The memories of San Francisco and the Bay Area had not been on my mind when I settled down to a dinner of cranberry scone, mushroom pizza bread and clam chowder soup served in a sourdough bread bowl.
But taste- and the memory of taste- is a peculiar thing, and even though I ought to have been thinking about South Korea, all it took was a single spoonful of this wonderfully thick, creamy clam chowder to remind me of the one I'd had for lunch at a bench table near Pier 39 a long, long time ago.
It didn't matter that on this evening I was sitting on a very comfortable chair in a Paris Baguette café in a crowded shopping mall near Downtown.
The soup, the clams, and especially the sourdough bread, brought me straight back to the city and I thought of her sunshine, her lovely chill air, the horse carriage, the horse clomping down the street, Ghiradelli, Alcatraz, the snorting sea lions down at the dock, and the fragrant dried lavender flowers sold in a shop within the Pier.
But taste- and the memory of taste- is a peculiar thing, and even though I ought to have been thinking about South Korea, all it took was a single spoonful of this wonderfully thick, creamy clam chowder to remind me of the one I'd had for lunch at a bench table near Pier 39 a long, long time ago.
It didn't matter that on this evening I was sitting on a very comfortable chair in a Paris Baguette café in a crowded shopping mall near Downtown.
The soup, the clams, and especially the sourdough bread, brought me straight back to the city and I thought of her sunshine, her lovely chill air, the horse carriage, the horse clomping down the street, Ghiradelli, Alcatraz, the snorting sea lions down at the dock, and the fragrant dried lavender flowers sold in a shop within the Pier.