brian w.'s Profile

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.

i'm having a hard time deciding what to rate farmerbrown.  it's a little ironic, because i had a hard time deciding what to order there.

i'm a sucker for soul food - i mean, who doesn't love a menu of fried, saucy, ooey, gooey, sticky, spicy items?  i changed my mind from the jambalaya to the cornmeal catfish to the ribs (served with onion rings) to the chicken fried steak.  i went, in the end, with the chicken fried steak.

all in all, the food was solid but not excellent.  i prefer elite cafe on fillmore, if only because they serve their biscuits piping hot and i'm a REAL sucker for warm biscuits.  it would've been nice, also, to be able to see my food - it's so dark in there you can barely tell chicken fried steak from veggies.  that kind of light level works fine at bars for making the girls look "mysterious" but not for my dinner.

a plus for the music - unlike most places,they don't blast it, just loud enough to pick out the beats.  and the guy was playing a pretty darn good selection of hip-hop too.

a plus for the service - our team skillfully navigated a big party table of 17, so a big plus for them.

a minus for the restrooms - single use, and too much "bar" and not enough "restaurant."  i have a simple criteria for restaurant restrooms - i expect to leave feeling cleaner than when i entered.  don't care as much with bar restrooms.

all in all, i'd go back.  maybe if i were having dinner with my art student friends (of which i currently have none). oh well.

i played this course on saturday, and the most amusing part of it was listening to the reaction from the 2some behind us:

"whoah..."
"what the..."
"where do i hit it?"
"holy SHIT."

yeah, there's some holes at chabot where as soon as you roll up your first reaction is going to be panic.  like the 150 yard par 3 9th hole...which  drops off a cliff and plays closer to 100.

or the 17th where you're basically hitting at a hill - there used to be a kalidescope to the side that you could check to see if you'd kill anyone on the other side.

or the 650 yard par 6 18th - the only hole i've played that has switchbacks.

chabot is all about placement...put the ball in the right place, let the hill take it, and enjoy the extra 50-100 yards of roll.  

put it in the wrong place, and pull another ball from the sleeve.