Category Archives: Restaurants & Reviews

Great Szechuan in Richmond

Matt and I went to Pacific East Mall so he could make use of the new camera he got for Christmas.  He wants to Photoshop the inside of the mall, adding a monorail.  Lunch first, though, at Great Szechuan (3288 Pierce Street, Richmond) at the back of the mall.  I’ve written about this place before, but let me say again how authentic the food is.  Two dishes of note today:  Szechwan spicy fish ($9.95) and dry cooked chicken wings ($11,95).  The fish entree was generous beyond belief – a large number of deep-fried fillets of moist, white-fleshed fish served on a wooden tray under a mountain of chili peppers, jalapenos and a few red and green bell pepper chunks.  There was chili oil in there, too, and methinks the fish batter was laced with something hot, but this might have been my inability to detect exactly where the heat was coming from once I reached DEFCON 1 on the Scoville scale.  The wings were like salt and pepper wings, but much, much hotter.  Both dishes, though fried, were not greasy.   Both were flaming hot, but complex.  For example, the fish had plenty of whole Sichuan peppercorns on top that provided a nice numbing contrast.  Be sure to order plenty of rice to cut the heat.  If you drink water, it’ll just spread it around your palate.

Genki in Berkeley

Spicy tuna roll at Genki in Berkeley

Sushi today at Genki.  Genki (1610 San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley) is an unassuming place in an ugly area (San Pablo Avenue – enough said) that we passed daily – sometimes multiple times – since 2000.  Today we stopped.  Matthew and I agree that our meal was very good.  We sat at the sushi bar so we could keep an eye on the goings on with the fish and were treated to friendly service and banter.  We both had one of the basic sushi combos for about $10 and ordered two deluxe rolls.  The combos were good in that the fish was very fresh and the fish to rice ratio favored the fish.  I mean, if you can’t serve a decent piece of tuna, I really don’t care about the flaming eel and blowfish roll.  While the lunch combos might be a better value at Yammy (El Cerrito Plaza), for example, Genki’s is solid.  The salad is a little odd, though, because the dressing sort of sits on top in a little lump.  I don’t know what to make of this but it tasted good.  The rolls were fabulous – and huge.  These kinds of extravaganzas cost about ten bucks wherever you go, but Genki’s were the largest I have ever been served.  We had what they call an Island Roll, with shrimp tempura inside and salmon, avocado and lemon on the outside.  The other one had shrimp within and spicy tuna and tobiko outside.  Oh, man, so good — so pretty.  If I were wealthy I’d eat this kind of thing all the time.  We’ll  be going back soon for more rolls.

Island roll at Genki in Berkeley

Island roll at Genki in Berkeley

Pyramid Ale House in Berkeley

Matthew and Oma at Pyramide Ale House in Berkeley in 2007

Just a trip to Pyramid Brewery, my regular Wednesday night haunt.  This time, though, the other family units came along – but not Steven, who’s in NYC on business.  Pyramid (901 Gilman Street, Berkeley) is a comfy place with great beer and overpriced, OK food.  You have to be very careful at Pyramid in terms of the food, since venturing into unknown territory – for example when they change their menu – is almost never rewarded.  Recently they revamped their grub, so we tried a few new things, like the roasted Anaheim chili appetizer, which was GROSS.  The filling includes Andouille sausage, cheese and zucchini, which sounds good on paper, but turns out to be a mushy paste.  The mac and cheese side was hopelessly dry, as was the scalloped potatoes dish – both of which were cold and lifeless, too.  Both had loads of panko on top that was, well, raw.  I’d like to go into that friggin’ kitchen and get rid of the panko, since it shows up on so much and they clearly don’t know how to use it.  For the record, the first thing you learn in cooking school is to use plenty of cream and butter in these kinds of dishes.  This is not difficult.  You need to get some ooze.  I guess they are just too cheap and think they can fool us by creating a faux crust with lots of breadcrumbs. The cheese and chicken quesadilla was fine, and actually generous.  Nothing special but not an outright insult.  Stick to the chicken sammies, burgers and sausage plate, or get drunk before you have the other stuff.

Fog City Diner in SF

We finally made it to the Fog City Diner.  The Morrison & Foerster holiday party is this evening, so we are spending the night in SF.  Matthew and I – as we do every year – BART in for early check-in and some sort of fancy lunch.  Today we decided on the Fog City Diner (1300 Battery Street, SF) to see what all the fuss is about.  Turns out Fog City is a diner in layout but more upscale in terms of menu and price.  We loved the salt and pepper squid appetizer because of the dipping sauce, which was a thin affair made mainly of lime juice, chili peppers and perhaps a little sugar; it was a blessing to get away from those thick dipping sauces.  Next, Matt had a crispy snapper sammie with roasted red peppers.  Size-wise it was fine and he said it was very tasty.  The accompanying fries were hot and crisp, and we saved the remaining sauce from the squid to dip them into.  I had an open face meatloaf sandwich with melted pepper jack cheese that was tasty – if a bit mushy.  Mine came with sweet tater fries, which I always like.  The sandwiches were $12.50 and $13.95, respectively, which is a bit high, I guess, but what the hell since they were pretty good.  I may come back again, but may not because they do not have enough restrooms to accommodate the crowds they get.

Denny’s in Vestal, NY

Frank's seat at Denny's in Vestal, New York

Frank's seat at Denny's in Vestal, New York

Today is the first anniversary of my father’s death, thus, the theme of this entry is coffee.  I’ll take this opportunity to write something about the Denny’s in Vestal, New York, he went to for coffee every morning  for years and years, as well as The Lost Dog in Binghamton, New York, the cafe/restaurant he frequented nightly for coffee until he felt like he looked so bad he shouldn’t go anymore, which, of course, was ridiculous, but such is the burden of vanity.  I can’t fathom the amount of coffee he drank in a day during the time he went to both places and also brewed pots at home, but his blood must have been 100% French roast.  Denny’s (4024 Vestal Parkway East, Vestal) is across the street from Binghamton University and usually crammed with people, but the staff always made a fuss over my dad, since he had forged relationships with these people via daily contact over time.  Whenever I was in town the fuss was extended to me, which was great.  This meant lots of good conversation, great buffalo chicken strips and about 5 times the Denny’s-approved amount of hot fudge on the sundae I would sometimes have as my meal.  Many of the servers were studying this or that or were artists needing to make some actual money.  Several were part-timers caring for families.  Pretty quickly I knew all their stories and they knew mine, though they had a head’s up since my dad filled them in over the years.  Toward the end the old man was not looking or sounding too good, having trouble simply sitting up for periods of time or going into coughing jags, but there was never a problem.  This group of employees was the tops, managers included, and I’ll always have a place in my heart for Denny’s, though the one here in El Cerrito, CA cannot hold a candle to the Vestal location in terms of, well, anything.  I include here a photo of my dad’s regular counter spot, which now has a laminated tribute to him taped to the counter, and one of two fabulous people who work there.  Next, The Dog.  He went to The Lost Dog (222 Water Street, Binghamton), which is hip and young, because he, himself, was hip, a former musician, and attracted to innovation – particularly in technology.  While he enjoyed his workaday coffees during the day, he moonlighted with baristas.  He liked especially to argue politics and social issues, and it seems the staff of The Lost Dog was happy to engage in this, though it occasionally turned ugly.  He would often say things just to rile a person up, often taking the opposite position just to see what came of it.  I knew this so I wouldn’t take the bait, but not everyone did.  When the people working at “The Dog,” as my dad called it, found out he was ill, they all sprang into action and took a Saturday to physically move him from his old apartment to his new one, the chef getting her truck in gear and the cooks and others, including one of the owners and the catering manager, hauling stuff down three flights of stairs, across town, and into his new elevated studio.  All this while being subjected to various instructions and comments from my father, who made even the simplest task next to impossible by virtue of his personality and apparent desire to be the biggest pain in the ass in town.  I suppose he had earned enough credit with these folks – and they must have seen who he really was underneath all that drama.  And that damned printer!  Before and during the move he fixated on his older Epson inkjet printer for fear someone would tilt and damage it.  He had some sort of system going where he filled up the cartridges himself, and if the thing wasn’t held level something would come undone in there.  I had to hear this every time I even went near it.  I offered to buy a new printer, but he wanted THAT printer, since he enjoyed the whole upkeep routine.  OK, whatever.  I started going to The Dog when I arrived in town to care for him, and was shown great sympathy and concern by all.  They told me my dad would spend hours in there writing in his journal – and always left a $2.00 tip when all he had was coffee.  He liked interesting young women, this much I knew, and The Dog has plenty of them.  And fun.  I could see why he whiled away time at his regular counter spot.  It is a fact that I would not be able to enumerate the things The Lost Dog’s Marie and Nicole did during the last few months of my father’s life – essentially acting as surrogate daughters and putting up with the full force of that big personality, which did not wane as his body weakened.  And as his body weakened there was no weakening in his desire for coffee.  Coffee was a key theme in his life from beginning to end, and is often the first thing that comes to mind when I remember him.

Staff at Denny's in Vestal, New York