Posted by Anita on 08.01.06 7:40 AM
Last night after work, we interviewed Architect #3 for the kitchen/bath/laundry remodel (more about that later, and elsewhere). At the end of the meeting, we realized that it was already almost 9pm, and we really had no desire to cook, or to wait around for food to be delivered. We originally were going to go to Valentina, but when we got there, there were only 2 tables occupied, and both of them looked to be near the end of their meals. Not wanting to incur the wrath of the waitstaff — or eat in an empty restaurant — we turned back down Cortland and headed to Chez Maman.
We’ve ended up making Chez M. our default on the hill. The food rates 3 stars, maybe even 2 on a bad day. But the manager, Olivier, is such a sweetheart, and the ambiance is so appealing that you can’t help but be won over. (We haven’t seen Monsieur O. lately, but a co-worker who eats there even more often then we do says we must be going on the wrong nights…) I’m a sucker for their hachis parmentier — who doesn’t love shepherd’s pie with a french accent? — and their croque monsieur. Neither one of them are life-changing, or even worth a drive across town, but that’s beside the point.
It’s maddening when they send out a crepe with the cheese still cold and unmelted in the center, or a salad missing one of its key ingredients. But, on the other hand, at these prices I’m willing to put up with missteps in the kitchen; I just wish they were more of an exception than a rule. They always make it right…. eventually. And you have to love a place that’s open nonstop from coffee through nightcaps.
Every neighborhood needs a bistro, and I’m glad that Chez Maman is ours.
Chez Maman
803 Cortland Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94110
415.824.2674
Bernal, restaurants
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Posted by Anita on 07.14.06 9:33 AM
After our first dinner at Cortez few months back, we were pleasantly surprised. The food was creative without being avant-garde, the cocktails were both well-planned and well-executed, and the service was warm but professional. We’ve gone back a couple of times for drinks at the bar. We love the rosemary popcorn, and the house Manhattan — made with Hirsch bourbon and brandied cherries — is one of my favorite drinks in town.
When we had dinner there last night, the food didn’t seem as inspired (maybe the novelty’s worn off?), but everything was at least good. The hanger steak was a little liver-y for my taste, but the accompanying onion rings remained truly divine. Other standouts included lemon verbena ice cream (which was an accompaniment to a lackluster apricot dessert), and a salad garnished with wafer-thin slices of manchego and serrano ham. The katafi-crusted crab cake was fairly pedestrian and a little heavy, and exterior of the lobster ravioli a bit chewy — although they put the hockey-pucks we had at Mamma Maria to shame. On the positive side, the service was just as wonderful as we remembered.
The decor manages to be modern-contemporary without feeling the slightest bit sterile. The light fixtures are works of art, and the noise is subdued by beautiful cork wallcoverings on the structural columns and doors leading into a private dining room.
All in all, a fabulous pre-theater option, and a great place to have a cocktail.
Cortez Restaurant
550 Geary Street (inside the Hotel Adagio)
San Francisco, CA 94102
415.292.6360
downtown SF, restaurants
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Posted by Anita on 03.16.06 10:17 AM
Don’t underestimate how hard it is to get a table at Dosa: Kathy, Neil, Cameron and I tried to walk in and eat here a couple of weeks ago, and gave up. Trying to work within the system, we gathered up 2 more friends — Dosa takes reservations for groups of 5 or more — and emailed early the next week to get a table. After 3 days without a response, I called and left voicemail. A very sweet woman called me back and apologized for the problem, and found us a table at the time we wanted.
Needless to say, my expectations ran pretty high after all of this rigamarole. Largely, I think they were met. The food is interesting, tasty, flavorful without being incendiary, and thoughtfully presented. Service was crisp but a little stand-offish, and our server was very helful when it came time to figure out what (and how much) to order — once we asked.
I was really pleased with how reasonable the prices were. For less than $45 per person, including tax and tip, we had 2 bottles of wine and a handful of beers, plus a ton of food. Our order included a refreshing chickpea salad, a pair of appetizers — crispy-spicy potato croquets and lush lentil dumplings — three dosai (paneer, egg, and rava masala), and two of the curries: a deeply spiced Tamil lamb, and a prawn coconut masala… oh, and a giant bathura. Each dosa came with its own bowl of sambar, plus two smooth chutneys: a gingery coconut one and a spicy tomato version. Needless to say, we didn’t have room for dessert, although I was tempted by the cardamom ice cream.
On the downside: The tables are awfully close together, the noise level is out of hand, the decor is warm but a tad bit stark — some art on the walls would help. Worst of all, the hordes of drooling, hovering patrons (staring daggers while you try to enjoy dinner) is really, really annoying. The hosts were letting people hang out in the dining area, not just the bar, and I found that extremely inappropriate.
If I could make a reservation for a party of 2 or 4, or better yet, walk in on a weeknight with a reasonable expectation of a table becoming available within the space of a leisurely cocktail, I’d become a regular. But given the hassle factor, I can’t imagine it being more than an occasional thing. I hope that once things calm down a bit, the owners might consider opening at least a few tables to reservations, while leaving the majority open for walk-ins.
Dosa
995 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415.642.3672
restaurants, The Mission
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Posted by Anita on 03.15.06 10:02 AM
Back in the ancient days, before I was Mrs. — yea verily before the dot-com boom — Boulevard was the place we always went for special occasions. We dined here Monday night to celebrate Cameron’s newfound employment, and it tickles me to no end that Boulevard is just as good as ever.
The service has gotten a little more sniffy, the clientele noticeably more swank, and the prices (never a bargain to begin with) have climbed proportionally. But the Beaux Arts decor is still gorgeous, the wine list is still deep without being impenetrable, and — most importantly — the food’s still creative without being too far out in left field.
There were a couple of missteps in our recent dinner — a desperately over-dressed salad, a server who left us sitting without water or drinks or so much as an “I’ll be right with you” for nearly 15 minutes, an awkward gap between the appetizers and the mains — but all was forgiven when our entrees arrived.
My heirloom pork chop was easily the best pig I have eaten in the states, perfectly cooked and richly porky with a perfectly salty, herbal flavor. And the accompanying pyramid-shaped raviolo was like a minature meal in itself: mascarpone mashed potatoes on the bottom, with shredded wild boar ragu in the top. Yum!
It’s nice when old standbys age well. I hope that Boulevard will still be around serving excellent food when we’re celebrating our 20th anniversary.
Boulevard
1 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
415.543.6084
downtown SF, restaurants
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Posted by Anita on 01.25.06 5:15 PM
Cameron was otherwise occupied yesterday, so I decided to head over to the East Bay and check out a couple of Thai stores in Berkeley. I wasn’t shopping for anything in particular yet, but I wanted to get a sense of what each store had, as I ramp back up to cooking Thai more often. Specifically, I wanted to know if I would be able to find Thai produce like young peppercorns, wild pepper leaves (bai chapoo), holy basil, pea eggplants and such.
Totally bypassing the theme of the afternoon, I started off the day with a stop at House of Chicken and Waffles (444 Embarcadero West, Oakland). I’d go into more detail here, but that’s a topic for another post. (Do you see my nefarious plan for blog domination taking shape? I knew you would.) Anyway, it’s probably a good thing that I was stuffed, or else I would have spent half the afternoon stopping at the taco trucks I passed along the way.
I hesitate to admit publically that I had never been to Berkeley Bowl (2020 Oregon Street, Berkeley), but I suppose I am among friends. I feel pretty safe in saying that this would have to be the best outpost that I’ve ever encountered for hard-to-find produce, including a wide variety of asian vegetables and ‘exotic’ citrus. Impressive bulk-foods section and competitive prices on everyday groceries, too. I wish I lived closer so I could bypass Whole Paycheck. Serious points off for the zoolike atmosphere and parking-as-combat — and remember, I was here on a Monday afternoon. God help you if you go on a weekend.
Next stop was Tuk-Tuk Thai and Asian Market (1581 University Avenue, Berkeley). They’ve got a pretty decent selection of thai foodstuffs in a clean, well-lighted store that won’t scare farangs. The size of a small supermarket, this place has nearly all of the ingredients you’ll need for a thai feast, mostly at prices that are competitive with Erawan and other local southeast-asian markets. (I found many things for less in the International Drive stores below, but you would have to make multiple stops in order to get everything you needed.) They have a small assortment of thai housewares, including special pans for kanom krok, and thai woodstoves!
There’s even a small boutique of hilltribe textiles at the front of the store, and a real tuk-tuk in the middle of the place, looking cleaner than you ever saw one in Bangkok. My first impression wasn’t all that good: the hot-food counter looked pretty sad when I was there (lunchtime on a Monday) — it’s pretty nervy calling it a food court! — and the produce section was abysmally empty and overpriced. You’ll need to stop by Berkeley Bowl on your way home: bird chiles and kaffir lime leaves are twice the price at Tuk-Tuk, and other, more exotic items are non-existent. Still, for packaged dry goods like noodles, curry pastes, and coconut milk, they’ve got you covered.
A couple of blocks further down University, I reacquainted myself with Erawan Trading Market (1463 University Ave). Their tiny storefront about the size of a walk-in closet stocking an amazing array of thai groceries, magazines, and videos. My motto here is: “If you don’t see it, ask” — This isn’t the sort of place that carries 25 bottles of each brand, so you might have overlooked it. Their produce selection wasn’t as good as I remembered it being 3 or 4 years ago, but the folks working there were just as friendly and sweet as ever. I think the free parking at the motel next door is a new addition. The only thing I saw here that I didn’t find elsewhere was Thai cardamom.
Deciding I had some more time to kill, I surfed over to Kasma Loha-unchit’s List of East Bay Markets with Thai Ingredients. I’m probably going to come in to work late on Friday and hit the Old Oakland Farmers’ Market, so I deliberately bypassed the Chinatown listings in favor of those under East Oakland.
First stop was Sun Hop Fat Supermarket (501 East 12th Street, Oakland). Recently relocated to the other end of its block, the new store is a warren of formerly-separate stores. One houses a pretty good selection of produce; another is the dry-goods section; the last is the butcher shop and fishmarket. Oddly enough, it was in the latter that I found the day’s best prices on coconut milk, both Mae Ploy and Chaokoh.
Next was Sontepheap Market (1400 International Blvd., Oakland), which Kasma lists as a 2-star market (excellent). I wasn’t all that impressed — their produce looked especially sad — but maybe I didn’t know what I was missing. They did have a fun little housewares section.
Two tiny shops further down International were a little more interesting. Lao Market (1619 International Blvd.) had a nice selection of produce, including wild pepper leaves and pea eggplants (no wing beans, alas). May Kong (1613 International Blvd.) is just 2 doors down, and seemed to have pretty good prices on dry goods, and stocked my favorite kind of Tianjin preserved vegetable, in the ceramic crock.
Closer to home: Today on my lunch hour I went to Battambang Market (339 Eddy Street, San Francisco) in the Tenderloin, where I got to see a shooting down the block. Three ambulances, eight cop cars, and a few dozen homeless/gawkers. Oh, and fresh turmeric, and cilantro with the roots on, too. I used to shop here for the things I couldn’t find at mainstream markets, and it (along with 99 Ranch in Daly City) will probably still be my go-to market for most things. I was sad to see that the formerly-decent market around the corner, variously known as Angkor Premiere Market or Tenderloin New Market (225 Leavenworth Street) has gone way downhill.
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Updated 4/07: A few dozen people a week wind up on this page when searching for Kanom Krok recipes. If that’s ywhat brings you here, my teacher Kasma Loha-unchit features a Kanom Krok recipe on her excellent site, Thai Food and Travel.
East Bay, shopping, Thai
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Posted by Anita on 01.25.06 7:50 AM
As promised, a wrapup of yesterdays trip to the House of Chicken and Waffles.
I’m about to commit blasphemy, but I think I actually like this place better than Roscoe’s. Cute decor with an air of space-age diner; bright colors and clean as a whistle.
I opted for the Angie’s Delight: 1 chicken breast, 1 waffle, plus grits.
The waffle was tasty, with a hint of spice; the chicken was nicely fried, then ‘smothered’ (actually dipped) in spicy chicken gravy. At first I thought I was going to have to ask for butter for my grits, but found a huge pool of butter lurking near the middle of the bowl… righteous!
Service was super-friendly, although it took more than 30 minutes to get my food (at 2pm… not exactly the lunch rush). And it’s not cheap: With a soft drink, my bill came to $11.
House of Chicken and Waffles
510.836.4446
444 Embarcadero West (near Jack London Square)
Oakland, CA
breakfast, East Bay, restaurants
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Posted by Anita on 01.21.06 10:29 AM
Thep Phanom used to be one of our favorites when we lived in the lower Haight. Even once we moved to another part of town, we kept coming back because the food was head and shoulders above the ordinary.
A few years ago, they started sliding. It seemed that the drop in quality coincided with the removal of the specials boards from above the windows. Although it paled in comparison, the food was still very good, and we kept coming back, kept recommending it as our favorite Thai place, kept ugring people to go…
So you can imagine our sadness after eating there twice in the last 6 weeks, and having two mediocre experiences. In December, we ordered a pair of our old favorites — tom yum goong and crispy basil chicken — plus salt-and-pepper beef, a new one for us. The soup was bland and unbalanced; the chicken, formerly blessed with a wispy crispy coating, now had a blatant battering; and the beef was interesting but not terribly Thai-flavored, and unpleasantly chewy. We chalked it up to a bad night, and didn’t give it much thought.
Last weekend, we went back with a couple of friends. We shared everything, so I had a chance to grasp the breadth of the problem:
Som tam — green papaya salad — is typically blazingly hot and pungently tart. Thep Phanom’s version was neither. The rather small portion was served in a cocktail glass.
Tom yum goong was dished out tableside into flat soup plates, rather than bowls. The broth was almost clear, not even a hint of redness from steeped shrimp shells or chiles. It tasted almost as bland as it looked: no hot, barely any sour, a paltry 4 shrimp for 4 people.
Larb ped featured tasty grilled, chopped duck meat, but the rest of the dish was bizarre. There were hardly any greens –typically you eat larb by rolling up the meat and seasonings in leaves of lettuce or other leafy veggies — and, again, the spice was almost non-existant. Larb is supposed to be HOT!
Basil chicken with crispy basil (gai kprow tod) suffered from the same problems as we noted on our last visit. Very sad… this dish used to be a true standout, a modern riff on a beloved thai classic. Now it wouldn’t be out of place at a cheap chinese takeout joint.
Panaeng beef curry was unspicy, badly balanced (sweet flavors completely overwhelmed the salty, spicy tastes) and oversauced.
Thep Phanom is still OK, but it’s no longer great. It may not even be better than average.
Thep Phanom
400 Waller Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
415.431.2526
Lower Haight, restaurants, Thai
Comments Off on Thai standby
Posted by Anita on 12.07.05 5:35 PM
Tonight, Cameron and I are going to COCO500, one of SF’s hot new restros, so I peeked at the menu.
I’m sending it straight to the editorial penalty box for the following infractions:
1) Pretentiousness:
You’ll find items in all the categories that could be starters, but there’s also a “small starts” category. The listings are sort-of organized by cooking method, but sort-of not. The word “dirt” has no place on a menu. And seriously, how can a dessert be noncommital? Is it sort of a brownie, but not really? Sort of dessert, but more like a kick in the ass?
2) Confusion:
Some of the items have dollars and cents, some don’t (why “6.0” but “11”, for example?). it’s like someone decreed: “all prices must have 2 digits”, or maybe or maybe they thought that if they didn’t add the “.0” it would look like “6 fried green beans” (which would be a pretty scrawny appetizer). Of course, all of this would be moot if they put the price AFTER the item, instead of before it. The way it reads now, it looks like an essay outline written by someone with poor counting skills.
3) Narcissism:
Any time the word “coco(a)” is used in a menu-item name (which, in and of itself, is a minor infraction) it is rendered in ALLCAPS. And, for the love of Pete, what the hell is a ‘ COCOmole “taco” ‘ ?
4) Ignorance:
Among the choice typos…
– seasame tuile
– balsalmic
Hello, get a dictionary. Or, better yet, an editor.
downtown SF, restaurants
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Posted by Anita on 11.01.05 5:51 PM
Last spring, we took a Chinatown Food Tour with an outfit called Local Taste of the City. It was so eye-rollingly bad — incorrect facts, overt pushing of unrelated purchases, and ever-so-gently racist commentary — that Cameron and I are still making jokes about it, 6 months later.
All you have to say to one of us is “durango melon” — the guide/owner’s name for durian — and we will bust out laughing. We also get a kick out of reminding each other that the reason why the buildings in Chinatown are built so close together is because the women had bound feet and couldn’t walk very far.
Think these are bad? They’re the tip of the iceberg, I assure you.
—
Edit by Cameron:
Our guide (aggressively shaven eyebrows and questionable personal hygiene) began our food tour of Chinatown with a 40 minute sit down at the Viansa tasting room, where we were subjected to a brief and yet amazingly incoherent history of SF. While being encouraged to taste and purchase wine that, “you’re just not going to see in stores.”
Yeah. Viansa. You know, you’re right. I’m not going to see that in the store.
The next stop on our our food tour was one of the hysterically cheesy “antique” shops that line Grant Street just inside the Chinatown gate. Here, our guide misidentified a large, labeled, stone statue of Kwan-Yin (female) as the Buddha. And then rattled on about various artifacts as we slowly drifted past a huge glass case of erotic statuary and appurtenances. Not a problem for us, but this is the kind of tour that someone from the Heartland might take their kids on.
Things sort of become a blur until we arrived at our first food stop of the day, supposedly the oldest Chinese bakery in Chinatown. Or something like that. I can vouch for the fact that neither the floors nor the tabletop had been cleaned since the 19th century, and the food stuck under the plastic covering the menus looked to be just as old. Just different cultural ideas about sanitation? Wrong. We received a tasting plate of n-a-a-a-sty little bites (think dim sum), one of which contained shrimp that was distinctly rotten. I discreetly (I hope) nudged my fair wife under the table and urged her not to eat that particular morsel.
Out into the street for more gibberish, puncutated by sudden stops in the middle of the street by our guide, who remained oblivious to the human traffic that would then pile into all of us.
More blur, then a quick visit at a fortune cookie factory. After a quick look at the machines, we were treated to an excruciatingly long shaggy dog story from our guide (who had tipped over from harmlessly eccentric to actively irritating) about both the San Francisco and Oakland airports requiring all travelers leaving the Bay Area to each have…A BAG OF FORTUNE COOKIES!!! Said bags were then presented with great flourish.
The cookies weren’t even all that good.
Somewhere in here, we were treated to the information that the buildings in Chinatown were, indeed, built closely together so that the poor Chinese ladies with their bound feet could walk easily between them.
In what we desperately hoped would be the climax of our day — meaning that we could part company with this very strange, very confused man — we began to tour a few food markets. As we toured, our guide helpfully misidentified oh so many wonders. Durian became durango melon. Burdock root became taro. After a while, my brain stopped functioning and I just nodded and smiled.
After five hours of this, we managed to break away, saying that we had made plans with friends for dinner and really needed to get back to our hotel. The alternative was to accompany our guide to dinner, which was part of the tour. I don’t know where we were to go, and I really don’t want to.
—
Edit by Anita:
You forgot the part about how he repeatedly answered personal phone calls on his cell throughout the tour.
And the part where every last shopkeeper who saw us coming rolled his or her eyes and muttered under their breath.
And the stops outside numerous retail establishments that were, alas, closed. (None of them had anything to do with food, so I suppose this is just as well.)
And the part where we were told not to mind the smells in a certain butcher shop because “…These People just don’t have the same hygiene standards as we do.”
And how “the Buddha” had coins in her lap… because you know the Buddha is all about money.
downtown SF, levity, travel
2 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 09.10.05 10:12 AM
Another unfortunate instance of a Top 50 restaurant that isn’t even close to hitting the mark: Town Hall.
Our server was nowhere to be found for the first 15 minutes we were seated. We weren’t even offered water or drinks. When he finally did appear, he brought the cocktail list (oh, so they do have one! why wasn’t it left with the menus?) that listed some pretty bizarre combinations, including a gin-based drink called The Big Easy — um, gin? New Orleans? — and a margarita-like tequila concotion made with cointreau, lime juice, and Falernum. They all sounded so poorly conceived that we stuck with wines by the glass.
My starter was Smithfield ham and cheese toast with jalapeno cream…. which really tasted like something you’d get at TGI Friday’s. It was positively sodden with pepper-infused bechamel (interesting but about 10 times the amount needed) and sprinkled with cold, flabby rings of jalapenos that had been breaded in the style of fried green tomatoes. Cameron’s appetizer, billed as “barbeque shrimp” was also served on toast, also with a drenching of sauce. He definitely got the worse end of the deal: his pool of brown sauce tasted of nothing except salt and worcestershire. Ew.
My main was a peanut-and-tasso-crusted Niman Ranch pork chop. The chop itself was brined to within an inch of its life… it was overcooked but still eerily moist…. spongy, salty, blech. The elements of the crust were so large that they fell off as soon as I cut into the chop. The accompanying mashed potatoes were good, but such a small serving that I literally had to lift up the pork chop to see if they’d been forgotten.
Cameron had a a trio of rabbit: hilariously tiny frenched rack of ribs, roulade of breast with unidentifiable stuffing, and another roulade of leg wrapped in bacon. What was billed as mustard spaetzle were scattered across the top as garnish. The vegetable was lightly-mashed peas and a celeriac puree. All of the meat was completely unsalted and basically tasteless, and the breast roulade was utterly overcooked and dry. Needless to say, neither of us ate much of our mains aside from the vegetables.
Since we were still hungry at this point, we split a butterscotch-chocolate pot de creme, garnished with buttercrunch. Sadly, this as the highlight of our meal, and it wasn’t even good. The “pot” was actually a two-layered cereal-size bowl of pudding (nothing creme-y about it) and the top layer tasted exactly like butterscotch pudding from a box.
Service never improved from the early missteps: Plates were dropped off uncerimoniously — it might have been nice to have an explanation of what the trio of rabbit included, for example — and we got the distinct impression that our server would have rather been somewhere else for the evening. At least we had that in common.
The high-ceilinged space is decorated in an eclectic vein that feels historic without degenerating into old-timey kitsch. The light fixtures in particular — including a Rube Goldberg-esque chandelier over the bar — are particularly striking. The entry area was jammed with people waiting for tables and having drinks at the ill-placed bar, but the restaurant tables were only a little bit crowded. On the downside, the lack of booths and window coverings combined with brick walls makes for a very loud space with unforgiving acoustics — there’s no prayer of ignoring the coversations of the people on either side of you. Still, it managed to feel warm and urban and inviting… I only wish the food had been the equal of the space.
Town Hall
342 Howard Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
415.908.3900
downtown SF, restaurants
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