Now, not many of you know this, but I'm a fiend for ice cream - vegan, store-bought, homemade, I'm all over any kind of frozen custard. However, I only recently got into gelato. I remember having it once&being totally unimpressed, but after trying it again back home, a fire has been ignited in me &now I am a gelato-consuming furnace of CHOMP (Miss Lumpy, now with 100% more wut?). Taking this nonsense into account, it's no surprise that when I was walking down Fillmore street &spotted Tango Gelato, I was pulled almost magnetically into the store. Painted a light, soothing sage contrasted with dark wood-tones, smelling of bread &that inherent sweetness ice cream parlors usually possess, it is the perfect place for a date or a quiet afternoon with a good book - fun fact, my choice was Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
A trend that I love in gelato shops is serving real food as well, usually paninis or salads, and Tango does not disappoint. They have a few choices of pre-chosen paninis as well as a board of "build-your-own" options. My creation was pesto, chicken, and goat cheese on focaccia, and I can honestly say it was the best panini of my life. They also offer small individual pizzas - rectangles of, oh, seven or eight inches long by four inches wide, and though they had a few selections, the only one they had available when I went was Veggie - fine with me! But leads me to believe they get them pre-made, or they have someone come in once a week to make a bunch &then freeze them, so if that bothers you, I'd opt for a sandwich or salad. I adored the veggie, &even my very, very carnivorous friend enjoyed it immensely.
Now, as for the pièce de résistance: of course, the gelato. Stars of smoothies and sundaes, you can find the menu of flavors online (click the picture above for a link!); their offerings feature classics like vanilla, chocolate, and pistachio, but also include Green Tea, Dulce de Leche, Blackberry Cabernet, and - sigh! - Crème Brûlée, among others, and if you couldn't tell, the latter was my favorite, though I greatly enjoyed the Blackberry Cabernet as well. The other flavors I tried were amazing as well, though I admit I was disappointed in the green tea flavor, as it was much milder than I was hoping for.
As far as pricing goes, I would say this is a lower-price destination. While the gelato is a bit pricey (compared to ice cream - it's pretty average for gelato), at $3.50 for their small and $7.00 for a pint (with, of course, other options in between) and $4.25 for a slice of vegetarian pizza, going in around lunchtime and getting a panini is your best bet. Because it can be hard to watch the grill and serve the high volumes of gelato orders they get at night at the same time, they don't offer paninis for dinner time - a shame, because at $6.50 for a big sandwich with salad and a free "chico"-size gelato, it would be the best-priced dinner in town.
Lolita-specific: What's more lolita than expensive, luxurious, glorified ice cream?! Kidding, of course, but seriously, if you're looking for a good time with a friend or two in one big photo-op, you've found it. Like I said, the entire store is a soft sage green contrasted natural hardwood, as seen in the picture above, and the walls are hung with black-and-white photographs from a local photographer. The booths are plush and fit two and four, respectively, so this isn't a great place for a large group, as the handful of small tables also only fit two or three comfortably. However, if you're looking for a cute place for a friend or two, or for a quick stop if your group is jonesing for gelato.
All in all, I definitely give it 4.5/5 stars. The food is excellent, the gelato is amazing &while they don't have many flavors, those they do have are a good mix of conventional &creative - my only concern is that everything except the panini was really a bit more than I'd like to pay. The staff is also friendly&helpful, &rather tolerant of my favorite ice cream-shop hobby: sampling as many flavors as possible. If you're visiting San Francisco &have a high-class sweet tooth, you would be doing it a great disservice if you left town without stopping by Tango Gelato.
http//www.tangogelato.com
(Part of Lolita on Location: San Francisco)

(Part of the Lolitas on Location: San Francisco series)

The Queen Anne Hotel in San Francisco

As I write this, I sit on a satin-covered settee before a fireplace. My feet crunch the Persian-style Victorian rug, and a porcelain cup of tea sits next to me on a marble coffee table, complete with gold filigree engraving. Above the fireplace, I contemplate an oil painting of the lady of the house entertaining a papal figure with her violinist, all of them coiffed and adorned in the style of the Sun King‘s court. In the other room is a wooden grand piano, crystal chandelier, and a young blond man who looks up every time I cast my eyes in his direction.

The main stairway in the lobby - an elevator is also available

It’s hard to believe I’m still in the twenty-first century, but my fellow parlor attendant is chatting on the cell phone to our family back home, and the young man is wearing jeans and a hoodie. I’m in the Queen Anne Hotel in San Francisco, a period hotel on Sutter Street. Down the street from Japantown and only a few blocks from Fillmore Street with its shopping &Victorian rowhouses, the Queen Anne is in Pacific Heights, a prime location for tourists with a flair for shopping and dining, as well as an appreciation of historical architecture.
The Queen Anne herself is four floors, with both an intricate cherry staircase and a gold-and-burgundy elevator, and contains 48 guestrooms total. It opened as “Miss Mary Lake’s School for Girls” around the 1890’s, making it one of the oldest structures in Pacific Heights, and was restored in the 1980’s as the Queen Anne Hotel after passing hands a few times during the century between. The lobby/parlor is a grand space with burgundy walls & window hangings and mahogany wainscoting, crystal chandeliers and two ornate fireplaces. Afternoon tea with cookies &sherry is served every day from 4 - 6 PM, and a complementary breakfast is served in the ballroom every morning, 7 - 9 (though I should note, it‘s not really impressive - bagels, toast, fruit, cereal, juices). The entire hotel is an antiquer’s dream, as almost all the furniture is from the building’s time of origin or around there, and every landing and room has it treasures. The hotel staff is very friendly and eager to help, and are full of suggestions and local knowledge, and there is town car service every morning at 7:45, 8:45, and 9:45, to anywhere in the city.

A small portion of the lobby

This hotel is not trapped in the past, however. Breakfast is accompanied by a toaster oven for your bagels and microwave for your oatmeal. Each room is equipped with modern televisions and mini-fridges, and the bathroom is almost disappointingly 21st-centrury - personally, I was half-hoping for a pull-chain on the toilet. The hotel is also equipped with high-speed wifi - theoretically. More on that later.
The guest room itself is beautiful - high ceilings, a beautiful color pallet, and huge, comfortable beds. The closet is very large, and the bathroom isn’t really tiny, either, and it has a bathtub, something many modern hotels have nixed. I almost wish the bathroom was more old-fashioned - lovely marble, but the tiles on the floor also cover the walls and surround the bathtub, which is also sadly modern - in a perfect world, the tub would be a brass-and-porcelain claw-footed monster, though I don’t doubt that in some of the fancier suites this would be a possibility. It’s comfortable, though, and not unattractive, so clearly my standards are just unrealistic. There is also a small sitting area with two armchairs, a nice wooden table, and a lamp.
While there is little else I can say badly about this hotel, as with anything, there are some discomforts. The shower in our hotel was broken when we checked in, to the point of being unusable - however, this was fixed when it was brought to the front desk’s attention, and after we left for the day so we didn’t need to put up with the noise from the plumber. The biggest concern for me, however, is the internet - I don’t have it. For some reason I am entirely unable to connect on either of my laptops, and on those rare times I can, there’s no signal. However, if this problem affects you on your stay, there is a desktop in the lobby available to guests. Another slight annoyance is, due to the age of the hotel, a great lack of outlets, meaning I can’t charge my cell phone, camera battery, and laptop at the same time. I’m sure I'll survive somehow. Also, they don’t have a pool or air conditioning, though in San Francisco, where it doesn’t often get much over 80, neither of these are necessities, in my opinion - however, they do have fireplaces lit all night to stave off the chill of evening.

The parlor fireplace, in front of which I sit writing!

Lolita-specific: The closet is large &deep, perfect for petticoats & even your largest dresses. They come equipped with sturdy wooden hangers that won’t stretch or damage your clothes, however, they have no pants hangers, so if you have any delicate skirts you don’t want to drape over the bar on said hangers, you should probably bring your own. The internet is provided, through wifi (theoretically) and the lobby computer. There is also a nice vanity/dresser next to the door, so if you’re sharing your room with another lolita you can coif yourselves at the same time without squishing into the same mirror. There are many places for photos, as most of the floors have lovely benches, settees, and armchairs scattered around, as well as some lovely art.
In conclusion, I would give it about 3.5/5 stars, which kills me, as this hotel is a Taurean art-and-beauty Nirvana, and my inner bull is going into overdrive at the multitude of rich colors &fabrics. However, the inconveniences must be taken into account. While they aren’t bothering me much, they are exactly that - inconvenient, and they may bother someone else more than I, so they deserve to be taken into account during a review. Even still, I’m having a great stay, and I would definitely recommend this hotel to anyone spending any amount of time in San Francisco - especially a lolita.