Millennium Restaurant then Bourbon & Branch, San Francisco

In our first full day in San Francisco, Funk and I walked the city from top to bottom…and then top again, back down to bottom, top, bottom, on and on. The hills in that city are INSANE! We had reservations at Millennium Restaurant, which was about 25 blocks from where we were at Fisherman’s Wharf. We decided to walk to the restaurant to work up our appetite. Along the way, we realized we were standing at the bottom of Lombard Street, which is known as the crookedest, most winding street in the world. Oh yeah, it’s also straight up hill. Not wanting to pass up a prime tourist attraction, we decided to walk (straight) up Lombard Street for a view of the city.

With burning buns of steel, we had 15 or so more blocks to go til Millennium. When we arrived, we were both famished and exhausted. And three hours early for our dinner reservation (whoopsies looked at my watch wrong!). Fortunately the hostess offered us a spot at the bar for the full dinner menu. As pretty as the restaurant dining was, bar-eating was a great way for us to chat with the bartenders who knew the area, and diners next to us who used to live near our neighborhood in Boston!
Millennium is a restaurant known for vegetarian, healthy, and environmentally friendly foods. Millennium strives “to make vegetarian dining fun and exciting.” And they do!

We started off with some fresh bread and a lentil spread. This spread was like hummus and I tasted some Indian spices. Funk and I bypassed the prix-fixed menu (which looked delicious by the way) for a single course meal: Spring Vegetable Cilantro Coconut Curry for Funk and Black Pepper & Rosemary Glazed Tempeh for me. Funk’s dish included a kaffir lime leaf & jasmine rice cake, sauté of snap peas, bok choy, shiitake mushrooms & sunchokes, lemongrass tofu, ginger-cucumber pickle, spicy peanut & shallot sambal. The rice cake was not like a diet-food styrophome textured rice cake, but more like tender rice held together, a little sticky, in the form of a patty. The rice was chewy and satisfying. My dish included creamy roasted garlic polenta, toasted almonds, port & morel mushroom soubise, and string beans (listed on the menu was seared fennel & broccoli di cicco, and marinated baby artichokes) alongside some of the softest and most flavorful tempeh I have ever had. I love how polenta can be cooked in many different ways. The night before at Greens I had it grilled in slices, while tonight it was more of a creamy mashed potato consistency. Both fantastic! We sipped on some yummy cocktails as well.

The bartender told us about a nearby bar that used to be a speakeasy called Bourbon & Branch.
He said there were two doors (unmarked) – to get in one, you’d need the password! Obviously, we didn’t know the password, but were able to slip right in. The bar was dark and secretive with bartenders wearing outfits similar to those worn during the prohibition days. The hostess told us we could go to a back room and pointed to a wall. I thought maybe she had had one too many cocktails, until she slid open the wall to reveal another room! It was so neat, and I felt like we were taken back in time to the 20s.

All in all, a delicious Saturday night in San Francisco.