brian w.'s Profile

Here's a tip: go across the street to McDonald's.  The food is just as good, it's half the price, and it's about 40 times faster.

With a plethora of options in Menlo Park and neighboring Palo Alto, I really don't see a reason why I should waste another 2 hour lunch at the BBC.

I don't Yelp much anymore, but I'll probably stop in to say hi when I have something I feel is important to say.  So, expect to see lots of ones and fives from me a few times a year.

Like most guys, I enjoy car shopping.  Love doing the research, love test driving the cars (especially reaching for ones out of my range), but I f'n hate, HATE car sales people.  Dealing with them makes me feel dirty.  I'm sure most of them are fine folks off the lot, but the whole "if I don't fuck you over I'm just fucking myself" dance gets really old really fast.

I thought dealing with them over email would save me the trouble and grease stains.  Not so fast!  Nowadays you're expected to check every dealer in a 1000 mile radius for the best deal.  Trying to get a dealer to commit to a price over email is worse than pulling teeth.  Worse yet, most of them try to get you to call them.

After dealing with about 40 dealers over 2 days, I got sick of the whole mess and emailed Cartelligent.  I got connected to Barbara Vong, told her what I was looking for, told her the best deal that I'd found so far, and she said I'll get back to you tomorrow.

Tomorrow comes, and she's found a deal that topped the best deal I found by over $100/mo (I lease).  Done. That more than paid for the Cartelligent fee ($500).

A few weeks later, one of the dealers I contacted got back to me and offered me a better price.  Sent that along to Barbara, and she got her dealer to top it again.  Score.

Lastly, before I picked up the car today, she tells me that we qualify for a $500 credit for Audi owners who defect from BMW.  That's more a function of timing, but whatever.  It's icing on the cake.

So, guys, here's what I recommend.  Do your homework, get the experience of looking for the car you want.  Dream a little.  Enjoy the process.  And when you want to commit, give Barbara a call.

My Quest for a Decent Massage in San Francisco™ took me from Burke Williams at the mall, to the spa at the Intercontinental, to Spa Bar on 3rd, to some hippie yoga commune on California -- and it has officially ended at Suchada.

My massage criteria are pretty simple: 1) I need to feel better, not worse, 2) the environs should be clean and relaxing, 3) i'd rather not make an additional mortgage payment for a mere 50 minutes of therapy?

My issue with the fancy spas is mostly around point 3 above -- while the facilities are awesome, and cucumber water is a treat, paying $130 for a 50 minute massage is the restaurant equivalent of getting a small piece of fish as your entree, but all the bread and water  you can scarf down.

Hippie Yoga Commune?  It was great for 1) and 3) but smelled like B.O.  Massive FAIL for point #2.

Suchada goes FTW on all 3 counts - $60 for a 60 minute massage, which involves a lot of stretching as well, leaving your whole body feeling loose, limber, and alive.  As an additional bonus, they give you a little peasant outfit to wear (so you're not butt nekkid, I'm shy), and you're not covered from head to toe in lavender oil or whatever when you leave.  I prefer not to smell like an herb garden.

Unless you're really into getting the crap beat out of you, go with a female masseuse  -- the guys are wicked strong and "medium" pressure to them is "torture" to me.

Hello Yelp, it's been awhile.  

I haven't written on Yelp because I can't really be bothered anymore, but I consider this a Public Service Announcement.

So it's a gorgeous sunny Friday.  Great day to try a new place, have lunch under the sun, sit out by the water.

We roll up at about 11:45, there's one or two tables occupied.  We get our food and drink orders in by 11:55.

Fast forward to 12:45, the first dish comes out.  That guy finishes his lunch before the second to last dish comes out.  The last one to be served decides to simply cancel his order.

Oh, and the appetizers come out at 1:15.

But was the food worth waiting for?  Let me give you examples: one guy decided to give his dish to the pigeons and seagulls.  Another guy's mouth was full of blood from the undercooked chicken.

(Point of comparison: I roasted an entire chicken in 60 minutes last night, and it was fully cooked.  There's no reason why a chicken wing should be bloody after the same amount of time.)

Sorry Carmen - we gave it a shot, and you blew it, spectacularly.

alright, that's it.  i was gonna let this one go, but three strikes and you're f'n out, bristol farms.

strike one: some (probably not all) of your cashiers are retards.  if you're going to weigh produce, MOVE THE PRODUCE OFF THE SCALE for each new item.  do i need to explain why?  when you don't, the weight of the items add up.  the scale doesn't have a visual ID tagging system that knows the difference between the asian apple pear and the celery.  and if we're going to point that out to you, don't be a bitch about it, just fix it.

strike two: i opened up the cherry tomatoes that we bought YESTERDAY and they're all covered in mold.  looked just fine yesterday! WTF happened in the last 24 hours?  yes, i refrigerated them.  

strike three: if this is going to be a gourmet, upscale grocery with gourmet, upscale prices, then i expect gourmet, upscale quality.  lower your damn prices, or i'll just shop in chinatown.  veggies there have a short shelf life but at least i'm paying only 1/5 of the price.

sheesh.

yo-gurt-too-ee?  seriously?  that name's a mouthful.

branding aside, my major difficulty with all the fro-yo joints cropping up is distinguishing one from the other.  what sets yogurtouile apart from the others, i don't know.  i had the original tart yogurt, which wasn't tart at all.  on the plus side, they had squirt bottles to add chocolate, honey, raspberry etc flavoring on top of the otherwise bland yogurt.  so there's not a whole lot that makes yogurt-too-ee stand out in my mind, aside from the incredible name.

the one yogurt stand that does stand out to me is yocup in the rincon center - it's not the product, they're in a commodity business.  But the people that work there either own the place or are really well trained, because they're genuinely friendly and happy to see you.  so maybe that's the distinguishing characteristic that will bring one yogurt chain above the others.

Suzu is ok.  Given the dearth of top-quality ramen houses in SF (recommendations, anyone? please?), we checked out Suzu on a chilly November night - perfect for a steaming bowl of ramen.

Having been spoled by Ramen Halu in San Jose, and Himawara in San Mateo, Suzu's ramen is a 4 out of 10 I'd say.  Suzu is that girl/guy that you meet in a bar that could go up to a 6 if you drank enuf, thus putting her/him in the "i won't feel too bad about myself tomorrow morning" category.

Dropping the human mating dance analogy, Suzu's ramen noodles were pretty good.  Broth, meh.  Kinda bland.  And toppings?  Non-existent.  But, their vegetarian croquettes were fresh and yummy, which helped fill me up.

Would I go back to Suzu?  Maaybe.  Certainly if I didn't have to wait for a table.  And definitely if I was trashed.

three word review:

yech....don't bother.

here's an update:

food, no good.

and another update:

dumplings, no taste?

promise, last update:

five happiness better.  
(http://www.yelp.com/bi...)

After years and years of searching, I've finally found my hair nirvana.  Who knew that it would be down the street from work (that's just straight up bonus points).

For you non-asian guys, let me tell you, it takes a lot of work to look this good.  (Sarcasm alert).  No but seriously, asian male hair is a pain in the a$$...first of all, it grows straight out, like a porcupine or fully loaded pin cushion.  Secondly, it grows funky, like the way plants grow toward the sun but less predictable than that.  And lastly, it grows like a mothereffing weed.  Within 2 weeks of getting a cut, I'm looking like Sonic the Hedgehog again.

Now I've tried it all.  Shaving it all the way down.  Supercuts.  Great clips for hair.  None of those worked, and paying $25 every 2 weeks for a crap haircut that grew out like a briar patch was no fun at all.  For the last 2 years or so, I found Willow salon, also in SOMA, but my regular person moved to Austin, so I was SOL again.

Cue Grasshopper - since I was looking for a new place to go, I thought I'd give it a try since it's just a block or two away.  And I'm happy to say I scored on the first try - the folks there are very professional, friendly, well-trained, and finally SOMEONE has figured out a way for me to go about 6 weeks per haircut (with a clean-up mixed in).  I figure I'm saving money by getting my hair cut less often, and I feel better about paying the money.

And if you've never gotten your head massaged with peppermint shampoo, well.  That's worth the money, right there.

So this is kind of an odd review for me, since I've never actually eaten at Pancho Villa Taqueria.  The place could be the next Ritz-Carlton, or your local dumpster, and I'd have no idea.  So this review's purely about food.

For 2 weeks in a row, my company's ordered Wednesday lunch from PVT via http://waiter.com.  It certainly isn't cheap, with their 15% markup, but what you're getting is 20-odd burritos made fresh and hot to order, labeled ACCURATELY for the owner, boatloads of pico de gallo (spelling??) and a monstrous bag of chips that just came out of the fryer (by the time it arrives the white bag is completely translucent).

2 weeks in a row now, PVT has been a big hit - and to keep 20 people with 20 opinions happy, that's no small feat.

Here's my tip: order 2 tacos instead of a burrito.  It's half the price and probably the same amount of food...on the tacos, the meat to topping ratio is heavily weighted toward meat.  good stuff.