Restaurant Reviews
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Etouffee at the Elite Cafe
Back in the day, that day being our time spent in San Francisco, one of our favorite restaurants was The Elite Cafe. Loved the neighborhood atmosphere of it, loved the oyster bar, loved the cozy booths if you could get them. The blackened steak, awesome. Clam chowder, yummy. But above all, the shrimp etouffee. Tiny rock shrimp in a yummy, yummy sauce. Oh, so very good. Love love loved it. And really, there aren’t many cajun places around here, and if they have an etouffee, it’s usually crawfish, which I just don’t enjoy as much. So, maybe two years ago, I took my friend Neva to San Francisco for the…
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The Restaurant at Wente Vineyards
Last week, The Restaurant at Wente Vineyards catered lunch for the staff at Ted’s work. He came home talking about how delicious everything was, which pretty much made me want some of that for myself. I know, greedy, huh? Well, Ted tends to spoil me and my tendencies, so on Saturday, while Maya was enjoying herself at her BFF’s birthday party/sleepover, he took me there for dinner. Since the birthday party started at 4:00, we had really early reservations, so we were the first folks there. I don’t think they were technically open yet, actually, because they had us wait in the bar area for a few minutes while they…
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Outsourced & Zatar
Last Saturday, while I was all grumpy and crisis-of-faithy after picking up the newspaper at breakfast (note to self, funnies only from now on), we decided it would be fun to go to Berkeley to see a nice romantic comedy. You know what? It was! We went to see Outsourced, which isn’t playing yet out in the ‘burbs, hence the driving in to Berkeley. Outsourced is the story of Todd (aka, Mr. Toad), a call-center manager in Seattle who learns that his call center is going to be closed down, and he must go to India to get the new call-center up and running, as well as to train his…
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Sunday in France
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8raqLzb3rQ[/youtube] This last Sunday, Maya went to spend the day with her BFF, leaving Ted and me on our own. I love Maya so much, and so much of being a parent defines me, that I sometimes wonder what we will do when she has grown up and moved away…days like Sunday remind me…we were fine before we had her, we’ll be fine when she is in college, or married, whatever. Days when we can go and see a movie that we want to see, without worrying whether it’s appropriate for a child or not…dinners at restaurants where we don’t need to think about kid conversation…which no wonder how wonderful…
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Miscellany
OK, first things first. Chrissy, Scarlett, and Curiosity Killer have all decided that I’m a Rockin’ Girl Blogger! Tres cool! I think that I am now supposed to pick 5 rockin’ girl bloggers, and nominate them myself. Or award them, to be more precise with my language skills. But here’s the rub…how do I decide, from my many female blogging friends, which ones are rockin’ girl bloggers? How do I say to some, ‘hey, you’re a rockin’ girl blogger’, and not others, who are equally rockin’ in my book? So I’m breaking the rules. No paying this one forward. I suck like that. But you know what? If you are…
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What a Weekend!
Our weekend started on Friday, when we went into San Francisco to attend an Ivy League mixer at a club bordering North Beach. We found pretty good parking on a quiet street just three blocks away, and we set off looking for a place to have dinner. There was a fancy looking restaurant right on our street, Myth, and since I was hungry enough that the golden arches were starting to look pretty good, and Ted says no WAY he’s driving into San Francisco and eating THAT crap, we decided to see if we could get a table. Well, all of their tables were booked, but they had room at…
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Restaurant Meme
ML tagged me to do this meme, and it’s taken me awhile to get to it…so many restaurants to think about…but I’m finally ready, so here we go: The rules: 1. Add a direct link to your post below the name of the person who tagged you. Include the state and country you’re in. Nicole (Sydney, Australia) velverse (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) LB (San Giovanni in Marignano, Italy) Selba (Jakarta, Indonesia) Olivia (London, England) ML (Utah, USA) J (California, USA) 2. List out your top 5 favorite places to eat at your location (locally). I had trouble with this part…when I started my blog, it was supposed to be restaurant reviews,…
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Cafe Esin
Every once in awhile, I feel the need to get back to my Restaurant Reviewing roots…after all, that was my original idea when I started this blog…that I would write about restaurants, because, well, what ELSE would I write about? I don’t have any ideas, so that will do. HA! Anyway, Friday afternoon, Maya had her friend Jackie over for a sleepover. We quickly discovered that there was no food in the house, so we decided we would go out for dinner (our solution all too often, but we really do enjoy it). Ted wanted to go to a restaurant in San Ramon named Cafe Esin. He had been there…
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Perfect Start to a Weekend…
…lunch with a Republican. Gosh, I never thought I would say those words! HA! But honestly, some of my best friends are Republicans. One such friend is Janet, who lives in NYC. Janet and I met at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, CA, and became good friends. She is a truly loyal and wonderful friend, though not without her faults, including: Spoiling my daughter. It was she that started Maya’s American Girl obsession. Maya now has 4 of the things. Janet only bought her one, so it’s not ALL her fault. Waiting until the last minute to call me and let me know she’s in town. I received a…
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Weekend…
I wish all weekends could be three day weekends. More specifically, I wish this had been a three day weekend. No worries, though, because we had a lovely time, and got in some touristy stuff, some shopping, and some loafing. 🙂 We started out with Friday night…Ted and LaLuna made a lovely hamburger dinner, which we enjoyed at S’s house, while we watched Battlestar Galactica. Lovely. We had a nice time, and S opened a wonderful bottle of red wine for us to enjoy. After we got home, Maya went to bed, and Ted and I watched Lost, which we had taped on Wednesday. Saturday, I woke up with a…
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Zachary’s Pizza
If you’re from the Chicago area, you probably can get Chicago style pizza any time you want. I’ve never been closer to Chicago than I-80, driving from San Francisco to Philadelphia, so I don’t know for sure. But if you live in the Bay Area, the best place to get Chicago style pizza is indisputably at Zachary’s. The problem is that Zachary’s is always CROWDED. There is one location in Oakland, another in Berkeley, and the wait is often over an hour. So the ‘in the know’ solution is to get your pizza ‘half baked’, and take it home, finish cooking it there, and enjoy. Well, good news to those…
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5 Things to Eat Before You Die
I saw this meme on Lotus Reads, and she did such a beautiful job with it, I thought that I would try it out, even though she didn’t tag me. I loved the thought she put into her answers, and the pictures. I’ve done several memes where one of the questions is “5 favorite foods” or something like that. For a question like that, my answer is generally something along the lines of ‘Rib Eye, Heirloom tomatoes, cheetos…”, that kind of thing. Things I love and eat often. This meme, however, is titled “5 things you should eat before you die”, which implies that these should be special things, things…
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Getting Crotchety in My Old Age
I think I’m turning into a curmudgeon. I find that I often don’t trust the service offered by young people anymore. I’m almost ready to call them ‘whippersnappers’. Case in point, there’s a breakfast place we enjoy in San Ramon called Katy’s Korner. A few months ago, I discovered that they make really yummy Huevos Rancheros, which is three eggs, simmered in salsa, and served on a big plate with black beans, tortillas, sour cream, and maybe some avocado. Mmmmm. Yummy. The waitresses at Katy’s Korner all seem like they’ve been there awhile, they know what they’re doing, they know what they’re talking about. They’re not old, by any stretch,…
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Portland Restaurant Wrap Up
Way back in November, when I started my adventure into this bloggy world, I had thought that I would mostly write about restaurants and maybe recipes, since I really like cooking and eating. 😉 That soon got to be pretty boring, however, so I moved on. Every once in awhile, however, I go to a restaurant, and I think, “I’d like to write a little review about that.” So, while we were in Portland, we ate at several restaurants, and I kind of intended to write about them all. But now I’m thinking I’ll just skip the places in Ashland and Eugene, and talk about the most memorable places we…
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Brentwood Corn
There are two Brentwoods in California….the Brentwood down near Hollywood, where the rich and famous reside, and the Brentwood in the ‘Far East Bay’ or the ‘Far Western San Joaquin Valley’, whichever sounds better to you. 😉 Our local Brentwood is known for the quality of their corn. When you go to the grocery stores or farmers’ market, the signs proudly proclaim, “Brentwood Corn”, and you know you’re getting the good stuff. Well, we went to Brentwood the other night for dinner. Ted’s mom had heard good things about Cap’s Oak Street Bar & Grill, so we all piled in the car and took her there for her birthday dinner.…