Aaron M.'s Profile

Mmmmm sopes are soooo good! Dense, chewy, and wonderful fried masa flour cakes topped with grilled steak or chicken, refried beans, cheese, lettuce, salsa fresca, grilled pineapple (yes really) and sour cream. Yum! Good call David B!

Kasuga is our favorite local sushi joint. They've been closed for remodeling for months now. Hope they re-open soon...

Best. Chocolate. In. The. World.

Seriously.

Makes Scharfenberger taste like Hershey's Syrup.

Come in for a tasting and learn more than you ever knew there was to know about chocolate, all while nibbling on little bites of heaven.

Panos' passion for chocolate is evident. He delights in sharing the tasting experience with chocoholics like us. As each subtle flavor is detected by your senses, his face lights up, just as yours will.

Tasting chocolate here is like wine tasting in Chateau Neuf du Pape: it's some of the best in the world, it'll cost a pretty penny to take it home with you, but it's world class.

Life is too short to waste time with mediocre chocolate.

FRESH CRAB!! Year after year, Hudson Fish Co gives us the best, sweetest, freshest dungeness  crab I've ever had in my life. Last visit I asked for their biggest one and he found a 2.75 lb crab!! Now THAT was a crab feast.

Hudson Fish Co also has delicious fresh caught fillets of fish, skinned, de-boned, and wrapped up in zip-lock bags ready to take home and cook. My favorite is the butterfish (aka walu). This winter I've also enjoyed their halibut, albacore tuna, petral sole, and rockfish. They also have assorted smoked fish, prawns, and other seafood goodies.

We're regulars at the Saturday morning farmer's market at the El Cerrito Plaza. They always greet us with a smile, and we always go home with a feast of fresh seafood.

Thanks guys!

Cafe Venue is my default choice for lunch when I'm in the neighborhood.

The ingredients are fresh, staff are friendly, and prices are right. They get a little crowded at lunch time, but the line moves quickly.

My favorites:
- Super Veggie Sandwich "with both" when I'm behaving
- California Club Sandwich when I'm being bad
- Turkey Cranberry Sandwich when I'm craving Thanksgiving lunch
- Chop Chop Salad (large) when I'm super hungry

Everything I could hope for and expect from a Subway.

The ingredients taste fairly fresh, the bread is soft, and the produce looks pretty good, although the tomatoes are unripe and the avocado comes out of a plastic tub. So yeah, basically it's Subway.

The staff seem friendly and helpful enough, doing a passable job to hide their boredom. They made my sandwich to order, and put on the ingredients correctly as I requested them.

I love that Subway corporate finally succumbed to the Internet outcry to tesselate the cheese: http://www.lefthandedt...

I paid $8.05 for a foot-long turkey and cheese sandwich with avocado, no drink, no cookie, no chips. This seems a little expensive, but cheap lunch is hard to come by in downtown SF.

Personally, I think Cafe Venue right next door http://www.yelp.com/bi... has much more interesting sandwiches, with better bread and better ingredients. That said, I also like options, and Subway is open late, so I'm happy to see Subway here

We wandered into The Winery Collective with: an hour to kill in Fisherman's Wharf, a thirsty birthday girl, and everlasting love for California wines.

We found they offered small pours of poor wines.

We tried their Touring California flight ($15 for 5 pours), and their Reserve Reds flight ($25 for 5 pours). The first wine we tried was the 2010 Sauvignon Blanc from "The Winery". It was crispy with sweet floral and berries on the nose, and dry on the tongue with a clean aftertaste. Delicious! Bonus: the winery is on Treasure Island, so we can go visit them! Sadly, we discovered that this was the first, and only, wine that we liked. The rest of our tasting went from bad to worse, although we did end on a high note at least.

Maybe I'm spoiled by recent visits to our favorite wineries, but I've never had such a short pour. Each glass had roughly 1 shot (1.5 oz) of wine. This is barely enough to clear out the flavor of the previous wine that was in the glass. It's also not really enough for two people that want to share the tasting. We were a party of three and were trying to share 2 flights between us, it would have been nice if our host had poured a little more generously.

I was also disappointed they did not appear to have any crackers or munchies. Considering the price of tasting, more generous pours and some simple crackers could really make a difference in the tasting experience.

Of course I say could, because if the wines aren't good, there's not much that can crackers and big glasses can do to help.

We discovered The Lake County Cab from Sol Rouge had clearly turned. My two companions made an awful face after tasting, so I was apprehensive to try a sip. I could easily tell from the smell that this wine had clearly turned. It smelled like rotting prunes. I took a small taste to confirm. I explained to our server that this wine was no good, and she responded that it had tasting notes of licorice. I insisted that, no, this wine was corked or rotten, but she insisted that the wine is supposed to taste like this. We let it go.

We were also disappointed by the double gold medal winning '07 Cab, also from Sol Rouge. For $75 a bottle, I expected a real treat. This wine was no good either. It didn't taste as bad as the other one, but it didn't taste good either. We didn't even finish our tiny little pour. I wonder if their bottles were stored improperly? I also wonder what competition it was in, in which it earned a double gold medal.

The rest of the wines in our two flights were unmemorable and expensive.

After two of us checked-in on Yelp, we got two extra pours and were offered anything we wanted to try, which was a treat. We picked out the Mourvedre, that we liked (but not $39 liked). We then requested she pick something spicy for us, and she poured us an '07 Vie zinfandel that was classic big California Zin, and wonderfully spicy. Our Peruvian server was friendly and nice, and happily honored the coupons.

She and Yelp saved the The Winery Collective from a 1-star review.

If you'd like a taste of Napa during your visit to San Francisco, I can highly recommend the Press Club downtown: http://www.yelp.com/bi...

Delicious California wines, and bars staffed by knowledgeable folks that work for each winery represented. Tasting here is like a mini trip to Napa, without the drive.

Krazy Kaps! Good prices considering the location. They have lots of Angry Birds hats, which appear to be really popular right now. Great selection of Krazy (and sane) hats for all tastes. I found an Animal hat that I regret not purchasing: http://www.yelp.com/bi... I guess I'll have to come back.

Cute baubles and shiny things can be found at Bliss on Pier 39.

I laughed out loud when the copy-editor in me found a double whammy:
http://www.yelp.com/bi...
Gross misspelling and extraneous quotation marks in one sign!!

Obviously I took a picture so I could share it with my fellow snarky Yelpers.