Christopher M.'s Profile

Really good "guilty pleasure" place... and inexpensive!

Good burgers made from good ingredients.  Not quite on a gourmet level, quality-wise, but well above anything from a fast food place.  

Make sure to leave the paper wrapper on while you eat or you'll have grease EVERYWHERE!  I found this out the hard way.   Also had the fries and a chocolate shake, which are both great.  The "mini" burger is actually quite big (a quarter pound) and should satisfy the average person.

Ten minutes after the hostess seated us, we finally flagged someone down to serve us.  Apparently she was going off shift, but took our order anyway.  During the wait, we watched the tables on either side of us both get seated, get served, and finish their meals.  

44 minutes later, our food arrived.  I'd ordered the "Triton" pizza without onions... it came slathered with onions.  Apologies and excuses were made... apparently something about a miscommunication on the change of shift.  Regarding that, the only time we saw our "new" waitress was when she came to present the check.  

My wife's beet salad was OK.  My pizza tasted bland and soggy.  Next time, for beer and pizza, we'll just head to LaneSplitter.

Very few Indian restaurants have been as consistently good as this one.  I've been here maybe ten or more times, and again tonight.  Great service, great food, reasonable prices, fantastic selection.  Even when it's busy, there's never a wait for seating.  I've had better Indian food, but not on these terms... those places charge too much, have snotty wait staff, and you have to wait for a table only to be seated next to the kitchen (the best Indian I've had is way down in San Diego, so...).

Relatively friendly staff, VERY fast service, great food, very crowded on Sunday morning...

Started by being seated at a two-top table by the kitchen.  After about five minutes of trying to hear ourselves think above the din of yelling cooks, the dinging bell, and the crowd up front, we asked to be moved to the back patio.

The back patio looks like the yard of a rental property where the landlord doesn't bother with a credit check.  It was clean enough, but the furniture was junk and there was quite a bit of misc. clutter.  

This place is a solid "greasy spoon dive" in that the food is five stars and the ambiance is one star.

Great people, well organized, nice boats.  Lessons are pricey.

Very cool!  On a warm day, this place feels more San Diego than San Francisco (Berkeley, whatever).  Great food at the sandwich shop.  Great snack choices.  Excellent beer and snack selection.  Relaxed atmosphere.  Great for a stopover during a bike ride or for after sailing.

Pleasant staff, nice ambiance, decent service...

We came here after completely bailing on Art's Crab Shak 'cause we found that place disgusting, so we were pretty much willing to settle for anything on the plus side of Denny's...

While wandering College Ave looking at menus, my fiance decided she had a craving for a pork chop.  Finding one on the menu here, we decided to go in (regardless of said pork chop's $27 price tag).  The place was decorated and lit very romantically, and only about 1/3rd full on a Saturday night.  

We saw the menu on the door, so we expected high prices, but the food didn't really meet the grade for the prices they charge.  My fiance had the pork chop, of course, with a salad for a starter.  I had the New York steak with the fruit and cheese plate for a starter.

My starter had a selection of two breads, a stack of three stale flatbreads (I think the moisture of a kitchen environment got to them), grapes, and three cheeses.  The soft cheese was fantastic, the mini cheeseball think was alright, but not great, and the hard cheese just tasted like a stick of paraffin.  The salad?  Well... it's hard to go wrong there, right?  The pork chop was decent enough, although not fantastic.  The steak was on par with one for which I'd pay half the amount at an average steakhouse.  

As for drinks, my fiance had a glass of Frog's Leap Leap Sauvignon Blanc.  Good stuff, although $9 for a five ounce pour is kind of silly.  I had the Perfection Margarita, which was actually pretty good, but not $12 good.  

I read in a previous review that the worst thing on their menu was the dessert.  We found this to be the opposite.  We shared a molten chocolate cake and absolutely DESTROYED that thing!  It was amazing!

Overall it's a nice place, but the quality of the food doesn't meet the menu pricing.

NASTY looking place.  Torn up plastic booths, old tables, filth everywhere, questionable clientele staring us down as we entered, and the place smelled like the side of Pier 39 where the seals gather.  We sat ourselves and decided what to do 'cause my fiancee had be asking me for a while if we could try this place, but I could see the regret on her face.  

Did I mention the place stank?  It was really overwhelming.  I scanned the hugely overpriced menu looking for something that might overcome my revulsion at the ambiance as my fiancee looked around at the food on other people's tables, which didn't look all that great.  We sat for about ten minutes debating what to do, all the while completely ignored by the wait staff (it wasn't busy... maybe 1/5th full).  Eventually, we got up and went to a better restaurant without eating here.

VERY cool Oakland landmark!  Lots of interesting stuff to look at, great history, and the bartenders are friendly and have great stories about the bar (not sure how much is fact vs. fiction but it's all fun).

I rarely go here... last visit, I was reminded why.

Before you even get into the store, you get the sense of the impending experience.  The parking lot has a number of people just hanging out; selling bootleg DVDs, petitioning for donations to questionable charities, and or just having nothing better to do than hang out at WalMart by their cars and smoke pot while trying to keep their oversized pants from falling off.  There's obviously a culture there as they frequently converse by yelling across the parking lot to each other.

The store is dirty, disorganized, and poorly stocked.  The entryway has trash in it.  The lines are long and slow.  Poor even for a WalMart.