A favorite San Leandro pizzeria never fails to satisfy
Last night, my oldest was in town and had a hankering for pizza. I didn’t myself, but I still have been craving pasta, so I decided to order from an old favorite: Porky’s Pizza Palace. This is a restaurant we have frequented ever since we moved to San Leandro, almost a quarter of a century ago. I love the old-fashioned, family-oriented, small-town-America feel of the place, and there food is pretty good as well. I didn’t take pictures this time, we just dived into the food.
The kids had a half-pineapple, half-Golden cheese pizza ($28). They thought the pizza was OK, pretty average pizzeria pizza.
We also ordered cheesy garlic bread ($6.3) and it’s definitely very cheesy. However, the cheese is not that flavorful. Next time we’d order the garlic bread without the cheese.
I decided to order a quart of ravioli ($14) and three meatballs ($12), so I’d have food for three meals. I really like Porky’s ravioli and meatballs. They are not going to win any culinary awards, but the ravioli are well cooked, with soft pasta, and are bursting with beef filling. The meat sauce is flavorful and tastes home made and the meatballs are light and, while commercial, not something I can actually buy myself at the supermarket. They are also pretty large.
In all, I like Porky’s Pizza, in particular the ravioli, and I’ll continue to order from there from time to time, as I have over the decades.
Porky's Pizza Palace 1221 Manor Blvd. San Leandro, CA (510) 357-4323 Mon-Thu 3 – 9 pm Fri 3 – 10 pm Sat 1 – 10 pm Sun 1 – 9 pm
A couple of weeks ago I saw a commercial for The Olive Garden‘s Never Ending Pasta Bowl and since then I’ve been obsessing about it. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I’ve been watching my carbs and avoiding pasta. Or maybe there is just something about the fantasies of limitless eating that appeals to human at an instinctive level. Olive Garden has been having this promotion for decades, so it’s obviously working for them.
I’m by no means a regular Olive Garden customer. I can count in one hand how often I’ve gone to the restaurant over the decades, with fingers to spare. Mostly I found it unmemorable, and with better Italian options around, often the same or more affordable prices, there has never been a compelling reason to go
I actually did a fair amount of reading on the Olive Garden and the Never Ending Pasta Bowl before my visit – such was my obsession. I learned that it wasn’t a particularly good deal for the customer, as most normal people can’t finish a single plate of pasta, much less have seconds. I also learned that you can take leftovers to go, and that you can order a serving of just the sauce. Finally, I learned that waiters hate it because they have to make multiple trips to the kitchen without the corresponding increase in tips.
We visited the Hayward location for lunch a Friday in October. I remembered the restaurant looking cuter back when I last went, this time it was just utilitarian. We were seated near the bar – and the kitchen – in a room without any decorations at all. Given that the food is not that cheap, I expected better.
We went there a little before noon and the place got fairly busy as the lunch hour came, though it was never really full. The restaurant is rather large, with good distance between the tables.
As the entrées all come with soup or salad and breadsticks, we didn’t bother ordering appetizers. My husband and daughter had the salad which they found to be unremarkable. It wasn’t good, it wasn’t bad, it was just a salad.
The breadsticks, on the other hand, were delicious. They are served warm, have garlic flavor, and have a soft interior. They are a tad dry, so they’re great for dipping. They were our favorite part of the meal – though I only had half of one, as I didn’t want to get full on bread (plus I’m watching those carbs).
Olive Garden has four soups, and I’d read that the Chicken & Gnocchi soup ($10, if ordered on its own) was particularly popular, so I ordered that. It was OK. I did like how soft and pillowy the gnocchi were, but there were relatively few of them in the soup. The chicken cream base wasn’t my favorite, but I’m not a fan of cream soups (or soups) in general. I did like it as a dip for the breadstick, however.
I got a second portion to go, as part of the Never Ending Pasta Bowl promotion (which gives you never ending soup or salad and never ending breadsticks as well), and I was surprised at how small it was. I think it had all of two gnocchi.
My daughter had the chicken parmigiana ($21.3). It was a large portion but not a particularly successful one. My daughter compared it to the frozen chicken parmesan we buy at the supermarket.
Mike had the seafood alfredo ($23.5) and he was equally unimpressed. He found the alfredo sauce to be thin and not particularly tasty, and the seafood just OK. He wouldn’t order it again.
In both these cases, you can get a much better plate of food for a similar price at a mom & pop’s Italian restaurant.
I, of course, ordered the Never Ending Pasta Bowl ($16) with a side of protein ($5). The protein this time around are meatballs, Italian sausages or “crispy chicken fritta”, which I think are breaded and fried chicken slices. You are given a choice of four pastas (fettuccine, spaghetti, rigatoni and angel hair) and six sauces (garlic herb, alfredo, marinara, five cheese marinara, creamy mushroom and meat sauce).
For my first plate I had the fettuccine with half mushroom sauce , half meat sauce and meatballs. The plate was rather generous and definitely enough for a lunch entree, particularly after eating the few gnocchi from the soup. The fettuccine itself was rather bland (but it’s pasta) and a little past al dente – with some parts that were on the rawer side. I don’t think I’d order it again. I did like the mushroom sauce, particularly when I got a mushroom. It was creamy, mushroomy and very tasty. The meat sauce, on the other hand, was a disappointment. It had very small and scant pieces of meat and tasted like jarred sauce. I definitely wouldn’t order it again. The meatballs weren’t bad. They were light, and tasted like the meatballs you get in pizza joint and sandwich places – which I, personally, like. The first order came with three meatballs.
For my second plate, which I took home, I had the angel hair pasta with the five cheese marinara sauce. I liked the angel hair better, but the sauce – a mixture of marinara sauce with alfredo sauce – tasted like supermarket vodka sauce, basically, a creamy tomato sauce. It was too acidic. I would not order it again. This second portion of pasta was also pretty small, and it came with two meatballs.
I also had a bowl of alfredo sauce, as I wanted to try it. As Mike noted, it was on the thin side, and it also didn’t differ much from the jarred stuff. It wasn’t bad as a dip for the breadsticks, but I also wouldn’t order it .
I had water with dinner, Mike had a soda ($4), and my daughter had the raspberry lemonade ($4.50). She really liked it. They come with unlimited refills as well.
Service was fine, a little bit rushed but that’s to be expected.
In all, it was a mediocre and yet pretty expensive lunch – though we all took some leftovers home. I can’t imagine rushing back to the Olive Garden.
Olive Garden 24688 Hesperian Blvd Hayward, CA (510) 782-6385 Su - Th 11:00 AM to 10:00 PM F - Sa 11:00 AM to 11:00 PM
This 85-year old Union Square fixture attracts tourists and old-timers
I love historical restaurants. Really, I love historical anything. There is a reason why I majored in history, after all. So when I came across Sears Fine Food, as I was looking for places to eat before a play at the San Francisco Playhouse (btw, don’t miss The Play that Goes Wrong), I knew I had to go. The reviews were mixed, but I was willing to put up with substandard food for the historical experience.
Sears Fine Food was opened back in 1938 by Ben Sears, a retired circus crown, and his wife Hilbur. They specialized on breakfast food, particularly the silver dollar Swedish pancakes made from a family recipe. Served with lingonberries, they are still on the menu today.
The restaurant is pretty small and it has less of a historical look than I sought, though it does have black and white photos on the walls of old patrons and an old-fashioned atmosphere.
I ordered the “Our World Famous 18 Swedish Pancakes” with lingonberry sauce and sausages ($27) for dinner that evening – both because nothing else on the menu really appealed to me that night and because I wanted to try them. Alas, they were pretty disappointing.
The pancakes themselves were abundant but generic. They didn’t have the metallic flavor of those made with a mix, but they didn’t have a particularly pleasant flavor either. They came with corn syrup which didn’t do them any favors. A few days later I had a similar dish of silver dollar pancakes with syrup at a local fundraiser, and the homemade pancakes were far, far superior.
I did like the lingonberry preserves, which did elevate the pancakes, but there were only enough for about half the pancakes. I could have ordered another serving ($3), I suppose, but there were too many carbs on the plate as it was. The sausages were fine, pretty generic breakfast sausages. In all, I don’t think I’d recommend this dish. And yes, it was ridiculously expensive for what it was. But I figure you’re paying for the location here.
Mike had the lobster risotto ($27) and that was a somewhat better choice. He liked that the lobster came on top of the risotto rather than mixed in, as that allowed him to control how much risotto he consumed. The risotto itself was a tad salty, but delicious. It had the creaminess you seek on risotto and a very balanced, umami flavor. The lobster, however, was in need of butter. Without it, it lacked moisture and richness. Mike probably wouldn’t order the dish again.
For dessert, he had the creme brulee ($10). It was just OK. The custard should have been more flavorful.
Service was very good, however, and I did enjoy our time there. Still, I can’t imagine I’d go back.
Sears Fine Food 439 Powell Street San Francisco, CA (415)986-0700 Daily 6:30am-9pml
Costco has introduced a new item to its food course offerings, the chicken & bacon sandwich ($7), and my husband had the brilliant idea to get one for me. For himself, he got a tried and true hotdog. It was awful. So awful that I threatened to divorce him over the slight.
The sandwich comes in thick, dense, dry and just overwhelming ciabatta. Ciabatta can be good if it’s bakery fresh, but this was just a huge mess and close to inedible. The problem, however, were the actual ingredients. My husband foolishly thought that it would contain some of the same rotisserie chicken Costco uses for its chicken salad. Alas, it did not. It has “oven roasted chicken breast” by which they mean thin processed chicken slices, with that same super-salty and chemical flavor of processed turkey. I personally hate it.
I did like the bacon jam, but it couldn’t stand to the horrible flavor of the chicken. I took one bite of the whole thing and told Mike he’d been scammed.
An exploration of Northern and Southern Thai cuisines
Los Angeles is a great city for Thai food. It’s in LA where I first became acquainted with Thai food, and I’ve had many a memorable Thai meal there. While Thai restaurants have become common in the Bay Area over the last three decades, and we have several ones even in San Leandro, there is still something special about LA Thai food.
Lum Ka Naad is not your ordinary Thai restaurant. It has an extremely extensive menu offering stereotypical Thai dishes as well as classics from other parts of Asia. More interestingly, they also offer a handful of unique dishes from Northern and Southern Thailand, allowing you to explore Thai cuisine more thoroughly. We visited the restaurant during our last visit to my family in the SF Valley, and I’m sure well return.
The restaurant itself is pretty casual, though more by juxtaposition than design. The dining area, if isolated, would be somewhat elegant. It’s decorated with non-garish pieces of Thai art. Alas, the bar/check out and their staging area, including where they keep their carts, are all open to the dining room and bring down the elegance factor by several notches. So just think casual.
We started dinner with an appetizer of beef satay ($15), which was delicious. It brought me back when I was first introduced to the dish so many decades ago. The beef is marinated in a curry then grilled and served with peanut sauce. Both the beef and sauce were on point. It’s been years since I last ordered satay – and I realize now that it’s because many restaurants don’t provide a beef option, and chicken or pork satay can be very dry. The beef was tender and didn’t suffer that problem.
We also shared an appetizer of angel wings ($16). These are boneless chicken wings stuffed with a mixture of ground chicken and glass noodles, then battered and fried. It was a very substantial dish, and I thought it was tasty though not out of this world delicious. Mike liked it more, I think. We took most of this home and reheated it a couple of days later, it stood up to time and microwaving quite well. Still, I wouldn’t order it again, though Mike might.
For dinner, I had the larb kua ($17) from the northern menu. Larb or laab, is a dish of Lao origins that has been adopted and modified in some areas of northern Thailand. I’d never had the northern Thai version, in which the meat is marinated with spices and then pan fried.
It was very tasty. It’s not a huge dish, and I actually finished it all, but I really enjoyed it. I had it with ground beef, but you can choose ground pork or chicken instead. The spicing was delicious and the texture added by the garlic was great.
Mike had the sator & shrimp ($20), a dish consisting of sator beans sautéed with shrimp, ground pork and a shrimp paste sauce. Sator beans, also known as stinky beans for their strong, foul aroma, are a feature of southern Thai cuisine. The dish was pretty spicy, but Mike thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a new flavor combination for him, pungent to say the least. The problem were the leftovers. They stank up my mother’s refrigeration and led her to ban us from using it in the future. The smell lasted even after the leftovers were consumed and she cleaned the fridge. If you order this, make sure to eat it all and don’t take it home.
My sister had the panang curry with chicken ($17). This was a good but not extraordinary version of this dish – but this is a dish so good that it’s hard to make any better. She enjoyed it quite a bit.
My nice, meanwhile, had the orange chicken ($16.50), but with with tofu instead of chicken. Made this way, this Chinese favorite is vegan. She enjoyed that it had been made with actual oranges, and remarked on the freshness of the flavor.
Service was great, our waitress was very attentive and cheerful, and helped us navigate the long menu.
We definitely enjoyed our meal and would return. There is a second Lum Ka Naad location in Encino, for those closer to that area.
Lum Ka Naad 8910 Reseda Blvd, Northridge, CA (818) 882-3028 Mon - Sun : 11:00 am - 10:00 pm
This Greek fast food chain serves authentic souvlaki pitas!
I have written before about how my first introduction to Greek food was during a trip to Greece while doing my year abroad in Egypt. I was a starving student and Greece seemed expensive compared to Egypt back then, so my diet while there consisted pretty much only of souvlaki pitas. These sandwiches of sliced lamb and beef, with tomatoes and onions, French fries and tzatziki sauce were absolutely delicious. I had the opportunity to try them again when we travelled back to Athens, right before the pandemic. They hadn’t changed.
The gyros that Greek and Mediterranean restaurants in the US were different, and not just because they lacked French fries. I could never really tell why, but the flavor was just not there. Thus I was surprised that Nick the Greek – a chain of all things – has managed to approximate them so well.
Nick the Greek opened a location in San Leandro in the last couple of years, and we’ve been regular costumers since. They have a pretty limited menu, however, of pitas, plates and a bowl.
I usually get the Beef/Lamb Gyro Pita ($12.50). I’ve now learned that the difference between a gyro and souvlaki is that the former consists of meat shaved off a chunk of meat cooked in a rotisserie, while the latter refers to meat cooked in a skewer. I could have sworn that the souvlaki pitas I had in Greece were cooked in a rotisserie, but I could be wrong. I do prefer the taste of texture of meat cooked in skewers, as it turns out.
I like how soft and spongy the pita is. The meat is a little too salty by itself, but it mellows out within the pita. By itself, the lamb has a very intense flavor – you can tell it’s lamb -, while the beef is softer. I like having fries in the pita, though these could be a bit crispier, you don’t really notice them while you eat. The whole combo just works together well, though the predominant flavor is that of onion, when you get a piece, and of the tzatziki when you don’t.
I’ve tried the chicken souvlaki pita before, and I didn’t like it as much. Despite the marinade, the flavor of the chicken was too soft to measure up to the rest of the ingredients. My daughter has done the felafel pita before and she thought it was OK, but not remarkable.
My husband prefers to get the gyro bowl ($13.50) which includes the meat of your choice, tomatoes, lettuce, onions and cucumbers, feta cheese, tzatziki and spicy yogurt on a bed of rice. The whole thing feels like a larger, more substantial meal than the gyro and is enough for two meals. He likes how the flavors meld together.
Nick the Greek has been expanding throughout California and the west, and I can understand why. It’s not a place where you’d eat every day, given the limited menu, but a great place to grab a pita when you don’t feel like cooking.
Nick the Greek 1509 E 14th Street. San Leandro, CA Daily 11 AM - 10 PM
My daughter loves Trader Joe’s Mandarin Orange Chicken, which she eats on rice, so I thought she might enjoy this Mandarin Style Orange Chicken Bowl as well, and save herself the trouble of having to heat up the chicken and the rice separately. Alas, she didn’t. She didn’t explain why she didn’t like it – but I’m noting it here so I know not to buy it for her again.
Safeway has these cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing on sale for $2.50 every few Fridays (regular $6), and I got them several weeks ago. They are very good – as long as you microwave them first. They are semi-freshly made, so they don’t have the annoying, metallic preservative taste of the ones that come in a can and you need to bake yourself. They are obviously not as good as home made ones, but they don’t require the work either.
I love cream cheese frosting, so I loved this, but it is ridiculously sweet, so I can’t eat more than a bite. Still, it’s a very good bite.
Every Friday, Safeway has a bunch of items for $5 – among them, a bakery item. They usually rotate among a half a dozen of choices, but I was happy to find a new item this week: cube cakes. These are large, 13 oz, square portions of tall layered cakes in several flavors. They usually sell for $8. Obviously, they are large enough to share.
My closest Safeway didn’t actually have any of these available on Friday, so I had to get them from the larger Safeway a few miles away. It was worth it. The Tuxedo Truffle Cube Cake, at least, was absolutely delicious. You’d be happy to get it as a dessert at any restaurant.
The cake included layers of moist white and chocolate (I think) cake, and chocolate and cream cheese mousses. The chocolate ganache layer on top was absolutely delicious, it tasted of a deep chocolate fudge, but the strong flavor was mellowed by the rest of the lawyers. The cake was lighter than it looked and just tasty.
My daughters love Madelines. I started getting them for them when they were very little and we’d stop at Zocalo coffeehouse for a snack and play. The little cookies/cakes were the ideal size for toddler and preschoolers and even elementary age kids. Plus being small, they weren’t too expensive.
For quite a while now, Safeway has been selling these overjoyed/Safeway Select madelines boxes, baked by Sugar Bowl Bakery. I buy them for my daughter when they go on sale for $5, which happens every few Fridays. She loves them. They taste very much like the ones she remembers from her childhood. They are like a dryer, denser sponge cake, hard enough to withstand dipping but soft enough to eat on their own. Flavor wise, they are better and much cheaper than the ones we got at Trader Joe’s.
24688 Hesperian Blvd Hayward, CA 
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