The intersection of 9th and Irving is considered the heart of the Inner Sunset. A bakery that my former student recommended was just up the street...
We noticed that there was a "parklet" right in front of the bakery where several locals were enjoying their morning coffee. If you look closely, you can also see the man who was begging with his hand out
Arizmendi Bakery is a worker-owned coop specializing in pastries, artisan bread and pizza.
"Make Loaves Not War"!
When I saw that they had bialys, I had to get one. Unlike a bagel which is boiled before baking a bialy is just baked. It also does not have a hole, but rather, a depression in the middle which is filled with diced onions. The one I bought had diced onions and tons of poppy seeds (which kept getting stuck in my teeth, lovely).
TC bought one of the chocolate cookies for later. We ended up having a pretty long day driving to different places and ending up in Gilroy by day's end.
While everything looked good, I kept my purchases simple, just the bialy, TC's cookie and a couple of loaves of sourdough bread for my dad (special request).
My bialy:
I loved the texture of this. It was chewy but soft and had great texture and flavor from the poppy seeds and onions.
TC's double chocolate chip cookie was quite rich and decadent.
This was one of two of the sourdough loaves I bought for my dad. One loaf was darker and had different seeds and grains on the crust. This loaf was on the smaller side; it was also heavy. I was tempted to rip off a chunk and slather it with butter, but I promised my dad I would bring him some San Francisco sour dough (just not from Boudin's).
Farther down the block was another bakery, Sheng Kee of which there are several locations. We recently visited the Richmond location a few days earlier when we were still staying at Thane's place.
It was much bigger and filled with so many good looking sweet and savory breads and pastries.
I ended up with a Blueberry cream cheese pastry - I liked how they stacked the puff pastry layers here.
For Bert, a chocolate bun filled with chocolate cream.
Both pastries were enjoyed later that day and for breakfast the next.
Since I'm pretty efficient, I also saw that yet another bakery was closeby, Tart to Tart.
Although Bert had what passed as "coffee" at the cafe earlier, I wanted to have some for myself, iced of course. Like Sheng Kee, the bakery had so many tempting items in their cases but we had places to go and wanted to make our way down the coast.
Across the street you can see a popular SF chain, Naan 'n Curry, which we didn't try this visit. My brother has gone in the past and recommended it.
Our caffeine fix before the cream and sugar was added...
A few minutes after we stepped out, the tiny sprinkles from the sky morphed into huge droplets and eventually a full on down pour once we got into our car down the street.
There were still more shops and eateries along this main drag that I wanted to explore but that will have to wait for a future visit.
More on the Inner Sunset district:
"The Inner Sunset - A Gateway to San Francisco's Golden Gate Park" PacUnion Real Estate, July 31, 2013
Arizmendi Bakery
1331 9th Ave
San Francisco, CA 94122
(415) 566-3117
www.arizmendibakery.com
Reviews/Articles:
"Arizmendi Bakery Tops in the Inner Sunset. SF Gate, March 4,2012
Zagat SF
Sheng Kee Bakery (multiple locations)
816 Irving St.
(415) 242-9200
www.shengkee.com (you may want to put it on 'mute' because there is annoying music) plus a review from CheapEats
Tart to Tart
641 Irving St.
(415) 504-7068
There is no website but are the reviews from that four lettered site
Despite the massive amount of precipitation, we still thought we would check out a particular landmark that required the sun...
2 comments:
I completely missed this post and am so sorry that I did. That bialy looks wonderful and is completely different than the ones made at PL Bagel (but a bit more like the ones Baltimore Bagel used to make). What great bakeries! I'd have been going crazy to have to limit myself to one or two items at each one.
i was comparing the bialy from arizmendi with the one you had. i would like to try PL Bagel's version for research purposes, of course, haha. the one from SF was very savory with the onions and the poppy seeds.
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