Free Museum Day
Nov 12th, 2007 by Ashley
Chun told me about Free Museum day last week and without checking why are they even free, I said let’s go. (You know me, I don’t usually ask where the free stuff comes from, I’d just shut up and enjoy. XD)
We planned to take off at 11 but ended up leaving our apartment around 11:40 cos chun and I were having a leisure brunch at our kitchen counter. (Poor Flora was waiting hopelessly at home with her homemade dorayaki. love ya dear~) We decided to take BART instead of driving since a hectic traffic could be anticipated in the city. The only thing to read on BART was chun’s Wall Street Journal. Thank goodness it’s Saturday. There are Art/Leisure/Music/Book/Food/Drink sections in WSJ Saturday edition. I especially enjoyed a piece about Margaret Thatcher. It’s about toughness which has a point (as opposed to being tough just for the sake of being tough.)
We got to the city around 2 and headed straight to California Academy of Science, one of my fav place in the city. Unfortunately the block had a power outage, thus we had to ran to SFMOMA in the rain instead. I’m never a big fan of MOMA, but it sure was a fun experience. The swinging ceiling fan in the lobby is very intimidating. (See Below)
I like some of the works in Matisse and Beyond. Especially Joan Miro’s smiling moon and Rothko’s famous No 14. Olafur Eliasson’s Take Your Time did take us some time in the line, and all that light made me dizzy so we didn’t stay for long. Douglas Gordon’s Pretty Much Every Film and Video Work from about 1992 until Now was very interesting.
After an afternoon of museum showering, we turned to what we are better at – food. Weekend in SOMA (south of Market), Le Charm is the place to go. It’s this little southern French restaurant we discovered and fell in love with back in June. They offer different menu every month and it has become a habit of ours to pay her a visit every once in a while. Unfortunately, the main courses weren’t very tempting this time, so we decided to focus on appetizers.
We had…
Crab Cake with Endive and Frisée Salad, lemon tarragon cream too salty
Périgourdin Salad with Smoked duck breast, confit duck, Foie Gras, apple and walnuts duck breast + apple slice was miraculous. so is the mysterious duck intestine.
and some Turnip tarte tartin no idea what it was and it’s the only thing we didn’t finish.
Baked escargots with tomato confit and mushrooms in garlic butter Escargot was heavenly as always. Philip joined us late and we had to order another plate of escargot cos we finished it all before he arrived (not even a drop of oil was left!)
for Entree we had…
Duck leg confit with sautéed potatoes and glazed squash
which is pretty decent
and some kinda fish with linguine.
We were all very full after the food described above but dessert was just too good to pass. Therefore, the four of us shared a Tarte Tartin, which is amazingly delicious, better than I remembered.
So yeah, it’s a pretty good day too. Except the fact that we were drenched most of the time :p