Esther "eyeYelp" Y.'s Profile

Typical festival -- live music, crowded streets, traffic control, vendors lined up as far as the eye can see (up to the top of the hill, at least), and lots of expensive unhealthy festival street food.

Great place to bring your cute dogs (just don't let them get stampeded over) if you like to meet new people (who also love cute dogs).

I like this location because it's large and fairly clean. I always get faked out though because most Ranch's I go to, the produce is on the far right when you enter. Here it's on the left. In any case, great deals can be found if you're watching the sales and this plaza has a lot of other convenient shops like CVS.

This is similar to the Emeryville Powell St. Plaza but with a few welcome additions of Ross and CVS. But like everyone else has complained, the design of the plaza is pretty awful and you just have to watch out for yourself!

I'm usually not a fan of TapEx, but certain locations I can tolerate. This one has a fairly nice interior design for being on Shattuck Ave.

Great selection of drinks. I've had the barley, Thai milk tea (8 hr brew), and black sesame here, and I approve of them all.

However, for THE best boba in this part of the East Bay, head over to Mr. Green Bubble. Sweethearts near campus is good too if you need a cheap fix.

Bags of fortune cookies! My friend really wanted to buy a bag of fortune cookies and I thought that was the weirdest request...but Yelp to the rescue, as always. Super cheap and fast!

Really nice staff, but they take a long time to do an oil change. My bf's car was sitting in the air for at least 30 minutes with nobody working on it? Not really sure what was going on but they promised our car back in less than an hour, and it took 1.5 hours and cost around $32 for our Toyota Prius. Thankfully they have a waiting room with TV and magazines, but it also smells like rubber and cigarette smoke in there. =P

Cute boba shop, and quite possibly the best boba and cafe in the East Bay north of Fantasia Coffee & Tea. The drinks are fresh and made from real ingredients, not powder, yet tasty! They don't go overboard on sugar, which is nice.

Parking is difficult, so expect to walk a little unless you get lucky!

I've tried and highly recommend:
- grapefruit green tea
- jasmine tea with pudding
- cocoa-fait (parfait) with your choice of toppings
- fried tofu cubes with your choice of spiciness

I have also had the sesame milk tea, which was a little on the bland side since they cut down on the sugar a lot. That's probably a good thing, but that causes it to be slightly bland and possibly not for all tastes. I'd recommend if this is your first time, get something else first so you have something good to judge by.

Slightly pricey at $3.55 for drinks on average, but it comes in a larger cup than most other boba shops.

Definitely authentic and much better than Quickly's and TapEx. The best boba shops in the Bay Area are now Fantasia, Ten Ren and any place that uses Ten Ren tea, and Mr. Green Bubble.

Cost Plus World Market is always a nice place to go to get imported goods, although you can buy most of these things at another market such as Trader Joe's, Berkeley Bowl, or an Asian market and often for cheaper. There are a few gems and good deals here, if you look. For example, there is currently a 50% off furniture sale, which makes the furniture quite affordable yet better quality than IKEA!

Cost Plus aisles will seem quite random...one second you're looking at different jams and then all of a sudden you're looking at drawer knobs. The selection is rather small but it's probably better that way if you're easily overwhelmed by the ginormous selection in today's markets.

My bf and I came here with our unfortunately-expired-last-week Google Offers to spend the amount we had paid for it. I'd never been, but have heard good things about Yoshi's SF & Oakland. A nice dressy Japanese restaurant with live music/shows. I spent an hour getting pretty for my bf and we left his place like a couple going to the Grammy's (ok, not really, but I can dream?).

We've been to JLS before, but this time, driving to a new place in the dark, JLS seemed really ghetto and scary. We ended up parking in the structure adjacent to Yoshi's. Parking was 75 cents for 30 minutes and $1 for every hour after that with validation. We got out of the car and were promptly greeted by a strong whiff of feces. Er...classy night already, I've been living in this pocket of the East Bay for 4 years now and I'm still not used to it. =P

We walked quickly to the restaurant, with him chastising me for going the longest way around the block because I had lost my direction after we got into the parking structure (I thought men were supposed to be the ones who were good at directions). We were 50% sure we'd get mugged if we had been outside for another few minutes.

Walking by the floor-to-ceiling glass windows Yoshi's at 7:45 PM on this Monday night, the restaurant was mostly empty. There was an entire section unfilled, and most people were in the tatami room, which was still only about 30% full. My bf whispered, "there are no Asians..." I wasn't surprised. Unless this is REALLY good sushi, we'd rather not dress up and pay $5 more per roll, we'd go somewhere cheap like Sushi House.

We requested seating in the Tatami Room, which was actually a room with tatami mats but large holes in the ground for your feet. So not truly an authentic tatami experience, but I must say it's kinda nice to put your feet down instead of sitting on them and making them go all numb. You can also play footsie with your table partner! =D Also nice for people wearing dresses, though be careful getting in/out lest you give some other patrons a free show.

Unfortunately, no exceptions could be made for our just-expired-a-few-days-ago Google Offers, and the rolls were certainly quite expensive for what you get, so we ended up just getting 3 rolls and a free bowl of edamame ($3 value, Yelp check-in offer).

We got the Yoshi's Roll, Rock N Roll, and Hamachi Negi Roll. Yoshi's Roll was $15 with 5 slightly-large slices. It was ok, the asparagus overpowered the whole roll such that I couldn't even taste the salmon or crab. Bf thought it was weird to put cheap lettuce in too.  The other 2 rolls were $7.50 and $7 and each came with 6 normal-sized slices and the Rock N Roll was probably the best of the 3 rolls. The unagi went well with the avocado, but this is a pretty standard roll. I liked the hamachi too, but that's pretty much all that was in it and it was not as flavorful as Rock N Roll. The sushi was relatively fresh but not particularly amazing or better than say, Sushi House.

Service was rather slow but Japanese food is more slow food than fast food and the point is to spend time on your date so it's definitely not a point I'd complain about.

The show is not included with dinner; you must buy tickets separately. And don't forget to get your parking ticket validated!

I don't think I'll ever come back to Yoshi's Oakland again unless Jack London Square improves dramatically. Yoshi's SF might be worth a chance, but again, I think it's just easier to go to a more casual and affordable sushi restaurant if the quality is going to be comparable anyways.

I visited a friend here and got a tour of the facilities. Think something like Google on a much smaller scale. Wow, Palantir employees, you guys are super lucky!