Beretta

Beretta has been the talk of the Mission restaurant scene for the past several months. I've walked past it so many times and thought to myself - why on earth is this restaurant so crowded? I knew I had to try it myself to figure out if it was worth all the hype. And I did just that - twice in one week. I guess I really liked it :)

So what is it about this place that has people willing to wait over an hour for a table?!? Well to start with they have amazing amazing cocktails, with some very unique names. I had the Airmail - gin, lime, cane juice topped with bitters. That was one good cocktail, so good in fact that I had it when I went back the second time.

On to the food now - nice cocktails are all good, but the most important thing about any restaurant is the food. And beretta does food well! The menu is Italian, lots of small plates, a few salads, risottos, but the thin crust pizzas are definitely the star of the show. If you think Delfina's pizza is awesome, you are absolutely going to love the pizza here. I highly recommend the pizza with the spicy marinara and pepperoncini - it's the most amazingly simple, tangy, spicy, flavor in each bite pizza. The funghi one is pretty good too. And did you know that egg on pizza tastes awesome - who would have thought? Ok so there's all this good food and all these great cocktails, but in these tough economic times (I just had to throw that in :)) the question is "Is dinner here going to burn a hole in my pocket?" The answer to that is "somewhat" - beretta is definitely not a cheap eat, but 30 buks could get you a couple of drinks and a filling meal. Thats not so bad i think. And if you share with friends even better!

So far everything sounds perfect, doesn't it? There is a but though - there always is. It's the noise - don't even think of going here if you want to have a conversation with the person you are with. So first dates are a complete no-no here. This restaurant is loud! I mean lip reading loud - theres music blaring, people talking, people shouting, you get the picture.

In summary, beretta is definitely worth a visit, my tip though is to either get there really early or really late. It'll save you from the extremely long wait and may also spare your ear drums from getting blown off!

Dinner at breakneck speed!

I'm going to write an extremely rushed and succinct review of Suriya Thai in the Mission. This is only fair considering that this is probably the quickest dinner I have ever ordered and eaten.

We got there on a Saturday night after Lit Crawl, 10 minutes before closing. We knew that we would have to decide our orders quickly - but we had no idea how quickly. The server was literally around our necks forcing us to order quickly. With so much pressure, of course we ended up ordering too much, and definitely waaay to much tofu. No sonner had we ordered our food, that it started appearing at such a fast pace, I'm sure these guys set the record for the fastest service ever! In the next 5 minutes every single dish we had ordered was on the table, and the kitchen was closed! If this was a relationship, it would be one of those definitely headed towards disaster for moving too fast!

The rest of dinner was a blur - the pace had been set, and we ate dinner at breakneck speed too, in case they made us leave the restuarant in the next 5 minutes because they wanted to close up. Anyway, half an hour later, and with the feeling of being spun around too fast we left Suriya Thai - a little dizzy, and convinced that some places are just better for take-out.

Vegetarian sushi?

I love sushi - it's weird coming from a vegetarian's mouth, but true. I always think how fortunate I am to live in San Francisco with so many restaurants that cater to, or atleast recognize vegetariansm. And I have not one, but two favorite sushi places that have so many vegetarian options that you feel like a kid in a candy shop.

The first one is Cha-ya, there was a point when I ate here so often, I guess because it only serves vegetarian food. Here was a place that I could eat, literally everything on the menu ( and I'm saying this because they don't have a single dish that has eggplant in it... hehe). So, I have my staples at Cha-ya that I would recommend to anyone - start with the miso soup and an order of the gyoza for appetizers. Next, order some rolls to share, I love the kappa rolls, the Shattuck and the tempura rolls. I also loooove the Cha-ya Delight, it's this wholesome hearty rice dish, with almost spice or salt, but it is still so flavorful. I don't know what it is about this dish, when it's served to you it looks like a bunch of boiled vegetables sitting on a bed of brown rice - almost too healthy looking to be tasty. But one bite of it and you know you were so wrong in judging this awesome dish - the vegetables are cooked to perfection, I think they marinate them in something because although there is no visible sign of spices, there is a certain subtle flavor to them. Moving on... the only thing I haven't had at Cha-ya is dessert, I'm usually so full and happy by the time I'm done with dinner that I never have room for dessert - and I think all their dessert options have B-fruit in them :)

So my second vegertatian-friendly sushi place is one that I recently discovered thanks to Siddharth. It's called Minako, and is in a pretty grimy part of the Mission. This place has attitude! And I mean that in a good way. As soon as you enter the small space, the individualism of the owners and the patrons is evident - the menu has caricatures and poems wirtten over the years by customers of the restaurant. That's a pretty novel concept according to me. The menu is pretty exhaustive - in addition to the regular menu, they had this little board on every table with 10 specials for the day. Pretty cool! So anyway, I was pretty impressed with how much character this place had... but what about the food?

It was a tough choice deciding between so many vegetarian and fish options (Minako is not an only-veg sushi place, but it still has more than enough vegetarian options). We ended up ordering the almond encrusted tofu, seaweed salad, gyoza, kappa rolls (of course), and my favorite - the vegetarian spicy eel roll. The soup is entirely passable - so don't order that. Instead the sushi options and the noodle options are safer bets. The fish-eaters on the table ordered some hamachi and Ashish's usual inari. Overall I think everyone was really happy with the food - we ordered too much, but surprisingly finished almost everything. I think the highlight for me though was the personalized touches - the menus with the customer drawings, the owner (?) of the place who chatted with us after dinner, and the little metal board with smart comments and the specials of the day. This is the kind of place you want to be a regular at - if only it was closer to home.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/cha-ya-vegetarian-japanese-restaurant-san-francisco
http://www.yelp.com/biz/minako-organic-japanese-restaurant-san-francisco

Did someone say buffalo wings?

On a vegetarian food blog?!? Is nothing sacred any more?

Now, those of you that know me well... know, that if there's one thing that constantly tempts me to go over to the dark side it's buffalo wings and the orange chicken at Panda Express (I know... gross!) . So, then you can understand my joy on finding a restaurant that serves vegan buffalo wings a.k.a buffalo girls, in the Mission.

It's called Weird Fish, and has a kindof eclectic menu of tacos, bar food, and expensive and strictly avoidable sparkling wine (according to Nilu anyway). The beers were good though, beer is always good :)

On the menu for us that night was, obviously the buffalo girls - it's seitan, a dense soy product, coated with this buffalo wing sauce.... I could hardly wait! And some other tofu and yam thing, and tacos for the main course. I guess it's evident that the food was really not something I would be screaming from the rooftops about. But one sinful bite of the tangy, succulent, steaming, fake... umm... wings, and I thought I have to blog about this place, because even if the food is so-so, and the alochol is expensive, and the server ignores you half the time.... the buffalo girls were worth it!

http://weirdfishsf.com/