Category: Restaurants (Page 51 of 52)

I just posted some more restaurant reviews. In addition to reviews for Pasta Pelican, Stacey’s and the Montclair Egg Shop that I’d mentioned earlier, I put reviews for The Ice Creamery in Castro Valley and Ploughman’s in San Leandro.

Yesterday we drove I-5 to LA and in our neverending quest to find something descent to eat on the road, we stopped at Cazuelas, a Mexican restaurant in Coalinga. We’d never been there before, so we had hope. It was slowly dispelled.
The restaurant actually looks better from the outside than the inside. The architecture of it is fine enough, but the twiching fluorescent lights and ugly vinyl chairs and formica tables gave it a definite dive look, though most of its customers were Mexican families.
There were only a few tables occupied when we got there, but service, still, was very slow. It took over five minutes for us to get seated, and we waited for a long time to get our food, the bill, etc.
Still, our culinary experience started well. The tortilla chips and salsa were actually good. The chips were crispy and only slightly salty, and not in the least oily. The salsa had the right note of spice and lime.
The menu featured standard Tex-Mex items (no cazuelas) at average prices (~$10). Mike decided on that night’s special, a tostada combo ($6) while I went for a carne asada torta (sandwich) with french fries ($8). My sandwich was OK. It would have been much better if the meat had not been oversalted. A slice of avocado and chopped tomato helped with this, however. It wasn’t very substantial, however, and I expected more for $8. The accompanying french fries were quite good, though a little on the soft-side for Mike’s taste.
Mike’s tostada was a whole different deal. To begin with it was a small shell with a tiny bit of chicken, some cheese and a whole lot of shredded lettuce. It came served with tasteless rice and watery, thin refried beans. He could not have been more disapointed on his dish. Unfortunately, it was very memorable. He woke up the next day with a bad case of food poisoning. As I’m pregnant, I’m extremely thanksful that I didn’t eat any of his food.
Our drinks were OK. I had a fountain coke and it was mostly flat but it tasted OK.
In all, we’ll be avoiding Cazuelas in the future as the plague, which it may just be 🙂
Cazuelas Restaurant
179 W Polk St
Coalinga, CA
(559) 934-0751

We ordered Lake Chabot Pizza after getting a couple of door-flyers for it. Apparently it’s under new management but we’d never try it before.
We decided on ther 2-medium, 2-topping pizzas for $17 (includes a free soda) deal.
I was happy to see that Lake Chabot pizza hasn’t downsized their pizzas like so many other pizza joints in the area have. A small pizza is 12″, a medium 14″ and a large 16″ (they also have 8″ personal pizzas, and 18″ extra-large pizzas).
The pizza arrived within half an hour.
We didn’t really like the pizza. The problem was mostly on the pizza dough, it was too thick and not very flavorful. I actually like thick-crust pizza, but only when the crust tastes good. The sauce was also too mild to impart any flavor on the pizza. The toppings (extra-cheese & pineapple for mine, sausage & pepperoni for Mike’s) were fine, but they couldn’t compensate for the crust (that was specially the case with mine).
We probably won’t be ordering from here again.

Last night we went to see the Boca-America game at SBC Park (Boca destroyed America 3-1) and we had “dinner” there. We sat at the club level and got food from McGraw’s Derby Grill. The food was OK.
Mike has a chili-dog which he thought was quite good. He thought the same of the chicken-apple-sausage sandwich he got for Mika ($5). Michaela actually ate the whole sausage (leaving the bread), which means it must have either been very good or she must have been really hungry.
I was much more unlucky with my cheeseburger ($6.25). The plain burger had been sitting under a heat lamp and was very dry. It was school-cafeteria quality (i.e. McDonalds would have been an improvement) and it came plain. You could add onions and other condiments in theory, but the cheese had fused the burger with the bread to the point that they were unseparatable. In other words, don’t order burgers here.
We has an order of fries (~$3) which was fine, and a churro ($3.50) which was disappointing. It was worm but kind of soggy.
Fountain sodas (~$3 for a small) were a little weird-tasting but strill drinkable.
In the same level there was a full bar, a stand selling quesadillas and other bad-looking Mexican food, and a stand selling pizza.

Yesterday I had a slice of pizza at the pizza place next to the Shattuck cinema in Berkeley. $2 for a Berkeley-size slice. I liked it a lot, it had that slightly alcoholic taste (don’t tell me it’s something bad) that pizza sometimes gets. The thin dough was pretty flimsy, though, if you picked it up from the outside crust, the end of the slice would fall down. The cheese also didn’t stick to the crust, making eating it somewhat messy (in other words, don’t get a slice of pizza to eat as you walk), but the taste was great.
The pizza place (I don’t know its actual name) has a couple of counters with stools, it’snot really kid friendly (hard to eat the pizza & control the kid) but I’ve been there alone with Mika a few times without too many problems.

I just posted a review for Lotus Thai Cuisine, a small and very cute restaurant on Piedmont Ave. in Oakland, where Kathy and I had lunch earlier this month. We loved the restaurant, in particular its recessed tables, but hated the dried-out food.
Another recently posted review is for The Rice Table, an Indonesian restaurant in Marin we visited last month with our friends Charlotte and Daniel. The food was great but the portions left some to be desired.
Closer to home, we went to Porky’s Pizza Palace in Washington Manor, a place where you can eat and let your kids run around. The pizza and pasta are OK too.
We’ve visited a number of other restaurants, the reviews for which are still on the editing process (I’ll add the links to them as I get them back). These include:
-The Egg Shop in Montclair, a great spot for a Father’s Day brunch
-Casa Madrid in Pleasanton, we didn’t like the tapas at this Spanish eater but got the best service we’ve ever had.
–Pasta Pelican in Alameda, the bay view is a winner at this moderately-priced eatery. The food is not bad either.
–Stacey’s, a nice bistro in downtown Pleasanton had the best herbed butter but very slow serive.
-Village Bistro in Castro Valley offers traditional continental cuisine, comfort food for grown up palates.
-Sansar also in downtown Pleasanton has delicious Indian food, at Pleasanton prices.

We now have our third Vietnamese restaurant in San Leandro: Le Soleil. It’s located on E. 14th STreet, downtown, next to Luke’s Grill.
We went last night, its second day of operation. There were some glitches with the food & service (waitress got one of our dishes wrong, kitchen hasn’t learned the dishes well so descriptions don’t match what you are served), but we had a very good experience overall. The food was quite yummy, the waitresses very nice and attentive, and the little space is very cute. It’s hard to believe that a year ago it was an stationary store.
Full review availble at http://www.marga.org/food/rest/soleil.html

Mike took me to the Pleasanton Hotel last night for a mystery dinner. It was great. The food was only so-so, but the whole evening was a lot of fun, nonetheless because Mike figured out who the murderer was 🙂
I wrote a longer review and will post it to my website later.

I just posted two reviews from my trip to Los Angeles.
We stopped at Mike’s Roadhouse Cafe in Kattleman City in our way to LA. It was just OK, better than Denny’s. They have a beautiful collection of (overpriced) pedal cars, however.
In LA, we had dinner at Patagonian Gourmet, a whole-in-the-wall Argentine restaurant in Tarzana that was actually quite good. They have a killer chicken escabeche that you have to try.