Surprising as it may be, Joel and I did not choose northern California as our honeymoon destination based on the abundance of great food and restaurants in San Francisco and The Napa Valley. We chose it for the price, the weather, the sights, the distance from home and the fact that I’d never set foot on California soil. However, once we starting planning the trip and actually thinking about the food (oh, the food!), we were very happy to eat our way around northern California.

I have plenty to share about the entire honeymoon but I’m going to begin with the first leg of our trip, which was a little more than a day in San Francisco.

We started our California eating with lunch at the Ferry Building Marketplace. We’d just arrived in the city and we were hungry. It was probably approaching 1:00 pm and the last thing of substance we’d eaten was leftover wedding cake at the airport at around 5:00 am. Because of the hunger, we wandered the Ferry Building twice trying to decide what to eat (and I think I would have been happy to eat every meal of our trip in that building). We ended up at The Golden Gate Meat Company. I had honey mustard pulled chicken and Joel had pulled pork. Both were excellent. In fact, I just reminded myself to try to make the chicken at home!

After a lengthy stop at our hotel and a nice walk around Fisherman’s Wharf (there really weren’t very many tourists around as it was a Monday), we settled on Bistro Boudin for dinner. My cocktail was excellent as was our server and the sourdough bread. Joel had a fantastic Dungeness crabcake appetizer with a roasted corn relish and mustard aioli. He liked it so much that we would have gone back to have it again if time had permitted. I had a trio of sourdough tortilla tacos. One was filled with grilled black cod, one with spicy grilled shrimp and the last one with Dungeness crab. All three were equally delicious. The best part of the meal was when I asked our server to leave the avocado off of my tacos. Her response: “Really?!?” I guess I should have known better than to ask for no avocados in California!

In lieu of a real lunch on the second day of our trip, we had milkshakes at the Ghirardelli Ice Cream Shop in Ghirardelli Square. These milkshakes were definitely worth skipping lunch for! I had a chocolate malt shake while Joel tried their Nob Hill shake, made with Ghirardelli fudge sauce and vanilla ice cream. I think his was the best milkshake I’ve had in a long time. I blame it on their fudge sauce.

After the milkshakes, we went back to the Boudin Sourdough bakery to go on their museum tour. On the tour, we learned a lot about sourdough bread and San Francisco.

As an avid baker, the best part for me is that the museum had lots of windows open to the actual bakery below. It was awesome to see a huge bakery in action. The quantities they produce and the baking machinery they use astounded me!

Before leaving the building, we wandered around the bakery shop, admiring the various bread animals (alligators, bears and sea turtles, oh my!), desserts and regular sourdough bread for sale.

And since the milkshake coma had worn off a little bit, we picked up a loaf of their beautiful sourdough bread to carry on the road with us. We made one quick stop at the nearby Trader Joe’s for some cheese and then we headed out for an afternoon in Muir Woods en route to Napa.