boon's log 0306.02: Fine Dining

We were honored to be invited to one of our finest fine dining experience, so far. IL's ex-boss, who is also our good friend, in the States invited us over to the bay area 2 weekends ago (yeah, back-logged entry, again...) to dine with him and his wife-to-be at Michael Mina's located inside Westin San Francisco. Michael Mina is an internationally acclaimed chef, and has a few chain/restaurants opened across on the West Coast, but they say that the one in San Francisco is closest to his heart.

Well, it was indeed an excellent and exquisite experience. The food was great! And it's not just food - it is also art. You can really see the passion and the culinary skills expressed in creating the food. Well, I'm no food connoisseur, but it does not take that to really appreciate it and also the atmosphere played a part in making it a unique experience.

We had the Six-course Classics Tasting Menu. Food came in small portions, but they came in a variety of cooking styles and made with different ingredients - and part of the waiter's job was also to explain each and every dish (and sub-dish) to us... otherwise, we wouldn't know where to start and how to tackl the food. The whold dinner lasted about 3 hours. By the time we finished, it was almost midnight.

We spent the night in Hyatt and departed back on Sunday. We managed to get a room with view of the city (meaning sky-scrappers...). Here's a few of them...



View from Hyatt, San Francisco

After the dinner, I was joking with IL that I wonder what will happen if I asked the waiter for some tomato ketchup... :P

boon out...

P/S:
Oh by the way, while we were there we went to the Macy's at Union Square and saw this little vending machine in the food court area...


hi-tech vending machine

Looks like a normal vending machine, right? Well... NO! If you look closely (sorry for the poor resolution - it's my camera phone again... :)), you can almost make out what it is vending - on the top right 6 shelves, it's the iPod Shuffle while the top left 6 shelves are iPod Nanos and the bottom shelves are the Sony PSPs.

...

Yeah! In a vending machine?! Well, that is something that you don't see everyday (except, of course, if you are working in Macy's).

Well, imagine this, you are down in the lower ground having a pretzel with your family (or girlfriend, or whatever) and then you stroll along the corridor and suddenly feel the need to quench your thirst for portable-music (as opposed to the normal folks who suddenly feel like quenching their natural thirst due to dehydration...).

What do you do? What do you do? Gosh, thank goodness for iPod Vending Machines! Once again, technology has saved the day!

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