San Francisco: La Boulange

When I first went to San Francisco a couple of years ago, a stumbled upon a bakery in the Cole Valley area called La Boulange. I was mesmerized by the desserts on display: croissants, macarons, quiches, tarts, breads... Then I tried the Fantastic French Toast and I knew I'd be eating at La Boulange again!

Skip to the present, and I have been to San Francisco two more times and I have eaten at La Boulange several more times. It turns out La Boulange is a local chain with stores all over the city. This past month I was staying only a block away from a location on Sutter Street in downtown. It was hard to resist its pull, so I went there several times over three weeks. The first time I had the French toast that I love so much. It's not a simple French toast! It somehow has a layer of custard on the bottom, and then the custard-soaked toast. It tastes like eating creme brulee in a cake form. How can you not love that? :) The toast itself is fluffy inside, but crispy on the outside. And it's served with fresh fruit. If I was ever on that show "Best Thing I Ever Ate," I would talk about this French toast :)

This year I decided to branch out and try some of the non-dessert things at La Boulange. They also make sandwiches using bread made in-house. I've had the hummus sandwich and the smoked salmon sandwich, both with a side of quinoa salad. Both of them were delicious. The hummus sandwich was topped with avocados and cucumbers, so overall it had a very refreshing taste. It would have been perfect for a warm summer day, but it tasted just as great on a cool fall morning :) The sprouts were too bitter for my taste, but I pushed them off the sandwich and ate them with the quinoa to cancel out the bitterness. As to the quinoa salad, it was too salty both times I had it :( Well, at least I got a good amount of fiber and protein from it...

The salmon sandwich came with cucumbers, creme fraiche and capers. The capers were well-washed and weren't too briny. I need to wash my capers when I cook with them that well, haha ;) Other than that, it was a solid sandwich with nothing too special about it, but I enjoyed every single bite.

My last time at La Boulange I ordered half of the goat cheese sandwich and a cup of French onion soup. The sandwich was very disappointing. It barely had any cheese on it. And it was toasted to the point where the bread was burned and the cheese was completely dried out. I hope this mispreparation is not the norm for this sandwich. Even the portobello and the roasted red peppers couldn't rescue the sandwich. The soup, on the other hand, saved the meal. This was actually my very first time having French onion soup, so I have nothing to compare it to, but I liked the one at La Boulange. The onions were caramelized well and sweet. And there was a crouton in the cup that nicely mopped up all the flavors.

I've had so many good experiences at La Boulange that I'm willing to overlook this last negative one. At the end I want to mention that all of the prepackaged desserts are also amazing. I've tried pretty much all types of shortbread cookies. Surprisingly, I'm not a huge fan of the chocolate ones, but love all the others. La Boulange is also known for their French-style macarons. They are always fresh and have the perfect texture. Now they even have a delicious pumpkin macaron :) They also sell so-call San Francisco-style macarons, which are single cookies of almond-hazelnut flour; these might be my favorites so far. Finally, the almond-chocolate croissants are a must-have. Honestly, I wish I could have every single meal at La Boulange, I love it that much!

Along the Pacific coast

California might be best known for its cities like LA and San Francisco, but the culture of the state is best experienced in the small towns dotting the coast. They can be located on either precariously steep hills or on quiet bays, but they all have the same atmosphere. Sea life and organic local food are everywhere. Even popular tourist attraction like Monterey and Carmel-by-the-Sea still manage to retain their original California style. However, finding a place to eat in places where tourists need a quick and rich meal can prove to be hard.

That was the case again in Monterey. If you stay in the downtown area (Canary Row), which I had to do, all of your options are Italian restaurants or places like Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. So what should a person do when they want good seafood that's not slathered with Alfredo sause? The answer, surprisingly, is eat at the C Restaurant at the InterContinental hotel in downtown Monterey. It was located right at the bay, so I had a good view of the open ocean from my table. Plus, it was one of the few places where I didn't have to wait for a table. To start my meal, I was brought complementary warm rosemary bread and goat cheese butter. The bread was amazing. I love any type of warm bread, but the aroma from the rosemary made it so much better. I was also curious about the goat cheese butter. Was it supposed to taste like goat cheese? Sadly, it didn't. It tasted like regular butter to me.

For my brunch, I was trying to decide between two dishes with seafood: shrimp frittata and crab huevos rancheros. I finally decided to get the frittata, partly because it had that goat cheese that the butter made me crave. I was quite disappointed in the frittata. First, it didn't have as much shrimp as I was hoping it would. In addition, it came with a topping of chip strips. I assume they were house-made, but the strips tasted just like Lay's chips. On the bright side, the goat cheese had lemon zest in it and gave the whole dish a fresh citrus tang.

Later that day, we arrived in Carmel-by-the-Sea. Unlike Monterey, there was a large selection of restaurants that seemed nice in terms of both food and ambiance. My problem here, though, was that we didn't have much time. I ended up eating in a French bakery because the desserts at the counter looked too enticing to resist. I again was started off with warm bread, but this time it was simple white bread. The butter was not any different than butter you can get from a grocery store. Thankfully, I gad ordered the baked Brie with red onion and balsamic vinegar marinade which I used to pair with the good bread. The marinade was sweet and acidic at the same time. It had a unique taste that I really liked and that went great with the plain bread. The Brie was also good, but I think I prefer it fresh, not baked. As I mentioned, the desserts looked great, so I got a coconut creme pie to go (not pictured). It contained a thin custard layer, a much thicker meringue layer, and a top layer of toasted coconut. It was really rich tasting, and a great indulgence at the end of my tour of the California central coast.


My goal for the day had been to get some great fresh seafood, hopefully caught close to where I was eating. At the end, I had just a few tiny shrimp in my frittata at lunch. I did enjoy what I ate, but my craving for seafood still remains to be sated.

Brunch the French way

French culture and cuisine seems to have a huge influence on San Francisco. There are countless of bakeries everywhere in town - from small neighborhood cafes to popular chains. Luckily, the majority of them serve delicious authentic food. The only bad thing is that I can't possibly try all the places I want to go to...

Well, the most obvious choice if you can go to only one bakery in San Francisco is La Boulange. It is a chain with several restaurants around the city, but the location I go to is the one in Cole Valley. This location offers typical bakery a-la-carte fare like croissants, quiches, turnovers and macarons, and it also has a made-to-order menu. I first tried La Boulange last year. On my last day there, I ordered the Fantastic French Toast. I was expecting a traditional French toast because nothing from the menu description suggests otherwise. But WOW! The French toast at La Boulange is seriously the best thing I have tasted in my life, at any restaurant, for any kind of meal. I couldn't go back there this year and taste it again.

So what makes the French toast so special? Well, it does comes in a round shape, but other than that it has a pretty much nondescript experience. But once you bite into it, you notice a flavor that's familiar, but yet it seems like it doesn't come from a traditional toast. After a little bit of thinking, you might realize that it tastes like creme brulee! Yes, that's right. And if you look carefully, you'll see that there is an egg custard layer beneath the toast itself. The combination of the creamy custard and the egg-soaked toast makes for a truly heavenly taste.

La Boulange is known for its macarons, which are supposedly the best macarons outside of France. I've tried several flavors so far, including chocolate, lemon, walnut, and raspberry mango (not pictured). They were fresh and did have just the perfect texture. However, the flavor wasn't as intense as I would have liked it to be. For example, I wish the lemon macarons were more lemony and that I could distinguish any kind of individual flavor rather than an overall fruity flavor in the mango raspberry macaron.

I'm a huge granola fan, so I also tried the granola at La Boulange (not pictured). I got mine with yogurt, which was the best part of the dish. It was very thick and sour, just like I like it. There are other items that I want to try, so I will definitely be going back there :)

Another French place that I had brunch at was La Terrasse at the Presidio park. The location of the restaurant was great. I had my brunch while looking at the Golden Gate Bridge on a sunny, warm day. I ordered the Brie, spinach and sun-dried tomatoes omelet, which was great. The cheese was perfectly melted, but not overpowering. There was a lot more spinach than I have seen in any omelet before, so I was able to get my daily serving of veggies :) My only disappointment is that the sun-dried tomatoes didn't stand out too much and were hard to find in the omelet.

You always wonder whether an international place here is as good as it would be in its country of origin. There were French people sitting close to me at both La Boulange and La Terrasse, and that to me is the best stamp of approval for a place.

Light French Food?

I really hate it when my plans fall through, like when Cashew and I couldn't go to Amuse because they're closed on Mondays. Of course, we had to go back. Interestingly, one night both of us wanted to eat something light, but we both wanted to go to Amuse. Well, when I think of French food, I usually think of decadent chocolate desserts, bread, butter and heavy sauces, but we decided to go there anyway and try our luck with the menu.

Lucky for us, they started us off with warm bread and butter. Warm bread is one of my favorite things in the world, even on a hot summer night. We enjoyed it so much, we had to ask for more of it. After so much bread, we were happy to order items only from the appetizer and salad menus. I have to admit though, some of their entrees did look tempting and I might try them some other time. Anyway, we settled on the goat cheese on a bed of tomatoes and their specialty salad for the night: avocado and crab meat. The avocado and crab salad was unexpected (but in a good way), made with real crab meat, and delicious. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the tomato salad. I guess I thought it would come up with diced fresh tomatoes. Instead, it consisted of crushed tomatoes with some cheese sprinkled on top of it. And honestly, the crushed tomatoes tasted like canned crushed tomatoes... It was very disappointing. I ended up spreading the tomatoes and cheese on the bread, which did make them more edible. (An aside: I actually love cooking with canned crushed tomatoes, but they are too bland to serve them raw...)

Finally Cashew and I got the obligatory French dish - escargot. They came in garlic and parsley butter, which I prefer to breaded escargot. I liked the melted butter, especially with the warm bread :) However, the escargot didn't seem very fresh, and were a little chewy.

Overall, I wasn't impressed with the food we got that night at Amuse. Additionally, the service wasn't the best. We had to wait for some items, and the waiters almost seemed rude. The only thing that redeemed the place was the bread, but this is something I can get at any good bakery...