Mingalaba
A very authentically prepared and reasonable priced Burmese food. Also, super-close (only a twelve-minute drive) from SFO.
Downtown Burlingame
1213 Burlingame Ave. Burlingame, CA 94010
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Elegant and stylish enough for a date night, but also casual enough for a cheap lunch in Burlingame. Also, if you’ve got a layover in SFO and want to get your Burmese fix, this is the place to go. (more…)
Can someone please explain to me why Austin is utterly overflowing with ridiculously good breakfast tacos and I can barely find expensive, passable versions anywhere else in the country. I mean, it’s not like San Francisco isn’t loaded with cheap and amazing Mexican joints and they certainly know how to put a great taco together. It’s a mystery that I don’t know if I’ll ever solve.
This, my friends is the future of fast food. Eatsa is the first eatery of its kind — a place where technology is being used wisely and effectively to produce food that is fresh, flavorful, reasonably priced, and — believe it or not — pretty darn healthy too. They’ve got it down to such as science that you pretty much don’t even need to interact with a human throughout the entire experience if you don’t want to. Hello, Eatsa. “Hello world.”
This is probably the most bizarrely happy-go-lucky place anywhere on the entire planet. On this day, torrential rain was falling from the sky, the shop’s WiFi was out so the normal music source was unusable, and many of the ingredients had not and were not going to be delivered. But, that couldn’t hold the Dat Dog staff down – it’s not in their nature. In fact, from the moment I laid my eyes upon that gigantic, two-story, neon, multicolored building on New Orleans’ Magazine Street, I knew there was something special about the place. I think passing through those Heinz mustard-colored doors functioned as a sort of portal to a comically super-happy alternate dimension.
The Japan Center Mall is a mysterious maze-like shopping center full of stalls selling Asian miscellany and a wide variety of authentic Asian eats. There are many places you could choose to eat at – with specialists for just about every Japanese food type you could think of. There are in fact a number of sushi options, but there is only one sushi purveyor inside of this massive mall that I find myself consistently returning to. It’s called Isobune and its a truly special place.
Everyone that’s even partially aware of the Austin dining scene has heard of Uchiko. It’s generally regarded as one of the top dining destinations in the city and I’ve known for many years that I needed to see what all of the excitement was about for myself. I think the restaurant may have actually first come to attention when the now-famed chef Paul Qui tore his way through Top Chef Season 9. He basically wiped the floor with his competition utilizing his signature Asian fusion style and I took notice. Paul has since moved on from Uchiko to work on other Austin ventures such as his food truck East Side King and namesake restaurant Qui. But, Uchiko remains as exciting and buzz-worthy as ever.
Alright, today I’m gonna throw it back. Back to the time when I was living in NYC and the inevitable boozy Sunday brunch ritual was both a reality and a necessity. Sure, San Francisco has a thriving brunch scene with plenty of interesting versions of Eggs Benedict and brunch cocktails, but I just haven’t seen the boozy excessiveness on the same level.
*Editor’s Note 4/17/15: O-Toro has since relocated to a larger space only a block away at 298 Gough St.
I’m constantly looking for sushi joints in the Bay Area serving really high quality fish at very reasonable prices. I’ve got spots all over the region (see: Wayo, Tataki, Sushi Tomi, Live Sushi Bar, and Geta) and I’ve even already got a place I love in Hayes Valley, but Domo is quite small and doesn’t take reservations so it’s not super easy to rely on it as a go-to spot in that neighborhood. Only a few blocks away is another well-reputed sushi den called O-Toro that actually does take OpenTable reservations and also sounded like it had a lot of potential to become my new go-to sushi bar in that neighborhood.
One day, Amy and I were headed to Oakland to check out the California International Antiquarian Book Fair (it’s way more awesome than it sounds, I promise). This year, the event relocated from its usual San Francisco venue to the Marriott City Center Convention location in the Piedmont neighborhood of Oakland.
Well, I’m pretty much always on the hunt for great, cheap sushi and I knew we would need to grab a good lunch before heading into the event, but I wasn’t very familiar with the area’s food selection. So, I pulled up Foursquare and did a quick search to gauge my options. Immediately, I was presented with an obvious lunch solution – a tiny hole-in-the-wall well-regarded for its quality fish and reasonable prices called Geta Sushi.
If you’re ready to drop some bills on serious sushi in San Francisco, Akiko’s is the place to do it. All of the fish is ridiculously high-quality and a good portion of it is even imported directly from the famed Tsukiji Fish Market in Japan. All of their preparations are utterly impeccable and do that magnificent fish the justice it deserves.