Just saw Jersey Boys for the fourth time, 'cause I'm crazy. And got lucky. Gonna cut and paste a post I wrote on the broadwayworld.com board.
I just saw Jersey Boys for the fourth time in SF tonight. I knew the run was nearing its end and couldn't resist trying for rush seats to catch this cast (I previously saw the 1st tour once and the 2nd tour twice). I left work early and got there at 5:45PM and was a bit worried because there were 13 people ahead of me in line, but ended up with lower box seats that were better than the rush seats I got last time - limited view but not as limited, and limited in the opposite direction (I was on the right side of the stage, last time I was on the left side). Though I don't think I realized how much was done on the catwalk until I couldn't see what was going on up there. And the people in the box with me totally missed the "Our Sons" going to "Four Seasons" on the sign because it was behind the spiral staircase from our perspective.
I don't seem to have gotten any understudies tonight, which is neat. I wonder if Rick Faugno was tired, though. I've never seen him before so I have nothing to compare, but by the end of the evening he looked noticeably more wrung out and with less energy than everyone else, and his control over his voice over the course of the evening didn't seem to be consistent. I have to say, Rick was far from my favorite Frankie, vocally - actually, probably my least favorite. He kept getting up into his throat rather a lot, which produced a rather unpleasant, pinched, sharp sounding voice, especially when he was belting or going high. What's odd is that I feel like his singing voice range went higher than the other Frankies I've seen in that he didn't seem to need to go falsetto as much, or he disguised his falsetto better, but I thought he sounded the best when he was singing the lower parts. "My Eyes Adored You," the beginning part of "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You," and the parts of "Fallen Angel" where he doesn't start going louder sounded terrific, I thought. But I couldn't get into his performances of "Sherry," "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Walk Like a Man," etc... On the plus side, my friend who has never heard or seen Jersey Boys before enjoyed it all, and leaned over after "Sherry" to say "Wow they really nailed that" and then again after "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You" to say he really liked it. So maybe I'm just hypercritical now, or it's not fair because I keep comparing to Jarrod who's not only my favorite Frankie, but I also have a recording of from the Emmy's to keep his interpretation fresh in my mind. Also on the flip side, Rick probably sounded closer to the more gritty sound the real Frankie Valli achieves in his non-falsetto singing than Chris, Jarrod, or JLY. I think he let it get a little out of control from time to time though. But I go back to the tired hypothesis b/c at times his singing reminded me a little of me at the end of a karaoke night when I have to force my voice to go where I want it to, and at times it slips a little out of my control.
Acting-wise, I thought he was fine. At times he seemed to rush through lines, but at others I thought his emphasis and delivery were spot-on, and at times more convincing than either Chris or Jarrod. I was sitting on the side where his back was to me in some crucial scenes, like "Fallen Angel" and the pizza parlor scene with Mary Delgado, though, so it's a bit hard to judge. I still feel like Jarrod matures the most convincingly and the most subtly of the three Frankies I've seen. He becomes more mature without you really consciously noticing it, but just gradually takes on more gravity and more emotional weight. I thought Rick was ok here - I didn't really feel like he came off too young or anything. Hard to match what Jarrod did, IMO, b/c I can't even tell how Jarrod pulls it off.
As for the others, I actually quite enjoyed Bryan McElroy's Tommy DeVito. Though he has a far weaker falsetto in that jail ditty he came up with in Ohio than any other Tommy I've heard, I liked his singing voice in general, and thought his interpretation of the role worked quite well. He did the tough guy thing covering up for the screwups and delivering lines just right to get the laughs, and I liked him. Jeff Leibow as Nick Massi I also enjoyed. I feel like his line delivery and accent was actually fairly similar to Michael Ingersoll's which made me wonder if he was influenced by Michael's interpretation or if maybe Nick just sounded like that and they were both working off of that. His take seemed less fussy OCD than Michael Ingersoll's and a bit more wise guy, but I thought it worked well. Andrew Rannells as Bob Gaudio I have mixed feelings on. Vocally, loved his performance of "Oh What a Night," not as fond of "Cry for Me." He played up the humor really well, and did the young Bob in a really funny way. My friend found something a bit off about his performance but couldn't articulate it but I think I know what he means - he was a bit overenthusiastic and a bit too broadly winking outside of the role, I think. I mean, he got great laughs from the audience but then he seemed to react to it a bit more than was in character. I guess what I'm saying is he didn't seem to stay in character - the other guys all reacted to the cheering and laughter in ways more consistent with their characters. But he was a lot of fun.
I think I still like my first Bob Crewe (name slips my mind) the best - his interpretation completely colored what I think the role should be for me. Jonathan Hadley didn't quite hit the right note for me and wasn't as funny, I thought, though he was fine in general. Also looked a bit older than I expected for the role. The girls were great, I thought. Since the spiral staircase was right in front of us it was kind of interesting and touching to watch Joyce Chittick as Mary sobbing on the staircase as Rick sang the first part of "My Eyes Adored You" (also kind of interesting to watch Rick just gulp down as much water as he could during the whole trying to get "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" on the radio bit - not sure how he could sing after downing that much water, though I'm sure he needs it!).
I don't know if being on the far side throws off the vocal balance or how things are mixed, and whether that affects how I hear things. But at times I felt like the orchestrations/songs were a little flat - I felt like I could barely hear "Short Shorts," for instance. But at others, the harmonies were heavenly - I thought they sounded better at times than I'd ever heard before. The three non-Frankie guys and whoever was singing backstage to back them up just sounded awesome together.
I think it's funny whenever I read a review about how the show really gets going with "Sherry/Big Girls/Walk Like a Man" because I'm actually a huge fan of the earlier mix of songs - I love the whole intro bit, adore "Silhouettes", love "A Sunday Kind of Love" when they're harmonizing on it in the church... I think that's one of the things that keeps me going back to the show instead of just listening to the cast recording, since they don't have the full songs in the cast recording.
The audience was great, btw - very very into things, laughing hard, cheering and whooping appreciatively, and I don't think I've ever heard them gasp so loud when Tommy says he owes half a million in tax money. They jumped up for a standing ovation before any of the actors even hit the stage for their bows.
At any rate, I have to say I missed my favorite Frankie, Jarrod, but on the whole I'm very happy I decided to see Jersey Boys for the fourth time. I just love this show, and the finale always brings a huge smile to my face (except the part of me which goes "oh no, it's almost over!"). It's probably a good thing it's going away soon - I've never seen any show four times in a single year before, and there are very few shows I've even seen four times total! Not sure I should let myself be tempted to see it for a fifth time!
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Happiness is...
Finding a recipe. Trying it out. Having it work out really well (except the part where you're the slowest cook in the world and it took you like 3x as long as it should have) and really actually liking it. I've tried a bunch of recipes on Allrecipes.com recently that have been decent, but this one I really enjoyed.
Pear and Prosciutto Pizza using Quick and Easy Pizza Crust. At least the way I made it - D'Anjou pears (had no idea which to use so I got the more expensive ones =P), imported Swiss cheese (it was that or fat-free which I knew my bf would kill me for), fresh mozzarella, and six slices of prosciutto... I would advise using more than the 6 cloves of garlic it calls for, though - I didn't have enough to spread all around the pizza, though it still tasted fine. But it was super-yummy and I quite enjoyed the crust which really was quick and easy.
Made Sweet and Tangy Sauteed Collard Greens on the side b/c I figured I should branch out from my typical spinach (the only green in a standard grocery store I really know how to cook). It wasn't bad - not bitter like collard greens usually are. Of course, there's a lot of butter in that recipe. Some people said they made it without the butter and it still tasted good. Maybe I'll try that next time.
On the eating out note, I've been:
Yummy Yummy (1015 Irving St, btwn 11th and 12th) which was quite yummy yummy ;). Vietnamese restaurant next door to San Tung.. my bf's pho (which they let him add both flank and steak too even though the menu had them in separate offerings) was quite tasty. I ordered one of the special grills, which is basically something like lemon pork (or beef or five-spice chicken, or sugarcane shrimp, etc etc), vermicelli, carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, and mint leaves on a plate accompanied by hard dry skins that you dip in hot water until they soften and then wrap your own spring-roll like things in. This was surprisingly good given that the ingredients are so standard for Vietnamese fare - fresh and delicious.
Lilly's BBQ (705 Divisadero between Fulton and Grove) Must qualify this by saying we got this takeout, and my bf biked it home. So it got home faster than when I walk/bus stuff home from, say, lower Haight, but it still cooled off by the time we started eating it. So that must be kept in mind since cool meat is not nearly as good as freshly warm meat. That being said, at the moment I favor Memphis Minnie's BBQ more. The people at Lilly's were really nice - seems like an entire family (all the males anyway) work there and the main guy was super down home and friendly. He advised us the tri-tip was too tough (in fact, wouldn't sell it) so we got the baby back ribs and beef brisket in a 2-meat combo, with a small order of cole slaw and corn on the side. The baby back ribs were ok - not particularly meaty, not particularly juicy, but reasonably flavored for the amount of meat I could get off the bone. The beef brisket - I don't think I'm as big a fan of beef brisket as I think I should be b/c I haven't liked it the last 3 bbq places we've gone... but at any rate, partly b/c it was cold, it was a bit tougher and not as tender as I think it should be. The mild bbq sauce was ok. I know it's not at all authentic but really, my favorite is KC Masterpiece. Particularly mixed with honey. The cole slaw I liked more than Memphis Minnie b/c it was standard creamy slaw as opposed to the vinegary stuff Memphis Minnie has. The corn was pretty much whole kernel corn out of the can though there's some smokiness to it so I'm not quite sure how it was cooked. It was better than the stuff at that Soul Food place we went to a few weeks ago. I've never had real authentic southern or Texas bbq so I don't even know if I judge these things right. But...Lilly's fell a little short for me.
Also had Squat and Gobble (1428 Haight St) for dinner but I don't even count that b/c I don't think it's really a dinner place. Got a Salmon Cobb salad. The salmon was fried. The salad was decent, particularly when I got the parts with bacon and blue cheese and ranch dressing all mixed in well, but the salmon was eh. It's fine when you're looking for a low-key dinner but it's not that fast.
Pear and Prosciutto Pizza using Quick and Easy Pizza Crust. At least the way I made it - D'Anjou pears (had no idea which to use so I got the more expensive ones =P), imported Swiss cheese (it was that or fat-free which I knew my bf would kill me for), fresh mozzarella, and six slices of prosciutto... I would advise using more than the 6 cloves of garlic it calls for, though - I didn't have enough to spread all around the pizza, though it still tasted fine. But it was super-yummy and I quite enjoyed the crust which really was quick and easy.
Made Sweet and Tangy Sauteed Collard Greens on the side b/c I figured I should branch out from my typical spinach (the only green in a standard grocery store I really know how to cook). It wasn't bad - not bitter like collard greens usually are. Of course, there's a lot of butter in that recipe. Some people said they made it without the butter and it still tasted good. Maybe I'll try that next time.
On the eating out note, I've been:
Yummy Yummy (1015 Irving St, btwn 11th and 12th) which was quite yummy yummy ;). Vietnamese restaurant next door to San Tung.. my bf's pho (which they let him add both flank and steak too even though the menu had them in separate offerings) was quite tasty. I ordered one of the special grills, which is basically something like lemon pork (or beef or five-spice chicken, or sugarcane shrimp, etc etc), vermicelli, carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, and mint leaves on a plate accompanied by hard dry skins that you dip in hot water until they soften and then wrap your own spring-roll like things in. This was surprisingly good given that the ingredients are so standard for Vietnamese fare - fresh and delicious.
Lilly's BBQ (705 Divisadero between Fulton and Grove) Must qualify this by saying we got this takeout, and my bf biked it home. So it got home faster than when I walk/bus stuff home from, say, lower Haight, but it still cooled off by the time we started eating it. So that must be kept in mind since cool meat is not nearly as good as freshly warm meat. That being said, at the moment I favor Memphis Minnie's BBQ more. The people at Lilly's were really nice - seems like an entire family (all the males anyway) work there and the main guy was super down home and friendly. He advised us the tri-tip was too tough (in fact, wouldn't sell it) so we got the baby back ribs and beef brisket in a 2-meat combo, with a small order of cole slaw and corn on the side. The baby back ribs were ok - not particularly meaty, not particularly juicy, but reasonably flavored for the amount of meat I could get off the bone. The beef brisket - I don't think I'm as big a fan of beef brisket as I think I should be b/c I haven't liked it the last 3 bbq places we've gone... but at any rate, partly b/c it was cold, it was a bit tougher and not as tender as I think it should be. The mild bbq sauce was ok. I know it's not at all authentic but really, my favorite is KC Masterpiece. Particularly mixed with honey. The cole slaw I liked more than Memphis Minnie b/c it was standard creamy slaw as opposed to the vinegary stuff Memphis Minnie has. The corn was pretty much whole kernel corn out of the can though there's some smokiness to it so I'm not quite sure how it was cooked. It was better than the stuff at that Soul Food place we went to a few weeks ago. I've never had real authentic southern or Texas bbq so I don't even know if I judge these things right. But...Lilly's fell a little short for me.
Also had Squat and Gobble (1428 Haight St) for dinner but I don't even count that b/c I don't think it's really a dinner place. Got a Salmon Cobb salad. The salmon was fried. The salad was decent, particularly when I got the parts with bacon and blue cheese and ranch dressing all mixed in well, but the salmon was eh. It's fine when you're looking for a low-key dinner but it's not that fast.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Brunch at Zazie
Finally decided to try to wait in line for Zazie (941 Cole St), the French restaurant that everyone likes to go to for brunch. Got there at 11:30...got seated maybe 40 minutes later? And got the food right around an hour after I got there... Quite the wait, though a former coworker I ran into who goes frequently said it was the worst he's ever seen it this morning. Just my luck!
The lovely thing (or maybe the bad thing, depending how you look at it) about Zazie is that for all their pancake/French toast dishes, you can choose to get one, two, or three pieces, and it's priced accordingly. Similarly, for their poached egg (and possibly other egg) dishes, you can choose one, two, or three eggs, with a gradated price tag for that as well. This is great for me because I'm indecisive as all hell, I was starving (having not eaten anything yet that morning, and having worked out that morning), and everything looked great. Between my friend and I, we ended up ordering one slice of the gingerbread pancakes with lemon curd and bijou pear and one slice of the French Toast Tahiti (Challah French bread stuffed with caramelized bananas and walnuts) to share (we each took half), and then I ordered myself a one egg St Trop (poached egg on English muffin with smoked salmon, red onion, capers, and lemon hollandaise sauce with a side of home fries with whole garlic cloves baked alongside) while she ordered a one egg Monaco (similar to mine but with prosciutto and tomatoes provencale). Yumminess. The main problem was deciding in what order to eat - I saved the sweets for last and they ended up cooling down a bit and therefore not being quite as yummy as if they'd been fresh out of the kitchen. The St Trop wasn't quite what I had in mind - there's a smoked salmon eggs benedict-type sandwich I had at a restaurant in SF years ago that I loved, and this wasn't it - but it was decent. A few too many capers. The home fries with the garlic baked alongside were quite good. The French Toast Tahiti was yummy though I should have drizzled more maple syrup on it (it came with a sort of caramelized sauce but I didn't get the plate with the sauce). The gingerbread pancakes were rather thick and the texture was rougher than I'm used to for pancakes, but they were interesting,and the lemon curd and pear were really good.
I don't know if I want to wait 45 minutes for brunch again, but Zazie was yummy. Maybe I'll go again sometime when the line is shorter. It seems Bambino's two doors down serves brunch and the reviews on Yelp are pretty good for it, and that place never has a wait. So maybe I'll check out Zazie and go to Bambino's if it's got too long a wait next time.
The lovely thing (or maybe the bad thing, depending how you look at it) about Zazie is that for all their pancake/French toast dishes, you can choose to get one, two, or three pieces, and it's priced accordingly. Similarly, for their poached egg (and possibly other egg) dishes, you can choose one, two, or three eggs, with a gradated price tag for that as well. This is great for me because I'm indecisive as all hell, I was starving (having not eaten anything yet that morning, and having worked out that morning), and everything looked great. Between my friend and I, we ended up ordering one slice of the gingerbread pancakes with lemon curd and bijou pear and one slice of the French Toast Tahiti (Challah French bread stuffed with caramelized bananas and walnuts) to share (we each took half), and then I ordered myself a one egg St Trop (poached egg on English muffin with smoked salmon, red onion, capers, and lemon hollandaise sauce with a side of home fries with whole garlic cloves baked alongside) while she ordered a one egg Monaco (similar to mine but with prosciutto and tomatoes provencale). Yumminess. The main problem was deciding in what order to eat - I saved the sweets for last and they ended up cooling down a bit and therefore not being quite as yummy as if they'd been fresh out of the kitchen. The St Trop wasn't quite what I had in mind - there's a smoked salmon eggs benedict-type sandwich I had at a restaurant in SF years ago that I loved, and this wasn't it - but it was decent. A few too many capers. The home fries with the garlic baked alongside were quite good. The French Toast Tahiti was yummy though I should have drizzled more maple syrup on it (it came with a sort of caramelized sauce but I didn't get the plate with the sauce). The gingerbread pancakes were rather thick and the texture was rougher than I'm used to for pancakes, but they were interesting,and the lemon curd and pear were really good.
I don't know if I want to wait 45 minutes for brunch again, but Zazie was yummy. Maybe I'll go again sometime when the line is shorter. It seems Bambino's two doors down serves brunch and the reviews on Yelp are pretty good for it, and that place never has a wait. So maybe I'll check out Zazie and go to Bambino's if it's got too long a wait next time.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Food
Having not updated in a month, I clearly don't remember everything I've eaten. Here's what I do remember.
Tara (123 2nd St, between Minna and Mission). This is a new Thai/Asian-fusion place that opened up near work (just down the street from Osha Thai) that I'd been meaning to try for a while and finally got in for dinner Wed night when I was in a rush to get to AT&T Park for the Boitano show. They said they could get me in and out in 30 minutes, so yay! The service was great - the guy was unobtrusively refilling my water glass every 2 seconds, the food was quick, it was easy to grab someone's attention to get my doggie bag and check... The food... well I got the Pad See Ew with beef, which is a favorite of mine. The dish tasted fine - not the best I've ever had but certainly not the worst - but the beef was tough and chewy. Not so good when you're in a rush, or in general. It's cheaper than Osha, the *flavors* were fine, but the textures and the meat need work. Only having had one dish, I hesitate to judge the place overall, but it did give me pause...
Amici's East Coast Pizzeria (216 King St) - so it's a chain I've been to several times before, so maybe it's not entirely fair to review it. But I don't really like it. Never had a pizza here I particularly liked (and their pizza is gross once it starts to cool - my group ordered some for dinner one night and I got there late and the crust was so tough I had to tear pieces off instead of just biting pieces). So I went here b/c it was across the street from AT&T Park and I needed to grab quick food before dress rehearsal for the Boitano show. Got a spaghetti b/c really, how far wrong can you go with spaghetti? Also because their pasta choices are crap. And the spaghetti was both expensive ($10+ for a small portion with meat sauce) and pretty crappy. I had better tasting spaghetti in the IAD airport while waiting for a flight one night, and I watched them scoop the spaghetti out of a bin where it'd been sitting for who knows how long. So yeah, this is me dumping on Amici's. NOT recommended.
Brenda's French Soul Food (652 Polk St between Eddy and Turk). Closed on Sundays. So sad.
Dottie's True Blue Cafe (522 Jones between Geary and O'Farrell). Where we went when we discovered Brenda's was closed. Very popular spot - the line went halfway down the block and stayed that way the entire time we were there. Specials menu had some fairly unique items on it. My friend and bf both got the Banana Chocolate Chip French Toast with Balsamic Strawberries, which was pretty good. Not nearly as sweet as you would expect. Also not as spectacular as you would expect, but yummy. I was hungry and saw a combination that appealed - 2 eggs, piece of ham, hash browns, 2 pieces of French toast...yes, I'm a pig. The eggs were fine - standard scrambled, not entirely flavorful but bury it with enough ketchup and anything is yummy. The hash browns were the same - very standard. The ham was good - a nice big slice of real ham, and not some dinky little bits. The French toast was fine as well - their French toast is on big thick slices of bread which don't absorb the syrup quite as much as I'd like. Oddly, my combo cost like $1-$2 more than the special French toast and I only had one half slice less of toast than they got with their special. Maybe we should have tried some of their more exotic specials, but my conclusion is that the place was good but probably not worth waiting 1/2 an hour or more in line for...
Went to Abacus again for dinner the other night with bf's coworkers. Got more interesting food than the last time we went with coworkers - mongolian beef, tangerine chicken, creamed corn and crab meat soup, and house special chow mein (or lo mein?). I still think the dessert here is the best part - we got the ice cream sampler again, this time with lychee, coconut, mango, and double chocolate ice cream. The mango was kind of icy but otherwise so yummy. The food is ok. Soup was nice on a warm night.
Ziryab (528 Divisadero between Fell and Hayes). Looking for a quick place to eat Friday night before a comedy show at the Independent, and finding long waits everywhere, a local clued us into this place. We were seated immediately, no problem. It's a Mediterranean place so most of the people I was with ended up getting kebabs of some kind which they polished off so I assume they were quite good. My bf got a smoked trout? appetizer special (there was some confusion about whether it was an appetizer or an entree but luckily he also ordered some mediterranean herb bread so he had enough to eat) which he said was really good. I got the chicken schwerma plate - bunch o' little pita bread pockets into which I could stuff the schwerma and sauce. Quite tasty. Overall, not cheap, but a good meal in a not-overly crowded place with decent service.
It's never fair to judge a place by just getting takeout from them, especially when you have like a 15-20 minute walk to get the food home, and you placed the order before leaving work, a 30+ minute bus ride away. But that's what I did with Siam Lotus Thai Cuisine (1705 Haight St at Cole). The Golden Triangle appetizer I ordered actually still tasted quite yummy when I got home, despite it being in a crispy wrapper which you would think would get mushy (and got a bit softer than I'm sure it started as) and gross. These were little triangle shaped "crepes" stuffed with mashed potatoes, yams, and peas and weren't nearly as heavy as samosas and such tend to be. They had a nice, lightly sweet, almost fluffy texture and taste, and were quite yummy. The Pineapple Cashew Nuts Chicken wasn't as good, though I really do wonder if it's b/c of the delay in eating from prep time. The flavors of the sauce and such were quite good but the chicken itself was strips of quite bland dry white meat. Maybe they would have been better warmer? I definitely want to try this place again sometime from within the restaurant.
Got takeout a fair amount that week, actually. Well, delivery in this case. The North Beach Pizza on Stanyan St only delivers or has takeout - there's no sit in. We felt lazy one day so we ordered our typical pizza with pepperoni & tomatoes. Yummy. My only complaint is that North Beach isn't particularly fast - I think the order arrived like 50 minutes after I made it? Need to plan ahead better - they have an online ordering system and you can specify a time if you order ahead of time. I should try that and see how well it works. But I love North Beach Pizza. Yum yum yum.
Decided to try Tsuna mi Sushi Bar (1300 Fulton at Divisadero). My bf liked it a lot more than me. It's a fairly trendy type place - famous for its diverse sake selection, with kind of loungey-seating around the walls and tables in the middle. They have a relatively small, IMO, sushi menu with some unusual stuff. We ended up getting a Tsunami - maguro, bincho and asparagus flash-fried, topped with spicy aioli, tobiko, and scallions (Bincho is apparently albacore - what goes by white tuna or shiro maguro elsewhere?). That was fairly yummy. We also got sake sashimi and I forget what other fish...either hamachi or maguro, but pretty sure it wasn't bincho. I also think we may have gotten the Five Sisters roll, which I think is known as a rainbow roll elsewhere - california topped with five types of fish. It was all quite good. I guess my lack of enthusiasm mainly stemmed from the prices - we had only gone to Sushi Bistro like the week before, and Tsunami is decidedly more expensive. And I guess also the selection since there were less choices than Sushi Bistro. Given that they're in entirely different areas of the city, though, it's not like you'd necessarily skip one to go to the other. I guess my conclusion is it's a decent sushi place, but on the expensive side, and unnecessarily trendy (which means long waits on weekend nights).
That's all I can remember for now...
On a personal note, I had fun over Thanksgiving weekend going to see Kurt Browning in "Peter Pan", which was a fun stage musical. Also had fun going to the Boitano show at AT&T Park, which was quite an interesting experience - it was kind of funky being out on the field looking up into the stands. Big park! Went to a Comedians of Comedy show at the Independent - Patton Oswalt and the other two headliners (a guy from the Sarah Silverman show, a woman from I'm not sure where) were quite funny, but there were two comedians in a row who were the first to go after Patton warmed up the crowd who really sucked. None of us liked them, and they set the wrong tone for the evening for us, I think. I was in a bad mood for a while and wasn't ready to concede the following acts were actually funny at times, and some of the other people left early. It's a shame. Also odd was that it was a music venue so there were no seats, just standing room. And it was PACKED. Quite unpleasant. I'm so cranky =).
Tara (123 2nd St, between Minna and Mission). This is a new Thai/Asian-fusion place that opened up near work (just down the street from Osha Thai) that I'd been meaning to try for a while and finally got in for dinner Wed night when I was in a rush to get to AT&T Park for the Boitano show. They said they could get me in and out in 30 minutes, so yay! The service was great - the guy was unobtrusively refilling my water glass every 2 seconds, the food was quick, it was easy to grab someone's attention to get my doggie bag and check... The food... well I got the Pad See Ew with beef, which is a favorite of mine. The dish tasted fine - not the best I've ever had but certainly not the worst - but the beef was tough and chewy. Not so good when you're in a rush, or in general. It's cheaper than Osha, the *flavors* were fine, but the textures and the meat need work. Only having had one dish, I hesitate to judge the place overall, but it did give me pause...
Amici's East Coast Pizzeria (216 King St) - so it's a chain I've been to several times before, so maybe it's not entirely fair to review it. But I don't really like it. Never had a pizza here I particularly liked (and their pizza is gross once it starts to cool - my group ordered some for dinner one night and I got there late and the crust was so tough I had to tear pieces off instead of just biting pieces). So I went here b/c it was across the street from AT&T Park and I needed to grab quick food before dress rehearsal for the Boitano show. Got a spaghetti b/c really, how far wrong can you go with spaghetti? Also because their pasta choices are crap. And the spaghetti was both expensive ($10+ for a small portion with meat sauce) and pretty crappy. I had better tasting spaghetti in the IAD airport while waiting for a flight one night, and I watched them scoop the spaghetti out of a bin where it'd been sitting for who knows how long. So yeah, this is me dumping on Amici's. NOT recommended.
Brenda's French Soul Food (652 Polk St between Eddy and Turk). Closed on Sundays. So sad.
Dottie's True Blue Cafe (522 Jones between Geary and O'Farrell). Where we went when we discovered Brenda's was closed. Very popular spot - the line went halfway down the block and stayed that way the entire time we were there. Specials menu had some fairly unique items on it. My friend and bf both got the Banana Chocolate Chip French Toast with Balsamic Strawberries, which was pretty good. Not nearly as sweet as you would expect. Also not as spectacular as you would expect, but yummy. I was hungry and saw a combination that appealed - 2 eggs, piece of ham, hash browns, 2 pieces of French toast...yes, I'm a pig. The eggs were fine - standard scrambled, not entirely flavorful but bury it with enough ketchup and anything is yummy. The hash browns were the same - very standard. The ham was good - a nice big slice of real ham, and not some dinky little bits. The French toast was fine as well - their French toast is on big thick slices of bread which don't absorb the syrup quite as much as I'd like. Oddly, my combo cost like $1-$2 more than the special French toast and I only had one half slice less of toast than they got with their special. Maybe we should have tried some of their more exotic specials, but my conclusion is that the place was good but probably not worth waiting 1/2 an hour or more in line for...
Went to Abacus again for dinner the other night with bf's coworkers. Got more interesting food than the last time we went with coworkers - mongolian beef, tangerine chicken, creamed corn and crab meat soup, and house special chow mein (or lo mein?). I still think the dessert here is the best part - we got the ice cream sampler again, this time with lychee, coconut, mango, and double chocolate ice cream. The mango was kind of icy but otherwise so yummy. The food is ok. Soup was nice on a warm night.
Ziryab (528 Divisadero between Fell and Hayes). Looking for a quick place to eat Friday night before a comedy show at the Independent, and finding long waits everywhere, a local clued us into this place. We were seated immediately, no problem. It's a Mediterranean place so most of the people I was with ended up getting kebabs of some kind which they polished off so I assume they were quite good. My bf got a smoked trout? appetizer special (there was some confusion about whether it was an appetizer or an entree but luckily he also ordered some mediterranean herb bread so he had enough to eat) which he said was really good. I got the chicken schwerma plate - bunch o' little pita bread pockets into which I could stuff the schwerma and sauce. Quite tasty. Overall, not cheap, but a good meal in a not-overly crowded place with decent service.
It's never fair to judge a place by just getting takeout from them, especially when you have like a 15-20 minute walk to get the food home, and you placed the order before leaving work, a 30+ minute bus ride away. But that's what I did with Siam Lotus Thai Cuisine (1705 Haight St at Cole). The Golden Triangle appetizer I ordered actually still tasted quite yummy when I got home, despite it being in a crispy wrapper which you would think would get mushy (and got a bit softer than I'm sure it started as) and gross. These were little triangle shaped "crepes" stuffed with mashed potatoes, yams, and peas and weren't nearly as heavy as samosas and such tend to be. They had a nice, lightly sweet, almost fluffy texture and taste, and were quite yummy. The Pineapple Cashew Nuts Chicken wasn't as good, though I really do wonder if it's b/c of the delay in eating from prep time. The flavors of the sauce and such were quite good but the chicken itself was strips of quite bland dry white meat. Maybe they would have been better warmer? I definitely want to try this place again sometime from within the restaurant.
Got takeout a fair amount that week, actually. Well, delivery in this case. The North Beach Pizza on Stanyan St only delivers or has takeout - there's no sit in. We felt lazy one day so we ordered our typical pizza with pepperoni & tomatoes. Yummy. My only complaint is that North Beach isn't particularly fast - I think the order arrived like 50 minutes after I made it? Need to plan ahead better - they have an online ordering system and you can specify a time if you order ahead of time. I should try that and see how well it works. But I love North Beach Pizza. Yum yum yum.
Decided to try Tsuna mi Sushi Bar (1300 Fulton at Divisadero). My bf liked it a lot more than me. It's a fairly trendy type place - famous for its diverse sake selection, with kind of loungey-seating around the walls and tables in the middle. They have a relatively small, IMO, sushi menu with some unusual stuff. We ended up getting a Tsunami - maguro, bincho and asparagus flash-fried, topped with spicy aioli, tobiko, and scallions (Bincho is apparently albacore - what goes by white tuna or shiro maguro elsewhere?). That was fairly yummy. We also got sake sashimi and I forget what other fish...either hamachi or maguro, but pretty sure it wasn't bincho. I also think we may have gotten the Five Sisters roll, which I think is known as a rainbow roll elsewhere - california topped with five types of fish. It was all quite good. I guess my lack of enthusiasm mainly stemmed from the prices - we had only gone to Sushi Bistro like the week before, and Tsunami is decidedly more expensive. And I guess also the selection since there were less choices than Sushi Bistro. Given that they're in entirely different areas of the city, though, it's not like you'd necessarily skip one to go to the other. I guess my conclusion is it's a decent sushi place, but on the expensive side, and unnecessarily trendy (which means long waits on weekend nights).
That's all I can remember for now...
On a personal note, I had fun over Thanksgiving weekend going to see Kurt Browning in "Peter Pan", which was a fun stage musical. Also had fun going to the Boitano show at AT&T Park, which was quite an interesting experience - it was kind of funky being out on the field looking up into the stands. Big park! Went to a Comedians of Comedy show at the Independent - Patton Oswalt and the other two headliners (a guy from the Sarah Silverman show, a woman from I'm not sure where) were quite funny, but there were two comedians in a row who were the first to go after Patton warmed up the crowd who really sucked. None of us liked them, and they set the wrong tone for the evening for us, I think. I was in a bad mood for a while and wasn't ready to concede the following acts were actually funny at times, and some of the other people left early. It's a shame. Also odd was that it was a music venue so there were no seats, just standing room. And it was PACKED. Quite unpleasant. I'm so cranky =).
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Food, what else?
Hmm. I last updated 8 days ago? I'm never going to remember everything I ate in the last 8 days.
Well, here's what I do remember. Last week was kind of our week for wandering out of our usual neighborhoods for food.
Last week, I had the urge for bbq, simply because walking around the office at lunch, I got a whiff of someone's yummy smelling bbq sauce with a kind of vinegary undertone that really reminded me of Memphis Minnie's. But the bf wanted to try something new, and after looking around, we ended up going for "soul food" instead of straightforward bbq. Yelp turned up HardKnox Cafe in Potrero, at 2526 3rd St (btwn 22nd and 23rd). It's a soul food restaurant apparently run by Vietnamese people, tucked into a rather nondescript block. The inside is pretty neat, from a vibe standpoint - corrugated metal lines the walls, with pictures and stuff evoking a kind of country-ish feel, there are a series of red booths along one wall, a bar along the other, and some tables in between. Food-wise...well I think they probably have good food but as my bf says, maybe we're just not soul food people. He got the fried chicken everyone raves about it and was very good indeed (actually kind of reminded me of San Tung's even though it had no sauce of any kind). His sides of corn and mac & cheese were only so-so, though. The corn was actually fairly bland and got kind of nasty-tasting when it was cold, while the mac & cheese was like somewhat better Kraft, though as he pointed out, it's kind of scary that it was still as liquidy as when it started even when cold. I got the smothered chicken, was a stupid move - I think I would have been better off with the smothered pork chops if I wanted some smothering. The smothered chicken is basically fried chicken drenched in gravy. Which means soggy fried part, though very tender fall-off-the-bone chicken. I think if I liked the gravy better, I would have liked the dish, but I didn't particularly like the gravy, which is mostly just a flavor preference thing. Which didn't help the fact that one of my sides was mashed potatoes, covered in the same gravy... I also ordered the collard greens, which also was a mistake. I was misled by the greens I had had at Memphis Minnie's (and possibly that place in Oakland) into thinking that to cut the bitterness, southern cooking usually used some sort of sweet/vinegary sauce, but nope. It was just a pile of very bitter greens. The thing is, I don't think any of this was done badly (collard greens *are* a bitter green) but it was just bad ordering on my part. I probably would have been far happier with the bbq pork spare ribs or something, and there was a long list of sides I could have chosen from. Just didn't pick the best ones. Each dinner did come with two corn muffins, and those were very good. Sweet and tasty all on their own, so I didn't need to put honey on them. For the fried chicken, I'd recommend this place, but it's too far out of the way for us to go back.
Thursday night I decided I just really wanted to eat at Helmand Palace (2424 Van Ness Ave, btwn Union and Green). The Helmand is an Afghan restaurant that used to be located on Broadway, within (long) walking distance to work, and I'd been to that location a few times - the first time with a vegetarian friend who loved the place, later for the lunch buffet with my bf (I think on Valentine's Day, actually). I've always loved the food, but then that location closed down (I guess due to a mudslide?). Sadness. Then, one day, I was poking around Yelp and discovered that Helmand was reopening in a new neighborhood and was happy again, though not so happy it was further away now. But I love my Kaddo so I'm willing to do the two bus transfer to get home from there. Now Kaddo is their sweet pumpkin dish and is absolutely the yummiest thing ever. Pumpkin cooked for hours into a delicious sweet soft texture, with yogurt and meat sauce on top. I loved going for the lunch buffet b/c I could get as much kaddo as I wanted. This time around, I had to satisfy myself with splitting an appetizer with my bf. The Helmand is just about the only place I've had lamb that I actually enjoyed (I usually hate lamb's gamey taste) because they make it tender, and at least in the Qabalee dish my bf has ordered more than once, with a minimum of that gamey lamb taste I hate. I got the Theeka Kebab (prime rib marinated in onion, baby grapes and garlic, then grilled and served with lentils and pallow rice) which was quite good. Though I really wish I remembered what dishes I had tried in the lunch buffet because I know they have stuff I like even more there. If it wasn't so far from work...
On Friday, the bf suggested Indian food, so we decided to try the Indian Oven (237 Fillmore St at Haight) again. This was the place we got take-out from last time. The food is definitely better when you don't carry it for 20 minutes on the bus (after letting it sit in the restaurant for probably another 20 minutes b/c the bus took so long to get there). The garlic naan was super-yummy fresh from the oven/griddle, in particular, whereas it had gotten rather soggy when we got takeout. What we ordered was fairly similar to last time - mango lassi (still some of the best I've had), chicken korma (hey it's my favorite dish), chicken madras (spicy coconut sauce with raisins), and an order of pulau (the rice with peas and spices). Very yummy, not that cheap though my bf did get another meal out of leftovers from it. Personally, I definitely like this place. The flavors suit me.
Saturday I met up with friends for peking duck and karaoke, so it was off to the East Bay with me. The peking duck was at Great China at 2115 Kittredge St in Berkeley. I loved that place. Might help that my bf doesn't like Chinese so I hadn't had Chinese food in a while, and also might help that I had no hand in the ordering (I think when I order I get really mundane stuff based on the English menu, b/c I have no idea what to order). But the food was all really tasty. The peking duck was great as advertised, though for me, using the thin little skins instead of the white puffy buns leads to very sticky hands. But the skin was crispy and delicious, and the meat was great. We also got the "double skin" which is not a dish I was familiar with - seemed to be some cold blend of noodles, funghi, meat, veggies, and whatever "double skin" is in a Wasabi-seasoned sauce. It wasn't my favorite but it was very interesting. There was some soup I don't know the name of that my friends like to order where they dump in a bowl of cracked rice (or something) which puffs up and softens in the heat of the soup and is quite yummy. There was do miau (pea shoots) which were honestly, just ok - there was some odd taste I didn't quite like but they were tender and done well otherwise - I think personally I like the simple garlic/salt taste and I'm not sure what else they used to flavor it, but it wasn't my favorite. There was a beef dish - sizzling beef of some kind. My bf has made me aware that Chinese restaurants tend to over-tenderize (and I think cornstarch) their beef to the point where it no longer has beef texture, which he hates. I don't hate it as much as him but it's not my favorite thing. And my least favorite is to get over-tenderized beef that is nonetheless hard to chew and stringy. But the tenderized beef at Great China was truly tender - soft, easy to chew, and with the yummiest sauce. I started scooping up sauce to put on my rice, I liked it so much. They also ordered lettuce cups, which were also really tasty. I may also have just been hungry, but I was very happy with the food there. There was a weird moment coming into the restaurant, though. It was a rainy day so everyone who was waiting was gathered under the small awning, the restaurant is tiny, and a guy in a wheelchair decided to plant himself right in the door. I think he couldn't get further in because of the way the entry way was designed (*not* a handicapped friendly restaurant) but he also refused to back out. And he and the waiter got in a cussing match where he, I think, led things off in a fairly antagonistic manner "get your hand off my chair" before asking for his order, and the waiter initially refused to serve him because of his bad attitude. Eventually I guess they worked out that he had already placed the order (the waiter was going "no, I won't make it. I won't make it!") and he got his food, but it was a bit of a mess. And no one could get in or out while this was going on. Then I couldn't get in b/c this huge stream of people came out of the restaurant. This happened again later - I'm not sure where they all came from because the restaurant was tiny. They must have a banquet room in the back or something.
Sunday, we went down to a friend's house in Fremont to play Halo3 on their new Xbox 360. They took us to, I think, De Afghanan Kabob House, a tiny hole in the wall at 37405 Fremont Blvd. More Afghan food! I decided to go for the beef kabob, my bf got the chicken kabob, one of our friends also got the beef, and the other got the ground beef with cilantro, scallions, and spices. The place is teeny - there are 3 tables shoved in one side of the room where you basically have to get up so the people in the tables further back can get in and out, and most of the room is dominated by the counter and grill where they cook up their magic. It wasn't very fast because they make your order on the spot, but boy was it good. My beef kabob - at least the first half or so before it cooled down - was delicious and so tender. The last two pieces I couldn't even cut with my plastic knife, or tear off with my teeth - I have no idea if it's because I got two bad pieces or because that's what happened when they cool off - but that was ok because I was pretty stuffed by that point anyway. Each dish came with rice, a potato/garbanzo salad and a kind of tomato/onion/cilantra salad which really seemed more like salsa, as well as a piece of Afghan bread. We didn't end up eating the bread (which was out of a bag) because they ordered the bulanee (I think) - a bread stuffed with potatoes and spices - which was really yummy. My bf's chicken kabob was good. I wasn't quite as fond of the ground beef patty which my friend gave me a bite of, but the fact that I'm not fond at all of cilantro probably didn't help. All in all it was way too much food, but it was very good.
Then, last night, my bf's sister was in town, and in the mood for sushi. We poked around on Yelp, and turned up Sushi Bistro at 445 Balboa St (between 5th and 6th). It got fantastic reviews, so we figured why not try it out. They had a very interesting and diverse menu - some of the typical standard rolls, but then a whole page of "bistro" rolls that were very creative and different. Also, a page of "Something Unique" which were more like little plates of creative combinations of food (many of which were cooked). A lot of the rolls were fried or cooked in some way or featured much spiciness or fruits or whatever... We had a very hard time deciding because there were so many options, but finally decided to order a couple rolls, "something unique" and the 12-piece sashimi combination, which had the best combination of fish I've ever seen for one of those combos. Lots of stuff I love, nothing I didn't like - 2 pieces each of albacore, albacore tataki, salmon, tuna, hamachi, and butterfish. I didn't try the tuna or the albacore since there were 3 of us, but the albacore tataki was melt in your mouth delicious, the salmon (which had been resting against a slice of lemon) was sublime (and slightly sweet), the butterfish was, well, buttery and delicious, and the hamachi was quite good too. I also got myself a lettuce wrap - an individual portion of a slice of lettuce on which they put stuff. I got the "Summer" which had unagi, salmon, abacore, avocado, sushi rice, and sauce on a slice of lettuce. It was super-yummy, though also quite messy, and heavily dominated by the eel. The "Something Unique" was the most disappointing - we got - I forgot what it was called, but it was blue fin toro with some sauce and apples, but the toro was cooked which seems a total waste. It tasted fine but when you want raw fish, cooked fish just doesn't cut it. The rolls were good, though - I'm actually not sure which was which and now I'm not even positive I remember which we got b/c we went through so many choices making the decision, but I *think* we got the Albacore Dream (spicy tuna, and avocado topped with albacore and house special sauce) which was an 8-piece yummy roll, and the... I want to say M&L except the ingredients don't sound right (baby lobster, cucumber, avocado rolled with soybean paper, topped with salmon). Hmm..maybe the one we got isn't on the Menupages page? At any rate, they were all yummy. I would definitely go back. If we are feeling adventurous, there are still a lot of interesting looking rolls left to try, and if we're not, their sashimi was super fresh and delicious, and they know what fish should go together. Yummy. It's not particularly cheap would be the one downside, but it's quite delicious.
And those were my culinary adventures for the week. Oh, and the bf got me more XOX truffles (hazelnut, coconut, peanut butter, and mint) and mmmmmm..... Boy, am I blabby.
Well, here's what I do remember. Last week was kind of our week for wandering out of our usual neighborhoods for food.
Last week, I had the urge for bbq, simply because walking around the office at lunch, I got a whiff of someone's yummy smelling bbq sauce with a kind of vinegary undertone that really reminded me of Memphis Minnie's. But the bf wanted to try something new, and after looking around, we ended up going for "soul food" instead of straightforward bbq. Yelp turned up HardKnox Cafe in Potrero, at 2526 3rd St (btwn 22nd and 23rd). It's a soul food restaurant apparently run by Vietnamese people, tucked into a rather nondescript block. The inside is pretty neat, from a vibe standpoint - corrugated metal lines the walls, with pictures and stuff evoking a kind of country-ish feel, there are a series of red booths along one wall, a bar along the other, and some tables in between. Food-wise...well I think they probably have good food but as my bf says, maybe we're just not soul food people. He got the fried chicken everyone raves about it and was very good indeed (actually kind of reminded me of San Tung's even though it had no sauce of any kind). His sides of corn and mac & cheese were only so-so, though. The corn was actually fairly bland and got kind of nasty-tasting when it was cold, while the mac & cheese was like somewhat better Kraft, though as he pointed out, it's kind of scary that it was still as liquidy as when it started even when cold. I got the smothered chicken, was a stupid move - I think I would have been better off with the smothered pork chops if I wanted some smothering. The smothered chicken is basically fried chicken drenched in gravy. Which means soggy fried part, though very tender fall-off-the-bone chicken. I think if I liked the gravy better, I would have liked the dish, but I didn't particularly like the gravy, which is mostly just a flavor preference thing. Which didn't help the fact that one of my sides was mashed potatoes, covered in the same gravy... I also ordered the collard greens, which also was a mistake. I was misled by the greens I had had at Memphis Minnie's (and possibly that place in Oakland) into thinking that to cut the bitterness, southern cooking usually used some sort of sweet/vinegary sauce, but nope. It was just a pile of very bitter greens. The thing is, I don't think any of this was done badly (collard greens *are* a bitter green) but it was just bad ordering on my part. I probably would have been far happier with the bbq pork spare ribs or something, and there was a long list of sides I could have chosen from. Just didn't pick the best ones. Each dinner did come with two corn muffins, and those were very good. Sweet and tasty all on their own, so I didn't need to put honey on them. For the fried chicken, I'd recommend this place, but it's too far out of the way for us to go back.
Thursday night I decided I just really wanted to eat at Helmand Palace (2424 Van Ness Ave, btwn Union and Green). The Helmand is an Afghan restaurant that used to be located on Broadway, within (long) walking distance to work, and I'd been to that location a few times - the first time with a vegetarian friend who loved the place, later for the lunch buffet with my bf (I think on Valentine's Day, actually). I've always loved the food, but then that location closed down (I guess due to a mudslide?). Sadness. Then, one day, I was poking around Yelp and discovered that Helmand was reopening in a new neighborhood and was happy again, though not so happy it was further away now. But I love my Kaddo so I'm willing to do the two bus transfer to get home from there. Now Kaddo is their sweet pumpkin dish and is absolutely the yummiest thing ever. Pumpkin cooked for hours into a delicious sweet soft texture, with yogurt and meat sauce on top. I loved going for the lunch buffet b/c I could get as much kaddo as I wanted. This time around, I had to satisfy myself with splitting an appetizer with my bf. The Helmand is just about the only place I've had lamb that I actually enjoyed (I usually hate lamb's gamey taste) because they make it tender, and at least in the Qabalee dish my bf has ordered more than once, with a minimum of that gamey lamb taste I hate. I got the Theeka Kebab (prime rib marinated in onion, baby grapes and garlic, then grilled and served with lentils and pallow rice) which was quite good. Though I really wish I remembered what dishes I had tried in the lunch buffet because I know they have stuff I like even more there. If it wasn't so far from work...
On Friday, the bf suggested Indian food, so we decided to try the Indian Oven (237 Fillmore St at Haight) again. This was the place we got take-out from last time. The food is definitely better when you don't carry it for 20 minutes on the bus (after letting it sit in the restaurant for probably another 20 minutes b/c the bus took so long to get there). The garlic naan was super-yummy fresh from the oven/griddle, in particular, whereas it had gotten rather soggy when we got takeout. What we ordered was fairly similar to last time - mango lassi (still some of the best I've had), chicken korma (hey it's my favorite dish), chicken madras (spicy coconut sauce with raisins), and an order of pulau (the rice with peas and spices). Very yummy, not that cheap though my bf did get another meal out of leftovers from it. Personally, I definitely like this place. The flavors suit me.
Saturday I met up with friends for peking duck and karaoke, so it was off to the East Bay with me. The peking duck was at Great China at 2115 Kittredge St in Berkeley. I loved that place. Might help that my bf doesn't like Chinese so I hadn't had Chinese food in a while, and also might help that I had no hand in the ordering (I think when I order I get really mundane stuff based on the English menu, b/c I have no idea what to order). But the food was all really tasty. The peking duck was great as advertised, though for me, using the thin little skins instead of the white puffy buns leads to very sticky hands. But the skin was crispy and delicious, and the meat was great. We also got the "double skin" which is not a dish I was familiar with - seemed to be some cold blend of noodles, funghi, meat, veggies, and whatever "double skin" is in a Wasabi-seasoned sauce. It wasn't my favorite but it was very interesting. There was some soup I don't know the name of that my friends like to order where they dump in a bowl of cracked rice (or something) which puffs up and softens in the heat of the soup and is quite yummy. There was do miau (pea shoots) which were honestly, just ok - there was some odd taste I didn't quite like but they were tender and done well otherwise - I think personally I like the simple garlic/salt taste and I'm not sure what else they used to flavor it, but it wasn't my favorite. There was a beef dish - sizzling beef of some kind. My bf has made me aware that Chinese restaurants tend to over-tenderize (and I think cornstarch) their beef to the point where it no longer has beef texture, which he hates. I don't hate it as much as him but it's not my favorite thing. And my least favorite is to get over-tenderized beef that is nonetheless hard to chew and stringy. But the tenderized beef at Great China was truly tender - soft, easy to chew, and with the yummiest sauce. I started scooping up sauce to put on my rice, I liked it so much. They also ordered lettuce cups, which were also really tasty. I may also have just been hungry, but I was very happy with the food there. There was a weird moment coming into the restaurant, though. It was a rainy day so everyone who was waiting was gathered under the small awning, the restaurant is tiny, and a guy in a wheelchair decided to plant himself right in the door. I think he couldn't get further in because of the way the entry way was designed (*not* a handicapped friendly restaurant) but he also refused to back out. And he and the waiter got in a cussing match where he, I think, led things off in a fairly antagonistic manner "get your hand off my chair" before asking for his order, and the waiter initially refused to serve him because of his bad attitude. Eventually I guess they worked out that he had already placed the order (the waiter was going "no, I won't make it. I won't make it!") and he got his food, but it was a bit of a mess. And no one could get in or out while this was going on. Then I couldn't get in b/c this huge stream of people came out of the restaurant. This happened again later - I'm not sure where they all came from because the restaurant was tiny. They must have a banquet room in the back or something.
Sunday, we went down to a friend's house in Fremont to play Halo3 on their new Xbox 360. They took us to, I think, De Afghanan Kabob House, a tiny hole in the wall at 37405 Fremont Blvd. More Afghan food! I decided to go for the beef kabob, my bf got the chicken kabob, one of our friends also got the beef, and the other got the ground beef with cilantro, scallions, and spices. The place is teeny - there are 3 tables shoved in one side of the room where you basically have to get up so the people in the tables further back can get in and out, and most of the room is dominated by the counter and grill where they cook up their magic. It wasn't very fast because they make your order on the spot, but boy was it good. My beef kabob - at least the first half or so before it cooled down - was delicious and so tender. The last two pieces I couldn't even cut with my plastic knife, or tear off with my teeth - I have no idea if it's because I got two bad pieces or because that's what happened when they cool off - but that was ok because I was pretty stuffed by that point anyway. Each dish came with rice, a potato/garbanzo salad and a kind of tomato/onion/cilantra salad which really seemed more like salsa, as well as a piece of Afghan bread. We didn't end up eating the bread (which was out of a bag) because they ordered the bulanee (I think) - a bread stuffed with potatoes and spices - which was really yummy. My bf's chicken kabob was good. I wasn't quite as fond of the ground beef patty which my friend gave me a bite of, but the fact that I'm not fond at all of cilantro probably didn't help. All in all it was way too much food, but it was very good.
Then, last night, my bf's sister was in town, and in the mood for sushi. We poked around on Yelp, and turned up Sushi Bistro at 445 Balboa St (between 5th and 6th). It got fantastic reviews, so we figured why not try it out. They had a very interesting and diverse menu - some of the typical standard rolls, but then a whole page of "bistro" rolls that were very creative and different. Also, a page of "Something Unique" which were more like little plates of creative combinations of food (many of which were cooked). A lot of the rolls were fried or cooked in some way or featured much spiciness or fruits or whatever... We had a very hard time deciding because there were so many options, but finally decided to order a couple rolls, "something unique" and the 12-piece sashimi combination, which had the best combination of fish I've ever seen for one of those combos. Lots of stuff I love, nothing I didn't like - 2 pieces each of albacore, albacore tataki, salmon, tuna, hamachi, and butterfish. I didn't try the tuna or the albacore since there were 3 of us, but the albacore tataki was melt in your mouth delicious, the salmon (which had been resting against a slice of lemon) was sublime (and slightly sweet), the butterfish was, well, buttery and delicious, and the hamachi was quite good too. I also got myself a lettuce wrap - an individual portion of a slice of lettuce on which they put stuff. I got the "Summer" which had unagi, salmon, abacore, avocado, sushi rice, and sauce on a slice of lettuce. It was super-yummy, though also quite messy, and heavily dominated by the eel. The "Something Unique" was the most disappointing - we got - I forgot what it was called, but it was blue fin toro with some sauce and apples, but the toro was cooked which seems a total waste. It tasted fine but when you want raw fish, cooked fish just doesn't cut it. The rolls were good, though - I'm actually not sure which was which and now I'm not even positive I remember which we got b/c we went through so many choices making the decision, but I *think* we got the Albacore Dream (spicy tuna, and avocado topped with albacore and house special sauce) which was an 8-piece yummy roll, and the... I want to say M&L except the ingredients don't sound right (baby lobster, cucumber, avocado rolled with soybean paper, topped with salmon). Hmm..maybe the one we got isn't on the Menupages page? At any rate, they were all yummy. I would definitely go back. If we are feeling adventurous, there are still a lot of interesting looking rolls left to try, and if we're not, their sashimi was super fresh and delicious, and they know what fish should go together. Yummy. It's not particularly cheap would be the one downside, but it's quite delicious.
And those were my culinary adventures for the week. Oh, and the bf got me more XOX truffles (hazelnut, coconut, peanut butter, and mint) and mmmmmm..... Boy, am I blabby.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Munch munch munch
More eats from last week, which was probably one of our most satisfying weeks for eating out yet.
First up, one of my bf's former coworkers notified us kind of last minute that he and his wife were going to be in town a week ago Friday night, so we acted quickly to locate a Nob Hill restaurant (where there hotel was). We came up with Fino Restaurant (624 Post St btwn Taylor and Trader Vic Alley) in the Andrews Hotel. This ended up being a cute little Italian restaurant that had pretty decent food. Apparently the bolognese sauce on the wife's pasta was a bit overly sweet (I suspect I would have liked it) but they seemed to enjoy their Fettucine Carbonara, Caprese Salad, and Caesar salads... My Polla alla Saltimbocca was delicious, though I've never had it with avocado on top before. My bf seemed not to enjoy his Salsicce e Penne as much as he had hoped, but that may have been due to a high stuff:pasta ratio - I think he wanted more pasta. Overall, I wasn't blown away but it was a good meal.
Saturday, I got my hazelnut milk tea and Chinese pastry fix down in Mountain View, and then went to a friend's place for her Halloween pumpkin-carving party. We got lazy and didn't bring a pumpkin, but it was fun watching everyone else's pumpkin take shape. There were some pretty cool ones, especially a very cool Bowser (doubly cool 'cause he designed it himself instead of using a pre-existing pattern). I always thought of jack-o-lanterns as just being a face but we got a pirate ship, a tropical island, a Pikachu, and a haunted house/castle...pretty neat! Evidentally I stuffed myself too full of pastries and milk tea and didn't have much appetite for dinner, but there was a pumpkin cake-thing there that was super delicious. Had a layer of something like pumpkin pie filling on top of a yummy cake. Kept sneaking bites of that all night.
I have no memory of Sunday, but I think Monday was the day I got an urge for pho, so we decided to check out Pho Clement (239 Clement between 3rd and 4th) in Inner Richmond. That was a happy meal. They have an extensive pho menu, but like most pho places, for some reason did not offer a combination of brisket, steak, and flank. However they said you could create your own pho combinations, which I promptly did. Based on my bf and my experiences, medium is just about the perfect size there - the large was too big, the small looked tiny, but medium was nice and filling. I got a pineapple shake which was very yummy (if a trifle strong with the pineapple) while the bf got a mango shake which was great. Both our bowls of pho really hit the spot - good tasting broth (I actually didn't have to add the plum sauce or whatever it is they leave on the table for once), yummy meat, good noodles... It was just good, basic pho. The place is nothing fancy to look at - as someone on yelp says, standard Vietnamese pho cafeteria setting - though they do have a nice big flatscreen which was showing the football game. To my pleasure, it also wasn't particularly full, so we got very fast service and seating. Sometimes nice restaurants are what we're looking for, but sometimes something warm and comforting is really the way to go.
Thursday was my bf and my 11th (eep) anniversary, so we decided to get a nice dinner to celebrate. After House of Prime Rib and NOPA both said they only had reservations available after 9, we turned to Zoya (465 Grove between Gough and Octavia), a restaurant we had previously tried to go to on a performance night (it's near the opera and all the other performing arts venues on Van Ness) and weren't able to get in. That turned out to be a great choice, and a near-perfect meal. The venue is a little odd - it's a little almost tower/turret like thing stuck to the end of a Days Inn. There is a bar on the first floor with some seating but the small dining room is actually on the second floor - up some fake green grass covered stairs which also leads to the upper floor of Days Inn rooms. However, once you go through the curtain covering the door, the dining room itself is in a cute little round room, with nicely set tables (though not too many of them!), little candles flickering, and windows around looking out on Grove St. The service is a little bit slow, because there is only one very sweet waitress who had to go up and down the stairs to carry up all the food, drinks, etc, as well as to check if anyone was there and bring them up to seat them. However, as I said, she was really nice, and we weren't in a hurry that night anyway. We don't typically get appetizers, entrees, AND desserts in the same meal, but we decided to splurge that night, and it was definitely worth it. I got the butternut squash soup with creme fraiche - I love butternut squash soup and while this wasn't the best I'd ever had (it was a little on the bland side), it was still a nice starter. The bf got their poke - ahi tuna with all sorts of stuff mixed in and fried wonton skins to scoop it all up with - and absolutely loved it. My aversion to cilantro made it hard for me to enjoy it, but it did seem a good appetizer. For entrees, I got the roasted chicken breast quarter with marsala pan sauce and porcini risotto (or something similar - that's what's listed on the website) and it was absolutely delicious. The chicken was moist, tender, and flavorful, the broccoli rabe tender and not at all bitter, and the risotto flavored just right - not bland, and not overpowering, just delicate and yummy. My bf got the Australian lamb loin chops with pomegranate molasses and pearl couscous with cumin herb oil and his only complaint was that there wasn't enough meat - they gave him two smallish chops and when he'd eaten it down to the bone, he would have liked more. But the flavors he said were very good. The dessert menu looked great so we decided to go for that as well - I got the chocolate pot de creme with strawberries, which was quite yummy, with the strawberries blending beautifully with the chocolate rather than seeming a bit too tart. The bf got the blueberry in grand marnier with graham crumbles, and one scoop each of Tahitian Vanilla and Scharffen Berger Chocolate Gelato, which was also delicious. Just a happy meal overall, and one that didn't leave us feeling too stuffed, which was nice. I definitely recommend this restaurant, though make sure to go on a non-performance night, or make a reservation ahead of time, because the space really is quite small.
On Friday, we weren't in the mood for anything heavy, and decided to go for sushi. A quick browse on Yelp turned up Wayo Sushi (1407 Van Ness), which got very good reviews. Wayo Sushi is definitely not a high-selection sushi place - the roll menu was quite limited and the nigiri was limited to the standards - but the prices were very reasonable, and the fish was quite good. We ended up getting 3 sets of sashimi (6 pieces each for about $9-$9.75) - hamachi (which reminded me strongly of amberjack, which I love), maguro (fine), and shiro maguro (as usual melt in your mouth). We also got a mango salmon roll - I only had one piece b/c I had stuffed myself with the wakame salad (yummy, good quantity for only $3.75) but it was quite good. Overall, I thought it was a reasonably good sushi place - nowhere you'd go if you're going for exotic, but a nice place to stop for reasonably priced, fresh fish.
Afterwards, we walked down like 10 blocks to Grove St to go to Citizen Cake (399 Grove St at Gough) since the bf felt like some dessert. I thought I was too stuffed to get anything, but as usual couldn't resist. I ended up getting a scoop of the banana toffee peanut butter (and possibly some other stuff) ice cream, which was quite good. My bf got the lemon meringue tart, which was also good. He also brought home a giunduja (sp?) something or the other, and a mexican wedding? cookie... I got to try the first which was kind of like a nestle crunch but with hazelnut overtones - pretty yummy. I think he enjoyed the latter?
Beyond that, we've actually been cooking and eating at home for the most part. But that was a good week for restaurant choices!
First up, one of my bf's former coworkers notified us kind of last minute that he and his wife were going to be in town a week ago Friday night, so we acted quickly to locate a Nob Hill restaurant (where there hotel was). We came up with Fino Restaurant (624 Post St btwn Taylor and Trader Vic Alley) in the Andrews Hotel. This ended up being a cute little Italian restaurant that had pretty decent food. Apparently the bolognese sauce on the wife's pasta was a bit overly sweet (I suspect I would have liked it) but they seemed to enjoy their Fettucine Carbonara, Caprese Salad, and Caesar salads... My Polla alla Saltimbocca was delicious, though I've never had it with avocado on top before. My bf seemed not to enjoy his Salsicce e Penne as much as he had hoped, but that may have been due to a high stuff:pasta ratio - I think he wanted more pasta. Overall, I wasn't blown away but it was a good meal.
Saturday, I got my hazelnut milk tea and Chinese pastry fix down in Mountain View, and then went to a friend's place for her Halloween pumpkin-carving party. We got lazy and didn't bring a pumpkin, but it was fun watching everyone else's pumpkin take shape. There were some pretty cool ones, especially a very cool Bowser (doubly cool 'cause he designed it himself instead of using a pre-existing pattern). I always thought of jack-o-lanterns as just being a face but we got a pirate ship, a tropical island, a Pikachu, and a haunted house/castle...pretty neat! Evidentally I stuffed myself too full of pastries and milk tea and didn't have much appetite for dinner, but there was a pumpkin cake-thing there that was super delicious. Had a layer of something like pumpkin pie filling on top of a yummy cake. Kept sneaking bites of that all night.
I have no memory of Sunday, but I think Monday was the day I got an urge for pho, so we decided to check out Pho Clement (239 Clement between 3rd and 4th) in Inner Richmond. That was a happy meal. They have an extensive pho menu, but like most pho places, for some reason did not offer a combination of brisket, steak, and flank. However they said you could create your own pho combinations, which I promptly did. Based on my bf and my experiences, medium is just about the perfect size there - the large was too big, the small looked tiny, but medium was nice and filling. I got a pineapple shake which was very yummy (if a trifle strong with the pineapple) while the bf got a mango shake which was great. Both our bowls of pho really hit the spot - good tasting broth (I actually didn't have to add the plum sauce or whatever it is they leave on the table for once), yummy meat, good noodles... It was just good, basic pho. The place is nothing fancy to look at - as someone on yelp says, standard Vietnamese pho cafeteria setting - though they do have a nice big flatscreen which was showing the football game. To my pleasure, it also wasn't particularly full, so we got very fast service and seating. Sometimes nice restaurants are what we're looking for, but sometimes something warm and comforting is really the way to go.
Thursday was my bf and my 11th (eep) anniversary, so we decided to get a nice dinner to celebrate. After House of Prime Rib and NOPA both said they only had reservations available after 9, we turned to Zoya (465 Grove between Gough and Octavia), a restaurant we had previously tried to go to on a performance night (it's near the opera and all the other performing arts venues on Van Ness) and weren't able to get in. That turned out to be a great choice, and a near-perfect meal. The venue is a little odd - it's a little almost tower/turret like thing stuck to the end of a Days Inn. There is a bar on the first floor with some seating but the small dining room is actually on the second floor - up some fake green grass covered stairs which also leads to the upper floor of Days Inn rooms. However, once you go through the curtain covering the door, the dining room itself is in a cute little round room, with nicely set tables (though not too many of them!), little candles flickering, and windows around looking out on Grove St. The service is a little bit slow, because there is only one very sweet waitress who had to go up and down the stairs to carry up all the food, drinks, etc, as well as to check if anyone was there and bring them up to seat them. However, as I said, she was really nice, and we weren't in a hurry that night anyway. We don't typically get appetizers, entrees, AND desserts in the same meal, but we decided to splurge that night, and it was definitely worth it. I got the butternut squash soup with creme fraiche - I love butternut squash soup and while this wasn't the best I'd ever had (it was a little on the bland side), it was still a nice starter. The bf got their poke - ahi tuna with all sorts of stuff mixed in and fried wonton skins to scoop it all up with - and absolutely loved it. My aversion to cilantro made it hard for me to enjoy it, but it did seem a good appetizer. For entrees, I got the roasted chicken breast quarter with marsala pan sauce and porcini risotto (or something similar - that's what's listed on the website) and it was absolutely delicious. The chicken was moist, tender, and flavorful, the broccoli rabe tender and not at all bitter, and the risotto flavored just right - not bland, and not overpowering, just delicate and yummy. My bf got the Australian lamb loin chops with pomegranate molasses and pearl couscous with cumin herb oil and his only complaint was that there wasn't enough meat - they gave him two smallish chops and when he'd eaten it down to the bone, he would have liked more. But the flavors he said were very good. The dessert menu looked great so we decided to go for that as well - I got the chocolate pot de creme with strawberries, which was quite yummy, with the strawberries blending beautifully with the chocolate rather than seeming a bit too tart. The bf got the blueberry in grand marnier with graham crumbles, and one scoop each of Tahitian Vanilla and Scharffen Berger Chocolate Gelato, which was also delicious. Just a happy meal overall, and one that didn't leave us feeling too stuffed, which was nice. I definitely recommend this restaurant, though make sure to go on a non-performance night, or make a reservation ahead of time, because the space really is quite small.
On Friday, we weren't in the mood for anything heavy, and decided to go for sushi. A quick browse on Yelp turned up Wayo Sushi (1407 Van Ness), which got very good reviews. Wayo Sushi is definitely not a high-selection sushi place - the roll menu was quite limited and the nigiri was limited to the standards - but the prices were very reasonable, and the fish was quite good. We ended up getting 3 sets of sashimi (6 pieces each for about $9-$9.75) - hamachi (which reminded me strongly of amberjack, which I love), maguro (fine), and shiro maguro (as usual melt in your mouth). We also got a mango salmon roll - I only had one piece b/c I had stuffed myself with the wakame salad (yummy, good quantity for only $3.75) but it was quite good. Overall, I thought it was a reasonably good sushi place - nowhere you'd go if you're going for exotic, but a nice place to stop for reasonably priced, fresh fish.
Afterwards, we walked down like 10 blocks to Grove St to go to Citizen Cake (399 Grove St at Gough) since the bf felt like some dessert. I thought I was too stuffed to get anything, but as usual couldn't resist. I ended up getting a scoop of the banana toffee peanut butter (and possibly some other stuff) ice cream, which was quite good. My bf got the lemon meringue tart, which was also good. He also brought home a giunduja (sp?) something or the other, and a mexican wedding? cookie... I got to try the first which was kind of like a nestle crunch but with hazelnut overtones - pretty yummy. I think he enjoyed the latter?
Beyond that, we've actually been cooking and eating at home for the most part. But that was a good week for restaurant choices!
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Joss Whedon is my Master
Whoo-hoo! New Joss Whedon show! Starring Eliza Dushku! Already greenlit for 7 episodes! On Fox! Damn writer's strike!
Whedonesque post with links to articles
Whedonesque post with links to articles
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