I was so excited about the prospect to be able to eat California food again after having had to go without it for a year. Many of the places we went to on our two week trip were places I had heard or read about. The first one was Ella's in San Francisco. We went there the morning after arriving at the SFO airport the night before. It was pretty packed but we were able to get a spot at the bar, which turned out to be cool because we could watch the cooks put together meals in what seemed like nanoseconds. Lucky enough it was Sunday so we got the brunch menu, which has heartier items on it than the regular breakfast menu. I decided on the huevos rancheros despite the tantalizing menu item "fresh baked sticky bun" because I was craving Mexican food. It was quite delicious, but the portion was so big I couldn't finish it all.
In Sacramento we met up with a good friend of mine and went to try out a fairly new restaurant by the name of Hot Italian. We sat outside in their nice patio (see pic above). The Hot Italian specializes in pizza. Funny, now that I think of it, I don't remember seeing any "hot Italians" or any Italians whatsoever. Maybe they were in the kitchen. We tried the Trulli (figs, caramelized onions, gorgonzola dolce, arugula, and balsamic vinegar plus added prosciutto) and the Stella (prosciutto parma, mozzarella, crescenza cheese, mushroom medley plus added egg). Out of the two, the Trulli was my favorite, although both were good. I was surprised that I liked the egg on the pizza as I always shy away from meals that have an egg on top as it seems quite unnecessary to just plop an egg on a perfectly good dish. My only complaint about the pizza were that the toppings were quite sparse and my teeth were craving more to bite into.
We also tried two salads, the Canalis (mixed spring salad, genoa albacore tuna, cannellini beans, taggiasche olives, red onion, pecorino romano) and the Campioni (heirloom tomatoes and fior di latte cheese with butter lettuce, radicchio and arugula), the Canalis was clearly the winner as it had much more flavor.
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