Cameron M.'s Profile

It makes me so sad to see really excellent restaurants getting the standard 3.5 stars on Yelp.

Where to begin! My experience with P/30 was amazing from start to finish. First, the staff is amazingly considerate. We came on a Saturday night in the fall, and due to the number of servers they weren't seating outside. The hostess made an exception for us though because we had our dog along, and sat us at a single table just outside the kitchen. It was the best seat in the house, even though it got a bit dark toward the end.

The ambiance is quaint, a small front room and larger seating area in the back, all packed in a cottage with the kitchen in the middle. It looks like they dropped a professional kitchen right where mom used to cook in this old house. There is quite a bit of outdoor seating, but since it was fall we had the only seat outside.

For starters I had the Mixed Endive Salad ($7) and my wife had the "something from the garden" which was an heirloom tomato salad with colorado chile vinaigrette ($7). I've had the pear-nut-endive-blue cheese salad a number of times in my life, but I have to say this was perfectly executed. The pears were delicious, and wherever the blue cheese was from, it was amazing.

For mains I had the Butterfish Gumbo ($22) and she had the hamburger ($13). The butterfish did amazing things for the gumbo which had all the flavor of a home recipe but in a much more elegant package. The burger was also excellent, and the fries were extremely memorable. The highlight though were the baked beans ($7) which I couldn't pass up. Best. Baked. Beans. Ever.

We had the specialty dessert (smores for two, $10) which are deserving of the title. A mixture of chocolate ganache and homemade marshmallow toasted with a torch is served in a small jar alongside a handful of homemade graham crackers. After those are gone, it's pretty much assured you'll use a spoon, and then your fingers to scrape out the remaining filling.

All in all, I remember each dish distinctly, which is hard to say about a place I had never heard of before tonight. And I had to censor myself from ordering other dishes. P/30 is a treat, and if I lived in Sebastopol I'm sure I would go as much as my cholesterol could take it.

Next time, fried chicken and waffles...

After being referred by my GP, I had a great experience with Dr. Kyle Bickel this week. After cutting my finger on an avocado, I suffered some nerve damage. Dr. Bickel saw me the same week, and he was very clear about my diagnosis and options for treatment, as well as quite a bit of background knowledge on the topic of digital nerves.. While no surgery was required, I walked away knowing everything about my injury and comfortable about the prognosis.

I highly recommend Dr. Bickel and The Hand Center, and would go back without question if I ever needed a hand specialist (and hope that I never will).

Oh, and my injury? Dr. Bickel revealed that he sees at least 20 patients a year with avocado-related injuries, far and above the most common home/kitchen cause of hand lacerations.

Five stars for bringing a mission burrito out of the mission. The reviews here make me lose a lot of faith in Yelp: I've eaten here four times since their opening and while the service and ordering need some work, the food is always consistently delicious (not surprising given that the chef came from Pancho Villa).

Without getting into the religious debate around mission burritos, this is certainly in the range of others, and after a few months I imagine they will be a solid contender.

Name another place you can get a burrito of this quality in SOMA, especially a block from caltrain. Chavos? Not even close. Tres Agaves? Nope. Luna Taqueria? El Norteno Truck? Maybe if they're open. All I know is that Iron Cactus is a regular part of my eating schedule.

I have been a long-time customer of Basil Thai (BT), and was excited to try their new spot (especially with the 20% discount they gave us back at BT). We went on a Friday night during peak dining time, and everything was quite relaxed. We sat upstairs, the light was a bit dim, but damn, those chandeliers are totally amazing.

We had a couple of the fresh spring rolls, and just as with BT, they were quite happy to substitute, taking the meat out of one and making it vegetarian. As other reviewers have suggested, the menu is paired down from the selections available at BT, but to be honest, they removed a lot of options I never chose anyway.

We had three noodle dishes and two rice dishes as main courses, and all of them were excellent. The preparation and flavors are much more street food than at BT, and given a choice between the two I think I would actually favor the Canteen from here on out. Oh, and the lemongrass mojoito was seriously delicious and not too sweet.

I'm sure Basil Canteen will be successful; with proximity to clubs, good drinks, and a menu that has lots of small plates, I can't imagine that this won't be pre-club spot like the other food in the area.

One of the better beer venues I've been to, with very intelligent and knowledgeable staff. I was looking for something "interesting," not smoke-beer interesting, but something you wouldn't expect out of a beer. Our waiter recommended a Flanders Belgian Brown Ale which uses a wild yeast and tastes something like a used sock mixed with sourdough. Surprisingly delicious, and well above my interesting mark. He recommended 4 beers, all unknown winners.

I will be going back for sure.

This is one of my favorite Chinese restaurants in the city, and you'll be hardpressed to find one this good outside of Chinatown.

First things first, I think the quality of their dishes, as with most Chinese restaurants, varies quite a bit. If you order a standard American Chinese dish, it's only so-so here, but everything else is amazing.

Start with soup dumplings. They're among the best in the city. Get the green beans with duck. Oh, the tiny, crispy morsels of duck. Have some Chinese greens (pea shoots or Chinese broccoli) and white rice. Get one of their Sichuan specials (I like the spicy shrimp), and wash it all down with a Tsing Tao. Near perfection.

The price is not dirt cheap for a Chinese restaurant, but it's well worth it. Expect to spend $20 a person.

Cheap beer is hard to find in Chelsea. And when I mean cheap beer, I mean CHEAP. Tuesday night they have a flip-for-drinks special where PBR is $2 with a coin-flip determining whether you pay at all. For the non-math people in the audience, this means $1 PBR all night.

The food is of the bar/pub variety and is not bad. It's kind of an unexpected place to go drinking, but somehow I end up there quite a bit.

Little sister to Bright Food Shop, Kitchen/Market offers up some of the same foods you'll pay much more for next door, but at a lower cost (and without seating). You can also buy some spices here and other foodstuffs. It's sort of like an experiment in selling the components of the food being served out of the restaurant. They also sell lots of these things online.

Their burritos leave a lot to be desired for someone with a west coast palate. They're interesting and sometimes tasty, but not a burrito in the traditional sense. More like a wrap.

It is possible to have food that is both tasty and won't boost your HDL by 20 points.

It's no Momofuku but the noodle soups are good and their vegetarian options are pretty numerous.

The communist aesthetic, open seating and pan-asian menu is so reminiscent of Wagamama that I'd guess they're related.

It can be crowded and loud for dinner or on the weekend, but it's usually pretty easy to get a seat at lunch.

It's hard to express this sort of sentiment in a single review, but I'll try.

I love coffee. I've had lots of amazing coffee in many places. Before Cafe Grumpy I was a staunch Blue Bottle fan, but I've changed my mind.

There are a few competitors in NYC, Gimme Coffee in Brooklyn, Joe around NYU, 9th Street Espresso in a couple of locations, but Grumpy is in another class.

The environment is comfy, quiet, and well-designed. For lattes and cappuccinos their machine pushes out some of the best espresso I've had. I prefer the latte in a to-go cup as their glass cups are a little small and short on milk. They'll also keep a couple of shot glasses around for a Gibraltar if you ask.

Their drip coffee is made exclusively in Clover machines. These things are the desire of all coffee nerds, making an absolutely perfect cup of brewed coffee. With a precise measurement of beans, this is more science than you can shake a stick at, and the results are wonderful.

All in all, it leaves almost nothing to be desired. I recommend this place to everyone, and no one has been disappointed.

Oh, and the staff are nice! Which is not all that common in such a quality coffee shop.