Valencia is a humming thoroughfare teeming with restaurants, bars, vintage stores, galleries, furniture vendors, shops hawking expensive curiosities, construction projects, pigeons, and one small, loud street performer with a bright blue guitar. I don't know what the street was like in the 90s, but it's changed remarkably since I arrived just seven years ago. The blocks have built up, becoming denser. Spaces have changed hands, but fewer proprietors without public relations teams still hold court over the bike lanes, shimmering cars, and busy pedestrian paths. Notably, many restaurants have closed, and many new ones have taken their place. The climate brims with potential, yet it's simultaneously harsh: with so many eating options tangling in such close proximity, survivors must stake out unique corners of the market -- or place a premium on a convenience they provide. Ironically, every Indian restaurant on Valencia -- unless I'm forgetting one down by the 16th Street corridor I tend to avoid -- sits clustered around the street's intersection with 21st. When I first came to town and lived up on Mission, near 26th, a New Orleans-esque restaurant called Le Krewe was installed in the space Dosa currently inhabits. Once I walked by on a toasty September afternoon. The sweaty host was planted on the sidewalk, handing out piping-hot gumbo samples, visibly happy to be removed from the maelstrom of silly fake trees and dangling beads inside his restaurant. While I knew nothing of the space's history -- the fact that many significantly better restaurants had failed there in spite of the desirable location -- I nibbled a particularly tasteless morsel, paused to peer briefly at the menu pasted on the door, and realized immediately the place had no chance of success.

After Le Krewe, a wretched Italian joint called Spiazzino moved in, followed closely by Dosa, which seems to have handily broken whatever dark spell had caused the carousel of doomed ventures to spin for so long. I'm not merely invoking Halloween's sallow after-glow. The notion of a real curse was half-jokingly bandied about a Chowhound board seven years ago. If some great chef's ghost, vengeful in the wake of his ancient restaurant's untimely demise, meddled with the revolving residents of 995 Valencia, the curse was piddling compared to the dastardly pox enveloping the 1100 block of Valencia, further up, on the Noe Valley side, between 22nd and 23rd.

That strip has been gutted like a fish. More crowbars swing behind the block's entrances than whisks and knives. Until 2006, Saigon Saigon occupied the large space adjacent to Lucca's parking lot. The food -- decent Vietnamese -- perked up a part of town lacking in lemongrass, but until very recently, through haphazard strips of lumber across the front facade, a squatter's paradise was visible within. Currently, its "For Rent" sign matches the one on the door of the old Watergate space. In 2003, when I moved into a building on the block, my apartment -- a massive converted one bedroom with a slanted floor and dirty beige carpets -- was positioned directly above the kitchen of that good French-Asian fusion restaurant. Almost immediately, Watergate moved to Nob Hill, where it later expired. The very solid Watercress took over the space yet closed three years later. I'm not sure what came next -- the much-maligned Senses or the endearingly clueless Janitzi with its convoluted "cuisine of the Americas" -- but currently the space is for rent. With walls that felt no further apart than my outstretched arms, Caffe Ponte Vecchio was a doll-sized trattoria. The food, especially the S.F. Weekly-approved lasagne, was tasty enough, but the charming atmosphere (lots of candles, silent soccer on the television) kept the tables tight with customers -- until the Tuscan proprietor closed up shop and moved to Florida, purportedly to spend more time with his mother. Bistro Annex came next and collapsed after a few years.

Aside from Lucca, the esteemed Italian grocery on the corner, the Columbian restaurant El Majahual has been the block's only survivor -- though I've never seen more than a few people in there at a time.

I left my apartment on the 1100 block in 2004, due in some small part to an increasingly fragile neighborly relationship with the social worker who lived upstairs. He'd blast James Taylor at high volume yet charge down the stairs screaming and purple-faced if my roommate and I had a few friends over for dinner. Even watching television was risky. The landlord was a character but not any slimier than most I've met. Something would break -- the sink disposal, a faucet -- and he'd figure out a temporarily satisfactory method of repairing it swiftly and inexpensively. It would break again and the process would start over. I see parallels in the state of the block's restaurants. If restaurants unworthy of the prime location routinely open and sputter, diners expect less. Each weak new attempt feels like a band-aid on a deep wound.

Maybe that's why the owners of Zaytoon have taken two years to renovate the Cafe Ponte Vecchio space; they're waiting to open once people have had time to clear their heads of negative associations with the block's run of failures. According to its website, Zaytoon will sell falafel sandwiches and shawerma wraps. For now, the interior -- an expanse of shiny pea-green tile -- is visible, nearly ready for action. As much as I like falafel and shawerma, and feel that, with Ali Baba's teetering towards major mediocrity for the past five years, and Old Jerusalem being more conducive to dining in, room exists for a newcomer to the genre to make a mark on the neighborhood, I fear Zaytoon won't succeed -- if only because of its strange and sickly color scheme. I hope I'm proven wrong.

My knowledge of the 1100 block is, of course, quite limited. I've only lived in San Francisco for seven years. My brief history is but one possible narrative of a discrete period of time situated around a small stretch of sidewalk many others know better. My difficult upstairs neighbor had rented his apartment for eleven years by the time I showed up. He's probably still there, and has seen many more restaurants come and go.

The cycle of trumpeted launches, seasonal specials, and eventual shutters spur your memory. The people I saw a lot of back when the Ponte Vecchio space belonged to Pont Vecchio aren't, in large part, the same people I see now. I recall the only truly good dinner I had there, before I practically lived next door. My first San Francisco roommate, a college friend, and I were celebrating his birthday. He'd been through a break-up; we were new arrivals, without a lot of friends, eating ravioli and swilling Chianti. There was something funny and a little lonely about a platonic, dude-ly supper for two at Ponte Vecchio, a place with a serious romantic pretense. The moment crystallized the start of a new era. College was over; there were fewer people around to help us celebrate the landmarks in our lives; going out for dinner was a good time, and while we were earning enough money to do so comfortably, there was still a whiff of irony about it, like we were play-acting. While I went there once or twice during the year I lived next door, by the time it closed just three years after that inaugural meal, I'd almost forgotten it ever existed. I was comfortable in the City. My first roommate had moved to New York. I was a few years into a serious relationship. I was leaving my second post-college job and searching aimlessly for the third, and I'd lived at other apartments and houses scattered across various parts of the neighborhood -- on short blocks with their own long stories.

What does your food look like before it gets to you? I'm not talking about shady factory-farming practices or the difference between the sunny farm on that bag of spinach versus the vast monocropped acreage of the Central Valley. No, I'm talking about something more basic: how well do you do know how familiar foods grow? Close your eyes, and imagine a field growing okra, kiwi, peanuts, or rhubarb: what do you see?

Last year, visiting the Post Familie winery in northwest Arkansas, I spied what I thought were tall, pretty flowers growing among the beans and tomatoes in the family garden. Up close, those six-foot-tall flowering stalks turned out to okra plants, with the sharply pointed pods curving back behind the wide petals. I didn't know until I became an apprentice at UCSC's Farm & Garden program that kiwis were harvested in the winter from thick, heavy vines, trellised like grapes. Or that asparagus spears push straight out of the bare ground, later unfurling into lacy, fernlike fronds that look like fairy-sized Christmas trees dappled with red berries.

You never know when a little bit of education will take you by surprise. I was taking a Sunday-afternoon stroll along Cortland Street, looking forward to the April 9 opening of Blue Elephant Thai in the old Tinderbox space, admiring Heartfelt's cute aprons and vintage glassware ("have a lemonade party!" suggested a cheery sign) and contemplating a daytime cocktail down in the secret garden of Wild Side West, only to be overtaken by a yen for Fiat Majani chocolates. When I lived in Bologna, I used to go around the corner to buy these suave hazelnutty squares, a specialty of the city; now, on the other side of another continent, they're still available around the corner, at Avedano's Holly Park Market.

Butchery is Avedano's reason for living (whole carcasses broken down weekly, the latest issue of Meatpaper on display, "I Love You More than Bacon" buttons by the register) but they're pretty savvy at filling out the menu with Italian chocolates, fresh baguettes, eggs from Soul Food Farm's happy hens, even a few baskets of well-polished potatoes and lemons.

But what were these fuzzy oval things in a basket above the baby artichokes? They looked like green almonds (but too skinny) or mutant edamame (only too chubby). Green garbanzos, the sign read, $6/lb, and it struck me that never before had I seen garbanzo beans (a.k.a. chickpeas) in their fresh, unprocessed state, before they'd been rattled into cans or dried to wrinkled golden bullets.

Had I lived in Mexico, though, I'd know these as guasana, a popular and very common snack, with a flavor somewhere between fava beans and green peas, with perhaps just a hint of down-South boiled peanut. Like edamame, they're typically steamed in the pod, then sucked out one bean at a time. According to Chowhound posters in Jalisco and Guanajuato, home cooks buy huge bunches of the whole plant, then strip the pods from the stems before steaming them in salted water until bright green and tender. Street vendors steam the pods over braziers and sell them by the bag, the outsides sprinkled with lime, chili, and salt. Andy Griffin of Mariquita Farm wrote a rueful journal entry a few years ago about his farm foreman's attempt to grow (and sell) fresh garbanzos to relocated Jaliscans expecting to pay Mexican prices for a California crop.

Mark Benedetto, a private vegan chef in San Francisco, identified my green handful without even needed to pop a pod. Seems he's been getting his green garbanzos, at $2/lb, from the Asian market at 22nd Avenue and Irving Street in the Sunset. He treats them like favas, nipping them from their pods, then steaming in lightly salted water. Once they'd lost their slightly chalky rawness, he tosses them in a pan with olive oil and a little minced garlic, rolling them around over medium heat until the garlic is just beginning to golden. Then, a quick buzz in the processor to a chunky puree, a little salt, pepper, and lemon juice--"like hummus without the tahini," as he describes it--and he's got a gorgeous spring-green mash ready to be spread on warmed pita bread.

Another idea, if you have a lot? Grind them to make falafel instead of the usual soaked-but-raw dried beans. Since only the outside of the balls fry (the insides steam), they'll keep a lot of their fresh, green-pea flavor.

Before we left for Scotland, we heard many warnings about the horrors of Scottish and British food. People seem very keen on laughing at haggis and detailing horrible meals they’ve had or heard about in the UK (Spotted Dick anyone?). Well, I'm here to tell you that Scotland has some truly wonderful food. But, like anywhere else, it' usually found in restaurants and inns that are run by discerning folk who like to purchase quality ingredients, often locally.

Although restaurants that offer well-prepared dishes from organic and/or local ingredients can be difficult to find once you leave your home turf, there are a few wonderful online sites that will do some of the groundwork for you. I spent some time on both TripAdvisor and Chowhound before we left town, and it paid off. The reviews on TripAdvisor led me to some great country inns with fantastic food, and Chowhound helped me find a restaurant or two in Edinburgh that we really loved. We also had the benefit of getting some sound advice from friends in the know -- which is always the best option if you have it.

So here are some of the excellent places we found with the help of our fellow posters at TripAdvisor and Chowhound, as well as our beloved friends. We were even lucky enough to stumble upon one by ourselves. These culinary gems are definitely worth looking up if you’re traveling to Scotland. I would also love to hear about other sites people use to find great restaurants or inns while traveling.

The Barley Bree Restaurant with Rooms, just outside Crieff and about an hour north of Edinburgh. (Found using TripAdvisor) -- This lovely inn has comfortable beds and a very nice host, Fabrice, who also happens to be a French chef. Fabrice makes everything from scratch, including the bread, and seeks out fresh local produce and meats. For dinner, he served one of the loveliest butternut squash soups I have ever had. It was velvety and creamy without being overly so. He also added slivers of some pickled ginger, which added a bit of spiciness. It was truly great.

This inn also offered the finest breakfast we had in Scotland. It was a sort of Scottish Breakfast/French petit dejeuner that started with yogurts, homemade stewed prunes, grapefruit slices, nuts and porridge, and finished with eggs, homemade sausage, back bacon, haggis (a lovely version created specially for the inn by a local butcher), roasted tomatoes and mushrooms. If you’re going to The Trossachs, this is definitely a great place to stay.

Heatherfield House, in Oban on the western coast about an hour outside Glasgow. (Found using TripAdvisor) -- Heatherfield House is run by Gary and Sue, a very nice British couple. One of the reasons I chose Heatherfield is because they have their own chickens and use their eggs for their complimentary breakfasts. So, after a fantastic night’s sleep in the extremely comfortable beds and a shower in the nicest bathroom we saw in Scotland, we sat down to a full Scottish breakfast. We started with berries, yogurts, muesli, and English and Scottish cheeses, before digging into the main portion of the eggy meal. I cannot stress enough how perfect the eggs are at Heatherfield. They are laid either the morning they are served, or the morning before, and the freshness of flavor and texture prove it. The homemade sausage (made at the inn) and back bacon were also fantastic. The dish was also served with blood pudding, and from what I can tell, it was a great version of this dish. I, for one, found that I am not a blood pudding fan, however. No matter how nicely it was made and seasoned, in the end, I can barely suck on a cut finger, let alone eat something that was essentially blood and suet in a casing. After breakfast, my daughters frolicked in the garden while the chickens pecked at worms in the wet dirt. Gary and his wife were very gracious hosts. It was really a perfect place to stay.

The George Hotel, in Inveraray about 30 minutes outside Glasgow. (Found using TripAdvisor) -- A small hotel run by the same family for the last couple of hundred years, this inn is nicely updated and has the quintessential Scottish pub on the main floor. The dining room is also nice, but as kids weren’t allowed inside for dinner we ate in the pub. This was just fine with me; the pub kitchen offered the best fish and chips we had on our entire trip. The full Scottish breakfast the next morning, which is included with a night's stay, wasn’t nearly in the same league as Barley Bree or Heatherfield House, but I think at that point we were spoiled. Our room, however, was beautiful -- complete with a whirlpool bathtub and view of Loch Awe.

Oink, in Edinburgh. (Discovered on a fluke while walking by) -- Oink is a new restaurant on Victoria Street in Edinburgh’s Old Town district. Each morning the folks at Oink present an entire roasted pig in their front window, and by the end of the day, that pig is stripped clean. Oink offers sandwiches of pulled pork on white buns with crackling or without. I got one with the crackling, but wouldn’t do so again: it was so hard I thought it would crack my teeth. The pork, however, was beautifully cooked and very tasty, but I must admit that I was craving a vinegar and tomato-based Southern-BBQ sauce to go with it. When I asked if they had one, or at least some vinegar, they said that many Americans ask for it, but they instead had a “chili sauce.” Excited at the prospect of something resembling a Vietnamese or Thai chili paste, I instead found that their chili sauce was the equivalent of a jar of Picante salsa. Oh, well. The pork was still mighty fine.

The Mussel Inn, in Edinburgh’s New Town. (Found using Chowhound) -- If you like mussels, this is a great place to go. There is a constant parade of heaping pots of fresh local mussels going from the kitchen to various tables in this small restaurant. In addition to the mussels, I ordered some freshly-made pasta with mushrooms for my daughters, which was quite good, and some fresh scallops for me. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they offer the entire scallop -- not just the white meaty part Americans traditionally see, but also the roe, which is the coral-colored softer part not usually served here, despite its delicious flavor.

Urban Angel, in Edinburgh’s New Town. (Heard about from a friend) -- If I could bring any restaurant home with me, it would be this one. Urban Angel provides Fair Trade, Free Trade, organic, and local fare at a fairly affordable price. I loved the natural and organic ingredients we found in our soups, salads and sandwiches at lunch and hear they have a spectacular dinner as well. I had an incredible frisée salad with couscous, white beans, almonds, and chorizo, while my daughters stole my delicious cream of mushroom soup and homemade bread out from under my nose. I dream of a restaurant like this opening within walking distance of my house.

The restaurant list for the 7th Annual Dine About Town has been announced. Dine About Town (DAT) was designed seven years ago to allow customers to try out new restaurants around the city at a reasonable deal. Modeled after restaurant weeks in cities such as New York, DAT features a fixed price lunch and dinner at over 100 restaurants throughout San Francisco. This year, DAT will take place from January 15 - 31.

For a three-course, preset meal, you will pay $21.95 for lunch and $31.95 for dinner at any of the participating restaurants.

Food enthusiasts around the city make a sport out of trying to find the best deals and the best meals that can be had during Dine About Town. While restaurants will continue to be added to the DAT list until opening day on January 15, the current restaurant list features some participants that seem to be good deals or to have interesting menus:

Absinthe (lunch)
Aziza (dinner)
Bacar (dinner)
Big 4 (lunch/dinner)
One Market (lunch/dinner)
Sens (lunch/dinner)

Chowhounds warn of spending more on a DAT meal than you would normally spend at a restaurant for a comparable meal. Examples of this are Chou Chou, Scott Howard, 1550 Hyde and Le Charm -- many of which have year-round prix fixe meals for slightly less than the DAT price. An additional tip: when finding DAT deals, check out the actual prix fixe menu. Some restaurants relegate their most boring, pedestrian dishes to the DAT menu, unfortunately.

The rules of Dine About Town:

* You must pay with Visa.
* You must tell the server that you'd like the Dine About Town deal when you arrive.
* The best DAT deals fill up quickly so make a reservation.
* All meals are preset and three courses.

Before I was a food blogger, I was a Chowhound. This occurred out of necessity when I first moved to the Bay Area over seven years ago. I had come from Southern California -- a place where I had lived my whole life and where I knew numerous hole-in-the-wall, amazing restaurants. Once I got here, I had bad meal after bad meal. Add the fact that I was homesick and it was June and like 10 degrees Fahrenheit out, and you may begin to understand my despair.

Then there was The Day Of The Two Bad Meals. I'd already had a bad lunch and for dinner my friend Tricia and I decided to eat close to our new Richmond District apartment. I burst into tears as I tried to eat horrible spaghetti, and vowed that I had to find a better way. I had learned that even though there are some really fantastic restaurants in San Francisco, there are also some really vile restaurants out there -- and when you're new it can sometimes be a minefield.

So I found Chowhound. And that was the beginning of delicious meal after delicious meal. Seven years later, I have a love-hate relationship with Chowhound, but I will always be grateful to the members of the boards for showing me the ropes when I was still getting my bearings in this new town.

Early on, we had a lot of "Chowdowns" where members of the community would gather to have a meal at a restaurant. There were certain rules to these events, and one of them had to do with assigning one person to transcribe the menu for the boards. I think because he hated being the transcriber, Derek (now chowfun_derek on the boards) often plied us with egg tarts from Golden Gate Bakery. He'd pick them up from the bakery right before our Chinatown meals and we would eat them still warm. We always let him off the hook for the transcription -- in fact I think that gift of the egg tarts let him get away with a lot.

Derek once told me that he discovered Golden Gate Bakery on his first day in San Francisco in 1970. "I had my suitcases and was walking down Grant, and I spied a long line and decided to just get in it to see what everyone was buying." It was the first bite of food he ate in San Francisco, and he now uses it as a "culinary touchstone" in the city.

Golden Gate Bakery is a very small bakery on Grant Avenue in Chinatown. They have several sweet and savory items, and are famous for their holiday moon cakes, though I have to admit that I only have eyes for their macaroons and their egg tart -- a light, flaky pastry tart that is filled with a warm, sweet, eggy custard. The pastry is really the star of this hand held delight, and when it's filled with egg custard that is slightly firm and not overly sweet you bite into a delicious treat. The macaroons are on the small side, very crunchy on the outside, and very basic with delicious coconut filling. They're my favorite in the city.

Going to Golden Gate Bakery is an experience. I went there on Saturday night and got in line with the throngs. There were several tourists behind me who didn't understand the process. "I think that they're confused," said one tourist, referring to the many employees who were standing around seemingly doing nothing while customers behind the counter just stood and waited. "No, they're waiting for the new batch to come out," I explained, feeling a bit like I was trying to explain what Willy Wonka was doing in his Chocolate Factory. One employee busied herself by preparing a mound of pink boxes. "I think that she probably has enough," grumbled the tourist. I smiled to myself, knowing that all those boxes would be filled very soon. Sure enough, several trays of egg tarts came out at once and the pink pastry boxes were quickly filled.

The line always snakes out the door and when you finally make it inside, a consistent skit ensues. If the item that you want is available, then you're in and out in a couple of minutes. More likely, however, is that your item won't be available. Then you call out your order, and they use a walkie-talkie to talk to the kitchen. There's lots of conversation back and forth before the woman finally tells you how long it will be. I've waited up to 20 minutes for egg tarts to come out of the oven. There's no cooling period -- if you get them right out of the oven, they will be inedibly hot for a few minutes. If you order several, the ladies will give you the egg tarts in a pink box that is vented for the steam.

There was recently a mini-crisis on the Chowhound boards, as Golden Gate Bakery closed inexplicably. When it was finally reported that the pastry maker had died, many speculated and wondered whether we had seen the end of the amazing egg tart. The store was closed for over a month, and the re-opening was delayed several times. "What I really hope they are doing is going back to their homeland ... to find a replacement egg tart chef who can replicate that signature flakey (sic) crust/exterior." said one person on the boards. Happily, the bakery re-opened last week and it's as good as it's always been.

If you're ever in Chinatown and aren't in a hurry, join the longest line on Grant Avenue to find your bliss. If you're going to Chinatown just to visit Golden Gate Bakery, call ahead first. They take a month off each summer, and are sometimes closed on random days.

Golden Gate Bakery
1029 Grant Ave (at Pacific)
415-781-2627

More on Golden Gate Bakery:
The Bunrabs on Golden Gate Bakery
Culinary Muse muses about the egg tarts