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| Town's Restaurant - San Carlos (****)
For a company group lunch to celebrate the launch of a new game, we went to Town's Restaurant,
sisters with Nola's and Mistral, both amongst my favorites. Same kind
of cozy atmosphere, comfort food. A big stove-slash-kitchen right in
the dinning area so that you can see the chicken as they're being
roasted.
We started off with some appetizers - philly cheese steak spring rolls,
garlic bread, and calamari fritte. The philly chesse steak was ok,
wrapped in a spring roll doesn't allow the taste to come out and the
ingredients were bounded. The garlic bread was decent, nothing so
special that I'd want to order it again. Calamari are always one of my
favorites, so I'd have to say it was well fried. Just wish there were
more to go around. My main entree was the house-special teriyaki skirt
steak and banana ice cream pie for dessert. The skirt steak was well
marinaded, very tasty. The portions plenty, for me at least. The mashed
potatoes are very well seasoned, creamy and fluffy. I'm not big on
onion rings, and there were only like 4 or 5 rings given on my plates,
so can't say too much about them. The banana ice cream pie was
interesting. The ice cream makes the chocolate cookie crush of the pie
less sweet, so it was a good thing. But do be careful of the english
toffee candy bits, they're crunchy and can be hard to chew.
Overall, I give the restaurant a ****, same as Nola's and Mistral. If
you're in the area, want somewhere nice (do be carefuly that it is on
the $$$ pricey side, with entrees running from teens to 20's) for a
business lunch, Town's is a nice option.
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| Ruth's Chris Steak House - San Francisco (***)
No matter what Kramer says about the place,it's
not worth buying the stock (RUTH). Have to say, it's not the beststeak
I've ever had. My medium-to-medium-well was more like mediumrare. And
it was too oily. The plate that held the steak were full ofbutter and
fat, no au jus. That's the other thing, the steak has no aujus, it
tastes like beef. Definitely not grilled, more like half panfried half
baked. The salad had too much cream dressing. The dessertwas in lack of
choices - only bread pudding and key lime pie.
Thegood thing
is that it's relatively easy to find street parking near theplace. The
crab cake (ordered in addition to the Dine About Town menu)tastes
pretty good. Mashed potato is nicely seasoned and just the
rightconsistency, in the beginning. The bread pudding is good, but too
sweetto the point of sickening. The rib eye seems to be better than
thepetit filet. The waiter was nice, and the manager came out to say hi
toevery table. Their website says business casual attire, but a lot
ofpeople was wearing jeans and sneakers.
So our experience went something like this. Due to another year of the Dine About Town, I choose Ruth's Chris Steak House
to try due to two reasons - Kramer's stock recommendation and it's
oneof the (regularly) expensive restaurants on the list. So even
thoughthere was a sample menu online, I decided to go with it. So
areservation was made for 8:15pm on Opentable.We
got there early, around 7:50, and had to wait only about 5-10minutes
before they seated us. The table was next to the window,looking on to
Van Ness. Can't say it was a view, as nothing excitinghappens in that
part of town at night. We were given menus and winelist, bread and
butter came later. After looking at the menu, I figuredthe 3-course
might not be fulfilling enough, so I suggested anappetizer, the crab
cake ($20). The crab cakes came first, was verytasty, you can see all
the crab meat, goes really nicely with the lemonjuice on the plate.
Then came the salad, which we both asked for theranch dressing. They
went a bit dressing-happy, I think, as there wereway too much dressing.
The salad tasted either bitter (natural taste ofthe greens) or salty
(the dressing). Then the steaks came with theirsides of mash potato and
creamed spinach. The first impression of thesteaks were they're really
fattening, you can see the melted butter onthe plate sizzling. I asked
for medium well, I got medium rare. Was itmy pronounciation? Don't
know. All I know was it was too bloody for mytaste. If this was what
premium beef tasted like, I didn't know how toenjoy it. It wasn't bad,
perse, just not to my taste. Then dessert tooka long while to come. The
bread pudding was really really sweet, with astrong hint of whisky. The
keylime pie was really sour, that's all Ihad to say, not something I'd
order.
With the addition of aglass of wine and appetizer, the
bill came out to quite an amount thatI had not expect. Next time, a
note to myself, keep to the menu, if Iwant to try a few more
restaurants. | | |
| Izayaka Mai - San Mateo (****)Speaking of food, Chibi and I ventured to a little Japanese place on 2nd and Ellsworth on Friday, Izayaka Mai (居酒屋). It's a tiny tiny little place, totally Japanese (because they had a big screen TV on the wall showing Japanese shows/news). They lack in help, I think. The old lady is nice but doesn't speak much English, I think. They have a lunch menu that differs from dinner, from what I was told. Hang on the wall is a small board with a list of sushi, but was not given any other sushi menu otherwise. Not to mention no translations. Luckily, I knew my ika and tako, and toro. That was enough for me. Toro, at $3.95/piece, was not a bad price. Especially when it tasted not-half-bad. My main entree was tanin don (他人丼) - beef and eggs over rice. It was ok, nothing too special, just a sprang from the chicken and egg over rice. To be honest, the Chinese version of beef and egg over rice, 滑蛋牛肉飯, is much better. From the Yelp site, their champon should be good but I didn't see it on the menu (or wasn't looking for it). Should definitely try next time. And next time, I'd go at night for their snacks-to-go-with-sake dishes.
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| Not opened yet...The Kitchen will be open soon... | | |
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