Kevin S.'s Profile

There should be an agency that forces a bad restaurant to give up its white tablecloths until it earns them back.  Sapore does not deserve to be a white tablecloth restaurant, and I am sorry to say that I have had better dishes at Pomodoro.  

IQ and I came here on a mid-Sunday evening whim, having heard good things about it from some friends.  We ordered the Caprese salad, IQ selected the special of bucatini amatriciana, and I ordered the fettuccini Bolognese from the regular menu.

The Caprese salad was an utter disaster and a terrible disappointment.  A good Caprese is ripe tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, sweet basil, and maybe a little nice olive oil.  This mess featured 1 supermarket-style, unripe, hard, flavorless Roma tomato cut into four thick slices, each topped with an enormous slice of mealy, flavorless, unpleasantly dense mozzarella.  There was barely any basil to be found, but the plate was overrun with salad-bar-style shredded carrots and leaf lettuces and drizzed with too much cheap balsamic and not enough decent olive oil.  The only flavorful item on this plate were the three pitted Kalamata olives.

It's completely beyond me how any self-respecting Italian would dare put tomatoes that hard and that unripe on an 8 dollar Caprese salad plate, when just that mid-August Sunday morning, just two blocks from your restaurant, a Farmer's Market offered up bushels of ripe heirlooms and buckets of sweet fresh basil.  I can imagine that in the dead of winter, somewhere in Ohio, restaurants would offer similar Capreses, but there is just no excuse for this in a restaurant that pretends to offer authentic, fresh, white tablecloth Italian cuisine, at the height of tomato season.

Things got even worse when the pasta arrived, after a considerable delay during which our table was largely ignored in the 1/4-full restaurant (we sat over our unloved dirty salad plates until we finally piled them out at the edge of the table to attract the attention of the many passing staff members, including our indifferent server and the manager on duty).

IQ's Amatriciana should have been a slam-dunk, given the availability of fresh tomatoes and the simplicity of this dish.  Instead he got a gooey, gamey, underseasoned, overcooked mess of a sauce on a plate of undercooked bucatini.  This tasted like canned spaghetti sauce dressed up with a few chunks of pancetta.  Amatriciana is truly an easy dish to make, and right now, in the height of tomato season, it should be abundant on restaurant menus and deliciously fresh and flavorful.  And as bad as the sauce was, there was way too much on the plate, too--the pasta was swimming in it.

My Bolognese was similarly oversauced but at least tasted reasonably like the dish it was named, if not a good version.  It was neither creamy and rich nor well-seasoned.

We had planned to order the special dessert of the evening, Peach Panna Cotta, but were so turned off by the food and the dismal service--our server waited a long time before she checked back, and let drinks sit empty a long time before she refilled--that we punted on the dessert.

When you spend 46 bucks for three bad dishes and a paltry iced tea, and find yourself at Safeway buying bread for peanut butter sandwiches immediately after, you've had a bad meal.

And I simply cannot fathom how this restaurant has earned the 4-star reviews it seems to have captured.

For 4 dollars less a plate, the handkerchief pasta with fresh, velvety, authentic pesto at Farina in the city is both a better buy and a better example of what should be possible, if the effort and care is just applied.  For the extra 4 bucks I could have paid the gasoline to drive to Farina, or over the mountain to Half Moon Bay and Pasta Moon.  Hell, for half the price I'd have enjoyed some pasta at Pomodoro and we would not have felt taken advantage of.

How is it I was both disappointed by Farina, and thrilled by it?

I was disappointed in that, knowing it was billed as a "Ligurian" restaurant, I expected more of what I ate in Liguria--lots of classic focaccia with pizza-like toppings, multiple items with pesto, some salt-baked fish.  

Farina's menu is decidedly more focused and upscale than the homey simple fare we found on the coast on our visits.

Thank goodness!

For the handkerchief pasta with the most silky, rich, perfect, Ligurian-tasting pesto, made with clean fresh-tasting Genovese basil imported from Italy, and the fantastic views of the ravioli filling operation, and the sumptuous eggplant ravioli we enjoyed the other night, I grant an unashamed 5 stars, even though Farina was not what I expected and wanted when I walked in the door.

Sometimes surprises and disappointments are secret triumphs!

Ay, Pape!  Where you been all my life?!

To think I've lived 10 years in the Bay Area without knowing that Pape's existed.  All that time I could have been having my meat cut to my specs by FRIENDLY butchers who know what the hell they're talking about, rather than the bored and can't be bothered meat counter folks at Lundardi's and the like.

Last week I bought a center-cut brisket with just the right amount of fat on it and a bone-in Boston Butt pork roast.  I popped both of them in my new smoker (The Gadget, I call it, because it looks like an early  A-Bomb) and about 8 hours later I had the most succulent, moist, delicious Texas style brisket and Carolina-style pork barbecue.

Yesterday I went back for another brisket, and it's in the smoker right now with some mesquite and Jack Daniels' oak barrel chips turning into some ridiculously tender barbecue.

I cannot wait to try some steaks from Pape's next!  Bonus that they have their own off-street parking and a very nice little grocery attached.

Pssst.  Do NOT tell Tony.  

I mean, do NOT tell Tony Tutto that I am cheating on his pizza with the pizza from La Pizzeria.  

Actually, Tony probably won't care but his pizza probably will, since I have previously proclaimed Tony Tutto's pizza in Mill Valley as the Best Pizza I Have Ever Eaten outside of Italy.

Tony's pizza just got matched by La Pizzeria's.

These are two quite different pies and quite different places.

Tony's is all vegetarian in a small operation with very unique pies like the Smokey and the pumpkin pie he has in the fall.

La Pizzeria's pies are available with meat products and are a bit more  like classic Italian-style pies.

By Italian-style, I meant pie varieties are more like what you would find in Rome or Florence--prosciutto and arugula, or capriciosa with 4 very specific toppings.

La Pizzeria's beautiful hand tossed, tender but crispy crusts are the stars here and the quality ingredients and wood fired oven add immensely to the charm.  

We wolfed down a classic prosciutto with arugula pie, one with cooked Italian ham and mushrooms, and a special, which on our Saturday visit was potato with pancetta--no red sauce, just lovely cheese, paper thin slices of salty sliced pancetta, and equally thin roasty-creamy slices of potato.

The pancetta and potato pie was so good we ordered a second pie, and then flagged down the owner and told her this deserved a place on the permanent menu, and since she hadn't tried it that night, we basically forced a piece on her.  Later she spotted us some desserts and told us we could order the pancetta pie any time we want it.  We'll see about that, because we plan to go back soon and I've already mentally reserved a pancetta pie and another arugula and prosciutto pie for our order.

If you live on the Peninsula or the South Bay, these pies are a bit closer than those at Tony Tutto's, since you don't have to slog through city traffic and over the bridge and back.

Add the charm of Campbell's nice downtown, with a late-night coffee house nearby and the Cardiff lounge both offering Saturday night live music, and it's a nice evening out for a warm night.

Just a note, Schulba's is open on Saturday by appointment.  Call ahead if you want to get your work done on a Saturday.  In my experience it's about 1 Saturday a month that they are open.

Boys and Robots go together.  And girls and robots go together.  Heck, kids and robots go together!

That's why some of the cool semi-funky tees and onesies and hats and boots and mittens and toys in this awesome shop rock it so hard--this store finds unusual, attractive, well-made clothes.

We got several great onesies, a cool silver robot tee, and the coolest ever rain coat for our friends' 3 year old and newborn here and we love to check in to see what's cool for the under-teen set these days.

Yes, prices are rather steep but if you check the sale racks and shop judiciously you can supply your offspringing friends with cool threads and accessories for their future astronauts, robot designers, neighborhood terrors, princess-to-be's, and what have you.

Ernest Hemingway supposedly only drank daiquiris at the Floridita, and mojitos at La Bodeguita, back in the day, in Havana.

Since I have delusions of significance (hey--Scotty thinks I'm the second most important person in the world!), I like to pretend I'm just as obsessive as Papa Hemingway.

So when in Mill Valley, I have my hot espresso beverages at LaCoppa--usually a doppio espresso macchiato--and my cold espresso beverages (which is probably some kind of oxymoron) at Peet's.

This is because LaCoppa uses really nice coffee and understands what a macchiato should look and taste like, while Peet's is a couple rungs down the coffee food chain and is perfectly suited to a nice, huge, sloppy American-style iced latte, which would be a somewhat shabby way to treat really delicate, good coffee.

Do you think after I'm dead people will all fondly reminisce about how I always took my hot espressos at the one and my cold lattes at the other?

Me neither.

I must be a picky bastard.

Visiting a gelato shop with 4 Italians is a dicey proposition.  Especially when one of them periodically delivers to you several gallons of expertly made gelato (he sells gelato-making equipment, and we have worked out an arrangement where I periodically cook him ham and ply him with good prosecco from a trusted source, and I get gelato from his training classes).  

One would think the Italians would all have turned up their noses at the inferior American product, and I, the ice cream addicted American, would be shrugging and saying "It was cold, it was sweet, what's not to like?"

Instead, the Italians were shrugging in a generous way, and I was sitting outside on a hot day shaking my head sadly.

I'm going to give Cici 3 stars mostly for the fresh artisanal ingredients, more to encourage then to keep trying (and maybe invest in some Technogel equipment) but the texture is off and many of the flavors are weak.  

I liked two things:

First, they actually are able to produce a good pistacchio flavor, which nearly every American gelateria fails utterly to do.  It tasted like toasted pistacchios, not some sickly sweet weak vaguely pistacchio'd up almonds.  This is a huge advantage for them as most American pistacchio gelato (don't even talk to me about our pathetic pistacchio ice cream) is horrible--you can usually tell because the color is way off.

Second, they ventured out onto the ledge a little with a salted chocolate flavor which was nice and dark and tasted of both salt and chocolate, a really unusual taste in a gelato.

The salted chocolate had good texture, the pistacchio was a little chalky.

I also tried vanilla bean which had an off flavor, and the stracciatella (chocolate chip), which got points for the shavey chocolate inside, very authentic, but lost points because it had almost no flavor--very weak.

Bottom line, 3 of my four Italian friends would go back, but this American would save the calories for more Tony Tutto pizza.

UPDATE--I'm giving a 1-star upgrade after learning that the woman called and apologized to the birthday girl.

ORIGINAL REVIEW:  Gosh--if delivering flowers on special days is your business, wouldn't you be especially careful to get the delivery day correct?  

I have ordered flowers from this florist on several occasions for family in the area and they have done a reasonably good job.  I always try to call a local florist directly for out of town orders rather than worry about Teleflorist or FTD, because I don't want the usual formulaic, crappy bouquets.

This time, I had a very specific conversation about what I wanted and that this was for delivery that day when i placed this order.  The woman who took the order said she would "get it right over".

Unfortunately, she didn't, and an 83 year old woman did not get the flowers I ordered for her birthday.

When I called to question what happened, what I got was "Gosh, I mixed up two orders" and a very nonchalant, half-hearted apology.  "Do you want me to send it over first thing?"  When I reminded her we had a very specific conversation about the delivery, she got very rude.

She's probably sitting there in her shop now muttering, "What a rude Californian", but her manners were lacking and her care for my business didn't pass muster.  Screwing up not only an order but a birthday is pretty bad.

We live in a city with TWO professional opera companies.  TWO.  Putting on great shows at price points that let everyone enjoy reasonably good opera.  For that we should all be proud.

I'm proud of Lyric Opera as a presenter of accessible offerings of opera with some really good production designs, soloists, and overall casts.

I've seen several very nice productions while the company was at the Legion of Honor, including a nice Lucia di Lammermoor and a good Tales of Hoffmann.

Now that they've moved to Fort Mason, I'm looking forward to a slightly easier-to-get-to theater, and I certainly can't wait to see a certain member of the chorus in Rigoletto.  I've had inside reports that the solists are excellent.

No matter what show you catch, enjoy Lyric Opera for bringing big opera to small theatres at even smaller prices, with lots of local talent.  Keeping opera alive and kicking in the 21st century is reason enough for 5 stars--the great entertainment to be had is pure gravy, to use a decidedly non-highbrow term.