Broccoli & Chocolate

restaurants * food events * news

Archives for September 2011

Review: Ironside

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Atmosphere: 4/5  ♦  Service: 3/5  ♦  Food Quality: 4/5  ♦  Value: 3/5
Times Visited: One  ♦ Will I Return?: Sure

Ironside is a hip little restaurant on Second Street between Townsend and Brannan in San Francisco. It’s one of the (great many) places that makes SF what it is in terms of food and ambiance. The decor is a sort of modern wild-west: heavy timber framing (the stairway landing is a 4′ cube of solid wood pieces!) and steel connectors and accents fit in with the polished concrete floors and steel-railed mezzanine. Like other top SF restaurants, it looks great.

The order-at-the counter style adds a bit of casual-ness to your lunch (though they are also open for dinner, and brunch on the weekends), and the paper menu has lots of tasty things to choose from. The list itself is nothing particularly fancy: soups, salads, pizzas, and sandwiches; but the execution is key.

Inside Ironside

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Products: Easy Canvas Prints

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This post is not so much sponsored, really, as part of an exchange. This is new to me and I was pretty excited about it.

Brendan from Easy Canvas Prints contacted me a bit ago to see if I wanted a canvas print in exchange for blogging about it. While I love this idea, I typically pass on promos because I don’t often find them relevant to my blog and don’t want to clog up the content with crap no one cares about. But Brendan knew a weakness of mine… I love canvas prints. I also love picture and photos in general. And I love ordering things online. Ok, Brendan, let’s do this.

Because this was being posted on my food blog, I figured it wouldn’t be appropriate to order a canvas print of my family, a sunset, or my cat. It’s really only appropriate to order a photo of food to discuss on a food blog. So, I set off perusing my multitudes of photos for one that would turn out well on a canvas.

I was looking for a superior photo, obviously, one with good light, a tantalizing subject, and perhaps some color. A close-up was going to work best since the canvas that Brendan kindly offered was an 8×10. After much deliberation, I chose this photo:

Tuna Sandwich from The Brick House in SF

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Events: SF Street Food Festival 2011

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After attending the preview dinner for this event, K and I actually left our house on the weekend (gasp!) and went to the full festival. Here were our thoughts:

SF Street Food Festival 2011

Pros:

  • Lots of vendors means lots and lots of food.
  • Helpful, well organized, uniform signage throughout the festival and at each booth helped to communicate information and make sure it was obvious what was offered at each booth.
  • Varied vendors made for a wide range of food offerings.
  • Extremely well organized arrangement, complete with information booths at appropriate intervals.
  • An entire event where food is the main deal instead of the sideshow. Brilliant idea.

    SF Street Food Festival 2011. Good lord there were a lot of people.

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Review: B

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Atmosphere: 3/5  ♦  Service: 3/5  ♦  Food Quality: 2/5  ♦  Value: 3/5Times Visited: One  ♦ Will I Return?: Unlikely.

No, my keyboard did not break one letter into writing the title of this post. The proprietors of B Restaurant in Oakland apparently decided their time could be better spent on things other than coming up with an extravagant name for their establishment.

Bar and transom windows at B

B boasts floor to ceiling transom windows which give the space a modern open feeling. You can enjoy the view from the windows while sitting at the contemporary bar that serves a full range of cocktails…. 

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