A slice of yum
Sure, yum may not be overly descriptive. Not only that, I’m falling into the “always start with dessert” mantra. To be fair, this dessert was AFTER lunch but the dessert was so memorable I’m starting with it.
I live with someone who loves sandwiches. While I could eat sushi or ramen or maybe even tacos for lunch every day, he could eat sandwiches. Especially submarine sandwiches. So we trekked to the Submarine Center (more on that later) and discovered the neighborhood of West Portal. It’s cute. With big houses. It looks nothing like the San Francisco we know and live in.
Anyway, after a satisfying lunch we decided to wander. A nice walk in the break in the SF winter storms. We stumbled on West Portal Bakery. They had tons of cookies. Muffins. Bread. Cornbread. But what caught our eye was this slice of chocolate cake:
fudgy, gooey chocolate cake.
What’s amazing about this is that neither of us are huge chocolate cake fans. I always opt for vanilla (with chocolate frosting). His choice is vanilla with vanilla frosting. But as you can see, there’s something about this one that’s just eye-catching. It glistened. It beckoned. So we ordered it.
Two forks and two bites later, we both said “wow”. This cake was rich without being too dense, moist without being gushy, fudgy without being sugary. Don’t get me wrong — this cake was sweet. But it had a smooth silky consistency that didn’t separate out the individual granules of sugar.
Two bites in we look up and the server was delivering us each a glass of water. She said we’d need it. She was right. This is the perfect cake to enjoy with a tall glass of milk. I would drive back to West Portal (in case you’re wondering it’s the other side of town. 6 miles the other side of town) to get this cake for a special occasion.
We also picked up 2 cookies for later; a chocolate chip (no nuts!) and an oatmeal cranberry cookie. The chocolate chip was deemed “good”. (I can’t give you a better description. I had less than a bit of it and it tasted like a cookie). The oatmeal cranberry cookie had too much cinnamon and not enough oatmeal. It was a dense cookie that wasn’t all that enjoyable. I’d rather save my calories for the cake.
We noted they also served sandwiches, had a wide assortment of fresh baked breads (that looked great) and honey cornbread flowerettes (like muffins) that we almost bought.
Since this really is a counter and we only had a snack, I’ll take a break from the normal tastiness/service/overall ratings. Just add that I would highly recommend the chocolate cake.
