K and I finally received the keys to our new house! We’ve been waiting a whole month after we made the offer to finally call the place ours. K’s most excited about all the gadgets and doodads he can add to the house. While I’m most excited about is all the ways I can decorate our beautiful home. Since we’re starting with an absolutely blank slate, I’ll be documenting our decorative decisions and plans. Stay tuned!
Tomorrow is the opening of local burger joint, Super Duper. I happened to walk by the outrageous line during their free burger give away from 1-2pm today. I haven’t tried it yet, but judging by the line and the few reviews on Yelp, it looks good! Since it’s a hike from my office, I’ll need to wait until the line dies down before I try this place. But, I’m looking forward to it!
Super Duper
721 Market Street
(between 3rd St & Kearny St)
San Francisco, CA 94103
Neighborhoods: Union Square, SOMA
This weekend, we had the opportunity to visit Disneyland! And as an added bonus, we were able to check out the updated Star Wars ride, Star Tours: The Adventure Continues. I sorely missed the ride when we took a trip to Disneyland in December and noticed that it was closed for renovations. What was a Star Wars geek to do in Disneyland without RX-24 to take me on a trip headed for Endor? Oh yeah, there’s always Jedi Academy!
Star Tours: The Adventure Continues opened in Disneyland on June 3rd, 2011. We didn’t get to Disneyland until June 4th. Luckily for us, the hosts for our trip, APTRA, reserved Fast Pass tickets for that day. The standby line was about 240 minutes. You read that right, 4 hours! The fastpass return line was only 20-30 minutes. Once again, use our strategies for avoiding the long lines at Disneyland! Of course, there were certain parts of the day where the fastpass return lines were 150 minutes. More on time saving tips on the bottom.
Star Tours now has 54 different variations switching between the characters you encounter and destinations you can travel through. The ride starts with an encounter with either Darth Vader or an Imperial Probe Droid with SkyTroopers. On our first ride, Darth Vader stopped our StarSpeeder 1000 to look for a Rebel Spy that is on board. It turns out that the Rebel Spy photo is actually someone that is on the ride with you. This adds to fun factor because you never know when you might be the spy! Darth Vader then uses Force Pull to pull the StarSpeeder towards him, where R2D2 responds by firing lasers at him, allowing us to make our escape out of the Star Tours hangar.
We light speed our way to our next scene. This part can either be on Tatooine, Hoth, or Kashyyyk. On our first ride, we went to Tatooine and got caught up in a Pod Race. The motions and scenes were actually pretty neat here. As we fly into a few racers, we latch onto a pair of the Podracers turbines to give us extra speed. It’s neat seeing Sebulba from the Episode I here.
Once we get back into space, you encounter a Rebel leader that asks for your help in Episode IV hologram-style. This could be either Princess Leia, Admiral Ackbar, or Yoda. On our first ride, Princess Leia says something about the rebel spy, and “Help my Star Tours, you are my only hope”. C-3PO agrees to help, and we’re off to another destination.
The scenes for the final destination can be Naboo, Coruscant, or the Death Star (above Geonosis). We had the Death Star for our first ride. When you exit lightspeed, you encounter Boba Fett next to a mid-construction Death Star. He’s here to get the bounty for the revel spy. After fighting with him and flying through the Death Star, you make it safely back to a Rebel Hangar.
Our second ride had us speeding away with the Millenium Falcon from Skytroopers looking for the spy. We took a podrace trip through Tatooine again. Admiral Ackbar asked for our help in bringing the Spy back this time. On this ride we took a trip through Naboo. You start out in the sky, but C-3PO loses control and we end up in the water (nearly hitting Jar Jar Binks). Here we are attacked by Naboo’s Sea Monsters and finally fly (swim?) our way out of the water and into a hangar. In the hangar, we crashed into a starfighter and droid. The3D effects are great and really make you duck out of the way as the starfighter almost hits you in the face.
On our last ride, we had Darth Vader, Princess Leia, and Naboo again, but the second scene was on Hoth. I thought this was really neat, as you fly through the snow, nearly buy it under an AT-AT and finally lose control while sliding down a snowy mountain path. I’m hoping I get to encounter Kashyyyk, Yoda, and Coruscant the next time I get to a Disney resort! Needless to say, I had a lot of fun on this ride and would definitely recommend it to everyone!
The beginning of the queue still has the familiar C-3PO, R2D2 and StarSpeeder interactions.
Rex and the Baggage Scanner. The Baggage Scanner has some pretty funny interactions.
Alright, here are the tips as promised (in addition to these):
Let me know what variations you got! Also, did anyone find the hidden Mickey’s on this ride?
Rated: ♣♣♣♣
You know how some people have a list of celebrities they’d like to meet? Well, I have a list and celebrity chef Tyler Florence is on it. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch him when I dined at Wayfare Tavern, but I did get to meet him here. When Wayfare Tavern first opened last year, the restaurant was the talk of the town. You’d have to make a reservation several weeks in advance to get a seat. Well, one year later and I still had to make a res a month in advance.
The decor of the restaurant is beautiful. It looks much like a tavern with rich wood tables and a stuffed deer head hanging over their bar, but it’s still very elegant with the dim lighting and personalized china.
We started the meal with bacon-wrapped dates and poutine (a Canadian specialty of french fries, cheese, and gravy). The bacon-wrapped dates were excellent. The sweetness from the dates were countered with the salty bacon. The poutine was such greasy goodness. Thin shoestring fries were topped with… not gravy, but pot roast. K and I had to cut ourselves short before we got too full. One nice touch was the complimentary popovers they served to each guest. We soaked up the drippings from the poutine with the fluffy popovers. Boy, it was sinful.
For my entree, I ordered the famed fried chicken. This takes your average fried chicken to a whole different level. Instead of plain ole buttermilk fried chicken, Tyler Florence marinates his chicken in a brine and seasons his batter with fresh thyme, rosemary and lemon. The chicken was perfectly crispy, juicy and aromatic. He took a southern comfort food and made it upscale with fresh herbs. I really liked this fried chicken, although if I had to choose between this or Ad Hoc’s fried chicken, I’ll go with the latter. I don’t think anyone can beat Thomas Keller’s masterpiece.
K ordered the burger made of grass-fed beef, Mt. Tam cheese, roasted onion and crispy bacon all stuffed within a brioche roll. It took K a whole 10 seconds to figure out how to shove this 6 inch high burger into his mouth. Of course, he managed. This was probably the best burger we’ve ever had. So juicy and tender, the burger just fell apart in our mouths. The Mt. Tam cheese was so creamy and rich, offsetting the saltiness from the bacon. The caramelized onions were sweet which helped round out the flavors.
For dessert, K and I shared the sticky toffee pudding with warm toffee sauce and ginger ice cream. Wow, this was the icing on the cake for us. There were little bits of dates in the cake making it so sticky, chewy and dense. The ginger ice cream was light and subtle which was a nice break from the heavy cake. But, oh so delicious.
Wayfare Tavern was an enjoyable experience. I’d definitely recommend it to couples for an occasion restaurant. If you’re lucky, you might catch glimpses of Tyler Florence while you’re there!
