East Bay A-Z: C is for Chai Thai Noodle

Name: Chai Thai Noodle
Where: East Oakland
Type of Food: Thai
Price: $5-15/entree
More Info

C is for cheap, so this week we took a trip to Chai Thai Noodle in East Oakland. A clean, no-nonsense family establishment, Chai Thai Noodle has an extensive menu of curries, noodle dishes, and various other entrees to choose from. I went straight for the Chan Pad Poo, a Pad Thai-like dish with dungeness crab and egg that was a hit with Yelpers, and ordered it “medium spicy” at the server’s recommendation. The noodles were chewy but not overdone, and the spice made the dish extremely flavorful while imparting the perfect amount of heat (Note: The heat does overpower the crab, so you may consider getting this dish mild). Among our other food selections were the barbecue pork neck (sliced into long strips and tasted not unlike bacon), the tofu tod (avoid), and the pad see ew (highly recommended). Don’t let the location deter you—Chai Thai Noodle is worth the trip for some good, cheap eats.

East Bay A-Z: B is for Bay Wolf

Name: Bay Wolf
Where: Piedmont Avenue, Oakland
Type of Food: New American
Tab (appetizer, entree, non-alcoholic drinks, tip): $84.84 for 2
Dinner Menu

Bay Wolf has a focused menu with a select few ingredients, so you can tell that what you’re going to get is probably going to be, at the very least, fresh. Our server recommended the lamb’s tongue salad with poached egg, capers, and a mustard vinaigrette. The tongue was braised, was incredibly tender, and had an unexpectedly subtle lamb flavor. My entree was a grilled duck with asparagus and green garlic flan (which was more like a pudding, but a tasty and inventive idea). The duck is quite possibly the best I’ve had in a long time, surpassed only by a pan-seared duck I had at Chambers Kitchen in Minneapolis last year. We also had a sausage-stuffed quail with lentils, and a goat cheese ravioli with beets and greens, which were both delicious but could have perhaps used a bit more acid for brightness. Again, we were left with no room for dessert, but some items that caught my eye were the rose-scented rice pudding and mini ice cream sandwiches with chocolate and caramel dipping sauce.

Bay Wolf is a pretty calm and quiet restaurant and has a large, semi-outdoor seating area with shutters that can be opened on mild, sunny days, and heat lamps that can be used on chillier nights. The service is formal, yet unpretentious, and seamless; we hardly noticed when our waters were refilled or our plates were taken away. All in all, highly recommended for a special night out.

East Bay A-Z: A is for A Cote

Name: A Cote
Where: Rockridge, Oakland
Type of Food: French/Mediterranean
Tab (appetizer, entree, tip): $69.72 for 2
Dinner Menu

A Cote specializes in well-executed, simple, rustic French dishes. We started with the wood-roasted mussels with Pernod and an order of pommes frites with lemon aioli. The frites were perfectly crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, and the tender mussels were served with crusty bread for sopping up the Pernod and cream sauce. At the recommendation of our server, we moved on to the grilled pork loin with rhubarb gastrique, and the grilled skirt steak with gigande beans. The pork was lean yet tender and incredibly flavorful, and the skirt steak practically fell apart on my fork. We did not indulge in dessert, but I’ll have to save room next time: lots of restaurants treat dessert as an obligation, but A Cote has put as much thought into their dessert menu as they have their dinner menu.

You’ll have to be a bit more of a social person to enjoy this restaurant. The space is cozy, and not particularly quiet. They also have a large, family-style table in the center of the dining room if you are not averse to sitting next to strangers.

East Bay Eating from A-Z

I work in Sacramento during the week and rarely have time to go out and find good eats. So when I return to the Bay Area on weekends, I have a tendency to fall back on safe, reliably tasty food options that I miss when I’m away. In an effort to change this, and to introduce enthusiastic eaters to the bounty of delicious food that is the East Bay, I am going to devote the next 26 Thursday nights to eating at a new, never-before-tasted place. Restaurants, food stands, taco trucks, Vietnamese, Ethiopian, cheap, expensive… There are absolutely no limits here, except that the place needs to start with the letter of the alphabet designated for that week. I will then write a brief blurb on each eatery and post it here on Fridays.

Since I started last week with A and ate at B this week, I will have two posts for this week. Stay tuned…