43 - Wazwan - Emeryville

5959 Shellmound Street, Suite 22, Emeryville, Ca. 94608, 510-655-3398

last visit: December of 2009

Wazwan's Website (which comes with a history lesson about Waza master chefs)

(Image from Yelp.com) This is one of my favorite places for fast food in the bay area. From when I was going to the Emery Bay theater in the 1990's until the emergence of the AMC theatre and Bay street, this little food stand stayed. It's outlived the Escapades Arcade and many of the other restaurants in there. I have a feeling it will be there for a very long time. It used to be cooked and served by Indians and now I see that they got enough money to hire workers of their own. They're always there and they always greet with a smile. Now they have a website and expanded to a catering business. The food is simply good and fast.

I'd have to say they do good Tandoori chicken and their spinach chicken curry is tasty as well. They have four or five different curries and I think I've tried them all. The Chicken Tikka Masala is awesome. They have good rice to go with it too, never too soggy so that it compliments the curry just right. Naan bread is provided with a small extra cost. I have like 20 different vendors to choose from when I'm going to the Emery Bay food court, but 9 out of 10 times I go back to Wazwan.

15 - Foster's Freeze - San Leandro

2601 Alvarado St., San Leandro, CA 94577, (510) 357-2094

Last Visit: September 29th, 2008

I hope I don't make a habit of this, writing up a place from a restaurant chain, but I do enjoy this particular Foster's Freeze. This is the only one I have ever been to, this is probably the only one that I will ever go to - voluntarily.

The thing is, this Foster's is owned by a Korean guy. I don't know what the stereotype is about Korean chefs, but this burger artist is actually really skillful. He likes to arrange everything in the burger just right, so that when you bite into it, you'd hit all the insides every time: lettuce, onions, cheese, and good old beef. The Korean guy is generally happy, and if you ever go, ask him to make a Boss burger. It's his master-piece.

I went there last Monday, September 29th. I guess nothing but gloom faces for that day. Congress had rejected the vote for a $700 billion dollar bail-out plan for Wall Street. The Dow Jones dropped an unprecedented -777 points. I lost a tenth of my portfolio in the morning. I guess that didn't mean much. I was still able to buy a burger at Fosters. My girlfriend did the math: Instead of the bail-out, if we split the amount of money that they were going to give Wall Street amongst the 300 million Americans in the United States, we'd each get $2300 and change. I rather like that instead of bailing out people who made bad business judgments.

Not a great post, but I do enjoy throwing in the events of the day into my blogs.

Yelp's two cents: - Read Chad L.'s review.