I went to Garcia's Taqueria for lunch and ate with my friend Dave and his company, Sendori. I ordered a super quesadilla with lengua (beef tongue) and a horchata.

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What I Ate: February 8, 2008

Potsticker King
19634 Stevens Creek Blvd
Cupertino, CA 95014
408-255-1600

Sit down Chinese restaurant with fast service. Although named Potsticker King, lacked the assortment of different potstickers that I had hoped for. (Only one potsticker item on the menu.) The potstickers were adequate and tasty. The menu, like menus for most Chinese restaurants, has a lot of different dishes available.

Surprise find: Ai yu jelly - a gelatinous sweet lemon scented dessert derived from the grass and leaves of a plant in the mint family

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Potsticker King (Cupertino, CA)

Because of the impending release of the new edition of the San Francisco Michelin Guide, I looked up last years recipients of the coveted Michelin stars. I realized that I didn't know of a website that compiled the list with all relevant information (most just had the names of the restaurants). After I compiled the list, Dave Lu suggested that I put up a Google Map to show where they were (instead of my original idea of linking to the Google Maps page). I tried this and managed to get it to work (for the most part) but found it really difficult to program with the editor that WordPress uses. So, I reimplemented it on Cooking For Engineers with all the restaurants. Go check it out.
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Michelin Stars in the San Francisco Bay Area

So, I'm getting ready to drive up to Berkeley/Oakland to dine at Oliveto Cafe and Restaurant. I've dined there once before and the food is remarkable — it's one of those places where you know the entire staff cares about food. One of things that stands out about Oliveto in my memory is not just the delicious food, attentive wait staff, and exquisite preparation of Italian cuisine - but also the menu. Tonight's menu should be posted around 5pm (about an hour before my dinner reservation) at http://www.oliveto.com/dinnermenu.pdf. (They always post the dinner menu at around 5pm and it changes every day.) I'll try to remember to download it tonight and post it here so it's more permanent. Anyway, the menu is always an adventure… I've been doing food writing for the last three and a half years (and been decently successful at my style of writing) and the menu confounds me. It truly is a culinary adventure just deciphering it. So, go and print it out and scribble notes over it and figure out what each menu item means. If you figure out one menu item, then post in the comments - I'll be doing the same. The early bird gets the easy entries…

Here's one from the Sept. 29 that I just couldn't figure out:
Chitarra nera alla colatura di alici - black guitar that filters anchovies?
My best guess is that it's a black pasta (either guitar strings like capellini or cut by a chitarra as in linguini shaped…) with a sauce made of anchovies…

One thing that I really hate is when I'm left alone WAY too long at a restaurant. When a waiter doesn't come by for a while after we've been seated, it's really frustrating. This evening, I kept trying to catch the eye of the waitress that was serving all the tables around us, but she was VERY adept at not looking in our direction. Finally, our waiter arrived (it wasn't the waitress that was serving all the other tables in our vicinity) took our orders and disappeared. Apparently, we were in the boondocks of this guy's waiting area and stuck in the middle of a different waitress's realm. They we realized that we were starting to get really cold (near an air conditioning vent). We kept looking around for our waiter but he didn't come back. Then a server (not our waiter) arrived with our food and we asked if it was possible to move. She said she'd find our waiter and disappeared. By the time the waiter returned, we had practically finished eating. Unfortunately, I didn't immediately ask for a to-go box so we once again had to wait and wait. I eventually stood up and walked around to look for our waiter. After returning to our booth, I stood there long enough for a passing waitress to ask if I needed anything. I asked for our check and she went off in search of our waiter. He returned shortly with our bill. I feel that restaurants, even casual ones, should do a better job with dividing up tables so they are accessible to their wait staff.

I've been to Santana Row quite a bit but have never dined at Left Bank (one of five Left Banks, owned by the owner of La Folie in San Francisco (where Roland Passot is executive chef) and Tanglewood (also in Santana Row). The dining was pleasant and the food pretty good.
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Left Bank (San Jose, California)

Last night I dined with twelve other food bloggers (including significant others) at Oliveto in Oakland, California. I had never met any of the other bloggers, but it was a lot of fun to eat good food and chat with other foodies.

When Food Bloggers Dine