Sunday, November 21, 2010

Pizza Rustica

Our friend, Jacob Snackgroot, from New York was in town last week, so we decided to bring him on our Rustica Pizza review, since people from New York think they're all like experts on Pizza or whatever, yeesh!


We started with the Insalata Mista Verde with chicken added. It tasted like a salad you would get in your airplane meal... only bigger and not on an airplane.

We wanted to get a rotisserie chicken, but they were all out of rotisserie chicken. Apparently it comes from different type of chicken than the kind they put on the salad we got. So instead we got pasta with shrimp and scallops. The pasta was fresh and light (for pasta) and the shrimps and scallops were tender and nicely seasoned with garlic and Italian parsley.

We figured we should try to unite the east and west coasts, so we got the All American Pizza which comes with sausage, pepperoni, green bell peppers, onions, and mushrooms. Jacob could barely contain his excitement. Pizza Rustica offers two types of pizza crust: a regular cornmeal crust, and one that has fennel and other herbs added to it. We went with the more exciting of the two.

Everyone agreed that the pizza was the best part of the meal. It even passed muster with a genuine east coast pizza elitist. Rustica makes a really great pizza that falls somewhere in between Lane Splitter and Dopo on the fancy-scale. We would probably eat it all the time if it weren't so darn expensive. As it is, we'll probably still end up shelling out for a Rustica Pizza from time to time.


EXTREME PIZZA CLOSE-UP!!!

Briana and Steve give Rustica 3.5 Sabuys, and Jacob gives it two fuggedaboutits. Jacob also encourages everyone to check out the lovely art in the men's room.








Next stop: Bittersweet!



Monday, November 15, 2010

Soi 4 (The lost review)

We are slackers.

So, three weeks turned into three months. We ate at Soi four (pronounced "soy four") back in May (before we went on hiatus) and took pictures but never put the post up. Then we got married, went on a honeymoon, did a bunch of other stuff. Now we're going to try and remember what we ate and whether or not we liked it.

This will probably not be our best work. Here we go:


OK, these look like drinks.

Um, pot stickers? There was something about this sauce that we maybe liked or didn't like... Maybe it was too sweet? I dunno, they look pretty good.

Corn cakes! Yum!

This was some kind of chicken thing? I think we thought it was pretty OK. (how helpful is this review, right?)

Yikes, um, well OK that's definitely asparagus, and uh maybe like bell peppers. I think I see some bamboo shoots in there. I guess we'd have to describe this dish as "unmemorable"?

OK, this one we remember. Dessert was fried bananas and ice cream. They were out of coconut ice cream so they used vanilla instead. It was good, but would have been better with coconut ice cream.

Who could forget our waiter, uh... this guy!


Soi Four 5421 College Avenue, Oakland, CA


Over all, the restaurant was fine, but a little overpriced. We give Soi Four 2.5 Sabuys:







Next stop Pizza Rustica!