After having my first San Francisco food truck experience a couple Wednesdays ago (after which I definitely recommend Deconstructed Samosas from Curry Up Now!), my friend Anna and I passed by the chocolate shop on Hayes St., which she highly recommended for a special occasion. (Thank you, Anna!) Since it was just a few days before Valentine’s Day, we decided the occasion was special enough to go pick out a few little chocolates for our Daniels. (This makes four friends of mine married to or otherwise involved with men named Daniel, all of whom are engineers of some sort. Any hypotheses about this?) After my experiences with these chocolates, I’m pretty sure I need to make up some more special occasions, like “Hooray, it’s Wednesday!” or “I am within a few blocks of the chocolate shop.”

Since my Dan is into whiskey and scotch, I automatically chose the Whiskey Walnut (“walnut marzipan topped with a whiskey ganache”) and Single Malt Scotch (“dark chocolate ganache infused with 12 year old single malt scotch”). Incapable of choosing between any of the other beautiful morsels in front of me, I asked the salesperson which ones were her favorite, thus ending up with Black Currant (“black currant paté de fruit topped with dark chocolate ganache and cassis”), Caramel with Fleur de Sel (“a soft caramel ganache made with French sea salt”), and a heart-shaped Passion Fruit caramel (“caramel made with the tropical taste of passion fruit”) to top it off.

All of the chocolates had an incredibly smooth texture, especially the single malt scotch, which was silky with just a subtle hint of scotch. The black currant contrasted the dark chocolate with wonderful, slightly tart berry flavor. Alas, neither of us could really taste the whiskey in the whiskey walnut one, but I certainly can’t say it wasn’t still tasty! (It could have been the wine and very garlicky pizza we had for dinner immediately beforehand, though, so perhaps we’ll simply just have to try it again.) As you’ve probably figured out by now, though, the caramels were our favorite. Incredibly smooth, with not even a hint of the usual stick-to-your-teeth quality of most caramels. My next trip to the shop will definitely entail trying each and every caramel—starting with the rosemary and lavender ones—in order to determine whether this bliss is sustainable. Someone has to do it, right?

Margherita and Ilaria pizzas

A quick look on Yelp resulted in the most fabulous find: Una Pizza Napoletana is only a .3 mile walk from SFCM and had already been on my radar (thanks to my pizza connoisseur friends). Well, yum. You walk into this place and it’s not too long until you realize that this place is about pizza and pizza only. Well, and drinks. Pretty nice drinks. But mostly about the pizza.

Beautiful, piping hot pizzas

Tessa enjoying some scrumptious pizza

Dan and I finally tried the trendy Vietnamese fusion Xanh Restaurant in downtown Mountain View this week. We always walk by and say, “One of these days we really need to go there!” but we’re usually sweaty from the walk from home or hankering for Thai instead. Well, we finally designated a date night on Monday and managed to get there in time for an hour of happy hour specials (definitely a great deal, as the cocktails and appetizers on the happy hour menu are pretty much 50% less than usual). We got Xanh’s version of a caipirinha (pretty yummy and mostly like a normal caipirinha with the addition of lychee), mojito (tasty, but not really that special—admittedly, my mojito tastes have been spoiled by Gloria’s!) and sangria/Xanhgria (quite yummy, plus a good pun on the restaurant name, which we were told is pronounced like “sun”). Our Buddha roll was tasty (though I wished the mushrooms in the description were actually in the rolls) and garlic noodles were pretty good comfort food (not garlicky enough, but I suppose we’re picky about that!).

To make up for the cheap happy hour specials, I couldn’t resist the most awesome sounding “Xanh Enlightened Crab,” which was described as “wok fired dungeness crab with roasted garlic, lemon grass, thai basil, kaffir lime leaf, green peppers, and fresh cracked pepper.” Since we have a thriving kaffir lime tree in front of our house, I was so curious to see how else to season with it other than in Thai red curry. Well, it did not disappoint, and, really, the picture does not really show how incredibly large it was (that plate took up a good third of the table!). I guess I should have known what I was in store for when the server brought out four moist towelettes before the dish came out. The seasoning was like a really complex, spicy, slightly sweet curry (the pineapple really made the sauce, and that wasn’t even in the description!), and since the crab took so much work, it canceled out the calories, right? Anyway, “ridiculous” is the word that kept popping out of my mouth—ridiculously huge, ridiculously messy, and ridiculously awesome.