A couple weeks ago I had to head back up to San Francisco to do some work in our data center. After I was done, I took my wife to a Thai restaurant that Dave Lu introduced me to: Manora’s Thai Cuisine. The food there is excellent AND reasonably priced (around $10 a dish).

Manora’s Thai Cuisine (Google Maps)
1600 Folsom St
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 861-6224

Por-Pia-Sod (rice paper rolls stuffed with crab, shrimp, pork sausage, pork, cucumber and mushroom, topped with sweet and sour tamarind sauce). Highly Recommended.

(  Click here to read the rest of Dining: Manora’s Thai Cuisine  )

So, Tina and I are in San Francisco celebrating our anniversary. I took her to Jai Yun and we had one of the best meals (if not the best - right now we think it’s the best but I’ll wait a few days before deciding). One thing it lacked was dessert and both of us had a craving for rice pudding. So on the walk back from Chinatown to Union Square (where our hotel is) we stopped at an E&O Trading Company.

They had a rice pudding with lemongrass, coconut milk, and a strawberry basil sauce. We decided to stay and ordered it. Unfortunately, the rice pudding was subpar - very mild, bland, and barely sweet. We couldn’t even taste a hint of lemongrass. Oh well. With this experience and our previous dinner (six years ago) that was entirely unmemorable (except for the corn fritters), what resulted was a new rule - never eat at E&O Trading Company.

It’s funny how sometimes the best things to eat are the simple things. I haven’t been to this restaurant in a couple years, so I thought I’d stop in. B44 is a restaurant specializing in Spanish (Catalan) cuisine and is situated on Belden Place among several other western European places to eat. After my last visit, I’d recommend the Catalan toast and ox tails appetizer. From memory their paellas are quite good, but for us last night it was the basic appetizers that hit the spot. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera on me, so no pictures - just descriptions.

B44 (Google Maps)
44 Belden Place
San Francisco, CA 94104
(415) 986-6287
b44sf.com

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On Sunday, Tina and I saw that McDonald’s had a new sandwich - the Southern Style Chicken. The photograph made it look like a spicy (we mistook the pickle to be a jalapeno) version of the McChicken, so we passed on it and picked up some Chicken McNuggets. Yesterday, while watching television I thought I saw (or rather heard, since I was working on the computer) a commercial for the new sandwich announcing that on May 15th you could try the sandwich for free. So, I went to McDonald’s for lunch today.

After confirming that the sandwich was free, I ordered one as well as a 32 oz. Sweet Tea for $1 that I saw a big sign for outside. I haven’t had their sweet tea yet, so I thought it would be fitting to try it with the Southern Style Sandwich. This was fortunate since you only get the sandwich for free if you buy a large beverage. So, $1.08 (8 cents of tax) netted me a sandwich and beverage.

(  Click here to read the rest of The Free McDonald’s Southern Style Chicken Sandwich (& Sweet Tea)  )

I just had the most amazing meal in my life. No kidding. And it wasn’t in San Francisco or New York, it was in Austin, Texas. The restaurant: Uchi; The executive chef: Tyson Cole; The food: mind blowing. I’ll be writing up a piece on Cooking For Engineers (but I’m in Austin right now and only have a laptop for use as an image dump and internet access - so I’ll work on it when I get back to California) but for now here’s a couple pictures as teasers.

(  Click here to read the rest of Uchi in Austin, Texas  )

I went to Garcia’s Taqueria for lunch and ate with my friend Dave and his company, Sendori. I ordered a super quesadilla with lengua (beef tongue) and a horchata.

(  Click here to read the rest of What I Ate: February 8, 2008  )

Potsticker King
19634 Stevens Creek Blvd
Cupertino, CA 95014
408-255-1600

Sit down Chinese restaurant with fast service. Although named Potsticker King, lacked the assortment of different potstickers that I had hoped for. (Only one potsticker item on the menu.) The potstickers were adequate and tasty. The menu, like menus for most Chinese restaurants, has a lot of different dishes available.

Surprise find: Ai yu jelly - a gelatinous sweet lemon scented dessert derived from the grass and leaves of a plant in the mint family

(  Click here to read the rest of Potsticker King (Cupertino, CA)  )

Because of the impending release of the new edition of the San Francisco Michelin Guide, I looked up last years recipients of the coveted Michelin stars. I realized that I didn’t know of a website that compiled the list with all relevant information (most just had the names of the restaurants). After I compiled the list, Dave Lu suggested that I put up a Google Map to show where they were (instead of my original idea of linking to the Google Maps page). I tried this and managed to get it to work (for the most part) but found it really difficult to program with the editor that WordPress uses. So, I reimplemented it on Cooking For Engineers with all the restaurants. Go check it out.
(  Click here to read the rest of Michelin Stars in the San Francisco Bay Area  )

So, I’m getting ready to drive up to Berkeley/Oakland to dine at Oliveto Cafe and Restaurant. I’ve dined there once before and the food is remarkable — it’s one of those places where you know the entire staff cares about food. One of things that stands out about Oliveto in my memory is not just the delicious food, attentive wait staff, and exquisite preparation of Italian cuisine - but also the menu. Tonight’s menu should be posted around 5pm (about an hour before my dinner reservation) at http://www.oliveto.com/dinnermenu.pdf. (They always post the dinner menu at around 5pm and it changes every day.) I’ll try to remember to download it tonight and post it here so it’s more permanent. Anyway, the menu is always an adventure… I’ve been doing food writing for the last three and a half years (and been decently successful at my style of writing) and the menu confounds me. It truly is a culinary adventure just deciphering it. So, go and print it out and scribble notes over it and figure out what each menu item means. If you figure out one menu item, then post in the comments - I’ll be doing the same. The early bird gets the easy entries…

Here’s one from the Sept. 29 that I just couldn’t figure out:
Chitarra nera alla colatura di alici - black guitar that filters anchovies?
My best guess is that it’s a black pasta (either guitar strings like capellini or cut by a chitarra as in linguini shaped…) with a sauce made of anchovies…

One thing that I really hate is when I’m left alone WAY too long at a restaurant. When a waiter doesn’t come by for a while after we’ve been seated, it’s really frustrating. This evening, I kept trying to catch the eye of the waitress that was serving all the tables around us, but she was VERY adept at not looking in our direction. Finally, our waiter arrived (it wasn’t the waitress that was serving all the other tables in our vicinity) took our orders and disappeared. Apparently, we were in the boondocks of this guy’s waiting area and stuck in the middle of a different waitress’s realm. They we realized that we were starting to get really cold (near an air conditioning vent). We kept looking around for our waiter but he didn’t come back. Then a server (not our waiter) arrived with our food and we asked if it was possible to move. She said she’d find our waiter and disappeared. By the time the waiter returned, we had practically finished eating. Unfortunately, I didn’t immediately ask for a to-go box so we once again had to wait and wait. I eventually stood up and walked around to look for our waiter. After returning to our booth, I stood there long enough for a passing waitress to ask if I needed anything. I asked for our check and she went off in search of our waiter. He returned shortly with our bill. I feel that restaurants, even casual ones, should do a better job with dividing up tables so they are accessible to their wait staff.