[AGU] Step 6: Finish Strong.

Friday's lectures were fairly interesting and better-attended in the afternoon than I expected. The posters were good and I met another person to whom I had hoped to be introduced but there was no heavy lifting and I should say that the conference ended nicely. It was a definite success.

I went straight to Aziza and sat at the bar because I was alone and knew that sitting at the bar is always a better way to talk to people while they work. I didn't know any servers besides Manuel but I knew both of the guys behind the bar and I managed to get in a quick hello to Farnoush as she rushed around. They are super busy and I am not surprised. Not only is Mourad a budding television personality or whatever but his food may even be better than it was when I worked there. I begin with the roasted pumpkin salad (fried persimmon, roasted turnip, black garlic and duck emulsion), followed that with sardines (little toasts strips, some fennel and a smear of maybe goat cheese[?]) and ended with wagyu beef (sliced filet[?] over cubes of braised cheek, chanterelle mushrooms, potatoes and other morsels of perfection). The parenthetical comments are only meant to flesh out the description; they cannot possibly do justice to how the food tasted. For dessert, I had a yogurt napoleon that was pretty good. For drinks, I had a dangerously good tequila cocktail with arugula and tumeric, then a Spanish red called Graciano. All this stuff is on the website, by the way.

I walked off my large meal on the way to a bar on Clement called The Bitter End. It is a spot familiar to me from my days living in the Richmond so I decided it would be a good place to meet up with Sean, Manuel and their friend Johnny. We had a few pints and rattled off some of the old stories one more time then went back to Manuel and Denise's apartment. We ate pizza, played with Maggie and hung out a while longer before it was time for bed.

Another wildly successful trip to SF in the books.