News You Can Bruise for 2004 April 23

While driving across the Missouri river, Brendan and I passed a riverboat casino. Except it wasn't a riverboat. It was a building built on a pier with molding on the outside that made it look like a riverboat. It was connected to an onshore parking structure. How can that possibly skirt any state regulation about gambling? Is onshore gambling actually legal in Kansas, with this casino merely trying to provide the experience of Old Tyme Riverboat Gambling?

Last night Sumana and I threw caution to the winds and went to Greens, a ritzy vegetarian restaurant in the Fort Mason center (where little corporations are housed in big boxy Army surplus buildings). Unlike our similar adventure at Millennium, it was great! It was hearty and rustic where Millennium was trendy and urban, open and sunny and Californian where Millennium was a dark, crowded bistro. Millennium was obsessed with meat substitutes, Greens with vegetables and grains. Both used the weird leafy vegetables you've never heard of--I don't remember what they were and I could just make up random-sounding vegetables like "erdile" and you'd believe me.

We shared two great appetizers; southwestern bean cakes and a "spring sampler" with walnut bread, bleu goat cheese, walnuts, and dates. I had a great polenta-in-soupy-stuff entree, and Sumana had shish kebobs which she didn't like as much. I ordered a chocolate mousse torte for dessert, which I haven't eaten yet. (I couldn't eat it yesterday due to my new "jam every other day" diet.)

Total cost of meal was $60, which I think is pretty good for an upscale dinner in San Francisco. That $60 does not include the enormously expensive cookbook I bought. I'm going to end up one of those people with a bookcase full of cookbooks. A cookbookcase.

Now's a good time to mention that sometime after this entry, Lego mad scientist Amy Hughes put the pictures of her awesome Lego church back online.