To see my previous post of my tour through the San Francisco Bay area, click here.

Sunday was Mother’s Day and I was wanting to go to a solid Indian place as I had my reservations that Indian food in Indianapolis was sub par.  I was partially right.

Amber India
http://www.amber-india.com/

Buffet during the week at Amber is $16, on Mother’s Day it was $30.   $30 was a little pricey for a buffet, but I thought that I would give it a try since I can easily eat $30 of food.

The interior was slightly modern, but still comfortable.  The buffet was a nice size, smaller than Vegas but a lot bigger than Ci Ci’s.   Did I just say Ci Ci’s?!   Ha.   Anyway, here are a couple of shots:

They had smoked salmon and a guy that was making the mini pancakes that are in the center that had green onion and veggies.   I wish that I had more details, but I was extremely hung over and hungry, so I didn’t take many notes.  Sue me.  I feel like I am writing reviews for the IBJ

The butter chicken was liquid gold and I found a few items that I liked more than I thought.   Everything was good at Amber.  I found everything here to be a touch more refined and tastier than Indian buffets in Indiana.

Would I Buy It Again?   Nah. Everything was good, but the next time I go for Indian in SF, I think that I want a more hole in the wall experience.  However, if I worked close to it, I would be really fat.

We then decided to head over the bridge to Berkeley to kick around, etc.  Since we just had a full Indian buffet, we were not that hungry, except you can always find room for tacos and…pizza by the slice!!

Gioia Pizzeria
http://www.gioiapizzeria.com/

Guess what?  They are open on Sundays!   Anyway… (Btw, take note of all the different colors of garbage cans in Berkeley.  I really didn’t know how to throw anything away there….is this compost….who knows?!)

$3.50 a slice and I went with the standard pepperoni and then tried a combo with spicy sausage and spinach.  Both were outstanding.  I liked the larger slices of pepperoni and it had great coverage.   The spicy sausage was heavy-handed with paprika and reminded me more of chorizo than a fennel-y Italian sausage.  Who cares, it was mighty tasty and I cashed out both slices.  Keep in mind that we are eating this forty minutes later than the Amber India pictures above.  Me = eating stud.

Would I Buy It Again?  Sure. Not on my must have list, by a darn good pizzeria when you are in the area.

Beard Poppa’s
http://beardpapasf.com/

So, I needed dessert at this point so I stopped in at Beard Poppa’s.  It was my only chain during the weekend, but it was odd ball enough that I had to try it.  The blue and yellow branding reminded me of IKEA and the minimalist interior extended that thought.   It was interesting because they had the puffs lying around in an open bin and then they pick one out for you and fill it with creme with this huge machine.  I had to giggle thinking about the metaphor here and was this part of their marketing scheme.   Yes, I am inmature.

Would I Buy It Again?  No.  I felt violated and it wasn’t that good.

At this point I was in a food coma and headed back to SF for a nap.   When I woke up, we wanted to try a new SF hotspot:

Flour and Water
http://flourandwater.com/home/

They open at 5:30 and half the restaurant is reservation and the other is first come, first serve.  At 5:05, there was a line of twenty people.  I thought to myself, would this happen in Indy?  Doubt it.  The majority of people just don’t get that excited about food here.  Need proof, we only have 285 people following us on Twitter!   We would be huge out there.   Ha ha.  Back to reviewing…

Home made pasta, thin crust pizza all made by extreme hipsters.  You have to check out their website.

I started off with the above sardine app $11.   Sardines are pretty popular in SF and if you are into salty oily fishes, you might be a bigger fan than you think.  The bad news here is that they left some scales on the fish.  I quickly sent that back and got a new one.   The fennel salad and lemon aioli brightened up the fish, but honestly I didn’t like this.

Next up was (without a picture) Bone Marrow Pizza with fontina, rabe leaves, and horseradish $16.  I love all of those ingredients, but put together on a pizza and it was flat out awful.  It just didn’t work and I couldn’t put my finger on it.  I did like the extra layer of fontina.  It is a great pizza cheese.

The main course was mixed roast pork with roasted asparagus, and morels $24.

The roasted pork consisted of pork belly a pork rib and loin.  This was so salty I almost sent it back…and I like salty food!  I expected the pork belly to be salty, but everything else was as well.  This dish confirmed that they are a jack of all trades, master of none.

Would I Buy It Again?  No, never. One of the worst meals that I have had in SF.  It is amazing they are booked solid for eight weeks straight and a thirty minute line out the door considering the food was so bad.

Overall, a pretty average day for SF food.  I didn’t find anything that I loved and I ended the night on a sour note from Four + Water.

For the next installment, I head to Napa.

-wibia

Tags: amber india, asparagus, beard poppa's, butter chicken, flour and water, Food, gioia pizzeria, Indian, Pizza, roast pork, sardines, smoked salmon

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 at 6:00 am and is filed under Food Reviews, Location: San Francisco, CA, On The Road. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.