So, it was a TUESDAY and I thought I would sneak in a quick lunch at Geta around 1:30pm (assuming the lunch rush was over), but I get there to find a completely full restaurant, people standing outside, and no room at the bar. Whaaaat?!! I had to wait about 10 minutes… since I was alone I grabbed a seat at the sushi bar.

The miso soup at Geta is totally legit. I’ve had a lot of bad miso soup in my day and this soup is freaking awesome. Can’t go wrong with the miso soup here.

I looked up above the sushi bar and saw this… Darn, didn’t try anything on any of those signs.

This is the fish in front of me.

…it’s almost sushi time!

Wahahahaha my favorite roll, the classic shrimp tempura. The only thing I wouldn’t mind leaving out is the lettuce. Since when do they put lettuce in sushi? Weird to me.

Spicy tuna roll, mmmm….

Here’s the outside.

Geta Japanese Restaurant
165 41st St
Oakland, CA 94611

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This time I planned on getting there early enough to get a seat! Swan Oyster Depot opens promptly at 10:30am. We arrived at 9:50am on a Thursday. We were the first people there! So we walked up the street and got a cup of coffee and walked back to the Swan to officially get in line. It was about 10:10am and we were still the first people in line… but not for long.

People began to appear and suddenly the line was about 20 people deep. Apparently this was a “slow morning”.

Here’s a guy setting up the windows. The sun was beating down so he had white paper covering all of the fish until the sun wasn’t so direct.

This shot was taken right after they put all the stools down… 5 minutes before this shot all of the stools were piled up in sets of two against the wall. This is it though, this is the entire restaurant. One main counter with stools. It doesn’t seat many people, hence why there is always a line to get in. It’s awesome, old school, authentic and everything you’d hope a seafood diner would be.

Yay, they finally opened and we took our seats about halfway down the bar, directly in front of the menu on the wall. I ordered what I had the last time I was there – the combination seafood cocktail and a bowl of clam chowder.

There was a huge bowl of oyster crackers every 3 feet or so… we were lucky enough to sit right in front of one! When you sit down you also get a big hunk of bread and butter, but I forgot to take a photo of that…

My view from the bar…

Ahhh the combination seafood cocktail! It’s served in a little sundae dish and it looks small but boy does it pack a big punch. The bottom is filled with lump crab meat, it’s topped with a jumbo shrimp and an oyster. And you get a big dish of cocktail sauce to dip everything into. It’s pretty mild and ice cold which is yum.

The first time I had this clam chowder I remember it being the absolute best clam chowder I’ve ever had. This past time I beg to differ but only because it was slightly luke warm… but I’m going to blame it on the fact that it was 10:30am and we were the first people in line. It was still very good and I ate almost the entire bread chunk they gave us.

What makes this soup so tasty is the fact that the broth is super flavorful and isn’t not super chunky… it’s definitely creamy but on the thinner side which makes dipping bread into it completely OCD and oyster crackers absorb the broth faster.  It’s really, really good.

So, long story short, place is great. Despite all the hype surrounding this place, I still think it’s worth going (if you have time). The seafood is super fresh, nice and cold, and the ambiance brings me right back to the diners of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.  You really don’t find many down home places like this in San Francisco. I love everything about it, except the super long line.

Swan Oyster Depot
1517 Polk St
San Francisco, CA 94109

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Besides awesome pastries, La Boulange also has a nice little menu of breakfast and lunch items like eggs, sandwiches and salads.  I opted for a cup of the Soup du Jour – Potato Leek, a Breakfast Pizza with Bacon and a Nonfat Latte.

This is the kind of place where you order at the counter, get a number and find a place to sit.  Then you sit down and wait for your food to be delivered.  We waited a little while and then the soup came first.  It was pretty good — not quite as sweet as I expected it to be, but nonetheless, good.  The soup came with a little slice of french bread which was really good. Once the bread was gone I really had no reason to continue eating the soup, but I did anyway… just because.

Above is the breakfast pizza with bacon.  It is very interesting… basically the crust is a sweet flakey phyllo-ish kind of dough, topped with melted cheese, diced tomatoes, chunks of bacon and finally some scrambled eggs (oh, then sprinkled with chopped parsley i think?).  I usually cut it in slices the short way and eat.  It is very good and filling.  The buttery-ness of the crust and eggs mixed with the smokey saltiness of the bacon is the perfect combo and worth every bite.  I’ve had it twice so far.

This is a “real” latte.  Drink it right from the bowl.

La Boulange
500 Hayes St
(between Laguna St & Octavia St)
San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 863-3376
www.baybread.com

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I’m definitely a corn-ie and will rarely refuse anything with corn in it.  The Cream of Corn soup is pureed very finely (there are no whole pieces of corn in it).  They use alot of butter also so it is buttery and corn-y with a smooth n silky texture, yum!  (I actually went to Zebulon two days in a row to get this soup).

The sandwich on the other hand was just good.  Nothing spectacular about it.  My general complaint with most hot sandwiches is that they could be hotter (don’t just toast the bread and broil the cheese down, heat up the meat too, geez!), and this sandwich was no exception.  The sweet potato fries were excellent as usual – sweet, crispy and chock full of yam.  The sweet potato fries are magnet that keeps pulling me back to Zebulon, I could eat them everyday and every night for the rest of my life.

Overall, a good lunch.

Zebulon
83 Natoma Street
(between 2nd St & James Lick Fwy)
San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 975-5705
www.zebulonsf.com (this place is now closed)

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This soup is a great afternoon snack.

Eddie Rickenbacker’s
133 2nd St
(between Minna St & Natoma St)
San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 543-3498

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For a started I ordered a cup of Tom Kha Gai aka, a spicy hot sweet coconut soup with chicken. There are usually pieces of hard lemongrass in the soup along with the mushrooms but on this particular evening there were some new unidentifiable mystery pieces floating around inside. The little pieces were so hard they felt like little rocks in my mouth so I picked them all out (see photo)… and later found out it is called Galanga, a spicy thai relative of the ginger family. It is harder, firmer and more dense than normal ginger. To find out more about galanga, click here.

I don’t care what other people say, I love Osha, and Osha gets DISCO FRIES!!

Osha
149 2nd St
(between Minna St & Natoma St)
San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 278-9991
www.oshathai.com

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