San Francisco – St. Francis Fountain

Bright and early Saturday morning we opted to seek out some breakfast. Though most places only opened at 11am. The best/worst part about visiting the west coast, when you’re completely accustomed to east coast time is that you walk up earlier than nearly everyone else, but that also means that walking up to go anywhere is never a problem.

Luckily, our hotel accommodated us early risers with coffee and mighty leaf tea bar that started at 6 am, and a selection of four different newspapers to read (and free wifi.) And as an added bonus they had soy milk for coffee and stevia sweeteners available and all the earl grey tea I could drink.

I tried asking around for suggestions for breakfast in San Francisco, but didn’t really get any definitive suggestions. I found a place called Sun Rise Restaurant through Yelp that seemed interesting, it had a lot of variety, including Latin inspired tofu scrambles, and tamales, and other tasty sounding options. Wanting to take advantage of the weather (which by our standards was lovely) we opted to walk the 3 miles over to the Mission District. The 24th St Station BART train stops not far from there, so it’s easily accessible by transit.

We walked down Market and Folsom, enjoying the street art, murals, and public art spaces all along the way. At around the 2.5 mile point I said “Wouldn’t it be funny if this place was closed because of the holidays?” JC told me it wouldn’t. Well, he was right, at least partially. Once we walked over to Sun Rise Restaurant, we were greeted with this sign:

I just had to laugh. It was closed until the day we were going to leave (for Las Vegas) oh well. The benefit of being in the mission district was that I knew there were options, wiping out my trusty phone (equipped with a shiny new temporary USA SIM Card) I found St. Francis Fountain, just a few blocks away.

We got there, hungry, and ready to eat. There looked as though there were booths available  but there weren’t. as we would notice later, one of the servers at St. Francis Fountain had made it his mission to make sure that everyone that came in knew that they had to write their name on the little piece of paper outside, and not come in yet. Whether it looked like there were spots available on not. It was weird, and we waited outside for a five minutes or so and then were seated at the bar.

The menu wasn’t super vegan friendly, but there were several items on it that looked like pretty solid options. I opted for the “Vegan Thing” and JC got the vegan huevos rancheros with a side of vegan chorizo hash. I don’t know if he’ll agree, but I think I won at breakfast.

The “Vegan Thing” with fried potatoes topped with tomatoes, vegan pepper jack cheese, salsa, guacamole, and green onions. Simple, delicious guacamole, the fresh salsa was tasty, and the combination of fresh delicious vegetables with the fried salty potatoes was a great start to my morning.

The vegan huevos rancheros consisted of a slightly spicy tofu scramble with a giant portion of black beans, 2 soft tortillas, and a fresh salsa.

The vegan chorizo hash was just fried potatoes with vegan chorizo topped with some chopped cilantro.

The coffee was steady and plentiful, and our food was good. I left thinking I should really make the Vegan Thing at home some day.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon walking the long way back to our hotel through SoMa, accidentally stumbling upon a food truck park (minimal vegan options though – this isn’t Portland.) but there was a vegan friendly tamale cart. And a Trader Joe’s nearby, another one of those things we just don’t have in Canada.

On those lazy December days that feel like lazy early September days, it’s hard not to daydream about living in San Francisco.

Some Info

St. Francis Fountain
Where: 2801 24th Street, San Francisco, CA
Website

SoMa Food Cart Park
Where: 428 11th St (between United States Highway 101 & Harrison St) San Francisco, CA
Website