The Ferry building in San Francisco is pretty much a foodie wonderland. Several artisanal producers of delicious food have opened stores there. It's like an all-star team of food.
That being said, I know many food-types that despise this place. To them, the Ferry Building is some sort of contrived Food Epcot where some bastardization of artisanal food has been cobbled together to create a fake theater-like experience for tourists. Hey, fat mayonnaise eating Midwestern foodie wannabe idiot that watches Food Network, come to our little food theme park where you can try a bunch of stuff you've only ever seen on television.
I think that's bullpucky. Makers of anything need to sell their stuff somewhere. It's not exactly a bad idea to open your storefront near others selling similar goods. It doesn't mean you've created some sort of contrived place, it just makes it easier for me to blow my vacation budget at once instead of wandering the streets of SF and Oakland trying to find the hidden alley storefront of the guy that makes the best saltines in the Bay Area.
Our first stop was Boccalone, a salumeria based in Oakland. Before they opened this outlet, the only way that you were able to sample their stuff was to join their pork club and pick up deliveries every few weeks as your products were ready. Luckily for the rest of us that don't have a budget that accomodates a subscription to cured pig they opened an outlet in the Ferry Building.
Note the jawsome meat slicer...
They also do deliveries, apparently. This is the custom bike that they use.
Here are our $3.90 meat cones. The two on the right are sampler cones. They contained a variety of different dry cured salamis and a portion of some sous vide city ham. The cone on the left was their prosciutto cone. Last time we were here their house prosciutto wasn't ready yet. It's finally here and was as luscious as we expected it would be. Depending on your taste in prosciutto, this is either as good or better than most of the offerings from San Daniele or Parma. It's not as good as full-acorn Iberico, but nothing really is.
Of course, you can't eat all of that meat without some bread, so we headed to the Acme bread outlet down the hall. For once the line wasn't obnoxious, although as usual they were out of 50% of the sandwiches they sell. Honestly, I don't understand why anyone gets a sandwich here as Boccalone also offers sandwiches, and I'd much rather buy a sandwich from a meat producer than a bread producer.
Next stop was Cowgirl Creamery. This place is always so packed you can barely move... it's like the bastard child of a cheese shop and a Ginza sidewalk. Their selection of cheeses is pretty huge and they have a team of very knowledgeable cheesemongers. Actual decided to skip the aged cheeses and went straight to the fresh cheese cooler. We got to try most of what was in there and the cheeses were all amazing.
So here's our final haul. The brunello we brought from home :)
Here's a closeup of the Nduja. There's seriously something very right about spreadable salami!
