Are you going to San Francisco?

If my last hotel was “the hotel from the FUTURE,” this hotel is definitely a thing of the past.  And I say that is a fond, affectionate way.  While it’s not my personal style, as in I’m not gonna run out and get a four-poster bed for our little apartment bedroom, I appreciate the history of the place. 

Around since before the big ol’ earthquake, San Francisco’s Palace Hotel surely reflects a storied past of when this “City by the Bay” was, in some respects, still the wild west.  It feels old—again, in the best possible way—and reminds me of how much differently we see and experience life today than they did just 100 or even 50 years ago. 

Take, for instance, my shock at stepping off the elevator on the seventh floor and seeing a marble staircase across the foyer.  Stairs!  On the seventh floor!  Who would climb up that many flights?  Of course, everybody, if they were born before the elevators were installed.  Then I scoffed at the completely functional, non-ornate bathroom.  What?   No slick basin sink?  No iPod dock for shower tunes? No in-mirror TV screen? (Yes, I actually stayed in a hotel – for work – with one of these.  And I actually called to the front desk to get a replacement remote for my broken one, because I’ll be damned if I’m going to stay in a room with an in-mirror bathroom TV and not watch that thing every hour of the day.)

But then I remembered that the bathroom works. The ceilings are luxuriously high.  And the wingchair alongside the heavy wooden desk is just something you don’t see every day.  Sure, they’ve made some concessions to the changing times—a flat screen TV on the sideboard; a wireless connection; I suppose even the digital alarm clock next to the bed counts as a modern concession, although it sits upon an honest-to-god piece of furniture, not some slickly installed plasticine shelf. 

Really, would you want it another way?  It does us good to remember that what we take for granted are beyond luxuries; they’re unfathomable to those who came 25, 50, 100 years ago and slept in this very room.  Maybe I should spend more time thinking about those who came before me than how I’m going to best feed media into my brain today.  No, today I’ll do it the old fashioned way, with a book and a bath—kindle and Jacuzzi-free, of course.

And, lest I forget the point of this blog, this historic hotel has a foodie connection! As averred on its website, the Palace Hotel is the birthplace of green goddess dressing.  So when I landed tonight, half sick with a sinus cold and coming off 5 ½ hours in the air (DC to San Fran is not a short flight) I knew that room service once again would be my destiny.

My kind of cold medicine.

Chicken noodle soup—addressing the virus-y half of me—and veggie crudités with green goddess dressing—for my hungry, food-loving half. Chicken soup is chicken soup--it was good, darlings, but i just don't think it can be great.  Great for a cold, though.  The green goddess is unlike any other incarnation of the stuff I've ever come across--and, like the hotel, i mean that in the best possible way.  Tangy, thick, herby, it definitely leaves you wanting more, while being also much lighter on the taste buds than a heavy ranch or onion dip.  

Not going to eat it all, surely, but the wood-paneled mini-fridge hidden in the sidebar—a holdover from the 70s, surely—can contain the veg for snacking in the work-heavy days to come.  Bear with me, friends.  Like my turbulent flight…it’s gonna be a bumpy ride. 

Gotta sneak in a taste...mmm!

Although I do have some backlogged food porn on my flash drive with me, so don’t get too lonely.  Cheeks will keep you well fed.