Surisan

https://www.surisansf.com/


Place: Sursian

Location: 505 Beach Street 
(on the corner of Jones Street)

Hours: open for breakfast weekdays at 8:00am and weekends at 8:30am

Meal: Boosted Jook[1] ~ rice porridge with carrots, spinach, mushroom, bacon (which I, of course, had un-boosted), scallion, cherry pepper, poached egg; and a glassa fresh-squeezed orange juice to drink (which came with the now-ubiquitous California paper straw)

(There is no direct EweToobular juxtaselection between today's meal and the Birds of Chicago. [Well, none of which I am aware.] I just like the song. I may have even posted it once or twice before here.)


To continue on with the Taylor Street Coffee Shop-family mini-chain tour, I revisited Surisan (see last 'blog-entry from Saturday, October 14th, 2017; plus, I ate dinner there just a little over a month ago). This restaurant should be the newest (#6 or #7) in the mini-chain; it has only been open since December 2016. I think that there is just one more restaurant left to check out now in their mini-chain ~ Berkeley Social Club, which is in Berkeley, natch', so that will probably need to be made at a later date when I feel like doing another 
mini-roadtrip "all the way" across to the East Bay.

Unfortunately, it was another li'l-bit foggy and chilly morning, so I wimped-out, J. Wellington, and sat inside once again. However, I was not the only one to do so, I was happy to see. The Sun did start to break out (a little) by the time I had finished eating, but it still would not have been very comfortable sitting outdoors.

This restaurant also has several of the same items offered at some of their other locations. A couple of remaining items left might be:

Hemingway Benedict ~ smoked salmon, avocado, fried capers, lemon, pickled onion, Wasabi Hollandaise (where I would have to, in earnest, have them rescind the dead, decaying, nicotine-induced, 
old-man-and-the-sea piscine junk)

or

Blueberry Stuffed Crunch French Toast w/ caramel sauce (this was going to be my back-up choice if the Jook could not have been made st*pid vegetarian-friendly).

I happened to notice on their menu that they specify that they "happily serve Snowbird Coffee" at this restaurant. I asked one of the Thai waiter-server-guys about this, and he told me that they also serve this same local brand of Coffee at Blackwood. (However, when I asked him which specific roast of Snowbird Coffee they serve, he could only tell me that it was a "Dark Roast"... so that narrowed it down... not so much.) Although, I do not think they serve this brand at the original Taylor Street Coffee Shop and did not see it specifically mentioned on some of their other restaurants' menus. I am very familiar with (and a big fan of) Snowbird Coffee; they have a near(enough)by coffeeshop in the Sunset, just on the other side of Golden Gate Park, that I have been to many times. Interestingly enough, I think that Snowbird Coffee is also a Korean-owned establishment; I am not sure if there is any other relationship. Good Coffee knows no jingocity, after all.

https://snowbirdcoffee.com/

Ha! I actually talked the couple at the next table (who happened to be from Oaktown; we talked a bit about the Coffee served at this location and about some of the other restaurants in this mini-chain; they have also eaten at Sweet Maple themselves) into ordering a side of the Rosemary Millionaire's Bacon®. Why would anyone be foolish enough into taking porky-butt bits suggestions from a st*pid vegetarian-type complete stranger?!

(If you can believe it, this overly bokeh-ed photo is actually the best of the three that I took this morning. Eh?! What'r'yagonnadoo?!)


I do not think that I had ever had Jook (or any similar Asian rice porridge dish) before. I liked it. There was plenty of spinach and (possible) shiitake and one other type of mushroom in the mix. (I am pretty sure that Quaker guy that has been serving 'merica with his own brand of oat-porridge for all these years has never thought about adding any spinach, mushroom, or bacon to his breakfast bowls.) This had a strong soy sauce base to it, so I would not recommend this dish for anyone that is gluten-intolerant (or just dislikes soy sauce in general). Thankfully, they served the bowl with a spoon sticking out of it... I was having the dickens of the time trying to eat this with chopsticks. All in all, this was a pretty d*rn healthy meal and easy on the digestion for me.

As far as any condimentary supplements, like most of the other restaurants in the mini-chain, they offer both Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (Original Red Sauce and Green Jalapeño Sauce) and Tapatío® Salsa Picante Hot Sauce. I just used some (well, 
a lot, really) of my own H*ll's Kitchen® Whiskey Habanero Hot Sauce (Thanks, Mom!) all over the top 
of the poached egg.


Yesterday I had breakfast at "Yooooouk's!".
This morning I had "Joooook!". 
It all makes perfect RED SOX sense to me.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating:
Boosted Jook ~ 6.5

___________________

1. Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-culinaristic pointer of the day:

"粥" (transliterated/pronounced "Jook"; also transliterated as "Juk" or "Jug") simply means "porridge" in Korean.

This dish is normally a rice-based porridge/gruel dish and it is eaten in many Asian countries either warm for breakfast or as a recuperative "get-well" meal.