|
"I wish I had a hollow leg."
- 66 Friends
- 234 Reviews
- 37 Review Updates
- 29 Firsts
- 5 Fans
- 4 Local Photos
- 1 Event Submitted
- 6 Lists
-
Rating Distribution
Loading...
- View more graphs »
Review votes:
513 Useful, 246 Funny, and 336 Cool
Boulder, CO
Yelping SinceFebruary 2009
Things I Loveletters from strangers, deep tissue massages, riding my bike downhill, driving in the city, sweltering weather, letting the ocean kick my butt, rambutan
Find Me Inmy room, studying endlessly.
My HometownEvanston, IL
My Blog Or Website When I'm Not Yelping...I'm silently judging instead.
Why You Should Read My ReviewsWhen I give 5 stars, I really MEAN 5 stars.
My Second Favorite Website The Last Great Book I ReadSpent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior
My First ConcertHanson. And yes, I screamed. I was 15.
My Favorite MovieA Clockwork Orange; other than that, mostly painfully stupid comedies
My Last Meal On EarthFugu.
Don't Tell Anyone Else But...I wouldn't eat pizza or hamburgers until I was 12.
Most Recent DiscoveryWNYC's Radiolab podcast
Current CrushAnyone who's a good cook.
Date
People thought this was:
- Useful (1)
- Funny (1)
- Cool (1)
Boulder, CO 80301
(303) 442-9150
The Buff Restaurant
Categories: American (Traditional), Breakfast & Brunch
However, I was neither thrilled by nor upset with the Buff, like many of the places I've been going lately... and I cannot tell a lie, not even to spice up my rating curve.
The Buff served me some awesome savory-spicy sausage gravy over tender biscuits and perfectly poached eggs... and then pissed me off by throwing cold sliced deli turkey and black, overcooked bacon in it. It served Dan the most boring limp omelet ever, served with potatoes that needed practically a solid coating of salt to be edible. For an appetizer, it did strike a resonant chord with its delicious pecan caramel 'quesadilla' with sweet cream cheese sauce.
I must admit I was also impressed with the BUCKET of pekoe tea with marigold and rose petals that I got for $2.25... but puzzled by our waitress. None of the words that came out of her mouth made any sense. She wasn't rude, just... confusing. Like she'd just been dropped in from outer space.
I'd go back just to have the sausage gravy again, but this time I'd just have the simple biscuits'n'gravy instead of fancying it up with crappy turkey and overcooked bacon.
The Laughing Goat has live music pretty much constantly and there's usually no cover, just a passed-around tip jar and CD's for sale afterwards. The crowd isn't stiff and tomb-silent during sets, nor are they so raucous you can't hear the music. It's just right for me, like the Baby Bear's furniture is for Goldilocks.
Tonight we brought Boggle and forgot to bring paper and pens, but not to worry... the non-snobby counter staff gladly lent us a spiral of receipt paper and a few pens.
There's a branch inside the CU library and they've kept me supplied with emergency breakfast burritos. I do wish both branches had more kinds of food, though. I like a savory bite with my sweet drinks!
People thought this was:
- Useful (1)
So, those combined with our drinks (blackberry ginger ale and Thai basil lemonade - both fantastic, unique, and difficult not to slurp in one gulp) made us super-excited about our entrees.
Then our entrees actually arrived. The 'crispy Thai fish fillet banh mi'? Not banh mi. At all. Oh, yeah, I know they call it 'their spin' and it's not supposed to be exactly authentic - I mean, just the addition of a fish fillet is telling you it won't be. But... there were no discernible cilantro or carrots or jalapenos, none of the vegetables were pickled, and the bread wasn't a French roll. And forget about any pate. It was a fish sandwich, nothing Vietnamese about it - but it was at least blandly tasty.
The salmon masala rice bowl was a) not masala and b) sort of hard to eat because of its taste uniformity. Imagine a big bowl full of rice and limp veggies and a salmon slab covered in the same strongly sour sauce. Halfway through I couldn't bring another chopstickful to my mouth. The dish comes with all the ingredients sort of separated out on the plate. The menu recommends you mix it together. I recommend that you don't. You'll need diversity of bites, trust me.
So basically my recommendation is to come here and order beverages and 50 chicken wings (yes, they are that good), but don't expect the entrees to wow you in the same way.
People thought this was:
- Useful (1)
- Funny (1)
- Cool (3)
Let's start out with the good, shall we? It's only human nature to want to convince ourselves something was awesome if we spend $38 a head on it, so a few things spring immediately to mind:
- chicken m'qualli - this tenderly cooked chicken had an aggressively tangy lemon zing to it, and it's the only dish we almost fought over who got to finish. My olive-hating butt actually ate an olive because it went so well with the rest of the flavors. There were sneaky lemon rinds hidden everywhere and if you got one in your mouth, it knocked you backwards. I approved.
- Super comfy seating. I sank into the fluffy cushions and didn't want to get up when it was time to leave. If you're the type who's apt to drop of to sleep after a good meal, don't get too comfortable.
Unfortunately those were the only two things that were really good about Tangier. Everything else was... underwhelming.
The harira soup tasted like Progresso minestrone soup with a squeeze of lemon.
The salad tasted like... well, iceberg lettuce and red peppers with carrots covered in chickpea flour. I did like the eggplant salad that was piled in the corner, though. I don't think I've ever not liked something with eggplant in it.
The chicken bastilla was probably my second favorite dish, although it could have been made SO much better if the cook had deigned to use a spice. However, simply the unusual combination of ingredients held my interest: ground chicken, egg, and almonds wrapped in phyllo dough like a pancake and sprinkled liberally with powdered sugar. It could have easily been a dessert. I would have preferred some strong spice to the chicken to offset the sugar (and, I thought, cinnamon, but it wasn't a listed ingredient) to make me feel less like I was eating a pancake.
The lamb barkouk was, like the chicken, cooked very tenderly - knives were not necessary. Unfortunately the sauce tasted like nothing. All it was was tasty lamb, standing alone. Which is fine, but... uninteresting.
The baklava was not light and flaky in the least; it was thick and hard to get your teeth into.
The 'mint' tea had no discernible mint in it. More than anything it reminded me of the boxed Teh Asli that's everywhere in Indonesia. That is to say, black tea with what tastes like a pound of sugar mixed in.
This would easily be a three star review - nothing was offensive, I felt pleasantly healthy afterwards, everyone was friendly enough - except for the fact that I showed up at the door half hungry, and left maybe a tiny increment less hungry, but definitely not anything approaching full. I think that for $38 a person you should be full. Well, either full, or exclaiming and raving about how wonderful the food was. Not kinda-full and underwhelmed.
People thought this was:
- Useful (2)
Boulder, CO 80302
(303) 442-4880
Q's Restaurant
Categories: American (New), Breakfast & Brunch, American (Traditional)
I got the chicken fried chicken with a waffle and scrambled eggs, with the Q's smoothie to drink, and Dan got the salmon sandwich with a citrus spritzer kind of thing (hee hee, he totally got the stereotypical girly order).
If this were a contest, I'd deem my drink the winner and his plate the winner. But it isn't, and anyway, the food had more in common than it diverged. The overall effect I got was that everything tasted super-fresh and homemade - and somewhat bland.
I know that I prefer things a little more zesty than the average diner - so please take my review with a grain of salt (har!... my meal could have used a grain of salt... okay, that was bad). There were some really good flavors in Dan's sandwich - red onion marmalade, horseradish aioli - but they showed up on my tongue just enough to tease me, and not enough for the taste to linger. Same with the sausage gravy on my chicken. Big chunks of tender sausage, mild, smooth gravy with only enough pepper and spices to tease.
I'm not sad I went, though. I do know how to appreciate a simple, unadorned meal, even if it isn't necessarily my 'thing'. The salmon was cooked absolutely perfectly, flaky and still red and tender in the middle, while the bread was soft enough to fall apart in your mouth but not soft enough to get soggy on the plate. The scrambled eggs were crispy on the outside, soft in the middle, and I have to say it's the first plate of scrambled eggs I've finished in a long time - I usually think scrambled eggs are kind of gross. My waffle was thick, with no discernible character to the batter, but the fresh strawberry compote on top lent it a homey kind of sweetness.
I wouldn't mind going back to Q's if someone else really wanted to go - I'd know I was getting a fresh, healthy meal - but it's just not my style of food, I don't think.
People thought this was:
- Useful (5)
- Funny (2)
- Cool (3)
It doesn't seem to have regular hours... it's just open totally randomly. When it is open, it doesn't seem to ever have any customers. Now, I understand that it has the misfortune to be sandwiched between Thai Avenue (with its 30 person lunch lines) and Bento Zanmai (with its revamped snazzy ramen menu). But... NO customers. None.
And it's not because it's bad! I'd rate the gyros there the same quality as Falafel King's... and Shishkabob Supreme's are $2 cheaper and also bigger. Their falafel is great. They have a lemonade with honey and rosewater for some crazy cheap price like $1.29. The owner (I presume he's the owner) is charming.
So what's up with this place? I don't know. It's a mystery! I've literally seen 1 customer in the probably 50+ times I've been to the food court. He has a 'Help Wanted' sign up, so he must be doing business - during all the times I'm not there.
Bizarre. But nonetheless, recommended. The food is perfectly fine, nothing to rave about, but fine, plus cheap, and sold with a smile.
People thought this was:
- Useful (1)
- Cool (1)
However, your $10 also goes towards help finding your bike if it gets stolen, free repairs and maintenance, discounts on bike stuff, etc.
All it would take for the CU Spin Doctor Club, or whatever, to regain student favor would be a case of reframing. $10 required to park bike on campus? Whack. Don't advertise that. But, $10 investment for totally free bike repairs and maintenance for the rest of your time as a student, plus discounts on essentials like tubes? Sweet! Wallpaper every advertising space on campus with that deal!
Especially since their maintenance staff is actually really competent compared with all the other bike shops in Boulder. In my previous review, I described in detail the incompetence of Full Cycle. (You can also find my opinion of University Bicycles somewhere on Yelp.) The bike station, however, fixed Full Cycle's mistakes in less than a half hour. My bike is now running better than it has since I first bought it. Thank you, Bike Station. Now find a way to repurpose your advertising budget.
Yeah, that lasted two weeks. Then my front gear went back to the way it was. Then in first gear my chain started reliably slipping off when I climbed hills. Then first gear didn't work at all. And THEN... my front gearshift stopped working altogether.
The last thing I wanted to do (even though I knew I had to) was take it back to the Full Cycle whirlwind again (see previous review for full definition of 'whirlwind'), so I procrastinated and just rode around in gears 8-16 for awhile.
Until I discovered that CU has a Bike Station that, for $10 a semester, will do maintenance on students' bikes. They fixed Full Cycle's mistakes in under half an hour. I waited over 2 months to post this review just in case the bike station's fixes failed as well - because in that case I wouldn't be justified knocking Full Cycles's repair.
The bike station's repair did not fail.
The comparison is clear. If you're a student, go to the bike station. If not... I can't help you, because I haven't yet found a reliable repair shop in Boulder otherwise. But I wouldn't put Full Cycle on any recommended list.
People thought this was:
- Useful (3)
2 Previous Reviews: Hide »
-
7/12/2009
What I have to say in my update about Full Cycle is so all over the place that I really have no idea how to quantify it in terms of stars.
My brakes were acting up (read: not making my bike stop), and my shifting was being a little weird, so I took my bike in to ask their advice: brake adjustment, or new brake pads? Obviously, the guy recommended new brake pads and a new derailleur. He also suggested a $75 'maintenance package'. I asked if the brake pads and derailleur were included in that package, and he said no.
Hmm, yeah, I think I'll just go for the parts I need, as opposed to a maintenance package that doesn't include the parts I need.
I should mention that this first guy who helped me was extremely nice and seemed to be honest and genuinely interested in helping me fix the bike without gouging me on the price. He quoted me the price of parts + labor and said that the bike would be ready in two hours.
I went back in two hours, paid the bill, and nodded at the guy, who said he was just going to fill up my tires and then it'd be ready for me, Then I went over to use their bathroom. Apparently while I was in the bathroom he found something wrong with my brake cables, because when I came out he said he couldn't in good conscience charge me for the work he did on the shifting or something because the cables were, I don't know, frayed or messed up or some such. (Can you tell I'm a bike maintenance whiz?) He said that he'd refund me the $8 for something or other, make the labor free, and the new work would cost $11. He said it'd be done the next day at the same time.
Came in the next day at the same time, and a different guy was there. I asked after my bike, and he said that it actually wasn't done because the cables they had weren't long enough and they had to order some different cables from somewhere else; so could I pick the bike up later in the day or tomorrow? I was sort of annoyed, because I'd taken a half hour long bus ride to get there, and I wished they had thought to call me before I made the trip, but there wasn't anything I could do about it, so I went home.
The following day, I went in, and the bike was finished, but the repair price tag read $24.95 (instead of $3, which is what $11 - $8 should equal). Of course, I had forgotten the names of all the parts that the first guy had named, and forgotten the procedure he said he would comp me on, and had never even asked for his name - oops.
Here's where I have to give Full Cycle credit: I pleadingly tried to tell the guy (a completely different guy from either of the previous two) that it was supposed to cost $3, while not remembering WHY or HOW it was supposed to cost $3, nor having any proof at all. Instead of blowing me off, he trusted me at my word and charged me $3. Bless that guy.
Yes, this review is scattered and rushed and bizarre and that's how I felt while it was happening. I felt like I had no idea when I could expect my bike back and what it would look like, and ride like, when I did get it back. The lack of organization back there is insane.
However - everyone was friendly, they tried to be fair, and both my brakes and shifting now work like a dream (they did adjust my back brake too tight and my tire drags, but that's easily fixed - right?). So I guess I'll leave it at 3 stars.People thought this was:
- Useful (3)
- Funny (1)
-
3/4/2009
Awhile ago my bike started having a problem. It started dragging, lost its momentum, and became difficult to pedal even going downhill. Riding to work, an all-downhill path, became a true workout, with me huffing and puffing by the end. I thought it might be my brake pads dragging, or a gummy chain, but beyond that I didn't have any idea because I am not mechanically inclined and barely know how to fill up my tires with air, let alone diagnose problems.
When I brought it in to get diagnosed, I had basically the same experience here as I did at University Bikes, except Full Cycle gets points for actually seeming like they cared about my bike's problem. They at least kept my bike overnight to look at it. Now whether they actually looked at it or not is sort of uncertain, since I came back to find it in the EXACT same position next to the repair counter that I left it. But the repair guys did seem concerned and a little worried that they couldn't find the cause, and at least threw out some ideas about what they thought MIGHT be wrong (chipped bearings, misaligned back wheel).
But aren't bike shops supposed to have ways of testing their ideas? I mean, if you think a bearing is chipped, don't you have a way of feeling for that? And if you think a wheel is misaligned, can't you hang it up and check? And if you do find something wrong, can't you quote a price for it and a timeline? These guys just sort of threw their guesses out into the world and left it at that.
NOTE: this review is about the Pearl St location, but the Pearl St location is not listed on Yelp.People thought this was:
- Useful (1)
Happily, I didn't stick to my guns about only eating shake handrolls (though I did have two). We took a more careful look at the menu this time, made sure not to order any appetizers, which are tiny but insanely expensive for their size, and were able to fill ourselves up diversely for $35. Not $35 each... $35 total.
Which made me happy. Because I love sushi, and my old standby Hapa has gone down the toilet. Plus: Japango's food really IS good... or at least was this time. The salmon was absolutely up there with the best I've had. The negihama roll was great - clean and simple. They did a very interesting, vegetably-fresh-tasting spider roll with 100% real softshell crab - not half and half krab salad like most other places. Their tempura batter was nicely spiced and the variety of veggies impressed me. I'm really not a spicy tuna person and Japango didn't convert me, but I tried a bite of Dan's and it was overstuffed with tuna, which is always nice.
I guess if you work the menu carefully, you really can get a good deal.
If Japango keeps this up - and I'll be back again and again in hopes that they do - they'll be at four stars in no time.
People thought this was:
- Useful (2)
- Cool (1)
1 Previous Review: Hide »
-
4/8/2009
Normally, when I review a place, it's about one thing: food. Oh, and also food. Food, too.
Japango's food was - after averaging out the highlights and the lowlights - solidly good.
There was only one WTF moment, which occurred in the form of the lobster wontons and their slathered on wasabi mustard dressing. I LIKE wasabi - my sushi soy sauce is usually pretty solidly green - and I had to wipe about 3/4 of it off to even taste the lobster at all.
And the best thing there was, surprisingly, their salmon handrolls. Just salmon and rice and nori, but their salmon was phenomenal! I have no idea where they got it, but it beats the pants of any other salmon in the area except possibly Amu's.
Everything else was tasty; no more, no less. Slightly better than Hapa for consistency of freshness of fish, slightly worse for roll construction.
But here's my beef, Japango: you are CRAZY EXPENSIVE. Not crazy expensive like, 'oh hey, this is sushi so it's going to be rightfully expensive and totally worth it', but like... 'I just spent $37 during Happy Hour and I'm still starving' expensive.
They have an 'all you can eat' on Tuesday nights for $29.95 or something. I laughed at this all-you-can-eat. I was like, 'who's going to eat enough to make that worth it?' When I eat at Hapa and stuff myself until I literally cannot bring another chopstickful to my mouth, I've usually spent about $20 or maybe $25.
Last night, I spent $37 - during Happy Hour, like I said - and like I said, I left hungry. Hungry! With my tiny little birdlike appetite that can't finish entrees at most restaurants. Hungry!
For reference, here's what the two of us had:
2 Shake handrolls
1 Pumpkin handroll
1 Shrimp Tempura handroll
1 Caterpillar roll
1 Las Vegas roll
1 order of lobster wontons
1 order kama (grilled hamachi collar)
1 order strawberry cheesecake
Looks like a lot, right? That's what we thought. We actually ordered those in three waves. The first wave was about half of that list and we thought it would fill us up.
However... the lobster wontons were miniscule - and $8.25. There were four and I could fit each one into my mouth like a little bite. The $2.50 special happy hour handrolls were great, but only three bites big. The $10.25 Las Vegas roll looked like a monster on the menu (apple, grapes, tuna, yellowtail, salmon, shrimp, crab, asparagus, cucumber, avocado, burdock root, and smelt roe) but came out normal sized - and only 6 pieces. Now, how can something that has 12 fillings in it be normal sized? Easy - make each filling a millimeter wide, except for the fake crab which gets a centimeter. Voila!
I'm sorry, but that kind of misrepresentation ticks me off a bit, and when it's combined with everything being both miniscule and expensive - even while being really tasty - I just end up never wanting to return. I don't want to spend $37 to be hungry and feel the need to snack on whatever's in the fridge when I get home.
If I want excellent (and expensive) fresh fish, sashimi-or-sunemono style, I'll go to Amu. Their fish is even fresher, the people friendlier, and the setting more comfortable. And if I want crazy rolls with mayo and fruit and crab legs sticking out everywhere that are tempura batter fried, I'll go to Hapa, which is cheaper and better at crafting interesting rolls. I won't be going to Japango again.People thought this was:
- Useful (7)
- Funny (1)
- Cool (5)
6 Lists
I am no longer excited.
The menu consists of a folded up piece of printer paper. What's wrong with that, you ask? Well, all their rolls have names like 'Rocky Roll' or 'the Firecracker', and there's no room on this piece of paper to print descriptions. So you have to ask the poor waiter what EVERYTHING ON THE MENU is, and he has to read it off his cheat sheet, and as soon as he leaves you forget everything he said because you can't hold the ingredients of ten different rolls in your head. So you end up ordering blind, unable to compare and discuss options with your dinner date.
It helped a little that they were out of roughly 1/3 of the things on the menu. Keep in mind that this was a Tuesday night at 5:15 and we were two of four customers there. Our eventual spread was pretty different than what we would have ordered if they had had most of the things on their menu. Here's what we ordered:
- green mussels
- chicken wings
- 1/2 Z#9 roll
- 1/2 Stop Drop and Roll
- Buddah Roll (the typo is theirs)
So one thing that I thought was cool when I looked at the menu was that they offer the option of getting a half order of some of their rolls at literally half the price (not 3/4 of the price like most places who do half orders). I liked the idea of this because I always prefer a larger variety.
Here's the problem, though - their rolls are maybe 1/2 of the size of Sushi Zanmai's, with 150% of the rice, and the rice is super mushy, but they're just as expensive. So really you're getting 1/4 roll at 1/2 price.
I've had the Z#9 several times at Zanmai - it's my favorite roll there - and the Sushi Spot's didn't even taste like the same roll. The shrimp tempura was so old-feeling - soft and mealy. The avocado had brown spots all over it and the salmon was chewy.
The Stop Drop and Roll was ancient-looking dark spicy tuna wrapped around a roll filled with... um... stuff. Can't remember, really, because all you can taste is aggressively spicy old tuna.
The Buddah roll came out with totally different ingredients than the waiter had named. Again, 90% rice, underwhelming filling - though nothing in it was disgusting like the others.
Literally, you can peek at a cross section of these rolls and the filling section is laughably tiny. Less than the circumference of the end of your forefinger. Go ahead, look at the end of your forefinger, and then picture it, shrunken, in a sushi roll.
The chicken wings were okay, and the green mussels I'd go so far as to call good. They were roughly the same as the ones at Zanmai or Amu except they haven't really perfected the balance of the sauce yet.
I wouldn't be me if I didn't complain about how much it all cost - $43 - but really, I wouldn't want to eat this food at half that price, and now you're telling me it costs as much to eat here as it does at Zanmai except here you get half the food and you're not sure whether you're going to get food poisoning?
Our waiter was very nice, and he seemed to be trying (he had to read all the menu descriptions for us!), but he really didn't end up succeeding. We weren't given water until we asked, nor were we given dipping plates for our soy and wasabi until after the sushi arrived and we asked for them. None of our five giant plates were ever cleared, so by the end of the meal plates were threatening to tip over the edge and onto the floor, and picking up anything from the plates that still had food on them was like navigating an obstacle course. Let me once again remind you that there were four customers - two couples - in the entire restaurant. Another waitress had to come and clear our plates at the end and give us our check, while our regular waiter stood at the bar 20 feet away, laughing and talking.
To put a cherry on top of this wonderful sundae of an experience, when the bill came, even though the waitress put it in front of Dan, I paid it. The waitress watched me slip my card in, because she was hovering. However, after she ran the card and brought the receipts back, she put them in front of Dan, and thanked him without even looking at me. Now, most restaurants do this, I've noticed - they just automatically think that the dude paid - but never have they so blatantly WATCHED me pay and then exclusively thanked Dan.
The Sushi Spot has earned the dubious honor of being the third restaurant ever that has made me seriously consider skipping out on the bill by jumping out the window and running away.