Mike finally returned to me a few restaurant reviews I wrote early this year. He edits them for me, as he thinks my prose is definitely in need of help. These are:
Adagia is nice restaurant in Berkeley with a dining room that looks like an Ivy League cafeteria. Good food too.
Le Cheval is a popular Oakland Vietnamese eatery, its food wasn’t as good as I remembered, though.
Spettro is another popular Oakland restaurant, this time eclectic Italian. I liked it.
Fringale is an upscale French Basque restaurant in the city. Our dinner was good if uneven.
and finally
Angelinas has become our favorite place for a pizza with the kids, not in the least because they are very child friendly.
Author: marga (Page 77 of 114)
I first tried Beringer wine when I went wine tasting at their impressive operation in Napa many years ago. They give a great tour of their facilities – or at least they did back them – but their wine seemed inferior. Outside the winery, it’s certainly affordable. Last night I wanted to drink some wine with our steaks (steaks two nights in a row, courtesy of Costco’s large sizes), but I didn’t want to open another bottle of expensive wine (and for me expensive is anything over $10), so I decided to open this Beringer bottle that somebody had brought us. It wasn’t that great.
It didn’t have much of an aroma to speak off, and the taste itself was very mild. Low on tanins with a bare hint of oakiness. It did improve when drank with the steak, assuming a complimentary role. I’d drink it again, but with food.
After our trip to the wine country, Mike and I seem to be getting into wines. We’ll see how long it lasts. But we’re happy with our half a dozen collection of good quality reds, 3 sweet wines and 2 sparkling. Not very much, specially if we start drinking it up. Alas, wine is not hard to find 🙂
Last night we opened a bottle of Tobin James 2002 James Gang Reserve Zinfandel. We had won it the previous day at a charity raffle.
It had a very strong fruity aroma, and was somewhat sweet, with a strong hint of plum. It was smooth, somewhat acidic, and really nice to sip by itself. It also went well with dark chocolate, marrying in your mouth. I thought it might be too fruity/sweet for the red meat we were having that night, but they went very well. The wine dried up and let the taste of the meat win over. Very good. Mike liked it too.
As you know, I recently took a trip to the wine country and the mendocino area. Here are the restaurant reviews from that trip.
Mendo Bistro is a bistro in Fort Bragg, Ca, which lets you chose what you want to eat and how you want it cooked.
Timber Cove Inn Restaurant is the restaurant of the hotel of the same name located about 15 miles north of Jenner, California. There is nothing else in the area so the restaurant gets away with charging ridiculously overpriced but still good food.
Solbar in Calistoga offers high-end interpretations of American Cuisine and mostly gets it right.
La Hacienda is your typical Mexican Restaurant in Cloverdale
We had a great lunch at the Mendocino Hotel Garden Room in a beautiful bee-filled garden.
And a disappointing lunch at the the Station House Cafe in Point Reyes Station, with extremely underseasoned food (but in another beautiful garden).
As you can discern from my postings below, Mike and I spent three days traveling through the Napa Valley, tasting wine and relaxing. We had a few really nice dinners, and more conventional lunches. But as I swore to review everything about the trip (to make it even more fun for me), here are my notes on our Wine Country Lunches.
Sunday we were in Napa and had lunch at Giugni’s Deli in St. Helena. This is our favorite sandwich shop in the whole world. *Every* time we come to Napa, we go eat there. Napa may be filled with culinary delights from north to south, but we will never know them because I will never have lunch at a place other than Giugni’s. It *is* that good.
On our third day in the wine country, we tried the wineries in the Anderson Valley in Mendocino. I had never been to this part of California before and enjoyed the wine tasting experience very much. None of the wineries we visited were as beautiful as those we’ve been to in Napa, Sonoma and even the Russian River, but they were nice, friendly and relaxing experiences.
We started at Yorkville Cellars a small family winery that sells organic wines. It’s run by an English lady and it’s been there since 1986. They mostly sell at the winery, local shops and restaurants. We’d had organic wines before and had not been particularly impressed by them, so Yorkville pleasantly surprised us. The tasting room itself was small but featured a veranda with picnic tables and a view of the vineyards. They had a very friendly black lab greeting you. Tasting was complimentary and they gave us good sized pours.
On the second day of our wine country trip, we headed to the Russian River Valley. I’d been there only a couple of months before, when my friend Lola treated me to a wonderful girls-weekend-out for my birthday, and I was eager to go again. I found the wineries in the Russian River Valley more relax and more friendly than those in Napa, and I was there purely for relaxation (OK, and wine tasting too).
Last time, the helpful manager of the West Sonoma Inn, where we had stayed, had recommended we go tasting at the wineries on Olivet Road. We hadn’t managed to do it, but it made sense to try them on our way from Calistoga. So there we headed.
This week Mike and I took a mini-vacation to the northern California wine country. We spent three days wine tasting, in Napa, the Russian River Valley and Mendocino. Of necessity, we visited only a few wineries, but you can read my notes from them. Alas, I’m in no way a wine connoisseur and I’m completely unable to taste any of the dozens of flavors experts can discern in wine. Berries? mango? licorish? I can’t find them. So don’t take my reviews too seriously. In reality all I can say is what I liked and what I didn’t like, which may be very different from what you like. I tend to like full-bodied wines, neither light or heavy in tanins and with a well defined oakiness (which I didn’t find at all in this trip).
Anyway here is my report from Napa. Reports from the Russian River Valley and Mendocino will follow.
Last night we got take out from New Hong Kong. I always order the same things, orange chicken, szechuan beef, sesame chicken, orange chicken, and then I’m a bit disgusted by the gooiness of it all. This time I decided to try something different and got the crispy chicken ($6 for half a chicken) and the ginger beef ($6.50). I also got the pork buns, chicken chow mein for the kids, and an order of free fried wontons.
The pork buns were good, as usual. They are steamed and they have a pretty high ratio of bread to stuffing, but they are good none the less. The friend wontons are crisp and very good with the sweet-n-sour sauce they came with. Pure fat and a guilty pleasure. Can’t comment on the chow mein ’cause I didn’t try it. But both the crispy chicken and the ginger beef were very good. The chicken was moist and had been nicely spiced (but it wasn’t spicy), and it’s skin was almost crispy enough. As it was, you could skip it and all that fat. The ginger beef had a light ginger flavor, and was nicely complimented by the green onions. The one problem is that there were just too many scallions and too little beef. Still, I’d order both dishes again.
According to Mike, there is a sign at Andy & Joe’s Restaurant saying that the restaurant is for sale or rent. I’m not surprised, as every time I walked by (and as it’s on my way downtown I walked by it a lot) it was empty or semi-empty. Alas, if they didn’t improve on their food, I’m not surprised. The restaurant business is hard and you need to offer a superior product to make it. If you do, like Le Soleil, staying alive shouldn’t be a problem.
I think there were a couple of other things that andy & joe’s did wrong (apart from offering mediocre food). One was to offer the same type of food that you can get at other established restaurants downtown. And it wasn’t a destination sort of food, like Vietnamese, Thai or Indian may be. The other was to not advertise widely at first. That’s when they need to get the word of mouth going. Putting flyers in area businesses and homes would have helped them. And finally, they priced their offerings too high.
The location may be a problem, too. This is the third restaurant in a row that fails there. The first one (since we’ve lived in San Leandro), Casa MarĂa #2 was closed down by the health department, briefly reopened afterwards, and then moved to a different (and one hopes cleaner) location. I haven’t been there again.
The second one started as Kolbeh, offered mediocre Mediterranean fair. Though I wished the owners well, their food just did not convince me. Apparently it didn’t convince others’ either, as they closed it and revamped it as a Mexican restaurant, Taqueria. They had a strange scheme, they served burritos and you paid $1 for each ingredient you wanted. That made a meat and guacamole burrito a bargain, but an “everything” burrito quite expensive. Alas, the pre-cooked meat wasn’t that great either. I was sorry to see them go, I liked the owners, but it was also inevitable.
And now Andy & Joe’s.
But alas, I don’t think the problem is the location. I think the problem is the mediocre food that all these restaurants are serving. And the lack of imagination. Do we need a burger place downtown? Ummm, no. Do we need another taqueria? Los Pericos practically has the whole San Leandro market. What we do need, if anyone is listening, is an INDIAN restaurant. There is one in Hayward, Favorite India, which delivers to San Leandro – but it’s not the same as having one here. Plus an Indian buffet would do well with the downtown business crowd.
And here is a radical idea, how about an Ethiopian/Eritrean restaurant? As judged by who attends the library story time, San Leandro has a large Ethiopian and Eritrean population. That provides a built-in market for a restaurant. Add to that all the Berkeley-transplants who live here, and you have a winner. An Ethiopian restaurant could offer a killer lunch buffet as well.
A Persian restaurant could be a great addition, as well, though I’m less sure there is enough of a market for it.
But anyway, restaurant entrepeneurs take notice, here is a space you could turn into a good and much needed restaurant with some vision.
On a different note, I’ve learned there is a new Jamaican place in town, but when I went looking for it I didn’t find it (not surprising, given how I am). Friends ate there, though, and they liked it. I’m hoping to visit it soon and give you a report.
Recent Comments