Andrew H.'s Profile

Fondue dinner at the Bread Company is probably the top restaurant experience I miss from Urbana, IL (caveat: this review is a bit out of date). At the time you could get a very decent swiss cheese fondue with good bread, some roasted garlic for an appetizer, and two glasses of house red for just over $30--a princely sum for a starving college student, but compared with the trendy $100 fondue restaurants in the SF Bay Area, a steal. The dinnertime atmosphere was also great: quiet, romantic, dimly but warmly lit.

They also had fantastic checkerboard shortbread cookies. I've been hard pressed to find better anywhere else.

Lunch sandwiches and other baked goods were both decent, but the five stars are for the fondue date memories.

Let me repeat part of my review for the Marina Grove, since it applies exactly for the Fillmore version:

This is a great cafe for food or tea. Their coffee is okay but nothing spectacular. We come here for their excellent mac and cheese, their very tasty vegetarian chili, and good iced tea, lemonade, and French-press style pots of decent loose-leaf tea. Hot pressed sandwiches (and the crab cake sandwich) are also good.

I prefer the Fillmore Grove to the Marina one because of distance to my usual haunts, and because Marina parking sucks ass. But, I'd have to say the mac and cheese is usually slightly better at the Marina Grove. We come to the FIllmore Grove probably once a week or so, and I highly recommend it for cafe food.

This is a great cafe for food or tea. Their coffee is okay but nothing spectacular. We come here for their excellent mac and cheese, their very tasty vegetarian chili, and good iced tea, lemonade, and French-press style pots of decent loose-leaf tea. Hot pressed sandwiches (and the crab cake sandwich) are also good.

It gets really crowded with Marina-style folks, but there are good lulls at actual meal times when people go off to other restaurants. For example, we often find that Saturday at 6pm the place kinda empties out just in time for us to swoop in and eat some quick dinner. Service is cheery, although they always try to upsell you on sweets.

If you don't want to find Marina parking, I recommend the Fillmore St. Grove. But I think the mac and cheese here is slightly better.

I thought Blue was okay, but not awesome. Their mac and cheese was tasty. It's a straightforward mild cheese sauce with a panko bread crumb topping. Not bad, but it wasn't (for example) nearly up to par with Blue Plate's competition. Their Niman Ranch pork chop was good, bathed in an Asian style dark salty sauce, with broccoli and good mashed potatoes; but it didn't have that mouth-meltingly tender texture the most well made pork chops do.

I didn't really enjoy the space. It was crowded and VERY loud, and the blue interior is distinctive looking, but for some reason didn't feel very good. The service, however, was great. Everybody was very friendly and accomodating.

All in all, a solid place to go, with decent food and great service, but it didn't seem like a must-visit restaurant.

Tasty mezes, good service, and a surprisingly stylish interior for this otherwise utilitarian stretch of Clement.

We ordered a bunch of assorted mezes. The vanilla-selection meze platter (hummus, baba ganoush, bulghar salad, red pepper ezme, dolmas), served with thick Turkish bread (not pita) was very decent. House made spicy garlic yoghurt was exceptionally delicious. The green beans we ordered were disappointing (overcooked and not very flavorful).

Service was quite good, they kept our cups of decent black tea topped up all night long (judging from the number of sugar packets in front of my saucer at the end of the night, I must have gone through a potful). Dessert was a tasty, rich, shredded-wheat and cheese concoction that I've had before but don't remember the name of.

We didn't get the "tray service" and I don't think they have crepes here for dinner any more; the menu was all Mediterranean. But in any case, it was well done and we'll likely go back.

This is a really fun place to have tea. It's often estrogen heavy (filled with women in flowery clothing with a couple sheepish looking guys thrown in), but if you can get over the girly decor, it's great. Teas are good, service is very friendly and quick, and they have delicious tea sandwiches, particularly tasty scones, and petit-fours for dessert.

We always get cream tea for two (scones and fruit, with a bottomless pot of your choice of tea), with a side of tea sandwiches. I particularly like the stilton and pear sandwiches, but most of them are great. All the black teas we've had there were pretty good, and the atmosphere is fun.

It's super crowded all the time, I recommend making reservations, especially on weekends. We're lucky enough to live nearby so we just walk in and if there's a long wait, we go somewhere else.

Indian pizza: four and a half stars, easy! The vegetarian curry pie was piping hot and delicious, every bite an explosion of garlic, finely chopped veggies, and spices. The crust is typical American not-thin, not-thick style, but quite well made for that genre. Definitely a tasty treat.

Service: two to three stars at best. We had read so much about their crappy delivery that we went for carryout. We ordered from their website and never got a callback. When I finally called in, they were like "oh yeah, we got your order" and hung up right away. I had to call back to ask when it would be ready, and they were like "oh yeah, it's ready now." Uh, thanks guys. Would it just have sat there if I hadn't called, TWICE?

The review consensus is right: great food, shitty takeout/delivery service. I recommend phoning in your order, requesting a time estimate, and picking your pizza up.

I'm so sad Lucy's is gone. This was my favorite cafe on the peninsula. All the people who worked here were nice, the milk tea was the best around (and pearls are omitted by default! yay), and the daily special meal (one meat, one vegetarian) was great. Tea eggs, jasmine tea, green tea floats... it was all good.

My girlfriend and I used to come here a couple times a week. It was a quiet, cozy place to have a small meal and good tea at any time of day. I'm only joking a little when I say that when they closed, we left Mountain View and moved up to SF.

I gotta say, I die a little bit inside every time I pass the craptacular mediocrity that is Shabuway, knowing that Lucy's went away. For this! Rargh!

This is exactly what a small American greasy spoon diner is. There's a bunch of short order cooks, a gruff but sweet counter lady, and a menu filled with eggs, patty melts, club sandwiches, and other standard diner fare.

I had a perfectly great lunch experience here. The cook and counter lady were both very nice, and the food was exactly what I expected. It was a tad more expensive ($10 for patty melt, fries, and drink) than I could wish for, but hey, I can hardly afford to buy a house on their street, either, so whatever.

I'd like to give them 3 1/2 stars (they're not really 4 star worthy in the final analysis) but I thought I'd pull the average up a bit. It's not fancy--Toast or Savor look like the freakin' Ritz if you compare menus and average clientele--but every neighborhood needs a place like this.

This place is what it is: an enormous store selling cheap made-in-China, Japanese-branded goods of all kinds, crammed with Chinese people looking for bargains.

Plastic lunch containers? Check. Bamboo kitchen utensils and Japanese style ceramics? Check. $6 large maneki-nekos? Check. Japanese shampoos and shampoo hats? Check. Banana trees of multiple types? Check. Stationery and pens? Check.

Everything is super cheap ($1-3 is the typical range with the occasional $10 item), with the usual mix of bargains (a bamboo chasen for matcha is usually $20 elsewhere, but $3 here, for example) and crap (some of the off brand toys are especially sad, even for $2).

"Ichiban-Kan on crack" is indeed a pretty apt description!

Anyway, while nothing here is super incredibly awesome, it's a really fun place to browse. Even with nothing in mind you'll probably walk out with some cute wooden bowls, closet hooks, or another plastic lunch container.