Wood Tavern, Oakland

I think the only people who read this are family members but I'm going to tell you for the thousandth time: GO HERE! It's the best restaurant EVER!

This is by far the best restaurant in the East Bay, and it's my favorite restaurant of all time. Real talk. Every time I have gone, the service has been friendly, helpful, and attentive. They pace the courses properly, don't rush the patrons, and the bartender gives generous pours. I can highly recommend any of the cocktails on the menu (they change daily but are always delicious and strong).

The food is always perfectly prepared (I can't stress enough how much I care about properly cooked meat), flavorful, and has lots of depth. Despite the fact that I don't have a paycheck I continue to come back for more. My personal favorites on the menu:

-Butcher Block Sampler: Acme toast with a variety of terrines or smoked meats; the chicken liver pate is to die for, as is the prosciutto-wrapped beer-infused pork terrine.
-Roasted Balsamic Beef Marrow: "meat butter" --Scotty
-Tuna and Fennel Salad with Lemon: refreshing, tasty, with the perfect amount of acid
-Roasted Pork Belly Salad: crispy, melt-in-your-mouth tender
-Chocolate Cake: enough to split between two but you won't want to
-Southie Affogatto: Jameson with espresso ice cream and a shot of espresso
-Polenta Encrusted Halibut: it was served on a bed of sweet white corn cooked with bacon; if it's still on the menu, you must order this

Things that are great but not as good as most things on the menu:

-Seafood stew
-Salmon with leeks
-Get the burger and I will punch you in the face--I'm not kidding, I know where all of my blog readers live. This restaurant has so much to offer; don't insult it by getting a freaking burger.

I've eaten here 5 times now and each time the service has been impeccable; friendly, not intrusive, polite, and attentive with a great sense of humor. The room can get a little loud, but the ambiance is nice and the food has been consistently mind-blowingly good.

Wood Tavern is located at 6317 College Avenue in Oakland, across from the Safeway on College and Claremont.

They are open Monday through Thursday from 11:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., and Sunday from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. They take reservations but are very accommodating to parties of two on a walk-in basis.

Phone: (510) 654-6607
Website: www.woodtavern.net

Corso, Berkeley

It's Winter Vacation and thank you family I now have some spending money, so it's time to EAT!

I really really really wanted to like this place more. I'll preface this review with the fact that I went to Corso with Scott S., my chef friend and fellow food snob, but unfortunately nothing really impressed us at Corso.

The hostess was very prompt with seating us (thank you, OpenTable!) and the waitress, who was incredibly friendly and laughed at our jokes in a relatively believable manner, recommended a great bottle of wine to go with our eclectic orders. Maybe we had too high of expectations...

We started out with the crostini trio, one of my favorite dishes of the night. One had mascarpone with tomato, another chicken liver, and the third a lobster puree. All were delicious, but a forewarning--if you order this, eat the liver one last, the flavor will linger in your mouth forever. It's great, but not when you're trying out the delicately flavored but wonderful lobster crostino.

Next we split the tripe with cannellini beans/spicy tomato broth and the papardelle with duck/olives. The papardelle was probably the best dish of the evening. The pasta was beautifully rolled and cut, and tasted very fresh. The duck sauce was also very flavorful, with extremely tender meat. The tripe was a total let-down. There were too many beans, not enough tripe, and the "broth" was more of a sauce and had no spice. Scotty has the most delicate, adorable palate when it comes to spice and even he thought it needed pepper. Post parmesean snow storm it tasted okay, but I wouldn't recommend this dish.

Then we had the pizza with funghi that everyone on Yelp has been freaking out about. This better have been an off night otherwise I am just reviewing the wrong restaurant. It's a pizza with a decent crust, but it's covered in sauteed button mushrooms. It is winter...mushroom season...and you give me BUTTON mushrooms?! For $13?!?! Please. Plus, Scotty pointed out that the center of the pizza had gotten a bit soggy; most likely because the mushrooms weren't cooked enough before being added to the pizza, so the water from them got soaked into what had been a decent crust. Ugh.

Last, we had sauteed baby spinach (still had some sand in it--not washed properly, but other than that it was obviously very fresh, good quality spinach) as well as romano beans with pancetta/hazelnuts/mint. The bean dish was actually a very unique, tasty combination, but the beans were totally over-cooked.

For dessert, Scotty had the olive oil cake and I had the poached pear with fresh whipped cream. The olive oil cake left something to be desired. It was a little muted on texture and could have used some rosemary. The poached pear was very visually appealing. They left the skin on, though. While my friend Margaret highly recommended the dish and thought it made it more rustic (I guess...), I guess I just don't really care about rustic when the skin peels off like slimey I-don't-know-what. The sauce had enough brandy for me to get wasted alone, though, so at least that was tasty. So was the pear after I peeled off the skin.

Service overall was very good--they sometimes seemed a little antsy to take our plates away which is a constant annoyance factor of mine, but other than that they paced our dishes relatively well considering how bizarre our ordering was.

At some point I might give this place another shot, but mostly the disappointment in Corso reminded me that I was cheating on my BF, Wood Tavern.

Dear Wood Tavern: I am very sorry that I went out on a date with one of your SF Chronicle food section rivals. It's just that I feel like I have to do all the work in our relationship. You're always busy, I have to take the initiative to call you, and I always have to pay. And what's with us needing to stay at your place every time? That said, I realized how well you treat me when I do call. Please take me back? Love, Kara.

Corso is located at 1788 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley.

They now take reservations on OpenTable.com, which can be accessed via their website at www.trattoriacorso.com or by phone at (510) 704-8004.

Michelle's Yogurt & Sweets

Apparently the new cool thing to do is get plain frozen yogurt because it's fat free, sugar free, AND probiotic (whatever that means--Oprah told me to eat it, so I'm doing it). People in LA are all over it and eating Pinkberry like nobody's business. Finally, those of us who are slightly behind the curve and living in NorCal are able to regulate our digestive tracts as well. I read in the Chronicle that Michelle's, the red-headed stepchild of Yogurt Park, is serving something called Mangoberry, a particular brand for this new yogurt fad.

Bored and tired from a workout, my friend Paul and I headed over to try this magical mystery dessert. Despite what the frequently incorrect Yelpers say, the man who works there is super nice and chatted us both up. Another fallacy on Yelp is that the medium size yogurt is tiny. It's not. The medium was the perfect size for me (meaning probably too big for most people).

There's a reason why some people call this style of yogurt "crackberry," because Paul and I could not stop eating it. I ordered it with mixed fruit on top, so I got a big thing of frozen, plain, tangy yogurt with mangoes, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries on top. Yes, the fruit was carefully placed on there, but I think it was more that he was trying to make it look nice, not because he was being stingy (again, you fail, Yelpers).

This puts all other frozen yogurts I've had to shame. It's not overly sweet and doesn't have the artificial taste that most frozen yogurts have. And yet it's absolutely delicious. It was also lighter than most frozen yogurts I've had, again probably because of the lack of sugar.

Anyway, this is a short post because there isn't much else to say. Try this yogurt, it's amazing.

Michelle's Yogurt & Sweets is located across the street from Yogurt Park at 2430 Durant Street in Berkeley.

Little Plearn, Berkeley

It's about time for a negative review...Andy had never had Thai food before, and Zoey and I were in the mood so we decided to take him out. This was before the days of my distrust in Yelp, so we decided to go to Little Plearn, "the best Thai food in Berkeley!" Little did we know what was in store for us.

I don't care if it was an off-night for their cook, the food that we had was inexcusable, as was the service. The girl who served us seemed to not be able to care less as to what we ordered, and didn't give us any suggestions for food when we asked. Eventually, we went with chicken satay, pad thai, and a chicken curry dish.

After waiting forever, Zoey and I got our Thai iced tea, which was thicker than usual and also sweeter. I was only able to drink about half of it before already starting to feel full.

Then, our underwhelming chicken satay came. Ignoring the annoyingly and borderline retarded couple behind us who kept saying, "oh my god I can't believe how authentic this place is," we dug in.

The chicken was dry and burned on the edges, and totally flavorless. The peanut sauce, which I usually look forward to, was thick and tasted like it had sweet cream in it. Not good. The creamy flavor took over the entire sauce so it didn't even taste like it had peanuts in it. Maybe there was peanut extract, if that exists?

Despite ordering our pad thai "spicy," it was overwhelmingly sweet and had no chili flavor in the slightest. I realize that pad thai is probably the most westernized dish of them all, but the waitress was no help in that area. The noodles stuck together, and there were about a pound of green onions in the dish. Plus, the limes that were served with them were dried up and when squeezed produced nothing.

The last dish that we ordered was a yellow curry with chicken. I've made a similar dish according to what my mom told me to do over the phone ("just throw some curry in a pot with oil and veggies"), and it came out better than this. Again, the sauce was overly sweet and had no spice to it. Aside from a few pieces of chicken, there were maybe three carrots and two bites of potato.

If the sauce had been delicious, that would have been okay, but it wasn't. Even the rice was terrible--it was mushy and stuck together. Yep, we were still hungry, and no, we didn't want to try dessert. Not that we were asked.

The most entertaining part of the night was the fact that we ended up having about three bags of leftovers because none of us could eat the food. Zoey and I felt bad putting it to waste so we thought we'd bag it up and give it to a homeless person. Apparently the homeless in Berkeley aren't hungry--we walked around for about thirty minutes and NO ONE wanted the food.

Thank you, Little Plearn, for a terrible dinner, overpriced food, a little bit of exercise in downtown Berkeley, starting my distrust of Yelp, and a reality check as to the eating habits of the Berkeley homeless.

Left Bank, Larkspur

It was my birthday a while ago. I made time to go to dinner with Andy but never enough to write about it. Chez Panisse was booked, so Andy asked around work for a good date place and came up with Left Bank, in Larkspur. I was a bit apprehensive because it's a chain restaurant...in Marin...but we went anyway.

The restaurant itself is adorable. It looks like a giant living room with a fireplace and has decorations of cute pigs everywhere. Mmm, bacon. It being in Marin, the bar was packed with bleached blonde 50-somethings with designer bags and botoxed lips, all of them drinking cosmos and lemon drops.

I myself preferred to have a diet coke with grenadine (I know, I know) while we waited for our table. Despite having a reservation, we had to wait for about ten minutes for our table. The hostess wasn't very friendly, but considering how busy the place was, we got seated relatively fast.

Being the good boyfriend to a high maintenance foodie girlfriend, Andy told me to order up. I started out with the Salade Lyonnaise, which had frisee lettuce, a poached egg, croutons, and bacon, and was dressed with a mustard vinaigrette ($8.50). Andy had the Salade Verte, which had butter lettuce, herbs, and a dijon mustard vinaigrette ($7.50).

My salad was delicious but also a recipe for a heart attack. Overall, it was a little bit greasier than I would have liked. I think that the thick-cut bacon could have been drained a little bit before being put in the salad. Because of the excess of fat, the croutons which were otherwise great, got a bit soft. But other than that, the egg was perfectly cooked and wilted the frisee just enough. Andy's salad was good; it was very basic but that's how he likes his food so it was perfect for him.

We also split Moules Florentines, which were steamed mussels in a white wine sauce with spinach ($11.75). By split, I mean that I ate all the mussels, dumped some of the shells onto Andy's plate, and he mopped up the sauce with bread. The mussels were very nicely cooked, but I think that the sauce could have had a bit thicker.

I think our server was new, too, because I had already eaten about half of the dish before he came by with those tiny little forks and plates to put our shells on. I had no problem just using my fingers, and the bread thickened up the sauce and made for another great side dish.

While not overly-impressed with my appetizers and the service, I am going to rave about my entree. Two months later, I still want to go back just to have it. While Andy ordered...wait...take a guess...steak and frites ($18.50), cooked medium-well (of course), I ordered the duck with lentils ($20.50). That duck was worth every penny.

It was cooked just enough so that the meat was juicy and the skin crispy. I got an entire half of the bird, so it was a struggle to finish everything. Even Andy liked it. The skin had a bit of a sweetness to it, almost like it had been cooked with dried cherries, but the sweetness didn't take away from the overall delicious, fatty flavor of the duck.

The lentils were just as delicious. They were cooked a bit al dente, and seemed like they had just been soaked in bacon juice. While they weren't greasy in the slightest, they contained the full flavor of smoked bacon.

I was so full at that point that I couldn't even try Andy's fries or get dessert. This is one of the best ducks I have ever had, and apparently it will only be on the restaurant's fall menu, so I need to get back there soon. Left Bank isn't a cheap place, but it's definitely worth it every once and a while.

Left Bank is located at 507 Magnolia Avenue in Larkspur. To make reservations (which I would recommend), call (415) 927-3331. I believe that the restaurant is a chain, so there are a few other locations that can be found on their website: http://www.leftbank.com/.

They are open on Sundays and Mondays from 11:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., and Tuesday through Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.

Pho Saigon Restaurant II, Richmond

I'm on a Vietnamese food kick right now. Not only is it cheap but the food I've had has been some of the most flavorful. I'm in deep need of flavor right now after spending an entire semester stuck in between the cement walls that SF State calls its "student lounge" while eating bagel after bagel because I don't like nacho cheese.

Pho Saigon Restaurant II is located in the Ranch 99 Mall. Unlike the jerks at Daimo, they serve me quickly, act like they understand my order, and give me what I like to eat. I've never had anything else besides Pho from there, because I'm a creature of habit and it's hard to say no to such a great deal. I usually order a medium bowl of Pho with thinly sliced rare steak, well-done brisket, veggies, noodles, and tripe ($4.60!!!). I know, most of you probably don't like tripe (I love it). You can also order it with meatballs or extra steak, depending on what you like.

It takes them about 3 minutes to get my order together and then I am out the door. Even after getting home, the broth is still piping hot (I know because I made it overflow onto my pants one time...It's hot.). In addition to the meat, they give me a big container of hot/sweet chili sauce, Asian basil, bean sprouts, lime, fresh sliced jalapenos, and parsley.

My recommendation is to first put the noodles into the soup so that they can separate. Also, that way one can avoid making the hot soup overflow. I usually put about half of the jalapenos into the soup. Despite looking juicy and delicious, putting all of them can make the soup almost unbearably hot.

Then, I put in the steak one piece at a time--as you have probably figured out by now I hate overcooked meat, and by cooking each piece individually, one can avoid doing so. Eventually, everything gets mixed in, and the flavors meld together perfectly. This is the ultimate comfort food.

Don't go to Daimo! Go here! The food is much better, the people are nicer, and the prices are cheaper! Pho Saigon Restaurant II is located at the Ranch 99 Market off of Highway 80 in Richmond (on the border of El Cerrito). The exact address is 3288 Pierce Street, and the phone number is (510) 528-6388.

They are open Sunday through Thursday from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., and Friday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.

The Great China, Berkeley

And...I'm BACK! After a long hiatus due to the magical mystery that is Organic Chemistry, I am almost done with finals and ready to eat.

After our last lecture of the semester at San Francisco State, my East Bay friend Greg and I decided to go to lunch in Berkeley. We had heard that The Great China had good food, so after some walking around we decided to check it out.

The place was really busy, and there was a sign-in sheet for a table, so we just added our names and stood around. Then, a huge group of people came up behind us, motioned to a waiter that they had five people, and he showed them to a table. We tried waving to him that we were first, but to no avail. I love great service.

Both of us were really hungry at that point, so I ignored growing doubts after some woman on her way out reached into the basket of fortune cookies and said "Gonna get my money's worth," took a few handfuls and shoved them into her purse. That, and I got increasingly concerned after seeing a whole lot of lemon chicken being passed out. At that point, though, we were in way too deep and got a table.

Finally, when we were seated, a waitress just came up to us and said, "Go to the back." Fortunately, the restaurant is pretty small, so it was relatively easy to figure out what she meant. After we sat down, the waiters were pretty quick to bring us a menu and take our order. Both of us went with the lunch special, because it was pretty cheap and seemed to be what everyone else was getting.

I ordered Ma Po Tofu ($6.75) and Greg ordered Bean Curd with Mushrooms and Broccoli($6.75). Service aside, I loved the food. My tofu was spicy and delicious, and both meals came with a huge plate of rice, a side salad, fruit, an egg roll, and a bowl of hot and sour soup. We did have to ask for our waters and attempt to ignore the waiters standing over us while we ate (hoping we'd hurry up--the check was delivered to us with the food), but for a grand total of $13.50 for two, I really feel bad complaining.

Maybe it was because we were in Berkeley that I expected better service. Not that Berkeley is known for having great service, but that I had the assumption it would be better service than that in Chinatown. The Great China is much cleaner than anywhere else in Chinatown, though, and I am always a huge fan of restaurants where I can get cheap food that tastes great. I even had leftovers.

Anytime you are in Berkeley for lunch, I highly recommend coming here. It's a great deal, and the food is delicious. Just imagine that you are going to Chinatown for lunch, but wanted to go somewhere with a usable bathroom. The Great China is located at 2115 Kittredge Street at Oxford Street in Berkeley. For reservations, call (510) 843-7996.

I can't find their hours posted anywhere, but I'd imagine that like most Chinese restaurants they are pretty much open all the time.

Banh Mi Ba Le Vietnamese Sandwich Deli, El Cerrito

I am officially a student again, and I need more cheap food recommendations, pronto. After reading my latest Bourdain book on BART this afternoon, all I could think about were his vibrant descriptions of Vietnamese food. Knowing there was no way I could afford to even drive to Pho84 not to mention buy food, I headed around the corner to a Vietnamese sandwich shop that I had found on Yelp! (sorry, AP, Civic Center days are Thursdays).

Banh Mi Ba Le has some amazing reviews on Yelp!, and while Yelpers are not always trustworthy, I thought I'd at least give this place a try. It's so hot today that I even walked, not wanting to get into my scorching car. Fortunately, this place is even closer than I thought--2 short blocks away from my apartment!

The sandwich deli is pretty much a hole in the wall of a worn down strip mall on San Pablo at Central. There were three older Vietnamese women standing behind the counter and a bunch of Asian people standing in front of the store, so I assumed it had to be good despite its appearance and headed in.

They serve about ten different types of sandwiches, including BBQ chicken, BBQ pork, vegetables, etc. I decided to order a Cha Siu Sandwich. Scared that it wouldn't be enough food for me after seeing the price ($2.25!), I also ordered a green papaya salad ($3, no seriously).

In about 30 seconds, I was handed a plastic bag containing all of my food, and I quickly headed home to start chomping away. After turning on Oprah, I opened up my lightly toasted sandwich. The baguette was crusty on the outside but oh-so soft on the inside; it was clearly fresh. Inside, a bit of the bread had been scooped away to make room for fresh, brightly colored carrot slivers, daikon, cucumber, jalapenos, cilantro, and of course, sweet BBQ pork.

Despite being full after my ridiculously cheap sandwich, I decided that I wanted to eat more anyway and dug into my salad. The papaya salad had raw papaya slivers, carrots, a little bit of flat leaf parsley, and was topped with shrimp. The dressing tasted of a million flavors at the same time--citrus, vinegar, spice (jalapeno, I think), and sweet. The salad on its own was filling enough, so now I sit here typing this, about to go into a food coma instead of trying to remember how the hybridization of carbon and hydrogen molecules works.

Now I haven't been to the Vietnamese sandwich shop at the Civic Center, but the sandwich I had today has got to be up there. I also unfortunately have not had the green papaya salad from Out the Door, but to be honest, at Banh Mi Ba Le I can walk around the corner, not have to worry about annoying mall patrons, and pay a fraction of the price. I'm sure that the salad at Out the Door is better but if you are a student on a budget, or just feeling like having the cheapest meal of your life, go here.

Banh Mi Ba Le Vietnamese Sandwich Deli is located at 10174 San Pablo Avenue at Central in El Cerrito (near the Pacific East Mall and the El Cerrito Plaza). Here is the Yelp! article that led me to them: http://www.yelp.com/biz/fOBypmZMEJ3GoulOSH-Zxg#hrid:Mc8Ab1le53MzAScYuM3GNg/query:vietnamese

Mangia Mangia, Albany (Part II)

While my seafood pasta was far from my mind, I couldn't stop thinking about my gorgonzola salad and the souffle. Yes...the souffle. I grabbed Andy and we drove over so I could satisfy my craving.

Mangia Mangia was a lot busier on Friday night. We got one of the last tables available. In addition to my salad and the souffle, I ordered one of the specials, which was a mushroom risotto topped with a filet mignon kebab, shrimp, and garnished with garden vegetables ($16). Andy ordered pasta bolognese (big surprise), for $12.

Let me tell you, my entree made up big time for the disaster I had previously. The vegetables were colorful, crunchy, and tasty on the side. The kebab had a wonderful smoky flavor to it and even though the meat was very thinly cut, it still had a bit of pink inside. Therefore it was juicy, full of flavor, and tender.

The risotto was also very flavorful. It was full of mushrooms and they also put fresh green peas in it. The rice was cooked al dente but still had a very creamy texture (and no, Howie from Top Chef, it didn't need cream to make it good).

So. My new recommendation is to go here and get an entire meal, just don't get the seafood pasta. Go with whatever the waiter/waitress recommends, and hopefully you will be as ecstatic about your meal as I was (Andy will tell you, I couldn't stop raving about my entree).

Now I know you've all read the other review of the souffle but let me tell you, Andy even ate it. "It's like getting a fresh chocolate chip cookie straight out of the oven but having no cookie!" It got to the point where we were fighting over bites because it was so good. Get the souffle. Get it now.

Scott Spencer's House, Piedmont

I have probably bragged to most of you that my buddy Scott catered my BBQ a little while ago for only $2.50 per person, and that the food was amazing. Well, he is now currently working at Town Hall in San Francisco and decided to spend some of his newly earned money on his friends, cooking a five course meal for eight of us.

As I told Scott, I wouldn't be writing him up in my blog if I wasn't impressed with his food. Instead, I'd just continue reviewing some of the other restaurants I've eaten at and not mention him. Scott really is that good.

In exchange for all of us bringing wine, the occasion being for our friend Kranzthor's last night living in the East Bay, Patton and I showed up at Scott's house in Piedmont at around 7:15. He had already been hard at work all day, planning, prepping, and re-planning our menu. The focus was going to be on using the highest quality ingredients, cooking them perfectly, and arranging them beautifully. I am getting increasingly angry at myself for not bringing a camera to this meal.

All eight of us sat down and took turns playing waiter, bringing in food from the kitchen while Scott cooked. Our first course was two mini-courses. The first that I will describe was an heirloom tomato and watermelon salad with honey champagne vinaigrette. When Scott first told me about this combination, I was really, really skeptical. And wrongly so.

Two ripe heirloom tomato slices, fresh from Scott's garden, were cut into squares and stacked with two slices of sweet, crunchy watermelon of identical size and shape. The green vinaigrette was drizzled lightly on top. Again, reading this you might be doubtful, but somehow the two textures and flavors melded perfectly; the sweetness of the watermelon enhanced the tomato's flavor, and the crunchy watermelon texture contrasted with the tomato's firmness. I couldn't stop eating it, despite the fresh hamachi tuna that sat next to it on my plate.

The hamachi tuna, flown in fresh from Japan that morning, was cut sashimi-style and topped with a smoked salmon beurre blanc flambe. It was my turn to play waiter during that course, so I got to see Scott take a torch and lightly brown the top of the sauce.

The tuna was melt-in-your-mouth good. It had a smooth, sweet but savory taste that one can only understand after having ridiculously fresh fish. The sauce was smooth and tasted strongly of smoked salmon. My only critique on this dish is that I would have liked to have had less sauce on the fish. The two flavors worked together nicely, so I wouldn't want to get rid of all of the sauce, but I would have liked to have had just a dot of it. That way, the salmon flavor would have enhanced the fish and allowed us to really taste the tuna.

Next on the menu was salt and pepper calamari with a fresh tomato and kaffir lime leaf cocktail sauce. My only complaint was that this was on the menu. I do like calamari, but it didn't exactly fit in with the whole feel of the meal. Fresh grilled squid would have fit in fine, but unfortunately, fried calamari was a request by our guest of honor. Needless to say, Scott was up to the challenge of cooking Kranzthor's favorite food. The calamari was lightly dusted in flour and nicely seasoned with salt and pepper. The tomato cocktail sauce had a great kick to it and a really unique flavor from the kaffir lime leaves.

Our third course was one of my favorites: a roasted heirloom tomato tart with caramelized onions, garlic confit, and basil sauce. The tart was very buttery and flaky, one of my favorite textures. Scott said he had been roasting the tomatoes all day, and it showed. They were rich, garlicky, and delicious. Patton doesn't even like onions, but I noticed that she scarfed down her tart just like the rest of us!

My favorite course, however, was the main course--the duck. I've said many times how the only duck I will eat is the Chinese-style roast duck. On Thursday night I added a second duck to my list. The duck breast was seared and served on a bed of baby carrots, artichokes, and green beans with a port and dried cherry mustardo.

Since the duck breast was seared, it stayed very moist. The meat was tender and the skin kept crunchy with just the right amount of fat on it. I thought that the vegetables that Scott chose to prepare it with were also cooked perfectly, and I liked the selection. In many restaurants, I have seen duck served on a bed of spinach, which completely ruins the flavor of the duck and makes the skin soggy.

In this case, the vegetables were lightly cooked, still crunchy, and very colorful. The thing that pulled everything together was the sauce. At first it tasted a lot like hoisin (Chinese plum sauce) sauce, which I have always loved on duck. But then, after another bite, I tasted the tartness of the dried cherries, which just added even more to the flavor. I liked the sauce so much that I even took my vegetables and started dipping them into it.

Our last course was dessert, which was a nilla wafer bread pudding with root beer syrup (homemade!) and homemade vanilla ice cream. This, as with all of the other courses, was delicious. I usually don't even like bread pudding, but this was great! As I shoveled mine into my mouth at record pace I began to get a little embarrassed until I looked around and noticed that everyone else was doing the same thing.

Now here comes the fun part. You can get Scott to cater for you, too! He's the self-proclaimed cheapest caterer/chef in the Bay Area (I can attest to that), who cares more about the integrity of the food and honing his skills than taking your money.

Scott is great at discussing menus and figuring out what works for his client (i.e., "I don't want to spend a lot of money but I want gourmet food." --me). He can be reached via email: mrspencer@gmail.com, but it's probably easier just to call him at (510) 301-2130.