2600 Durant Avenue
Berkeley
So the focus of this blog is going to be shifting again, because I am no longer going to school in the Tenderloin and living in Redwood City. Now I’m going to school in Berkeley and living in the Mission. Thus, I’ll now be writing about cheap food in the Mission and Telegraph areas. This completely destroys the cleverness of the blog title, but such is life.
I had an interview at the Hotel Durant today right before lunchtime, so I decided to try the hotel restaurant, a pubby sort of place. I had a turkey, avocado, and bacon sandwich ($8.95); it came with salad or fries, and I chose salad. I also had a soda ($2.00), which is ludicrously expensive but comes with refills. In general, the prices may keep me away. Twelve dollars for lunch isn’t unreasonable in a nice place with table service, but there are so many cheaper options around here.
The sandwich was good. Avocado can be a problem in a sandwich; it can squirt out of the sandwich or squish all over everything. The avocado here, however, was just the right amount of ripe. It stayed put, but still had some body. Also, the cook recognized that the richness of avocado calls for discretion with the mayonnaise. The bacon was also good. I don’t like bacon that’s been cooked to crunchiness; I think it tastes burnt. This bacon was crisp but still chewy, and went well with the smoothness of avocado. The turkey wound up being something of a bit player, but that was fine.
The salad was fine. A nice assortment of greens with some shredded carrot, and some honey mustard dressing. I could have done without the red onion, though. I think red onion in a salad is like a tuba in a band; if you have enough else going on, it works, but you wouldn’t want an ensemble to consist of, say, a snare drum and a tuba.