HOW TO "ITALIAN"

The fog never left the ridge-line above Marin City, and the sky remained leaden throughout the day. It was cold and windy when I caught the bus back to city, and once home I hardly ventured out at all. Except for two bowls of tobacco. One before dinner, while scurrying around the neighborhood, once after while digesting fried noodles with hot sauce, shrimp paste, crunchy sliced bitter vegetables, and a grilled bockwurst, plus a cup of coffee.

Call it "fusion cuisine" if you will. The hotsauce stood in for tomatoes, the shrimp paste for anchovies, and the crunchy vegetables could have been freshly picked garden greens but weren't. So it was Italian. An Italian would've recognized it as food. Possible Roman.

The bockwurst is another matter. I'm not sure that Italians recognize anything German as edible. Germans go south to enjoy life .....
But Italians seldom go north for any reason.

I was recovering from Mill Valley.
Putting it out of my mind.


OH JESUS, MARIN!

There is nothing near the Marin City bus stop that anybody would identify as food. Boo-King and Panda Xpress.

The Strawberry Village area is equally depressing, but largely without a place for a chilled 72 ounce softdrink, because they're up-scale. In between those two locales is Pickleweed Slough. Gas station convenience stores, Mickey D's, and Seven-Eleven.
Plus a generic sushi restaurant.
Sub-urban.

There is an Italian restaurant near a bus stop in Sausalito, which blazoons that it has gluten-free pasta and pizza. With that assertion, they loose every shred of Apennine street-cred they ever had.

My best thought while sojourning in Marin was "Broccoli Pineapple Tofulato Frozen Non-Diary Dessert", for the crowd that drinks kale shakes and hates lactose, gluten, highly refined sugar, and everything else. I should write a business plan, then sell the whole idea to a group of investors.
It will probably do fabulously well in Marin County.
But I wouldn't want to meet the customers.
Icky spiritual vegan freaks.


"Gourmet 'bro-napple' non-dairy treat! Made deep in the Amazon! Part of the proceeds go to dolphins!"


The best Marin restaurants are in San Francisco.




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