Bowen D.'s Profile

Super awesome. These guys are like the super cool old-school motorcycle mechanic for PC's, but way nicer than your average wrench monkey (not that ALL mechanics are touchy - viz http://www.yelp.com/bi...). I know a lot about computers, enough to install a new hard drive, but not enough to rebuild the entire PC when it died. These guys answer answer questions intelligibly, give reliable estimates, do quality work, and are even sort of fun to chat with about the guts of how the machines work. Pretty awesome!

I love good German food (OK, I love good food of almost any kind), and I love simple things done right, or things done right, simply. Or maybe it's just that things done right are often done simply. Or that it's simpler to do things right.

In any case, today was a great day for German food in my ver y particular corner of San Francisco, as I had lunch at Schmidt's and dinner with his older 'sister' Walzwerk. If you haven't been to Walzwerk (and frequently) in the last 10 years, where have you been? And since you have been there, you will have known that Dave & Kristiana have been planning a new liitle "German deli" which has now been open for a few months.

I finally stopped in today and we had a delightful tablefull of raw beet and carrot salad, marzen bratwurst, German cold cuts, and two (small, lunchtime) beers.

Great food, reasonable prices, authentic Berliner-cum-San Francisco atmosphere, friendly, tasty fare, what more do you want?

(What more did I want? I wanted a plateful of the creamed herring at Walzwerk, two more schwarzbiers and an Underberg to finish -- but that was later.)

Homey, friendly, a little funky, and very tasty. Started with a place of EXCELLENT friend oysters to share.

I had a beet salad to start - nothing really remarkable here, but tasty all the same, and then Grits & Grillades for the main. Grillades are slow-braised veal cheeks, done up in a nice rich gravy. The meat was tasty, but the grits were great.

The food isn't innovative or even that current, but you can't help but love the place overall. Very friendly and honest service. Reasonable (but not cheap) prices. If you want more up-to-the-minute design and menu, try Cochon, but for a more down-home experience Dick & Jenny's is great.

BIG local food for BIG local customers. Famous for their long cheesy macaroni, red sauce, and po-boys. I had a great oyster po-boy, certainly top notch, and very fairly priced at $8 for a "half", which was by any measure a "whole" sandwich. If you're in the Ninth near Arabi, it's worth a stop to check out this local institution.

This was the best higher-end restaurant meal I had all week in NOLA. I took a group of 6 there and we filled the table with all sorts of goodies - and there wasn't one real dud in the whole pile.

We started with Fried Rabbit Livers, Wood-Fired Oyster Roast, Friend Alligator, the Boucherie Plate and the Ribs with Watermelon Pickle. I didn't get to taste the ribs, but they looked great, and everyone else loved them. The Alligator was perhaps over-fried but still tasty. The rabbit livers were AWESOME. I could eat a plate of them right now. "Oyster Roast" is oysters on the half shell with a bit hot sauce, thrown into a hot oven. Very nice - although I prefer them on the bbq if you're going to cook them... I might have used a little less sauce and a hotter oven. The boucherie was great, especially the "pig face". Oh yes, and an order of the soup of the day, which was EXCELLENT.

Entrees were Rabbit & Dumplings, Roasted Fish "Fisherman's Style", and two massive over-roasted pork chops. The chops were impressive, very juicy and very tasty. I wish I had tried a bit of the rabbit, because it looked amazing. The fish was beautifully done.

Great cocktails - I will admit to having three whiskey sours made with Bernheim Wheat Whiskey -- very nice.

Great design and nice view of the kitchen and big wood-burning oven. I loved the feel of the place and the young, hip, friendly, foodie staff. Right on, Cochon!

I stopped in for lunch on my last day of a recent trip to New Orleans. I was happy to see that the lunch menu is VERY fairly priced, with under-$10 appetizers and mains in the mid-teens.

I had a friend oyster salad to start, which was nicely crusted with cornmeal and presented with a few mixed greens and halved cherry tomatoes. The oysters were tasty, but the salad was generic and the tomatoes tasteless -- no surprise this time of year. Why put imported cherry tomatoes on a salad in winter -- just use something else! The oysters were tasty but not the best I've had, although I did really like the crust.

For the entree I had scallops with red thai rice and some other vaguely asian-fusion accompaniments. The scallops were smallish, salty and chewy - not great at all, and we had nice big tasty ones the night before at Dick & Jenny's, so it's clear they're available in the area. The purple Thai rice was overcooked and a bit gluey.

Great service, great prices for a place with such a reputation, but the food was just so-so. I'm glad I tried it, but I'll take a pass next time. Why is fusion so popular in NOLA?

I just spent a week in New Orleans and was lucky enough to eat at several great restaurants. Stella came very highly recommended, and one highly-placed local even told me that it was, in his opinion, the "best food you'll have" in New Orleans right now.

I respectfully disagreed with my host. Stella is a nice place, but the food is very dated, and although there were a couple of tasty items, my overall impression was that the place is over-hyped and CERTAINLY not worth the VERY high prices.

I had oysters granita three ways to start - three large oysters on the half shell topped with three different "granitas" of ice and various flavorings. Barf. Frozen barf, actually. Don't get me wrong, I love oysters, but these were nothing to write home about. For one, this is a novelty dish. Second, there was WAY too much ice, so I ended up with a big mouthful of super-cold salty slush and barely avoided oyster-flavored ice-cream-headache. Sort of like Oyster Icee. Bad idea, and not well executed.

For the main I had duck five ways. I'm generally a duck eater, but it sounded interesting, and many other dishes were loaded up with shrimp, which I am allergic to, so I went for it. Tea-smoked dug leg was excellent. Foie gras wonton was pathetic - expensive airport bar food. Greasy wonton, melted runny foie gras. Another bad novelty idea.

We asked for advice on wine and although I asked for a "spicy pinot" we got a thin, pale one. The server asked how I liked the wine and I gave him an honest answer, to which he replied with a shrug.

For $35-$45 entrees, I expect WAY more. I ate far better at Cochon for half the price, not to mention Rocky & Carlo for a tenth of the price. Stella, you're not fooling anyone, fusion was OVER in the 80's!

Adam and I wanted to meet for a beer after work, and we just wanted to grab a slice, but parking around 16th and Valencia was such a fuckshow that we abandoned that idea. He suggested having a drink at Liberties, and I said sure, I've never been there. We ended up ordering dinner - and what a massive mistake that was. $20 steak and $14 fish and chips, the steak was like a shoe and the fish tasted like the newspaper it should have been wrapped in. Incredibly, the tab was more than $100, and we both left feeling worse than when we walked in. What a joke.

Lastly, why, why, why is the place packed with happy Friday-evening diners? I mean, sure, have a pint, no worries, but why in the fuck would you eat crappy pub food for triple the fair price???

I say fuck this, fuck that sort of neighborhood disgrace. Never again.

This place is weird. Clearly someone had a Concept -- actually, not just one but several, including cafe-in-a-florist-shop, wine bar, wifi lounge, art space, and, well, large blue furniture? We stopped in for a sandwich, which wasn't bad. The soup, on the other hand, was first cold, then warm but fair at best. They compensated, graciously, with free (and very good!) coffee.

If "My Florist" was in, say, San Francisco, the closest equivalent would be Axis Cafe, which I hate - and even that is less jarring. Since it's _not_ in SF, I suppose it's not necessarily all that bad, but I'm still not really sure exactly why you'd go here, although I can think of several reasons I'd go here instead of less-appealing alternatives. Maybe that's their strategy?

Anyhow - not bad, just a little weird.

I hate to dis a local favorite, but I've two sub-par pies at Goat Hill recently. One was the nightly special - linguica and green onions - which came out soupy and not very flavorful. The other was a combo that we ordered up with Italian sausage and some other things... but there was hardly ANY sausage at all. I mentioned this to the server, and he said he'd pass along the feedback. We didn't expect any special treatment, after all, it's just a pizza, but I did mention it again to the head of the house as we were leaving. Her response was, "if you want more sausage, ask for extra when you order." Eh? F**k that, a sausage pizza should COME WITH sausage, enough to taste it, not one little speck per slice.

Step it up, Goat Hill, or die slowly and shamefully.