*1113 - panta rei

This was when we were living in our old apartment a little further down from where we are now. We stepped out of the apartment to the bus stop and traversed through what felt like a part of Mexico. Rolled along and then suddenly turned into a ridiculously narrow road (the kind where if you are so lucky as to be crawling along looking for a parking spot, you might hold up five blocks worth of honking vehicles as you try your best to parallel park brilliantly in a spot that you only come across after circling ten times on your very first try, which doesn't usually happen under stress like that) and then, we were in China. We hop off and walk through China with eyes wide, round the corner, and suddenly we were back in San Francisco. Blink. One thing rolled into another so abruptly, it was as if we had crossed invisible borders to different parts of the world in just 10 minutes.

And then we settled into an Italian restaurant, Panta Rei, for some really amazing pasta. Really. Amazing. Really.

Duck with homemade spinach fettuccine in brandy tomato cream sauce. Tasted heavenly but actually looked kind of gross in the photo (my excuse: I only had nerve for one shot per dish because this was the type of restaurant where you feel judged if you whip out your camera), so none this time.

And then all sorts of shellfish with homemade squid ink linguine and a white wine sauce. WOW. (Evidently shot blurrily and hastily from somewhere near my lap.)



And it made for good leftovers too--a teeny bite in a little saucer the next day!



You can really tell when you eat fresh homemade pasta ... the texture is just so different and the flavour is fuller. But after the two or three times I have attempted this in my life, sans mechanical pasta rolling machine a la Statler kitchens that could roll your hand into a sheet of pasta in an instant if you weren't careful, I have since concluded that no matter how good it tastes, the hours of pain that go into hand-making pasta with a rolling pin and a knife are just too much to go through for a mere treat for myself. Or anyone, for that matter. (Sorry.) Some day: a pasta machine. Mmmm.