Channelling Bud Trillin

I spent the last several days in my native habitat: the San Francisco Bay Area. I went out there to give a talk at Stanford Law School’s CIS (more on that in another post) but took a little extra time to see friends and family. When I visit the Bay Area, I usually try to organize as much of my schedule as possible around food. I had dim sum at Yank Sing, pizza from Zachary’s (now employee-owned, I’m told), and burgers from In-n-Out. I walked through the renovated Ferry Building for the first time. (The renovation is brilliant, but the food is simply decadent. A caviar store? Two olive oil stores?)

The Bay Area may do the contrast between the ends of the economic spectrum in this country as well as any area there is. There’s a fair amount of empty commercial real estate in the Silicon Valley, so the region isn’t wallowing in money quite to the extent that it has wallowed in the past, but on the surface it’s still pretty rich. Yet my best meal was a burrito from a counter in the back of a little Mexican grocery store in Mountain View, south of San Antonio Road, near Bayshore Freeway. A friend who lives nearby took me there. Excellent stuff. Cost next to nothing. Tasted rich.