Not Miss Kimberly's Corned Beef & Cabbage

Growing up in our complicated, oddly combined hyphenated family culture (that's Chinese-by-the-way-of-Taiwan-Jerseyan, Southern Baptist, Neo-Confucian, hippie from Tiburon), St. Patty's was always a big deal. I never knew why, but my mother, who was a terrible cook for most things, made a fantastic corned beef and cabbage. Most years, I continue that tradition and make my mother's recipe for friends. This year, I've been too mired in work to deal with the long cooking process so we decided to have St. Patty's meal out. We drove by the overgrown frat-boy convention at Harrington's and decided to punt to The Liberties in the Mission. The place was entirely sit-down dinner and each beer took about 20 minutes to arrive. While we may have escaped the frat-boy convention, we were now deeply in yuppie family territory. Almost every table consisted of 40-something couple with their young toddler. A festive atmoshphere is hard to conjure when you have been hailing that server 3 times for a Guinness.
And the corned beef and cabbage was just barely okay. Too salty. With a weird cream sauce. The cabbage wasn't creamy and smooth. Miss Kimberly, this is one dish that your cuisine still reigns supreme!