Tasting Tour of the Mission Date Night

tastingtourSanFrancisco21As I mentioned a couple months ago, I’m doing a collaboration for a few fun dates around town with HowAboutWe. This company started as a dating site back in NY and then evolved into offering HowAboutWe for Couples, a service that curates and creates local experiences for two and takes care of all the planning and logistics. The service recently branched out to San Francisco where they’re adding more and more dates to the SF DateBook every day. These are all exclusive experiences and/or hard to get tickets to special events which you can completely customizable with their free concierge option. Some favorites right now I’m eying in the SF DateBook include: Woodcutting map class, trapeze lessons, VIP tickets to Under the Living Roof , and of course lots of restaurants and tasting tours.

Oh, and they’re offering a special deal to Say Yes to Hoboken readers with $50 off your first date. Offer expires 12/31/13.  9/26 update — This link wasn’t working earlier, but is fixed now. Enjoy your $50 off!

tastingtourSanFrancisco7Last time we had a closet edit date that was really fun and super helpful. This time we went on a tasting tour of the Mission through Edible Excursions. The Mission is the epicenter for all things foodie and hipster in San Francisco. There are new eateries popping up every day in that neighborhood and so lots of new things to discover.

Keep reading to see what yummy Mission spots we hit up for the tasting tour (only some of which I had been to before!)…

tastingtourSanFrancisco1We started the tour at 18 Reasons on 18th between Delores and Guererro, part of the Bi-Rite family, they offer classes and other community education events. We sampled some cheese and crackers and heard all about the Bi-Rite family which you can read about here (spoiler: much more than their famous ice cream!).

tastingtourSanFrancisco4Next stop we learned about this beautiful MaestraPeace Mural at The Womens Center while sampling some ham and cheese croissants from Tartine (the best bakery in the city!). I was trying to pace myself with the food but that croissant is impossible to resist. Feeling like I could be done eating at this point but continuing on like a trooper!

tastingtourSanFrancisco5We headed to Dandelion Chocolate next. It’s one of the few small batch bean-to-bar chocolate shops in America. Meaning, they roast, crack, sort, grind, hand mold each bar by hand from start to finish in their little willy wonka factory there on Valencia. You can even take a tour- no golden ticket necessary. Or…you can even sign up for a trip with them to the cacao farms in Belize to learn more about the process and make some yourself (Wouldn’t that be fun?! Let’s do it!). They source these beans from all over the world: Venezuela, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea. We sampled a few favorites, they were incredible and so different from one another. Each bar has only two ingredients: cocoa beans (you can even buy a huge one- see the image above), and cane sugar. Incredible, right?
Our next stop was Tacolicious. I had been to the location in the Marina (the original) but hadn’t been to the mission spot. We sampled some tacos, which were amazing of course and honestly I was so busy stuffing my face (remember, I wasn’t even that hungry here, blaming pregnancy…) I didn’t even get a good picture besides this sub-par instagram shot. So yummy though!

tastingtourSanFrancisco8Okay so at this point I really was full but the show must go on! We walked a few blocks, just enough to work up a teeny tiny bit of an appetite to the Thursday evening Mission Farmers Market. Jared’s sister, Jordan, lives in the Mission and hits up this spot every week so we had gone with them once. We had sampled the roasted chicken and strawberries with her (mmmm….) but the sausages at 4505 Meats was what we sampled on the tour and they kind of stole my heart. I could really go for one of those right now. Soooo good.

tastingtourSanFrancisco9At this point I was deliriously full. The rest is a haze, I think we had dessert tastings at both Craftsman and Wolves and Bi Rite Creamery? But I felt like I was being rolled through the Mission by the oompa loompas and don’t remember too much (put me in a blue dress and I really am starting to resemble a blueberry for reals).

It was a great date, the perfect combination of delicious and educational, leaning hard into the delicious. Ever been on a tasting tour? They do others in SF in Japantown and 24th street, would love to do another sometime.

Comments

Really this sounds amazing. Especially the ham and cheese croissant!!

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