Malinda Lo

As much as I love a delicious gourmet meal full of fancy-sounding cooking techniques and sauces, I also love simple food. I’ve written before about my obsession with finding the perfect pizza. Lately, Amy and I have been experimenting with tossing the dough and I think we are verging on a perfect home-made version! However, that doesn’t stop me from trying lots of other pizzas, too.

Here’s a slice from Zachary’s in Berkeley, CA.

A slice at Zachary's

This is a Chicago-style pizza, which means it’s of the deep-dish, stuffed full of layers of goodness kind of slice. Chicago style isn’t my favorite, but I had nothing to complain about with this pizza. I think it was stuffed full of spinach, pepperoni, mushroom, mozzarella and (my favorite) tomato chunks. Mmm. Also, we drank lots of beer with it.

Closer!

Burgers are also easily found but often poorly put together. Either the bread is too large or the beef is not tasty enough, or the toppings don’t stack up. I ate this burger at Market Bar in San Francisco while waiting for the ferry. It was sort of an accidental dining experience, but it wasn’t bad.

In fact, this burger was actually quite successful because the bun was not too large (my main pet peeve about burgers), and there were plenty of delicious pickles served alongside. In my opinion, no burger is complete with some tart, tasty pickles. Plus, the fries were fantastic.

The burger and fries at Market Bar

I also prefer my burgers medium-rare. This one was perfectly cooked.

A peek at the interior

This weekend I’ll be enjoying myself at San Francisco Pride, probably eating some pizza and burgers along the way. If you’ll also be celebrating the 40th anniversary of Stonewall this weekend, I hope you have a fabulous time!