Chocolate Emoticon

I had lunch last week at Café de la Presse in San Francisco with my friend NamasteNancy.

Her company was fun and full of information about the art we were to enjoy at 49 and 77 Geary. The food was delicious - thin, crunchy tarte flambée with Serrano ham and some bitter little fresh greens for starters, then a little round artichoke, fresh tomato and yummystuff tartelette thingy with the lightest, butteriest crust I've ever, ever experienced (sorry, I can't recall the name - it was one of the daily specials).

The surroundings are lots of fun with pricey French-language magazines and newspapers to browse. The service was brusque but excellent and our waiter was no dummy; when he came to ask if we wanted coffee, he brought along a heaping plateful of these little chocolate macarons as incentive to stay and sip. It worked. We sipped, we chatted, we crunched our way through to the soft interiors and licked up every crumb, both of us leaving with smiley faces not unlike this chocolate emoticon.