Avery G.'s Profile

In the search for the perfect cheesesteak, I made a quick detour from my plan to have another cappicola sandwich from Giordano's and instead went across the street to Buster's, self proclaimed home of the best cheesesteaks in town.

The small restaurant looks somewhere between a diner and a burger stand - with counter seating, some seats along the window, a register and a soda cooler... which is good - it means the focus is on the food!

The menu is pretty basic: Cheesesteak done two ways: Philly (incorrectly called "Phili") with meat, cheese and onions OR California Style (aka a Cheesesteak Hoagie) with lettuce, tomato, mayo and all the typical hoagie fixins. Burgers are also available - including the Buster burger - a burger with a cheesesteak on top.

Buster's gets extra points for offering a few different types of cheese, including the cheesesteak classic - melted Cheez Whiz! For my cheesesteak, I picked a large cheesesteak, Philly style with onions, white american cheese, cherry peppers and mushrooms - easily recognizable for any New Englander as a D'Angelo's Number 9.

How was the cheesesteak? In many ways, better than most in San Francisco. It was nice and moist with a great flavor, though it was a little salty... but I don't mind a little salt, considering every place in town seems to be afraid of a little sodium chloride.

As a cheesesteak purist, I do believe that the only cheesesteak is just that: cheese and steak. In my mind, there's no need to offer a chicken cheesesteak or a pastrami cheesesteak. Call them subs, hoagies or something else, but not a cheesesteak. No points have been deducted over it, but still... CHEESE... STEAK! CHEESESTEAK! Not Cheesy Chicken. Think about it!

After what seems like a year of waiting, O'Neills by the ballpark is open! i'm live-yelping it from the bar, a mere two hours after opening.

More to come as the night progresses...

It's just a few minutes before 6 and I'm well into my second pint of Murphy's while waiting for the missus... The bar has a raucous vibe ans Eoin O'Neill, owner of both this branch and its sister bar in San Mateo is beaming with pride... shaking hands and welcoming the neighborhood inside.

7pm now... three Murphy's, a Magner's cider and a hefty pour of Michael Collins (a great whiskey from the independent Cooley distillery) and life is fine...

7:30 and the fourth Murphy's is underway. The bar is still doing a brisk business and the staff is unfrazzled. A lack of bathrooms (only a single men's and a lone women's room may be an issue. Still, the vibe is great...

8:20 - The night is over. Overall, the bar is great. I wish that the Magner's was on tap and that there were a few more bathrooms, but overall, I'm ecstatic that O'Neill's is in my neighborhood!

The morning after...

It's Saturday morning, and now that I'm on my laptop, not trying to write a review from my PDA, it's time to give some final thoughts on O'Neill's.

I've been patiently waiting for O'Neill's to open for what seems like months. Originally slated to open no later than March 1, due to problems with the contractors it didn't open its doors until April 21, missing Opening Day, St. Patty's Day and at least a half dozen home games where the hordes that invade the neighborhood would be more than happy to shell out $5.75 for a pint of stout.

Honestly, even though construction had kicked into gear over the last few weeks, I still had no idea when it was scheduled to open. If it was not for the fact that I elected to work from home Friday afternoon and that I couldn't think of anything better to have for lunch than Quizno's, I wouldn't have known. However, the fates conspired to have me walk by the bar a little after noon, and seeing how close the bar was to finishing its construction, I just had to ask when it was opening. The sign installer looked at his watch and said "3pm".

By the time I got to the bar a few minutes before 5, it was already halfway full of neighborhood denizens who, on their way back from lunch or on their way home saw that the bar was open and decided to stop in. It's obvious that my neighborhood has been craving a new bar, especially one that is open every night until 2am.

The bar is beautifully appointed: dark wood, stenciled gold lettering and hand painted scenes from the St. James and Lady's Well breweries. The mahogany bar is the definite centerpiece, large enough for 6 bartenders to be working along side of a couple of bar backs. There is also table service, and supposedly as of Monday if the restaurant inspector gives them a thumbs up, food. I have no concern at all the O'Neill's will be successful.

My largest worry are the crowds that are sure to wreak havoc during game nights. Sure, there are enough days where we'll be able to enjoy the bar with the locals, but how much damage to this new neighborhood gem will be done by the throngs of baseball fans?

Retro sodas, international magazines and one of the most extensive selections of chocolate... do you need any other reason to stop in?

Fog City News has an amazing selection of chocolates - ranging from Milka and Ritter Sport from Germany to Cote d'Or and Galler from Belgium and many many more. The selection of small batch Austrian chocolates infused with flavors such as ginger and mustard makes you take pause as you try to figure out how they would taste. Looking for a surprise for a child, get a Kinder Egg - which aren't officially sold in the states because of the possibility of a kid choking on the toy inside.

Take care to notice where your chocolate bar is actually produced -  especially the British ones like Cadbury, which in this case are made in Canada, not England.

My only gripe is their hours - only open until 6pm during the week and only open one Saturday a month.... which is bad for the sweet tooth, but good for my wallet (and waist!)

For my 100th review, I knew that I needed to do something important - the review that I would have the most trouble with telling the whole story while keeping it relevant and honest. With this in mind, I decided that I would have to do the Toronado.

I have a long history with the bar. For the final years of the last millenium, my wife and I chronicled our evenings there on our online journal (yes, this was pre-blogging), and there was lots to blog about. We talked about the bartenders, the regulars and the invaders from the Marina who looked utterly confused when the folks behind the bar said "No, you can't have a gin and tonic" followed quickly by "No, you can't have an Amstel Light" and finally by "No, you can't pay by credit card". The Lower Haight was going through a fight for its very soul - battling against SUVs, gentrification, yuppie encroachment and the chain stores and shops that wanted to replace local establishments... and the Toronado was the point where the battle would be won or lost.

That was the late 1990s, and now in 2006, things haven't changed that much. During the days and weekday nights, it's full of regular Lower Haight denizens - and on Friday and Saturday nights, it's a battle between locals and folks from different neighborhoods (and tax brackets). Pauly, Johnny and Kirsten are still behind the bar, and Tad is still the best bouncer in the city - I mean, how many people can come up with a trivia question like "Name the three characters from MASH that were there since the first episode" on the fly? (The one that everyone misses is Nurse Kelley... she's the key to the whole series! - I think I won a beer for getting that).

So many of my life changing events - from birthdays to our going away party when we moved to Connecticut in 1999 were held at the Toronado, and while I lived just 2 blocks away in a tiny studio apartment with my wife and two cats, the Toronado was like my living room - where I went to relax and to entertain. During the big power outage when the state was plunged into darkness, the Toronado served the neighborhood beverages while Rosamunde turned on their big gas grill and served up sausages for the locals. Up until 1999, the Toronado was home.

The bar hasn't changed at all since then. The banner from the bar's first serving of Aventinus on tap is still there, and aside from the growing rack of empty 3 liter Duvel bottles on the wall, the bar is exactly the same.

The problem is that even though the Toronado hasn't changed in the past decade, I have.

I still love the beer - 46 well selected taps (though I wish they would rotate some of the taps more often - I love De Koninck, but there are other beers that should occasionally take that slot) and a bottle list that is beyond compare in this city and possibly in the country. I've gone there with judges from the Great American Beer Festival and been able to stump them with flavors they couldn't attribute to a specific beer style, let alone a brewery. I love the fact that Dave leased the space to an ex-Bartender to start Rosamunde. The festivals (Barleywine, Strong Beer, Belgian Beer, Oktoberfest, Fresh Hop and many more) are always amazing - the barleywine festival becoming one of the seminal barleywine events worldwide.

But as I get older, the music starts to quickly get too loud - and even though I used to be there two or three times a week in the late 90s, now that I am no longer a regular, sometimes I feel like a stranger. Certain new bartenders throw more attitude than necessary, giving non-regulars the stinkeye before reluctantly taking an order - which is a shame for a beer bar that beer lovers make pilgrimages to from all over the world. I'm not saying that you need to be nice, but you need to be respectful of your customers up until they make assholes of themselves.

Yeah, I don't wear t-shirts and ripped jeans any more and I live in a SOMA loft, but the Lower Haight is still in my heart, as is the Toronado.

Still, I would love for them to install a drain in the bathroom so I don't have to wade through the piss on the floor when I have to take a leak.

I never thought I would give a chain sandwich shop a review, let alone a positive one, but since discovering the Prime Rib sub, I'm there three times a month for lunch.

Why do I love the sandwich so? I think the secret ingredient is crack. Prime rib, sauteed onions, melted cheese and crack. Why else would I finish my regular sized sub and while sitting at my desk in a food coma be wishing that I ordered a large? I'm addicted to this sandwich, and the King Street Quiznos is my pusher.

Yeah, the Cabo chicken sandwich with sliced chicken and avocado is good, and the Italian sub is nice when you're craving a hint of cappicola. But forget about these sandwiches and make your way to the Prime Rib, and if you're there with a vegetarian, order two to make up for the one he or she won't be having.

The minute this sandwich goes off the menu, Quiznos goes back down to two stars - so if you value your four stars, DON'T GET RID OF THIS SANDWICH!

For over a decade, I've been going to Orale Orale for excellent chimichangas, fantastic margaritas and some of the best salsa in town. I wouldn't ever give away the secret of the margarita-to-go, but since the cat is out of the bag already, I'll just go ahead and sing its praises. Many times, my team would head out to Orale for lunch and spend a quiet afternoon at our desks sipping on our innocuous soda cups filled with the magical lime and tequila elixir. Sure, we could have been busted, but then the management would have to stop doing take out margaritas as well.

For years, Orale Orale was the great equalizer - from management down to us lowly grunts, we would sit side by side with salsa laden chips in one hand and margaritas in the other.

It's an Embarcadero Center legend and worth a visit for lunch or a very early dinner.

Whenever I need some esoteric cooking implement, I always head over to Sur La Table, and rarely, if ever, am I disappointed. German bag-clips for sealing cereal bags? Yep - and in three sizes. Japanese Slicky for grinding sesame seeds? Check. New England crocks for storing all of my utensils? Check (ordered and held for me for a month when I was still living in Germany and waiting for a business trip to bring me back to the states to pick it up).

The only problem is that every time I go there, I end up getting something - a citrus press here, a silicone basting brush there. The only point off is because of their house-brand All Clad knockoffs. I picked up an 8 inch stainless steel frying pan, and the weight balance is so off, that if you don't put it JUST RIGHT on the gas burners of my stove without anything in it, it flips over - not something I want with a red hot pan.

When I lived in Germany, I used a great comic service out of Berlin called Black Dog Comics. I sent Dirk, the owner, a list of the books I read and the indie writers I followed, and every three or four weeks, I would get a package in my mailbox with about a dozen comics. Not only did he get the few mainstream things I read, but he was able to get all of the indie books (and some of the back issues I missed).

Black Dog was great because I didn't have the time to manage all of my subscriptions... and he never missed a book, ever.

When I moved back to the city, I thought I would be able to visit my old standby, Comix Experience, every week or two, but the fates conspired to keep that from happening - which makes their subscription system impossible to manage as it requires regular visits to get the monthly order form and to send it in.

But when I visited James at Isotope, I was pleasantly surprised to get the sort of service that I had become accustomed to in Germany. Over the next few weeks, I funneled all of my regular books over to him, and since then, regardless of if I showed up once a week or once every two months, every book was waiting for me - including special orders, graphic novels and everything in between. On many occasions, I've picked up a number 3 of a series and asked if he could find the first two issues I missed, and like clockwork, the next time I came in, the back issues were waiting for me.

Not only is James a great shop owner, a Mac user and Yelper, but personally turned me on to Jade (the multi-level bar up the street) and hooked me up with a shifter card for drinks at Sauce. James runs a comic shop that hardcore comic geeks and the occasional funny book reader can feel comfortable going to.

For Indie comics and graphic novels, Comix Experience is legendary in San Francisco.

For years, I lived blocks away from the store and was able to stop in each week to pick up my books, and more importantly, get the newsletter.

The newsletter, actually a multi-page booklet, had reviews of upcoming comics and an order form which listed most of the popular comics on it. As a subscriber, I would fill out which comics I wanted, turn in the form and then the comics would be pulled every week.

However, when I moved back from Europe this time, I didn't end up in the Lower Haight, instead moving near the ballpark. This in itself made going all the way out to Divisadero a pain in the backside, but adding in a new job that requires a good amount of travel made it almost impossible to ensure I would even make it into the store more than once a month, making it difficult to ensure I would get the newsletter each month to fill out the form in time.

Because of this, I cancelled my account.

If your schedule allows weekly visits, or you just need a quick indie fix, you could do much worse than Comix Experience.

After seeing the glowing reviews from some Yelpers I really have come to respect, I had to ask myself why Oola never made its way onto my culinary radar.

Now I know why... it's because Oola is THE RESTAURANT THAT FLAVOR FORGOT (cue ominous music).

I mean, Oola didn't really do anything wrong - except for that horrible slaw. I mean, what the hell were they thinking and how the hell can you screw slaw up that bad? It's just shredded carrots in a light salad cream! People who've never made a slaw in their life could make a better slaw than this. I'm no fan of slaw, but come on. Really.

Anyway, as I was saying, aside from the slaw, they didn't do anything really wrong, but that isn't to say that they did anything right in the kitchen. Take, for example, the Caesar Salad. This salad had such potential because they not only used anchovies in the dressing, but also included two fillets. However, the white anchovies lent little flavor to the dish, and even less salt. The chef was heavy handed with the dressing, which was close to being good, but tasted more like an aioli than a true Caesar dressing. With some of the dressing scraped off and a healthy hit of salt, the flavor improved significantly.

That's when I realized that the chef was just too scared of his diners - choosing to underseason and dramatically undersalt everything. In an attempt to make something that would appeal to everybody, they end up making something totally lackluster and ultimately forgettable.

This, in itself, confused me when I finally bit into one of the ribs that everybody seemed raved about. Even the people at the table next to us were waxing philosophic about the "best ribs they ever had"... so again, I had high hopes. However, the ribs just weren't interesting. I've made better Asian-style ribs, as have friends of mine. Technically, the Oola ribs were perfect - tender to the point that the meat just falls off of the bone, with a nice caramelization of the sauce. However, the flavor just wasn't there. Adding some salt, pepper and chili while easing up on the honey and hoisin would have helped. Not being afraid to make something bold would have helped more. Even the sauteed spinach - technically perfect, was bland and underseasoned. Salt and pepper helped after the fact, but you can't correct this dramatic of an underseasoning job once the food has left the pan.

For $50 a head, I expect much better. I don't want my lemonade to be warm in the glass when served - take out the bar spoon and give it a stir with the ice in the glass before bringing it to the table.

Honestly, I'd rather have had a bad meal than something just so disappointingly unforgettable.