Leslie Sbrocco: Seasonal Cal-Mex fusion in Albany.
Vanessa Guerra: The blueberry pancakes.
Kristie Ramirez: Huge.
Vanessa Guerra: Huge.
Kristie Ramirez: And wood-fired favorites in San Mateo. I kind of went a little exotic with mine.
Leslie Sbrocco: Just ahead on “Check, Please! Bay Area.”
Cecilia Phillips: Ooh, look at this. I’m never going to have anything more delicious.
[music playing]
Leslie Sbrocco: Hi, I’m Leslie Sbrocco. Welcome to “Check Please! Bay Area,” the show where Bay Area residents review and talk about their favorite restaurants. Now we have three guests and each one recommends one of their favorite spots, and the other two go check them out to see what they think. Joining me at the Check Please table today are culture curator JG, HR manager Vanessa Guerra, and graphic designer and illustrator Kristie Ramirez. Welcome, everyone.
Vanessa Guerra: Hi, Leslie.
Kristie Ramirez: How are you doing?
Leslie Sbrocco: Let’s kick things off with Kristie’s go-to brunch spot. Offering a blend of both California and Latin specialties, fresh mimosas, and a sunny patio to soak it all in, it’s the perfect place when this mom of two under two needs her own “timeout.” Located in Albany’s Solano Avenue district, it’s Brezo.
[music playing]
Heather Mervine: Brezo is a family restaurant where we serve up a lot of just homey meals with a little Californian and Latin mix that makes people happy. Our menu here is a mix between me, a Californian, and him coming from Mexico.
Heather Mervine: Who had chilaquiles?
Heather Mervine: I grew up on a farm, so we wanted to make everything fresh and everything from scratch. We use recipes that I’ve been developing for a long time. Like the pancakes, we make a blueberry butter for the top, so it’s like blueberry on blueberry. The polenta is like from when I was a kid, my dad used to make me polenta for breakfast. We like to cook it slow and low, and we put lots of cheese.
Hector Hernandez: Lots.
Heather Mervine: The yummy part.
Hector Hernandez: Yeah.
Customer: Wow. It’s so cheesy.
Heather Mervine: On the Latin side, we have gordita, the sopes, chilaquiles — that’s more Mexico City. My favorite thing to cook is the braised lamb. It will take hours and hours to cook, but as soon as they come out, it’s the best thing ever. And then we have a little Latin. The chimichurri goes on top of it, and it’s like, that’s all the combination of us.
Heather Mervine: Here at Brezo, we welcome everybody. You can come for a date or you can come with your kids. We put a lot of love in our food.
Heather Mervine: I love to put smiles on people’s faces. I couldn’t think of doing anything else. I think we’re, like, a really good team.
Leslie Sbrocco: Now, Kristie, what’s unique about Brezo is it is this mixture of cultures, isn’t it?
Kristie Ramirez: Yeah, definitely. You know, I love breakfast and I like the idea of using two different types of, kind of, my favorite food. I’ve gone all around the Bay Area trying to look for the best chilaquiles, and I think that they’re here. It’s a huge portion. It’s a perfect tomatillo sauce, the chips are always crisp. What makes it slightly different is they drizzle their own homemade salsa roja. So you’re kind of getting a mix of the two best worlds — the red sauce and the green sauce. I love ordering it with the egg over easy. Once you pop that little yolk and it kind of runs in, it adds like a buttery texture to the chilaquiles. So good. And it was kind of a girls day out, and so we had mimosas. I specifically had the peach cider mimosa. It was really light, bubbly, with a hint of the peach. I really enjoyed it and I think it complemented the chilaquiles really well.
Leslie Sbrocco: And it’s nice to have a cider.
Kristie Ramirez: Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Leslie Sbrocco: What did you have when you went?
Vanessa Guerra: I had the woodland omelet.
Leslie Sbrocco: Okay.
Vanessa Guerra: Vegetarian, full of provolone and lots and lots of grilled mushrooms, spinach, some garlic. It came with a nice portion of home fries and it was really delicious. It was huge. The portions are huge and so it was hard to finish. I only got through about half of that portion.
Leslie Sbrocco: So you get two meals.
Vanessa Guerra: I got two meals. Yeah, exactly.
Leslie Sbrocco: All right, JG, what was your experience?
JG: The staff was really, really friendly. The food was amazing. I actually went for a dinner and they have a salad called the calico salad. It’s like a southwestern, romaine lettuce, it has a nice zesty chili lime dressing to it, and it had a right amount of crunch to it. I wish it had more chips because who doesn’t like a good chip? And a little bit more avocado, but the overall salad was really good. And I had the lamb shank which was super fall-of-the-bone tender. It had a polenta that was nice and creamy. It had a nice, interesting sauce to it.
Kristie Ramirez: You can never go wrong with their Mexican dishes as well. You know, when I’ve gone, their gorditas — they are handmade tortillas and they’re stuffed with meat, they have beans in them, their housemade salsa, cheese, lettuce. Very, very good.
Leslie Sbrocco: Very good. Did you have anything else? Did you try anything else?
Vanessa Guerra: Well, we ordered a lot of food while we were there, so my sister got a cheeseburger that I had complete entrée envy over because it was on this huge brioche bun with tons of fun vegetables on it, bacon, cheese dripping off of it, huge burger. She could only get through about half, and then she got a really lovely side salad full of fresh veggies, garbanzo beans, cucumbers, and a delightful vinaigrette that was perfectly bright on the salad. Perfect accompaniment to that burger. And then my uncle, he got the blueberry pancakes, which were like–
Kristie Ramirez: Huge.
Vanessa Guerra: Huge!
Leslie Sbrocco: The size of your plate.
Vanessa Guerra: Yeah, the size of the plate, and there’s three of them. They had the blueberries folded into the batter, which was great. Tons of blueberries on top. I think it even had blueberries in the butter, which was a nice touch. And we got the Kahlua banana French toast, and that was also a fan favorite. It was nice and crispy, bananas — sweet, kind of that flambé style, and it was delicious.
Kristie Ramirez: One thing I also did want to note that we had the scones. Oh, my God. They are so good. The scone itself was very fluffy. Cut in half, it was filled with a cream. And then it had a really nice preserve on it. And I felt like it was a great balance, because the acidity of that preserve really cut through that sweetness and heaviness of that cream.
Leslie Sbrocco: Now come on, JG, you’re getting a little breakfast envy over there, aren’t you?
JG: I’m not an egg fan, actually, so I’m super limited with breakfast. So, like, I didn’t know that chilaquiles was that fire. I would get that without the egg ’cause I’ve done that before. I wish I would have definitely got the chilaquiles, ’cause now the way you explain it, I’m like, okay.
Leslie Sbrocco: Well, you can always go back.
JG: Oh yeah, definitely. For sure.
Leslie Sbrocco: You can always go back.
JG: And like I said, the staff was really cool. Definitely nice to know that there’s scones there.
Vanessa Guerra: We were super disappointed ’cause I wanted to try that scone, but they sold out, so it must be very popular.
Kristie Ramirez: Oh, yeah. It’s so good.
Vanessa Guerra: Oh, I’m sure.
Kristie Ramirez: Go back for that.
Vanessa Guerra: Yeah, we’ll have to do that.
Leslie Sbrocco: All right, if you would like to try Brezo, it’s located on Solano Avenue in Albany. The average multi-course tab per person without drinks is around $65.
Leslie Sbrocco: JG’s local favorite dishes up Southern classics paired with an equally warm side of hospitality. Whenever he’s craving the chef’s signature fried chicken and rich mac and cheese, he heads to San Francisco’s historic Fillmore District, home to Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement.
[music playing]
Fernay McPherson: Soul food can be any type of cuisine. It’s just what resonates to people in their spirit, in their souls. It’s comfort food, you know? So I want people to feel that comfort when they’re eating it. Minnie is my great aunt, and Lillie Bell was my grandmother. Everything is food that I learned to cook from them with just little twists and spins that I learned over the years. I grew up going to church, and after church it was fried chicken, you know, dinners that people wanted. So I wanted to do something that just really resonated with my childhood, something that was scratch-made. But I also wanted to put a little twist on it, so that’s where my rosemary fried chicken came from. We have all your classic Southern sides, which is collard greens, mac and cheese, cornbread, which is my favorite. So we’re going to put that brown butter in slowly so that we don’t cook our eggs. The brown butter in our cornbread just adds another layer of flavor that really has people thinking, “What is this?” Like, what’s in this cornbread? I hear people say, “I don’t even like cornbread, but this is some good cornbread.” The Fillmore is the neighborhood that I was born and raised in. My great aunt Minnie and my grandmother, when they migrated here, they saw a different Fillmore. The fact that I am able to open up this Black-owned restaurant in a historic, Black-owned neighborhood, to be here and represent that bygone era is just so important.
Customer: How you doing?
Fernay McPherson: When people come in here and they tell me how proud they are, how they have a space that feels like home to them, it makes me feel good that I’m able to do that. I’m here. I’m home. I appreciate everybody. Thank you.
Leslie Sbrocco: Now, JG, have you been a fan of Chef Fernay for a long time?
JG: For a good moment, um, she was actually in Emeryville prior to, at the public market. That’s kind of, like, where I found it randomly one day. But honestly, I think that it has a different flavor and just energy coming from the Fillmore District because of, historically, where she’s from. It’s just one of those places where you just feel at home. And the rosemary fried chicken is something that’s just — I think is very unique with the brine. Leg and thighs is my go-to. So sometimes four is not enough, unfortunately, so I usually get like an eight piece. They have a house hot sauce that they make. It has a nice, like–
Leslie Sbrocco: Kick to it.
JG: It’s just a nice kick to it, yeah. Like a nice kick. And they come with sides whether you get the four or the eight, And the yams has a nice sweet nutmeg, cinnamon, whatever it is, that I just imagine that yams would be ’cause growing up my grandma used to put vanilla extract, cinnamon, and nutmeg in it. And just like a big hug, actually.
Leslie Sbrocco: All right, now tell me about that mac and cheese that goes with it.
JG: The mac and cheese is definitely her signature.
Leslie Sbrocco: Yeah.
JG: And that’s one of the few places that I enjoy the mac and cheese in public because of the layers of cheese and how gooey it is.
Kristie Ramirez: Yeah, so I have to agree. The mac and cheese was super cheesy, very creamy. But for me, the braised greens were the star of the show. Perfect seasoning, the broth was really good, like, I basically killed that by myself.
Vanessa Guerra: Those were the best collard greens, braised collard greens I’ve ever had. They were delicious. We got the pickled vegetables also, They house make them, it’s in a quick pickle. And there is four or five different kinds of vegetables in there that really also helped cut the richness of the chicken, along with the richness of the collard greens and the hot sauces and everything. It was really great on the palate. Loved those.
Leslie Sbrocco: Did you get fried chicken?
Vanessa Guerra: We did. We got the fried chicken and the wings in a hot honey sauce. And the wings were a huge portion of these, like, six or eight dinosaur-sized wings. And when we saw those come out first, I thought, “Oh dear, we probably over-ordered again.” And we only got through about half of those before we started moving on to the four-piece chicken that we ordered.
Leslie Sbrocco: Right, and fried chicken for you?
Kristie Ramirez: You know, I’m not a huge fried chicken fan and that place made me a fan.
Leslie Sbrocco: Okay, there we go. High praise.
Kristie Ramirez: I have to say that rosemary, the seasoning, it’s just so unique to me. Also, we’re, like, hot sauce people, so we have to add hot sauce. But, you know, the chicken can stand alone without the hot sauce also.
Leslie Sbrocco: All right, and did you have anything to drink?
Kristie Ramirez: Yeah, I actually had the sangria and it was really refreshing, light, paired really well with that chicken.
JG: I like that their wine menu is from Black vendors as well, which is pretty cool. That kind of encompasses that Fillmore energy.
Leslie Sbrocco: All right. Did you have dessert?
Kristie Ramirez: I did, I had their banana pudding, which was kind of like a crème brûlée. It was the fusion that I didn’t know that I needed so badly in my life. Me and my husband were, like, fighting for the last bite of it. You know, it had that beautiful crème brûlée that you crack into. It was, like, super creamy. Never experienced a dessert like that.
Vanessa Guerra: We had the sour cream pound cake that had a caramel drizzle on it, and some homemade whipped cream on the side. Came with a bunch of strawberries and it was so good. It wasn’t too sweet. It wasn’t too dense. It was perfect and kind of had to hide it at the very, very back of my fridge when I got home so nobody else would gobble it down later that night but me. So, delicious. Highly–
Leslie Sbrocco: Had no calories either.
Vanessa Guerra: Zero calories.
JG: I don’t know if you guys got the cornbread.
Vanessa Guerra: The cornbread was good.
JG: The honey butter cornbread is definitely where it’s at, too. I’m not a big dessert fan personally, so I usually opt out of desserts.
Leslie Sbrocco: Well, you got cornbread and yams.
JG: I got yams. I think I got enough sugar for the day. And the vibe there, to me, is what you think of the Harlem of the West would be. I think it brings a different light into a neighborhood that really needs some light on it, and it has a really historical, happy thing to say about culture. So that’s the reason why I like going there, ’cause for me, it’s nostalgic. It has great music, great people, and it brings people together in a way that I think people in San Francisco should be together.
Vanessa Guerra: I mean, the vibe in there is really comfortable.
Leslie Sbrocco: It’s about hospitality.
Vanessa Guerra: Hospitality all the way. It was a wonderful little restaurant. It’s small, but it felt very big and a lot of spirit. And the personality of it was great.
Leslie Sbrocco: All right, I think you got some fans, JG.
Vanessa Guerra: Yeah.
Leslie Sbrocco: If you would like to try Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement, It’s located on Fillmore Street in San Francisco, and the average multi-course tab per person without drinks is around $45.
Leslie Sbrocco: Vanessa says any way you slice it, her restaurant serves some of the Bay Area’s most delectable wood-fired pizzas. But that’s just a small part of the draw for her. The high ceilings, lively bar, and family-friendly vibe, all make for a great night out, no matter what the occasion. Located in San Mateo, it’s Rise Woodfire.
[music playing]
Omid Zahedi: The cuisine at Rise Woodfire is Italian American comfort food, as well as American comfort food. All the things that we grew up on with a chef’s touch.
Susan Payrovi: We decided to call this Rise because Omid has been working on his dough for seven years.
Omid Zahedi: There’s four flours that make up the pizza dough. It has wheat germ in it, rye in it, it also has whole wheat, and then it has a high-powered, high-gluten flour. This dough has already seen four rises. The fifth rise is when it goes in the oven, and that’s the final rise. You can make a pretty good pizza at home, but there’s no competing with giant 5,000 pound brick oven from Naples, Italy. We use almond wood. It just adds another layer of flavor. This is our prosciutto slicer. It is actually hand-cranked. We want it to go nice and slow and give us paper thin prosciutto. My love affair with the menu or any individual item kind of rotates in and out. Our prime rib is awesome. Sometimes I’m all about just a straight-up Napoli pizza, other times it’s all about the wings.
Susan Payrovi: I actually love the chicken. It has a really good flavor to it. You know, the white meat is great, the dark meat is great, and the different sauces. A big hit is the chimichurri.
Omid Zahedi: We love being here at the train station. The ambiance of this place with the 40-foot ceilings, I think we got the largest, tallest bar, maybe in the peninsula. [Laughs] One of the funny things that happens here is sometimes the conductors will give us a phone call and place a pizza order, and then we’ll have it ready for them, and then they’ll just run in and throw a 20 down, and grab it and jump back into the train and take off. I’ve eaten thousands of pizzas and I’m still not tired of it. Yummy! There’s a lot of things to disagree about, but pizza has no enemies. [Laughs]
All: Cheers!
Leslie Sbrocco: Now, Vanessa, they do a very large menu here, don’t they?
Vanessa Guerra: They do. Pretty eclectic menu.
Leslie Sbrocco: And is that one of the reasons you love it so much?
Vanessa Guerra: I do. My daughter is a vegan, my son’s a full carnivore, and there’s something on the menu for all of us there. We always start with the prosciutto and arugula pizza. Their crust is nice and chewy and especially love the delicate slicing on the prosciutto. I love the meatballs. The meatballs are absolutely delicious. They’re soft, they’re in a very savory, robust meat sauce. It comes with a very delicate crostini. It’s a perfect accompaniment to the richness of the meatballs.
Kristie Ramirez: I actually started also with meatballs, and I have to say that I loved them. I feel like that tomato sauce was what made that meatball.
Vanessa Guerra: Isn’t it good?
Kristie Ramirez: It’s so good. You can just scoop up that sauce. And the meatballs are perfectly seasoned.
JG: Unfortunately, I didn’t have the best meatball experience.
Vanessa Guerra: Oh, no.
JG: The bread was nice and warm, but the meatballs was kind of lukewarm, kind of cold. And I know that’s something that’s fixable, and I did get pizza. I actually went with the back rib and arugula pizza. The white sauce was really good. The beef rib was super tender, the crust was nice and chewy, and it’s actually a good shareable pizza for like two people.
Leslie Sbrocco: And did you wash that down with anything?
JG: I actually had a Mezcal club soda ’cause that’s usually my default cocktail. Their mezcal was a really good well, two limes, that’s like my Sprite — a spicy Sprite. That’s kind of what I rock with.
Kristie Ramirez: I actually had the Lovely Locomotive. I thought it was great. It’s a gin-based drink with a peach puree. The gin wasn’t so strong, and it paired well with that puree. I got the lemon pesto shrimp pizza. I kind of went a little exotic with mine. And it was beautiful. It was really, really bright. It was garnished with this, like, dried lemon on top, it had chili flakes, and when you would bite into it, it had whole garlic that would kind of like pop in your mouth and give you kind of this sweetness.
Leslie Sbrocco: All right, and they’ve got a whole selection of grilled items, right?
Vanessa Guerra: Oh, they do. They have prime rib Thursday through Sunday, they have Scottish salmon, chicken, and that lovely wood-fired rotisserie.
Kristie Ramirez: My husband got the Pitman chicken. I had a few bites. It was extremely tender. But the thing that got my attention was actually the coleslaw. It had like a horseradish sauce. So it was a very bold flavor. And my husband said that was probably the favorite thing that he got.
Leslie Sbrocco: Was the coleslaw?
Kristie Ramirez: Was the coleslaw, yeah.
Leslie Sbrocco: Okay.
Vanessa Guerra: Their hummus is also delicious. They make their own pita bread, they put the hummus with Persian cucumbers, feta, some tomatoes to give it a little texture.
Leslie Sbrocco: Nice. Did you have any dessert?
Vanessa Guerra: Celebration cake. We had the chocolate celebration cake. And it is wonderful. Nice chocolatey flavor. I think they put a little bit of coffee or espresso in there to balance out the richness of the cake. It’s served with a scoop of ice cream, and we’re usually fighting over finishing up that.
JG: I got the chocolate chip cookie brownie situation. Yeah, that’s delicious. I wish the cookie was sweeter, but the texture, the brownie, and everything was definitely nice.
Leslie Sbrocco: And what about the atmosphere?
Kristie Ramirez: I love the atmosphere. The restaurant itself is really lovely and it’s right there next to the train.
JG: What makes it unique is actually the space. The patio is really beautiful. There’s a lot of natural light that’s inside. My biggest disappointment is I was just kind of standing there for a little bit, and it was really not that busy. And I’m, like, I’m just waiting to sit down.
Leslie Sbrocco: Was it an off night?
JG: Could have been an off night.
Vanessa Guerra: We’ve always had great customer service and friendly waiters.
JG: But that was just my personal experience, but I would definitely give it another chance for sure. I think it’s a very good large group setting spot because the menu is so vast, and I love how it’s close to public transit too, you know what I mean, and it’s free parking. You know, I live in San Francisco. Free parking is not the norm. Some free 90 minute parking, or I could take Caltrain and pull up and it’s right there. So it’s easy for people to get to as well.
Leslie Sbrocco: Excellent. If you would like to try Rise Woodfire, it’s located on B Street in San Mateo, and the average multi-course tab per person without drinks is around $35.
Cecilia Phillips: And now reporter Cecilia Phillips has more Bay Area bites you’ve just got to try.
♪♪
Cecilia Phillips: So we’re here in San Jose at the Japantown Farmers Market, and the Obon Festival is happening. But this is a really awesome place to visit year round. What makes this area so special?
Jennifer Rast: It’s the most historic of the three Japantowns in the United States. We’re tiny, but mighty. We’ve got a lot of legacy businesses. My family’s been in Japantown for five generations doing agriculture in the Valley, so agriculture means everything to us. The Obon Festival is kind of like our version of Day of the Dead. It celebrates our ancestors. We dance, we have games, and then some foods over there as well.
Cecilia Phillips: Excellent food.
Jennifer Rast: Yeah.
♪♪
Cecilia Phillips: Mogu mogu means, like, “num num” in English. Like chowing down sound.
Jennifer Kimura: Like, nyom-nyom.
Cecilia Phillips: Nyom-nyom. Yes. So then I’m hoping that your food is yum-yum, right?
Jennifer Kimura: Very yum yum.
Cecilia Phillips: Okay.
Jennifer Kimura: We do make a beef curry sando, which is Wagyu beef with curry sauce that I make, a little bit of potato, one with the cheddar cheese, one with red cabbage pickle.
Cecilia Phillips: Whoa! Delicious. Mogu mogu. Yum yum.
Cecilia Phillips: So you’ve been doing the Obon and doing tempura for 20 years.
Wayne Kogura: Close to 30 years now.
Cecilia Phillips: Oh my gosh. Hot, fresh, fried food.
Wayne Kogura: That’s what we’re talking about.
Cecilia Phillips: It is not cool here in San Jose.
Wayne Kogura: No, no, no, but we keep it cool. We got the good music going, we got the good refreshments. Yeah, we’re good. So today what we’re cooking is the tempura. Onions, we got green beans, we got zucchini, some yams, and one shrimp on top, and then there’s your dipping sauce.
Wayne Kogura and Cecilia Phillips: Cheers.
Wayne Kogura: Cheers it. Top.
Cecilia Phillips: So it’s light, airy, not too heavy.
Wayne Kogura: Nope.
Cecilia Phillips: Not oily.
Wayne Kogura: Yep.
Cecilia Phillips: It’s delicious.
Cecilia Phillips: So we’re at the Obon Festival, and it’s all about remembering ancestors. Do you have anything that comes to your mind when you think of, like, ancestral dishes, family history?
Kristie Tam: That would be our guava cake. My grandparents owned Aki’s Bakery in Japantown and they were here for many years. So we brought our guava cake, and this is what Aki’s Bakery was known for. And we do the same thing just with a little twist.
Cecilia Phillips: Ooh, look at this. The cake is so light. I’m never going to have anything more delicious.
Kristie Tam: This is Imagawayaki, a Japanese pancake sandwich with red bean paste in the middle.
Cecilia Phillips: So this is a very traditional dish? Is it a dessert? Is it like a breakfast? Is it a snack?
Kristie Tam: I’ve had it at all times of the day, but we’ll call it a dessert just because of how sweet it is.
Cecilia Phillips: Mmm! They smell so good. These are hot.
Kristie Tam: They are.
Both: Cheers.
Cecilia Phillips: Oh, my gosh, it’s so good.
Kristie Tam: Fluffy.
Cecilia Phillips: It’s so fluffy. And the red bean paste has only a little bit of sweetness. It’s actually pretty savory.
Kristie Tam: Yeah.
Cecilia Phillips: Half dessert, half you can have at any time.
Kristie Tam: Yeah. I want these all the time actually.
Both laugh
Leslie Sbrocco: I have to thank my great guests on this week’s show. JG, who raves about the rosemary fried chicken at Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement in San Francisco. Vanessa Guerra, lover of all things smoky and charred at Rise Woodfire in San Mateo. And Kristie Ramirez, who dreams of mimosas on the patio at Brezo in Albany. Join us next time when three more guests will recommend their favorite spots right here on “Check Please! Bay Area.” I’m Leslie Sbrocco, and I’ll see you then.
All: Cheers!
Leslie Sbrocco: Cheers. I hope you had fun.
[Conversation continues indistinctly]
Man: The temple here is a religious center. It’s one of the largest in the United States.
Cecilia Phillips: Tell me about the little tags that are hanging around. What do those mean?
Man: People make a tag during the festival time honoring their ancestor or someone that they’ve lost.
Cecilia Phillips: Are there any specific foods that you think about when you think about family?
