New Year’s at San Francisco, oh my. The glimmering lights, and festivities – granted it was a bit overrated with all the scantily clad women waltzing the streets (how could they not freeze?) but wonderful nonetheless.
I stayed with the family in a 4-bedroom suite at Villa Florence, a block away from Union Square. Parking on New Year’s Eve was like trying to fit into size 00 pants after the holidays; just not gonna happen. Until we lucked out at a ‘full’ parking lot under the square.
January 1st also being my birthday I’ve always felt slightly let down by the festive nature of New Years. It is a new start, but how exactly does everything change? Things go into a spike, then fall into normality; from what I’ve seen, it’s mostly an excuse to wear silly 2013 glasses and party ‘into the new year.’
But hey, who am I to judge? I entered 2013 standing outside a Thai shop, totally unaware of the fact that the year had changed until the workers inside had started counting down from 10. My mother and I struggled to catch a glimpse of the harbor’s fireworks; we didn’t see them, but it was a pleasant moment of its own.
And now that I’ve turned 20, I feel like life has changed in a sense; I’m not a teenager anymore. Life is getting real. I’m asking myself questions such as, “Will I be financially secure in the future?” “Where will I live?” “Is college even necessary?” Le sigh. Too much to worry about for someone who doesn’t even feel 20 yet!
Oops. I digressed too much.
Right. Pepple’s Donuts, from New Year’s Eve – The entire family walked 2 miles out of their way to indulge me, those selfless souls.
In case you don’t know, Pepple’s Donuts sells vegan donuts in the Ferry Building everyday from 9-5. They use local and organic ingredients to create incredible donuts with fun flavors; I saw apricot-vanilla and concord grape, but I was more interested in Matcha Green Tea & Chocolate Coconut:
Matcha Green Tea: We managed to snag the last one! At first it was troublesome trying to ‘bite’ into this, so I ended up just tearing it into chunks with my fingers. Hmm. Not quite what I was expecting from a donut; it had no ‘fluff,’ and was actually quite dense. Its crumb was more akin to a quick-bread than the mainstream Krispy Kreme donut, the predominant donuts of my days.
The flavor was very lacking – I couldn’t detect even the slightest hint of green tea. It appeared to be a dense sugar bomb with green icing. Delicious nonetheless.
Chocolate Coconut: Yum! Again, this was very dense, not to my liking. But the combination of chocolate and coconut cannot be beat. I repeat, cannot be beat. It was a wise choice, and the more favored of the two we sampled. The chocolate frosting was sugary and quite flaky, but in a fun way. The coconut shreds were visually appealing and took the coconut-ness up a notch.
All in all? Pepple’s Donuts has amazing concepts and have rave reviews on Yelp; I would give it 3 stars if it were an ordinary donut, but since they’re vegan I’m pretty much obligated to give them another. 4/5 stars, Pepple’s. You earned it.
Nomstoppable 
Is it even possible to go wrong with Match green tea sweets? That donut looks amazing.
Haha either it’s deliciously sweet or matcha tea-flavored deliciousness 🙂
I love San Francisco–how did I miss this donut shop where I was there?! I think matcha is a hard flavor to get right. So often you either can’t taste it at all, or it’s weirdly cloying. Blech.
Agreed – but when it’s balanced well… yum!
(Yeah they’re kind of hard to find, we wandered the Ferry Building for awhile before we found their stand; it was very small and at the far end of the building)