Dinner With Vida
Mel's Drive In
There are so many restaurants in the Sunset that as I drive to work in the morning I am almost overwhelmed with the possibilities on Geary Street alone. But when it comes down to it I am almost always too lazy to drive that far and try and find parking after I pick Vida up from school. But the other afternoon as I was driving to the chiropractor down Geary Street I passed by Mel’s Drive In. It’s a local chain and although chain restaurants break the Dinner With Vida charter I am willing to make an exception for locally owned restaurants with more than one location. They had a large banner hanging from the restaurant (which also happened to be surrounded by ample parking) that advertised “Kids Eat Free Monday Through Thursday Limited Menu”. Being unusually exhausted I was inspired to go out to eat before the weekend and take advantage of this opportunity.
The other night when we were lying in bed Vida quietly says “we don’t have hotdogs anymore”. I envisioned her on Dr. Phil in a few years describing how her once perfect childhood was ruined by having hot dogs flow freely and then cruelly and arbitrarily withdrawn. When I picked her up from school I told her we were going out for hotdogs. I assumed that the “limited menu” surely included hotdogs and that she was going to happily find her way back to the hotdog grail. Vida was excited to go out to dinner but as we were driving she announced that she didn’t want a hotdog. She decided that she wanted hamburger. That was cool with me. I was definitely planning on having a hamburger myself.
We walked through Mel’s shiny chrome doors and waited pointlessly by the sign saying “Please Wait to Be Seated” until Vida was about to pull my arm off. I finally asked the cashier if we could sit at the counter and Vida made a beeline for the green swivel chairs. All around us were families, many of them with elderly relatives in wheelchairs, probably drawn to Mel’s by the convenient parking and the “home style” meals. I was set to order a hamburger until I became slightly flustered by the huge menu and people around me ordering broiled chicken and Salisbury steak. I thought maybe I was missing an opportunity to eat something other than a hamburger. But finally I decided on the Sunset Burger with avocado, cheese and bacon and served on grilled sourdough bread. I took a look at the children’s menu and panicked as I noted that there was no hot dog available. What kind of children’s menu doesn’t offer a hot dog? I was fairly certain that Vida was going to change her mind and want a (six dollar) hot dog after all. Vida wasn’t really interested in dinner. She was busily coloring the children’s menu and pushing the buttons on the tabletop jukebox when I casually confirmed with her that a hamburger was still what she wanted. She said she “didn’t want dinner.” I let her know that I was going to order a hamburger for her and she mumbled “and French fries, and soda” without looking up from her drawing.
When our food arrived I was stunned to see that the children’s hamburger was the size of a Whimpy Burger—a thin patty, a glob of melted American cheese and a the tiniest bun I’ve ever seen. Vida didn’t care but any child over four ordering off of this menu certainly would. My burger was delicious overall but I’ve become so accustomed to Niman Ranch meat at Burger Joint that anything else is inherently second rate. The grilled bread dripping in whatever conglomeration of fats they grill it with was a little much but I ate it so fast that the waitress did a double take. If Vida’s burger had been anything but garbage I would have eaten that too.
When we received our bill I was stunned to see that I had been charged 6.95 for Vida’s meal and soda. Did we do something wrong? I was instantly transported to Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory where violating some rule buried in the fine print could strip you from your prize. Our Russian waitress with the thin, well-muscled arms paused and apologetically explained that the discount would be taken at the register. (As we waited for the cashier a woman holding a clear plastic to-go container of ham and pancakes was paying for her meal. Obviously someone who took the 24-hour breakfast menu seriously.) After Vida’s not so happy meal was removed from the bill I breathed a sigh of relief. We walked to our car in the parking lot thrilled with the convenience suburban families eating at Ihop take for granted. I was certain that Vida would want me to make her some scrambled eggs as soon as we got home but otherwise, my twelve dollars was well spent.
Restaurant Total: 114
You See Sushi
When I picked Vida up from school yesterday I was leaning toward going out for more pupusas. I asked her if she wanted guacamole or sushi and inevitably she said sushi. Since sushi is one of the fastest ways to break the bank we headed toward what I thought would be a relatively cheap sushi restaurant, You See Sushi on Parnassus below UCSF. Until recently it was an outpost of We Be Sushi another inexpensive sushi joint.
As we walked in the door, a woman cashiering behind a counter greeted us half-heartedly. Another woman wearing a gray, Tweetie Bird t-shirt that said “Anything!” came to seat us. Apparently that didn’t extend to actually bringing us to a table since she pointed to the corner and handed me a couple of menus as we walked down a small set of stairs. We sat down and Vida, as usual, loudly exclaimed, “they aren’t bringing us our food!”. Once again I patiently tried to explain the ordering process. A similar breakdown usually happens when we finish eating as well. Vida often tries to tell me that “they don’t have bills here” and that we should just leave.
Luckily a small bowl with carrot sticks appeared. Vida was busily dipping them in soy sauce when the server handed her a pair of training chopsticks. They were not only an ingenious combination of folded up paper and a rubber band, they were also a big hit as she happily practiced using them on the carrots. The meal itself didn’t start out that great. The edamame tasted like they were cooked in a vat of salt and were way over cooked. They were also very hot which pretty much eliminated their use as a diversion tactic. The miso soup was extremely muddy with lots of cabbage and nothing else. Things improved when we received our sushi. A roll with tempura red snapper and spicy mayonnaise was delicious and Vida plunged into the teriyaki salmon roll without blinking. The inari seemed stale but the spinach roll was full of nicely cooked spinach.
A family with a baby came in and Vida casually mentioned she wanted a baby like that, not a pretend baby”. She has been obsessed with big brothers and sisters lately. She has also entered the stage of distinguishing in no uncertain terms the suitability of boys and girls in various realms. She has recently insisted that she only wants to watch “girl movies” and that “boys aren’t allowed” in almost any activity she can think up.
After a fairly relaxing dinner we wandered across the street to the Golden Bear Liquor and Deli. A toothless elderly woman in a head-scarf greeted us enthusiastically from her seat at a table with “nice to see you”. I was tempted to look behind me and see who else had come in but she was smiling at us and nodding so I just smiled back and went to the coolers for some half and half. As Vida picked out a small package of candy necklaces I could hear her greet the next customers with “nice to see you, thank you for coming in” as they walked in the door. Their confusion was audible.
Vida and I approached the register and the woman put the half and half in a bright yellow bag from a World’s Gym in Burlingame and handed Vida a miniature candy cane. We paid and walked back to the car. Although the candy cane was stale (or maybe because it was stale) our surreal experience at the corner store rounded out our dining experience. I drove home happily considering the satisfaction in random encounters with eccentricity.
Restaurant Total: 113
Osaka Sushi Mifune Thailand Restaurant
The rainy weather and early darkness have made it more difficult recently to find the inspiration to go out to eat. Since we have been home on vacation this week it has been even more tempting just to stay home. As a compromise I was thinking that it would be good to explore some more restaurants in the Castro since it is usually difficult to find any reason to do so. I don’t know of a worse neighborhood for restaurants. Its not that there are few to choose from but that they are so uniformly mediocre. It’s like living in a tourist trap. We’ve been compelled to go down and have the nondescript pizza and chilled antipasto at Firewood too often. I took Vida to Thailand Restaurant when she was very little and although I found the food to be less than sensational the staff fell in love with Vida and conveniently carried her around the restaurant during the most of the meal. I was so anxious to eat in peace they could have been dangling her over the soup pot for all I knew. What is remarkable about some of the restaurants is the fact that after more than 15 years in the neighborhood I have hardly even been tempted to visit them. I finally went to China Court on 19th and Castro when Vida was a toddler mostly because it was a free meal. In my job as a mystery shopper I have eaten probably a half dozen times at Fuzios (owned by Chevy’s) and have had decent meals but the ambiance is slick and soulless particularly when you know that the servers and the kitchen workers are being rated on getting your meal out to you in 12 minutes or less. So far the finest dining I have experienced in the Castro has been at Ma Tante Sumi, a high quality French and Japanese fusion restaurant with lots of class.
Once again in the mood for sushi I decided that Vida and I would walk down to Osaka Sushi on Castro. Vida wanted to sit at the sushi bar and as we pulled out a chair it was so dingy and dirty I started to get freaked out--it’s a mystery to me how restaurants can spend so much time and energy decorating and then keep something as obvious as stained upholstery around. I had been thinking lately that there was little point in going to so many sushi restaurants and ordering basically the same things so I resolved to find at least one distinctive thing to order. The special rolls were mostly way out of my price range but they had a gyoza roll with cucumber and tempura roll that looked good. Vida hadn’t had a nap so I thought that edamame might keep her from roaring at the people behind us. Although there are seats around the sushi bar you can’t order from the sushi chef but wait for the waitress to take your order. This made the place seem a bit unfriendly. The rap and dance music was oh, so, Castro.
Luckily our edamame came quickly and Vida stopped tearing the chopstick wrapper into tiny pieces and throwing them on the floor. Eating edamame at so many restaurants I get so used to getting clammy soybeans that when they come fresh and warm the restaurant automatically gets raised a notch in my estimation. At Osaka Sushi they were also freshly sprinkled with salt. Probably the best edamame are at Mifune, a great noodle place in Japan Center. They come warm and sprinkled with kosher salt that doesn’t melt as quickly or compel you to order more beverages. The tempura roll was great even though I had to pick out my least favorite vegetable, asparagus. It was stuffed with Japanese sweet potato and kabocha squash, shrimp and a green bean. I felt guilty and unadventurous eating the gyoza roll but I enjoyed it thoroughly. There must be a stereotype of wimpy Westerners eating every fried roll they can find instead of braving the raw fish. Vida ate her avocado roll and I even got her to try the other rolls.
The rolls that I saw coming out from the sushi bar looked impressive. The great selection of meals being prepared by the kitchen was also notable. It seemed like this really was, amazingly enough, a pretty decent restaurant in the Castro. If it had friendlier service and didn’t fry my brain with club music I might have been tempted to try it again.
Restaurant Total: 106
El Zocalo
When guests are in town it is always tempting to take them to places that have been a proven success. I’m usually only interested in the risk involved with restaurants that are an unknown quantity when I don’t have to stare at disappointed people. My Mom and Dad were in town and since going out to eat as family isn’t the most stress free proposition we ate a lot of fantastic meals at home that were guaranteed to please everyone. My mom is usually game for anything but when my dad is in town I feel much more nervous about making sure he is happy since the easiest way to ruin a meal is to take him somewhere he doesn’t want to be. It was dangerous enough to take him to Ebisu since he doesn’t eat sushi and doesn’t sympathize with those who do. We have to be willing to endure subtle taunts without letting it annoy us.
But the experience of “Dinner With Vida” shouldn’t always be reserved for the two of us—mostly because I don’t get to experience restaurants as fully when restricted to ordering soda and French fries. My mother had never had pupusas and since it is rare to find something that she hasn’t eaten before I wanted her to experience them. H suggested El Zocalo on Mission near Valencia. The place was packed. I kind of wished it had been just Vida and I so we could sit at the counter and watch the kitchen. H amused Vida in a very generous fashion while we waited endlessly for our meals. Vida is currently “Bat Girl” which consists of roaring loudly and looking as mean as possible. It looks worse than it is. They were also “out of guacamole” so it required more than the usual amount of fortitude and trips to the jukebox to keep her from going stir crazy. My parents were beginning to be convinced that it was because we were “gringos” that we weren’t being served promptly. I was beginning to feel like a teenager annoyed with her parents and acting accordingly. We could hear the slapping of pupusas being freshly made but conspiracy seemed more likely the longer it took.
We were served eventually but not until at least 40 minutes after our order had been taken. I ordered a chicken soup for Vida knowing that she wouldn’t be interested in the pupusas. This caused a major uproar as she loudly rejected the very concept of soup. It was really delicious—I doused the chunks of carrot, rice and chicken with a generous squeeze of lemon and it could have come directly out of my grandma Bona’s kitchen. I fed Vida most of the chicken from the bowl along with a few scoops of rice and we were somewhat able to enjoy our meal. The cheese pupusa was excellent but the chicken pupusa with its ground up meat filling was less than appetizing. Overall I was impressed with the flavor of the food but definitely not with the service.
Restaurant Total: 104
Amasia Hide's Sushi Bar in San Francisco
Holiday celebrations have more than compensated for the lack of dining experiences with Vida this month. A few weeks ago though we managed to get to Amasia Hide’s Sushi Bar in San Francisco, on Noe and 14th. It’s in the same location as another sushi bar (that I don’t think I ever knew the name of) that closed a couple of years ago. The old sushi bar was a favorite destination of my friend H.P. who until moving to San Francisco never knew the joys of “sush” as she fondly named it. I had been there a couple of times over the years before and unfortunately it was never one of my favorite places to go. It had an extreme amount of character with ragged hand printed signs announcing the specials and an overly friendly owner. It was the kind of place where things would come from the kitchen and appear to be gratis but then the unintelligible bill would reflect otherwise. The place was so cluttered with signs and decorations that it couldn’t possibly be adequately cleaned. The atmosphere said “cheap sushi” but I always found that I spent an extraordinary amount of money without getting much food.
The owners of Amasia couldn’t project a more different atmosphere. The place is immaculate. Since Vida and I walk by the restaurant often on our way to Duboce Park I have often seen the owner carefully adjusting and cleaning the pristinely lacquered aesthetic. The restaurant always looked like it would be too expensive for just a casual night out so it wasn’t on the top of my list until I saw that it had an Early Bird Special before 6 p.m. All of a sudden I realized that this could be a good way to get to more expensive restaurants and I began to notice other Early Bird Specials at other restaurants that I had more or less rejected because of expense.
Vida and I were actually on our way to another sushi restaurant that had also changed owners but it was closed and out of desperation I forced Vida to walk a few blocks to Amasia. It wasn’t a very good start to the evening but since injuring my back carrying Vida has been almost out of the question. Like many San Francisco restaurants during the winter Amasia was freezing. We kept our coats on and I ordered tea. Vida was amused by colorful origami animals displayed on the ledge above our table and eventually by an orange soda. The server came over with the specials board and explained them to us including sake specials. He then left the board propped up on a chair for me to stare at as I contemplated our order. It was a clever technique since I suddenly was obsessed with ordering premium sake just by having the sign in front of me. I couldn’t pass up ten-dollar sake being offered for five and I couldn’t imagine what could be worth ten dollars in the first place (on my budget of course).
I have never ordered cold sake in a bowl before so I was completely surprised by the experience. The server set down the black lacquered dish and poured the sake from a large bottle purposefully spilling over the sides onto the dish. I felt confident that this was symbolic generosity but I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the sake that was sitting on the plate. Do I pour it back into the dish? I wasn’t about to let it go to waste so that’s what I did but I was afraid of being gauche about the entire experience.
We didn’t order anything else extraordinary—they had a great special on Rock and Roll and as usual all Vida ate was a single avocado roll. She also ate all of the pickled ginger on the plate and was asking for more. I couldn’t believe she had eaten all of it until I saw what she was doing with it in her mouth. She was making a hilarious face kind of mouthing the ginger and then swallowing. I became concerned that she wasn’t chewing it and so I asked her to make sure she chewed well before swallowing and she replied, “too spicy”. I finally understood that her incredible consumption of pickled ginger had nothing to do with really eating it but swallowing it whole. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t figured it out before but it didn’t seem to be doing her any harm. But now that I know I can’t stop watching her as she eats it.
At the end of the meal we were brought a small origami box with animal crackers in it. Vida was completely uninterested in what I thought was one of the cutest things I have ever seen. When I tried to get her to eat a cookie she said, “you eat them”. So I did.
Restaurant Total: 103
