Aunt Mary's Cafe - 4307 Telegraph Avenue

I can't believe that this place is so close to our house and we didn't even know it was around. Apparently Aunt Mary's has been open for a year. I dunno how we missed it, but I'm glad we finally found it.

We've eaten brunch here twice now. After my last disastrous experience at my go-to brunch place of yore (Cock-a-Doodle), I've been looking for a new one. And may we praise the Brunch Gods now, for it is found. And it is good.

The menu here can best be described as Southern-meets-California, which now gives us 2 places close by (Pican is the other) that service this need.

First off, I love what they've done with the space. Warehouse-chic is up my alley and P.I.C. also loves high ceilings and concrete floors. Secondly, I love that our server wore retro glasses and a housedress and an apron. Thirdly, I love that our server had a sassy attitude and brought Partner in Chow out of a bad mood (we thought we'd missed brunch hours) and into a good one (we did actually miss brunch hours, but they made it for us anyway).

We ate here one weekend and brought friends back about 2 weeks later.

What we've ordered: red flannel hash, pain perdu, succotash (w/bacon and heirloom tomato), hang-town fry
Service: hip, local sass
Atmo: urban hip warehouse
Crowd: penultimate Temescal neighborhood crowd
Spent: around $30.00 for two
Overall rating: 4.5 sporks

The first time we ate here I had the succotash and P.I.C. had the pain perdu. Both were really fresh, really delicious, and overall something we'd both order again. The second time I had red flannel hash and a friend had the hang-town fry, which had fried oysters on top. These freaked him out because he hadn't noticed that part of the menu description, but I suppose if you like oysters (and need something called hang-town fry) these are probably pretty darn good.

I can't remember what his wife or P.I.C. ordered, because I was sitting next to my brunch pals' newborn and therefore just completely distracted by his insane cuteness throughout the meal. Yes, I am a terrible food reviewer. On the other hand, I'm a great babysitter.

The red flannel has is a combo of root vegetables with eggs on top. To be honest, I was chatting away and playing with a month-old baby and catching up with old friends and basically so distracted that I don't really remember it that well, but I ate the whole thing and I'd order it again, so I think it was really good.

On the succotash/pain perdu day I was a bit more focused, as there was no sinfully cute newborn hogging my attention. Both were fantastic - the heirloom tomatoes weren't overwhelmed or made too hot and soggy by the succotash, and there was just enough bacon to flavor without making it too bacon-y or fatty.

The coffee here was also good. Bonus.

The pain perdu was really delicious and the presentation was artsy and fun. The sauce didn't make the bread too soggy, and P.I.C. ate all of it with no troubles.

Overall, we're thrilled that this place is around and will be eating brunch here again soon.

Tai San - 2811 Telegraph Avenue

We decided to order takeout from Tai San, which was a fortuitous pre-determined decision given my general phobia of (1) bad lighting and (2) carpets in restaurants.

The staff here is really, really nice. The guy on the phone was even really nice. And there was a big table of well-heeled Chinese people inside having a relaxed, leisurely meal, so we figured that the food probably didn't suck.

Turns out it didn't suck. Partner in Chow has gone down on record as saying this is the best Chinese we've encountered on Telegraph, and better than our go-to delivery place (Yang Chow).


What we ordered: mu shu tofu/vegetables (they'll add the tofu for you, either fried or sauteed), hot 'n sour soup, vegetable fried rice, broccoli beef
Service: really friendly and super fast
Atmo: Bad early 90's Chinese buffet
Crowd: Hard to say - there was only the one table of well-heeled Chinese people. It was about 8 on a Tuesday.
Spent: around $28.00
Overall rating: 3.5 sporks

One big bonus of Tai San is that it's freaking cheap. We spent less than $30 on 4 menu items - nice.

Another bonus was the Hot 'n Sour soup, which P.I.C. claims is the best we've had so far in Oakland/Berkeley. I liked it, but I do wish it had been a little hotter to balance the sourness. Sour it was; hot, meh. Next time I'll ask them to make it spicier.

I am not a fan of overcooked, fried or overly rich food - one of the reasons I don't eat Chinese food often, as it tends to be covered in stuff and full of scary meat and hard to taste the main ingredients individually - so Tai San was a pleasant surprise for me. The mu shu tasted fresh and the vegetables were nice and crunchy, even the cabbage. I hate getting soggy cabbage in my mu shu and ate a lot more of this than I normally do.

The broccoli beef was pretty standard Chinese take-out broccoli beef. The beef was that strange fluffy Chinese food beef, and I didn't eat it. PIC liked it, though the standouts were definitely the soup and the mu shu.

The veggie fried rice was also pretty clean-tasting - not a whole lot of oil, not greasy. If you like greasy fried rice that's really been fried, you won't like this. If you prefer fluffier, cleaner rice that's only been lightly fried and flavored, you'll like it. I liked it.

Overall, I'd get take-out from here again. But until they rid themselves of the carpet and swap out the fluorescents and pink vinyl chairs, this is a take-out only place for me.

Cafe Colucci - 6427 Telegraph Ave

Cafe Colucci seems to be the go-to Ethiopian place in this part of Berkeley/Oakland, and it's easy to see why. What they got right: atmo. So many Ethiopian/Eritrean places are either really dimly lit or just kind of run-down, and this place has a California-meets-Africa vibe that makes it really inviting overall.

I've been here a few times years ago, and this was my first time back since we discovered Cafe Eritrea d'Afrique. Partner in Chow ate here during her mourning period for The Blue Nile, so the first time she ate here she wasn't impressed. This time, we shelved all thoughts of competing or defunct restaurants and just ordered what sounded good.

What we ordered: vegetarian sampler, side of Mitten-Shouro (which the menu claims is "so tasty you will be hooked for life" - good marketing, Colucci)
Service: good - we went in late and it wasn't that busy
Atmo: cool California cafe with African accents
Crowd: hipsters, hill folks, the neighborood
Spent: around $30.00
Overall rating: 4 sporks

One interesting sidenote: some Ethiopian restaurants we've visited have tables of Ethiopian-looking diners. Eritrea d'Afrique and Asmara both seem to have a constant bar crowd, and usually some tables of folks who look like they know their Ethiopian food eating there. Cafe Colucci seems to lack that authentic African diner; perhaps it's the wait. Hmm.

Good rule of thumb: if you walk into an Eritrean/Ethiopian restaurant and it's filled with Eritrean/Ethiopian diners, it's probably a good sign.

While we're going to tie Colucci with Eritrea d'Afrique, Partner in Chow definitely prefers the food at Eritrea d'Afrique. Colucci ties because the atmosphere is so much better, and atmo is an important part of any dining experience. I do love Eritrea d'Afrique, but I am notoriously sensitive to bad lighting - and their lighting and color scheme is just the worst. Fluorescent gray meets white linoleum floors and gray walls and gray tables... ugh. Colucci has good lighting, warm yellow/orange walls and way better furniture.

The real test will be what happens when we're done with this project and just want to go get some Ethiopian food. Hmm.

Cafe Colucci seems to be the go-to Ethiopian place in this part of Berkeley/Oakland, and it's easy to see why. What they got right: atmo. So many Ethiopian/Eritrean places are either really dimly lit or just kind of run-down, and this place has a California-meets-Africa vibe that makes it really inviting overall.

I've been here a few times years ago, and this was my first time back since we discovered Cafe Eritrea d'Afrique. Partner in Chow ate here during her mourning period for The Blue Nile, so the first time she ate here she wasn't impressed. This time, we shelved all thoughts of competing or defunct restaurants and just ordered what sounded good.

What we ordered: vegetarian sampler, side of Mitten-Shouro (which the menu claims is "so tasty you will be hooked for life" - good marketing, Colucci)
Service: good - we went in late and it wasn't that busy
Atmo: cool California cafe with African accents
Crowd: hipsters, hill folks, the neighborood
Spent: around $30.00
Overall rating: 4 sporks

The food here is very good; no complaints. It was hard to avoid the comparisons with Eritrea d'Afrique - the spicing is slightly different, the Mitten-Shouro was a new one for us (dunno if we're hooked for life, but we liked it a lot), but we missed our usual side of fava beans that we have at Eritrea.

One interesting sidenote: some Ethiopian restaurants we've visited have tables of Ethiopian-looking diners. Eritrea d'Afrique and Asmara both seem to have a constant bar crowd, and usually some tables of folks who look like they know their Ethiopian food eating there. Cafe Colucci seems to lack that authentic African diner; perhaps it's the wait. Hmm.

Good rule of thumb: if you walk into an Eritrean/Ethiopian restaurant and it's filled with Eritrean/Ethiopian diners, it's probably a good sign.

While we're going to tie Colucci with Eritrea d'Afrique, Partner in Chow definitely prefers the food at Eritrea d'Afrique. Colucci ties because the atmosphere is so much better and atmo is an important part of any dining experience. I do love Eritrea d'Afrique, but I am notoriously sensitive to bad lighting - and their lighting and color scheme is just the worst. Fluorescent gray meets white linoleum floors and gray walls and gray tables... ugh. Colucci has good lighting, warm yellow/orange walls and way better furniture.

If we could just take the atmo at Colucci and the food at Eritrea, we'd never bother with another Ethiopian place. The real test will be what happens when we're done with this project and just want to go get some Ethiopian food. Hmm.

Ethiopia - 2955 Telegraph Avenue

We really wanted to like this place, but that wasn't in the cards.

Somehow, walking into a restaurant that's almost empty just makes me want to like it even more and so I was determined to look past the fact that the menus were sticky, the partition at our table almost fell on Partner in Chow and was just sort of ghetto-rigged together, and the table was kinda sticky too. This place shall therefore forever be known as "That Sticky Place," and that's just never a good thing for a restaurant. Unless you're a Saltwater Taffy restaurant or something.

The only other table was full of 8 fresh-back-to-school Cal students, which meant that we got to listen to inane college chatter while we waited. And waited. And waited. And this is when That Sticky Place lost its Mom 'n Pop appeal.

We were seated immediately, but it took about 15 minutes to even get water. I'd actually started a Countdown to Meltdown by the time we finally got service, meaning that about 10 minutes in I gave Parnter in Chow an ultimatum: if we didn't get service in 5 minutes or less, we were leaving. And I timed it (thank you, retro gold Timex, for your stopwatch capabilities).

The waitress made it to our table with literally 5 seconds to spare.

So: this didn't start out well at all, but we both love Ethiopian food and I decided to just let it go and enjoy the food - there was one server and it seemed like she was overwhelmed by the large-ish table of college kids, and Ethiopian/Eritrean restaurants in general don't seem to be hallmarked by speedy service.

The waitress assured us that the vegetarian combo for one wasn't enough food for the two of us. Being somewhat familiar with the strange, hunger-defying aspects of injera I was hesitant to believe her, but since she worked there and all we went ahead and ordered basically the entire vegetarian menu.

One bright spot here: you can take a number of dishes and combine them as you'd like for your entree.

What we ordered: vegetarian sambussa, every vegetarian thing on the menu
Service: friendly, but a bit disorganized and very sloooooow
Atmo: sticky - this just doesn't seem like the cleanest place around, and lots of things have seen better days. We do like having the partition between us and other Ethiopian-fan diners, but since ours was wonky and we were facing The Back Side of it (I thought partitions were decorated on both sides, but ours wasn't) it didn't help out too much. It just made me feel like we were forgotten behind a semi-invisible wall that might fall down on PIC's head.

Crowd: What crowd?
Spent: around $25.00
Overall rating: 2 sporks

The sambussa came first. This is a lot like a samosa in Indian food; this one was filled with lentils (I think). The flavor on these was very good and very concentrated, and this would end up being the bright spot of the meal. I'm generally avoid fried food, but I enjoyed the one I ate.

The first thing we noted when the veggie platter came is that we could have easily ordered for one and added a side. Oh, well. The second thing is that the injera was really... dense. And kind of dry. And extra sour. This injera:regular injera was like baguette:sourdough rye. It was the oddest injera we've ever encountered, and while I tried to shelve my preconceived notions of injera I just couldn't quite get over its dryness. On the plus side, there was a LOT of it - and the dogs enjoyed every leftover morsel later on. (They therefore give this place 5 paws up for providing enough food that they got tasty leftovers.)

The food itself was also a bit different than other similar places we've tried, in that everything was just really intensely flavored. Generally this is a good thing; here, the flavors were so concentrated that it became a little much.

With so many other options for Ethiopian food (Cafe Colucci is right down the street), this restaurant is in last place of all the Ethiopian/Eritrean restaurants on Telegraph. Sorry, Sticky Place. Maybe we'll try again someday. Or not.

Le Bateau Ivre Cafe - 2629 Telegraph Ave

The Drunken Boat is at this point the furthest we've gone on our project, and we were excited to be so close to campus - if a little afraid of a French place that's probably been around for 30 years, with a sign boasting brunch, lunch and dinner - could they really do all three well?

We went in after 9 for dinner and were pleasantly surprised by the atmo. This apparently used to be a house and reminded me of being in Europe somehow, and since Partner in Chow and I both love classical music we enjoyed the soundtrack. We sat in the restaurant side, which is apparently different than the Cafe side.

We were seated right away and had no issues with service, but of course we went in pretty late and there were only a couple other tables. Our waiter was super nice and really attentive, and though the Yelp folks are noting some incredibly bad service (which I myself have zero patience for) we had a great experience here.

What we ordered: crabcakes, lobster bisque, cheese baked in a pastry thing (this is named something en croute or some such), red trout spread with bread, Chimay (bonus points for having Chimay on the menu)
Service: attentive, friendly
Atmo: sparse but Euro-friendly - tablecloths, but it's in an old house and it feels like it.
Crowd: old-School Berkeley - this seems like a place that kids who grow up in Berkeley frequented with their parents or grandparents, and then bring their kids to when they grow up.
Spent: around $50.00
Overall rating: 4 sporks

We really enjoyed Le Bateau Ivre, though we didn't order an entree. I'm a person who enjoys doing Appetizer Explosion rather than meals, and this menu made that possible. Also, this place was really reasonably priced - the crabcake plate had 2 huge cakes on there with big chunks of crab and fennel over salad, and they were like $9. These were the single best plate of crabcakes I've had in California, ever. They may be the best crabcakes I've ever had period, and I've eaten them in D.C. and Maryland and in various other places where crabcakes are supposed to be great.

The reason they were so good was threefold: (1) The crab was extremely fresh, (2) The crab was the star of the show and in big lumps, (3) I love fennel, and it paired well with the crab. These were rustic, homestyle crabcakes that fell apart when you put a fork in them. Fine by me - that just means there's a shit-ton of crab in there.

The smoked red trout spread was really salty and trout-y. It was a little intensely flavored for me (kinda just too fishy), but smoked fish in general is just a little fishy for me, and I knew that going in so I'm hesitant to fault the spread. We lucked out and got super fresh bread straight out of the oven (mmm) so we used that rather than the toasties that came with it.

The lobster bisque tasted like LOBSTER. Big capital letters. This was not your watered-or-creamed-down version that tastes like generic cream base with a hint of lobster; this tasted more like a lobster than lobster meat. Impressive.

So the bisque was freaking delicious, but right on the cusp of being more like a sauce than a soup. PIC has bad memories of the generally well-loved Martini House due to them over-concentrating their flavors and serving soups that tasted like sauces, but this one was just soup-y enough to pass with her.

Brie baked in pastry: hard not to enjoy this calorie explosion, if you're into that sort of thing. PIC is most definitely into that sort of thing and enjoyed this quite a lot.

Overall, the food here has concentrated flavor and good-sized portions for what you're paying, at least on the appetizer menu. The plates were overflowing with salad, etc and could have easily been much larger plates.

I really like eating in restaurants that have been around for a long time, the same way I enjoy living in Victorians and buying mid-century furniture. We didn't know what we were in the mood for that night, so finding an old-school Berkeley institution that happened to serve quality French food for reasonable prices was a nice surprise. We sat in the front window and had a nice cozy late supper, listening to classical music and enjoying a strong Belgian beer. That's just good eats.

We'll be back. I'm interested in trying brunch on the patio, as brunch outside is a hard thing to find in Oakland.

Addis - 6100 Telegraph Ave

Addis had the somewhat interesting presence of a security guard by the front door. Just having been subject to buzzworthiness at Saysetha, we began to seriously wonder about who on earth has previously walked through the doors of the establishments on this stretch of Telegraph.

We apparently passed muster (despite my still-pink mohawk) and were greeted by the security guard, so then walked in without incident.

Being such big fans of Cafe Eritrea d'Afrique, we wondered if we'd like Addis as much. Ethiopian food is almost the same as Eritrean food, but not quite - some of the spicing is slightly different, some of the items are slightly different.

Turns out we really liked Addis. The atmo has a lot on Eritrea d'Afrique - nice partitions that separate diners from one another, low lighting, no linoleum. It actually reminded me of Asmara, which I also really like (and which we really need to review - I've been there, Partner in Chow has not). The service, on the other hand, can be described as casual at best. At one point I actually got up myself to go find a napkin after waiting for about 5 minutes, but then again I felt pretty comfortable doing so. It's a pretty laid-back vibe in there.

What we ordered:

Addis combination explosion, which included your typical vegetarian items (red & yellow mashies, salad, collard-ish greens) as well as a couple meat items (um.. beef?)
Service: don't be in a hurry. Or if you are, let them know and be prepared to snag your own cutlery if necessary.
Atmo: calm, quiet
Crowd: mellow Berkeley folks
Spent: around $30.00
Overall rating: 4 sporks

The atmo helped push Addis into 4-spork land, though Partner in Chow thinks she likes the food at Eritrea d'Afrique better. It's slightly hard to compare because we ordered meat at Addis, and have never done so at Ed'A.

Overall, the injera was great and we ate all our food, so we must have liked it a lot. We'd eat there again.

Burma Superstar - 4721 Telegraph

We've been to Burma Superstar twice now. The big downside is the wait, and they don't take reservations.

The upside is the food. I've never had anything quite like it, and PIC agrees that this is a must-try for anyone interested in Asian food.

What we've ordered: tea leaf salad, cashew chicken, lamb something, black rice pudding, various other things
Service: rushed and vaguely disorganized, but friendly
Atmo: upscale warehouse - high ceilings, open floor plan, big bar
Crowd: The Hills + the neighborood
Spent: around $20.00/ea
Overall rating: 4 sporks

Burma Superstar is legitimately delicious. The tea leaf salad is like nothing we've ever had before, and we order it ever time. The other dishes are just cleaner than Chinese food, and the meat here doesn't have that scary-ass Chinese take-out rubbery texture that makes me antsy.

Service here is a bit wonky and can take longer than it should.

Upsides: really good tea selection and interesting desserts. The black rice pudding was delicious and we demolished it with no difficulty. The lamb dish was tender and superbly flavored - I hate lamb, and even I liked it.

This is a great alternative for Chinese take-out given the quality of the food. It's more expensive than Chinese take-out, but in this case you get what you pay for.

Pizzaiolo

PIC and I have been to Pizzaiolo on multiple occasions, and eating here for the project was really just an excuse to eat here again.

Since the last time we've been they opened a back patio, and we sat out there and listened to jazz while eating. This was a nice bonus for us; also nice is that they sorta snuck us in and we didn't have to wait, probably because the wait staff could tell that we're from the neighborhood. Score.

This is one of my favorite restaurants in Oakland, and if it weren't for the inevitable wait time I'd probably eat there too often. You can of course make reservations, but I'm an impromptu diner.

What we've ordered: plain pizza, wild fern pizza, meatballs, olive oil cake, salad, various appetizers
Service: hipster friendly - the servers probably live nearby
Atmo: inviting, warm, upscale, but not stuffy - I've worn shorts. Then again, I'll wear shorts just about anywhere.
Crowd: the Hills are alive + the neighborhood
Spent: we generally spend about $50/person here
Overall rating: 5 silver sporks

PIC and I have gone back and forth as to whether or not Dopo has better pizza. It's a tough call, but I think I'm going with Pizzaiolo here due to the freshness and variety of toppings. The last pizza we had was a wild fern pizza that was devoured by a third friend who usually fears all things green. PIC actually didn't like that pizza so much due to its lack of cheesiness (it just had some pecorino sprinkled, and no mozzarella), but that was really more our bad - we didn't read the menu properly. I loved this pizza, and the fact that it got a vege-phobe to eat 2 slices was impressive.

Keep in mind that the pizza here is really more of a super-thin flatbread that's not really a meal. If you want pizza for dinner, you might want to go to Lanesplitter.

The meatballs here are one of my favorite menu items on any menu in a 5-mile radius. They are delicious, sinful and remarkably filling. An order of meatballs and a shared pizza is enough for me to eat, and if we weren't always getting wine we'd spend a lot less money here.

The appetizers are always seasonal and delicious, so if something leaps out at you, order it. Same goes for dessert, though the olive oil cake was so surprisingly delicious that I'll mention it here.

Extra bonus points for Blue Bottle Coffee, which without question is my favorite coffee in the Bay Area (sorry Peet's).

There are 2 main downsides to Pizzaiolo:

1) It's always crowded, making impromptu dining difficult, and making it unpleasant to sit at the front tables
2) It's expensive

Other than that, there are no downsides. Except parking, which is getting harder and harder with each new awesome restaurant that opens on that stretch of Telegraph. But I can't really complain, because having a new Gourmet Ghetto emerge in Oakland is well worth the parking woes to enjoy it.

Eat here.

Saysetha Thai - 6230 Telegraph Ave

This place had the odd... convenience?... of a buzz-in door that, presumably, keeps out the riff-raff. Since I routinely dress like the riff-raff and was sporting a mohawk the day we went, Partner in Chow and I wondered whether or not we'd make the grade.

Fortunately, we apparently looked respectable despite my pink mohawk, and in we went.

We've now eaten at Saysetha once and ordered take-out twice. I think that this place overall is better for take-out, because the ambiance is a depressing 80's time warp. You almost expect someone in Miami Vice clothes to be hitting the buffet... not that there's a buffet to be had, but the atmo would suggest that, at some point in the decor history, there was some sort of awful buffet full of fried things that tempted diners who might be just as happy at Denny's. That being said, the food is good and really cheap, and because it's so cheap it gets extra bonus points for still being good.

The other thing that puts this place ahead of most Thai restaurants is the ability to substitute gluten for your protein, which is a welcome alternative to soy. Tofu can just get boring. So...

What we've ordered: appetizer explosion plate, fresh spring rolls, chicken curry (yellow), gluten curry (red), papaya salad, cashew chicken
Service: very friendly - the Mom of the Mom 'n Pop
Atmo: as referenced, the last time this place was remodeled there was no such thing as the Interwebs
Crowd: the neighborood
Spent: around $25.00
Overall rating: 3.5 sporks

This isn't the best Thai we've ever had, but it's pretty darn good. The papaya salad has just a little too much fish sauce for me, but since it's one of my favorite Thai dishes I order it anyway. The appetizer platter was a bit too full of fried items - my bad for not noticing that the spring rolls on it were the fried ones.

The fresh spring rolls are delicious and FRESH, and they get a 5. The nice addition of mango to go with the mint just makes this roll extra special and fresh-tasting. Note: eat them all, because if you keep them for leftovers the rice paper gets really stiff.

The curries are unpredictable in ingredients, but good: the night we ate in there, the yellow chicken curry was good but there were basically no vegetables other than potatoes. This last time, the chicken curry was absolutely loaded with string beans. So you might want to clarify exactly what they have on-hand that day for your curry, if you have strong opinions about what goes in there.

The gluten red tofu was delicious, and the texture of the gluten was great - not too chewy or too soft. Remember, this isn't on the menu.

The cashew chicken was better than any Chinese cashew chicken we've gotten - less greasy, less mystery-meatish. So if you don't want curry and like Chinese food better anyway and only came for Thai because you got outvoted, this is a good option.

Overall, we'll order from Saysetha again due to the pricing and protein flexibility. I freak out about non-organic meat but I also tire of tofu, so it's nice to know that I can get cheap, solid take-out Thai and still get my protein without getting awful images of factory farms and such.

Marc 49 - 4915 Telegraph Ave

Marc 49 is a wine bar on Telegpaph that caught our attention due to the fact that it opened after the Partner in Chow and I had passed it.

For due diligence, we went back to Marc 49, the newest obstacle between us and Pizzaiolo.

We've now been there a few times.

What we've ordered:

Mozzarella/Tomato Salad, Oysters, Fig & Proscuitto Sandwich (we think), Meaty Sandwich/Salad Combo, er... OK, we don't exactly remember what we've ordered, which has far less to do with it being a wine bar than that... er... well, it was awhile ago, OK?
Service: friendly
Atmo: laid back wine bar
Crowd: the neighborhood - young hipsters, yuppies, etc
Spent: around $30.00
Overall rating: 4 sporks

Marc 49 gets bonus points for being reasonably priced for a wine bar. The other alternatives near our house are Franklin Square and A Cote, and both tend to run you $100+ for 2 people if you're hungry.

This place has a good selection of good sandwiches and salads, and a decent wine selection. The back patio is a friendly place to kick back with friends, and overall we've always had a really good time here. Service is prompt and friendly, the front room has cool low tables and a nice bar. Basically, Marc 49 is filling a gap for the neighborhood and democratizing the wine bar experience for twentysomething kids that either can't afford Franklin Square, or don't want to eat fussy, small plates of food.

Nice job, Marc 49. We'll be back.

So.. behind...

We are sooo overdue on updating this blog. We know this.

Unfortunately, our project got a bit stalled when the Partner-in-Chow was laid off, which is what happens when you work for a mortgage company that didn't bother to see the "warning signs" (read: the various fraud reports submitted to upper management).

That being the case, we've been a bit remiss about eating out in general. We've also been busy, and so I owe The Internets some long-overdue reviews. Some are for the Telegraph project, some just for the general blog list. I'll list them here so I remember:

Outstanding in the Field (a.k.a. Out Drinking at the Ranch)
Flora (newish, and on Telegraph!)
Pican (eat here - in Oakland)
Miyozen (sister restaurant to Drunken Fish)
Dopo
Drunken Fish
Absinthe (woo for Top Chef)
Sea Salt, Lalime's & T-Rex (the trifecta)
Firefly
Taquerias: Mi Familia, El Amigo, Perico's, and the taco truck we found near High Street
Oceanaire (San Diego)
JORDN (San Diego in the Tower 23 hotel)

OK, now I'm getting lazy with links. More:

College Ave:

Soi Four
Oliveto
Citron
A Cote
Filipo
Bittersweet

A bit East of the East Bay:

Rugby (Georgetown)
J.Paul's (Georgetown)
Bodega
Home (NY)
Casa (NY)


... there's probably more. Which is to say that we're way behind in reviews and way behind on the project but not, perhaps, just not eating out at all. Just not as often.

However, Pizzaiolo is next on our list for Telegraph, and the rule is that we can't eat on Telegraph until we're up to date. We are actually up to date on the Telegraph blog (with the exception of Flora, which is new after all), so we can eat there.

And a new tapas place opened on Telegraph, so we need to hit that. A wine bar opened too, so we need to hit that as well.

So much to eat, so little time.

Stay tuned...