Family Kitchen Roadtrip - Matterhorn and Alembic Bar in San Francisco

For a little trip outside of our family kitchens, here is a look at our recent tour of San Francisco, where we ate, drank, played with kitties, and repeated the process over three days!

We kicked off the weekend with a fondue dinner at Matterhorn, a Swiss restaurant near my house. The smoked cheese fondue was pretty good, but the star of the night was the steak fondue in oil - with six different types of dipping sauces, no less. The appetizer dishes that came with the fondue were really refreshing - especially the baby artichoke salad with lemon zest. We lingered over the fondue pots and drank some really good, reasonably priced wine.

The next day we went to one of my favorite places to hang out, Alembic Bar in Haight Ashbury. They have wonderful handcrafted old fashioned drinks and a very eclectic menu. We ordered just about every offal that they had on the menu that night, much to the horror of the vegan diner who was sitting next to us on what seemed like her first date.

As we ordered a raw calamari salad to start and followed it by baked bone marrow, roasted madallions of beef tongue, oysters, and house-made corn nuts (memories of 7th grade beckons), we overhear the vegan diner saying to her date, "Bone marrow? Who would think of such a disgusting thing to put on the menu?"

Ah. Well, Amy says you can't trust a vegetarian. I don't even want to know what she would say about vegans.

While the vegan and her date dined on olives and nuts, Amy's oysters arrived fresh on the half shell.


Then the waiter delivered the magnificant baked bone marrow with toasted bread - I didn't catch the look on the vegan diner's face as I was busy spreading marrow on the bread anyway. The marrow is flavored with capers, parsley, and roasted garlic. You spread it over toasted artisan bread. The texture is soft, buttery, fresh, and rich.


I suppose this must have looked pretty scary to a vegan - after all it is a big bone cut lengthwise, probably requiring a band saw. Whatever. It was delicious!