The Best Restaurants in Oakland - According to Me

This is a departure from my usual tech-oriented writing, but a few of my friends have previously suggested that I write a food blog as I'm always checking out the latest restaurants in Oaktown and have pretty strong opinions about who is or isn't serving quality food. Quite honestly I don't have the time to write such a blog, plus I don't consider myself to be anything close to an expert when it comes to the culinary arts - I just love to eat!  However, I do have my favorite hangouts, and so without further ado here is my official "Top Ten Restaurants in Oakland" list.  In alphabetical order:

B-Side BBQ

If you're looking for quick and cheap BBQ with the meat piled on high then this isn't your place. However, if you're looking for very well prepared fare using quality ingredients and a great atmosphere then you've come to the right BBQ joint.  My favorite two dishes are the brisket and the Dark & Stormy St. Louis ribs.  The sides are excellent too. I've had their cornbread, mac 'n cheese, spicy coleslaw and potato salad...all were great. Even the toast that comes with the BBQ is done really well...no slices of Wonder Bread here.  And finally, how can you not like a place that often shows Blazing Saddles on their big screens?

Camino 

Run by an ex-alum of Chez Panisse (as are a number of restaurants here) I guess it's no surprise that I consider this place to be the closest thing to Chez Panisse without having to actually go there.  Some people might be put off by their "community" seating arrangement, but it doesn't bother me at all.  The reason I don't come here more often, though, is because their menu changes daily, you don't know about it until they post it to their website they day of, and they only serve three entrees per day - so it's always a bit of a gamble.  On the plus side they'll serve you boatloads of Acme's "Pain de Mie" rolls, which I am terribly addicted to. Though I haven't eaten here a lot, the times that I have I've walked away thoroughly satisfied...I think the last time here I had some terrific roasted crab.

Commis

Quite simply, the best fine dining in the East Bay.  James Syhabout's first restaurant is a winner and has deservedly earned its Michelin Star.  The attention to preparation and detail is amazing in this place.  In fact, when you're in there it sometimes feels a bit eerie because the kitchen is right in the middle of the restaurant but you never hear a peep from any of the chefs because they're all meticulously working on the food preparation/presentation.  Their multi-course fixed-price menu changes frequently, but definitely count on a couple of the courses bordering on molecular gastronomy...Mr. Syhabout evidently worked a stint at the famed elBulli restaurant in Spain.  The food here isn't cheap and in fact is probably the most expensive restaurant on this list, but after eating here I've always come walking away thinking it was a bargain.

Dopo

I've eaten at every decent Italian joint in the city, but Dopo stands out for me as having the best pasta and thin crust pizza of the bunch.  Their menu changes constantly, but when they offer a squid ink pasta I almost aways get that.  They serve lasagne pretty regularly and that is excellent as well.  Their calzones are also a great alternative if you're not quite in a pizza mood. I really like that the crust on their pizzas/calzones have that perfect amount of crispness without getting burnt. If there are any downsides it's that the place is pretty noisy, I sometimes feel cramped in there, and their pasta portions are a bit on the small-ish side.

Duende

This is the hot new kid on the block, and I'm currently addicted to it.  Paul Canales of Oliveto fame recently opened up this place, and not only is the food terrific but the space itself is stunning and ambitious - they spent what looks like a small fortune gutting it out and creating a sense of openness throughout.  The restaurant is broken up into several sections: the main restaurant; the central bar area with shared table seating; the all day "Bodega" where among things they offer coffee, dessert, Spanish wine selections and olive oil; and an upstairs lounge where they occasionally host live music.  The food is Spanish tapas style and meant to be shared.  My favorite dishes include the squid ink seafood paella, the prime rib steak, and the stuffed peppers with lamb.

Flora

Whether or not you like this place, you have to give props to Flora for being a groundbreaker in Uptown, being the first ones of their stature to take a huge gamble on the neighborhood.  And it's paid off handsomely for them, as they've continued to be one of the most popular restaurants in the city. They've gone through several chef changes over the years, but I think their most recent one has made them as good as they've ever been. About half the time I go here I sit at the bar and eat their burger, which for my money is the best burger in town.  Their menu changes constantly and I've rarely been disappointed with any of their meat and seafood dishes.  And oh, their caramel pudding, which they've had since the very beginning, is simply to die for.  Great art deco look and feel too, and the best bar and cocktails in town.  They also recently opened up their sister bar Fauna right next door.

Haven

Daniel Patterson's second restaurant in Oakland (Plum being the other) is easily their best.  The location is a bit hard to find for a first-timer, as it's tucked away in an area of Jack London Square that isn't obvious as being a retail space.  But once you go inside, the modern industrial look is great, and I think the best seating location is right at the bar overlooking the kitchen.  Kim Alter is the executive chef here, and I guess the best way to describe her style of cooking is "bold and aggressive", with dishes like bone marrow and shepherd's pie cooked with pig's blood often on their menu.  Some folks think her "bold" style results in dishes being overly salty and/or buttery...but I'm a sucker for all that.

Hawker Fare

James Syhabout's second restaurant is one that I go to quite often for lunch or a casual dinner. They primarily serve Thai rice bowls mixed with various meats and veggies...my favorites are the poached chicken, pork belly and veggie curry.  You would think that Asian restaurants could not possibly screw up making something as simple as steamed rice, but the reality is that many unfortunately do.  Hawker Fare makes their rice just about as perfect as can be, and they also do a great job with it in their congee dish - just the perfect texture and consistency.  Recently they expanded their menu to include more small bites, mainly meat skewers done Izakaya style...they are delicious.  And from what I've heard they plan to offer even more dishes in the not too distant future. Oh, and they've got a cool assortment of old school music posters featuring local acts on their wall, and they often have a lot of soul/R&B classics that I love playing in the background.

Hopscotch

I have a special fondness for this place because they are super close to my office, I was there for dinner the first night they opened and had a fabulous meal, and Jenny and team are always super nice and accommodating...in fact we had our company holiday party there last year and had a blast.  The restaurant looks like a 50's diner which is cool in and of itself, and perhaps the best way to describe the cuisine is "diner food with a Japanese twist". Their signature dish is the fried chicken, marinated in a soy/mustard sauce and perfectly executed.  Other menu items come and go; I recently had an oxtail stew which was just out of this world.  They also open for lunch and serve a fantastic Tonkatsu sandwich, along with their First Base Burger which you can order with a slice of beef tongue on top - awesome!  Within their first year of operation they received a 3-star Michael Bauer review and also made the Chronicle 100...very impressive!  Great bar too, and one of the few that serve Asahi Super Dry on tap.

Pizzaiolo

This place been a Temescal mainstay for a decade now, and it's still going strong.  Excellent pasta and other main dishes, and their pizzas are fantastic as well...just a hair below Dopo's in my opinion.  They also serve homemade toast and Blue Bottle coffee in the mornings...great place to hangout before starting the workday. The vibe at night is pretty hip and so the place does get pretty loud.  The restaurant seems to be booked solid all the time, and for whatever reason they've never taken online reservations; otherwise I'd go a lot more. Wassup with that?

Okay, I just realized that there are a lot more good restaurants in town than just these ten.  Here are a few of my other favorites in no particular order:

Oliveto: Been a Rockridge institution forever and it's had its ups and downs, but recently on an upswing again. Great location on top of Market Hall serving upscale Italian fare.

Wood Tavern: I just haven't been here enough to consider it for my Top Ten, as the place is just so damn hard to get a table. I will say that the last time I went they prepared a fabulous steak.

Stag's Lunchette: Best sandwich shop in Oakland...period.  The grilled cheese and pastrami reuben are menu fixtures and are excellent.  And some of their "guest" sandwiches have just knocked my socks off, like the meatloaf and the coca cola braised beef.

Burma Superstar: Sister restaurant to the SF institution.  Pretty much the same menu, but pricier and in a more upscale setting.  The Rainbow Salad is always popular, though really not my thing. My favorite dish is their pork belly with pickled mustard greens.

Chop Bar: Great place to have brunch on a nice day where you can sit out on their patio area.  Very well prepared egg dishes, nice assortment of muffins/pastries, and very friendly service.

Sidebar: Their ribeye steak frites is huge and the best steak bargain in the city...I pretty much get this every time I go there.

TrueBurger: The closest thing to a Shake Shack experience outside of NYC.  Really well prepared burgers, and I love the brioche-like buns they use. Great shakes too.

Boot and Shoe Service: Same ownership as Pizzaiolo and same thin crust style pizza. However, the place is even louder than Pizzaiolo (and too hipster) and I find the pizza quality to be less consistent.

Miss Ollie's: This place is fast becoming one of my favorites and may be in my Top Ten before too long. Fried chicken is amazing, and other dishes are also excellent.  Very reasonable prices too.

Rosamunde: Recently opened in Old Oakland.  Love the variety of sausages; my two favs are the chicken habanero and the Mission Street.

Going the Opposite of Cord Cutting - The Tivo Stream

You would think that my being a tech geek/early adopter type means that I would have been one of the first to jump on the "cord cutting" bandwagon and dump my cable subscription.  And trust me...the thought of cutting out a $100+ monthly Comcast bill, along with the usually horrible Comcast customer service department, crosses my mind each time I see that charge on my Visa statement.  But attractive as that sounds, and despite the fact that I am downloading/streaming more and more of my video content, I can't seem to escape the clutches of my cable subscription.  One of the main reasons for this is the obvious one for many us, namely live sports.  Until the major networks come up with an equitable solution for cord cutters to access their live content over the internet this may be a huge stumbling block for me and other sports fans.  The other reason is simply convenience...having all my video content stored on an easily accessible hard disk still beats picking and choosing content from various sources (Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, etc.) and having to deal with the occasional internet connectivity issue while downloading or streaming.

Which brings me to Tivo...I've used quite a number of DVRs over the years, and their UI's range from simply horrible (Comcast) to pretty decent (DirecTV) to Tivo, which is still the best of the bunch despite not having done much in recent years to advance their technology.  The one nice thing about Tivo, though is that it's an open platform, so as a result there are some extremely clever and useful 3rd-party projects such as PyTivo and kmttg that extend the functionality of the platform.  I recently decided to upgrade my unit, because believe it or not I watch enough TV that I occasionally run into situations where I need to record more than two shows at once...their new Premiere 4 allows you to record up to four shows concurrently.  One of the other reasons I picked up the new unit is because Tivo was offering a bundled deal which includes the Premiere 4, a MoCA adapter which basically allows you to attach wired devices to your network via your home's existing cable coax, and their relatively new Tivo Stream mini-device which lets you stream and/or download content from your Tivo box to your iPad.  The device itself is small (4"x4") and super simple - just plug in the AC adapter and connect to your home network with an ethernet cable and you're all set to go.

The Stream allows you to stream content from your Premier that was previously recorded or is currently recording, and it also lets you downloaded content directly to your iPad for offline viewing...both of these functions are performed using the free Tivo iOS app.  As you might expect the app looks and feels similar to its TV sibling, so there was zero learning curve involved.  One cool feature is that you can "slide" the playback marker to any specific time within the program - something that you can't do with the TV remote.  For the most part everything worked pretty flawlessly and as advertised.  If you began watching a program on your TV, paused it and later resumed watching it from your iPad, it remembers where you previously left off and picks up from that point...and vice versa. The one annoying bug I found is that if you stream a program that is still being recorded, your streaming gets interrupted when you get to the location where the Tivo was recording as you began your streaming session...you have to jump back out to the "Now Playing" list, select the program again and then it will resume streaming from the point where it left off.

Will Tivo sell many of these Stream units?  Probably not, as it's really a niche product at the moment with a fairly limited audience.  First off, it only works with the iPad, so if you're thinking about using it to stream to your desktop/laptop computer or Android device you're basically SOL.  Secondly, the streaming function only works within your internal home network, i.e. you can't stream over the internet...which is really a shame because if it did this then I would no longer have a need for a Slingbox.  And lastly, it obviously only works with Tivo and specifically with later modeled Tivo's...and your Tivo needs to be ethernet or MOCA connected to your home network to boot.  However, if you can deal with these limitations then the Stream is a nice add on and essentially turns your iPad into an additional (and portable) home television.

Bluetooth Finally Comes of Age - The Jawbone Big Jambox

Well, it's almost the end of the year and I have to say it's been a pretty ho hum one in terms of tech gadgetry...why else would I be talking about something so mundane as Bluetooth!  But seriously, Bluetooth technology has come along quite a way since it was introduced over a decade ago.  Back then the technology was so flaky - slow speeds, compatibility issues, connection problems, etc...and this seemed to continue on for a number of years.  Did anyone back then ever get Bluetooth to work on a Windows machine?  I bet not!  It was only during the past 3 or 4 years that things got progressively better, probably due to a combination of evolving/maturing Bluetooth standards along with the proliferation of Bluetooth headsets and "hands free" automobile products that brought the technology to the mainstream.  Nowadays Bluetooth seems to be pretty robust and I can't recall the last time I had issues pairing a device.  To paraphrase the late Steve Jobs, "it just works"...finally!

A great example of the above is the latest gadget I purchased, the Jawbone Big Jambox wireless Bluetooth speaker.  Talk about a dead simple setup procedure - the first time you turn the thing on it smartly goes into pairing mode automatically and has voice/sound prompts to guide you through the process.  The speaker can store a total of 8 paired devices, and 2 of them can be simultaneously connected to it.  In addition, it also comes with a built-in microphone so that you can use it as a wireless speakerphone.  So, for example, if you're streaming your favorite tunes from your iPad to the Jambox and your phone happens to ring, the Jambox will recognize this and pause your music, announce the incoming call (w/ caller id even), and when you pick up the call it immediately turns itself into a full-duplex speakerphone with amazingly good call quality.  Audio quality is generally very good for a speaker of this size - as long as you keep that in perspective you should be fine.  The device's software can be updated through the Jawbone website, and there are even some supplemental apps (e.g. voice dialers) that you can download to the device as well as a plethora of optional audio "voices" in case the default one doesn't suit your taste.

The versatility and simplicity of the Jambox makes it a better choice for many audio enthusiasts over the more elegant (and non-Bluetooth) wireless solutions offered by Sonos.  Don't get me wrong, though...Sonos products are in a league of their own in terms of versatility and handling complex, multi-room environments.  But they can also be a bit finicky in terms of setup and maintenance...at least that's been my experience.

The Jambox is also quite stylish-looking too; don't you agree?

Quick Thoughts on Tyler Hamilton's Book

I just got done reading Tyler Hamilton's book, and all I can say is "Wow".  I know that his credibility may be called into question given some of the lies he's told over the years, but the level of detail and specificity described in the book makes it hard for me to believe that he's saying anything other than the truth.  And I've definitely come away from it feeling stronger than ever that Lance was been doped up all these years.  A few noteworthy takeaways:

• I was amazed at all the planning and precision of the doping programs by the top teams and how everything was so carefully timed and executed.
• It was interesting to read about how all the riders had so much information about the doping methods used by their rivals, and how they all knew who was/wasn't doped up.
• Lance was an unbelievable control freak and bullied everyone who got in his way.  He was even more of an SOB than I had previously imagined.
• Illegal practices or not, Michele Ferrari was a genius scientist/doctor that you had to grudgingly admire for his knowledge of the human physiology, training methods, diet, and of course performance-enhancing drugs.  I loved the story about Lance getting worried about Pantani's solo breakaway during a Tour stage, and getting Bruyneel to call Ferrari on the phone to run some quick calculations to confirm that Pantani would eventually blow...which he did.
• Recreational riders are going to start using the term "not normal" on their weekend club rides from now on.

Nexus 7 - The Best Android Device Available

Let me just start out by saying that the Nexus 7 is unquestionably the best Android device available today! It's lightning fast, noticeably faster than any mobile device I've used...and I've used a bunch of them.  I don't know if it's due to the quad-core processor or the smoothness of the Jelly Bean OS...probably a combination of both.  Applications download/install several times faster than on other devices, and when you go into 3D mode on Google Maps it's absolutely amazing how quickly all the building structures take shape.  I bought the device intending to hand it to one of our developers in order to test our Android app, but I've held onto to it for over a week now and I'm not sure I'm going to relinquish it...sorry David!

There are a number of other reasons to like the Nexus 7.  The build quality is excellent, as is the screen resolution.  For lots of people the form factor of a 7-inch device is advantageous to the 10-inch iPad because of portability.  One of the nice things about its size is that I can store the device in the glove compartment or in the center console of my car, something I absolutely can't do with the iPad.  The smaller/lighter form factor will also be preferred by a lot of people who read books, though I suspect magazine readers may not think the same.  If you rely heavily on Gmail, Maps and other Google apps like I do then there is no comparison between the way they run on the Nexus vs. the iPad...the latter seems stuck in the stone ages.  Battery life is also outstanding, on par or maybe slightly better than the iPad.  And perhaps its biggest advantage is the price...at $199 it's priced the same as the mediocre Kindle Fire and and blows it away in just about every respect.  And that price is less than half the cost of the entry-level iPad.

Quite a bit has been written recently about Android 4.1, aka Jelly Bean, particularly the sheer speed and smoothness of the OS.  In addition to that Google is really trying to play up its Play Store (no pun intended) as well as the integration with all of its cloud-based services.  For example, after going through the setup process my homepage shows a collage of content I have stored in Google:

Perhaps the coolest Jelly Bean feature is Google Now, which is best described as an intelligent extension to the notification system.  Google Now will automatically display "cards" based on some of your common activities.  For example, I checked the score for a recent Giants game on the device, and ever since then it's been display cards for each of the Giants games, keeping me up to date on the scores.  Ditto for the weather.  And it even goes beyond that, bordering on creepy.  The other day I was reading an article on TechCrunch written by a guest author who is employed by one of the local VC's.  After finishing the article I decided to hop onto the VC's website to check out the author's bio...this was done on my laptop.  A few minutes later I picked up the Nexus and noticed that a new notification had popped up...it was driving directions and estimated drive time from my home to the VC's office.  As I stated...a bit creepy, but useful nonetheless.

So the big question is...will I replace my trusty iPad with the Nexus 7?  It's a really, really close call...but probably not.  I do like the convenience of having 4G connectivity when I need it, and unfortunately the Nexus only supports wifi.  And though I love the whole concept behind Google Now, I also think that the technology is something I'd rather have on my smartphone than on my tablet device...now, if Verizon can get off their butts and deliver Jelly Bean to my Galaxy Nexus I'd be set!   I also think the iPad still gets the nod as the superior reading device, especially for reading magazines/newspapers in landscape mode.  In fact, some of the Android reading apps don't even support landscape mode on the Nexus, probably due to the fact that at 7 inches the screen isn't conducive to a quality reading experience in landscape.  But at $199, it's easily the best value out there and is worth serious consideration for anyone needing to buy a tablet...regardless of the price point.