Category Lunch

Bourbon and Beef

Friday, October 4, 2013 0 Ballin', Dinner, Lunch, Oakland , , , Permalink 0
Bourbon and Beef

Until I saw all the cute boys in the neighborhood, I was seriously pissed that my mom moved me to Rockridge when I was 14 (in 1975). I was a Berkeley kid. Moving to Oakland was uncool. The kids that hung out on the steps of Chabot School (smoking and drinking) were rivals to the kids who hung out at the 7-11 in Elmwood (smoking and drinking). It was a Jets/Sharks kind of situation. Well, without any real threat of violence. Oddly enough, my parents didn’t take my grievances about the situation seriously. With the perspective of an older person and the ...

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Rosamunde’s Sausage Grill

Thursday, September 26, 2013 0 Broakland, Dinner, Lunch, Oakland , , , , , , Permalink 0
Rosamunde’s Sausage Grill

Contrary to popular belief, Gertrude Stein did not disdain Oakland. Her so often repeated (and misquoted) line “there is no there there” was not an indictment of our city, but an observation made in painful nostalgia that the Oakland of her childhood (and her childhood home) no longer existed. The rural Oakland (pop 35,000) that she left in 1891 had given way to an urban Oakland (pop 300,000) when she returned in 1935. But her actual meaning doesn’t matter. The saying so perfectly represents the dichotomy between the perception of Oakland and the reality. To outsiders Oakland is either a thug ...

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Trueburger

Monday, September 23, 2013 0 Broakland, Dinner, Lunch, Oakland , , , , , Permalink 0
Trueburger

“Have you found my husband’s body yet?” my grandmother practiced saying in Spanish on her third day alone in the desert. She was in a VW bus in Baja. When it broke down my grandfather rode off on the 90cc Honda dirt bike across the sand dunes to look for help. At the time she was practicing her morbid Spanish, he was waiting for auto parts on the laid back schedule of a small Mexican town. The note he’d written and given to a crop duster to drop to her had (predictably) not made it into her hands. They were adventurous people ...

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Grand Lake Kitchen

Tuesday, September 3, 2013 0 Dinner, Lunch, Oakland , , , , Permalink 0
Grand Lake Kitchen

Getting knocked unconscious is (ironically) the most memorable experience I’ve had on Grand avenue. I woke up on the pavement after a car driving next to me honked so loudly that I swerved into a parked car and flew off my bike headlong and headfirst into the street. I was 12. No one stopped. Likely concussed, I rode home anyway. Later that day my mom yelled at me and my dog bit me. That’s the stuff of country songs right there. That was the summer I was taking sailing lessons on Lake Merritt. In those days, in the late summer and fall ...

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Stag’s Lunchette

Saturday, August 10, 2013 0 Lunch, Oakland No tags Permalink 0
Stag’s Lunchette

It’s not easy to make the perfect sandwich. I’ve given this a lot of thought. I love the sandwich. To make and eat a sandwich, you don’t need a kitchen, utensils, or a table to sit at. I can carry one in my purse. There are endless possibilities. My beloved hamburgers (and even tacos) are variations on the theme. I can trace my epicurean evolution through my personal sandwich history. As a 5 year old I was fascinated with a version I had at Mels Drive In (at this location in Berkeley), a sliced up hot dog served on a hamburger bun. It's ...

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Wood Tavern

Friday, June 28, 2013 1 Dinner, Lunch, Oakland , , , Permalink 0
Wood Tavern

In 1980, I had breakfast almost every day with the Moonies. I was a high school dropout with a 10 speed bicycle, a couple of pairs of jeans, and no prospects. I’d roll to College Ave every morning for my croissant and latte at the Aladdin restaurant, which everyone knew was run by Moonies. I resisted invitations from the (unpaid, we later learned) glassy eyed servers to come for dinner and indoctrination. I was only there because they had an espresso machine. Tres hip in those days. My job at the nearby gourmet sandwich shop (Curds and Whey, for the OG ...

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Nido/Pietisserie

Thursday, June 13, 2013 0 Breakfast, Lunch, Oakland No tags Permalink 0
Nido/Pietisserie

The only memory I really have of Jack London Square from back in the day is the time my mom dragged my truant-ass to juvenile court when I was 15 (a valiant effort on her part that didn’t work at all). At that time the court was a block or two from the wasteland that was Jack London Square, then only a place for noobs and tourists. The neighborhood around it was an industrial desert when industrial wasn’t cool and the adjective “urban” meant "stay the hell away." Twenty years later when I worked for the presiding judge of that same court ...

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Mijita

Monday, June 10, 2013 1 Lunch, San Francisco , , , , , Permalink 0
Mijita

When it comes to me and fish tacos it is not the pursuit of happiness but the happiness of the pursuit of the best version that makes my lunch hour fun. I'm always looking, no matter what side of the bay I'm on. In the East Bay, my current favorite is at Tacubaya. But if I'm at work in SF, I'll walk down to the Ferry Building at lunch to Mijita. I feel so lucky to be able to walk to such a beautiful place for lunch (a place that is a vacation destination for people from all over the ...

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