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Category: Restaurants (Page 19 of 52)

Wing Fiesta

April 8, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Wings Fiesta is a local chain which serves, well, chicken wings.  They also have ribs, chicken tenders and fries, but their emphasis is on wings.  We went to the one on West Juana in downtown San Leandro.  They’d left a menu with “buy one, get one free coupons” and I figured that made it worth a try.  It was worth a try, but not really a repeat visit.

Wing Fiesta serves both “jumbo wings,” regular fried or baked bone-in wings, and “boneless wings”.  You can chose from a variety of sauces to accompany them.  The regular wings ($5 for 6) were pretty good, they had a crispy breading and were well seasoned.  The boneless wings ($4 for 7), however, were horrible – they tasted like frozen/microwaved chicken pieces.  It was hard to eat them, even with the sauce.  We tried the teriyaki and honey BBQ sauces, and they tasted pretty generic.

We didn’t try any of the sides, I asked if we could get a french fry to see if we liked them but they wouldn’t even give us one.  That wasn’t the only problem with the service, it was incredibly slow – I think it must have taken over half an hour to get our very simple order.  That said, all the staff are young and new so that may improve.

The one thing that might make it worth a visit is their $1 beers (with food purchase).  I’m not a big beer drinker, but for those who are, you can’t get a better deal in town.

Wing Fiesta
160 W. Juana Ave.
San Leandro, Ca
510-357-1099
http://www.wingfiesta.com/
M-F 5-11 PM
Sa-Su 11 AM – 11 PM

San Leandro Restaurant Reviews

Chain Restaurant Reviews

 

San Leandro Restaurants – closings, changes and openings

January 24, 2012 / / 0 Comments

This is just an update on what’s going on in San Leandro’s dismal restaurant “scene”.  Please comment if you have any more info.

– Smiling Jack Station is a new Filipino restaurant at the old Straw Hat location on Washington Ave.  In addition to Filipino favorites, it offers boiled and fried seafood, BBQ and burgers.  They have a banquet room and karaoke and dancing on weekend nights.  There is a $5 off $25 coupon on their website.

– Dick’s Restaurant and Lounge has changed ownership.  The owners are keeping the name and apparently, most of the menu.  Even the chef will be staying transitionally.  One change: they’re adding TVs both to the dining room and lounge.  Alas, that, to me, is a reason *not* to go.  If you need a TV to distract you from what you’re eating, that says quite a bit about the quality of the food.

–Harley’s / JD’s Burgers, you know, the restaurant on Washington and Marina that looks like it used to be a drive-in restaurant, has a new name.  Maybe it means it’s changed ownerships. Hopefully it means the food won’t be as atrocious and expensive.  Unless I hear lots of good reviews, I probably won’t give it a try, though

–La Bella Italia.  The placed turned into a Mexican restaurant some time ago, but it doesn’t seem to have lasted much as that, and now it’s up for sale.  I hope someone with some vision – and a good cook – buys it.  Really, I would LOVE it if someone would turn it into a modern-day Pring’s.  Find the old menu, get a great chef, and give it a try! I’d go for sure.

–Nick’s Family Restaurant has been remodeled. I haven’t been back but the reviews on Yelp are very mixed vis a vis the food.

– Mon Café in the Manor seems to be for sale.  Or at least I think this for sale ad fits Mon Café the best.

– New China Buffet is also for sale (see here).

–Ploughmans is up for sale.  I’m sure some people will be sad, but I don’t think it’ll be that great a loss.  San Leandro does need a good breakfast place, hopefully whoever buys it will turn it into one.

–Vila Cereja is *still* up for sale.  That place has so much potential! I wish San Leandro’s Business Development department would actually do something useful for once and entice a San Francisco restaurant to open a second branch here.

–Vo’s, that stylish Vietnamese bistro on Parrot has closed down and another Vietnamese restaurant (Song Huong) has opened in its place.  I’m not surprised that Vo’s didn’t make it.  They had pretty good food, but it was very overpriced, even when using restaurant.com coupons. Song Huong is said to serve more traditional Vietnamese food.

 

City Center Grill – Oakland – Review

December 10, 2011 / / 0 Comments

We went to the City Center Grill for lunch a couple of weeks ago when we took place in an Occupy Oakland protest (as you can see, these protests do bring business to nearby eateries, we saw several cops eating around as well).  As it was in the weekend, our choices for lunch were limited.  Unfortunately, City Center Grill wasn’t a good one.

City Center Grill offers breakfast, burgers, sandwiches and salads.  We went for the cheeseburgers, $7.50 with French Fries and a small drink.  The fries were OK, but the burgers left much to be desired.  I don’t think we even finished them, even though they were pretty small for the price.  The fries were good, however.

Service (this is a place where you order at the counter) was very friendly.  Still, I wouldn’t go back.

City Center Grill

1221 Broadway, #105
Oakland, CA
510-452-3100
M – F 6:30 AM – 3:30 PM

Marga’s Restaurant Reviews

 

Tim’s Backyard BBQ – Medford, OR – Restaurant Review

December 10, 2011 / / 0 Comments

We went to Tim’s Backyard BBQ for dinner on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.  We had seen the restaurant as we drove to our hotel, and Mike is pretty much always in the mood for BBQ.   While we liked the down home vibe of Tim’s – it’s larger and not as divish as our favorite BBQ places back home, but still very modest -, the food was somewhat disappointing.

We ordered a lot of food, and we got a lot of food.  The food was somewhat expensive, but you did get quite a lot of it.  Unfortunately, it all tasted absolutely the same.  That’s because all items came drenched in BBQ sauce, and you could taste little of the meat itself.  The BBQ sauce (no choice as to spiciness) was nice enough, but I prefer to taste my meat as well.

Of the stuff we had, the ribs were by far the best.  They were fall of the bone tender, though we would have preferred a more smokey flavor.  The pulled pork and the brisket were almost identical, both were shredded and dry (perhaps that’s why they were drenched).   The links were perhaps the most disappointing.   Links are generally Mike’s favorite, but at Tim’s they tasted/felt like store bought sausages with sauce on them.

On the plus side, the onion rings were good.  Then again, I’m pretty sure most restaurants buy the onion rings pre-made and just dump them into the deep frier.

In all, if we were in the mood for BBQ in Medford, we’d probably head somewhere else.

Tim’s Backyard BBQ
1605 West Main Street
Medford, OR
(541) 499-0707
http://timsbackyardbbq.com/

Marga’s Restaurant Reviews – Outside the Bay Area

Jaspers Café – Medford, Oregon – Review

December 4, 2011 / / 2 Comments

Picture "borrowed" from City-data.com

We stopped by Jaspers Café in Medford in our way back to California.  I had researched Medford restaurants before we left and Jaspers got very good reviews – plus I’m always in the mood for a burger.

Jaspers offers the most extensive selection of burgers I have ever seen in my life, a couple of dozen at least.  They also have tons of different hot dog combinations and sandwiches.  In addition to offering different topics and combos on the burgers, from your regular patty & cheese to those covered with mole sauce and pot stickers, Jaspers offers several burgers made with more exotic meats.  These include relatively common choices as Buffalo and Kobe Beef, but also elk, antelope and venison.  Of course Mike and I had to try those burgers, which definitely was a mistake.

I had the “Widowmaker” burger ($8.20), which came with a 1/3 lb Himalayan antelope patty, covered with bacon, cheddar cheese and a peanut butter chipotle BBQ sauce.  It definitely sounded interesting to me, but it was a total miss.  I’ve eaten all sorts of wild meats in my day (and this reminds me I want to post a list of them) and have generally liked them, but Himalayan antelope had an off, gamy taste which I didn’t like.  The closest thing I can compare it too is Indian goat meat (which I also dislike).  As if that wasn’t enough of an issue, the meat was incredibly dry.  I really don’t think I’ve had a drier burger.  Perhaps fortunately I couldn’t really taste the meat or the other ingredients unless I made a special effort (and I did, because I wanted to see what antelope tasted like) because the flavor of the sauce was overwhelming.  Really, that’s the only thing I could taste.  It wasn’t bad, the BBQ sauce is pretty tasty, but it made the whole burger one-note.  Needless to say I would never order this again.

Mike had almost as bad luck with the burger he ordered.  His was elk and also suffered from dryness and an overwhelming sauce, though at least the elk meat itself was tasty.

Both kids had plain cheeseburgers.  Camila liked it well enough, but Mika considered it the worst burger she had ever had in her life and didn’t eat much of it.  It definitely tasted differently than other burgers,  the taste of the meat might have been gamier.  I thought it was OK, though it needed seasoning but Mike thought it was quite good – then again, he likes his food undersalted.  We ordered fries and onion rings, both very tasty.

Another problem with Jaspers is that it’s a tiny place.  I don’t think more than a dozen people can be seated inside (they also have outside tables).  We stopped there around 3 PM the Sunday after Thanksgiving and the place was packed.  It was pretty cold waiting outside, but fortunately we managed to grab a table before our burgers came.

In all, I’m glad I tried the burgers but I would definitely not eat them again.  I’m curious enough to go back and try one of their whacky combinations with a beef patty, but given that Mika didn’t like them I probably won’t.

Jaspers Café
2739 N Pacific Hwy
Medford, OR
541-776-5307
http://jasperscafe.com/
M-Th 10:30am til 7pm
F-Sa 10:30am til 8pm
Sun 11am til 6pm

Marga’s Restaurant Reviews – Outside the Bay Area

Marga’s Road Restaurant Reviews

Round Table Pizza – San Leandro – Review

September 12, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Last night we went to Round Table Pizza on East 14th.  I’d gotten a $24 worth of pizza for $12 gift certificate at Got Daily Deals, and I wanted to put it to use.  We got a large cheese pizza and a medium King Arthur supreme (a meats/veggie combo), a couple of drinks, and it come out to about $10 over the gift certificate. Definitely pricy, but we didn’t use any other coupons.

I thought the pizza was pretty good.  The cheese, in particular, was quite nice and there was plenty of it, specially in the cheese pizza.  The King Arthur pizza was a bit too salty for me, but that’s what happens when you get multiple meats in a pizza.  In all, we felt the pizza was OK, but only marginally better than Papa John’s, which is much cheaper (and closer to us). I may go again to Round Table, if there is a very good deal, but otherwise I wouldn’t bother.

The restaurant, btw, is a bit divish.  You order at the counter, and can seat in a booth or table. They have a TV showing sports and it’s sort of dark. It has no decor to speak of.  When we were there, a Saturday around 6 PM, the place was quite empty.

Round Table Pizza
15255 East 14th Street
San Leandro, CA
(510) 278-3002
www.roundtablepizza.com

Marga’s San Leandro Reviews

Marga’s Chain Restaurant Reviews

San Leandro: restaurant notes

August 21, 2011 / / 0 Comments

– I hear Angelina’s has changed ownership. It has significantly declined in recent years and we hadn’t been there for years.  Hopefully the new owners will do something good with it.

–Vila Cereja and La Bella Italia are still for sale/lease.

-Also for sale: El Amigo (Mexican restaurant), Arby’s.

–San Gaspar is undergoing construction after a fire that shut them down and will re-open.

-I still haven’t been able to try Mae’s, as it never seems to be open when I want to go (before 2 pm for lunch and after 6 pm for dinner), but I hear Mae’s temper is getting even worse. Complaints of Mae’s offensive behavior, bad customer service, long waits and unavailability of menu items continue to plague it on Yelp. I still wonder if it’s a legitimate business.

-The city of San Leandro is considering banning styrofoam containers, restaurants are barking. Most cities in Alameda County have banned them already.

Rainforest Cafe – Las Vegas – Review

August 11, 2011 / / 1 Comment

Mika (my 9-yo daughter) had been asking me to take her to the Rainforest Cafe for months.  We’ve been to the one in San Francisco a couple of times, and she loves it.  However, the Rainforest Cafe is not just out of the way, all the way in SF, but it’s also ridiculously expensive – and the food isn’t even very good.  However, I knew she was going to find out that there was a Rainforest Cafe in Vegas (as it was at one of the hotels we were staying at), and she’d demand we go there, so I made plans to do so.  My plans basically consisted on going elsewhere for dinner, and just having dessert at RC.  They sort of worked – Mike, Camila and I had burgers at In-n-out and then a dessert at RC, but Mika insisted in having dinner there as well.

The Rainforest Cafe in Vegas is located at the MGM Grand hotel.  It’s a pretty small affair, in particularly in comparison to the one in San Francisco, and, IMHO, not nearly as cool.  The fact that you can see the people walking in and out of the hotel from your table (or at least, from the table we were seated at), really detracts from the experience.  There are relatively few animatronic animals, and they are static most of the time, but they’re pretty cool when they move.  I did like the rain effect behind me.  Mika liked it well enough.

Food at the Rainforest Cafe in Las Vegas is even more outrageously expensive than at other RCs.  Most entrees are in the high 20’s, and even children’s meals are $10, and all they include is a drink (not dessert).  You can get a coupon for a free appetizer with the purchase of one entree in several of the coupon books you find in Las Vegas, and when we went the first time there was a man downstairs (by the entrance from the self parking lot) handing out coupons for one free child’s meal with the purchase of an adult entree.  Still, the food is super overpriced.  On the plus side, the adult portions seem to be quite large and may be large enough to share.

Mika had the fettucini alfredo, and she was happy enough with her dish. No complains there, but really, she’s happy with the Budget Gourmet’s version of this dish, so she’s not picky.

We all shared the “volcano” ($15), a dessert consisting of three long brownie balls, surrounding two scoops of vanilla ice cream and covered with chocolate fudge.  There is a glitter stick on top to suggest an explosion.  I’ve had it before, but I had forgotten just how bad this very expensive dessert is.  The brownies are way too dry, the fudge is way too sweet, and there isn’t enough vanilla ice cream for the amount of brownies available.  There were four of us eating this dessert, but we couldn’t finish it.  Actually, we didn’t want to either.  I know I’ll have to return to the Rainforest Cafe (though hopefully not to the Las Vegas one), I hope to remember to order something other than the Volcano.

On the plus side, service was very good by our very cordial and cheerful waitress.  She didn’t seem to mind at all that we were ordering so little food, and was very pleasant to us and the kids.

Rainforest Cafe
MGM Grand Hotel & Casino
3799 Las Vegas Boulevard South
Las Vegas, NV
(702) 891-8580
http://www.mgmgrand.com/restaurants/rainforest-cafe.aspx

Marga’s Restaurant Reviews – Outside the Bay Area

Marga’s Chain Restaurant Reviews

Final thoughts about food in Vegas

August 11, 2011 / / 0 Comments

These are a few places we went to that don’t merit a post of their own.

–McDonalds. Pathetic, I know, but pretty much every hotel has one in their food court, and they charge regular McDonalds prices (including their dollar menu). Most other food court choices are overpriced and don’t seem much better.  Some McDonalds have free refills on sodas – which is great when they’re otherwise $3-4 at the hotel.

–New York Pizza, on the mezzanine level (the one connecting you to the Excalibur and MGM) of the New York New York hotel.  Pizza slices start at $5 for plain cheese.  The slices are pretty large, though thin (like NY pizza).  They are reheated in the oven, so they’re not particularly fresh.  My daughter thought they tasted like Costco pizza. I thought they were OK.

-Gelato at Trevi, near the “fountain of the Gods” at the Caesars Palace.  Mika had a cone of the chocolate mousse ($5.75) and it was absolutely delicious, easily the best gelato I’ve had in the States. It’s expensive, but it’s a generous scoop.

–Cafe Belle Madeleine, at the Paris hotel.  The girls and I shared a chocolate mousse pastry ($5.50).  It was very good, very chocolaty and very rich.  It was more of an adult pastry, though.  Other pastries looked just as sinful.

–Frozen strawberry daiquiris by the MGM Grand pool.  Ridiculously expensive at $22 for a daiquiri in one of those souvenir yard cups ($11 for refills).  It was a lot of fun drinking it while traveling through the Lazy River, however.  I shared it with Mike and didn’t get in the least buzzed, which makes me suspect it had little if any alcohol.  It tasted quite good, though.  A virgin refill for the girls cost just as much, and tasted the same.

–Water & sodas. They were $2 on the hotel machines at the Luxor and $3 at the MGM grand.  They’re more in the shops, but you can get them on the strip for just $1-$1.50.

–Cheap breakfast.  We brought cereal and had it with milk we kept in the cooler.  Neither the Luxor nor the MGM had fridges in their standard rooms, but they both had ice machines.

Spice Market Buffet – Planet Hollywood Resort, Las Vegas – Review

August 11, 2011 / / 0 Comments

(Updated with 8/14 visit)

Las Vegas used to be the land of buffets.  Every casino used to offer them as a way to draw in customers, who would then spend lots of money gambling.  They used to be terribly cheap. That’s no longer the case.  Every casino still has a buffet, but the majority of them are extremely expensive.  Even a cheap buffet like the Luxor’s is $20 for dinner, with most of the better ones averaging around $30.  I think the only reason why they can get away with those prices is that most of the restaurants on the strip are grossly overpriced, going off the strip requires a car, an expensive taxi drive or an uncomfortable bus ride.  They have you.

All that said, I sort of wanted to go to a buffet during our 2011 trip to Vegas.  I had gotten a 2-for-1 buffet offer with my MGM Grand room, but the MGM buffet gets such terrible reviews that I didn’t want to try it even at the reduced priced.  I decided upon trying the Spice Market Buffet mostly because it was at the Planet Hollywood hotel, where I wanted to go to check the “rainstorm” attraction, and because at $23 after a $5 off coupon I found online, it wasn’t terribly priced.  Plus it got decent reviews.  In all, it wasn’t a bad choice.  The food ranged from OK to good and given the prices in Las Vegas it wasn’t a bad value.

We returned to the buffet for dinner in August 2014, using the “buffet of buffets” pass (which gives you entry into 5 participating buffets for $50/$65 weekdays/weekends). The food then felt even more tired and less exciting than the first time around.  I don’t think any of us were able to find anything that really excited us.  The items I had liked during my first visit (Italian short ribs, American BBQ ribs and Chinese pork buns) were either missing or inedible this time around.   As in other buffets, your best bet may be with the roasts – if you watch to make sure that the piece you get is from the center of a fresh roast.

The Spice Market Buffet portrays itself as an international buffet, and while the food stations are arranged by cuisine (“seafood”, “American”, “Italian”, “Asian”, “Mexican”, “Middle Eastern”, “bread & salads” and “desserts”), in reality all the “ethnic” food are American favorites from other cuisines.  For example, Mexican food included fajitas, tortilla chips and guacamole – not a mole poblano or a pollo al pibil.  Similarly, there was no chance you’d encounter a Persian stew or Syrian kibbeh at the Middle Eastern station: hummus, pita bread and a chicken curry was more like it.  Still, there was a lot of food, much more than anyone could possibly sample on just one visit.

Among the things we sampled and failed in our visits were a linguini with a garlic butter sauce lacked flavor, though my 9-yo liked it. The meatballs were too dry and not worth the calories.  The sauce on the chicken marsala was nice enough, but the chicken was so dry as to make it inedible.  The beef on both an Asian stir fry and Mexican beef fajitas was also dry and tough, though the flavors were OK. The guacamole had been clearly mixed with some extender. The crab legs were very, very dry.  A crab-stuffed-sole had been left for too long under the heat lamps and had become too tough.

Desserts were weak during our first visit, but had improved for our second -perhaps in comparison to the rest of the meal.  We were able to get seated relatively quickly, but our service, which had been good the first time, was so-so the second time.

I’m definitely not looking forward to returning.

Spice Market Buffet
Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino
3667 Las Vegas Boulevard. South
Las Vegas, NV
702-785-5555
http://www.planethollywoodresort.com/casinos/planet-hollywood/restaurants-dining/spice-market-buffet-detail.html

Breakfast $20/13, Weekday lunch $23/$15, Sa/Su Brunch $28/$20, Dinner $31/$20 (second prices are for kids 10 & under, Total Rewards members save $1)

$5 off coupon often available, Groupon deal often available, part of Buffet of Buffets pass

Marga’s Restaurant Reviews – Outside the Bay Area

Marga’s Las Vegas

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