Yeh F.'s Profile

A waste of $4.50 on free tickets to VAMPS that I won at fanime.

$1.50 for the two bottles of water they confiscated at the door.
$3.00 for making me coat check my bag because I had a "professional camera" (DSLR) and only "digital cameras" are allowed.

If you're gonna coat check my damn bag then don't grab and throw my water away without warning.  Also, when you do that to people, I'm not gonna pay $5 for your water inside.

Also, be consistent on the photography rules.
1) The MC actually said no *flash* photography allowed for the band, despite what your sign and security guy said.  Get it straight which it's supposed to be.
2) If flash photography is not allowed, then it makes even less sense to force people with DSLRs to coat check those given those are the type of camera that can have the big ass lenses that don't require flash in the first place.

Fire your idiot security.  Or management.

You know what I'll always be reminded of when I think about Jean-Georges?

The fly.  Specifically, the fly on my friend's plate.  Ok, it was a very small fly.  And we were done.  But still.  A fly.  At such an expensive restaurant!

Well ok, we were only there for lunch, so it wasn't that pricey.  $14/plate minimum 2 plates per person.  And $8 dessert.  It's like Dine About Town prices (this is an SF thing I think), except they have it every day for lunch!

Food-wise the presentation was great.  As for the taste itself... several of the dishes had a sour taste to it, but not in a bad way.  Perhaps that's the secret ingredient for restaurants to charge about $100/person for dinner.  I may never know.

Service was probably what you'd expect from restaurants at this price range.  In other words, no complaints.  They did try to coat check us at first but we were able to keep them on us (all my stuff was in there).

Still, we agreed this was the best place out of all the places we ate in our week in NY.

I only live a block away and have been reading about it on Yelp, but it was only tonight that I decided to actually go in and take a look.

I think the first thing I noticed was that the restaurant was not as dark as I had expected and somewhat noisier.  Also, the crowd was a lot younger than I'd expected from the other reviews, but then again, it IS Feb. 14.

Came in at the same time as another couple, no reservations, at 9PM, and I think we were all seated within 15 minutes, which wasn't bad.

The complimentary bread was typical for restaurants of this type, but I liked the butter.  For the main course, I got a rack of lamb, which was one of the specials.  It came with 8 pieces of lamb and some potatoes and cucumbers.  It's a good thing I didn't order the full special which would've come with soup/salad and pasta, or I don't think I could've finished it all.  But I do want to try those, maybe next time (I was also sick, so my appetite wasn't fully there)

Special things of note:

The waiter noticed my Cal jacket and said Go Bears! when I went in, and also as I left. +$1 tip
He made more conversation and jokes than 99% of the restaurants I've been to, which was great!  More waiters should do that.  +$1 tip
He didn't make a comment or stare at my very... untraditional date.  +$1 tip

So I think I ended up overtipping by 20% or so.  But I do expect to go back in the future, preferably with a more traditional date so I consider it a good investment (sorry, weighted companion cube, but I do expect my date to speak to me...)

Professional and they know what their stuff.  Went there last week to buy a binocular and let me try out the binoculars (settled on the Orion Ultraview 10x50 WA).  Also have a lot of good astronomy books that are about $5 less than the list price.  Yeah it's always cheaper online but the books they stock are the ones that are generally recommended and you can flip through them.

Also have a lot of accessories like red LED flashlights (to preserve your night vision).  Only bad thing is they were out of stock for some of their items, but you could always order from their online store as well.

Edit: It's closed

From what I remember on a previous visit, it's located at a convenient location (Great Mall), the guy was very friendly, and it wasn't a very big store, but had enough of the bigger euro games to be a reputable gaming store.  Not many other choices around this area anyhow.

4 stars for the LOL factor of BUKKAKE ramen
1 star for the honest practice of including the tax in the printed price (unlike the rest of America)
-2 stars for only having 2 slices of meat in the ramen

We liked the Kuro ramen

2 stars for having 2 songs I could/wanted to sing.

But let me explain.  If you like Chinese music, this place is fine for you.  Average selection of English songs as well.

But if you want Japanese music, forget it.  They have 500 Japanese songs, about 495 of those are from at least 20 years ago.  You know because it's all these songs about sake, love, and random Japanese places.  Even the two songs I managed to pick were from my childhood, one with English romanization, and the other only showed the current line, and was a little slow so there's no way you could read ahead.

Given that it's new, the toilet is still very clean and wonderful to use.  The wall tiles also have some lines from a Tang poem which I found amusing given the context of the bathroom.

Price for 9 people at the grand opening discount for 3.5 hours was about $135.  That includes a $3 food/drink fee that you must spend, which they get from a store downstairs.  Same practice as Music Tunnel really, but it's also remarkably overpriced, especially when you notice the $2.75 water at the karaoke place is $1 downstairs, and most other things are almost $4.  They also gave us a card with a 10% discount as we left.

They open around 3PM on most days (I think 2PM on Saturday) and are open for about 12 hours thereafter.

I still prefer Do Re Mi at Japantown for the large selection of recent Japanese songs, or Music Tunnel for having a well-rounded selection for everyone.

This is by far my favorite karaoke place.

It might be yours too, if you like to sing anime songs.  Of all the karaoke places I've been to in the bay area, this one has THE most recent anime songs.

We're talking Suzumiya Haruhi, Rozen Maiden, Bleach (I'm still shocked that Music Tunnel did not have Ichirin no Hana), Shakugan no Shana, and so on.  They also have some of the older classics that are no longer in the new systems in places like Music Tunnel like Evangelion or Rurouni Kenshin songs.

However, their system out of all of them is one of the worst.  A huge number of thick books only work on the old system, and they're pretty sticky as well (eww), and songs are listed only by titles.  Pretty much no songs had their actual MVs as well, it was always just looping animation with korean text.

In some ways this is actually better than the all-digital systems in the other KTV places though, since they tend to show more information for each listing, like what shows songs are from, but a combination would probably be best.

We don't drink, so we had no problems on that count.

Price-wise ~1.5 hours for 6 people was $7/person.

Given all that, I'd still give it a 4 for being the only place that has actually satisfied my karaoke wishes in years in the bay area.  If you aren't an anime fan though, Music Tunnel is probably better for you.

We ended up waiting 45 minutes-1 hour before we were finally seated.  Fried soft shell crab was excellent, as was the spanish mackeral sashimi.  Ramen was ok, potstickers were bad, and there was this other thing the girls seemed to like but I thought was too sour.  Oh, and good seaweed salad.  Service wasn't really there though, even though we had been forced to sit at the counter.  Eric claimed their seafood wasn't really fresh though, which may be because of the 85 health inspection score they got, 8 points lost for moderate health risks due to food temperature related problems.

They did only charge us 15% gratuity (their menu says 18% for 5+).  But I still hate any amount of forced gratuity when the service is bad.  Compare this with Le Bistro, which we'd gone to earlier the same day.  Great service but he didn't include the tip (even though it was stated as 18% for 6+) so we could decide for ourselves.

The food was rich. The lamb was rare. Portions small (typical). And service was very good.

Most of us had the One Dish Wonder which was soup/salad + meat (lamb)/fish(halibut) + a dessert.

Friends thought their lobster brisque ($10) was way too rich so had a hard time finishing it. I liked my Asparagus cream soup though.

Price didn't really affect portion size, as even a friend who ordered a $21 duck had pretty small portions for the meat.

Dessert was great.

Service was very attentive, with the guy peeking at us to see if we were done pretty often.  Of course, we were the only people there for lunch so that might've helped.

They serve fois gras here too if that matters to you.