SF Day 5: Gnocchi and North Beach Pizza

Another rainy day in San Francisco did not dampen our adventurous spirit at lunchtime. On an earlier jaunt through North Beach, we had passed a restuarant that had the phrase "house of gnocchi" over the door. No one could remember the exact name though so we picked another italian place we knew the name of and met John there, luckily Figaro's, "house of gnocchi" was right across the street. We settled in to a fairly empty restuarant staffed by italians, the beautiful kind. We shared a Insalata Caprese and then our entree came. In a frozenmoment, that will now be mentioned every time we order gnocchi, John's Gnocchi Basilico came to the table, literally. The pretty italian waitress upended the entire bowl onto the table in front of him. When the replacment dish came we tucked in to some excellent gnocchi, all made fresh. One was a basil gnocchi in a creamy mushroom sauce, the other was a spinach gnocchi in a tomato sauce. We also shared a steaming bowls of mussels in a wine and cream sauce that had us asking for more bread to sop up the sauce.

We sent John back to work and wandered North Beach, stopping in at Stella's bakery for some almondina and almond with pine nuts. We wandered a little farther up Columbus to XOX Truffles. The only place I know of where you can get 20 chocolate truffles for $7! We got an assortment and since they all look alot alike, each one is a mystery bite sure to please those chocolate cravings.

We finished the evening off with watching Harry Potter and ordering in from North Beach Pizza while John had an evening out with some friends.