Deep-Fried Bacon: Day One: A beautiful day for a ballgame

We figure it's best to show you our vacation one day at a time. Some days there'll be more to see than others, some days we didn't take too many pictures, and some days are a little hazy in our memories perhaps. But this way, you won't get too sick of us too quickly, and we don't have to try to get it all out at once.

We landed in San Francisco, flowers in our hair and ready for vacation, at 9:30 in the morning on Wednesday the 12th. We'd been up since about 4:00 NY time, so even though it was 9:30 in the morning, it was really mid-day for our stomachs. After a short trip on the BART to our hotel, we ambled over into the seedy Tenderloin, not really where you want to hang out unless you want a banh mi.

For those of you who've been living under a rock since the French colonized Vietnam, a banh mi is what happens when the French colonizers try to make a baguette using Vietnamese rice flour, and then fill it up with meat, pate, pickled veggies, and various other items. In a perfect world, the bread is crusty yet with a nice tender crumb, and the fillings hit all the hot, sour, sweet and salty notes that southeast Asian cuisines cover so well. And since San Francisco is in some sense a perfect world, the banh mi you'll get there will knock your socks off. Inside: Vietnamese bbq pork, pickled carrots and daikon, jalapenos, cilantro, some mayo.

Also, since it was still breakfast time, a steamed bun with egg, onions, and to be honest, I don't know what else.

And on to some baseball! I know the Giants and Dodgers, and their fans, hate each other. Really. But wow. This is hatred that goes back deep, and far, and spans two coasts, and many generations of haters.

First, if you ever get a chance to go to AT&T Park (or whatever phone company it's named after at the moment), the beautiful park right on the Bay, do yourself a favor and do so. An ideal spot for a ballgame on a sunny afternoon for sure.

Second, if you ever get a chance to see reigning Cy Young Award winner (and perhaps this year's as well) Tim Lincecum, who looks like he's 12 years old but pitches like a beast, throw heat by the Dodgers' juicing slugger Manny Ramirez while the sold-out crowd gets drunker and rowdier each moment, you should do that too.

Third, if you get standing room tickets, stand as close as you can to home plate. But be aware that it means you won't leave that spot for most of the game, unless you want to lose it. So by the time you do leave the spot to get some of the park's famed garlic fries, the fries may be soggy and disappointing. Which we would remedy later on our trip, but you'll hear more about that when we get to Napa.

But, after a manager gets ejected, benches clear, the bench coach/acting manager gets ejected, Lincecum pitches a gem but gets victimized by a bad call and a hit with two outs and two strikes in the ninth, and the Giants win it on a walk-off home run in the tenth, I recommend high-tailing it a few blocks away to the 21st Amendment brewery, where you'll have their delicious beer and be surrounded by lots of drunk Giants fans, only getting drunker.

For the ladies: the Hell or High Watermelon Wheat beer, garnished of course with some watermelon and refreshing on a hot summer afternoon. For the fellas, I recommend the Back in Black, a dark, chocolately, but hoppy American IPA.

A few watermelon slices later, we went back to the hotel, checked in, relaxed for a bit, but then felt that familiar stomach rumble that can only mean one thing: get up, go to the Mission, most likely to Pancho Villa's Taqueria, and get a burrito.

Now, and I apologize, we did not get a good shot of the gargantuan carnitas burrito, but trust me, it was an excellent choice. We did get good shots of the torta ahogada (more or less, "drowned sandwich", filled with pork and spices and succulence, and the chile relleno that I thought I was ordering as a small side dish but as you can see offered a bit more. Don't worry, we didn't finish this all, and distributed leftovers to some folks who hopefully enjoyed them as much as we did.

Oh -- make sure you wash it all down with some horchata. To call it mexican rice milk flavored with cinnamon really doesn't do it justice. To say that the missus would drink it by the bucketful gives you some idea.