North Beach Deja Vu

mini booths w/ paintings

Back when I was trolling Yelp for a good North Beach place to check out for my bday party, one particular restaurant, Tommaso Ristorante Italiano, kept popping up. I really wanted to go then, but they don't take reservations, and all the reviews said it got really crowded on weekends. I decided to queue it up on my lists, and finally hit it up for my last date night.

It's always fun going over to North Beach because it gives me the whole I'm so cool I freaking live in San Francisco and work at a video game company and life is awesome <:D feeling. Totally irrational, but it happens. This time I was geeking out especially badly because after 15 mins of looking for parking, I finally got a spot (90 degree angle space!!) that had an incredible view of TransAmerica building on one side, and Coit Tower on the other. Such good times

When we got to Tommaso's, I had this crazy flashback deja vu of being there with my dad back on one of my many college trips to Cali. As soon as we opened the door it was totally confirmed as I recognized the mini booths with faux Mediterranean frescoes on the walls. We had to wait a few mins to be seated, and then we got stuck in the middle of the giant communal table.

It was late-ish when we got there (prolly 8:45) and so people were starting to clear out. It was pretty ridiculous because the way the traffic flow went, everyone left the center table except the parties directly on either side of us :P. Truthfully, worse for them because both Carlos and I were still in our many bouts of loud coughing fit sickness. It was kind of annoying though, because it made everything REALLY hard to hear. I have trouble enough trying to understand his accent anyways, so adding on excessive ambient noise did not help at all. It was a whole lot of "QUE?!"ing all night.

lasagna

The food itself was decently tasty. I ended up getting a cheese pizza with garlic, and Carlos got some lasagna. I really liked my pizza and the small was more than enough food for two meals for me (even with someone stealing a couple pieces :P). The lasagna was ok, but not as memorable. There were a bunch of varieties of pizzas, so it would be fun to go back with a group and order several to split. 

Overall the meal was good, but the loudness of the room and crowdedness of our seating kind of put a damper on it. If I went again, I'd try to guarantee getting a mini-booth for privacy. I haven't been very many places in North Beach, but I have a feeling I'd disagree with the many reviews calling Tommaso's the best. It's good, but not omfh amazing.

Giant Meatball Action

outside wall

One of the few rules of RDN is that we can't go to a place without the submitter being present. Luckily for us, Panch has yet to put anything in the hat, or we'd all be SOL :P. But lately, we've been running in to the same issue with the newly promoted lead: Manu <3. For like a month we had been tabling Emmy's Spaghetti Shack until he was finally able to go last Monday.

awesome bread

hipster vibe

We decided to be nice and invite Ken to this RDN as a new job special. It was a decision I immediately regretted as he showed up late, and Emmy's is strict about their "no seating till the whole party arrives" rule. Emmy's is a cute, well-known dive place in Bernal Heights across from the Safeway. It has fun art on the outside of the building and the inside is very hipster. It is decorated to look shack-like, and has things like laundry hanging from the ceiling. The menu is pretty simplistic, but there are a variety of Italian dishes. All of us went for the famous spaghetti and giant meat balls except Manu (since he can't have red meat).

cute menu

I think one of my favorite parts of the dinner was the free appetizer bread. It was a chopped up focaccia with olive oil and so insanely good. I can't even remember why, but I know we gobbled it up in like a minute and luckily they promptly brought more. I think it may have had Rosemary on it, cuz I freaking love Rosemary.

The pasta dishes came and were HUGE. All of us were pretty hungry and no one got more than half-way through their food. Each spaghetti came with three large meatballs. They were about the size of your fist and very filling and tasty. The pasta itself wasn't particularly notable, but like most such dishes, it still tasted good since spaghetti is hard to screw up. I was happy that even after being stuffed I had a giant dish of leftovers to take home.

giant meatballs & spaghetti

Emmy's seems like a nice, dependable, neighborhood joint where you go if you are in need some some serious meatball fix. It isn't too big, so unless you want to wait, it's probably best to go at an off-time or a weeknight.

Finding the Ideal Restaurant

super happy bday sharon <:D

Nothing is more stressful than planning a group dinner in a neighborhood you aren't familiar with. For my bday, the plan was to hit up a North Beach club. Should be easy to find a place to eat, right?? NO! Despite the thousands of Italian places in the 6 block radius, picking the food took me forever. I really wanted to find the perfect place that: was swanky, took reservations, had unique food choices, and had a menu where people could get away with not spending too much money. Thus I ended up with Ristorante Ideale.

Pumpkin Pasta!

The place is small, but has a nice ambiance. Very dark lighting, but it looked like there were cute blue tiles on the walls. There was a bit more Italian on the menu than I like, but it was still readable. For starters they brought out some very yummy bread and oil. It was warm and soft :) 

Tortellini

I had already decided what to order in advance as their specialty was "pumpkin ravioli"... and I'm incapable of not getting pumpkin dishes. Other dishes included some type of tortellni filled with cheese and veal, pasta w/ egg, and gnocchi. I'm bad at describing pasta, but my dish was pretty awesome :). The pumpkin flavor was subtle and not overdone with excessive spicing. The noodles were soft and creamy... mmm. Everyone (besides Ken :p) really enjoyed theirs as well. James said something like "one of the best noodle dishes of his life," crazy!!

Sadly, all of the desserts looked kinda nasty to me. I don't like chocolate or coffee or lemon, and that was it. Everyone tried to get some specialty cake that was gone, so instead the restaurant comped us some free desserts and gave us a sampler platter of the rest :).





There was tiramisu, chocolate ice cream cream ball things, and some profiteroles. Not my stuff, but everyone else enjoyed.

I really liked the waiter. He was a friendly Italian dude who seemed to genuinely care that we enjoyed our meal. I also liked that he gave us the free desserts. Good meal!! I'd check this place out again :)

Dinners with Dad

Although my dad and I share the same love for eating, I swear we have opposite tastes. He's all about the generic "fancy" restaraunt, so on our last biweekly meal, we ended up at Cafe Pro Bono in Palo Alto.

This is a small place in the southern end of town. I was sooo stressed that night, so it was great to get away for dinner before returning to work until midnight :(. The meal itself wasn't too noteworthy, but I did have a nice piece of breaded halibut. My only complaint was that the place didn't serve any salads with the main courses. I think it should be included if you spend a fair amount on a nice dish. I did enjoy the side of their version of rice-a-roni :) can't live here without the san francisco treat!!

Presentation was good. Probably worth checking out if you are in to that stuff 

Gag Reflex Pasta >: |

I am so not a picky eater. As you've prolly noticed, most of my reviews describe the foods as "awesome!!" I can appreciate almost all types and I'm not even that elitest, so it takes work for me to dislike a food. Congrats Pascucci on State St. in downtown Santa Barbara, you did it.

My road trip was pretty sporadic, so we didn't really make plans for much. After arriving, we hit the beach for awhile, enjoyed the scenery and freshened up at the hotel. We heard that State Street was the hott place to be, so we headed out. By this time it was around 8 on a Sunday, so we figured we'd be ok. NOPE! I think it was like UCSB back to school weekend. SO MANY PARENTS AND KIDS! Most of the places down there were getting $$$ and $$$$ yelp reviews, so we were a bit limited in selection. We put our name down at 3 or 4 places before finally ending up at this Italian place, Pascucci. I was starving and excited. It was cute inside, very fake but cute. They started us off with garlic cheese bread! Ok, great so far! I excitedly saw a pumpkin and squash ravioli dish and was decided.

Little known fact- I don't actually eat out THATTT much. I try to bring frozen dinners to work everyday to save money and calories. One of my favs is Lean Cuisine squash ravioli, so I figured a nice restaraunt would rts. >: |

It finally arrived and I excitedly bit in. I was punched in the face with a stronggg pumpkin taste that was followed up by cinnamon. Weird. Ok, keep going. By the time I had finished my second ravioli I started feeling nauseous. This thing was sooo strong. And with some flavor that just tasted off. It had a strong cinnamon and some other spice after taste that destroyed me. And not in like a fun pumpkin pie way, in like, I just ate a rancid rotting gourd way. 

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Turns out Eugi was hating his salmon bowtie pasta as well. There was just an off flavor about the whole dish, and the salmon was so ridiculously smoked tasting that it kind of permeated the taste of the whole entree. We were so disgusted that we asked for the check after 5 mins. Didn't even want to bother complaining (mainly cuz it was almost 9 at this point, and I was concerned that the Yogurtland that I'd seen a few blocks down would be closing). Thankfully Yogurtland was open till 11, and so I had a most delicious froyo for dinner :D. They even brought back pumpkin pie flavored, so I had a sweet and satiating squash experience to carry me through the night.