Lots of reasons you should come visit

The most fun thing about living in the bay area is all the cool stuff we get to go do when people come visit us. This weekend we got a visit from one of W's sisters, and we moved all over town making sure she had a quality visit. So we started Friday night at the Bachhus wine making club, Where there was a delicious tasting going on. The concept was pretty cool, you buy by the half barrel, they bottle up your goods and put a customized label on it. The wines they have vary in quality and character, but there were some very good ones. After wine, we made our way to Berkeley and chowed down on some Zachary's Pizza. We elected for a half Caesar, and a large Deep dish with sun dried tomatoes and salami. As usual it was worth the trip. Saturday we got up early (by our standards of course) and made the drive up to Napa. On the way through we noted that there was a sonic in american canyon, that might warrant a stop on the way home. Our first stop was at Mumm Napa, the official wine of Jason and W. The tastings there are reasonably priced for wines that we knew we loved, so we picked up a few on the way out, and made our way to some lunch. Travel/Foodie friend Steve recommended that we eat at Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen. I started with a mojito, and W had what is quite possibly the best bloody mary in the universe. For lunch I had a seared ahi tuna salad, W had an amazin "Adult" grilled cheese sandwich with fig jam, and Mel had a really wonderful curry chicken. We sprung for dessert too, havina a strawberry crisp, pineapple upside down cake and this wonderful lemon cake a la mode that was just incredible. Next we were off to Clos Du Val, but since we'd seen them along the way, we stopped at Folie A deux, and the Cosentino Winery. We do really like Folie A Deux's Menage A Trois wine, but the tasting room was charging above retail for it, and their other wines were only average. W discovered Cosentino long ago while waiting for a table at nearby Mustard's, so we stopped in specifically to grab a couple of bottle of their "The Zin" wine, and try some of the other delicious wines they had available to sample. We moved next to Clos Du Val, which wins the prize for prettiest setting, and their wines are spectacular. They could sell wine that good from the back of a truck and it would still be great. We made a final move to the Vintner's Collective, and tried some really good wine there too, but by then the triple digit temperatures were starting to weigh pretty heavily on our tasting team, and we decided to skip our final planned stop and start working our way home. We stopped at that sonic on the way back to get some junk food, and a delicious cherry lime aide. Some time during my stop at sonic I managed to drop my wallet, and didn't realize it was missing until Sunday when I went to work, but I'll get back to that. We came home tired and had leftover zachary's for dinner and crashed pretty hard. For the record I was the DD, tasting a lot more wine than I drank.... safety first! W and Mel went shopping on Sunday back in Berkeley for an Item we needed for a special event coming up this weekend (details to come after Saturday) I was supposed to join them to come check out the international food festival, but I was busy looking around the house for my wallet. Finally I called the last place I remembered having it, the Sonic in American Canyon. Turns out they had it in their safe, just waiting for me to come back and get it. We had some time to kill before dinner, so we drove back up there to get it. It turns out some jerk lifted the $20 I had in there, and tossed it in the garbage. Fortunately a car hop was nice enough to rescue it and turn it in. So if you eat at the Sonic in American Canyon, California; Tip Big! they deserve it. We drove directly back to San Francisco to grab dinner at our must bring restaurant, Tomasso's. The wait for a table was 45 minutes, so we had time to go see one of our favorite wine maker's new ventures, the Vin Club. We've been a fan of Vin Nostro wines for a few years now, and are glad we have a new place to go drink them whenever we feel like it. We got back to Tomasso's and got seated at a booth! We really enjoyed our dinner and had their always wonderful tiramisou for dessert, and finally tried the creme brulee, which is just as good.
Monday we went for the final bay area delight, a burger from In N Out. I'm trying not to think about the number of calories we went through, but when visitors come we have to go all out. Stay tuned next week when we reveal the mystery item purchased someplace in Berkeley and why we need it.