More Ten Word Restaurant Reviews

My last post misses the mark in two respects. My friend actually asked for some vegetarian options, and wanted a neighborhood where there might be some shops open late. This being Oakland, its hard to tell whether you can find a store open late, since even the restaurants close at 10. And me being a carnivore, I am not a good one to go to for vegetarian options. So I thought I would do a few more reviews in shop-y districts, which are also likely to have decent menus that include vegetarian options.

Rockridge (from yesterday's post: Oliveto, Filippos):

Uzon: only get take-out, good sushi, cute space, agree with Anonymous

Rikyu: more good sushi, expensive but tastier. Boringest location in all Rockridge?

Garibaldi's: Where your parents might eat if they were rich here.

Pasta Pomodoro: Like its siblings, big pasta plates, outdoor seating, does job.

Crepevine: Hard to get behind crepes, big lunch menu, good lemonade

Ben 'n Nicks: Every Saturday, kid-filled bar, love the nachos and beer.

Cactus: Allegedly Chez Panisse spin-off, delicious Mexican, no table service. Great.

Khana Peena: Wierd dome, great tikka masala, cost too expensive for Indian.

Currylicious: Bad name, hard to find, really fresh, tasty, they deliver.

Okay, that covers all the places that I have eaten at between Rockridge BART and the intersection of College and Broadway. Many many shops in that stretch too, if shopping is your bag.

As an aside, I fully endorse Anonymous (actually, its just Pat) on Barlata and Dopo. Dopo and Cesar are located on Piedmont Ave, another shop-filled neighborhood. Barlata is in Temescal, near Pizzaiolo.

Barlata: good tapas, house wine in a small carafe, totally awesome.

Dopo: nice owner, great Italian food. Again with the small portions?

Dona Tomas, Temescal: High-end Mexican by Flora owners, where Pizzaiolo rejects eat.

Ten Word Reviews

I got an email from an old friend today asking that I blog more. November sort of wore me out on the blogging front, but I thought I would give it a try. The other thing she asked for was some restaurant recommendations for Oakland. So I thought I would do some 10 word restaurant reviews:

Oliveto, Rockridge: Lighter fare downstairs, and less likely that a pig died.

Camino, Grand Ave: Long tables, slow service, no off-season limes. Good food.

Flora, Telegraph/17th: Art deco bar, yummy lunch, political Oakland "celebrities", get reservations.

Filippo's, Rockridge: Take kids every Friday, cheap meal, would like bigger portions.

Luka's, Grand/B'way: Great beer, fries, pool table. Remember the Hofbrau? Luka's better.

Franklin Square, Franklin/B'way: Only had lunch, downtown Oakland has a 'scene'. Pretty good.

Pizzaiolo, Temescal: Delicious fried chicken, egg on your pizza. Can't go wrong.

What Is My Problem?

I find it almost impossible to sit still in long meetings. Is this normal? I feel like a child.

More Family

Once again, my cousins are blasting past me with their bad-ass talent. While Rachael may be only rapping her winter dance invites, my cousin Zoe is tearing it up at the Yerba Buena Arts Center's Left Coast Leaning Festival on Thursday night. (I don't actually know if Zoe "tears it up"; based on what I've seen of her work, I don't think that's totally accurate. If you want to see what I mean, google her on YouTube, or "YouTube her" at zoe | juniper). Meantime, her sister Kate has artwork showing in PARIS! Paris, people, is in FRANCE! I have nothing in France! Nothing!

I need to go quell my inadequacies.

Brussel Sprout success

Thanks to Ella for this brussel sprout recipe. I tossed some pancetta in for good measure, but even without it, this recipe rocks. Also, you don't have to shred the sprouts. I ran out of time and just quartered them. Also, I didn't use a half pound of shallots, either. I used one and a half shallots.

In other words, I made a different dish based on this dish, which was excellent. I credit the original recipe and Ella for that success.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I have so many things to be thankful for that I won't enumerate them all, but thanks for coming to read my blog!

Nothing to report

But I have posted over at Fungus Everything. It's mushroom season, people.

Housekeeping

This blogging every day thing having been wildly unsuccessful, I will still try to prop it up with some not interesting posts, before giving up almost entirely.

What's in my head? That song that goes, "oooo, your body girl, makes the fellows go, oooo" rinse, repeat. It's driving me insane. I don't even know where it's from.

I need to find a good brussel sprout recipe for Thanksgiving.

T & A Lady has some great questions about the mammogram debate that I'd like to validate. First of all, kudos, all the right questions. I don't have all the answers but the problem with mammograms is something like this: 4 out of 1000 women under the age of 50 who are NOT screened will get breast cancer. 3 out of 1000 women under the age of 50 who ARE tested will be found to have breast cancer. That is statistically insignificant, and may cause to unnecessary further testing and procedures, which have non-negligible costs to the healthcare system. The cervical cancer screening debate (whether to get a PAP smear before age 21) is actually more troublesome, because in addition to the statistical insignificance of early detection, women who undergo an unnecessary procedure to remove benign tumors which may be found in screening (and which would otherwise go away on their own) may result in fertility problems. So now the unnecessary screening has created a health risk. I got all this from a New York Times article I read last week but which I am too lazy at this moment to hunt down.

But the whole debate points up something I find even more irritating and troubling and which I run into more frequently now that I work more closely with health care, and that is a lack of interest in, or understanding of, evidence-based medicine. Doctors have lobbied so hard to be taken seriously over the past 1.5 centuries, that we mistake them for scientists. And while many of them are, the practice of medicine is remarkably driven by intuition, litigation-avoidance and guesswork. Maybe most doctors in the fee-for-service model don't have time or access to peer reviewed data (not paid for by Big Pharma) and statistics that could help shape care. The particulars of this are interesting (to me) but the bigger point I wanted to make is the failure to view health care through this lens is one of many problems with the healthcare reform debate. Just irritating scaremongering.

We are here for Thanksgiving, hopefully doing lots of hiking, eating, running, movie viewing and trying to not get on eachother's nerves. Have a great holiday weekend.