Schubert's Bakery

521 Clement Street (On 7th Street), San Francisco, CA

I had the worst cheesecake ever yesterday. I was on Clement Street, doing some shopping around -- Green Apple Books is amazing and Kamei Household Wares has beautiful and affordable Japanese dinnerware -- it was one of our “explore different neighborhoods in San Francisco” afternoons and after lunch at Ma Ma San, we walked down Clement for some Bubble Tea but we walked past Schubert’s and I can’t resist bakeries. The place looked really nice, typical neighborhood bakery, cakes that looked too good to eat, seniors having their tea in tiny tables. They had a range of cakes, but since I’m a purist when it comes to cheesecake, I decided to have the plain cheesecake (they had strawberry and chocolate) for $1.50, and I thought, wow…what a steal! The cake came in a small white paper package tied up with string (yeah, I have “My Favorite Things” tune in my head now) -- totally adorable. Couldn’t wait to have it when I got home and ugh, it was the WORST CHEESECAKE I’ve ever had. It didn’t smell like cheesecake, it was extremely light and airy, it crumbled when my fork cut into it and the base was sponge, not graham biscuits! It was criminal. It was so bad that for the first time in my life, I abandoned a cheesecake. I couldn’t believe how bad the cake was -- it didn’t taste like cheese, didn’t smell like cheese -- so I googled reviews on the bakery and reviewers on Cityssearch were insanely raving about Schubert’s Bakery being the best bakery in SF -- my ass it is. Agreed, the environment very conducive for a afternoon snack, especially with it being on such a noisy street but if that one cheesecake was anything to go by, I wouldn’t recommend that the people who think that Schubert’s Bakery is the best bakery in SF to try Ambrosia on Ocean Avenue, off 19th Avenue. It’s not the best bakery, but it’s very similar to Schubert’s and the cakes are waaaay better.

My vote for best cheesecake still goes to Macy’s Cheesecake Factory and a surprisingly good and cheap cheesecake from Ikea’s food court. How cheap you ask? 99 cents a slice!

Bombay Ice Creamery

552 Valencia Street (at 16th Street), San Francisco, CA
Hours: Tue-Sun 11am-9pm, Closed on Mondays
http://www.bombayicecream.com

Yummy! I love exotic flavored ice-cream! I mean, Zhuang and I have our traditional favorites -- Haagen Dazs green tea, coffee, french vanilla and Ben & Jerry's chocolate chip cookie dough and mint chocolate chip but you can get that anywhere anytime -- so where's the fun in that?

Anyway, I've heard of Bombay Ice Creamery from a while back, on a show on the Food Network and it's this cool little shop in the Mission that serves flavors of ice-cream that many people would cringe at. Zhuang and I, however...well, let's just say the last flavor ice-cream we tried was wasabi ginger from Cold Stone Creamery. We kinda stumbled into Bombay Ice Creamery while on our way to Roxie Theatre. It's easy to miss, although you can't miss the huge Bombay Bazaar right beside it that sells saris, indian bangles and a ton of Indian condiments.

We had a double scoop of Saffron Rose and Masala Tea and mmmmm, it was sooooo good. The double scoop (big scoops too!) was $3.75 while a single scoop was $2.25. It was not too creamy (like Mitchell's - yuck), it was light and very tasty. You would expect a flavor like Saffron to be pretty intimidating and heady when it comes to taste, but the two flavors actually complemented each other really well and I could have probably finished the double scoop on my own. They also had flavors like Cardomon Rose, Pistachio Saffron and Ciku (yes, Ciku - the hairy fruit that looks like a ball).

Bombay Ice Creamery also has kulfi -- a creamy (yogurt?) mixture with condensed milk and garnished with rice noodles and rosewater syrup and lassi. It may sound a little strange to have rice noodles as dessert but if you've tried Gulab Jaamun, you know what I mean.

If you're looking for a savory snack, the big samosas come highly recommended. We were saving our stomachs for Pancho Villa, so we didn't have any, but will definitely go back for it. For a tiny place, Bombay Ice Creamery has a few tables for dining in, so it makes sense that they also serve Chaat, a sorta curry made with yogurt and potatoes.

For complete menu, check out the Bombay Ice Creamery Web site.

Great India Restaurant

6127 Geary Blvd. (between 25th and 26th Avenue), San Francisco, CA 94121
(415) 751-4433

We had the lunch buffet for $6.45 per person excluding tax. The buffet runs from 11am to 3pm. For that price, it was definitely worth it. Taste-wise, the food was above average (think Naan-n-Curry) and although the spread was large, it had a good variety. They had basmati rice, plain naan, chicken tikka masala, lamb curry, tandoori chicken, pakoras, samosas and a about four more dishes that I can’t pronounce nor spell. :) I think it was another chicken dish, a kurma/daal dish, spinach and the yellow-colored cabbage. I liked the chicken tikka masala and Zhuang liked the lamb curry, the tandoori was okay, nothing to shout about. The sauces that they had to accompany the meal was authentic, although I’ve had better mint. They also had the creamy yogurt sauce that goes really well with the mint and tandoori chicken and naan. For dessert, they had gulab jamun. I think it’s a bread ball in syrup -- tastes better than it sounds. Good item to cleanse the palate after a spice-filled attack of curries. I’m a little peeved that we weren’t served fresh naan even though other tables were. They had naan on the buffet spread, but they were also serving baskets of fresh naan to other tables.

Penang Garden Restaurant, San Francisco

728 Washington Street (at Kearny), San Francisco, California
Hours: 11am-10pm (Sun-Thur), 11am-10.30pm (Fri & Sat)
http://www.penanggarden.com

We had dinner at Penang Garden today -- according to my Penangite and KL-ite friends, it’s supposed to the best Malaysian food around. We’ve been disappointed a few times before so we figured, oh well, what’s one more. Haha, Zhuang says that the most difficult food critic to please is definitely a Penangite tasting Malaysian food abroad. The restaurant’s called Penang Garden but it serves Malaysian, Thai and Singaporean (oh pleeeeease!) cuisine. The place is either run by people from KL or Ipoh coz they were speaking Cantonese and the menu was in Cantonese too. Oh, it also had a HILLARIOUSLY misspelled mini menu on the table -- we laughed soooo hard that I absolutely had to nick it and keep it as a souvenir. More later on, now back to the meat of the review!

This is what the two of us had for dinner, total of $29.08 excluding tips:
Lor Bak
Char Koay Teow
Penang Asam Laksa
ABC for dessert

The main dishes were close to authentic and worth the price, at $7.95 each, pretty big portions too. Char Koay Teow -- yummy :) Best Char Koay Teow I’ve had so far outside of Malaysia (the Banana Island in Westlake San Francisco one sucks, apparently the one in Penang Restaurant Chicago is pretty bad too). Only complain was that it wasn’t burnt enough although it did have the wok smell. Oh, also, for true blue Char Koay Teow fans, be forewarned that it doesn’t come with cockle shell “ham” or fried pork fat. Ask for extra spicy if you like it hot. According to Zhuang, the Asam Laksa was very authentic (in the words of a Penangite, “look like drain water, smell like drain water”) but he had to ask for extra prawn paste, “heh kor.” The noodles were good although not as fat as the ones back home. Plenty of fish. Definitely be adventurous and try the Asam Laksa if you’ve never tried it.

Stay away from the Lor Bak coz all we got was Bak (meat), no Lor. Lor is a starchy egg-white deep with soy sauce that gives it a dark brown color. Love it coz it’s sweet and when you dip the salty Lor Bak (meat rolls) into it, yummy! However, that wasn’t the case at Penang Garden. Although for $6.95 we got two small pieces of Lor Bak, one tiny piece of Heh Chi (prawn fritter), one Tau Kua (deep fried chinese tofu), half a century egg with pickled ginger and cucumber. I failed this dish coz it was served without Lor (gasp!) which I think is a sin! You can’t call a dish Lor Bak if you’re only serving it with ONLY chilli sauce (pretty good, not the usual Tupai brand one, it was sweet and slightly vinegar-y.) The Heh Chi was *sticks tongue out* couldn’t taste the shrimp at all! The photo of the Lor Bak had the Lor, but when we asked about the sauce several times, some suspiciously didn’t know what we were talking about (of which we then asked, “You’re not Malaysian, right?” followed by blank nods) and some just said they didn’t have it.

As for the ABC, you have to remember that I’m a Penang girl, which means I was spoilt for choice back home -- it was ais kacang any day at Swatow Lane and cendol at Penang Road -- and the only time I had to resort to ABC was when I had midnight cravings for sweet ice shaving, meaning I would get them at the local mamak. The ABC was okay but I wouldn’t definitely not order it again, coz it wasn’t very impressive (no red beans, no green wormy stuff in cendol and it had a lot of funny colored jelly stuff that were tasteless). Also, Penang Garden has a good variety on the dessert menu, stuff like fried banana with ice-cream, fried ice-cream, mango with glutinous rice, pulut hitam and bubur chacha. There’s also a good dessert place a few blocks up from Penang Garden that has really really good Taufu Fa (sweet tofu) with ginger. I think the place is called Hang Ah and the serving is huge.

Service was good, food came fast and I think they open late coz we arrived at around 9pm and stayed till 10:15pm and they were still serving and taking orders from people who came in around 10:20pm. I would definitely go back to Penang Garden again, it’s cheaper and what we’ve had tastes better than Banana Island in West Lake and nearer than Spice Islands in Palo Alto. There’s parking at the Portsmouth Square Garage near Penang Garden but you can probably find free street parking if you go later than dinner time - we did! I think we’re gonna try something more outrageous on the menu next time. They have a dish that’s called Special Coffee Short Rib, Strawberry Short Rib and a dish that’s supposedly Durian doubled-boiled with Chicken. Interesting...

By the way, the person who wrote the menu or designed the web site needs to take spelling lessons. Just for fun, check out the Penang Garden Web site and see how many bloops they made. I love accidental humor! So far, we’ve found “Directoins,” “Pork, Brief and Lamb” and “King Pork Buff.”

Check out the menu that I "borrowed" from the restaurant at This is a Real Menu. or check out my primary blog.