Bay Area Bargain Bites
Here's the link to today's Chronicle.
There there are some interesting places to look into and some Chowhound favorites.
Will have to check the old Maverick's Cafe, now Cafe Capistrano, in HMB as some changes seem to be going on there (it's across the street from Mezza Luna).
I was happy to see Curry Corner in Hayward mentioned since it was the first restaurant to change my mind about Indian food ... that it could taste distictive and delicious.
Whoever the Spices I & II fan is on the board, they both were mentioned.
There was a recent debate on the board recently about whether Coupa Cafe would be considered a cheap eat. Well, according to the Chron, the poster who thought it was pricy loses.
Nice indexing by location and cuisine. The Chron seems to be using the web more effectively. Now if they would only include links to restaurant websites in with the reviews, that would be nice.
The only part that was ... well ... lame was the burger section ... in my opinion. To put Joe's Cable Car and Taylor's Refresher in a bargain burger category ... well, really.
rworange
Sep 18, 2005 01:09PM
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Have we had any reports on Jook n Fun?
I got a laugh out of the El Huarache Azteca item. "Spend some quality time with the platillo de barbacoa"? Yeah, if you get there by 10am or something.
The Chron's "cheap" criteria are:
- good-tasting entree for $10 or less
- 90 percent of the menu $10 or less
- dinner for two possible on $30 or less
- 10% "wiggle room"
Hence a definitely not cheap place like Bocadillos makes the cut, even though you'd have to order very carefully to get dinner for $15.
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right here
Link: http://www.chowhound.com/topics/show/...
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We didn't have any trouble getting barbacoa at 1:00 on a Sunday afternoon. Note that the other place mentioned in that report -- Casa Maria -- is gone, which is a shame since I had some good food there (although it was wildly uneven).
Link: http://www.chowhound.com/topics/show/...
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Yes, "compared to what?" is a natural reaction. A $7.00 banh mi at Out the Door is a bargain?
Amanda Berne had a huge territory to cover and a variegated readership to find consensus with, and overall I think she came up with a pretty good list, including places as obscure as Lee Hou.
Link: http://eatingchinese.org
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Out the Door is a bargain compared with Slanted Door!
Amanda Berne's just one of 20 or so writers credited for the feature. Her byline's at the top because she wrote the lead.
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I definitely agree with you that the burger list needs some help. There are any number of places where you can get a cheaper and arguably better burger than any on the list. I refuse to believe they couldn't find at least a dozen choices in San Francisco.
My personal favorite burger is at Harry's Bar, where you can get a huge Niman Ranch burger (cooked rare if you ask) and mountain of fresh fries for around $6. On Monday nights, add a beer for $1. Doesn't get much cheaper than that in SF.
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After the picnic yesterday, seven of us die hards went to try the noodles and fried chicken at San Tung on Irving, one of the listed SF places. We shared seven dishes (Dumplings, two versions of fried chicken, two versions of soup noodles, another noodle dish, and pig's ears), and with a bit of leftovers, my share of the bill, tax and tip included, was $9!
All of the dishes were tasty, and some were really good (the beef with five spice soup noodles were worth driving across town for, imo).
Melanie took some pics, so I hope she posts, either here or in another thread, with more thoughts and the names of what we sampled (As Windy mentioned below, all that drinking and eating at the picnic was hard work and I was content to let others do all of the ordering)
For several of us, it was our first time at San Tung, and it was nice to see it mentioned this morning. I think it definitely deserves a place on the list. San Tung really is a bargain (more than just a) bite!
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I had a soda and got leftovers for my $9 (and we tipped at least 20%). Almost as good a deal as the Chowhound picnic. Between my chicken wings and a few Mexican sweets I'm having a fine snack day.
The three noodles we ordered were the beef soup noodles with five spice, black bean sauce noodles, and spicy soup noodles with mussels (not the name on the menu).
I really liked the pig's ear appetizer too. And their kim chee is crunchy and perfect.
In the name of fairness, we ordered both the original dry fried chicken (which is sweeter and sticky) and the dry fried chicken (wet), which has a garlicky gravy on top.
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This was a first visit to San Tung. Having tried several Korean-Chinese places in the South Bay, the standards here fell short for me. The only dish I'd order again is the five spice beef noodle soup which KK has recommended. In fact, I'd be inclined to order other 5-spice dishes here as the pig ears 5-spice seasoning was quite tasty too even though they were overcooked.
The gan zha jiang mian (black bean sauce noodles, dry version) was pretty good. The addition of an assortment of seafood (shrimp, scallops, etc.) was a nice surprise. The big chunks of zucchini were too hard besides being too large. I'll remind Ruth and Pssst that they had this dish at Ming's in San Bruno with hand-pulled noodles and invite them to compare it.
As a general comment, the noodles in all three dishes were too porous and soggy. I like Shandong, Korean-Chinese noodles for their toothsome, elastic texture, and I didn't find that here.
Here's the side-by-side of the dueling chicken wings. The plate on the left is the dry-fried wings, on the right is the wet version of dry-fried wings. The wings were frozen and didn't have much chicken essence to them. The saucing and seasoning could have been much more complex, but didn't compensate in this case.
On the positive side, prices are quite reasonable here. Also, the wait staff were flexible and comfortable speaking in English and happily provided ice water and refills.
Link: http://www.chowhound.com/topics/show/24739#97277
Image: http://home.earthlink.net/~melanista/...
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The gan zha jiang mian was fine, but nowhere near as good as the Ming's version, which had less stuff in it, but did include yummy carmelized onions.
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has anyone tried the restaurant simply greek on piedmont ave. is it worth the effort.
tia
dave
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I'd say it's decent and good value for the money. The fried squid for $3 was quite a deal --- my Simply Greek post below.
Link: http://www.chowhound.com/topics/show/...
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I think these guys did some real work and I have a bit of suspicion that they probably get some of the ideas from this site a lot - not entirely sure, just a hunch.
They mentioned my favorite bargain place China Tofu in Union city (East Bay) that I had been touting for years in this site.
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