iScream

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They hosted something at the elementary school which everyone but me went to. Apparently it was terrific.

I stopped there myself and got a cone with salted caramel and Mexican chocolate and couldn't've been happier. This is an ice cream that can compete with all the other excellent ice-cream joints in the East Bay.

Troy

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 Solano's newest addition is Troy's third location. Can't speak to the other two spots, but Solano's is pretty great Greek food.

We ordered an appetizer platter (meza) with a mix of olives, eggplant much, falafel, pita, dolmas, hummus---look at the menu---and garlic fries to start. Good garlic fries. Not as good as Saturn's but way better than the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. And, note, it was a huuuge basket of fries. Don't order two.

For dinner, I ordered the Greek Burger Wrap. And I'm glad I did. It wasn't terribly large, but it was the size I wanted. I liked the mix of meat to vegetables. I did add a mix of ketchup and their garlic-jalapeno sauce to the meat as I ate, but it wasn't strictly necessary.

Lady Steed ordered the Gyros Platter. Like mine, her meat was beef and lamb ground together, but hers were panfried in strips---it wasn't obviously "ground" even though the spices were throughout and the texture was even. The tzatziki sauce was good---tasted almost like it was made from sour cream rather than yogurt because of its creaminess. The grilled vegetables were so good she didn't let me try them. The zucchini was particularly good with the eggplant close behind and the tomato taking up the rear.

We went around six on a Friday and it was quite busy. We didn't wait because we sat at the bar, but almost immediately after our arrival, they were giving out wait times.

We'll go back again.

Sweet Basil Thai

. With the kids out of town, Lynsey and I are back on the Solano trail and a trip to Sweet Basil Thai. I ordered drunken beef; Lady Steed ordered kang kua moo; we shared kao pode tod. Our mains came with salad and soup. The salad was simple, looked like iceberg and carrot out of a bag, but the dressing was delicious. The soup was, I believe, a simple miso (or whatever the Thai equivalent is) but also delicious. The corn cakes I imagined would be like cornbread but no: pretty much whole corn somehow glued together. The accompanying cucumber relish was also tasty with a sauce even sweeter than the salad dressing. The cakes were good but not particularly memorable. Of our two main dishes, I preferred mine. First, the meat was more tender, but primarily, what I loved what the unavoidable Thainess of it all. Lime leaves and cilantro and ginger and all those other magical ingredients that combine to make Thai food so distinctive. Since first having Thai food early in our marriage and being blown away by the new palette, we went through several years of trying out every Thai place's pad thai and using them as a gauge of comparison. But you'll notice no pad thai today. I'm a bit surprised myself. But the fact is we couldn't really compare it to previous pad thai anymore. Since moving here (and beginning Eating Solano) we've been rather avoiding Thai food. It felt time to try something else, and avoiding Thai moved from a temporary thing to a near permanent thing. So while we can't compare so well any more to previous Thai experiences, I think you can say we've been reconverted. I'll let Lady Steed record thoughts on her dish in the comments.

Khana Peena

Not sure on the exact date that we went to Khana Peena, I think it was back in April, probably over Spring Break. We used a Living Social coupon.

I honestly cannot remember what we ordered here. But I do recall that we really liked everything we ordered. We liked the space as well and next time would like to sit in one of their romantic looking booths. We noticed that most of the people coming in were partaking of the buffet. When we come again we will be trying out the buffet as well. I think we went in right around the time they opened for lunch and we were the first customers  but once it hit noon the restaurant got very busy with all the people using the buffet, which indicates to me that buffet must be very good--it is certainly a good deal.

We will be coming back here, it was very good Indian food.

Rivoli

On April 3rd we suddenly found ourselves without the kids and Theric was able to get a reservation at Rivoli that same evening. Rivoli has been one of the Bay Area's top 100 hundred restaurants since 2004, so we both had very high expectations.

It's been a while since we were there but we will try to recall what we thought:

I had the "portabella mushroom fritters, aïoli, parmesan, arugula, caper vinaigrette" for my starter. It was so delicious and definitely my favorite thing from the entire meal. Should we ever return to Rivoli, I will be ordering this again, and maybe only this. The presentation was great too--I wish I had taken a picture. Theric had some sort of sea food bisque. He says that it was good, but wasn't very impressed.

Main dishes: I had rack of lamb. Very flavorful, tender and cooked to my liking (rare). My main complaint with this dish is that it is difficult to eat in a restaurant setting. You really need to be able to pick up the bones and chew on them a bit in order to get all the meat, which I did not do--it would have been inappropriate in the setting of this very nice restaurant. So, I felt like the portion on this dish was small because I had to leave a lot of meat on the bones. I was still hungry after finishing my lamb. On the side were perfectly roasted new potatoes--crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, seasoned with garlic and rosemary, delicious.
Theric got a slow braised pot roast with homemade buckwheat spaetzle and veggies. He liked it fine but wasn't overly impressed.  The roast was tender and flavorful, the veggies tasty. I thought the speatzle noodles were really delicious and kept stealing them off of his plate. 

We did not order dessert, but the offerings were very tempting. 

The atmosphere at Rivoli is very nice. The back wall of the dinning room is all glass and looks out onto a pretty garden filled with shade loving plants. The service was very attentive (my water was kept full, questions about dishes were answered in a friendly manner and they even brought us extra bread while we waited) and the presentation of each plate was lovely. Rivoli is fancier and far more expensive than most places we go out to--it would be a good place to go on a special occasion. 

Rivoli was very good, but, except for the portobello fritters, we were not overly impressed. We had high expectations and I would say that they were not met. Everything was very good, so I suppose the main problem was that Rivoli did not live up to their reputation. 

Theric's brief review: Everything we had at Rivoli was good but nothing we had at Rivoli convinced me it was worthy of being one of the Bay Area's top 100 restaurants. It was all quite good, but not impressive or overly interesting. I didn't feel like I got my money's worth.

Places Eaten in brief review 2013

Gordo's : Still the best burrito.
Zachary's: Great pizza. Two X-large Zachary's were far more than our family needed. One had flat crust the other deep dish. We liked both.
Suzette:  Had savory crepes, which were fine but the dessert crepes were fantastic. If we go again we will skip the savory crepes and just get the dessert crepes.
Everest Cafe: Best service of anyone on Solano, they are so nice there! But the food was just ok.