Kevin S.'s Profile
Date
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 695-7800
The Front Porch
Categories:
Southern,
Cajun/Creole
Neighborhood: Bernal Heights
I had pretty much the same sensation here at The Front Porch, but it was newfound disillusionment rather than a bittersweet return home.
Lookie, all my friends said this was a place to get great fried chicken and southern cooking.
Really? Tough, stringy chicken, overfried, greasy, harshly spiced? Honey, that is Northern Fried Chicken. You could get run clean out of the south serving this stuff.
Sweet Tea that was allowed to go sour? That's amateur-hour Yankee crap. We make better sweet iced tea in Northern Ohio, for cripe's sake.
Tough collards, underseasoned everything, and the cardinal sin:
TOUGH, COLD BISCUITS.
I'll give two stars for the mashed potatoes and the macaroni and cheese, both of which needed copious salt and pepper but otherwise were well prepared.
The rest of this meal was a disaster. The leftovers from our ill-advised bucket serving of chicken reeked of harsh spices and grease for a couple of hours after our meal, stinking away in a paper bag, like a bad memory, which is what we have to show for our 80 dollar meal at The Front Porch.
San Francisco, CA 94114
(415) 252-7500
Starbelly
Category:
American (New)
Neighborhood: Castro
I gotta tell you, I feel Mick Jagger after eating at Starbelly. It's famous, but, honestly, what for?
The experience was a bit of a letdown for us after hearing lots of raves from friends and familiy. The food was really average for the price and for the clamor and certainly not something I'd reserve far in advance for.
Some examples: If you're going to feature pizzas on your menu in what has become a top notch pizza town (Delfina, Pizzette 211, Little Star, need I say more?) you need a crust that brings flavor to the party and you need to top it well.
Our server steered us toward the Margharita with prosciutto and arugula added instead of the squash pizza which included black garlic, saying it was the better choice. What came to my table was a lukewarm, average-to-bland pie with tiny, tough little arugula leaves scattered on top, and then too-thick slices of American prosciutto strewn on top of that.
To me, if you're going to serve prosciutto on a pizza, it needs to be thiiiiiinnnnnnn enough to bite through. I don't need to be gnawing the ham off the slice or forced to chew an entire piece of prosciutto with one bite. And why in the world would you not put the meat down on the hot pizza, then add the arugula on top. You want the prosciutto to get a little heat from the pie more so than the arugula. This feels like a pizza made by somebody who doesn't care about pizza.
My companion's spaghetti with bacon was ok, but oversauced and a little too sweet.
We started with dungenees hushpuppies which were also served lukewarm, undersalted, and a tiny portion for the price.
Interior is nice, service is quick and good, but I was disappointed by the lukewarm, bland food.
In this case, I could tell not only at our table but at all those we could see, the fumbling, erratic service we saw over several recent visits had been replaced with careful, congenial, and warm treatment. We were greeted warmly, offered options, our servers and runners who brought us food paid appropriate attention to us.
I also feel like they have warmed up some of the dining room, with better lighting--but maybe it was just a different perspective on my part.
On to the food! While I am sad that the menu-starring cranberry bean and pancetta bigoli has been replaced, the rich duck version is very good. Even better is the fantastic beet salad with an avocado mousse...one of the best salads I've had in months. My companion's bolognese on tagliatelle was spot on and succulent, and we split a secondi of pork in a tomato sauce over creamy polenta that was a true winner.
Thank you Osteria for paying attention, upping or your game, and having the tenacity to stick with it. We will be back...we need good places like this in our neighborhood!
2 Previous Reviews:
-
9/25/2010
Uh Oh.
Service and inconsistency can kill a restaurant's chances, and if Osteria Coppa doesn't focus on service they are going to blow it.
The simplest things are the easiest to train. These are things I learned working at a Big Boy burger joint in Ohio, for cripe's sake.
Diners don't want to be ignored, left sitting. Look at every table nearby when you are offering one table water.
Check back on diners who have just received food, especially when you are just one table away. There could be a problem, the diners could want something more...you're right there, take a moment to ask your guests how their food is.
If you're the manager running the front of the house, move around the entire dining room. Don't spend all your time at that one round table near the kitchen where friends of the management seem always to be sitting--get out and greet other diners, find out how they like the food and service. You've seen me here 6 times, don't you think in one month you could register the fact that I'm already a regular? Pasta Moon figured this out in 4 visits over a much longer period. I'm not asking for royal treatment, but regulars are your backbone.
Water glasses go empty for long long stretches, and the food is sometimes salty so you need water. My partner does not drink and I'm a one glass of wine diner by necessity, and Osteria doesn't have good non-alcoholic choices, other than water.
The host staff are generally unwelcoming, unsure, and unfriendly.
And a word about portion control. I've had your bigoli 3 times and each time the portion size is completely unpredictable. Last night it was TINY compared to the serving given my partner. The fig salad was similarly tiny compared to the generous portion I enjoyed a week ago.
I finished the bigoli in no time and tried several times to flag down our server so I could order a second entree--yes, a second entree in a fine dining establishment, but when you're hungry you are hungry. He made no less than 4 visits to surrounding tables without seeing us, checking on is, or giving a damn. And no other staff member responded to our furious arm waving. What gives?
Look, for 76 bucks for two plates of pasta, one glass of rose, one salad, and one fritto appetizer, we should be eating a reasonable portion of pasta, but one of us left hungry. We should be seeing attentive, welcoming, service, but we finally gave up.
We live an easy walk from Osteria and we've been enthusiastic fans of the place for this first month, but our patience is wearing thin. Good service is as important as good food, and consistency of a good experience trumps all.
Osteria, can you learn and grow fast enough? We're not quite sure we're willing to drop 75 to 100 dollars a visit waiting for you to deliver on your estimable promise. -
9/1/2010
Coppa happens to be my favorite type of salume--salty, perfumed pork product that is heaven on earth when it's done right. It features larger pieces of meat in the sausage than your typical salami or sopressata so you get a more direct taste of the quality of the pork.
So any restaurant named after my favorite sliced meat item has a leg up on the competition, as it were.
Osteria Coppa comes highly touted and had the advantage of taking over the failed Pomaroma's newly renovated space. Good riddance to Pomaroma which seemed like a high school play version of a restaurant (disastrous food, slapstick service). They did one thing right, which was all of the exterior renovation and some of the interior, and Osteria got to rebrand the space, outside and in, and move in with vastly superior cooking chops and hopefully much better service.
Chef Chanan Kamen's pedigree is well documented elsewhere, so let's get right to the food.
We're still in shakedown period here and it does show a little bit, with slamdunk standouts overcoming a few misses. The bigoli pasta with cranberry beans and pancetta and parmigiano reggiano is oustanding, one of the best conceived and executed pasta dishes I've had anywhere, Italy or America. The flavors are beautifully balanced. The beans and pancetta make the hand-made bigoli sing rustic notes straight to my tastebuds.
A linguine with lobster was not quite as delectable--it seemed a little underpowered compared with the bigoli, but it was a very fine dish and showed a deft hand.
Osteria Coppa's buzz has emphasized the house-cured salumi and we tried that on our first visit as an appetizer. The portion size was good for two people, and it was very nice salumi. The variety of flavors and textures, and the portion, is not something that is going to dethrone a Perbacco, however. We liked everything we tasted but there was a bit of sameness to the recipes. We had bressaola, an oregano salami, mortadella, a spicy salami, and a pepper salami. I was least impressed with the latter two items. The oregano salami was the standout. We'll try this again in a couple of months and see how the product evolves in response to customer feedback. I would probably reduce the amount of mortadella--it can be a very cloying taste in large quantity--and vary the size and textures present in the other items as well.
The fried artichoke contorni was a true miss. Soggy and cold, it was billed and ordered as a contorni, a side veggie, but was delivered as an appetizer. We wanted it to eat with our entrees and when we finally sampled it, the flavor was good but the texture, cleaning of the artichoke (too much nettle left behind) and the temperature were not satisfactory.
The pizza was a welcome success. We tried a margherita as an appetizer on our second visit and absolutely loved the tangy, simple tomato sauce and light, tasty crust. A little more salt in the crust would be welcome but this was a lovely pizza and we're ready to try another version on our next visit.
In my opinion Osteria Coppa is already by far the best Italian dining on this side of the Peninsula (Pasta Moon is still hard to beat), but there are some quibbles this early in their tenure.
The dining room needs some cozying up, especially the back part. I think the back quadrant could use another row of booths or banquets along the wall to get away from the randomly-placed table feeling back there. It just doesn't feel as special in that part of the dining room.
And the service needs work. Our first experience, with a young lady, was very good, although she seemed nervous. Her professionalism and the tone of her service matched the restaurant's aspirations. Our second server, a fellow working the front of the house, was not so good. His service didn't fit this restaurant's intended tone. It was more befitting a TGI Friday's to be honest. He did a lot of standing in one place, whirling around to talk to different tables in a rushed and loud fashion that made us feel like our dining experience was something he needed to get through, rather than a mission for him to make our night special. I didn't like the service at all and I think it won't serve Osteria well.
Finally, I'd like to see the menu grow a little bit. We're already thinking we'll be weekly diners since we live just a few blocks away, and I don't want to get tired of what so far seems like excellent food and a great deal of potential.
Bring it on Osteria Coppa, we know what you can do, let's see even more, and welcome to our neighborhood!
San Francisco, CA 94109
(415) 673-2961
Ristorante Milano
Category:
Italian
Neighborhood: Nob Hill
Yes, the pasta is homemade, delicious, and the portions are sizeable. The dishes themselves are a bit homely--oversauced for the most part, strewn with a little too much musky, dark, limp, julienned basil. But they go down easily and if that were all we had to talk about, I'd be up at around 4 stars for Milano.
But our experiences with other items are less successful. For example, the complimentary focaccia and olive oil were both largely flavorless.
The bruschetta antipasto with heirloom tomatoes was billed as coming with gorgonzola but arrived with thick, largely flavorless discs of mozzarella, and the otherwise tasty chopped heirlooms were drowned in not very fruity olive oil and way, way too much garlic. I would not order it again.
The proprieter is charming, and he graciously seated us quickly at a rear table in the loft area which quickly got very stuffy.
Our server, though, was far less charming. She seemed a bit sour and there were long waits for water, then bread, then the appetizer. And through all of this I waited nearly 30 minutes for a glass of wine, but when the error was finally detected it was comped.
My lasagna special featured delicate homemade pasta in at least 9 or 10 layers, with a tasty bechamel lurking between the layers, and a generous, maybe even slightly too generous layer of beef and veal meat sauce which was sweet and tasty.
My companion's fettuccini with Milanese meat sauce--the same sauce on the lasagna--was tasty, but way oversauced and the fettucine is not as delicate or perfectly elastic as we have had at, say, Pasta Moon in Half Moon Bay.
I liked the place and I might wander in if i the neighboorhood but given the waiting lines we saw on our exit, I doubt this is feasible, and if I have to go to the trouble for reservations, I'll likely opt for someplace a little more special than Milano.
This meal amounted to a lamentable steak surrounded by dismal sides and appetizers, all offered up by very amateurish, distracted service, and a front of the house that lost my reservation.
Let's get right to it.
The bread served up with much panoply, huge planks of something with an overdone, bark-like crust and a foam rubbery interior, was, to be honest, awful. I also don't get why snipping a few chives into butter, letting it get warm and possibly old, and then smearing it into a crock is supposed to impress me.
Good bread and fresh butter beat rubbery bread and stale, oniony butter pretty much every time.
My iced tea was no more second rate than most restaurants outside the iced tea belt, but honestly--iced tea is not hard to make at all, why should it be second rate in a high end restaurant? This was weak and slightly mildewy tasting.
I ordered the tomato salad. It's September, tomatoes are peaking, New Jersey is supposed to be some kind of tomato heaven, I'm sure there's a farmer's market or produce purveyor who can give you the featured ingredient in your salad in some sort of ripe state. These were red but hard, acidic, flavorless, and mostly a plank on which to serve overly generous crescents of harsh onion. Too little cheese, cheap olive oil, third rate at best.
On to the main event, a Delmonico steak with bearnaise accompanied by hash browns.
The hash browns were a dense disk of shredded, fried potatoes of approximately Frisbee-esque proportions. They were fried and oiled to within an inch of their life, with no potato flavor remaining.
My steak, which I ordred medium well, was more like well--charred to the point where most of the marbling had rendered out and it was mostly previously-tender meat held together by habit rather than any physical force. It tasted good in a "it used to be a nice piece of meat" kind of way.
Maybe I should have ordered medium, but I usually find when you order medium you get medium rare and vice versa. Medium well gets me some good char and crust but moist and tender meat inside without too much blood. This was not pink anywhere.
The bearnaise sauce was of the runny, dissolves into butter and vinegar variety. It at least tasted like bearnaise but I might as well have just doused my steak with tarragon and melted butter.
I skipped a humdrum selection of desserts that you can find in any roadhouse around the country.
I am not going with a 1-star on this because I think there are elements here that might have been decent on a better night, and I think I might be able to order better with practice.
The question is, why would I?
The sad shame of it all is that this operation wastesa great space with a wonderful patio area, which many restaurants would kill to have.
Princeton, NJ 08540
(609) 799-0550
Marriott Residence Inn Princeton at Carnegie…
Category:
Hotels
1) Busy traveling professionals expect, in 2010, for the in-room wireless and internet to be reliable. I had lots of work to do one night during my recent stay, and the internet connection would not stay up and running. Over the course of a valuable evening, they had to keep rebooting the router or whatever, and seconds after you'd reconnect, down it would go. And the connection when it was up could be very slow at times.
2) The room I had was horribly laid out. No desk to work at. You could not see the television straight on from either the sofa or the bed--I actually had to move a big, ugly, awkward cabinet holding the widescreen tv and try to turn the damn thing so I could see it from the bed where I was working late.
3) Smoke alarms going off in my room due to the shower running? I had to run and open all the windows to kill the alarms. Good grief.
4) Again, catering to business travelers, can't you do better than frozen White Castles, a couple package of Stouffer's meatloaf, and some Lean Cuisine fish dish in your little store for those hungry people who have been stuck on airplanes and racing down I-95 from Newark all evening and can't find an open restaurant? Why do you have dozens of choices of hamburgers, chips, and ice cream but 3 real food options that one could heat up in the in-room kitchen? Come on, put a little more thought and effort into it.
5) The bathroom in my suite was a disaster area. No tub, the shower drained directly into the middle of the bathroom. I had to step around a lake after my first shower. What?!
This is close to my company's east coast office, handy to several of my largest customers, but when I'm back in the area I'll pass on this place.
PS, the free breakfast in the morning was really subpar compared even to the last Courtyard I stayed in. Rubbery waffles, unripe fruit, somebody picked super spicy breakfast sausage.
Palo Alto, CA 94306
(650) 857-0687
photograph & frame
Categories:
Framing,
Art Galleries
We've had several special pieces framed here including some aquatints we brought back from Italy and pieces done by friends. P&F in the Marina always did a great job.
Today we have taken in a couple of new posters we want framed and found the same great selection of frames at good prices and pretty fast turnaround for our dollars.
We're in Palo Alto a lot so I'm sure we'll see a lot more of this store.
And when it's not half-in-the-bag or plain bonkers panhandlers, it's grubby perfectly sane jerks who want to sit there and smoke for an hour while talking loudly to some half-deaf jerk.
Peet's, why can't you pick a location and offer some outdoor seating so we can enjoy your coffee the way coffee was meant to be enjoyed--cafe style, outdoors, in our wonderful peninsula weather, in peace.
2 Previous Reviews:
-
1/25/2010
i used to NOT love this Peet's, but it's become is my local--it's dog-walkable to my place and right on my route to work every morning, so I'm a quite the regular.
I love most of the staff who treat me very well and go the extra mile for me--they have all learned my drink, greet me warmly, bring me water for my dogs, and all the little things that being a regular face bring. They also consistently brew better beverages--other local Peet's locations, like Millbrae downtown and Bay Meadows, have much iffier drinks--one time it'll be too weak, another time too little ice in my iced latte so it doesn't chill, you name it. The baristas here do a quality pull.
I really, really wish the seating were better--not very many comfortable chairs, which is a big downside to Peet's as a whole. They also devote more than the needed space to merchandise but this location is not as bad as some Peet's. And there is no outside seating except a stone planter outside to which I have to retire with my drink so I can sit with my dog. Some other Peets have some nominal sidewalk or patio seating.
C'mon, Peet's, a coffeehouse should be an inviting place where patrons can relax with a book or a newspaper and enjoy your beverage and the vibe, but you seem intent on sending us on our way. -
3/12/2006
Not my favorite Peet's. I like the spacious corner location near North Beach Pizza and the theatre, but they I miss the church pews you can still find in other Peet's locations and I wish the granite window-facing counters were a bit wider, so you'd have some legroom and could read a friggin paper. But it's still a Peets, with excellent coffee and decent pastries and none of the idiocy of Starbucks.
We have enjoyed the dog park and met many great dogs there. It's spartan, with just one bench for humans, one baggie and trash receptacle, and user supplied bowls and jugs for water which have to be refilled several hundred yards away at water fountains--no water yet directly to the fenced in dog park.
It's of course a much smaller dog run than nearby Seal Point Park, but the dog population is overall better controlled and friendlier. I hope it does not became a haven for uncaring owners like Seal Point seems to be on the verge of becoming, with more incidents of bad owner behaviors every week.
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3800 Useful, 3839 Funny, and 3798 Cool
San Francisco, CA
Yelping SinceJanuary 2005
Things I Love My Blog Or Website
But once the rescue set up in their store for weekly adoption events, the crappy treatment began.
The adoption event was always shoved to the back of the store. They refused to put signage out front, and forced us to set up the dozen or so dog crates in a cramped claustrophobic area near the dumpy restrooms in the back, near the stockroom so that even their employees had to work around us.
Week after week I and other volunteers with the rescue were placing dogs with new families and along the way showing people options for leashes, bowls, food, toys, and beds. I bet I sold hundreds and hundreds of dollars of their merchandise, when their own employees couldn't be bothered to order poopie bags for their racks or replenish paper towels for the cleanup stations. The store personnel never bothered to remember us from week after week. I'm in your store for 3 hours every week and you can't say hello like you know me? The groomers were often rude.
I gritted my teeth week after week, knowing that these leashes I was recommending were enriching a crassly inconsiderate store. Now that we've found a new home I'm glad to tell people to stay away from this store and its management. Everything you can buy here can be had at better prices with friendlier, more knowledgeable staff at Pet Club or Pet Food Express.