Hello,
I enjoy eating out here in San Leandro. I have a
comment and some suggestions–
Nick’s Family Restaurant is the only restaurant in
town that serves home fries similar to what I have
eaten at Full House Cafe or Mama’s Royal Cafe. They
also have really good fresh fruit. I would suggest a
revisit to try those two items. The others places in
town serve hash brown potatoes (no thanks).
Suggestions: my favorite place to eat is Ernies
Seafood on E. 14th St. where it crosses San Leandro
Blvd. near the hospital. It is the pink building.
Lots of great fish and seafood items. I especially
like the half crab sandwich special with coles slaw
and shrimp salad. Lots of variations. They also
serve steak. You can eat in the front area in booths,
the backroom where there is a televison which you can
ignore or sit out on their deck which faces a side
street.
I also like the Imperial Garden on MacArthur
Blvd. I can request no salt, no soy sauce, no MSG, no
sugar, no cornstarch and cooked in a dry wok and I get
it that way.
There is also a Vietnamese restaurant at the end
of Merced St. in a shopping center that serves very
nice fresh spring rolls and a fish soup. I request
certain things be left out of the soup and they serve
it that way. I have to go back again to get the name
of the place. Enjoy
Category: Restaurants (Page 40 of 53)
You heard it here first, Joplins has the best burgers in San Leandro, and I’ve eaten at enough places in San Leandro to know. If you like your burgers big and juicy – so big you won’t be able to finish them, so juicy you better have a napkin ready – this is definitely the place to go. And you should hurry, both times I went there, there were only a few customers for lunch, which concerns me as I definitely don’t want the place to close.
On both my visits I ordered their cheeseburger ($5), which comes with the usual ingredients (tomato, lettuce, onions) and is made to order. I already described it as being very good, so good that now every time I want a burger, I want a Joplin’s burger (a Val’s may be better, but they’re too far away). I want one right now as I type this, btw 🙂
Fries come with some of their dishes, but not with the burgers. An order of regular fries will cost you $1.50, but I’d advise you to go for the garlic fries ($3.50) instead. They are made with real garlic, not garlic powder, and they are out of this world. I should say, however, that I liked them better on my first visit, when they were skinny fries, rather than in my second, when they were the thicker wedge-type. I should have said something to the waiter; next time.
I went with my sister Kathy on my first visit, and she ordered the fried chicken wings ($5). These were quite good as well, nicely seasoned but not too spicy, and came served with sauce on the side (so this might be a good dish for little kids too). Our only complaint was that chicken wings are a pain to eat, we would much have preferred fried chicken legs. One more thing to tell them. On my second visit I went with my friend Aamani who also had – and enjoyed – the burger.
Both times service was very good, attentive and friendly.
My one qualm with Joplin’s is their menu. They have an amazing breakfast menu with things such as blueberry sour cream pancakes and bananasplit belgian waffles as well as several types of omelettes and combos – but their lunch menu is quite limited. They have some salads, a few sandwiches, a couple of burgers, friend chicken wings and shrimp, and, out of nowhere, some Mediterranean messe offerings (felafel, hummus, dolmas and salad). As much as I like their burger, I’d like to see more choices. On the plus side, all lunch offerings are extremely well priced, with nothing over $7.50.
Joplins opened a couple of months ago in the space vacated by The Blue Dish, on Victoria Circle in the Broadmoor. It’s name after a relative of the owner who used to be a famous Jazz musician. They have jazz for brunch on Sundays and I definitely want to try that – and then I’ll report back (on the food, not the music, as I’m tone deaf).
Joplin’s
585 Victoria Court
San Leandro, CA
510.568.5100
2013 Update: This restaurant is now Ahu’s Hawaiian BBQ
—
San Leandro has more Hawaiian restaurants that I can count, and I’m not sure that Ohana was actually needed (and judging by the lack of patrons last Thursday evening, I may not be alone in that assessment), but it’s not entirely unwelcomed. If you are at that shopping mall (you know, the one that has Home Depot, Walmart and the Pet food store – which was why we were there) and you are hungry, your choices are limited to Togos and whatever fast food place there is in Walmart. So Ohana at least presents another choice for food. And while it’s a chain, it’s well located in chain heaven.
Ohana presents a menu very similar to those in other Hawaiian restaurants. It includes BBQ meats, alone or in combination, chicken katzu, curry and a couple of chicken dishes with “special” sauces. They also have burgers and spam.
We weren’t too adventurous that evening and decided to go with the Seafood BBQ Combo ($8), Chicken Katzu ($6) and BBQ Chicken Saimin ($4). The seafood combo was good, but it only contained one piece of fish!!!! There wasn’t even enough to share. The chicken katzu was heavily breaded – as it usually is – but tasted fine, though I think I prefer Ono’s version. I’d ordered the saimin for the kids and they weren’t thrilled by it. It basically tasted like chicken noodle soup, so clearly the problem wasn’t in the dish.
In all, Mike thought the meal was fine, and probably better than at Ono’s (where we go from time to time as it’s close to our house), while I think I rather go back to Ono, though the portions there have gotten smaller and smaller.
Ohana Hawaiian BBQ
Westgate Mall Shopping Center
1933 Davis St. #135A
SL, CA
510-383.9898
http://www.hawaiianislandbbq.com/
Today we went to Favorite India for lunch and had their buffet. At $7 each it was quite a bargain. The buffet had various vegetarian entrees, as well as tandori chicken, chicken masala and a chinese-style dish with noodles and very spicy chicken. The latter was good, but the chicken masala was so delicious – velvety with just the right amount of citric – that that’s all I wanted to eat. The chicken tandoori was good as well, moist and not too fatty.
Though the non-vegetarian choices were fewer than at other places, we had one of the best buffet experiences. I’ll certainly go back for lunch when I have the opportunity.
Reader Michaele Maurer wrote me about her own experience at Tsuru Sushi, a small Japanese restaurant in downtown restaurant that I wasn’t particularly thrilled with. I’m always happy to publish other people’s experiences, specially well written ones.
A couple of days ago I got a flyer from a new pizza joint called “Fiestas”. It’s located in Oakland but it serves San Leandro (and other parts of the East Bay)Its menu is pretty standard, basically pizza, salads and chicken wings, and I thought I’d give it a try. I went for their 3 2-topping medium pizzas for $15 deal, which seemed a pretty good deal.
The pizza was fine, one notch above Dominoes. There was a good amount of cheese and toppings. It wasn’t anything special, but I’d order it again. I wouldn’t say the 2-topping pizzas we ordered were “gourmet,” though we didn’t try their specialties.
Fiestas Pizza
6432 International Boulevard
Oakland, CA
510.777.0012
http://www.fiestaspizza.com/
I don’t know if it was the name or the big apple in the flyer but I’ve been ordering food from Big Apple Pizza thinking that it was Red Apple Pizza. Big Apple Pizza is a small chain located on MacArthur Blvd. (not that you would know that from their flyer) that has only recently started sending me flyers.
The first time I ordered I got their fish and chips ($17 for a 10 piece meal). The fish was not coated on a traditional beer batter, but instead had some sort of gritty coating that was neither flavorful or good to eat. The very thin stripes tasted stale and it was clear that the fish had been bought frozen and then dumped into the deep fryer (or it might have been the microwave). It had a dark brown appearance and did not look at all like the picture in the flyer.
The meal came with fries, soda and bread. The fries were also soggy and soft, the type of fries you get at a school cafeteria. Frozen, no doubt, and maybe even microwaved. We probably could have made a better meal out of Safeway’s freezer. The bread was standard sliced bread from a bag.
The mini cheese pizza we got for Mika, however, was pretty good.
Our second time we ordered their pepperoni & cheese pizza, which has a 4 cheese blend ($15 for their “x-large”, probable a 16″ pizza). We liked it. The pizza was on the thin side with a good amount of cheese and pepperoni. We’d order again.
You get your choice of wings, salad or a 2 liter soda with each combo pizza. We had the wings, they were fatty and came in a hot sauce that did not taste good to me. Next time I’ll go for the soda.
Big Apple Pizza
360 MacArthur Blvd
San Leandro, CA
Daily 11 AM – 12 AM
(510) 638-1996
I received the following message about a disappointing experience at the Black Bear Diner in Reno. While I clearly cannot verify what happened, I’m happy to provide a forum for people to tell about their dining experiences – good or bad.
Sunday morning we went to brunch at the Pelton Cafe. This used to be a favorite of Mike’s (God knows why), but I’ve always felt the food to be a cut below sub-par. We hadn’t been there in a while, though, and I think in the mean time the place changed owners, though the quality of the food stayed the same. Mike had his usual sunrise combo, or something of the sort, pancakes, eggs, sausage, you know, the usual. It was fine. Mika had themost pathetic happy face pancake ($4!). It was one large panckage with a happy face drawn with whipped topping. It didn’t come out very well, however, and the face looked more frowny than anything.
I made the mistake (yes, memory can be short) of ordering a burger (comes with potato chips, not fries). It was horrible, McDonalds produces higher quality burgers. The burger was dried, fatty and I wouldn’t be surprised if it included an additive of some sort. It wasn’t very large, either, and while it was cheap given its low quality I felt ripped off. In short, don’t order a burger here.
The Pelton Cafe served dinners for a little while, but I think they are back to serving lunch and breakfast only. Good thing.
(San Leandro Restaurant Reviews)
March 2012 update
We haven’t gone to Mountain Mike’s in several years. While the pizza is probably the best in town, it’s more expensive and the buffet has gotten expensive for our family of four. But last night we were sans kids, but not for long, so we headed back there for their Wednesday night buffet (now about $8.50 per person, including soda). The place and the buffet is pretty much identical as when I wrote my original review in 2006, though they have more video game machines now. Still, other families have probably concluded the buffet is not that great of a deal, as there weren’t any kids there last night.
Once again, I liked all the pizzas. I finally got to taste a bar-b-q chicken pizza, which I never had before because the concept is not that appealing, but it was surprisingly good. So was the pizza (can’t remember what toppings it had) that came with a garlic sauce. It was definitely a winner. The cinnamon dessert pizza wasn’t as good as I remembered, but it was still quite yummy. Finally, they now have mixed greens in the salad bar.
2006 Review
A few weeks ago I got a flyer from Mountain Mike’s Pizza advertising their “all you can eat” buffet Wednesday nights ($6.50, 5-8 PM), and a couple of weeks later it came to mind when I was trying to figure out what to do for dinner. Eda, our friend Arthur’s mom, was in town so we quickly arranged to meet her and the kids there. It was a good plan.
Mountain Mike is a chain, but doesn’t really look like one. It could really be your neighborhood pizzeria, and I think that’s what it strives to be for the Marina district. It has recently undergone a renovation, so the place looks clean and now there is a separate dining area towards the back. There are still a couple of video game machines to keep the kids occupied.
But the pizza is what matters and the pizza was good. All of their specialty pizzas were available – albeit not at the same time -, cut into slivers so that you can taste many of them, and all the ones we tried were very good. The all-meat was too salty for me, but I equally enjoyed the vegetarian, the pineapple chicken luau and the other types. The crust was on the thin side, the cheese was cheesy and the toppings were generous without being overwhelming. Everything tasted like good qualities (relatively speaking, of course) ingredients.
Their “dessert pizza”, a cinnamon-toast tasting pizza, was out of this world, specially as it was served very hot.
The buffet also included a salad bar. There were no fancy lettuces here (too bad, ’cause that’s the only type of salad I eat) but they had pasta salad and potato salad, as well as the fixings for your run of the mill salads. Other people seemed to enjoy them.
At $6.50 for all of this it’s a great deal – and the pizza is good enough that we will order from Mike’s next time we want pizza. Note that they don’t have free delivery, however.
Mountain Mike’s
2150 Marina Blvd.
San Leandro, Ca.
510.352.5954
http://www.mountainmikes.com/
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