Sam M.'s Profile

Okay Otaez, you are no longer on notice, because you have pupusas and they rock my face.  A lot of places nearby pretend to have pupusas and then do not.  Or maybe I come too late in the day.  I'm not sure.  Anyway, Otaez has never let me down.  I agree with Hella A regarding Otaez making me want to "stuff my fat face" with a fried pastry filled with fried pork rinds.

My friends and I were once talking about different foods that would prevent us from ever becoming vegetarians.  The answers were diverse:  peking duck, pork rinds, Costco hotdogs.  You know, I know a lot of very different people.

I think my answer at the time was something lame like "peanut butter and bacon sandwiches" but seriously, bite me bacon, because since then I have discovered STEAK TORTA.  OH MAN.  It's a fried piece of skirt steak on a toasted roll with griddle-toasted cheese, refried beans, some kind of vegetables, and like four whole avocados.  And it costs LESS THAN FIVE DOLLARS.

I really wish I had some cred and could recommend something from one of the nearby hole-in-the-walls more than this one, which is just slightly more corporate.  No, I've been to most of them and Steak Torta just owns the crap out of all of them.  If other taquerias are helicopters, Steak Torta just smashed a police car into them.  Because he was out of bullets.

This feels like a really low rating but I only gave Blue Front next door three stars and I need to convey that this was much, much worse than Blue Front.  Sorry.  Nothing personal, proprietors of the Squat & Gobble Cafe 2.

I got the salmon sandwich because I had eaten a really good salmon sandwich once at the Crepevine on Fillmore, and, you know, doesn't it seem like Squat & Gobble and Crepevine are the same place?  So the one at Crepevine was a huge piece of salmon bursting with mayo and capers.  The one here was just a tiny anemic fillet of nasty off-tasting salmon on a tiny bun with awful tomato and lettuce.  It was really atrocious.  I ate all of it, and my chili side dish, and some of Jeff J's homefries, and some of Sam's Mom's waffle, but, you know, I'm kind of a fatty, and I was really hungry after being prideful out in the sun all day.

Also, I hope I don't sound like a pretentious douche, but they sprinkled italian parsley on top on my chili.  It looks like cilantro but it is not the same thing.  Water looks just like sulfuric acid, but it would not be smart to serve your customers a pitcher full of sulfuric acid.

Oh, and one more thing--it was nice to sit out on their patio, but the wall I was seated next to smelled really moldy.  Bad job, Squat & Gobble.  Maybe it is personal now.

What is everyone's problem with the damn picture?  "Oh no!  They took my picture even though I asked them not to do that!  Two stars."  Are you a vampire?  Haven't you ever been on a boat before?  They do that on like every boat cruise ever.

I think I paid about $35 per person for a night cruise with Sam's Mom and it was GREAT!  The night tour gets you a free audio guide, but even if you're there during the daytime I'd suggest getting an audio guide anyway.  It does an awesome job leading you through the surprisingly small prison and telling you about all the historic events that transpired there.  "See these cracks in the ground?  That's where the marines were dropping in grenades when renegade convicts were holding the prison guards hostage."  Then they have special stuff going on like informative videos and cell lock-ins and live storytelling.

As far as touristy scheisse goes, it's not quite the Mapparium, but it's definitely up there.  You will inevitably have people visiting you when you are in the Bay Area, why not take them here?

Oh man, DELICIOUS smoked pork and vegetables for five dollars and twenty-five cents.  This rocked.  

They were also very accommodating regarding Mitra L's request to add additional vegetables to the spicy eggplant dish.   Seriously, who wants a whole plate full of eggplant anyway?  Such a lame texture.  Healthy yelpers you are welcome here.  Also fatties who like pork, also very welcome.

I only wish they were open after drag shows at the Cinch...  oh well, I guess I must be content with Bob's Donuts.

So it's basically Tartine, in that they make delicious baked goods and sandwiches and there is a huge line, except Tartine's sandwiches cost two dollars more, are three times bigger, and don't make you say, "Hmm, this is delicious but I could probably have made this at home."

Sam's Mom got beignets were kind of cold and lame but the jam was delicious!  Also today they had a special on beignets:  one dollar each, or two for two dollars.  Sam's Mom related the story of our neighbor's yard sale where she was selling LP's for 25 cents or three for a dollar.  You know she's got cred because she was talking about LP's and that's old school.

Speaking of money, $15 got us a small ricotta sandwich, two beignets, and 8 oz of apple juice.  Not a super cost effective endeavor.

These guys are GREAT!  Some fat dude sat on my glasses and not only did Focal Point fix them for only $5 the next morning, the cashier also made a Price is Right Showcase Showdown reference while he was making my change.  Then it turns out they didn't fix them all the way, so I took them back again this morning and they fixed them again free of charge.  Also I stole a Highlights magazine from them.

I guess I should be mad that they messed up my glasses the first time, but seriously, Showcase Showdown AND Highlights.  It's like the optometrist that would exist in Heaven.

Hung suggested that I give this one star lower than its Solano counterpart because of the absence of a hot cashier.  I am actually going to give it two stars lower because some of the food we ate was seriously awful, which has never happened on Solano.  Both the chickpea curry (channa masala maybe?) and potato naan were oversalted and overspicy, but somehow flavorless.  Like, onions, chickpeas, curry powder, they all have flavors, but here they all just played backup singers to salt and burning.

Other than that the veggie korma was actually pretty good and the saag daal was just okay.  $6 curries are cool, but yo, I'm probably not gonna press my luck here anymore when 60% of the food was inedible on my first visit.

There was someone playing piano earlier in the night and then he stopped, and then someone said I could play piano, and they went and checked at the bar, and the bartender was like "I don't care it's not even our piano."  I'm not sure how that works.  Anyway, it turned out to be true because it was padlocked and nobody had the key.  I thought it was pretty nice of them to offer though, and it was a good experience anyway because "ready to play Bohemian Rhapsody" is a good time for me to stop drinking.

So, it was a cool vibe, three stars only because their mixed drinks pretty much do not contain alcohol.  I don't know how much they cost because someone else bought that round, but, yo, if it's more than one dollar it's kind of a ripoff.  Go for one of their 24 draft beers instead.

Also the lock on the men's bathroom is...  unreliable.

I pretty much like Rudy's Can't Fail.  My friend from out of town really wanted to go here.  I was like "Okay, fine, it's pretty much the same as Colonial Park Diner except with hipster waitstaff, but that's cool."  You know.  It's a diner.  They have okay food.  Even the "Combat Mac 'n' Cheese" was not that exciting and it's pretty dire when even macaroni and cheese is not that exciting, because as a culture we are pretty much all "OMG EASY MAC WITH BACON."

Anyway, they are open late and do have good drink specials, and $6 is reasonable for a chocolate Guinness espresso milkshake.  If it's after 10 PM and you are hungry but don't feel like heading all the way down to the Oakland taco trucks, it's a decent choice.