Review 2: The Pit

Restuarant:
The Pit
328 W Davie St
Raleigh, NC 27601
(919) 890-4500

I am a big fan of Bobby Flay. I guess it’s the fact that he has a Southwestern expertise in cooking is what makes me drawn to his character. Everything he makes just looks so yummy! My favorite show of his is Throwdown! For those unfamiliar with the show, Bobby basically challenges various ‘experts’ to a cook-off where the main course is what the expert knows. Thus, a variety of food is ‘thrown-down,’ including tacos, burgers, cakes, and other everyday food items. One particular episode featured a rib battle between barbeque master Ed Mitchell and Flay.

Ed’s restaurant is located in Raleigh, North Carolina, which is a way away from here in the bay. Though this website is intended for food in the San Francisco Bay, I happened to be in North Carolina July 4th weekend, thus, I knew I had to check out what the big deal was over good old Southern style barbeque.

Environment:
My California stereotype of Southern dining imagined Ed Mitchell’s Pit filled wall to wall with gaudy Texas style décor. I had images of cattle skulls, horseshoes, and antique rifles adorning the wall. Boy was I wrong. When I first stepped into the pit, I was surprised with how nice it looked inside. If we weren’t stuck in the humid, sweltering heat of the South, I would have sworn I just stepped into some kind of swanky, Santana Row-like hot spot. Just comes to show you that you should have an open mind when trying new things.


Service:I arrived in Raleigh at around 4, and me and my friends headed to the Pit right after the airport at around 5. The staff was very friendly and we got seated right away. Our waiter also checked on us several times to make sure we were okay with our accommodations. Service was fantastic, but I’m guessing it was so awesome because we ate right before rush hour. When we left around 6, I saw lines going out the door, which I can imagine wasn’t very pleasant for someone with an empty stomach.

Price:Dinner at the Pit can get a little pricey, depending on your income. Dinner ranges from 15 to 25 dollars for a good meal, and special cocktails range from 8 to 12 bucks. Their world famous ribs go for 12 bucks for a half rack and 22 bucks for a full rack.

Quantity:The Pit gives a pretty reasonable amount of food. It’s not quite the grand and huge image I had of Southern cooking, but compared to any other type of meal, it will definitely keep you full. The main meat dish comes in big portions, and there are a variety of sides that will keep you from getting hungry well into the night. Like many other BBQ joints, you know what you’re getting ahead of time, as portions usually come in various ounce size varieties.

Quality:I can tell you right now, The Pit lives up to all of its expectations. There’s a reason that this place has been featured on the Today Show, Food Network, and other programs. The meet was juicy and had no hint of over flavoring. I myself had the brisket, opting not to try out the ribs. My friends ordered some ribs instead. At first, when their plate came out, I was worried I had made the wrong choice. Their ribs looked great, the meat came right off the bone. It was tender and perfectly seasoned, rubbed, and glazed. I can’t even begin to describe the flavors that jumped out of my mouth. First it was salt, then it was peppery, then it was spicy, and then it was tangy. That, topped off with a cream and whisky, made everything taste fantastic.

When my plate came out, I was ready to indulge my senses. For sides, I ordered fried okra and potato salad. I wanted to try the okra out of curiosity, as I’ve had it in soups before, but never in fried form. It tasted similar to fried zucchini, but with a strong zip at the end. The potato salad was also top notch. It was rich, sweet, and the potatoes were fresh. The potatoes didn’t have that processed texture that so many potatoes in potato salad end up with. (That was quite a mouthful to type and read).

Of course, the sides would be useless if the main course wasn’t great. And it was. I ordered mine medium rare, and the way that The Pit cooked it was just right. They hit the medium rare dead on. Not to chewy and stringy, yet not bleeding from the sides. It was soft and tender, and had a good flavor to it. It’s almost as if I was eating prime rib, no joke.

Then there was the pulled pork. I’m a big fan of pulled pork. It’s tender and sweet honey barbequed taste makes my mouth water. I guess I could be considered a pulled pork snob, which really doesn’t mean anything except I’m picky about my meat. The Pit did not disappoint, as it was literally the best pulled pork I’ve ever eaten. It was juicy, something that is often hard to find in the dish. And it was flavorful. There was no bland salt taste here, just a flavor explosion.

The only warning I give about the brisket is don’t eat the rim of the meet. I’m guessing that’s were all the salt deposits, and boy, one bite into it made me ask for as much water as I could afford.

Overall:If you happen to be in Raleigh, and you’re looking for a BBQ place, you won’t have to look hard. But, if you’re looking for a great BBQ place, then the Pit is for you. My overall experience there was quite enjoyable, and should I ever go back to the Carolinas, I know where I’ll be heading.

Also, rumor has it that Ed Mitchell often makes appearances during the night time, so feel free to try and snap a picture with him if you happen to catch him.

Review 1: Cherry Sushi

(Please note that the quality of pictures will be much better in later reviews. I only had my camera phone on me at the time.)

Restaurant:
Cherry Sushi
2910 El Camino Real
Santa Clara, CA 95051
(408) 557-0770

Cherry Sushi is located in the middle of an eclectic and unique center of the El Camino Real. The diverse selection you of food appears right in front of your eyes. Across the street there’s a Korean market, to the left a pizza parlor, and to the right an Indian restaurant. Places with so much variety in such little space are sometimes hard to come by when you’re looking for a tasty bite to eat, unless you live smack dab in the middle of San Francisco’s culinary neighborhoods. For the rest of us, we have to settle with what we can find, and luckily for me, I found it. With so much to choose from in the area, I decided I felt like eating sushi that day.


Environment:Walking in without looking at the menu, I was really surprised with how nice the place looked. I didn’t feel like I was entering a standard sushi joint, but rather some kind of sleek lounge that you would find downtown. The lighting was darker than many other sushi places I’ve been to, yet not so dark that I would need a flashlight to navigate myself through the tables as if I had been plopped into a poorly written episode of Scooby Doo. The overall sense I would give to the furnishing would be classy and intimate. Although I don’t have any photos to highlight the décor, I can tell you that I was impressed.

Service:Right when my dining party walked in, we were escorted to a table. It wasn’t a particularly busy day, which may explain how fast we got to our table, but nonetheless it was nice that we were taken care of so quickly. From personal experience, I can tell you that at even when there’s virtually no one at the establishment, some places will still give a cold shoulder. Why? Because they are jerks! I kid, I kid.

After we sat down and ordered, the waiting time was minimal. There was always a waiter or two to fill our drinks up, and they were always courteous. I can sum it up by saying the service was great.

Price:The sashimi plate we got cost about 30 dollars, and it probably could feed about 3-4 people. Bento boxes went into the 10 dollar range. Roll wise, the low end rolls cost about 5 to 7 dollars while high end rolls went for about 9 to 14 dollars. I would say it’s a little pricier than your average, run of the mill sushi place.


Quantity:The photo above is the sashimi plate. The size of each sashimi piece was huge, but I’m not sure for the amount of pieces they give you if it could feed the advertised 3-4. We got some rolls on the side. They weren’t the largest I’ve ever seen, but they were decent size. At the end of the day, I was a full boy, but I’m not sure if it was because the rolls were huge, but rather because we had ordered so much. If you want to do the math, one sashimi plate and 4 rolls was enough to get a party of 4 more than full. Take with that what you will.

Quality:The sashimi was top notch, that’s a fact. The fish was fresh, much fresher than at other places I’ve been too. You could tell by the texture, as there wasn’t the dreaded ‘stringy’ texture you taste when biting into a fish that has been left on the counter for some time. The flavor of the fish could be tasted to fine tip, with no hint of degradation what so ever.

The appetizers and side entrees were standard. There aren’t many ways you can mess up a miso soup or side salad, unless you practiced Japanese culinary behind the back alley of a Kinko’s. If you did, then I have to ask who are you, and where’s the closest health inspector?

The rolls were also run of the mill. Naturally, rolls with fish outside them, like the Cherry Blossom w/ Salmon, seen above, were delicious. The strength of the taste really relied on the freshness of the fish. The rolls that did not were simply average, such as the baked eel roll we had. Also be warned that the spicy selection, like the Spicy Tuna Roll, were indeed very spicy. Yes, it is redundant to say the word spicy so many times, but I think it gets my point across. I’m not great with the spices, but even the other people in the group were noting how hot-hot-hot the food was.

Overall:If you like nice atmosphere and fresh fish, Cherry Sushi is for you. The place comes off refined and some what swanky. It’s a great place to take someone on a date and will draw in a young atmosphere. However, if you’re looking for a hole in the wall type place that’s a bang for your buck, you might want to look elsewhere.

Questions, comments, concerns? Email us at mail@sfbayfoodreview.com.

Welcome to The San Francisco Bay Food Review!

About 2 years ago, I started a website that chronicled events in the sporting world. Usually, the articles I wrote had a very sophisticated twist on it, and by sophisticated I mean it had a lot of dick jokes. You can see for yourself. The Play in California eventually gained a small cult following and was linked to sites like Sports Illustrated and Deadspin.

Yet, after a while, I began to lose my interest in writing sarcasm filled sports stories. One can only write about a stoned out Barry Zito in the first person for so long. Thus, the articles became less and less. At first I used to post articles on a daily basis. Then it became weekly. Then it became monthly. Then it became, bi-monthly. Alas, I had lost the passion to write about sports, and I needed a new target to focus my creative endeavors on.

I’m a person with very simple pleasures in life. Besides the obligatory friends, family, and relationships, there isn’t much that gets me excited about things. I guess in this age of Youtube and Google, it’s easy to have hobby ADD. Yet, there has always remained two things that I enjoy and have never faded away in the fads of today and tomorrow: sports and food. I love sports. AND I LOVE FOOD!

There’s nothing that really gets me more excited during my mundane work week than knowing that every weekend, I get to indulge myself in the best that my local restaurants have to offer. And luckily, I live in an area where the food is diverse and world renowned: the Bay Area.

Thus, as I go on new dining adventures, I decided that I’ll be chronicling my experiences on this website, while offering my personal ratings of what I thought of the establishment I went to. You may be asking yourself, why not just get a Yelp account? The answer: because I wanted to personalize my experiences to share to you. So enjoy! And keep your eyes peeled for the first review coming soon 