Childless Summer Adventures 2021 (1/5) – San Francisco

Our epic plans for the 10-year wedding anniversary was forever cancelled like nearly everything else in 2020. What made them possible in the first place, which was Hong’s parents’ willingness to host the kids for a summer, survived. Shortly after the COVID vaccine became widely available, they offered again. With zero hesitation from any participant, the kids were on their way to learn swimming in New Jersey during the summer of 2021.

With international borders still mostly shut, there was no way Hong and I could pull off any sort of epic trip. Her upcoming Boards recertification exam also weighed heavily on her mind and made any elaborate plans unrealistic. Nevertheless, having one and a half months of child-free time to ourselves was incredible. It was arguably an even greater sense of freedom than being teenagers and having no parents around. We continued working our full-time schedules and made the most of the breaks in between. The first four of this five-post series will document our nights out and weekend getaways, with the last episode commemorating the transcontinental drop off and pick up trips.

In this series…

• San Francisco
• Carmel-by-the-Sea
• Seattle
• Los Angeles
• East Coast

The Office

This may sound funny but the first awesome thing about this childless summer was the ability for me to go into the office.   Coworkers planned a few get-together events.  I saw some of them for the first time in 16 months… and some others for the first time ever.  Better yet, I was able to casually agree to attend a happy hour on one of those days, a luxury that hadn’t been possible when afternoon pick-up duty was a thing.

Mark Hopkins Hotel (InterContinental)

Situated at the top of Nob Hill, this 19-story hotel was the first InterContnental in the United States and a major landmark in San Francisco. Top of the Mark, a lounge at the top floor of the hotel, is an old school luxury destination similar to the Top of the Rock in New York. I became intrigued by both the hotel and the observatory lounge a couple years ago, during a period when I climbed up Nob Hill on my daily detour to work. The ascend began with several blocks of the city’s most infamous filth in the heart of Tenderloin, followed by a steep leg workout that made me sweat on even the coldest days, before reaching the top where white-gloved doormen stood on guard. Mark Hopkins was on the peak of all this, sitting high above the rest of the city both physically and metaphorically. Perhaps it was no longer the most hip place these days, but it represented so much prestige of the past century.

Sure it’s silly to stay at a hotel merely 20 minutes from home… but, why not? We killed two birds with one stone by making an overnight stay and getting a drink at the Top of the Mark. It was fun imagining its glorious days serving the generation that gave birth to the Boomers, even though it mostly just looked old now. The comfort of the hotel itself was actually quite pathetic, hardly comparable to the Holiday Inns of the world. The walls were so thin that kids next door woke us before the sun fully came up. In a way, though, it was a nice reminder of what a long way our societal advancements had come, such that our basic standards have risen above even the best stuff that our ancestors enjoyed.

Dining: Akiko’s

I wanted to take Hong to a fancy Friday night out in San Francisco, and chose this place for its 18-course omakase.  We arrived to find a super tiny mom-and-pop sushi joint with tourist families stuffing their faces with udon and large sushi rolls.  We were super puzzled and disappointed, with me feeling extra guilty for making Hong dress up for a more laid-back version of our own neighborhood sushi.  It was only after we sat down I realized that we were at Akiko’s Sushi Bar… a few blocks from Akiko’s Restaurant where I had a sushi bar reservation. In my defense, the name on the restaurant’s own website was ambiguously spelled “Akiko’s Restaurant and Sushi Bar”.  Nevertheless, it was an embarrassing and stressful situation. We apologized to the mom-and-pop, dashed over toward the correct restaurant, took some time to calm down, and enjoyed an absolutely wonderful sushi experience.

This was the priciest meal we had ever had, topping the two-Michelin-Star Gaggan in Bangkok. The food was delicious and easily ranked among the best sushi we ever ate, thus I should probably write more about it. Unfortunately, I don’t have nearly enough adjectives to describe this level of culinary experience. The service was attentive and the attention to detail was superb.

Dining: Son & Garden

This was an over-the-top girly brunch place in Tenderloin decked out with flowers from the ceiling to the plates.  We loved it.  Patrons here were more consistently dressed up than anywhere else we had been recently, a stark contrast to the street folks foraging in garbage cans right outside its windows.  Let’s just call it a quintessential San Francisco experience, I guess, to experiment the full range of American wealth inequality within a 5-foot radius.

Dining: Kokkari

We had been interested in coming here together for several years. While popping in for a business lunch is fairly easy, however, a weekend dinner reservation at this high-end Greek restaurant is impossible without months of foresight.  This time around, we simply snatched a late reservation on a Wednesday night.  Although eating past 8pm was not our thing, we happily made an exception now that we didn’t have to worry about bed time for the kids.  Kokkari was so popular that even when we left at 10:30pm mid-week, it remained mostly full with staff running around at full speed.  The ironic part was that the restaurant had a policy limiting the dining window to two hours, but the service was so slow that it wasn’t possible unless we skipped appetizer or dessert.