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EBT posted:Now finding a decent schwarma in the east bay is a drat nightmare. Oasis in Berkeley?
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Aug 6, 2013 05:41
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So Angelenos, Zankou Chicken, does it deserve its reputation or not? It seemed fine, not necessarily any different than similar places (I don't know if you want to say an Armenian place is Middle-Eastern... but the food at least really is).
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Aug 6, 2013 06:19
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Ardennes posted:So Angelenos, Zankou Chicken, does it deserve its reputation or not? Depends on where. The kind of sketchy one on Sunset at Normandie is awesome. This is the only one I've been to except the one in Montebello and it was fine, but not as great. nm fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Aug 6, 2013 |
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Aug 6, 2013 06:22
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nm posted:Depends on where. The kind of sketchy one on Sunset at Normandie is awesome. This is the only one I've been to except the one in Montebello and it was fine, but not as great. I have been on the one on sunset, it seemed fine, and the one on Van Nuys. Both seemed to be about the same. Not too different than RoRo's also on Sunset (across from Crossroads of the World). So what is greater LA's weakest food category? It isn't Mexican, Chinese, or Korean obviously. I guess pizza isn't spectacular, but doesn't seem that bad. Not a lot of representation of French food in Southern California? Maybe Thai? We get to claim In-N-Out, Tommy's and Astro. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Aug 6, 2013 |
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Aug 6, 2013 06:42
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EBT posted:Now finding a decent schwarma in the east bay is a drat nightmare. All the shawarma in America is too much like a salad wrap. A real shawarma is essentially just meat, with maybe some pickles, and then garlic sauce and hot pepper sauce. Also it should be so dripping in fat that you have to have a plastic bag on the bottom to catch the grease. If there's any shawarma like that in the Bay Area let me know.
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Aug 6, 2013 07:09
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Ardennes posted:So Angelenos, Zankou Chicken, does it deserve its reputation or not? Zankou is good. Just get a half chicken and put it about 1 to 1 wrapped in pita with the garlic sauce. Their falafel is okay but not notable.
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Aug 6, 2013 07:12
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Kenning posted:All the shawarma in America is too much like a salad wrap. A real shawarma is essentially just meat, with maybe some pickles, and then garlic sauce and hot pepper sauce. Also it should be so dripping in fat that you have to have a plastic bag on the bottom to catch the grease. Truly Mediterranean in the SF Mission is a hole in the wall that makes a shawarma that is pretty meaty and messy and tasty.
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Aug 6, 2013 07:34
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withak posted:My pizza scale is calibrated for Chicago, and Little Star (now in Oakland too! only 7 minutes from my house!) is the only bay-area pizza that I have found that is worth going back to. Little Star also runs Blue Line in Campbell, and a Blue Line just opened on Castro in downtown Mountain View. Pretty drat good, highly recommended for anybody in the neighborhood. The cornmeal crust tastes like Pizza Hut crust if Pizza Hut weren't disgusting.
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Aug 6, 2013 08:45
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Kenning posted:All the shawarma in America is too much like a salad wrap. A real shawarma is essentially just meat, with maybe some pickles, and then garlic sauce and hot pepper sauce. Also it should be so dripping in fat that you have to have a plastic bag on the bottom to catch the grease. Meaty type shawarmas with pickles/garlic/hot sauce, that are not like a "salad wrap": Truly Mediterranean at 16th and Valencia in SF Taboun on parnassus and stanyan in SF Yummas on 8th and Irving in SF Those are all good choices, but the best shawarma I've had in the Bay Area, which also happens to be of the lots of meat/pickles/hot sauce type, is at "Taste In Mediterranean Food" on Broadway and Laguna in Burlingame: http://www.yelp.com/biz/taste-in-mediterranean-food-burlingame-2 edit: i guess none of those have just meat plus some hot sauce/pickles, they usually have some vegetables too, but they're good and not at all like salad wraps. Jerry Manderbilt posted:Oasis in Berkeley? There's one in downtown SF too. That place is pretty good. ntan1 posted:Also, the Chinese food in South Bay is better than the Chinese food in San Francisco. There's tons of good chinese food in the south bay, but there is in SF too. It would be hard for there not to be, with a population that's 20% Chinese. As far as Pizza goes, my favorite in SF is probably Marcellos on castro and Market/17th. Beats the hell out of Escape from New York which is much more popular and has a location right down the block. I somehow have never tried Chicago style pizza though...I should probably get on that and go to Little Star or something. CA food chat is serious poo poo because CA has awesome food 
Rah! fucked around with this message at 10:04 on Aug 6, 2013 |
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Aug 6, 2013 09:58
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Rah! posted:There's tons of good chinese food in the south bay, but there is in SF too. It would be hard for there not to be, with a population that's 20% Chinese. Easier than you'd think given how bad the food is in parts of China that are like 100 percent Chinese.
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Aug 6, 2013 10:02
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VideoTapir posted:Easier than you'd think given how bad the food is in parts of China that are like 100 percent Chinese. Yeah, but there is plenty of good stuff in SF, and why wouldn't there be, seeing as it's a place where food is taken seriously and which has a large Chinese population (which is mostly from Hong Kong and Southern China, if anyone's curious). My Taiwan-born, SF Chinatown-raised Chinese friend who has been to Taiwan and Hong Kong many times, and has also lived in San Jose, who constantly tries every drat Chinese restaurant he can find, backs this up, and I can confirm it too, as can tons of other people  . I think the idea of Chinese food in SF being inferior to the south bay stems from the high concentration of mediocre tourist-oriented places in Chinatown and other touristy parts of SF. You won't find as much of that in the south bay, but it doesn't mean you can't find plenty of good/legit stuff in SF.
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Aug 6, 2013 10:33
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Rah! posted:Yeah, but there is plenty of good stuff in SF, and why wouldn't there be, seeing as it's a place where food is taken seriously and which has a large Chinese population (which is mostly from Hong Kong and Southern China, if anyone's curious). My Taiwan-born, SF Chinatown-raised Chinese friend who has been to Taiwan and Hong Kong many times, and has also lived in San Jose, who constantly tries every drat Chinese restaurant he can find, backs this up, and I can confirm it too, as can tons of other people Just go out to the Avenues, basically. My favorite place, Shanghai Dumpling King, closed, and I was gutted. The Taiwan on Clement is still good, though, as are quite a few other places on Clement. Or were, I haven't been back in a year since the social media boom.
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Aug 6, 2013 11:52
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Leperflesh posted:For Chinese food I used to go to a place on the corner of 6th and Balboa, because I used to live half a block away. It was always packed with nothing but chinese people, the menus were mostly only in chinese, and the food was amazing. That was in the late 90s though so I dunno how it is now or if it's even still there. There is a place here in union city like that, my roommates and myself are the only white people I have ever seen there.
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Aug 6, 2013 18:56
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Rah! posted:Yeah, but there is plenty of good stuff in SF, and why wouldn't there be, seeing as it's a place where food is taken seriously and which has a large Chinese population (which is mostly from Hong Kong and Southern China, if anyone's curious). "Food taken seriously" likely has less to do with it. It's mainly the fact that there is a large Chinese population. Rah! posted:My Taiwan-born, SF Chinatown-raised Chinese friend who has been to Taiwan and Hong Kong many times, and has also lived in San Jose, who constantly tries every drat Chinese restaurant he can find, backs this up, and I can confirm it too, as can tons of other people Backs what up? If it's the fact that the Bay Area as a whole has decent Chinese food, that's correct. However, Taiwan and Hong Kong have larger diversity, better selection, more competition, authenticity, and taste when you get down to it. quote:I think the idea of Chinese food in SF being inferior to the south bay stems from the high concentration of mediocre tourist-oriented places in Chinatown and other touristy parts of SF. You won't find as much of that in the south bay, but it doesn't mean you can't find plenty of good/legit stuff in SF. It also has to do with demographics of the type of Asian people who live in SF versus the South Bay. You'll find good places in SF, but the South Bay has better selection.
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Aug 6, 2013 20:11
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ntan1 posted:It also has to do with demographics of the type of Asian people who live in SF versus the South Bay. You'll find good places in SF, but the South Bay has better selection. Are Chinese people in SF more downscale compared to the population here in the Silicon Valley?
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Aug 6, 2013 20:48
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ntan1 posted:"Food taken seriously" likely has less to do with it. It's mainly the fact that there is a large Chinese population. My point is, SF is a good food city, and is well-known known as a good food city, and there are high standards for food quality in SF because of that, and it would be wrong to think absolutely none of it applies to the Chinese community/Chinese food in the city. Being so close to so much fresh produce definitely plays a huge part in that good reputation/high standards (both in Sf and elsewhere in the Bay Area), and I've heard people specifically claim that good quality produce makes a big difference in lots of Chinese food in SF vs. say, a lot of parts of the mainland China. Of course the number of Chinese people has more to do with it though, because it creates a greater demand for good and authentic stuff. quote:Backs what up? If it's the fact that the Bay Area as a whole has decent Chinese food, that's correct. However, Taiwan and Hong Kong have larger diversity, better selection, more competition, authenticity, and taste when you get down to it. It backs up that SF has plenty of good and authentic Chinese food. He's had a poo poo ton of exposure to good/authentic chinese food throughout his life in the Bay Area and in Hong Kong and Taiwan. And while I'm not an expert myself, I trust his judgement, and my own tastebuds work too. I can tell poo poo from non-poo poo. And I've heard plenty of people claim SF itself has lots of good stuff, just as I've also heard people claim it doesn't have enough. I wouldn't be surprised if the south bay has more of it, as it does have a larger population than SF (including Chinese people), as well as fewer tourists to take advantage of with half-assed food. But my point is that you can find the good stuff here too, and it's not hard. That's all. quote:It also has to do with demographics of the type of Asian people who live in SF versus the South Bay. You'll find good places in SF, but the South Bay has better selection. I'm genuinely curious here, what's the difference in demographics you're talking about? I know SF is full mainly of southern/Cantonese-speaking Chinese people, but I'm not as familiar with the Chinese community in the south bay. I'm guessing it's more diverse? I'm also going to guess out of my rear end that the Chinese community in SF might have a larger proportion of lower class Chinese people than the South Bay as a whole? I know Chinatown for example has the lowest average income of any neighborhood in SF and is full of chinese immigrants living in SROs and tiny apartments and such, and I can't think of a similar area in the South Bay. I guess that could possibly have some impact on food quality, especially considering the higher cost of leasing business space and housing in SF. And I do know there are a lot of upper and middle class Chinese people in the south bay too. Rah! fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Aug 6, 2013 |
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Aug 6, 2013 20:55
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Ardennes posted:I have been on the one on sunset, it seemed fine, and the one on Van Nuys. Both seemed to be about the same. Not too different than RoRo's also on Sunset (across from Crossroads of the World). I know of a few decent Italian and French places, but I'd say those are definitely weaker in the LA area. I also haven't found too many good Indian restaurants, sort of the same situation there as French and Italian. I know of a couple good spots for each, but it's not like Mexican or Korean where you can get bomb food anywhere and everywhere (including food trucks) at all hours. Thai food we definitely have plenty of, you should check out Thai Town sometime!
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Aug 6, 2013 20:59
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enraged_camel posted:Economically, the city has suffered very badly in the past five years. Most high quality businesses left downtown, and it has become a barren wasteland of abandoned buildings, empty parking lots and low-value shops. It doesn't help that there's also a WalMart (that I live across the street from) that attracts all kinds of people from the ghetto and drives wages down in the area. There is a lot of crime everything from petty theft to robberies. There's a public parking lot next to my apartment building, and us residents park our vehicles in gated areas of the lot. Despite this, my car has been broken into twice over the past year. Did I mention that I don't venture outside after dark, despite being a fairly strong guy? Tell me more about the "people from the ghetto" that WalMart attracts.  Leperflesh posted:Courthouses do not usually anchor nice business districts. They attract bail bondsmen, pawn shops, and payday loan sharks. There's actually the police HQ directly across from the new courthouse, and they're spending quite a bit of money in DTLB to nicen up the neighborhood, including at least one new upscale apartment building. Ardennes posted:So what is greater LA's weakest food category? It isn't Mexican, Chinese, or Korean obviously. I guess pizza isn't spectacular, but doesn't seem that bad. Not a lot of representation of French food in Southern California? Maybe Thai? It's probably French or Italian. There's just not a lot of great Italian around, outside the Mozzo-plex. Similar to how the pizza is not good. Traditional French is also pretty rare. Thai though, there's a ton of good Thai in LA and Long Beach. vvv Good point...it's so off-the-radar here I didn't even think of it. There's like a couple of George's Greek Cafe's around. Zeitgueist fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Aug 6, 2013 |
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Aug 6, 2013 21:57
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Coming from Chicago I have to say the greatest culinary dearth in L.A. is Greek food. Yah, there's that fancy-pants place on Westwood Blvd, but I've yet to find a basic great gyro sandwich with the right sauce and fresh pita. I've also yet to find Gold Coast Dog-level-good hotdogs and those delish fries with the skin on.
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Aug 6, 2013 22:10
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Willa Rogers posted:Gold Coast Dog-level-good hotdogs Doesn't exist outside of Chicago.
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Aug 6, 2013 22:33
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Rah! posted:My point is, SF is a good food city, and is well-known known as a good food city, and there are high standards for food quality in SF because of that, and it would be wrong to think absolutely none of it applies to the Chinese community/Chinese food in the city. Being so close to so much fresh produce definitely plays a huge part in that good reputation/high standards (both in Sf and elsewhere in the Bay Area), and I've heard people specifically claim that good quality produce makes a big difference in lots of Chinese food in SF vs. say, a lot of parts of the mainland China. Of course the number of Chinese people has more to do with it though, because it creates a greater demand for good and authentic stuff. You could say that about Hong Kong and Taipei too. Hong Kong is considered one of the most international cities and its standards have been consistently high. Taipei has a strong selection of fruit, is near the ocean, and it's own very complicated style of food. The only exception to this are the Mainland China cities, as you've mentioned. Notice that I did exclude Mainland Chinese cities as well. Some places (Beijing/Shanghai) probably have decent food, but it doesn't help that I get the stomach flu way too often when going to China. quote:It backs up that SF has plenty of good and authentic Chinese food. He's had a poo poo ton of exposure to good/authentic chinese food throughout his life in the Bay Area and in Hong Kong and Taiwan. And while I'm not an expert myself, I trust his judgement, and my own tastebuds work too. I can tell poo poo from non-poo poo. And I've heard plenty of people claim SF itself has lots of good stuff, just as I've also heard people claim it doesn't have enough. I wouldn't be surprised if the south bay has more of it, as it does have a larger population than SF (including Chinese people), as well as fewer tourists to take advantage of with half-assed food. But my point is that you can find the good stuff here too, and it's not hard. That's all. That's correct then. To be honest, from my perspective, both SF and the Bay Area will never have enough "good stuff". There's just so much that you can find in Taiwan/Hong Kong that you can't find here, and Asia is very large. However, that's the tradeoff for having good selection of all other types of non-Chinese food also. quote:I'm genuinely curious here, what's the difference in demographics you're talking about? I know SF is full mainly of southern/Cantonese-speaking Chinese people, but I'm not as familiar with the Chinese community in the south bay. I'm guessing it's more diverse? I'm also going to guess out of my rear end that the Chinese community in SF might have a larger proportion of lower class Chinese people than the South Bay as a whole? I know Chinatown for example has the lowest average income of any neighborhood in SF and is full of chinese immigrants living in SROs and tiny apartments and such, and I can't think of a similar area in the South Bay. I guess that could possibly have some impact on food quality, especially considering the higher cost of leasing business space and housing in SF. And I do know there are a lot of upper and middle class Chinese people in the south bay too. You got it. It's a combination of the reasons you cited. The South Bay has a more diverse combination of different Chinese people from all over, has higher concentrations of middle/upper class people, and is generally a better area to raise children or buy a pretty house.
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Aug 6, 2013 22:55
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Due to the larger Japanese (As in from Japan) population I found Japanese food to be far more authentic and tastier in Socal than what I can get in the Bay Area. I forgot the name of it but there's a Yakitori place in Little Tokyo that I swear makes better yakitori than most of what I've had in Japan.
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Aug 6, 2013 22:57
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Senor Science posted:Due to the larger Japanese (As in from Japan) population I found Japanese food to be far more authentic and tastier in Socal than what I can get in the Bay Area. I forgot the name of it but there's a Yakitori place in Little Tokyo that I swear makes better yakitori than most of what I've had in Japan. Yes. However, there are a few holdouts and really expensive places in Northern California that are extremely good and comparable.
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Aug 6, 2013 23:00
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How did we get over a page of SF Bay Area pizza chat without anyone mentioning Zachary's?
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Aug 6, 2013 23:07
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GrumpyDoctor posted:How did we get over a page of SF Bay Area pizza chat without anyone mentioning Zachary's? Zachary's used to be the only acceptable pizza in the East Bay, now the Little Star expansion in Oakland makes them superfluous.
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Aug 6, 2013 23:11
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GrumpyDoctor posted:How did we get over a page of SF Bay Area pizza chat without anyone mentioning Zachary's? Because Bay Area food chat is boring as gently caress.
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Aug 6, 2013 23:11
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Regarding Chinese and Japanese food, some of the best I've ever had of either have come from (mostly little) places where the family that owns it immigrated to the US from Mexico. It's like this combination of taste which is awesome. Also, Chinese cowboys speaking Spanish are pretty cool.
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Aug 6, 2013 23:19
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withak posted:Zachary's used to be the only acceptable pizza in the East Bay, now the Little Star expansion in Oakland makes them superfluous. Cheeseboard is good.
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Aug 6, 2013 23:26
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I always kind of find it rings false to me when people make blanket declarations about "oh the food in x place is better than y place" when those places have dozens and dozens of restaurants of that variety. Like, has anyone ever managed to try every Chinese restaurant in San Francisco? It'd be a daunting task. Never mind actually trying a representative sample of dishes from each of them. There's loving tons of Japanese restaurants too. Here in concord there's at least eight places I can get sushi within two miles of my house, and it's loving Concord. It's almost like people's experiences with what restaurants they've tried are subjective and non-representative or something.
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Aug 6, 2013 23:26
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Man, almost all of the sushi bars and Japanese restaurants I've eaten at in the East Bay and around UCI have been Chinese or Korean-owned. I could spend all day eating in Little Tokyo, though.
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Aug 6, 2013 23:28
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Dusseldorf posted:Cheeseboard is good. Cheeseboard was my first experience with white pizza, and it's loving delicious. No meat = easy to go with vegetarians, and having only one type of pizza a day means you just grab and go, so that monstrous line leading out the store isn't as bad as it looks. I have to stop at Cheeseboard pretty much every time I go back to Berkeley. Bonus points for being so close to Gregoire, with its awesome potato puffs, as well as Philz Coffee. Sad that they stopped doing Off the Grid by the Safeway though.
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Aug 6, 2013 23:35
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Leperflesh posted:I always kind of find it rings false to me when people make blanket declarations about "oh the food in x place is better than y place" when those places have dozens and dozens of restaurants of that variety. Like, has anyone ever managed to try every Chinese restaurant in San Francisco? It'd be a daunting task. Never mind actually trying a representative sample of dishes from each of them. There's loving tons of Japanese restaurants too. Here in concord there's at least eight places I can get sushi within two miles of my house, and it's loving Concord. Some people do purposely go out to a lot of different restaurants and ask for recommendations from servers all of the time, you know. Some people also really like certain types of food and have eaten a lot of that type of food, and as thus can make good judgments.
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Aug 6, 2013 23:38
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Dusseldorf posted:Cheeseboard is good. That is California pizza, which is fine, but it is not a substitute for real pizza.
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Aug 6, 2013 23:38
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withak posted:That is California pizza, which is fine, but it is not a substitute for real pizza. Please don't start a "real pizza" debate. Its dumb.
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Aug 6, 2013 23:45
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Not to distract from the real argument (about pizza), but the SFBG made an attempt at doing some actual journalism about the BART negotiations. http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2013/08/05/mouths-bart-workers-cleaning-dreaded-escalators-skirting-death They talk to a train mechanic who cites a previous reduction in safety effort as a cause in the death of a track worker and one of the janitors who cleans the poo poo and piss out of the elevators every day. Protip: Don't read the comments.
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Aug 7, 2013 01:45
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withak posted:Not to distract from the real argument (about pizza), but the SFBG made an attempt at doing some actual journalism about the BART negotiations. Great article showing how unions help promote fair wages, job safety and benefits even for people doing jobs such as janitor. The comments are pretty horrible from the typical Fox News types claiming people such as janitors shouldn't get a living wage and medical benefits since it's not a smart valuable job.
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Aug 7, 2013 02:16
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I will close this thread if you guys start discussing food again.
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Aug 7, 2013 02:24
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Here's a little something I was wondering: how well-represented are the non-latino immigrant communities in California? For that matter, who are they? Japanese? Chinese? I noticed a ton of Armenians where I used to live but I think they're pretty thin on the ground once you get away from the westerly parts of LA county.
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Aug 7, 2013 02:50
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Here's a little something I was wondering: how well-represented are the non-latino immigrant communities in California? Well there's this link with the massive table: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California
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Aug 7, 2013 03:08
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Here's a little something I was wondering: how well-represented are the non-latino immigrant communities in California? There's a really significant Armenian population in Fresno.
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Aug 7, 2013 03:21
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