Milestones, meals and meeting up in the City

The past couple of weeks have marked several milestones for my life out west.

• Dave and I have lived in San Francisco for one year.
• Dave had his one-year anniversary working at the Golden State Warriors.
• We moved into a new apartment.
• I taught my first Les Mills BODYATTACK group fitness class.
• We visited our 100th restaurant in the Bay Area.
• And we finally had a long overdue dinner date with Dave’s core coworkers and their wives.

Dave works in basketball, so he gets a little busy during the long season.  Not only is free time on the weekends precious, but because his two close coworkers live about an hour from the City and commute into Oakland each day for work, getting together is not easy.  As the season neared, we finally found a time for everyone to meet up in San Francisco for a night out.

We ate at Amarena in the Russian Hill neighborhood.  Amarena is a little Italian place, where all the workers seem to be Italian.  We all agreed the food was fabulous and so was the ambiance.  As most restaurants in San Francisco, it was small, dark and cozy, with a pretty inviting interior of wood and trees.

It was a perfect location to experience our 100th restaurant in the Bay Area.

We had a couple of bottles of red wine, some bruschetta, tuna tartare, delicious bread, pasta, fish and a chocolate dessert.  For me, the dessert was the low point of the meal.  As someone with a certified sweet tooth, I prefer desserts that are nothing less than decadent, and therefore, had to stop on the way home for carrot cake from my favorite spot.  Although the rest of the table was pleased with their respective desserts, they seemed to understand where I was coming from and promised not to judge me for my second round.

I truly enjoyed our evening with Dave’s coworkers and their wives.  Dave spends more of his time with these two fellows at work than he does with me, so I appreciated the chance to learn more about them, their personalities and what brought them to the Warriors and the Bay Area.

They’re definitely good people.   Nice, funny, and more importantly, they savor the essential things in life …  good wine and good dessert.