Sam M.'s Profile

ON VACATION UNTIL 8/21/2011.

Please give this review 1,000 useful ratings so that everybody knows not to go there before August 21!!

This might be my new favorite restaurant.  This might be my new Oaxaquena, except it's two blocks from my house instead of a BART ride plus two blocks.  Dude, the cold soft scrambled egg salad that comes with the veggie combo (it might come with everything--have to go back and check).  I could eat a dozen eggs' worth of that.  Then there's the shuro wot, which is just some kind of delicious chickpea porridge or something that comes bubbling in a pot.  It's awesome too.   You would not think anything so smeary could be so delicious.  Then there's the breakfast, with more eggs and an injera/beef combo that makes "red and oily" taste good.  Oh gosh.  And it's so cheap, even for Ethiopian, and the service is so fast and attentive.

I still have to go back and try the sambusas and the kitfo.  Dear everyone:  please patronize to this restaurant so it doesn't close ever.

AHHHHH NO IT CLOSED.  WHY DIDN'T YOU LISTEN TO ME, INTERNET??  I am quitting Yelp now.

This place is fantastic.  The best part is that it's pretty much just a museum about Oakland and California and it's not trying to be a museum about all the art that has ever happened in the world or anything--as a result, it really excels at telling you stuff about Oakland and San Francisco and California and everything.  

I still don't understand how the Spanish thought California was a peninsula when they first discovered it, but they have to be pretty smart because they invented tapas.

Also, yes, the Pixar exhibit is all that.

Really a gem...  calming atmosphere, tasty food (the chutneys, the samosas, the veggie korma), low prices, and just a couple touches of nice service that make you feel like you're in for a really special evening.  Also a great date place (actually, Jeff always wants to come here, but I'm kind of a jerk).

This is it.  This is my new favorite Mexican place.  Everything is huge and delicious and takes forever to arrive.  Like, seriously, pounds of guacamole for $5.  

Also there is a secret that makes it even better, that takes it from AMAZING to RIDICULOUS, but I can't tell you what it is because that would ruin the secret.

You know, getting to my house off of 24 I must have passed this place like a dozen times.  Today I had to run home and clean up before my mom got here, and I had no food in my house, so I was running around looking for somewhere to get a nice sandwich.  "Oh!"  I thought, "How about Cafe Hella Oakland?"

My bagel sandwich was OUTSTANDING and only $4.50.  As others have mentioned, the cucumbers on it are sliced to a thickness of about three nanometers, so you get just this amazing tender salty crunch.  I think it had avocado, tomato, some sprouts, some sort of lemon thyme dressing or something.  It was pretty much the perfect veggie sandwich.  Also, while waiting for it to be made, I got to read this fantastic children's book about a bear who gift wraps a different object in his house every day so he can pretend that it's his birthday every day.  It made me think a lot about material possessions.  

This place is seriously so charming.  This is the kind of place you think could not exist in yoga mom robot Rockridge.

Basically, I need to think up more reasons to go here, and I'm definitely going to use it as a landmark when I'm giving directions to my house:  "Oh, yeah, then take a soft left at CAFE HELLOAKLAND and go over the 25 speed bumps on Colby."

I'm not the world's most knowledgeable consumer of outdoor equipment, and I can only speak to the renting here, but this place is awesome for renting.

Three of us rented mountaineering equipment for a four-day trip--two of us from Marmot and one of us from REI.  The rentals from Marmot cost half as much, and when our four-day trip turned into a five-day trip because of altitude sickness, the staff at Marmot were way more understanding.  Marmot let us drop everything off a day late with no extra fee and no questions asked except for "is everyone okay?"  REI wanted medical documentation.

Marmot really should have charged us extra for the stank condition I left the boots in, but they didn't.  Sorry!  I'll do better next time I rent from you.

Usually I rag on Out of the Closet (wordplay!).  I usually say something like "Oh, Out of the Closet, I love that you support AIDS testing; could you please have something in stock that I might want to wear, ever?"  NOT THIS TIME.  

Seriously, one week before Halloween they turned me into Julia Child for $12.  Okay, $14 once I bought pantyhose.  I don't think I could even count on Garment District for something that clutch.  Definitely shop here if you are a 50-year-old 6-foot-tall woman.

Not sure what things were like when Dan R was there, but I just took a trip over with Sam's Mom today and admission was only $6.00, and 50 cents off with AAA.  It was AWESOME.  You get to see cannons from the 18th century, learn all about how to make charcoal, and travel down into the heart of a 200-year-old furnace.  It's pretty cool.

I can't help but think of Roadside America, which also costs $6.00 but is way lamer.  Take a detour on your cross-country road trip, skip Shartlesville, and head to Lebanon instead.  Bite me Roadside America.

Not just worth 5 stars, also worth my 200th review.  One of my favorite memories ever is hanging out on the Palatine Hill in Rome after closing time but before security could find us to kick us out.  No other tourists--just three of us, some rocks, and a sunset.

Sutro Baths is basically the same thing except reinterpreted through the lens of San Francisco--exposed piping replaces aqueducts, crumbling fifty-year-old reinforced concrete replaces crumbling two-thousand-year old stones.  It's possibly the most bizarre set of ruins you'll ever see and it's 30 minutes out of downtown SF on the 38.  You owe it to yourself to visit.

Seriously, read these other reviews.  There's something poetic here in the decaying seagulls and the exposed piping, the beer bottles and graffiti and the obscenities carved into sandstone.  It's inspirational and it's very, very special.

I have to disagree with Manny F, though--unless the object of your desire lacks a sense of smell, the faint smell of poo mingling with the ocean breeze disqualifies Sutro Baths as a "great place to make your move."  Also, I don't know why people drink beer here, because if you fall in the water you're gonna need to get some shots.