Any Mountain

Any Mountain.. with window paint..

Closed after the 24th of April (having lost their lease) they were in the middle of painting a goodbye on their big picture windows.. We often bought our shoes there.

Townie

Townie is a small plates/ bar that recently opened on University at Grant.. I imagine it would be a great place to meetup with friends or a casual date place.. Beers are crafty locals and they have a wine and cocktail menu.. but I didn't partake..

We were looking for something naughty around the dinner hour Thursday evening & Townie was open.. perfect!


Happy Hour..


We ordered 3 small plates:


Potato Croquettes.. meh. They weren't bad.. but not really commentable.


Garlic Cheese Toast?? Yes please!!

and our absolute favorite:


Pork Belly Banh Mi.. this is like a half of a half of sandwich.. amazingly good, but after 3 bites it's gone. You'll be sad. Order two, (or better yet, eat dinner before coming here.)


with iced tea & cider our bill came to a bit under $40..


We'll definitely be back.. I love the open, airy feel of the place and the maps decorating the walls.. There's other small plates on the menu we'd like to try and we'd definitely order the Pork Belly Banh Mi again..

Sack's Coffee House

Looking for a local local for the days I don't want to hoof it all the way to University or beyond (what? when would I NOT want to do that??) I came across local favorite Sack's Coffee House.. They already make a lot of Daily Cal's best cafe lists.. but I hadn't known that just yet. I just saw a place I've not been to, and they weren't too busy what with it being between semesters..

First thing I noticed were these GIANT Rice Krispie treats:



..and the row of various cookies.. distracting me from ordering my coffee:



I ordered a cafe au lait & a red velvet choco chip cookie:


Cookie was so freaking good! Crispy cookie, but not so hard it crumbled from breaking pieces off.. flavor was so good. Sweet but not too sweet. The coffee? I could taste the coffee notes beneath the steamed milk.. which often isn't the case with a lot of au laits I've had.. Happy Camper. Thank you!

I came back today and tried the wifi.. Wifi was just fine, thanks.. not hyperspeed like a place I frequent now & again on Shattuck.. but fine, and much better than my regular hangout over on U. While I did some online reading, I treated myself to lunch..

Iced coffee & people watching:


Club Sandwich (toasted nice!) came with a pepperoncini and a sad pickle slice (which I did eat..so it wasn't that sad):


As many may already know:

Sack's Coffee House
2701 College Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94705
(510) 644-2233

They are open most every day from what I understand and have lots of other good food.. so I would expect to see more food "porn" from me here at some point now & again. I do expect I'll go back there now & again.. especially for those cookies. As for the crowds, I'm sure they'll be back too.

Yum @ the Berkeley Buslab

My daily walks to and from Berkeley has had me walking by the Buslab on Adeline near the intersection of Stanford and Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. The Buslab always has neat VW vans/buses that are in the process of being serviced, repaired or even converted..

Monday the 2nd I was walking and spotted something new.. the Tillamook Cheese Yum Bus.. 8!






Heading over to the Tillamook website.. I was surprised to find that they had a variety of these VW conversions.. numbered 1 through 7.. but not 8! So this may be just the newest edition to their "Yum" fleet.. and, as it turns out.. they are on tour in SF Bay area.. I'm not advertising for them though, so you'll just have to go to their site to see where in the City they'll be the next few days.. I just wanted to post pix of this neat conversion job.

Poetry Unbound at Art House Gallery

One of the new pleasures of living in our area of Berkeley is visiting the Art House Gallery



Located near Shattuck and Russell (just a short walk to Ashby BART,) it's a peaceful retreat from the world with a great poetry reading series every month. I actually came across the place on my walks to and from downtown Berkeley during the Spring school session and house hunting.

After spotting a poster taped to a light pole advertising an event hosted by Art House Gallery for the Anniversary of People's Park, I finally went to check them out in late April. The Art House Gallery and Cultural Center is an art and photography gallery owned and operated by noted Berkeley photographer Harold Adler.. The space also functions as a small event venue for local writers and performers. Mostly run on donations, it's become a gathering place of community to share ideas and creativity in the South Berkeley area these past five years.

I wasn't sure what the place was.. As most the events occur on weekends, it's closed during the week and daytime hours.Come the weekend, there's open mic events, live music, and poetry! One of the key event series is Poetry Unbound, a three hour evening event featuring spoken word, poetry and sometimes other performance art if the muse strikes someone. These events feature different noted area poets, as well a brief open mic for locals to read, perform.. whatever.. For about 3 minutes, you can have a live audience to test your latest poem(s).

Last night (Sunday) Poetry Unbound celebrated its one year anniversary of monthly readings.. Featuring readings by Kayla Sussell, who writes poetry with music themes (Jazz especially!) She shared that she's been writing poetry for about the last five years, but they are all quite polished and refined. Featured poet Charles Curtis Blackwell, reading his poem "Cousin Alice" was a super treat to the ears, and my personal favorite of his set.

Afterwards "jazz/world" inspired ensemble band COPUS performed a strong set to close out the event. COPUS is a 5-piece performance group of rap, fusion, jazz and world music.. Formed in 1998, this San Francisco-based band has great flow. Led by Royal Kent,(whose lyrical and well-timed word and song stylings seemed to transcend rap or spoken word poetry at times).. Other current members: Monica Williams on flute, Patrick Mahon on bass and electric guitar, Greg McCray on percussion/drums and composer Wendy Loomis rounding it out on piano.

Last night was a special night, but you can still come to Art House and enjoy the next Poetry Unbound.. They're usually the first Sunday of the month.. hosted by writer/poets Richard Loranger and Clive Matson, the open mic signup starts at 5pm sharp, with readings beginning around quarter after/530 pm... Don't quote me on that but instead check out the Art House Gallery Website where Poetry Unbound and the various live events are posted, as well their facebook page.. There's many other events that go on here.. but I've been having such a great time attending these poetry readings.. so many creative and talented people!

Art House Gallery and Cultural Center
2905 Shattuck Ave
Berkeley, CA
FRI-SUN evenings (check their website or facebook page)

City Storage Emeryville

Things keeping me busy the past month or so, so I haven't been out and about, but out of town. Today upon returning from a quick venture out in the world for lunch, I got a closer look at the deconstruction of the former "National Upholstering Company" building at 40th and Adeline. I'm not overly familiar with Emeryville and admit to not knowing how the mostly abandoned warehouse-like structure was originally used. The spouse and I had guessed it was a bakery warehouse, but honestly had no clue. I liked it though, despite the over-grown ivy and occasional homeless camp that sprouted up in warmer weather. I had hoped something more would become of the place, but I perhaps selfishly hoped it would be more housing.. not storage.

Storage is what it will be! It seems City Storage, a company with locations in San Francisco had purchased the location a couple years ago and finally got through all the hoops of conditional use and planning approvals. We first noticed demolition of the interior this last Saturday, though it could have been earlier.. (as mentioned, we've been out of town).





According to the August 2013 progress report from the City of Emeryville Building and Planning Newsletter dated 1 September, 2013:

"City Storage: This proposal involves the conversion of an existing 32,291 square foot brick 
building at the northeast corner of 40th and Adeline Streets to 57,600 square feet of self‐
storage. 

The applicant would retain the existing brick facades and locate all parking and storage 
units inside the building. The proposal includes a single residential unit for the on-site manager and a small retail space at the corner as accessory uses. 

A second story of storage units and extensive landscaping work along Adeline is proposed. 
The Planning Commission approved the project on October 27, 2011, and approved a one‐year extension on January 24, 2013." (page 7)


One might wonder if Emeryville really needs more storage,(there's at least two other companies: Public Storage on Christie and ExtraSpace on Hollis) but as a renter in the E*ville Triangle area, I can tell you storage is hard to come by and expensive. Many of the apartments and lofts being built up in our area are small and costly, and often lack the space to store anything as simple as a bicycle or other off-season gear and equipment. While we're lucky we have a large enough unit now, if we wanted to move, we'd have to find a place to store a good portion of our furniture. I'm not sure where we'd keep our bikes, as leaving them locked up outside in our fine community is asking for trouble and inviting theft. While we're on the 'Edge of E*ville' we're more accurately on the Edge of Oakland when it comes to crime.

Bites off Broadway Pt 2: Dessert!

As mentioned in the earlier post, Bites off Broadway is a community event over in the Temescal area of Oakland every Friday night (from May 11th to October 12th) with the highlight being foodtruck vendors.

When it comes to dessert there may be a few options off the trucks, but if you want some really good treats, you wont' go wrong with Big Wheel Cookie Co.



Big Wheel had cookies as well brownies available for purchase.. but it was the organic iced cream sandwiches that caught our eye:



Lemon Ginger Cookie with Vanilla Iced Cream.

This was so good.. lemon-y ginger cookie matched the sweet, smooth vanilla iced cream and was an excellent finish to all the rich foods we'd had for dinner.


Expresso Chocolate Cookie with Mocha Ice Cream; rich and decadent. You could easily understand how they could run out. If you want to be super naughty this is the way to do it. =)

You can follow them on twitter: @BigWheelCookies or Facebook.. but if you want the yumminess you'll have to attend Bites off Broadway on any given Friday between now and October. =)

Lois the Pie Queen

Saturday had us walking to Berkeley for various errands. We headed up Adeline and decided to stop for breakfast along the way at a local favorite, Lois the Pie Queen.

Lois the Pie Queen is a legend and has been filling the neighborhood up with food and love for over fifty years. If you come here, bring your appetite and you will not be disappointed!



Sean and I made it over here quite a few times before we moved to SoCal, but that was well over eight years ago! Lois the Pie Queen is one of Sean's favorites, so you know we had to get over here at some point.. =)

The restaurant was the same as I remember it. The wall of photos, the dimly-lit dining room with its long diner counter and the uber-friendly service. It looks like a diner but you've entered a local family room really.



Waffles?? with pecans?? Pancakes with fruit?? Chicken with Waffles?? or eggs?? Do I want eggs?? So many things to choose from!! I decided on the Chicken breakfast with eggs and hashbrown potatoes and biscuits:



Sean had the Reggie Jackson Special (pork chops, eggs, potatoes and (not pictured) biscuits too!)


Assuming you had room after this (and if it weren't for the big walk we were planning this day, I'd be hard pressed to say we really had room for anything else) there is the pie!



There are so many pies and cobblers I couldn't get it all in one shot, so you'll just have to head over there and find your own way through that display case!

Sean decided for us with the Lemon Icebox Pie:


I am sucker for what I call "cooler" pie.. cooler/icebox.. it's good stuff! This was definitely GOOD stuff! It's not a place we can eat every weekend, or very often. I can't say chicken is something I should be eating very often.. Lois the Pie Queen is a good treat and great way to fuel up for a busy day.

If you don't think you can eat all that, just go for breakfast or just go for coffee and pie. It's family friendly (though you may have to wait for a free table, or be willing to sit at the counter like we did.

An important thing to note is that they are CASH ONLY. That's the way it used to be y'know, and Lois the Pie Queen is the same as it was these fifty plus years.


Lois the Pie Queen
851 60th St
Oakland, CA 94609
M-F 8am-2pm/Sat 7-3pm/Sun 7-4pm

No website but check out the YELP Reviews for other folks opinions and images.

Lanesplitter

In our Berkeley days (pre-2004) had we wanted pizza we would head to Zachery's in Rockridge or on Solano.. or order delivery from North Beach Pizza. If we were on campus we'd hit up Blondie's once in a while. Here in Emeryville, our local options include Lanesplitter, Arizmendi's, Rotten City (which we've not been to yet!) and more recently, Hot Italian...



Our local Lanesplitter is where Adeline, San Pablo and W MacArthur Blvd meet. Pretty ideal location for a place called 'lanesplitter', right? Turns out that Lanesplitter is a local chain and are named for that fun motorcycle habit of "splitting lanes" when they ride through traffic giving people like me a heart attack as they zoom up on the yellow line, cutting through traffic. Then again, it could be for bowling.. either way.. there's a random pin sitting above near the bar and a dust covered motorcycle perched high above just to give you pause to consider over your drink..


The drinks are posted on the chalkboard behind the bar as well on the menu.. they have a few beers on tap... and a cider.


Two Rivers Pomegranite Cider

As for the food, you can pretty much hit the place at almost any time and there's some sort of special going on.. The first time we came here they had a "Happy Hour" special of $5 off a large pizza. This makes it only $2 more than their medium, so it's worth it.


One of the more popular pizza choices is the "HeartStopper" (bacon, gorgonzola, roasted garlic, spinach)


It's really large! (that's my pint glass being held up to compare)

Other than the size,(which you can get in small, medium and large) not sure why it's called a heart stopper. I imagine like any pizza, if you eat too much, you'll have the same clogged arteries you'd get if you ate too much of anything not healthy. I'm over-thinking it here, though.. so moving on..


Here's a slice.. Notice how the topping just sort of stop about an inch before the crust? (and in some cases sooner) Call me picky but I like my toppings to completely cover the pizza. You're paying for the toppings right? Otherwise it's just a cheese pizza.

The crust itself was nice and chewy though.

We came back last weekend (since one of us were craving pizza and the other was happy to go along with me... er.. ahem..) While the pizza wasn't amazing (honestly I'm not a NY style pizza fan but I DO like pizza a LOT) but the service the first time was pretty good.


Sean ordered the Vegetable Lasagne:

It was pretty large and could easily have been shared if so inclined.

I ordered the 2 slice w/ drink combo:

the combo is a large one-topping pizza. I chose spinach.

As you can see this time around the toppings go all way to the crust.. This pizza was actually better than the other pizza. It seemed crispier, and the edge was just as chewy as the other pizza we'd tried.

I got the 2 slicer so Sean could have one. He in turn, let me have about half of his lasagne. I ate about half of my half and handed it back. It was good, cheesy, robust (is there another way to say 'meaty' when talking about the denseness of vegetables?), and filling. The lasagne had a nice garlic flavor to it as well. I would totally order this alone to split between the two of us.

The lasagne came with a side salad.. I had ordered one as well off the 'sides' menu:


I can't say how much dressing they actually put on the salad, but I hope it's not this much. As it was I used very little of mine and had plenty left for Sean to use so he wouldn't need to touch his dressing. The "breadstick" is that same chewy crust-like bread. Good stuff.

I think we were better off doing the combos than ordering a huge pizza. One doesn't have to stuff yourself full of pizza to leave this place full and satisfied.

I wish I could say the same about the service. It's very hit or miss.. First time (on a Tuesday) was amazing.. Manager or someone greeted us at the door, explained the menu since we'd said we'd never been here before. Our server was was a very efficient lady whose name I wish I could recall. The experience made us happy enough to come back when the mood was upon us.

This last time, goddess server was working but not in our section. Being a Saturday evening, it wasn't too crowded and they seemed to have plenty of help, but our server was distracted or just not giving a crap. It seemed like the server from the other section was picking up the slack, cleaning tables and seating people. She attempted to serve us our food but it was for the couple next to us. The busser ended up serving our food in the end.

One family had to physically get up and get our server's attention to explain they were ready to order. The couple seated next to us had to ask for their check. When he came around with it (finally) he didn't look at us or ask us if we needed anything or were ready for our check.. Sean waved the guy down finally to ask for OUR check and we were able to pay up and head out.

The pizza was definitely good enough to go back. It could be a Friday night thing, or a service anomaly (these things happen). It's one for two however you look at it.. and like Sean said, worse case, we can always order 'to go' next time. =) It's so close though, why not try it again?



Lanesplitter Pizza
3645 San Pablo Ave
Emeryville, CA 94608

Another Friday Night at Rudy's

AKA: the "I can Haz Cheeseburger" Rudy's edition..

Friday night soda run had us thinking about food.. Our neighborhood pizza and bread joint Arizmendi's was closed, and somehow we ended up here.. Rudy's (which was already a favorite, but is fast becoming one of our 'regular' places).

We started it off with the Boneless Buffalo Chicken Tenders:


I came in craving mac & cheese and ended up ordering a Bacon Classic with cheese, served w/ salad instead of fries:


Sean ordered a very similar burger, "The Chupacabra" which was goat cheese and bacon:


I had a Coke Zero and Sean had the "Shaken Jesse" and after we ate all that our original server (whose name I can't recall but runs the counter really great!!) had already gone off shift. Another guy, "M" was working the counter.. He kept hitting me with a new Coke Zero as we decided on dessert..

Sean went along with me and we split a slice of the Coconut Cream Pie:


Not sure why it was served with a dollop of whipped cream (we were asked if we wanted it a la mode which we declined) but who cares: it was good. The graham-y crust was sweet and crumbly and had a cinnamon-y-ness to it as well coconut. I am pretty sure there were bits of coconut in the crust.. If you don't like coconut, you won't like this but it was good! The pie itself wasn't especially coconut-y, but had a creamy, whipped texture to it. I would definitely order it again next time I've gone without a cooler pie for a while.

Soy-riffic Soyrizo Saturday!

Yes, another post about Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe! We haven't been here for breakfast since we moved (I have to use that clarification, as we HAVE eaten here since we decided we wanted to come home).

It was still relatively early, but the place was busy.. about 15minutes and then we got a seat in the back.. We immediately ordered our coffee!

Coffee here.. time to order..

I"ve been cutting back on my meat eating (No really!) and I like to do "Meatless Mondays" and on occasion a few meatless meals in between. One of the things I wished I could have tried during Lent was the "Meatless Soyrizo Scramble" ($9.50) so this was as good a time as any:

Soyrizo scramble: consists of 3 eggs, corn, green onions, soyrizo, and pepper-jack cheese.


served with black beans.. at least a cup's worth.. It may be more than you possibly could need or want after the scramble and toast.

Sean ordered the French Toast Deuces Wild ($10.50):

2 slices of Challah French Toast served with toasted almond slices, 2 eggs any style and choice of a meat (veggie sausage, chicken-apple sausage or in this instance: bacon). They also have a pancake version called "Pancakes Deuces Wild!" of course..

Sean said he chose this in honor of a friend of ours (who was working her final breakfast shift at a Disneyland Hotel restaurant.) When we were regulars at her restaurant, we often ordered a similar item called "Hooked on Twos."


One of the things I really like about Rudy's is how vegetarian-friendly they are. Many of the dishes are veggie-friendly, or can be made veggie or vegan-friendly with tofu substituting as the protein.

The staff is pretty knowledgable, providing very good and often friendly service. The food is always good to really great! I'd be hard-pressed to mention anything that wasn't worth trying at least once.

We definitely don't go here enough to be regulars, but between here & Doyle Street, I'm a very happy & stuffed Meeko. So until next time.. =)