Last night I made Canarian food for my little family. We had oven-baked potatoes, a very nice braised chicken with onions and an almost healthy banana pudding. The recipes are up at:
http://www.marga.org/food/int/canary/
Author: marga (Page 58 of 112)
A couple of nights ago I made balsamic-glazed sirloin steak from a recipe from epicurious.com. Mike thought it was quite good, but I didn’t like it. I thought it lacked flavor, and it wasn’t very tasty – despite all the good ingredients in the marinade. It was also not as tender as the steak I’d made a couple of nights before, despite being pretty much the same type of steak. I wouldn’t make it again.
So, you ask, why blog about it? Well, it’s so if I come across the recipe again, and I’m tempted by it, I can do a search on my blog and find that I didn’t like it the first time around 🙂
Yesterday we went to the Washington Manor Library to see animals the Oakland Zoo was bringing, and decided to stop for lunch at the Great Wall Restaurant before the the “show”. We hadn’t been there before.
They serve a standard Chinese-American menu. Most lunch plates and a la carte entrees are about $5-7. We started with the fried pork wontons they also have plain wontons). They looked like money purses of fried dough around a pork meatball. I didn’t think the meatball was very tasty (the kids didn’t like them), but the fried dough was good with the standard sweet-sour sauce.
Mike ordered two of their set lunches ($5), one with sweet and sour pork, fried rice and chicken chow mein and the other with almond chicken and fried rice. I had the lemon chicken ($6).
The fried rice was very nice, the diminute pieces of bbq pork were smokey and full-flavored, and they imparted the whole dish with their flavor. Mika really enjoyed the chicken chow mein, and I thought it was quite flavorful as well. The almond chicken was very nice, it had a standard flavor but a lot of it. I was less crazy about the lemon chicken and the sweet and sour pork. The problem with the former was that the sauce failed to adhere to the chicken, and the chicken by itself was rather tasteless. The sauce was good, but not spectacular. The sauce on the sweet and sour pork, however, left much to be desired. It managed to be neither sweet nor sour, and was mostly “blah”. The meat wasn’t fatty, at least.
Service was good, the waitress was accommodating and the food came very promptly to the table. In all, I’d go to the Great Wall again if I was in the neighborhood and had a hankering for Chinese food.
Great Wall Restaurant
15048 Farnsworth St
San Leandro, CA
(510) 352-8343
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I bought this wine during a recent trip to the Gold Country in California. I loved most of the wines at that winery, but this one was one of my favorite ones. At $26 it was pretty expensive for me – but I did like it a lot.
We drank it a few nights ago along with a simple dinner of french bread, soft cheese, sorpressata, coppa and olive oil. It was, once again, very good, with a rich flavor, full body, soft tannins, and memories of dark berries. It was also succulent and buttery. Mike liked it too, but I don’t think as much as I did.
In all, one of my favorite wines.
I never buy top sirloin, because I don’t find it to be the most flavorful of steaks, but it was on sale at Safeway and I figured it was worth a try. I looked for a recipe in epicurious.com, and found this one for Grilled Steak Verciano. I made it last night and it was *very good*. It imparted the meat with a strong flavor (lots of it from wine, so don’t make it unless you like red wine), and both Mike and I loved it.
I didn’t get the grill hot enough before I cooked the steaks, so 4 minutes on each side led to a very rare steak. Next time I’ll get it hotter, but I’ll probably do 5 minutes on each side anyway.
Grilled steak with wine-soy sauce marinade
1/2 cup red wine
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp. dried rosemary
2 large garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2-pounds top sirloin steaks
Mix the red wine with the soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, rosemary, garlic and salt. Add the steaks and cover well on both sides. Marinade in the refrigerator for 6 hours, turning half way through.
Heat a grill to medium-high. Grill the steaks until done, about 4 minutes on each side for medium-rare.
Marga’s Best Recipes
I noticed that Cafe Sorriso has changed ownership. If anyone goes and has a comment, please put it in my original review page (like above).
Horatio’s Lounge is undergoing a renovation – the whole bar was close on a recent visit, so we had to have our desserts at the restaurant. But it’s opening in the next few days. I’m not sure if I’ll get there any time soon, so if you go, let me know how it looks. The desserts we had at the dining room weren’t as good as usual, they tasted stale. Hopefully, it’s a momentary glitch.
It seems that the Italian restaurant on Bancroft and Dutton is actually getting ready to open and the Vietnamese restaurant at East 14th and Estabrook, is progressing.
Anyway, if you know of something happening in the vibrant San Leandro restaurant scene, please comment here.
Note: Raaga has closed. Indian Oven has opened in its location.
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I was visiting my parents in the SF Valley this weekend, and my sister Kathy suggested that we go to Thai West for lunch, a favorite restaurant in the neighborhood. Alas, it was close for Sunday lunch, so we went hunting for another alternative. Raaga was the first such alternative we found – and I was glad we did.
We got to the small strip-mall restaurant around 12:30 PM on Sunday (July 2008). The place was deserted, and they were just putting out the lunch buffet. I hope people in the area are late lunchers, because no one came while we ate.
The food was very good. The buffet consisted of three meat dishes (chicken curry, goat curry and tandoori chicken), and 2 or 3 veggie dishes – I noticed a vegetable sambaal and some daal, I’m not sure if they had something else. There was also rice, vegetable pakoras, raita and things of the sort. They brought fresh nan to the table, and it was very good, thick and warm.
I loved everything I had. The tandoori chicken lacked the red dye that is usually used to give the dish its distinctive color, but it was juicy and very flavorful, without being spicy. Indeed, Mika, my picky 6-yo, ate quite a bit of it. The chicken curry was both rich and deep, a tiny bit spicy and somewhat sweet, with layers of complexity. It was not the sort of dish you tend to get in a buffet – I really enjoyed it. The goat curry was almost as good, well balanced, rich in flavor, giving you something new, yet familiar (to eaters of Indian food). Kathy tried the veggie pakoras and she thought they were very good as well, Mika even ate a couple of bites without complain.
Service was great, if silent.
The bill came up to $38 after tax. They only charged us for 3 buffets (there were 3 adults and 3 kids, but the kids mostly ate rice), and we had 4 drinks. In all, I thought it was very affordable for the quality of food.
Raaga
10110 Topanga Canyon Blvd.
Chatsworth, CA
818-407-8898
Never say never, right? Reading back my old review of Pea Soup Andersen’s, it sounds like I’d sworn never to go back – but last weekend we found ourselves driving down south and hungry by the time we got to Santa Nella. And your choices for food in Santa Nella are limited: Pea Soup Andersen’s, the restaurant at the traveler’s center (which might have changed names since that review), and fast food. So I thought we’d give Pea Soup another chance. I probably wouldn’t again.
It’s not that the food was particularly bad. Mike actually enjoyed his croissant club sandwich ($9 or $10). But it wasn’t particularly good either. My BBQ Western Burger (~$10) came with bacon, 2 onion rings and BBQ sauce (I asked for it on the side), but it was cooked medium-to-well-done, rather than the medium rare I had asked for. As a result it was dry. It still tasted fine, however. The portions were very generous, though I wished they were smaller and so was the price tag. I’ve noticed that prices of burgers at restaurants have gone through the roof (I recently had a $17 burger at Adagia), but come on! – if I pay $10 for a burger I want it to be good, if not excellent.
Anyway, I think next time I may actually drive a couple of miles out of the way to Los Baños and have something to eat there instead.
Pea Soup Andersen’s
I-5 Exit 407
12411 S Highway 33
Santa Nella, CA
209-826-5534
Original Review
Marga’s I-5 Restaurant Reviews
Bay Area Restaurant Reviews
I have one restaurant left to review from my trip to Sonoma & the Lake Country, and that is Omelette Express, a breakfast and lunch joint in Windsor. We had breakfast there last week, when visiting the area.
I only had a bagel with cream cheese and a mocha, so I can’t really say much personally about the food. The bagel ($2.50) was a little bit too soft, but otherwise fine. The mocha ($3.50 or so) was pretty nice, but not stellar.
Mike had ham, onion, bell pepper and cheese omelet ($11), which he thought wasn’t very good. It came with potatoes that were under-salted and sort of soggy, they left much to be desired.
Service was friendly and efficient.
In all, I wouldn’t go back not just because of the mediocre omelet, but because they don’t offer the sort of things I like for breakfast (pancakes, waffles, etc.), and because they seem quite overpriced. However, if you do go, pick p one of the paper take-out menus they have around. When we went, they had coupons for $3 OFF breakfast and lunch.
Omelette Express
150 Windosr River Road
Windsor, CA
(707) 838-6920
M-F 6:30-3 PM
Sa-Su 7-4 PM
Marga’s Restaurant Reviews
Bay Area Restaurant Reviews
Sometimes it seems like grapes for wine are grown in every region in California. Recently, I have discovered the wines of the Gold Country and Paso Robles, and early this week, I discovered those of the Lake County (or to be more precise, those on the eastern side of Clearlake). While I was surprised at how good the little-known Gold Country wines were, and disappointed at how mediocre the much-better-known Paso Robles wines were – I was unprepared for how much I’d dislike many of the wines from Lake County. No wonder I haven’t come across them in other venues. In all, I went to five wineries in the region, the wines of the larger one were generally good, but the other ones left much to be desired. All the wineries we went had a $5 tasting fee – which only in the case of Ceago was justifiable.
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