Clement Street

San Francisco is a city of neighborhoods, including places our many tourists rarely visit. Several years ago, a Chinese friend took me shopping to the markets along Clement Street in the Richmond District.

In those markets, we encountered exotic items like marinated duck eggs, pig balls, and liquors that can knock you senseless after a drink or two.

Tonight, we returned to the scene of these crimes. Our first destination was the great independent bookstore, Green Apple, that anchors Clement Street and defines the tone of the neighborhood. There, I found a used copy of one of my favorite books, the brilliant "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families," by Philip Gourevitch.

Eventually, we found ourselves in one of the small food markets where the ingredients we were seeking for tonight's dinner (baby bok choi, buna shimaji, daikon, and ginger), were available. The price for all of the food pictured above?

$3.69.

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