As those of us in the *rest* of the nation wait around for New York Times Critic Frank Bruni to render judgment upon our local restaurants, one astute Chowhound has beat him to the punch with regards to Coi.

The only San Francisco restaurant to make Bruni's list of notable cuisine outside New York, Coi seems to have re-emerged, at least temporarily as an "it" restaurant, despite the new crop that has sprung up since it opened last year.

A thread this morning on Chowhound gives a report of one diner's experience, in significantly more eloquent and detailed language than the usual message board rant. If you're curious about this local gem, you should read it.

Coi Report [Chowhound]
Coast to Coast, Restaurants That Count
Coi [MenuPages]
Coi [Official Site]

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

As many of you may know, we usually try to tie together our favorite good, bad and ugly user reviews with some type of loose theme. Unfortunately for our organizational attempts, there are many reviews that just cannot be categorized. Hence, this week's collection of those non-sequitur gems.

First off, you know how much we love malapropisms...

No "place to be scene," but great value

The food was something you could have gotten from a diner and the waitress was something you could have picked up in a diner parking lot.

Continue reading "The Week In (User) Reviews: A Motley Menagerie Of HodgePodge" »

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

A tip to restaurateurs everywhere: you probably don't want to involve yourself in religious controversy of any kind, from putting Hindu deities in suspect places ...

Most disturbing of all we discovered photos of Hindu deities in restrooms.

I used to love this place, but the quality of food has drastically decreased. My sandwich was flavorless and burned. The soup which used to be one of my favorites tasted very watered down. To top top it all off , I was given Scientology's Narc-o-Non pamphlet with my order. I was severely disturbed and disgusted by this. Keep your harmful cult BS to yourself. Don't force it on your patrons. I will never go back to [redacted], and will inform eveyone I know of the Scientology connection with the restaurant. For the record Narc-o-non is just another way that scientology prays on people at their weakest moments to manipulate them into joining their destructive cult. I think it is pathetic and shameful. Why not just beat up old ladies and take their money too?

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

Usually, we dedicate this feature to pointing out a pattern of reviews, or possibly shining light on some humorous anecdotes and/or malapropisms. This week--maybe since it's Friday on a holiday week--we're going to present one review that caught our eye. There are no words. We just ... wow.

i went here one night and got utterly fujumbled. they got this new bartender who goes by the name Mr. [redacted]. i thought he was gonna be a bitch ass at first but he hooked it up. shots and beers like whoa. bitches flashing and people partying like it''s 1999. an old asian man came in claiming to be Mr. [redacted]'s long lost uncle and wanted a free beer but couldnt prove it so all he got was a tossing out of the bar like you see in the movies, the motha#### landed right on his face. i highly recommend this establishment. good times and good beers. after all, isn''t life all about beers, bitches and bling?

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

This week saw a deluge of reviews for the Mission's new swanky Italian joint and focacceria, Farina. Earlier in the summer, Farina received some harsh reviews upon its relatively well-publicized opening on 18th Street. "Anonymous" merely recommended the Italian-craving diner opt for the nearby Delfina, a sentiment echoed in a longer review left by "render ferguson":

I went here for dinner the other night. I was initially impressed with its quaint location and lack of parking. They seem to have copied the north beach atmosphere with a mexican twang. The food was a step above Olive Garden, with a disagreeable after-taste. I would suggest Del Fina for an authentic mission experience.

Took the excuse of some out of town friends visiting to try this place out and had a simply perfect evening. Each course was even more amazing that the last. All the wines we tried from their selection were lovely, and the grappa selection was an equal match.
If you are one of the few people that responded with a negative review, I highly suggest giving it another shot and enlisting the advice of the staff. The few suggestions they made at our request were great compliments to the choices we had already made. A more authentic genovese meal can not be had in San Francisco! I can't wait to go back.

Being born in Genova, I wanted to try this place. It was great. The food was outstanding and so was the service. We were seated upstairs ( on a Saturday night) and we felt like we were the only people that mattered with all the attention and prompt service we received.If there's a complaint, it would be the background music. Somehow the Latin music was, I almost want to say, annoying. I'm sure there's plenty of Italian music that could be played and I just don't mean "O Sole Mio" and the like. There's plenty of modern Italian music out there. But this was a minnor thing. For those who complained that the portions were too small, they need to know that portions in restaurants in Italy are generelly on the small size, since you just don't order one thing, but a series of courses. For too long Italian restaurants have been what "Americans" thought they should be: huge portion of pasta with globs of runny sauce which you don't know whether to eat or drink it and the biggest no-no of all: meat served on top of the pasta or alongside on the same dish. Not Italian. Besides, if you want a big portion at Farina, order the veal chop, it's huge.Keep up the good work, Farina, we will definetely be back. And yes, the focaccia, just like we had in Recco, buonissima!!

Farina [MenuPages]

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

Instead of dedicating this week's edition of The Week In (User) Reviews to the countless funny, ridiculous and/or idiotic reviews that come in every week here at MenuPages, we're going to share two well-written reviews. Since we don't write reviews ourselves, it's really helpful to other users when great reviews appear on the site. So, we encourage you to read the following reviews, find your muse and share your bounty of San Francisco gastronomical knowledge:

"Anonymous" left the following review about Spork, the modern Mission eatery that also got the SF Weekly treatment this week :

We went early, and there were plenty of tables, but the place was full, with several groups waiting by the time we left. Warm, soft bread came with honeyed butter. We shared a starter of lobster on polenta, which was tasty, with big pieces of lobster. Each of the three in my group had something different, and each was excellent: inside-out burger, pork and mussels, and mine: stroganoff, which didn't come as one would expect it, but it was delicious--the kind of meal one thinks about later! We shared a dessert: pot brownie. Ordering coffee gets a French-press pot, that provides about 2-1/2 cups. Tables are close, and there are no table cloths, but the service is good, and the decor nicely minimal. It's not a cheap meal, but definitely worth the money, and, as I said, I'm still thinking about it.

Continue reading "The Week In (User) Reviews: Something Different" »

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

When it comes to our four ratings categories--food, service, value and atmosphere--atmosphere usually gets neglected. Obviously, food is always front and center. Service is usually the recipient of grumpy reviewers' wrath, and in this day and age, everyone is worried about their cash flow, so value is commonly noted. Atmosphere is just there in the background (pun halfway intended), waiting to be mentioned.

We've brought atmosphere's neglect before (check here for more funny atmosphere reviews), but it's really the gift that keeps on giving.

In any case, here are two wonderful reviews about the ambiance of restaurants. First up, we have a review by a certain "Anonymous" that highlights the supreme awkwardness of being the only patrons in an establishment. We're not sure about you, but if there's no one in the restaurant when we walk in, we walk right back out. Don't care if it's Myth or Aqua; we just feel weird being the only ones in a place. We also prefer to practice better grammar:

Even though I and a friend we're the only customers at about 6 p.m, the food was still really good...

My wife and I love [redacted] (across town) and figured that its other location would be the same.

Unfortunately, they allowed a person, after we had pointed it out to the host, to sit there with no socks or shoes on.

Very disgusting. He looked like an old friend of mine: [name redacted].

Just some food for thought as you head into the weekend.

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

When it comes to user reviews, we've made it no secret that we encourage the sharing details that may be helpful to the common restaurant-goer. The bulk of our reviews discuss aspects of the restaurant that nearly everyone notices and cares about: atmosphere, service, cost, portion size and of course, the food itself. Sometimes, we get reviews that are helpful in other ways, like pointing out that there is a line on weekend mornings for Mama's:

Standing in line is worth the wait on Sunday morning for a memorable homemade breakfast experience. Very San Francisco.

omg! the meal my friends and i had was crazy. imperial rolls, chicken salad, roasted crab, garlic noodles, and fbi. nothing could have been better. even the prices are better than the other crab houses in the city. in short, best place for crab.

Most disturbing of all we discovered photos of Hindu deities in restrooms.

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

Politics and hot topic issues are inherently touchy subjects in real life, often rife with gray areas, blurry lines, rocks, hard places and maybe even a quagmire or two. But when it comes to restaurant reviews, it's pretty safe to say that if a controversial issue is referenced, it had better be used in a constructive and, ideally, witty fashion.

We like it when users make references to current events and personal points of view, but sometimes, opinions don't make for helpful reviews. For example: MenuPages users are often interested in discovering if a certain restaurant's preparation of a dish--say, veal scallopine--is good or not. But no one cares about your stance on veal, right or wrong:

for the guy who had the veal.... the fact that you eat veal means your a savage. how 'bout i come to your home, put you in a cage so you can't move and after few days i'll slice open your throat so you bleed a slow death.

On the other hand, we do enjoy clever political references. Take this final quip at the conclusion of a well-written, glowing review about an Afghan restaurant:

Screw al queda, food should be for peace

There were more WMDs in Iraq than shrimp in my shrimp noodles.

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

Oh MenuPages users, we love it when you review new restaurants. Don't get us wrong; we appreciate all reviews for all restaurants. But when you take the time to review a brand-spanking new restaurant, it is really helpful to the rest of the MenuPages community. Why? Simply put, people (including us) are curious. There are so many openings these days, it's hard to keep up, so if some decent reviews come in for new restaurants, it helps.

It's nice to be able to differentiate a restaurant that you must go to ASAP before it's impossible to get in (Nopa) from a restaurant that is still working out the kinks (see below) from a restaurant that you should probably just pass on.

With that said, here are some of this week's reviews that gave us the lowdown on newly-christened restaurants. Take the jump with us.

Continue reading "The Week In (User) Reviews" »

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

Last week, we discussed the finer points of palate sensations. This Friday, let's examine something that requires little to no sublety: delivery.

The thing about delivery is that you aren't (or shouldn't be) expecting much to begin with. If you are anything like us, delivery--whether it be Thai, pizza or Chinese--serves two purposes: convenience and comfort. If it comes quickly, it pleases. If the food is decent and "normal" (so to speak), it pleases. Delivery doesn't require being the meal of the month; it's supposed to be solid.

With that said, here are two divergent delivery experiences, as told by our dear users. First up, an anonymous positive review of SRI Thai in the Sunset:

We order delivery from here all the time. I have never actually been to the resturant, but the food arrives quickly and is ALWAYS delicious. For the amount you get it's a great price. Try the green curry with chicken, you won't be disappointed or hungry!

Then there's the (entertaining) flip of side of delivery, after the jump.

Continue reading "The Week In (User) Reviews" »

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

Sometimes, it's hard to pinpoint the exact essence of a dish. Recently, we had a very nice meal at a local Italian restaurant. It was fine, nothing particularly special, but a dining companion of ours ordered a pasta dish that included duck that had an odd flavor. Nothing spoiled or anything like that, just ... odd. It didn't taste like duck or sauce or rotten-ness. Finally, after much deliberation and mastication, we hit the nail on the head: it tasted like Teflon (from the frying pan, we surmised).

Anyhoo, it's always fun when reviewers compare pedestrian dishes with creative and unusual "flavors." It allows the reader to sit back, reflect and think "Hmm, I can see that." Here are three of our favorites:

And it's really all about the cheese. It takes like it's made from melted used combs with flavor & color added. It's heavy with little flavor.

The tom kah gai is not worth ordering-- it tasted like sunscreen mixed with chicken broth.

It followed the traditional diner pickle taste ... For those of you who don't know this taste is like placing a preserved and chilled animal organ from a failed and forgotten lab experiment into your mouth.

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

Just about every review--be it for a high-end, Michelin-starred destination restaurant or for that little Chinese joint on the corner--mentions something about service.

Service is a particularly prickly issue, for patrons, industry folk and comment ombudsmen (ahem, us). Sometimes, it's clear from a reviewer that service was quite subpar and worthy of a poor rating:

I thought it would be nice to take my wife to [redacted] for her 30th b-day. Boy, was I wrong. As we were checking our jackets, we could hear 2 of the hostess talking about, "how f****** funny it is to watch people trip on the stairs." (Yes, those were the words that came out of their mouths). Service was okay. Our server had random uninvited conversations with us...

I approached the man at the counter and asked him if they had white American cheese, he condescendingly blurted out "No. American cheese is not white, it's yellow." and then stomped away, not looking at me the entire time. I subsequently told the man at the register and the hostess that yellow American cheese is welfare cheese and it is nasty, the man replying "White American cheese is very rare. Everyone has an opinion!" Yes, well my opinion is that white American is not rare, it's just more expensive and tastes better, and that buying ingredients on the cheap gets you a negative review.

The moral of the story? If you are nice to your servers, odds are they will probably reciprocate the courtesy.

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

Usually, we reserve this feature for making fun of your malapropisms and grammatical errors. But after last week's educational post, we actually got a cornucopia of excellent reviews this week. Take, for example, one reviewer's thoughts on Clementine:

I have been to Clementine several times and have never been disappointed. Reservations are a must for weekends but they will let you sit at the bar and eat.
They [have] a good wine selection. Very relaxing environment and street parking up to 4 blocks away at times.
Allow about $50 per person with wine.

Even an anonymous review on Pizza Love showed that negative reviews can be thoughtfully-written and acerbic without being inappropriate and inane:

We made a mistake of taking advantage of flyer left on our doorstep and thought we'd try a new pizza place. Not sure why since we have our favorites. I can say that through this experience we've definitely learned our lesson.

Remember those frozen pizzas your mom would leave you and babysitter with circa 1980 something? This was much worse. The dough was much thicker and the entire thing was completely undercooked. It took a really bad turn when we actually ventured to try a slice. The ham was not the normal canadian bacon nor ham in the normal portions. These were huge, thick chunks of gelatinous stuff. I actually didn't brave the ham, my b/f did. I tried the pepperoni. After we each had a piece and scrapped the rest of the pizza.

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

While there may be a fine line between which user reviews are acceptable and which user reviews are not, no such line exists between quality reviews and well, dumb ones. Idiotic reviews don't share anything helpful with other prospective diners. Case in point: this review for a restaurant that shall remain unnamed:

you should probably kill yourself before you ever give these people your money.

With that said, let's turn our collective heads towards good reviews.

Continue reading "The Week In (User) Reviews: The Review Ombudsman" »

If you call at 8:00 pm you'll get your food at 8:07... scary actually. The delivery boy has a wok tied to the front of his bike...

By the way, the picture above was taken last August, somewhere in the Sunset District.

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

You know, walking down the street these days, you'll probably see a dozen things that scream bad parenting, from the infant in the stroller eating plastic to the preteens on the corner smoking Parliaments. Now, we're not parents yet (wood has been knocked, thanks), but if given the choice, we'd probably pass on giving candy drugs to our offspring. But hey, that's just us:

My daughter ended having the chocolate syringe. It seemed like bad parenting to let her squirt chocolate out of a medical syringe into her mouth, but after [redacted], I wasn't in the mood to fight. The syringe came on a glass plate which was sprinkled with gummi pills.

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

Here at MenuPages, we allow--or rather, encourage--our users to rate the fine restaurants of San Francisco. In addition to a written section of the review, there are four arenas upon which our restaurants are graded: food, service, value and atmosphere. Of those four criteria, the one most neglected by reviewers is probably atmosphere, so this week, we salute those of you who enlisted creative means to decry a restaurant's aesthetic shortcomings.

Get ambianced, after the jump.

Continue reading "The Week In (User) Reviews" »

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

From Mirriam-Webster:
Main Entry: mal·a·prop·ism
Function: noun
Etymology: Mrs. Malaprop, character noted for her misuse of words in R. B. Sheridan's comedy The Rivals (1775)
1 : the usually unintentionally humorous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase; especially : the use of a word sounding somewhat like the one intended but ludicrously wrong in the context.

Nothing says entertainment like "ludicrously wrong in the context"! With that in mind, here are our favorite reviews of this long and arduous week. In order to minimalize your required thinking, we've highlighted the offending malapropisms.

i would defiantly go back

More after the jump, including lawyer-based hors d'oeuvres...

Continue reading "The Week In (User) Reviews" »

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

Last week, we honored some of our more creative user reviews. This week, we're going to tackle reviews that make non-sequitur references to European countries.

Huh?

Yeah, non-sequitur's great, isn't it?

Our three favorites post-jump.

Continue reading "The Week In (User) Reviews: Euro-Edition!" »

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

We love our users. Simply put, they make MenuPages what it is. We get so many reviews everyday, we really appreciate the few reviews that make us pause for a second and smile. The following reviews did just that for us. So we thank you, dear reviewers, for brightening up our rainy days.

But don't worry; we'll return to highlighting your embarrassingly hilarious malapropisms soon enough.

Without further ado ...

We like reviews that suggest innovations in the restaurant industry:

If you call at 8:00 pm you'll get your food at 8:07... scary actually. The delivery boy has a wok tied to the front of his bike...

If taste was color this place would be a rainbow!

Continue reading "The Week In (User) Reviews" »

Every Friday, we provide you with the best--and the worst--user reviews from the week. The following reviews are real, valid, submitted, unedited (except where marked) reviews from our various sites.

Honorable mentions:

i was a bit focused by menu...all the dishes seem the same!!!

If you want to spend $300 somewhere and be guaranteed post-date sex, this is the place to do it.

Pretty much across the board. Not one of us was pleased with the food, and really all we needed was basic bistro fare at [redacted], which seems to be slipping or something. It's a little like the Michael Richards rant. Avoid or prepare to be sad.

The Top (Bottom) Three Reviews after the jump

Continue reading "The Week In (User) Reviews" »