Oh wow! Thanks @SeanP813 @chewchow and @butteredwaffles!
I did a review of the Cheese Festival in another post so finally getting down to talk about the places we visited outside of it. As I mentioned, we went to go visit family and a lot of the choice we ended up making were based on where they were and their own selections. We managed to have some really good bites…
On the way up, P was craving hot dogs after he heard there was a Sonora Hotdog guy in Fresno. Sadly it was a hot dog stand and he was only open at night! So we went searching for other dogs in the area and came across Rocket Dog which touted gourmet and inventive hot dogs.
We got the Bahn Mi dog and it was pretty good. The bread was fresh and the pickled worked well. Still it was not as statisfying as a real bahn mi. So we likely won’t order it again.
Starving from the road, I did not take a pic of the Mac and Cheese dog with a side of their fresh cut potato chips… but man. Both were EXCELLENT. They used a really nice housemade mac and cheese with great cheese flavors. They used a Pretzel bun that as super toasty and buttery, The Brat that comes with it just worked bringing in the spice. Would totally order this again.
We got Cotati late and with a lunch like that, we crashed and woke up bright and early. Fam wanted to take us to a bakery that was walking distance from the community and we ended up at Redbird bakery.
Everything looked so good! Fresh baked in house. They had sandwiches in mini baguettes ready to go and I opted for the Biscuits and Gravy (Added an Egg). P ordered the breakfast burrito.
To our horror, upon ordering they turned around and gave him a pre-made burrito that had been sitting in this kinda popcorn machine type heating cabinet. Ugh. He was too nice to reject it, so he just kinda scarfed it down as we waited for my Biscuits and Gravy…
The Gravy was really good! The Biscuit was excellent! Everyone had bites of it, so it perked P. up and our usually cronchy cousin even enjoyed it! I had recently watched a video where some English High Schoolers tried Biscuits and Gravy for the first time… He had that look on his face… lol.
With that to fuel us, we went to into the city, arriving at the Ferry Building. We had been to Gotts on a previous trip, but we still could not resist their soft serve. We bypassed our usual dippy cone and just went for the straight chocolate vanilla swirl. The chocolate was okay, but the vanilla had a lovely deep flavor. We recently had the dippy cones at Heavy Handed which flavor of the soft serve was meh. This was so good and creamy. Nevertime, I’m doing a dippy cone for sure.
We also had a shrimp empanada at El Porteno which was so good. We recently ordered the Empanadas from El Sur which were only marginally better on the crust department… but this crust was also super yummy.
We wandered the city quite a bit and grabbed some Dim Sum to go at Dim Sum Bistro. We had been here before, it’s not a super quick service, bit the Dim Sum here always makes us happy.
Chicken Shu Mai
Ham Sui Gok
Super fresh and very generous filling. They were the perfect thing to eat on the little parklet on top of the new Chinatown station (Which is lovely).
We ended up near Dandelion and had to check out Baklava story! Turns out I’ve been eating Baklava wrong my entire life (it should be flipped with the honey side up) and we picked up a tray of his fresh out the oven Baklava. This was precious cargo through most of our trip as we had a few more errands to run…
Finally we met up with another family member close to their work in the Tenderlion. I had read some good things about Out of Sight Pizza. However it was Friday and they were slammed with to go orders. The owner apologized and said it would take forever to get a whole pie made, that he recommended we do the slices. Luckily they had slices of pretty much everything ready to go…
We pretty much ordered OOE. Even though I know a whole pie would have been better, the slices heated up well and tasted awesome. It’s a true blend of neopolitan (so no real crunch) and new york style (They were quite sturdy). They do specials and the winner of that list was their Elote Salad…
Absolutely phenomenal. It was crunchy, creamy, loved the use of the fresh dill (Not a huge fan). It did taste like the best elote ever. Overall, happy.
The following morning we had a lovely brunch at home and then off to the cheese crawl. The best bite was the pizza from Acre made with Bellweather farms ricotta. Everyone we raved about it too said they have really good pies on the regular.
The shopping center where we had the crawl also had a Red Bird Bakery and I went in and got a Jalapeno Cheese Biscuit since I was so happy with my regular biscuit. OH BOY! They don’t mess around with the Jalapeno. It was nice and spicy… made with Fresh Jalapenos too.
After the crawl we still felt like we could manage one more meal, so we went to Khoi Loi and they were able to accommodate us at the bar. It was great, we had a nice sight on their bincho grill.
From the grill we got the Issan Sausage. Lovely portion. Delicious loose pack with fresh herb flavors just popping through.
We got the Pad See Yew, it’s a standard order for us. It was delicious.
I had come with hopes of Khao Soi. Sadly they only serve it at lunch. 
So instead we opted for Veggie Green Curry which came just studded with Sweet Potatoes. It played off so well with the creamy spicy herbaceous curry. Now I was able to see why this place was so special.
Our final day was mostly at the Cheese Festival. We had lovely bites including some excellent Macaroni and Cheese from High Schoolers in a Culinary Program at Casa Grande H.S. in Petaluma. They had their own catering company and they brought tastes of Hibiscus Lemonade, the Mac and Cheese and Butterscotch Bundino which rivaled Nancys. They were a huge hit.
Afterwards and since we were in the area, we had to stop by one of my favorite places on earth… the Schultz Museum. The Happy Puppy Cafe there does fancy hot chocolates and we got a white chocolate which P really likes and I’m kinda Meh about… but this one was really nice.
Our last dinner with family was at Tumeric Indian Restaurant near the Sonoma State campus. It recently opened up and it’s your standard Lunch Buffet, Indian Dinner restaurant. It was not bad. The butter chicken was especially good and they have goat curries. Hope they do well.
Still feeling shafted from the soggy breakfast burrito, we hit Eggspresso Cafe in Petaluma. It’s a not so subtley inspired by Eggslut.
It was good. The real winner were their Potato Coins. Super good. Chips seems to be theme for this trip.
On the way home, we had perhaps our best bites of the trip. We stopped over Duc Huong Gio Cha Bahn Mi in San Jose. We had heard raves and saw that there was a huge line still even a little after noon. Turns out they take the order quick… but it’s the wait for the Bahn Mi which they make fresh. We ate them on the road so no pics. But we got the BBQ Pork, which was stuffed with meat we didn’t think we would finish the Veggie. But the Veggie was the winner with wonderful tofu skin and mushrooms, if you love Maggi… you’ll love the Veggie.
All in all, a tasty trip! Next time we’ll dedicate more time for an eating tour, but for the time we had and the amazing company we got to see, this was a very worthwhile trip.
–Dommy!
