Michael D.'s Profile

I've been here a couple times now and enjoyed it both times. There are always plenty of people there for lunch, a testament to their local popularity.

I really liked the fried rice. I definitely recommend a pork and kimchi combo. We've been pleased with their soups, too. The Pho isn't bowl-you-over amazing, but it's solid.

They prepare a lot of the food from scratch, and that makes a difference. The prices are reasonable and the portions are hefty. And I like their iced coffee -- some assembly required because it comes out with the press still dripping.

The ambience is nice. Good music, and the owner has quite a bit of his record collection on display.

And last but not least, the staff is super friendly. Our waiter joked around and was helpful. His father, the owner, got into a chat about a few different topics and brought some complementary pat bing su to the table. Stand-up people.

Sakura has been a nice fall-back Japanese restaurant for me for near on a decade now. Nothing here is so drop-dead amazing that I feel the need to tell all my friends, but I've never been disappointed with the taste and quality of anything I've ordered.

My favorite right now is the nabeyaki udon. I love the tempura green beans, and when I'm in the mood for soup, it's really one of the best options nearby.

Lunch specials a good deal, and you end up with a lot of good food for not too much dough.

The wait staff has always been helpful and friendly.

And, of course, they have these great tea cups. It is a cute poem, but using the Chinese characters for different seafood which are homonyms for the words they want to convey.

I was invited here by friends, so I had no idea what I was getting into. I knew it was a buffet for Sunday brunch, but that was about it.

Sunday turns out to be an overpriced champagne brunch. The problem is, I am allergic to champagne, so I cannot take advantage of the one thing that might make this brunch cost effective.

But then maybe the food would make up for that, right? Wrong.

The breakfast and pasta bars have nothing to make them noteworthy. They aren't using some special ingredients or anything, so it's just the same thing you could do yourself at home with ingredients bought at the supermarket. The waffles were alright, but they sit in a tray, so they aren't going to be crispy the way waffles ought to be.

As for all the meats available, they weren't any good either. They weren't horrible, mind you ... er, I take that back, the bacon was horrible. The hand-sliced beef was too done, as was the fried fish. Then one of my friends points out -- it is crab season, so good, fresh crab is cheap right now, but they are using frozen crab. Seriously?

Well, at least the pineapple was fresh. And I was there with friends, so the company was excellent.

If the buffet had been about $10 to $15, then I would have given it another star, because it would have met my expectations. Instead, we walked away paying $44 per person (and $2 for parking).

Oh, and why does this place have "Shanghai" in its name? I would have killed for some Chinese food after eating there.

A restaurant like Craft only gets one chance. You are paying a premium to eat at a restaurant like this, and if they don't perform, you aren't going to go back.

Service was excellent, the mixed drinks were superb. ... But the food was just not worth the cost. I really understand what you are doing, but it just didn't wow my mouth the way I expected. Our meat was just a little too overdone, and perhaps not enough salt on the venison to bring out the flavor. The best side was the cabbage and bacon risotto, which even then was a little on the salty side. The mushrooms -- man, I'm a sucker for mushrooms -- but I could make better at home.

So, when all is said and done, with a bill weighing in at more than $100 a person, you really need to do better than this.

The service is good here and the bread they bring out is tasty, but that's about the best thing I can say.

I've eaten here a few time over the years, and I think what happens is I forget about the last time and remember the first time -- back when the mushroom soup was good.

The problem is that the food is priced much more expensive than I think it really ought to be. It is on par with or slightly more than Cafe Brasil next door, but the food isn't any where as good. The meat that comes out is OK, but not really that interesting. The milanesa I had last time was tougher than I want to eat. But what really drags things down are the sides. The rice, in particular, is completely bland and uninteresting. It reminds me of a sub-par pilaf at a Midwestern diner.

Oh, and there is some kind of tit-for-tat between them and the neighbors about parking, so be careful which spot you park in. I think the deal is that the south-facing spots are theirs and the north-facing ones are for Cafe Brasil. The staff will warn you if they get a chance, but just make sure you don't get towed.

A night at Rustic Canyon is a good night.

My starter was the crispy polenta, and I cannot say enough good stuff about that dish. With an egg and an amazing mushroom sauce, I was off to a good start with my meal here. And the crisp didn't fade as I ate the dish ... even the last few bites retained their crunch even though they'd been sitting in sauce while I worked on the plate.

I ordered the quail for my main dish. The biggest surprise was that the dish was smaller than the appetizer, but that's OK, because it left room for desert. It was a great dish as well, with confit bacon and tart cherries making for a great balance of tastes.

And then we topped off everything with fresh donuts. They weren't excessively sugary, and neither was the hot chocolate used for dipping. The donuts were light on the inside and about the size of a racquet ball - much larger than I was expecting. They really rank at the top off L.A. donuts, only really having the green tea donuts at Gyenari as competition.

Another positive note about this restaurant: most of their beer are Belgian or Belgian-inspired. They had two local beers on tap plus a Belgian. Then there were plenty of bottles to choose from. My only complaint is that the list was hidden behind all the wines, which made it hard to find without the waitress' help.

I'll definitely look forward to returning to this place in the future.

I don't frequent Big Boy restaurants much anymore, and usually only in situations where I'm out in the boonies. A trip to Vegas falls into that category when you cannot wait for lunch.

But I have to bless this restaurant with an important achievement: introducing me to homeopathic vegetables. What's that, you ask? That's when you boil vegetables down to such a state that they still retain the form of a vegetable (in this case carrots and broccoli), but there is none of the flavor or nutrition of a vegetable. Like homeopathy, it was so much fakery.

To make things even sadder, there were technically three vegetables: broccoli, orange carrots, and yellow carrots. I looked at the yellow vegetable with wonder when it was laid in front of me, surprised at something distinct this far from civilization. But then I couldn't tell by the taste what they were. When I asked the waiter, he had to ask his manager to solve the mystery.

The rest of the meal was as expected. Chicken-fried steak is what it is, though certainly saltier here than it needs to be.

Eat here only because you have to make the sad choice between starving and indigestion.

I've been pretty happy with this place so far. Their one failing has been slight mess-ups on my order, in particular not leaving out something I asked to be left out. But they were ready and fast to fix the problem, which is fine by me.

My top recommendation at this point is the fish kabobs. I was nervous about ordering them, because it's the kind of thing that most places screw up and I wasn't in the mood for dry fish. The mahi-mahi turned out to be perfect -- a balance of char and juiciness that didn't need to be dipped in the garlic sauce (but that didn't stop me).

The plates all come with sides that I've found pleasing. The hummus and baba ghanoush need to be finished. The salad is simple but tasty. I also have to give them props for not putting too much rice on the plate, a mistake I come across at many middle-eastern restaurants.

The beer selection isn't huge, but did include Fat Tire and Blue Moon the nights I've been there. Of course, I've deferred drinking beer so far because the jalab turned out to be worth trying -- a little sweet, but then every jalab I've ever had has been.

The only parting complaint I can think of is the small pita bits they serve as a free appetizer. The sauce has a great flavor, but the chips are a little too flimsy to get much of it on there, so we kept ending up with broken little pieces of chips in there. Not a crime, mind you, but a touch frustrating.

My rating is really for the weekend Mexican food. I have been there during the week, when they have their kinda-overpriced sandwiches, and I was really unimpressed. I hadn't really intended to go back, but my wife wanted to check it out now that we knew it was open on weekends.

And the weekends are given over to excellent Mexican food. The menu is simple, with a mix-and-match approach to meat and how you want it delivered. The pork had great flavor, and in an amazingly rare experience for me, I didn't have to modify anything in the burrito. The serving is hearty, in part because they use brown rice -- I only ate half of it. It also came with a simple and tasty salad.

I also have to mention the iced tea, which has an excellent flavor, obviously infused with a hint of something. When I don't feel the need to add sugar, as was the case here, it's a clear sign of a good product.

We'll definitely be heading back here for weekend lunches in the future. Show owner comment »

I should probably leave it alone, maybe it was a fluke, but food poisoning while on vacation, leaving me in bed in a hotel room for a full day was not pleasant. Oh yeah, and not being able to eat more than a few bites at a wedding reception the following night. My first warning sign should have been seeing the bus boy leave a toilet stall and go back to work without stopping at the sink.

I'm not sure what did me in. I order pork chops, which come with a fried banana. Seemed like a good idea. The banana was tasty, at least. The salad wasn't even worth touching -- I think I picked out a carrot or two and then just figured I'd leave room for the main dish when it came. I don't think I've had a worse pork chop, and that's before the misery started at 2 a.m. It was unbelievably dry and tasteless.

I think the rest of my party would be hard pressed to give this place anything higher than a two. Their dishes were merely OK.