Cioppino at Betty Lou’s (San Francisco)

While James and I had a long weekend off from school, we hopped on a plane to San Francisco, one of my favorite cities. Why, you ask?

I love everything about San Fran. Everything. I love the funny fog. I love the weird street acts. I love the energy, the trolleys, even the comically inclined roads, letting drivers use sheer gravity to drop their doors open.

No, you're seeing straight. I swear the camera's straight. That hill was just freakishly high.

You've also got to love a city that's known for its bread. I love carbs with almost embarrassing ferocity, so I'm down with any city that defines itself by its speciality breads.(Someday, I'll tell you about that sad, dark time when I tried to get myself on a keto diet and cried every time someone ate fries in front of me).

My sister Hannah is a skilled baker whose oven churns out mean sourdough loaves. But these San Franciscan breads packed such a powerful tang of fermentation that at least three of the pounds I gained from this trip could be attributed to my wild sourdough intake.

Fancy bread from Boudin Bakery (also known for their fantastic clam chowder)

As a science teacher who studies bridge engineering with students, I have great fondness for that proud, towering, telltale red structure that never fails to evoke the Full House theme song.

All weekend, our poor, long-suffering Lyft drivers had to witness repeat performances of our backseat amateur karaoke hour as we shamelessly yowled, "Whatever happened to predictability / The milkman, the paperboy, evening TV!"

(In fact, Danny Tanner is keeping me company in the background as I write this very blog post.)

We got into the San Francisco airport past lunchtime and our bellies were rumbling louder than the plane, but we refused to allow a single bite to pass our lips.

We were waiting for cioppino.

Cioppino might look like a riotous mess in a bowl, but it contains everything good from the sea, along with the most delectable red sauce. It was a dish invented by Italian-American immigrants who pooled their catches after a day of fishing - mussels, clams, prawns, scallops, and fish. As the history books recall, these pots of stew were prepared aboard refrigerator-less ships where cooks had to cleverly make do with scant veggies, tinned tomatoes, and whatever they caught in their nets that day.

Thus cioppino, the greatest entree on this big green Urf, was born.

James and I knew we wanted cioppino to be the very first San Fran food we put in our mouths. But we'd only learned about this iconic dish hours before we arrived, and we hadn't done a lick of research. And our growling hunger wasn't about to wait. So Yelp found the closest restaurant within walking distance of our hotel, which turned out to be Betty Lou's.

When we got to the entrance, I confess my heart sank just a little. The plain, unassuming interior made me wonder if it was a reflection of the paltry meal we were about to have.

However, I've never been happier to be wrong. These furnishings aren't a reflection of the food; this is a case of displacement. I firmly believe that the culinary geniuses in this kitchen must be spending so much time making magical food, they don't have time to think about petty things like fancy decor.

Every restaurant that offers cioppino varies things just slightly. The seafood mix is different from place to place, but it seems like most will have shrimp, some sort of bivalve, and crab. At Betty Lou's, the variety was rich with both crabs and mussels, prawns and sweet bay shrimp, cracked crab, sea scallops, and calamari. That happy medley of seafood comingled in a shareable-sized Jacuzzi of the most amazing red sauce.

The only thing we were missing was some red pepper flakes. Our waitress gave us a proud and pleased nod when we asked. ("That's exactly how I like my cioppino," she winked.) The spice amped up this dish tenfold, so much that we didn't want to waste even a spoonful of sauce. Now we needed some carbs to sop it all up.

But wait. Wasn't this a restaurant?

If only all problems were this easy to solve.

Actually, Betty Lou's provides a little basket of that trademark San Franciscan sourdough bread. Unfortunately, we'd crammed them all into our mouths in the nine minutes it took for our order to arrive, and we reached the bottom of our pasta plate far sooner than we would have liked.

A bread refill costs extra, but we forked over the three fifty without an ounce of hesitation because we weren't about to leave any of that red sauce unsopped and uneaten.