Boudin Bakery

San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf area teems with tourists and many of them end up stopping by Boudin Bakery. The Boudin family is famous for their sourdough bread. Way back in 1849, they discovered that wild yeasts in the San Francisco air imparted a unique tang to their traditional French bread, giving rise to “San Francisco sourdough French bread.” Today, the Boudin family's initial recipe lives on with a portion of the original mother dough still starting each and every sourdough loaf they bake. There are several locations, but the wharf location is the flagship location and in addition to selling breads (and cookies and other treats), there is a gift shop and cafe plus a bistro restaurant on the second level.

We went one Sunday morning for breakfast. We sat outside by this fireplace and it was wonderful. We both ordered the same breakfast: hot tea and an Egg, Bacon, & Cheddar Breakfast Sandwich on a sourdough English muffin with tomato & lettuce:

This is one of the best breakfast sandwiches I've ever eaten. The sourdough English muffin was so darn tasty. There was lots of egg, bacon, and cheese, too.

A week later we stooped back into the cafe for a light meal in late afternoon before heading to the airport for our red-eye flight home. SP tried Fish Tacos:

He enjoyed them. I asked him to order me a grilled cheese with bacon, but he messed up and I just got grilled cheese. It was fine, the sourdough bread saved it from being boring.

There was a bit of a line to order at the cafe counter and we made some new friends while in line. We all were looking for seating outside and decided to share the big table for 8 people. The 3 adults and their 3 kids all had Clam Chowder in Sourdough Bread Bowl. One of the young girls let me take a photo of hers:

They said it was tasty. The kids seemed to enjoy the bread more than the soup! They really got into digging out the bread from the bowl and broke quite a few plastic spoons!

If you're visiting San Francisco and at Fisherman's Wharf, you'll definitely come across Boudin Bakery and it's definitely worth stopping in for a snack, cafe meal, or bistro meal. We brought home a loaf of sourdough, which the lovely bread counter girl wrapped up carefully for us to keep it extra fresh once we said we were flying home in a few hours. I also got a chocolate chip cookie to eat on the flight and it was yummy, too (although, truthfully, I slept on the flight home and ate my cookie for breakfast after we landed).