Author: marga (Page 90 of 114)

During our trip to the Olympic Peninsula we spent a night at the Kalaloch Lodge and (with no other options in sight) had both dinner and breakfast there. It wasn’t a bad experience. The Kalaloch Lodge is located in a beautiful setting next to the beach and the restaurant has great views of the Pacific Ocean; reserve early to get a window seat. The restaurant has a lodgy feeling with wood-covered ceilings and walls, though it looks more functional than cozy.
The menu is American/Pacific Northwest, and has a strong emphasis on seafood. Appetizers and burgers were $7 to $11, while main entrees $10-26. There is also a children’s menu with the usual offerings for $3-5.
Mike started with the clam chowder ($4 for a cup). He found it a bit salty, but overall good – better than your average clam chowder. It had big chunks of clam and celery, which he liked.
He continued with the seafood pasta ($22). It came with 2 scallops, 4 or 5 chunks of salmon, several large shrimp and red and yellow pepper, all in a very cheesey alfredo sauce. He was quite pleased with the dish.
I had the beef stew ($10), which was nice and hearty and I enjoyed (though not as much as mine, of course).
Probably the low point of the dinner was the service, the restaurant was busy though it didn’t seem understaffed. However, our waitress disappeared after bringing the soup and didn’t come to offer refills on the bread or the drinks, even though it took a long time before the entrees came.
The next day for breakfast service was better, but then again, the restaurant was less crowded. Their breakfast menu offers classics – pancakes & egg dishes – I had some really good granola and Mike had the pancake and egg combination which he enjoyed.
In all, we had good meals and we’d eat there again if we were staying at the lodge.
Kalaloch Lodge
157151 Hwy. 101
Forks, WA
866-525-2562
http://www.visitkalaloch.com/restaurants.shtml

During our visit to Port Townsend last month, we had dinner at the “Surf” restaurant. The restaurant is located by the waterfront and has beautiful views of the harbor. Inside it sort of resembles a pizza parlor, it has an enclosed bar area, a billard room and a couple of separate dining rooms. Tons of high chairs and booster seats make it perfect for a family with tired children.
The menu was mostly seafood based with most entrees in the low teens. Mike had one of the four daily specials, salmon in some sort of sauce, the sauce was mild but overall he liked it. I had the fish & chips which were also good. Service was friendly though the waiter seemed to be quite distracted.
If you go to Port Townsend, you could do worse than the “Surf”. However, it seems that the restaurant will be either closing or changing ownership soon.
Surf Restaurant
106 Taylor St
Port Townsend, WA
(360) 385-2992

We’ve eaten at many places on I-5 between the Bay Area and LA, and I have to say that “The Ranch Kitchen” has been the best of the bunch. Now, considering that most of the restaurants on this stretch are quite bad, this is not necessarily high praise, but the food we had there was actually pretty good. Alas, while it’s not as expensive as the actual Harris Ranch restaurant (where entrees hover in the thirties) it is pretty expensive, with sandwiches in the low teens and entrees in the high teens to high twenties)
The menu is beef driven, of course and both Mike and I decided on the Gorgonzola burger, at $11 one of the cheapest items on the menu. The burger consisted of a 1/3 lb patty topped with gorgonzola cheese, caramelized onions, grilled pancetta a roasted red pepper and mayo. Mike thought that it was quite good, but I felt it was somewhat unbalanced. The toppings seem to compete in flavor, rather than compliment each other, and the taste of the beef disappeared underneath so many other flavors. Still, it was an enjoyable eat. We both liked the fried potatoes, these seasoned thick slices of potato, slightly crunchy outside and very soft inside. Mike had onion rings instead, and he felt there were too few of them for the extra $1.50. They were good, but would have been better with a dipping sauce (none was offered).
Mika had the chicken strips ($6) which had a light breading and were actually made of chicken breast. Alas, they were a bit dried. They came with the same fries I got, Mika didn’t really like them and I’d prefer there would have been a healthier alternative.
Both Kathy and Mika had vanilla milkshakes, they were a bit too thin.
Service was good and in all we had a good meal, despite the expense we will probably stop here on our way to LA in the future.
On a final note, we went for dinner at the Harris Ranch restaurant once a few years ago, and while we found it both expensive and overpriced, the food was surprisingly good.
The Ranch Kitchen
Harris Ranch Inn & Restaurant
24505 West Dorris Avenue
Coalinga, CA
1.800.942.2333
http://www.harrisranch.com/

Earlier this week I took my two girls to Rockridge by BART. We’d done that < a href="http://www.marga.org/food/blog/archives/001739.html">once before and Mika and I had enjoyed it. We hit Crepevine, Rockridge Kids, a very nice toystore where Mika loves to play and the Rockridge Marketplace, where I got some rabbit and duck legs to cook at home. But it was the allure of Crepevine which had made Mika so excited about the trip.
Crepevine is a small restaurant serving both savory and sweet crepes, in addition to soups, sandwiches, pastas and breakfast items. It offers sitting both inside, and in a covered patio with easy access to the street. I’m looking forward to trying their savory crepes sometime, but this time I’d had some lunch so I decided to go with a sweet one instead. These are served folded as an envelope and come with a scoop of French vanilla ice cream (I think) and cream. I got the one with mascarpone cheese and a sweetened nut mixture. It was good but nothing speciall and there was too little filling for the crepe, I don’t think I’d order it again. Mika once again decided on the banana and caramel run one, which we both liked. Camila even got to enjoy some of the banana pieces.
I didn’t really like the ice cream – though perhaps that’s because its flavor was too subtle to compete with the ones from the crepe – by Michaela loved it.
I’m pretty sure that going to Crepevine is going to be part of our routine when visiting Rockridge. Next time I’ll have to try the savory crepes.
Crepevine
5600 College Avenue
Oakland, CA 94618
(510) 658-2026

Even though I’ve been eating out quite a bit lately, I’ve been very remiss about writing about the restaurants I’ve visited. Of course, you could argue that there is absolutely no reason why I should be writing about the restaurants in the first place, but as long as I do it, I figure I should be comprehensive. I’m particularly interested on being comprehensive about San Leandro restaurants, as there aren’t really good resources out there on the San Leandro restaurant scene (and given how poor it is, no wonder). The problem comes when I go to a restaurant I don’t particularly like and then I forget to write the review. After a while, i feel compell to go back and write it, and yet I don’t want to go back and waste money in subpar food. But if I don’t, my guide will never be comprehensive. This has happened with Buffet Fortuna – a horrible Chinese buffet located near the downtown Safeway, with Bancheros, an institution serving Chef-Boyardee tasting Italian food in Hayward and with a couple of burger joints. It also happened with Wikiwiki Hawaiian BBQ on East 14th, near Bayfair mall, which I visited last June.
Wikiwiki is one of the many Hawaiian BBQ joints that have sprouted in San Leandro in the last year. As I’ve written before, I’ve found most of them to be underwhelming, and while Wikiwiki wasn’t the worst, it certainly does not merit another visit. As in the other restaurants, I found the chicken to have a strange consistency, very dense, almost canned-like. I can only speculate as to what gives chicken that horrible consistency at Hawaiian BBQ places. One theory is that the high salt & sugar content of the marinade dries out the meat making it denser. Anothe perhaps more likely one, is that the places use “chicken filets”, scraps of chicken that are manually pressed and glued together into the desired shape. The taste was OK, nothing special but certainly edible.
I also ordered the lau lau pork, pork wrapped in taro leaves and steamed. The pork was covered with a shredded green substance that might have been the taro leaves, but more likely was seaweed. It certainly imparted a very fishy taste to the pork, which I found quite unpleasant, but others might like.
I can’t imagine going there again.
Wikiwiki Hawaiian BBQ
15696 E 14th St
San Leandro, CA
(510) 276-0777