This oyster po’ boy from Brown Sugar Kitchen, in West Oakland, is going to give Bakesale Betty’s fried chicken sandwich a run for her money. You watch.
There’s Flora Restaruant, B Restaurant, and some new restaurant that just opened up near Jack London Square (folks from San Francisco) that I can’t seem to find, that I want to try. Flora is in my favorite building (blue Art deco across from the Fox Theatre) in Oakland, that I’d love to own one day. We tried Sura restaurant, a relatively new Korean restaurant on “kimchee row” on Telegraph, and it was pretty good. Good soondobu.
The (household) consensus is that the best restaurant in the East Bay is Rivoli.
Went for a stroll to The Wine Mine, which is just a block away. Wine Mine is an alternative to Paul Marcus wines in Rockridge, cozier and cooler than BevMo, and is another one of those “yeah, this is Oakland…people just don’t know” type of places (good, substantive, real deal).
They have $1 wine tastings and really good and nicely priced wine from all over.
Across the street is Casper’s hot dogs (really good old school hot dogs and milk shakes). Next door to Wine Mine is Cafe Mariposa, this gluten-free bakery. They sell their food to a lot of places including Whole Foods.
We try out new rice every so often brown rice, some multi-colored rice, jasmine, etc. I picked up this brown rice Kagayaki haiga rice. It’s supposedly brown rice in nutritional value but tastes like white rice. It’s pretty good and probably we’ll keep this as our main rice.
While we’re here, if you can find/buy Louisiana gulf shrimp, it’s much, much better than the regular shrimp you get in the store, it’s not gummy, and it’s a little “shrimpier”/”murkier”. We usually only get a chance to eat gulf shrimp in Louisiana so when we saw some in the store we picked some up and I remembered the difference in taste.
Pizza in North Oakland/Berkeley Area
- Pizzaiolo Temescal on Telegraph - wood oven, former Chez Panisse pizza cook
- Zachary’s Rockridge on College -Chicago style
- LaneSplitter’s Temescal on Telegraph- New York style; thin crust
- CheeseBoard Berkeley Gourmet Ghetto on Shattuck - foo foo Berkeley style
Too good.
Soup kick:
- Soondubu from My Tofu House on Geary in SF, or Pyung Chang on Telegraph
- Chicken soup from La Calaca Loca in Temescal
- Tom Yung Kung from Lotus Thai (we only do take out now, FYI)
- Seafood soup w/ handmade noodles from Shan Dong, downtown Oakland
Could use some more Oakland/Berkeley/SF recommendations maybe for Cioppino, clam chowder, etc.
Some notable soups I’m still hoping to find something comparable here: bouillabaisse in Marseille and French Onion soup in Montreal
A good friend of mine hooked me up with some Royce chocolate from Japan today. It’s pretty good.
I’d go with Neuhaus belgian chocolates for Valentine’s Day. Marie Belle is really good/artsy too and Bay Area local chocolate is nice too, Michael Recchiuti and Charle’s Chocolates. I’m cool with being cheap, but not with chocolate.
Not sure what it is with Belgians and chocolates (and beer and waffles and french fries) but they’re really good.
