sailorbuoys's Profile
Looking for best Bloody Mary
Kitty's on Hollis appears to make a delicious spicy one complete with veggies.
update on manka's
Inverness:
Very Small place.
Big politics.
I went to a knitting retreat here last year and had some of the best meals ever. I would stay just for breakfast if I could afford it...
Ferratt's in Albany-- has anyone been?
I met a waiter on BART a few weeks ago who handed me the card for this place. Has anyone been? What I'm most amazed about is that it's open until midnight-- which is rare for sleepy East Bay.
The website is most intriguing as well:
http://www.usite.com/ferratt/
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Ferratt's Tapas Bar & Entertainment
854 San Pablo Ave, Albany, CA
Berkeley - Porchetta Friday at Sea Salt?
I have had the Porchetta here twice and loved it both times, although I asked for slightly different garnishes. Someone here had dry meat? Wow, that's the exact opposite of what I noticed about it. I have shared the plate both times because it's large, and also so I could order more appetizers, which I usually love.
I never save room for dessert here though-- it's usually too sweet, too gloopy or not seasoned properly.
Falanghina- Pizza Napolitana is coming to West Berkeley
sometimes licenses get shared between two businesses owned by the same people.
Camino in Oakland?
I ate there last night as well, with 4 others. We ordered everything on the menu plus doubles of a few dishes because we knew it wouldn't be enough food. Last night: 4 aps, $7 & $9, 3 entrees, $18 & $22.
It wasn't. we left hungry even after ordering all the desserts too. Our "tables'" favorite (there are long communal tables) was the vegetarian entree: Roasted artichokes with marrow beans, baked egg and dried pepper $18.
The mixed grill that listed pork belly had one one inch piece of some the best pork belly I've eaten but overcooked salted ling cod.
I would say it was similar to CP but only in airs, not plates. Salt and acid were missing as was cohesion and even flavor.
Total bill including 2 delicious non alcoholic drinks and 3 glasses of wine: $250 before tip.
I found it most unfortunate that nothing non-cafinated besides a rosemary tisane was available. Even a Roiibos would be nice...
Desserts could have matched the season as well. They felt a little autumn to me.
Menu writing is not their strong suit just yet. When you list an ingredient on the menu it can't merely be a garnish. Especially when it's a protein.
"Dine about Town" top lunch spots
thank you Ruth! so nice to read all this, even after my lay off.
and ps, RW Orange-- is your friend cute?
I want my coffee : no starbucks , no peets
What about Guerilla cafe in North Berkeley? They serve Blue Bottle. The place is small and I don't know the prices but BB is delicious.
Also, I realize this is far, but the little coffee place at Toby's in Point Reyes Station does something amazing with espresso!
Emporio Rulli
Melanie,
Have you been to the Auriana dinners? I will try and remember to tell you how my meal was as I have been invited to go.
Shuna
COCOA BARRY EXTRA BRUT COCOA POWDER
I get it from Pacific Gourmet, a "gourmet foods" distributor for restaurants, etc. But even when i have not be in a restaurant, per se, I have been able to buy from them direct. You just need to go there and pick up with cash. They are a small company but they have a large warehouse.
You may also try asking your local favorite pastry chef to buy you some.
GREAT East Bay Hamburger?
hello hounds!
I am looking for a hamburger as large, juicy, & succulent as the one at Luka's. Yes, I know that Barney's exists but I would rather not go there unless I have to.
Any hamburgers I can put on my East Bay radar. Please refrain from telling me about San Francisco-- I do not want to drive there for a hamburger, thanks!!
First Date/Blind Date in East Bay?
Yes on not trying too hard. no on onions/garlic because I really have a hard time with these things nowadays. b/c of this, thai and vietnamese are difficult... but mostly I want to think outside my own box so I'm open to all suggestions! thanks.
Mission Pie, SF report w/ pics. It's good!
I had a banana cream pie and a tiny walnut tartlette the day before yesterday that were AMAZING! you'd think the walnut tart would be exactly like pecan pie but it was better!
But that banana cream pie? I can't get enough of it...
Cooking Classes in SF?
If you're really attached to SF, then what you've done is great. But there's a new kid in town in the east bay, http://www.pauldingandco.com/calendar/?6/2007
I took a knife sharpening class there that was great.
First Date/Blind Date in East Bay?
Hello 'Hounders.
I am looking for an easy place for a blind date in the East Bay, preferably North Berkeley, but can be elsewhere. Good food but not: expensive, frou-frou, romantic, onion or garlicky. I don't drink alcohol and I don't want my date to get drunk wither.
It can be as easy as Gioia but not Arinell.
Thanks!
East Bay Restaurants: please help me expand my eating ways
This is an amazing list! Thank you all ever so much. I've bookmarked the url so that I can remember to come back here before I go out.
I always feel taken advantage of at Gregoire. The portions are tiny for the price, especially with that excessive packaging. But I do go there when I'm in a blood sugar bind.
I find the Cesar on Shattuck underwhelming to the point of disappointment. The one in Oakland is a bit better.
I think I need to go to A Cote, yes, although I do not drink alcohol, so the beverage suggestions are lost on me. And, yes on Jo jo, I haven't been in way too long.
Thanks again!
Early Breakfast or Pastries in Berkeley/Oakland?
and you can buy the jam from Pizzaiolo! Great gift to go for out of town guests.
Even if you just go here for coffee it's insanely amazing.
East Bay Restaurants: please help me expand my eating ways
Hello Chowhound,
Although this is my second time living in the East Bay, I can't seem to do much more than go to the same few places over and over! I live in North Oakland but am not opposed to driving for good food.
Here's where I've been a lot:
Pizzaiolo, Dona Tomas, Tacubaya, Cafe Gratitude, Chez Panisse, 900 Grayson, Vik's, Kirala, the Indian place on the upper most South side of Solano, O Chame, Sea Salt, Lalimes, Gioia, and Oliveto.
I'm looking for places off the beaten track, nothing too expensive or spicy. Mostly I just need help discovering new menus, new locations, new tastes. I go in these same circles over and over and I know there's more ground to cover than this.
Good BBQ?
Any help you can offer much appreciated!
Bay Area Dessert Tour: A Very Long Report
I had a lovely "Caramel-Custard" tart with a cocoa crust. The bottom layer was caramel and on top was a thick white custard, like pot de creme, but baked in. On top was a toasted almond covered, chocolate mousse filled "truffle" and on the plate was a nice chocolate caramel. Some other desserts looked nice as well but we were quite full. (I had just that day taught a class on custards and we had all eaten way too much dessert already!)
Dessert Only: SF Restaurants
this Presidio Social Club was impossible to find on the Internet, no menu listed... sorry, I might have tried it had I been able to find it!
Bay Area Dessert Tour: A Very Long Report
Doodleboomer, This is such an interesting criticism! I would have to agree. I have only tasted a few things from Bi Rite Creamery but I have taken note of how powerful they are. Like Sketch and Ici, pastry chefs turned retail ice cream makers are still making restaurant-quality ice cream. This is a criticism that will give me much food for thought!
Bay Area Dessert Tour: A Very Long Report
I didn't say what I had there because I didn't want to harp on the negative. I ate a "crostata" made with apples that tasted of nothing, a crust that was tasty (except for the chunks of sugar I had to pull off the top) but the dessert was plated in a bowl and there was "sauce" in the bowl with the consistency of water so that that very crust turned into a bloated mess. The people plating the dessert put "pesto" on the beautiful ginger ice cream by accident (they took it off the bill b/c of their mistake) so that sort of ruined it.
We also had the lemon sorbet and basil ice milk.
A. basil is not in season. B. it tasted oxidized. C. the lemon sorbet was watery and almost flavorless, especially right next to the basil ice milk.
While I appreciate that Pizzaiolo has finally hired a pastry chef, I think someone needs to be hired to plate them correctly.
Bay Area Dessert Tour: A Very Long Report
Desserts ran $7-10. But I think these prices are fair, especially as compared to some savory items in comparable price ranges. (Like soups and salads.)
You're welcome-- glad someone could get through the whole report!
Rec's for Graduation Party-Berkeley/Oakland Area
900 grayson recently lost thir chef, so the food could very well be a lot different now.
Perhaps this is off the beatn track, but I had a lovely meal at Lalime's last night, in North Berkeley. And that restaurant group also has Sea Salt and T Rex, both larger in capacity.
Rec's for Graduation Party-Berkeley/Oakland Area
The dessert was the highlight of my ok meal at Bucci's last winter.
Bay Area Dessert Tour: A Very Long Report
In the past month I have eaten more than my fair share of restaurant desserts. As promised I am going to try and give a report.
Best desserts: Oliveto, Delfina and Bar Tartine
2nd best: Ame, Lalime's and Rubicon
Worst: Campton Place and Salt House
Oliveto's desserts were clean, simple and perfect. We ordered the whole menu. They got points for seasonality & innovation, as well as a dessert I had much disdain for initially but blew me away: a "Raisin Tart" with a tender, delicate, buttery crust. My favorite was a mandarin orange frozen parfait and an impressive coco nib pannacotta-- silky smooth, not too much gelatin, redolent of chocolate without the heavyness of actual chocolate.
At Delfina we had the carnaroli pudding with cherry compote, buttermilk pannacotta and pistachio gelato. The carnaroli was my favorite but i like the new plating on the pannacotta-- there was a tangerine miroir/gelee on top instead of the usual caramel. I don't like my pistachios toasted, but the gelato was great otherwise: good strong flavour.
Bar Tartine has come a long way. Desserts tasted: Rose geranium pannacotta with rhubarb consomme and stewed rhubarb, and Chocolate mousse cake with red beet ice cream, sesame tuile, candied kumquats & beets.
The first one was surprisingly nice, if a bit sweet. The rose geranium flavour was well balanced, although the whole dessert was fairly soft. Coconut chunks were floating in the soup that didn't make sense, but besides that all was well executed.
Beet ice cream was creamy and not "dirty" tasting the way beets tend to taste as a concentrated flavor. Mousse was light in texture, tuile flavor didn't make much sense on the plate but it was delicious, kuquats were great for acid and bitterness against a mostly sweet dessert, but neither of us appreciated the actual beets on the plate.
Ame and Rubicon get points for trying hard. For giving it a go at seasonality (I looked at the Americano dessert menu and 3 out of 4 desserts were chocolate.) and pretty plating styles. Although Ame played it so safe it felt boring and Rubicon took some poetic license I didn't appreciate.
Ame: Chocolate Mousse Crunch with chocolate sorbet and sour cherry red wine compote, Rhubarb Pie with strawberry ice cream, and strawberry salad, Meyer Lemon Beignet with mango Lassi and Black Cardamon honey.
The choc. dessert was seamlessly executed and pretty to look at but it lacked soul or depth. To much sameness. The crunch at the bottom of the mousse-cake had peanuts in it which didn't make sense in the overall flavor profile and the sorbet only tasted of cocoa.
The strawberry dessert was confused. The crust on the pie was possibly made of just cream it was so tender, but the pie itself had little to no sugar which didn't work with the corresponding garnishes. A strawberry ice cream seemed overly sweet in comparison and tasted so strongly of strawberry it made me and my companion suspicious. Are they using fruit puree? What let us know they were was the "strawberry salad"was a few haphazardly sliced strawberries with coulis poured over the top, but, the strawberries themselves had no flavor. (or the flavor of commercial strawberries in March.)
The beignets were also confusing. they were indeed yeated doughnuts, fried to perfection, but they tasted nothing of Meyer Lemon. There were three components: "beignets," lassi and a pot of marmalade. The sauce over the doughnuts was barely cardamon nor honey. A pretty plate, but not cohesive.
Rubicon's pastry chef is doing a good job, but could be doing a lot better. The chef's food is more refined than hers and it shows in comparison. Desserts ordered: Bittersweet chocolate pecan crepes with oven roasted pear and Szechuan Pepper Sabayon, Spiced Apple Beignets with dried Moyer Plums and salted caramel ice cream, and Pistachio Rose petal Meringue with honeycomb, dates and yogurt sorbet.
the chocolate dessert should be named something else. Three, what looked to be fried but are actually baked tiny square puffs are served in a bowl with sabayon in the middle and the plum-pear stuff going on underneath, the sabayon could be a dessert all on it's own it's so fantastic. Subtle, light, gorgeous deliciousness! Fantastic use of/for a strong spice. Two puffs are filled with very bittersweet chocolate (cake batter?) and one is filled with pecan pie filling without the nuts. the bowl could use to have more balance-- maybe another pecan pie puff? maybe actual crepes if that's what the menu says? The baked puffs are almost impossible to cut with a fork, and although you could just pick one up and pop it in your mouth, it would deliver too powerful a punch t be able to taste anything else.
The beignets are not that. They are overcooked, dry, cake doughnut middles, small and covered with too much sugar. besides the ok ice cream, this dessert is not good. And because salted caramel ice cream is on so many dessert menus, it shouldn't show up unless it's very very good. (Like the version at BiRite creamery.)
The pistachio-rose petal dessert is very pretty, but quite small in relation to the amount and size of the other desserts, like a quarter of the size. I liked the flavors although my companion was put off by how cold it was. I imagine the sorbet is pre-scooped and frozen so that it will stand up to a torch on the meringue exterior. The rose water flavor was strong and could do to be pulled back on, but this was the best dessert overall.
At Campton Place we ordered every sngle dessert so I can safely say that they were all awful. The dessert of carrot ravioli and avocado mousse was fine, if you like those flavors. Me not being one to be impressed with smoke an mirrors I found the flavor man behind the curtain to be missing. This is a European trained pastry chef so the execution is spot-on, but much of the components were so bitter or strongly flavored we could not eat more than a few polite bites. If you are looking for very "strange" flavor combinations and that's all you care about, these desserts are for you. But too many of them tasted only of a particular alcohol used or the overall flavor compositions were too confusing to get a straight read on any of them. So unsatisfying it made me sad.
Salt House was worse than Campton Place because the desserts had no flavor at all. We also ordered the entire dessert menu so it's not that we didn't have "the good one." A rhubard gratin was raw rhubarb set into pastry cream with a burnt custard crust (not bruleed with sugar or anything), what looked to be overcooked granola on top and a scoop of flavorless (rhubarb?) sorbet. There was a chocolate mousse thing which was dense and weird. A lemon pudding cake which was dry (isn't the point of the pudding cake to be moist?) with scattered huckleberries on the plate, a "marshmallow" that was no more than a stale piece of meringue, a bitter maple-walnut tart with tough crust, a giant scoop of ok banana ice cream, although too sweet, on top, a very odd pineapple-coconut triangle parfait on top of dry cake-- the pineapple was not ripe, the plating was something out of the midwest and the cake was practically inedible. Considering that the pastry chef was recently featured in The SF Chronicle I though these desserts were going to wow me with at least flavor. But from the childish plating style to the execution to the flavor, this was the worst experience of them all.
What I learned is that SF likes to follow trends. Chocolate mousse, doughnuts and attempts at odd pairings appear to be all the rage. Seasonality still has a long way to travel, even in our organic-local-farmers' market driven city.
Restaurants for desserts I'd still like to try: Boulevard, Ritz Carleton Dining Room, Jojo, and Masa's (just to see who they get next.)
Thanks for the suggestions initially!
Dessert Only: SF Restaurants
OK. So so far what's been reccomended is:
Salt House, Range, ?Aziza?, Incanto, Coi, Town Hall (probably not for me because I prefer non-artificially flavored desserts), Pizzaria Delfiina and Citizen Cake.
Has anyone liked anything at Ame? Myth? Boulevard? Slanted Door? Postrio? Scott Howard?
Thanks for all your feedback! It's enlightening indeed!
(A full report is promised of course.)
Dessert Only: SF Restaurants
If a person knows how to make butterscotch from scratch it is far from cloyingly sweet. It can be gorgeous and subtle and a profound memory awakening! This is like saying Spam is better than ham because it's always going to taste the same.
Dessert Only: SF Restaurants
Hello Chowhounders! I am on assignment to eat at 5 restaurants JUST for dessert one night next week. One of them will need to be Bar Tartine.
Places I've eaten lately: A16, Rubicon, Delfina & Campton Place. Menus I've seen recently: Citizen Cake & Perbacco. Meals I will have soon: Oliveto & Quince.
Are there any pastry chefs out there whose work I absolutely must not miss on this one night of extreme dessert eating? I want to eat desserts that offer a range of styles and tastes. From American to European, experimental to down home.
I'm open to suggestions! Thanks for any input you have!
First Look - TWO - ex-Hawthorne Lane Restaurant location reopened tonight
Hello! Did it seem like one might need resos for the weekend? You walked in, but you also mentioned something about limited seating... thanks.
