We only have one night, Saturday the 21st, due to a forced stopover, and will be staying at the Marriott YVR on Westminster Hwy. We will not have a car, but, of course, can take taxis. We would love to get a recommendation for an interesting Chinese restaurant (the specific cuisine and price level are open, as we are fairly adventurous diners) that is not too far away and would not have a terrible wait time on a Saturday night. We would probably not be able to eat before 8-8:30pm if that makes any difference. Thank you for your help.

We will be spending Thanksgiving weekend in Paris, staying at the Esprit St Germain. After reading this site, along with various other blogs we have come up with the following meals. I would love your opinions and suggestions.

Fri lunch - Dans les Landes
Fri dinner- Le Voilin d'Ingres
Sat lunch - Caius Zinc
Sat dinner-L'Auberge Bressane
Sun lunch - Liza
Sun dinner- Les Fetes Galantes

We actually have reservations at all of the above. Have we overdone it or is this reasonable?

Looking forward to any opinions you may have. Thanks in advance.

My wife and I will be in Bangkok later in the month, but, unfortunately, it is only for a stopover on the way home from Laos. We will be staying at the Peninsula Hotel and would like to have a good Thai meal, but not too far afield, because we have an early flight the next day. I have read some nice things about the Supatra River House and Khinlom Chomsaphan, but would love some input from some fellow chowhounds.

Yikes is right! We had a reservation for Mar 4 and went through with it. We had a great experience there, however-great food, great wine and great service-both friendly and professional. There is no excuse in the world for the night you had, but we wanted to share ours, as well.

Many years ago I went to this stand on the Plaza and loved the carnitas sandwich. We will be in Santa Fe Labor Day weekend and wondered if it is still there and still as good as ever. Is it there on Sundays? Thanks in advance for your help. By the way, we are planning our 2 dinners for La Choza and Los Potrillos, with a lunch at Bobcat Bite. Good choices?

We will be visiting Santa Fe over Labor Day Weekend and will be in town for Saturday and Sunday night dinners. We were thinking of La Choza for Saturday night, but are finding many restaurants are closed on Sundays. We aren't looking for super deluxe (Geronimo's, Inn at the Anasazi, Compound, etc), but looking for something with a little atmosphere that is representative of the city. Thank you for any ideas.

La Rueda in Puerto Iguazu also has a very large menu that is not exclusive to meat. There was plenty of pasta and even local river fish. We had a terrific dinner there in early November.

We just returned from 2 great weeks in Argentina. There are lots of comments about BA, so I won't bore you except to say that we had a great and very local lunch at El Obrero in the La Boca section (don't go at night) and a very good steak dinner at La Brigada. In Iguazu, we had a disappointing dinner (not bad, but nothing special) at the Iguazu Grand Hotel, but an excellent dinner at La Rueda in town. It has a very large menu (meats, seafood (even local river fish), etc. Very reasonably priced and a very good wine list. In the Mendoza area we stayed both at the Park Hyatt and Cavas Wine Lodge. In the city, we were very disappointed in Azafran-overcooked meat and very slow service. However, we had a great dinner at Bistro M at the Hyatt-much less expensive than we guessed for a deluxe hotel restaurant. In Mendoza, we had a great experience at the "Vines of Mendoza", really a wine bar where you can try flights of Mendoza wines as well as glasses, especially from small producers whose wineries are not open to the public. They are located right around the corner from the Hyatt. We also had 2 excellent dinners at Cavas, but it's not very convenient unless you are staying there. Our favorite wineries were Carinae-small production, very personal tour in the Maipu district; Archeval Ferrer-another small producer, excellent, but VERY expensive wines, but the best "tour" of our trip, in Lujan de Cuyo; and Andeluna, a larger producer, but located in the Uco Valley in one of the most beautiful locations imaginable-also an excellent tour guide. We had 2 wine lunches; one at Familia Zuccardi-huge amounts of very high quality meats(beef, ribs and pork all included) as well as just about as much wine as you could drink (of their medium lines) and at Ruca Malen-really a gourmet meal of set courses-one of our best meals of the trip. One suggestion, in general, that we found about beef in Argentina. If you like your meat less than medium (or medium-well, for that matter), order it RARE! It won't come bloody red, but you'll get it the way medium-rare is prepared at a good restaurant in the US. Make reservations at all wineries that you want to visit-you'll get an English speaker and many of the wineries will NOT let you in without an appointment. Have a great trip and I hope some of these suggestions help you.

We will be staying in Tucson on Sat, Sep 8, but for only 1 night. We're going to do El Charro (downtown) for lunch, I think and already have a reservation for Poca Cosa for dinner. The next morning we're going to Xavier del Bac. We have to catch a 5PM flight back to Chicago that pm, so we have time for a nice lunch/brunch. Aside from the food stands at the mission, any suggestions? We are open to any type of food, but would like to keep entrees under $20...something fairly unique to Tucson (but not Mexican) would be ideal.
Thank you for your ideas.

So it sounds like Sadie's is the place, if we want the "full" experience-Good New Mexican food, a later dinner and booze! Thanks for all of your help.

Do you know if you can BYO to M & T's?

Thanks, tenacity, for the info on Mary & Tito's. I think we can arrange to do a Friday dinner.

Next month we will be in Albuquerque for 3 dinners. I THINK for 2 of them we'll be going to Ambrozia and El Norteno (not cast in stone, however). We'd like the 3rd to be New Mexican but I've noticed that many of them (Mary & Tito's, La Esquina, Perea's in Corrales, for example) either don't open for dinner or only serve up until 6 or so and we prefer a later dinner time. We're staying at the Hyatt Tamaya so are very flexible whether going into the city or somewhere a bit north. Any suggestions?

I couldn't agree more...I was just going to post the same thing!

It's about a 10 minute drive from your hotel. It's just NE from where you are staying.

It is, indeed, Barrio Cafe. The area is not bad, at all, and there is ample parking within a block. They do not, however, take reservations and there can be quite a wait during prime dinner times. That said, the food is terrific. We've particularly enjoyed the mole and the cochinita pibil, but we've liked everything we've ever tried there. They also have a terrific wine list that includes many Mexican wines and a nice, informative section about the wines.

In San Francisco, Aziza has a very romantic atmosphere with excellent, upscale Moroccan food. You can reserve one of the booths in the front room. It's dark enough that you have a lot of privacy, but light enough to read the menu! They also have a very reasonably priced wine list that compliments the food.

I second the recommendation for Ravenous. Also Healdsburg Charcuterie has excellent French "comfort" food-also very low key and quiet inside. We also like Willy's Seafood Bar-mostly small plates, but a very creative and eclectic menu. Both places are very reasonably priced and very close to the square. Also, a very interesting lunch suggestion is the reserve room at Mayo Family Winery, also near the square. They do 7 small tastes of food, matched with 7 of their wines for $20 per person. It was very well done and they were very generous with the wine pours.

I don't want to totally bore you with all of them, but our favorites were Field Stone, White Oak and Clos du Bois in the Alexander Valley; Rosenblum, Mayo Family, Huntington and Davis Family in Healdsburg; Arrowood in Glen Ellen; and Rombauer and Alpha Omega in the Napa Valley. We were also pleasantly surprised at the new Coppola place that used to be Chateau Souverain. They are not just trying to create Napa north, but are doing some new things in Sonoma that I hope work out. Our favorites usually mean a combination of good wine, a fun atmosphere and an informative pourer. Some places have great wine, but the rest of the experience lacks something. The wineries about all met the 3 criteria, in our opinion.

We just returned from our trip and I wanted to report on our findings:

Charcuterie in Healdsburg-we hadn't been there in years and we really enjoyed it. It is what it is: French bistro comfort food, but very well prepared. We had the steak with gorgonzola sauce and the chicken baked in red wine, very much like Coq au Vin-both very good.
It's a great, fairly quiet, alternative to the newer and more upscale places in town.

Willy's Seafood and Raw Bar-Healdsburg-we actually did carryout here (the Bears game was on Monday night!) and it was also very good. We had the riblets, pulled pork sandwich, artichokes and french fries as well as a salad. The riblets and french fries were particularly good.

Mayo Family Winery in Healdsburg-I wanted to mention this because of the lunch wine and food pairing. You get 7 tastes matched with 7 different wines for $20 per person. It was beautifully presented and the wine pourings were quite generous. In fact, if you wanted a bit more wine with any course, they were happy to pour for you. They have these "Reserve Rooms" in the town of Healdsburg and in Sonoma Valley.

The Girl and the Fig, Sonoma-we went here for lunch and really enjoyed it. It was a much busier place than we expected with a more creative menu and it really hit the spot. The service was very good and we particularly liked the burger. We also had the tartine.

Mustard's Grill-As usual a great meal. There have been many postings about it..the pork chop is about as good as there is in a restaurant (but if you ever get to Cooper's BBQ in Llano, TX-wow, but that's another story) and we have always found the service very friendly and helpful.

Wappo Grill in Calistoga-We went here for lunch and the place was almost empty. The service is VERY casual, without much atmosphere, but the food was excellent. Unfortunately they were out of the Brazilian stew, but we had the stuffed pepper and the duck carnitas-loved both.

Gordon's in Yountville-we had breakfast here. It's a very casual, local place where you order at the counter and they bring the food to you. We had the Mexican scramble which was very tasty.

Delfina in SF-we had somewhat mixed feelings about it. The food was outstanding, probably the best on the whole trip. We had gnocchi w/bolognese and a fabulous pork shoulder as well as the salmon. Our negative was that almost every table for 2 is right on top of the neighbors on both sides. We learned way too much about the people around us and had a lot of trouble communicating with each other. The service was quite good, however, although each course was served pretty much on top of each other. We got the feeling that they really wanted to turn over the tables, but they never rushed us at all.

Bocadillos in SF-we went for lunch and loved it. It has small sandwiches (bocadillos in Portugese, I believe) and plates, as tapas you could say, but they were really good and the place is really fun. We had a large special salad with blue cheese and the serrano ham sandwich and the lamb burger. The lamb burger was fantastic.

Aziza in SF-we thought from start to finish, the best restaurant experience we had. The atmosphere was very romantic, the service was terrific and the food was outstanding. We had the wild mushroom baked in phyllo appetizer and both the tagine and the Couscous for mains. Everything was great and particular kudos to the wine list: lots of good bottles for $25-35, which is VERY hard to find in northern California.

Thank you to all that helped us with your suggestions, especially the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, which we hit on Saturday AM on our way up to Healdsburg. It was one of the best, if not the best, local market that we have seen in the US (Madison WI is pretty close in the summertime). We also visited about 25 wineries and would be happy to give our opinions if anyone is interested.

I also agree completely with Terra. It's our favorite restaurant in the Valley. We've also been to Mustard's many times and have had a good experience every time (the pork chop is awesome!). We're going to try Go Fish next month...I read that the chef from Julia's Kitchen is starting there December 1.

I want to thank everyone for their suggestions on this post as well as some others. It looks the agenda for next month (at least right now) is:
Sat: A stop at the Ferry Plaza FM on the way to Sonoma
Dinner at Syrah, Santa Rosa
Sun: Dinner at Charcuterie, Healdsburg
Mon: Dinner at either Willy's or Ravenous, Healdsburg
Tue: Dinner at Mustard's Grill (an old fav of ours)
Wed: Dinner at either Terra (another fav) or Wappo Bar
Thu: Dim Sum at Koi Palace on the way to SFO
Dinner at Delfina
Fri: Dinner at either Limon or Bar Crudo
Tons of wine tasting during the week, including the "Red Velvet" weekend in Alexander Valley.
I'll report back after the trip. Again, thanks for all the help

Thanks to both of you. Those are exactly the comments that I was hoping to hear. We loved the place many years ago and were hoping that it hadn't changed much. We'll definately go there next month.

My wife and I always try to get up to Healdsburg for at least 1-2 dinners a year. Over the last few years we've tried many of the other places in town, i.e. Dry Creek Kitchen, Ravenous, Willy's, Zin, Tastings, Bistro Ralph and we've enjoyed all of them. We haven't been to Charcuterie in at least 3-4 years and used to like it very much. Has any one been there somewhat recently? Thanks for your help.

Our favorites over the last couple of years have been Ravenous and Willy's. We have also always enjoyed Charcuterie, but haven't been there for a couple of years. Any recent visitors?

My wife and I will be visiting San Fran but only have 2 nights (Thu-Fri) and 1 full day. We are looking for medium priced (around $75 pp w/wine) dinners that are somewhat unique to SF. We're from the Chicago area and love ethnic foods, but are open to suggestions. We like relatively informal places (i.e. not dressy), but not TOO loud or crowded. We also want places that take reservations. From the posts I've read, among the places I'm thinking of:
Betelnut
Delfina
Limon
Aziza
Zuni Cafe
Yank Sing for Dim Sum
We're staying near Union Square but as long as we can take public transportation without too much difficuly, location in the city is no problem. What do you hounds think?