I was a fervent fan of The Linkery until they moved into their new, much larger space and decided to do ass-hat things like charge for ice tea refills (I think the charge for Kara's ice tea alone was $15 on our last visit!) while providing much slower service than at their old location. But, I'm still willing to give Jay the benefit of the doubt and I do plan to go back again in a few months, well after the growing pains have eased and they're more comfortable with their new size.
Unfortunately, I can't say the same for Sea Rocket Bistro, the restaurant that took over The Linkery's old location at the corner of 30th and Upas. I love seafood. I could eat seafood every single day and never get tired of it. So, naturally, I was ecstatic that a new seafood place with the same values that The Linkery espouses was moving in as soon as The Linkery moved up the street. And, it was natural that Kara and I tried the place during the first week it was open. My impression at the time was that the food was quite good, but the service was unbearably slow. I chalked this up to both the restaurant being brand new and this also being the restaurateurs' first restaurant. We left that first meal convinced that the place had real potential and that we would return after it had been open a few months to allow the owners some time to work out the kinks.
Sea Rocket opened their doors in June, had their "Grand Opening" in July and then had two favorable reviews last week in both the San Diego Reader and San Diego City Beat. So, I figured, now was the time to go back and try again. We tried again last night and we have no plans to return ever again.
First, I was disappointed they were out of the seafood paella, which looks quite good. But, I can understand that when you use only local sources and you're running a small restaurant, you will sometimes run out of stuff. After scouring the menu, Kara and I both decided to order small: we both ordered the Green salad, mine with the scallop topper and Kara's with the sardine starter, all served at the same time. I ordered a lemonade and Kara ordered an ice tea and we had a carafe of water to drink as well.
The water and the lemonade were both brought to the table in a timely manner, but the ice tea took much longer to come. (Perhaps they had to brew the tea, I don't know.) Then, the waiting began and we had to wait a very long time for our dinner to show up. I could excuse this if the place was busy or if they were short-staffed, but they were only half-full and looked to have 4 servers for 6 tables. I mean, seriously, how long does it take to make a salad, saute scallops on the rare side and grill up some sardines? The longest time might have been to prepare the sardines... but that could not have been the case (more in a second on this). I think we waited at least 30 minutes for the food, during which time I almost finished my lemonade and we drank most of the water.
The food did come, finally, and while the salad and the scallops were delicious, something seemed wrong about the salad. I quickly remembered how the salad was lovingly described as containing fresh figs from a North Park garden and, since I love figs, I was really looking forward to the salad. Hell, I decided to order the salad based on the figs. But, there were no figs in this salad and, instead, the salad had dried cherries, the kind you might buy in a sealed plastic bag from Ralphs. I summoned our server and asked about the figs and she said something like, "oh, they must have forgotten to put the figs in the salad, I'll go check in the kitchen". Seriously, WTF? How do you forget the main ingredient and worse, substitute with a vastly inferior product? The server did return shortly with a small bowl with a sliced whole fig, which was as delicious as I expected it to be, but it just seemed an incredibly careless mistake to make. Putting that aside for a moment, let me return to the sardines.
Kara is not the fish lover that I am. She likes fish, though and she wanted to be adventurous, so she selected the sardines. Now, I had read raving reviews of the sardines and I expected that they would be at least as great as the grilled green bean in ginger soy sauce (yum!) at The Linkery. I also understood that they were whole sardines on a skewer, but neither Kara nor I had much experience with whole fish. No big deal, I stopped one of the employees that was walking nearby (I think it was one of the owners) for some help. I explained that this was the first time we had ordered the sardines and we asked her the best way to "eat" the sardines. I can't believe no one has ever asked this question (hell, I think I read in one of the reviews last week that the reviewer asked the same question), and she seemed mostly bothered by the question, although she did offer some help, suggesting that we slip a knife or fork down the side to remove the fillet from the bones. Not the best attitude, but it was an informative answer and Kara and I had one each of the three sardines. I liked it well enough, Kara less so, but neither of us could understand what any of the raves were about. It was a messy proposition with little flavor and little meat once you took off the skin and bones. I liked it more than Kara, so she offered the third sardine to me. I took it, ate a little bit of the meat and immediately sensed that I had eaten the "bad" part of the fish. It tasted soft and bitter, so I slid the whole thing open and quickly realized that half the fish was still bloody and uncooked!
I had gotten the impression that the place had two signature dishes, one was the sea urchin (which I don't much care for) and the other was the sardines. So, how the frak do you mess up your signature dish by not cooking it, especially after it took half an hour to get it to the table in the first place? Once I realized that the fish was uncooked, I also realized that there was a small puddle of fish blood on the plate. We stopped our server, pointed out the problem and they offered to either replace the dish or take it off the bill. Since Kara had lost her appetite at the sight of the uncooked fish and fish blood, I asked that they remove it from the bill.
I should also mention that the sardine dish is described as being "on a bed of greens and lima bean salad". I'm sorry, but a single 1 1/2"-diameter piece of lettuce does not a bed of greens make.
By now, we were both discouraged and ready to leave. We had also been out of water for about 10 minutes and, even though we had stopped servers three times for problems with our meals, none of them had noticed that our water was empty and we were too distracted to notice until we were already thirsty and waiting for the check. I could say that we skipped dessert (which we did) and left quickly, except nothing quick happens here. The various servers passed the bill and my credit card sitting on my table a few times before noticing it was there and picking it up.
As I said at the beginning of this review, we will not be returning to Sea Rocket Bistro and I can't recommend it to anyone. Some of the food (the salad ingredients and the scallops) might have been really good, but the food preparation and wait staff are both severely lacking and have only gotten worse since they opened, not better.
Showing posts with label The Linkery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Linkery. Show all posts
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Saturday, February 23, 2008
We can't get enough of Zia
Kara introduced me to Zia and Zia's Afghan Cafe when we first started going out and it was one of our favorite places to dine. And, for a little while, Zia had a booth at the Hillcrest farmer's market where he sold his delicious chicken in pita bread sandwiches that I could never pass up. So, it was very sad for both of us when Zia stopped showing up at the market and closed his restaurant. We later learned that Zia had gone back to his beloved Afghanistan after the Taliban government was overthrown. We were happy for Zia, but sad for our culinary loss.
We later discovered that his son, Khaled, had opened his own restaurant in the Rolando area (East of SDSU for the neighborhood-names challenged) after Zia's place closed. I think the name of the place is Café Zia, although the menu says simply, "Zia wraps". The food there is wonderful and we both highly recommend it, but Rolando is out of the way, so the only time we go there is when we see a play at Cygnet across the street.
This past September, we were at the Adams Avenue Street Fair when we noticed a new place named Zia Gourmet Pizza was opening soon. We checked it out and sure enough, Khaled was opening another "Zia", this time closer to home and this time, as a pizza place. We spoke to him briefly and he indicated that he would be keeping both his wraps restaurant and this new place open, not closing one in favor of the other. We were jazzed at the prospect of having two Zia's to eat at and looked forward to its opening.
We were on Adams Avenue about a month ago, thinking that we would check out the new pizza place, but while it had opened, it had odd hours (5PM to 10PM) and was not yet open for the day. We were too early, so we ate elsewhere that night.
Kara had been kind enough to cook dinners for us every night this past week, but she was tired of cooking and wanted to go out last night. The original plan was to go to our regular place, The Linkery, but I checked the menu for the night, wasn't that impressed with the current selections, and was itching for a change. I suggested Alexander's, where we had an incredibly delicious but very noisy meal a little while ago, but Kara wasn't ready to go back to such a busy place on a Friday night. I then remembered Zia's new place, suggested it and Kara was enthusiastic about the idea.
So it was that we tried the newest Zia incarnation last night. For a Friday night, the place was almost dead with only a party of three at one table. A quick glance at that table revealed the man, Zia, himself was back in the states and eating in his son's restaurant, which was very cool. Khaled was behind the counter and greeted us warmly (he remembered us from our visits to his wraps place). A very good start.
The place is pretty bare bones. There's no signage inside and no menu board. The entire right-side of the front of the restaurant is crammed with couches and furniture (we didn't know what to make of that) with customer booths and tables to the left. There is a counter that separates the diners and furniture pile from the kitchen in the back with no signage or menu board of any kind. I didn't count, but the counter had about eight different pizza pie plates each with three to five slices each of different flavors of pizza with a paper menu stuck under the front-edge of the plate with the name of the pizza circled. The hostess/waitress standing behind the counter stood ready to take our order and we quickly understood that you could pick slices from the counter or order a custom pie. I like variety, so we checked out our options, asked some questions and decided upon four slices total for the both of us.
All pizzas come on a crust described as "mouth-watering... prepared with healthy whole wheat and herbs and spices". Here are the slices we chose with the descriptions straight from their menu:
As a meal, the food was healthy, adventuresome and excellent, well within the tradition of "Zia's". As a pizza... well, I can't really compare these pizzas to any other pizzas because the taste is so different. If I'm in the mood for pizza by the slice, I'll probably still go with my favorite place, Pizzeria Luigi, where the slices are both delicious and cheap ($5.50 for 2 slices and drink), but Zia's pizzas I don't think are meant to compete with your local pizza joint or any other pizza place for that matter. I'll go to Zia Gourmet Cafe again when I'm in the mood for something different, local, tasty and quick — something Zia. As for recommending the place, absolutely we'd recommend it, not as a pizza place, but as a good place to eat and very vegetarian friendly.
My only complaint, if you can even call it a complaint, is that I like the wraps place better than the pizza place. But then again, I haven't tried all the different pizza options and I might find a slice of Zia Gourmet Pizza that is as good as any of the incredibly delicious wraps at Café Zia. The best possible thing that could happen would be for Khaled to open a third restaurant with both the wraps and the pizza and perhaps other options here in South Park; with The Linkery moving this spring and with the renovations of the warehouses on 3oth Street between Ivy and Juniper or the reconstruction of the buildings on the corner of 30th and Beech, there are plenty of places for new restaurants to try.
Oh, and one last thing, we didn't want to disturb Zia while he was eating, but we did stop and say hello when we were ready to leave. He was very happy to see both of us (especially Kara) and he told us how he owns some land in Afghanistan now and is looking forward to going back again in March to check on it. Zia is such a nice guy and although we miss his cooking, we're both very happy for him and he seems very happy as well.
Zia Gourmet Pizza is located at 3311 Adams Ave, Suite A, (next to the yoga place run by the same cult that runs Jyoti Bihanga, Kara's favorite restaurant) in Normal Heights. It is open 5PM to 10PM, Tuesday through Sunday, and closed on Monday.
We later discovered that his son, Khaled, had opened his own restaurant in the Rolando area (East of SDSU for the neighborhood-names challenged) after Zia's place closed. I think the name of the place is Café Zia, although the menu says simply, "Zia wraps". The food there is wonderful and we both highly recommend it, but Rolando is out of the way, so the only time we go there is when we see a play at Cygnet across the street.
This past September, we were at the Adams Avenue Street Fair when we noticed a new place named Zia Gourmet Pizza was opening soon. We checked it out and sure enough, Khaled was opening another "Zia", this time closer to home and this time, as a pizza place. We spoke to him briefly and he indicated that he would be keeping both his wraps restaurant and this new place open, not closing one in favor of the other. We were jazzed at the prospect of having two Zia's to eat at and looked forward to its opening.
We were on Adams Avenue about a month ago, thinking that we would check out the new pizza place, but while it had opened, it had odd hours (5PM to 10PM) and was not yet open for the day. We were too early, so we ate elsewhere that night.
Kara had been kind enough to cook dinners for us every night this past week, but she was tired of cooking and wanted to go out last night. The original plan was to go to our regular place, The Linkery, but I checked the menu for the night, wasn't that impressed with the current selections, and was itching for a change. I suggested Alexander's, where we had an incredibly delicious but very noisy meal a little while ago, but Kara wasn't ready to go back to such a busy place on a Friday night. I then remembered Zia's new place, suggested it and Kara was enthusiastic about the idea.
So it was that we tried the newest Zia incarnation last night. For a Friday night, the place was almost dead with only a party of three at one table. A quick glance at that table revealed the man, Zia, himself was back in the states and eating in his son's restaurant, which was very cool. Khaled was behind the counter and greeted us warmly (he remembered us from our visits to his wraps place). A very good start.
The place is pretty bare bones. There's no signage inside and no menu board. The entire right-side of the front of the restaurant is crammed with couches and furniture (we didn't know what to make of that) with customer booths and tables to the left. There is a counter that separates the diners and furniture pile from the kitchen in the back with no signage or menu board of any kind. I didn't count, but the counter had about eight different pizza pie plates each with three to five slices each of different flavors of pizza with a paper menu stuck under the front-edge of the plate with the name of the pizza circled. The hostess/waitress standing behind the counter stood ready to take our order and we quickly understood that you could pick slices from the counter or order a custom pie. I like variety, so we checked out our options, asked some questions and decided upon four slices total for the both of us.
All pizzas come on a crust described as "mouth-watering... prepared with healthy whole wheat and herbs and spices". Here are the slices we chose with the descriptions straight from their menu:
- French: "Our savory wild Atlantic salmon (marinated in a mouth watering combination of herbs and spices) combined with tomatoes, capers, lean cream cheese, fresh basil and topped with mozzarella." $3.45/slice
- The New Yorker: "Our tasty and lean turkey pastrami combined with green onions, pepperoncini, light cream cheese and fresh basil and topped with mozzarella." $2.95/slice
- Veggie: "A tasteful combination of artichoke hearts, goat feta, kalamata olives, light cream cheese and topped with mozzarella." $2.95/slice
- Roast Chicken: "Our succulent chicken (marinated in a savory lemon-garlic sauce) combined with fresh garlic, green onion, mushroom, capers, ricotta cheese and topped with mozzarella. $3.45/slice
As a meal, the food was healthy, adventuresome and excellent, well within the tradition of "Zia's". As a pizza... well, I can't really compare these pizzas to any other pizzas because the taste is so different. If I'm in the mood for pizza by the slice, I'll probably still go with my favorite place, Pizzeria Luigi, where the slices are both delicious and cheap ($5.50 for 2 slices and drink), but Zia's pizzas I don't think are meant to compete with your local pizza joint or any other pizza place for that matter. I'll go to Zia Gourmet Cafe again when I'm in the mood for something different, local, tasty and quick — something Zia. As for recommending the place, absolutely we'd recommend it, not as a pizza place, but as a good place to eat and very vegetarian friendly.
My only complaint, if you can even call it a complaint, is that I like the wraps place better than the pizza place. But then again, I haven't tried all the different pizza options and I might find a slice of Zia Gourmet Pizza that is as good as any of the incredibly delicious wraps at Café Zia. The best possible thing that could happen would be for Khaled to open a third restaurant with both the wraps and the pizza and perhaps other options here in South Park; with The Linkery moving this spring and with the renovations of the warehouses on 3oth Street between Ivy and Juniper or the reconstruction of the buildings on the corner of 30th and Beech, there are plenty of places for new restaurants to try.
Oh, and one last thing, we didn't want to disturb Zia while he was eating, but we did stop and say hello when we were ready to leave. He was very happy to see both of us (especially Kara) and he told us how he owns some land in Afghanistan now and is looking forward to going back again in March to check on it. Zia is such a nice guy and although we miss his cooking, we're both very happy for him and he seems very happy as well.
Zia Gourmet Pizza is located at 3311 Adams Ave, Suite A, (next to the yoga place run by the same cult that runs Jyoti Bihanga, Kara's favorite restaurant) in Normal Heights. It is open 5PM to 10PM, Tuesday through Sunday, and closed on Monday.
Friday, March 24, 2006
Wimps, Sausages, and TV
I really wish the Democrats would get their act together and actually do something. Bush's ratings are at an all-time low, the American public has overwhelmingly turned against the war in Iraq and is convinced that it's a "bad thing", the majority of Americans know that Bush broke the law with his domestic wiretapping program, and yet, the Democrats are afraid to support a censure of George. Come on! It's a no-brainer... just like W himself.
No, the Democrats are too easily intimidated by words. Words from Republicans that claim that if you're not for the administration, you might as well be giving handjobs to the terrorists. I've always been disgusted by the Republican leadership, but the Democrats have shown that they also serve the Republican leadership with their inactions.
Off my soapbox, let me check in with my local world. Kara and I just had a wonderful dinner at The Linkery, followed by coffee at Rebecca's Coffee House. We dined and sipped with our friends and former-closer neighbors Tony and Edith. The Linkery is a local restaurant that specializes in homemade sausages and serves delicious food with an extensive and varied menu. This is our third time dining there and the food has been excellent each time. Tonight, I had seafood sausage tacos (made with mahi mahi, scallops, and shrimp) and the "sun salad" and we all shared the picnic plate appetizer with a chicken tarragon sausage. They have a menu on their web site as well as a blog that read regularly. Rebecca's is our local coffee house with the best scones in the world (I don't think they have a web site, so I can't link to it).
Finally, I want to mention that we've finally given up on Netflix due to their discriminatory DVD distribution process (the more DVDs you rent per month, the slower they ship new DVDs to you). Also in the last month or so, we've upgraded our TV antenna to DirecTV (with a DVR) and opened a membership in Citizen Video, a brand-spanking new DVD rental place in our neighborhood that specializes in foreign and independent movies. Thanks to the DVR, Kara has been able to watch all those Law & Order (all the different flavors of L&O, of course!) episodes that she never got to see before and I get to catch up on Daria.
No, the Democrats are too easily intimidated by words. Words from Republicans that claim that if you're not for the administration, you might as well be giving handjobs to the terrorists. I've always been disgusted by the Republican leadership, but the Democrats have shown that they also serve the Republican leadership with their inactions.
Off my soapbox, let me check in with my local world. Kara and I just had a wonderful dinner at The Linkery, followed by coffee at Rebecca's Coffee House. We dined and sipped with our friends and former-closer neighbors Tony and Edith. The Linkery is a local restaurant that specializes in homemade sausages and serves delicious food with an extensive and varied menu. This is our third time dining there and the food has been excellent each time. Tonight, I had seafood sausage tacos (made with mahi mahi, scallops, and shrimp) and the "sun salad" and we all shared the picnic plate appetizer with a chicken tarragon sausage. They have a menu on their web site as well as a blog that read regularly. Rebecca's is our local coffee house with the best scones in the world (I don't think they have a web site, so I can't link to it).
Finally, I want to mention that we've finally given up on Netflix due to their discriminatory DVD distribution process (the more DVDs you rent per month, the slower they ship new DVDs to you). Also in the last month or so, we've upgraded our TV antenna to DirecTV (with a DVR) and opened a membership in Citizen Video, a brand-spanking new DVD rental place in our neighborhood that specializes in foreign and independent movies. Thanks to the DVR, Kara has been able to watch all those Law & Order (all the different flavors of L&O, of course!) episodes that she never got to see before and I get to catch up on Daria.
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