melkor

If you live anywhere near me I'd be happy to give you several fistfulls of fresh Thai basil. Whatever is left on the plants in November will get dried and once spring rolls around again the dried will get tossed. We never really use any of the dried stuff over the winter, but it's nice to know it's around should we decide to make something that needs it.

What did you think of the Vixen?

In all fairness, they are also both twice the price of 1550 Hyde.

I wouldn't put 1550 Hyde in the same company as Danko, CP, or Quince - but then again I wouldn't put Zuni there either. I've had consistantly good meals at 1550 Hyde, but then again you've had good meals at Boulevard

I'd guess it'd cost $50 or so each way by cab - it's likely to be cheaper to just rent a car for 1 night.

From the suggestions already offered I'd go with Chez Panisse, Gary Danko, Zuni, Slanted Door, and Quince. There are a handful of places people seem to really enjoy that I've found either awful or underwhelming - Fleur de Lys, Oliveto, Charles Nob Hill, and Boulevard in my mind range in order from quite bad to just unremarkable. I'd also add 1550 Hyde and Delfina to your list of places to visit while in town.

I had an excellent meal at Craftsteak, strangely Don King was at the next table.

We usually just bring an arm-full of stuff, a sparker, a white, a red, and something sweet for after dinner. Usually we drink our way through whatever we brought, otherwise whatever is left goes back in the cellar when we get home.

And the real plus is that none of us got sick.

Check out this thread - I'm hardly by myself in thinking that eating bad sushi is a bad idea. The fish from the rolls may not have been frozen pre-cut, but I have no other explanation for how the center of the salmon sashimi I tried was frozen and all of the outside edges weren't. Discount Sushi is crap, it being cheap isn't anything close to a redeeming quality - good ingredients cost money.

Alright I'll bite. Where does one get well-prepared fast food? --damn i must really like this thread Where do I get well-prepared food fast? First Sqeeze in Napa, Cha-Am in Vallejo, Pho 84 in Oakland, the Canyon Cafe in American Canyon, I like In and Out Burger - but it would be hard to call their food carefully prepared. Good sushi is all about spectacular ingredients being properly prepared - Yo! has lower quality fish than you can buy at Safeway, and to say anything there is properly prepared is a joke. I'm more than willing to eat on the cheap, but bad sushi is just bad food - cheap or not.

C'mon... You're going to need to share - If they don't have an angry lion roll then it's not as bad as it can get. Check out this thread on a Sushi dive in Northern California. Now, I love "dives" and certain "value" places, probably more than the next guy. "Dive" bars, taco stands, pizza joints, hamburger places, just to name a few. But there are certain words that should NEVER proceed the word Sushi. 1. Dive 2. Value 3. Cheap 4. Budget 5. All you can eat 6. Sale 7. Monday If ever these words proceed "Sushi" you should run as fast and as far as your legs will take you. Should you not heed the above caution; STOP and ask yourself, "Why am I eating this?" 8. Discount

C'mon... You're going to need to share - If they don't have an angry lion roll then it's not as bad as it can get. Check out this thread on a Sushi dive in Northern California.

There are a couple of good dive bars in Napa (green door & green lantern - I don't think they are related) both are good for that authentic dive-bar experience. The endless supply of Taco Trucks would be your best bet for Mexican food. There are a couple of BBQ places in Vallejo, but I've only driven past them so I can't comment on their food. Good Asian food is lacking in the valley, you need to drive to the east bay or San Francisco for that - Oakland has an endless supply of great places to explore. There are a few good greasy spoon diners in the area - one in American Canyon (The Canyon Cafe) which seems to be open for a few hours a day completely at random, if you happen to be there when they are open you can get the authentic breakfast-all-day diner meal, I'd avoid the rest of the menu. There's another diner in Napa that's good on Soscol by 6th street called the Soscol Cafe, you can order pretty much anything there and it's good. The Foothill Cafe is an out-of-the-way place near the outlets off highway 29, it's fairly generic California cuisine, but the food is good, it's not really a dive so much as it's off the beaten path and mostly free of drunken tourists. Zinsvalley on browns valley road is another good spot off the beaten path, no corkage, huge outdoor patio, reasonable prices, friendly people, and it's quiet. There are a huge number of restaurants in the area, most of them cheap - but it's hard to explore all of them when the produce from the garden is taking over the kitchen.

Dean and Deluca started carrying them around January of this year, I've only tried the ones at the shop in St Helena, but all of them are excellent.

Um, maybe it's better now, but Delfina is (check your web) loud, loud, loud. He asked for romantic, but maybe we need a definition. Whispering? Boinking on the table? Delfina isn't quiet but it's not unreasonably loud, and it's hard to find better italian food in SF.

I'd recommend Delfina for Italian in SF.

Let me preface this by saying that I would have likely lived out the rest of my days without eating discount sushi from a converted burger shack had it not been for Carolyn Tillie spending a year trying to convince me to go. Tuesday night a few of us (Carolyn & her better half, Rancho Gordo, MsMelkor and I) got together for dinner at Yo! Sushi in Fairfield. Ordering is done at the cash register with a highlighter on a take-out style paper menu. For help deciding what to eat they have a long row of photos with descriptions for each item on the menu. The menu items range from standard lower-end sashimi, tempura, teriyaki, and udon to bizarre fusion rolls (the caption under the strange photo of the angry lion king reads: California Roll topped with Salmon & house special sauce - baked. Topped with crab meat & tobiko). Eating here is cheap - we ended up spending $10/person for dinner. Some of our food showed up on plates, some showed up on a bridge, some in a boat. By far the best items from the menu are the cooked rolls. While they taste much more like something you'd get at a generic American Chinese restaurant than something from a sushi place, they at least were fairly good. The tuna roll, which for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to order, was in my mind in a three-way tie with the salmon sashimi, and gritty green tea icecream for the worst dish of the night. The tuna roll had a gummy texture and an off taste. The salmon sashimi was apparently pre-cut and then frozen and defrosted for service, as the piece I had was not only stringy, but it was still slightly frozen in the center. The green tea ice cream left the unusual texture of sand in my mouth. The general theme at Yo! Sushi seems to be to mix as many things in each roll as possible to avoid focusing on any one ingredient. There are several Asian restaurants in the same general area serving food better than the cooked dishes at Yo! and the raw dishes aren't worth their meager asking price. Besides, there's an In and Out Burger a block away. If you're going to eat poorly prepared fast food its hard to beat In and Out and it's half the price. On the bright side, the whole experience reminded me of the Al Sharpton's Casa De Sushi Saturday Night Live sketch, no one got sick, and I got the chance to buy more Rancho Gordo beans without having to trek up to the farmers market during tomato season.

I've been to Bistro Don Giovanni a few dozen times, mostly for lunch - and mostly off season. The service when they are packed is less than ideal, but the quality of the food never really sufffers for it. I've had a few questionable experiences there, one of which included ordering 3 out-of-stock bottles from the wine list in a row - but I still much prefer their food and for that matter their service to what Tra Vigne provides. I think overall, the reason people recommend Don Giovanni is because it offers as close to a storybook wine country experience as you can get - eating fish from a wood fired oven on the patio sipping a glass of sparking wine with a nice vineyard view. There certainly are worse ways to have lunch.

You got it.

There's a small bakery on college ave in rockridge that makes a rustic baguette as good or better than acme does but I can't for the life of me remember their name.

We were in Paso last weekend and went to Turley and Dover Canyon, both were excellent.

We're working on putting together another Northern California potluck - the last one was in Napa, the next will be in San Francisco. We will post more details in the appropriate forum when they are available.

A passive system isn't an option for me as my house has no basement. I bought a stand alone cabinet type wine cellar a few years ago and keep it at 58*F, I've also got a 45 bottle wine fridge in the kitchen I keep at 45*F. The larger cabinet has all the reds and the ageworthy whites. The small fridge has whites that won't age and a handfull of other whites/sparklers that are ready to drink.

I'd add the Martini House and Pere Jeanty to your list