More restaurants

It's DAT, so we're going out more.

Monday, we went to midi brasserie, located on Sutter right near Kearny, attached to the Galleria Park Hotel or whatever it's called. Restaurant upstairs, bar downstairs. It was a very cute space overlooking Sutter, decent service. The DAT menu was exactly the same price as the components on the menu totaled up, so I didn't try to stick to it. Got a pear and Belgian endive salad with blue cheese and candied hazelnuts in vinaigrette, which was decent. Nothing exceptional, but nice and crisp and fresh, and the candied hazelnuts were yummy. For entree, I got butternut squash ravioli - 4 ravioli for $20 =P. It was right about the middle to the upper end of the range of butternut squash raviolis I've had - I've had some truly nasty or uninspiring ones, and some really yummy ones. These were fine - pretty yummy, decent filling. Not the best and not the worst. The bf got the duck leg confit - he was starving so the quantity wasn't really sufficient for him - the duck was fairly small. He said it was decent. For dessert, I got the bittersweet chocolate pot de creme which is, as my bf pointed out, really just fancy chocolate pudding with whipped cream on top, but it was really chocolatey and I enjoyed it. He got the honey chai cake with cream cheese frosting which I found just odd tasting but he said was ok. He did say he probably wouldn't bother to go back to midi, though. I was curious about the braised pork short ribs on the menu they were out of, which would be the main reason I'd go back, but yeah there was nothing that really stood out.

On Tuesday, we went to Cafe Andree, attached to the Rex Hotel in Union Square (on Sutter near Mason). We went there mostly b/c the other DAT restaurants I'd looked at were booked up on OpenTable, while Cafe Andree had open reservations. No wonder, too - there were only 3 parties including us in the restaurant the entire time we were there. It was a smallish space attached to the hotel, kind of cute with a sort of old library theme to it. Service was quite slow, though very friendly. I got the DAT menu. Appetizer was butternut squash soup (sense a trend?) which was actually quite tasty, one of the better I've had recently. Entree was sesame crusted salmon with bok choy, a tempura pumpkin piece (nicely fried), on top of "forbidden fried rice" which was some sort of black rice. Tasted pretty decent - cooked salmon is never that good, I've discovered, but the combination of flavors was decently done (if a little heavy in the sauce). Bf got the pork loin with caramelized apples, braised chard, and sweet potato souffle - he was disappointed that it wasn't a tenderloin, but said it was pretty decent, liked the sauce, actually ate the greens b/c they were buried in the sauce, and liked the sweet potato souffle, which I found a little odd. Dessert for me was the white and dark chocolate molten cake with peanut butter ganache, and it was crap. Rubbery cake that didn't taste very good, with a somewhat warm, somewhat better tasting melted chocolate center. I still ate it all, being me, but I was very disappointed and fairly vocal about it. A neighboring table got it as well and I heard the guy more politely saying how it wasn't what he expected in a molten cake. Overall, appetizer and entree were decent, if unexceptional. Dessert was bad. Probably wouldn't go out of my way to go back.

One place I did go back to was the Live Sushi restaurant in Potrero Hill on Saturday night. Went with a vegetarian friend, who was pleasantly surprised that they actually had a fair number of veggie options (and were very open to substitutions - like edamame for the fish-based miso soup). My miso black cod was a bit disappointing (maybe I should stop getting it every time I go out) - the last time I got it there it was better. My Nemo - seared scallops wrapped in salmon with a garlic-based dipping sauce - was quite tasty, especially with the sauce. The sushi was all good. I like Live b/c the fish is quite good, there are interesting options, and parking is never an issue.

Cafe Claude - yum!

Haven't blogged in ages which means I haven't been keeping track of restaurants I've been to, which is annoying when I try to pick restaurants to go to and can't remember if I've been to one or what I thought of it.

So, making note.. went to Cafe Claude tonight (7 Claude Ln, a little alleyway off of Sutter right next to Kearny), and really enjoyed it. They have a small jazz band playing by the bar some nights of the week, they have outdoor seating with heat lamps (we sat indoors), and they have yummy food. I got a french onion soup that was good (not the best ever but more than good enough, esp on a chilly day), and Porc au Miel, which was pork tenderloin in a honey cream balsamic vinegar sauce, with caramelized apples and haricot verts. The sauce was delicious, the pork was tender, and I ended up sopping up the last of the sauce with the Acme pain epi bread they gave us at the beginning of the meal (yummy). There was some flavor I didn't love on occasion (the chives? rosemary or something? but for the most part it was just really yummy). My bf got the seared ahi tuna with onion confit, bacon, soy green peppercorn sauce (and lemon zest?) and that was quite yummy too, especially if you ate the fish and confit all together. The flavors really complemented each other well. Yelp and OpenTable says it's $$ - I'm not sure how they classify that. Soup was $8, my entree was $19, his was $20, I think...and it's casual. Definitely would go back.

Best French Toast ever

Got a random late night email from a friend last night asking if we wanted to go to breakfast today. Despite the fact that I got back from karaoke (Music Tunnel in Richmond has a cool touch screen interface now, which almost makes up for its still relatively (to Gamba) poor English music selection) at 3:30am and then stayed up until 4:30am trying to get something working and kicked off for work, I woke up at 9, unable to fall back asleep. So I texted him and off to breakfast we all went.

Randomly picked Olea based on both of us finding it highly recommended on Yelp (though he didn't read the menu, unlike me, and was a bit surprised at how non-typical brunch their selections were). Three of us ended up all getting the challah custard toast with cinnamon sugar and berries, while the fourth got an poached egg in a cazuela (which apparently is just a certain style plate) with tomato sauce, mushrooms, and shredded chicken. The egg, which I tried one small bite of, was good, but the french toast was amazing. My friend afterwards said it was probably one of the best he had and I think it probably was *the* best I've had. I've had French toast at several places recently (like Zazie's) and made my own that other people have highly complimented but I haven't actually enjoyed that much, so I was starting to lose faith in French toast. But Olea's has restored my faith. So moist and tasty all the way through (the custard and the challah both playing a role here). so perfectly sweet (not too sweet but with a great cinnamon sugar taste) it almost didn't need syrup. Loved it.

Service was good (friendly server), we sat at the communal table (2 parties of 4 completely ignoring each other), and had a bit of a wait... Place is small but the lines don't seem so much long as just happening in waves. If you get there at the right time, as one wave of people are leaving, you'll get seated quickly, but if you happen to be unlucky enough to get there just as pretty much all the tables get seated, you have to wait for basically a full meal cycle before a table clears. Don't know if it gets busier later, we got there before 10:30. Definitely recommend this place on the basis of the French toast alone. Mmmmmm.

A new restaurant

A new restaurant has recently opened next to the Papalote, across the street from the Lucky, on Fulton near Masonic. That would be Jannah, which is described as Mediterranean/Middle Eastern. We finally checked it out tonight for dinner. We started off quizzically ordering a couple of their "home-made juices" for $2 - sun dried lime and raisin with mint. They were out of the raisin, it turns out, so we never got to try it, but after a couple sips each of the sun dried lime, we both quickly gave up on that. Very odd taste, not at all something we liked (but vaguely reminded me of some of the dried plums Chinese people like to snack on, so it's probably a personal taste thing). We then got the "Jannah", a $3 salad of eggplant, roasted red peppers, marinated cucumbers, and onions in pomegranate molasses, served with pita bread, which I found more and more yummy as I ate it (and got closer to the molasses). My bf wasn't as big of a fan - he thought it was fine - but given that he's not a vegetable eater, that's not really a surprise. Finally, for the entree, he ordered the perdaplow, a phyllo pastry stuffed with shredded chicken, raisins, rice, cardamom and some other stuff, sitting in an apricot sauce. I took a bite and found it had a strong taste I didn't like - I think it was the cardamom - but he seemed to think it was ok enough to eat most of it. I ordered the fesanjoon - chicken with walnuts marinated in pomegranate molasses sitting on a bed of rice with steamed veggies arranged around it - and really enjoyed it. I think I really like pomegranate molasses. The entrees were $11 each (the menu is really straightforwardly laid out - all entrees are $11, all salad/dips are $3, etc). On the service front, they weren't particularly speedy but it was fine.

Overall, I liked what I ordered and would go back, but my bf said he decidedly would not return. I think the weird flavors in both his drink and his dish turned him off. It's too bad, b/c I suspect there are other things on the menu that he might like better, like the tikkas. If he really refuses to return, I think I may use this as one of my standby takeout places when he's not around.

Pleasant surprise in Potrero area

I sometimes think restaurants are the most enjoyable when you go in with no expectation whatsoever. After spending the last 4 evenings eating the beef chow mein I made Sunday night (good the first couple nights, tiresome by the 4th night), I desperately wanted to eat out and have something different. My bf needed to pick up a package from the UPS center so I started checking Yelp for restaurants in that general vicinity. I randomly stumbled across Slow Club, which has a ton of good reviews on Yelp, but whose menu, to my Dragonfly-craving self (ie, French-Vietnamese) didn't look particularly interesting. However, the bf thought it sounded good, so to Slow Club we went.

What a pleasant surprise! I got the burger (sans mustard), since Yelpers raved about it, and it was indeed a really tasty burger. Had non-lettuce greens, tomato, balsamic onion, cheddar cheese, toasted bun, yummy burger patty and just really hit the spot. Plus, the fries on the side were the thin-cut crispy kind, well-salted, which is my favorite kind. My bf got the flatbread, which very much resembled a pizza (tomato sauce, cheese, basil, fennel sausage), which he said was good, though by the end he was a bit tired of it (I think it's meant to be an appetizer but it was almost too big to be an entree!). But the really delicious part was the dessert. The dessert menu in general looked good to me, with its use of Bi-Rite ice cream, the presence of a warm fruit crisp (plum), and some other good stuff. But what jumped out at us was the TCHO dark chocolate mousse cake with honey-lavender ice cream. I didn't really like the ice cream - not sure I actually like lavender - but once scraped aside... WOW. So very very yummy. Each bite was a bite of joy. It was like eating a cake of XOX truffles, almost. Usually when they're like "Scharffenberger chocolate" or "Ghiradelli chocolate" or even "Valhrona chocolate" it ends up being disappointing. But TCHO dark chocolate? So very good. I was a very happy me by the end of that meal. Immensely unhealthy meal, but so very yummy. I'd definitely go back.

Things that make me smile

I like it when I go on YouTube and inadvertently discover new videos that make me happy and make me appreciate the interweb even more.

Latest set of vids that bring a smile to my face feature the Chicago cast of Jersey Boys (before Jarrod Spector left for Broadway) singing a bunch of songs I enjoy at the Festa Italiana in Chicago:

Jersey Boys Cast - Blue Moon
Jersey Boys Cast - Still of the Night
Jersey Boys Chicago Cast - Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me
Jersey Boys Chicago Cast - For the Longest Time
Jersey Boys Chicago Cast - Crazy

Jersey Boys A Capitol Fourth - almost exactly same mix of songs and cast as the Emmy's performance, but I like it a lot better because of the lack of Sopranos clips and incongruous images of people getting whacked while these guys sing.

And because I'm not sure I ever linked them before here:
Jersey Boys at the Emmys 2007 - good performance, weird-ass juxtaposition with Sopranos clips
Jersey Boys cast sing movie medley - from the One Night Only concert I went to
Jersey Boys Sing It Sucks To Be Me Pt. 1 - much funnier if you're familiar with the show, but so very funny if you are
Jersey Boys Sing It Sucks To Be Me Pt. 2

There's nothing like guys harmonizing to make me happy.

I have to push the pram a lot....

I seem to be going to a succession of shows these days. After returning from Seattle and seeing Rent with Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal (again, whoo!), I went to see Spamalot just a couple days later in SF.

I've seen Spamalot once before, on Broadway, with Harry Groener in the role of King Arthur. To my surprise, I didn't particularly enjoy it. I think I must have been in a bad mood, and was really bothered by feeling like I was left out of the joke. The audience kept laughing, which is great and fine, except they kept laughing when I didn't see anything funny going on - or anything in particular going on. It's not just that I didn't "get" the joke, I didn't even notice anything resembling a joke was happening. Feeling like I'm left out of the joke hundreds of people are getting does not put me in a good mood.

This time, I was determined to arm myself before going by watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail first. I'd forgotten how the first 1/2 hour of that movie is essentially a series of sketches, with King Arthur passing through all of them. It's also where many of the famous jokes (or at least the ones repeated a lot at CTY) take place, with the "I'm not dead yet", airspeed velocity of a swallow, "she's a witch! a witch!", "it's just a flesh wound", etc all taking place in rapid succession. I also realized I didn't forget as many of the jokes as I thought, though I'd completely forgotten about the Finish subtitles in the credits, the fake movie start, and some of the details of the "we're the knights of the round table" random musical number at Camelot.

I settled into watching Spamalot Wednesday night at the Orpheum, and discovered to my delight, that I was enjoying the show considerably more than the last time. You'd think re-hearing the exact same jokes twice within a week, told almost exactly the same way, would lessen my enjoyment of them, but I think the recognition from the movie helps. You're laughing with fond familiarity, on top of enjoying just amusing humor. Though my sister hasn't watched Holy Grail since high school and still really enjoyed the show. I still wonder about combining the random "Dennis" guy railing against authority with Galahad, or the guy who conks out the "I'm not dead yet" old man with Lancelot, though at least in the latter case, it almost makes sense given Lancelot's later random acts of senseless violence. They completely diminished Sir Belvedere's role (dropping the witch scene, which I thought was classic in the movie) while keeping large roles for characters like Lancelot, whose actor played multiple roles in the show (periodically we'd look around and be like, where'd Lancelot go? Oh the actor is playing the French taunter). Still, as long as you're not expecting a completely faithful adaptation of the movie, it's fun to see how they've adapted the movie to a show. Especially given that the show is much longer than the movie was. There are several fun numbers basically making fun of the whole musical theater format. I thought John O'Hurley made an excellent King Arthur, combining that just right degree of dignity and royalty with absurdity. The rest of the cast were also stellar. The Lady of the Lake was a great comic actress, overplaying her part to great effect, and much hilarity. Lancelot threw himself into his role(s) with glee - not the best French accent but a really funny physical interpretation of the taunting. Sir Robin, Galahad, Arthur's faithful companion whose name I've forgotten...all excellently played. It was definitely an enjoyable evening out. Though I do have to wonder how some of the jokes play with those who have never seen the movie. They should be funny even if this is the first time you've seen it, but you might wonder why the audience is laughing *quite* that hard. On the other hand, the audience seemed less composed of insiders this time around - while they were clearly enjoying the show, people laughed when I did and didn't laugh when I didn't, and it felt like a better communal experience all around.