the screening of The Fault In Our Stars. I do cry at movies, but there's something about the sheer manipulation in such genres designed to induce viewers' tear ducts to overflow that makes me unable to shed any.

3 and a half stars out of 5 stars for me. Would recommend it as great alternative to the countless summer blockbusters sure to inundate the screens later this month.

Captain America: Civil War Short Review

I enjoyed Captain America: Civil War, even if I disagreed with the titular character ideologically. The whole plot could have been resolved with a phone call, but I'm not complaining. The best characters hands-down are Black Panther and Spider-Man, who steal every scene they are in. I can't wait to see their solo movies and that is saying a lot for the latter, because I simply loathed The Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2. Lending Spider-Man to Marvel was a genius move by Sony; best advertisement they could have gotten.

4 out of 5 stars for me.

Batman v. Superman: short review of an overlong movie

Batman v. Superman is mind-numbingly dull, dour, overlong, lifeless and boring, with its huge gaping plot holes cutting a wider swath than the destruction wroth by its superheroes.

Particularly grating on the nerves is Lex Luthor in a role so badly mangled by Jesse Eisenberg and so annoying that I badly wanted to able reach into the screen to physically strangle him just so I wouldn't have to put up with his lunatic ranting and raving anymore.

I had no idea that one of Superman's rather large arsenal of abilities included a magical compass/radar that let him know whenever Lois Lane was in danger so he can rescue her for the millionth time.

Not even Wonder Woman's lasso could compel me to enjoy the movie, and the movie's portrayal of journalism was simply preposterous.

I can't think of a superhero movie that has ever made me feel this sleepy. Scratch that. I don't think I have ever watched a movie that made me feel sleepy. And I have seen my fair share of terrible superhero movies.

Zack Snyder, please just let other people handle future DC superhero movies in the future. Seriously Warner Brothers, what were you thinking handing the reins to the DC Universe to him?

2 out of 5 stars and I feel that I am being very generous.

Zootopia Short Movie Review

Beautifully filmed with gorgeous visuals and a highly entertaining zippy storyline with a timely inclusive theme about diversity that is neither cloying nor preachy, Zootopia is a must-watch for both kids and adults alike.

4 and a half stars out of 5 stars for me.