Refreshed Anyway

You'd be surprised at how much fun a middle-aged couple can have showing their godson around the Ferry Building in San Francisco. My Fairy Godson is up from LA for a visit - he quit his job recently (yes, brave in this economy, but he knows when enough is enough) so he is able to spend a happy ten days with us.

We rode the ferry across from Larkspur Landing to the Ferry Building on a gloriously warm day (except just in front of the Golden Gate, where the wind whipped the waves and chilled the air), just for fun. We stayed topside all the way across and looked for seals, seabirds, scenery and wind surfers.

We could have chosen to eat daintily at Boulette's Larder, or Orientally at the tea house that serves great dim sum, or fashionably at the Slanted Door but we were in an American mood, it being the Fourth of July weekend.

We arrived just in time for lunch so stopped quickly at what would in another time have been called "Taylor's Refresher" but which has now changed to Gott's Roadside. If you've ever driven up the Napa Valley (and who hasn't?), you surely noticed on the west side of the street the long lines of people waiting patiently to put in their orders at Taylor's - it has been an institution there for years. It changed hands and names fairly recently and a new locations opened in the Oxbow Market in Napa as well as at the Ferry Building.

It's still good chow, with a popular downscale menu of burgers and dogs, salads and sandwiches, but made with decidedly upscale ingredients. This is my hot dog, 100% grass fed yadda yadda, artfully buried in mustard, ketchup and relish, along with the onion rings My Beloved ordered and a coffee shake. They take your order in a semi-chaotic atmosphere and give you one of those little electronic devices that call you with flashing lights and attention-getting vibration when your order is ready - theirs are marked "Come and Gott It" on the top. I'm not making this up.

The food all around was quite good - burgers, fries, dogs, rings - it was all well made and well cooked. If my dog was a little too buried in condiments, it was easy enough to scrape off a pound or so of the extra. No problem.

Thus refreshed, at the used-to-be Refresher, we sallied forth to drool over the mushroom selection, the cheese, wine and meat shops, and the satellite store of the Heath Ceramics works. I'm still dreaming of the wide blue-green bowl there.