Into the Sunday Rabbit Hole...

That's one freakin' big rabbit!
















Jeep organized a BBQ in Golden Gate Park by the Flower Conservatory for Academy of Art students and alumni. As you can see, this is not the Flower Conservatory. Despite a lovely mapped with arrows, I could not find the cookout area and since Jeep hadn't arrived yet, I went for a stroll in the park.










































































Here is the new De Young Museum still under construction. Those mounds on top are part of their organic building. The roof is a giant garden/lawn. Building is looking to be pretty cool.
















So finally I arrive. The area was hidden inside a grove! It was certainly easy to spot with all the people around it.
















Fishballs and a pretty good chili paste with some vegetables.
















Due to the "Thai-ness" of our organizers, this would be a Thai BBQ with plenty of skewered goods. Not all recipes were Thai but let's just pretend... Got stuck on grill duty. I must say, I LOVE going to BBQs where I don't have to lay a finger on the grill. Sit back, socialize, and eat. Mike?
















Here is a devious Thai game. Can you guess the rules? It's like regular "pass the soccer ball" but if you deliver a bad pass or botch a good pass you get sent into the middle. Not so bad? Well another way to keep yourself from getting sent into the middle is to kick the ball into said person. And there is no rule against how hard you kick the ball. Just please don't kick that person.
































Not surprised Nae Nae volunteered to play.
































































Afterwards, I went to try and catch up with my coworker Ed (above is Eddy, not Ed) who was having a birthday dinner for his girlfriend Daphne at the Melt Cafe in North Beach. I would eventually make it up there but only after they had all finished eating. Jimmybird was at the cafe DJing and rounding up a healthy new group of fans as his new wave offerings really appeal to Ed's friends. Be there to enjoy the joy. Next Friday.
















No having just knoshed all day on skewers, I met up with Casey and Akiha who also arrived late to go foraging. Da Flora would give us the big ole DENIED. Closed on a Sunday? =P That will be for later...
















Anyways, next on the agenda. Guess who got to go see DAVE CHAPPELLE!!! The answer sadly is not me. We waited in the quickly dubbed "Crapshoot" line for 30 minutes but were eventually turned away.





















Foraging part 2. Casey had been to this place called Caffe Sport in the area that he wanted to go to. OK. My Da Flora planned wasn't happening so who am I to argue.





















The decor was... insane? I kind of likened it to the TGIFridays of Italy. Or rather Italian America.
















Which was exactly the style of cooking. Here is a pesto dish which had a decent taste of the pesto. That is until the copious amounts of garlic kicked in. Enough garlic in my dish to make Deda cry just reading about it. Don't get me wrong. Garlic great. I think it adds some flavor but when there is so much I can't taste the rest of the dish? I'll just say too much for my blood. I wonder if you can order dishes sans garlic?
















Big ole plate of mussels served in a cremey white sauce. Not so bad. Except for the copious amounts of garlic.
















Eggplant Parmesan. With copious amounts of garlic. I would say the food was also a bit overpriced. It was supposed to be a "family style" restaurant but the portions were pretty tame. Maybe a 1.33-1.5 normal the amount, but nothing so much one hungry Asian man could wax. So $18-24 a dish? They must be charging extra for all the garlic. If they'd serve the food without the garlic, I could be convinced to try it again but with so many dining options in North Beach, that will probably be unlikely. Company was great however!

Afterwards, I wandered into a Gelato place where we ran into an old acquaintance of me and Casey's whom we had worked with on Casey's game project in our senior year at the Academy of Art College. That had to be a run-on sentence. Anyways, it was fun catching up. And eating free gelato! Gelato tastes so much better when it's free. Plus I could taste the pistachios in their pistachio gelato so that's a plus.