Several readers have written in to ask what’s happening on the corner of 21st Avenue and Geary, former home to the Video Cafe which closed a year ago after 25 years in business.

Over the summer there was a brief flurry of demolition, and recently, crews have returned to commence work.

Cub reporter David stopped in last week and took the photo above. Contractors are gutting the interior to build a Chinese restaurant, according to the plans.

One permit quotes $150,000 for an interior remodel that includes new kitchen equipment, a bathroom remodel, adjustments to the entryway, a new second exit in the dining area, and a rebuilt mezzanine and stairway.

The extent of the renovations is not surprising since it was the need for ADA upgrades to the restrooms and entry way that closed down the previous cafe. The owners were unable to afford the renovations.

No word yet on what the new restaurant will be called or when it will open. As we learn more, we’ll keep you posted!

Sarah B.

B Star on Clement gets clever and seasonal with one of their signs. Photo by Ross

Stomach growling? You might want to check out some of these new and improved spots here in the neighborhood…

• New bubble tea contender Tea Lover opened at 544 Clement at 7th Avenue. “We weren’t surprised the place had a line Sunday afternoon — the city loves bubble tea,” wrote SFWeekly.
• Prime Rib Shabu on 5th Avenue near Clement has finally re-opened after closing for 3 months of ADA upgrades. After a case of reviewus interruptus when they found the restaurant had closed for renovations earlier this year, SFWeekly critic Jonathan Kauffman was finally able to publish the writeup of his favorite shabu spot in the city. “The lamb, in particular, took to the flavors in Prime Rib Shabu’s most heretical departure from the traditional shabu shabu: a bowl of soy sauce mixed with a morass of chopped cilantro, green onions, and green chiles.”
• The former Coriya Hot Pot restaurant on the corner of 10th and Clement has been closed up for a few weeks now, with paper covering the windows. The curiosity is killing the SFWeekly Buzz Machine who reports that a new sign – “The Grill” – is up on the facade. But no word yet on the menu and if diners will still be cooking their own fare. “Darn those covered windows.”
• EaterSF published their 38 Essential Restaurants list earlier this month. Two neighborhood joints made the list: Halu (312 8th Avenue) and Aziza (5800 Geary). In other list news, Michelin’s 2011 Bib Gourmand list (great meals for smaller budgets) includes Chapeau!, Burma Superstar, and Troya – all on Clement Street between 2nd and 5th Avenues (via Grubstreet). Japanese restaurant Kappou Gomi (5524 Geary) also made the list – for the first time.
• SFWeekly food critic Jonathan Kauffman took time to review Red Tavern (2224 Clement near 24th Avenue), one of the Richmond’s first Russian restaurants to open in a long while. He had as much to say about the atmosphere as he did the food, concluding after three meals there that “the food zigzags from the good to the odd, but the meal is rarely boring.”
• The Stow Lake Boathouse finally re-opened under new ownership last Wednesday. Renovations are underway and prior to the full cafe opening, the boathouse is offering a limited but attractive menu that includes fair trade coffee, sandwiches, piroshiki, pastries and salads. And yes, pink popcorn is available too. View the menu
• There’s more to restaurants than the food… like the bathroom! I’ve had meals ruined or improved when I visited a restaurant’s restroom. EaterSF is looking for the best restaurant wash rooms across the city, so if you have a favorite in the neighborhood, be sure to let them know. I nominated Pizzetta’s – that little tv in there delights me every time.

Sarah B.

Golden Gate Park is busy this weekend with Hardly Strictly Bluegrass going on at Speedway, Lindley and Marx meadows, free days at the Academy of Sciences, and the 12th Annual World Veg Festival at the County Fair Building.

The World Veg Festival is a two-day celebration of all things vegan, vegetarian and everything in between. The festival features informative lectures by the movers and shakers of the vegetarian movement plus creative vegan cooking demos; international cuisine to sample or buy; vegan friendly merchandise; a Children’s Corner; Veggie Speed Dating; a Vegan Fashion Show; and a variety of world entertainers.

Some of the outstanding speakers are John Robbins, Jeffrey Masson, Rory Freedman, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, Dr. Michael Greger , Dr. Michael Klaper, Dr. Milton Mills, Dr. Anteneh Roba, Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, & more!

View the full festival schedule

The festival takes place on Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 6pm at the County Fair Building in the park (9th & Lincoln).

Admission is free if you arrive in the first half hour, after that it is $8 for adults. Children under 12 and seniors are free all day long.

Sarah B.

The new Steins restaurant, located at 731 Clement Street

While out for dinner Monday night, I noticed a couple of restaurant changes on Clement Street.

The former Burma Tea Leaf restaurant at 731 Clement Street near 9th Avenue is now “Steins”, an American/German eatery offering lots of beer, five flat screen televisions over the bar, and a varied menu that includes bruschetta, burgers, chicken sandwiches, ghoulash, and bratwurst. The restaurant has a heavy emphasis on beer judging by the German beer signs and steins lined up on the bar.

The place was about half full, with many baseball-cap-wearing guys watching Monday night football. If you’ve eaten there, leave a review for us in the comments!

A block up at 639 Clement is the home of King of Thai Noodle House, one of the neighborhood’s best hole-in-the-wall places. They have closed their doors temporarily through September 30 for remodeling.

Coincidentally the space next door, a former photo store, recently moved out so I had high hopes King of Thai might be expanding their footprint (they only have about 6 tables inside). But alas, after eating dinner at their sister restaurant at 346 Clement, I confirmed that they won’t be expanding, just re-opening after the remodel.

Bon apetit,

Sarah B.

The mechanical horse warning sign at Toy Boat Cafe. Photo by chopperwelder

Here are a few local tidbits for your Tuesday:

• Bike to Work Day with Supervisor Eric Mar this Wednesday, Sept. 28. Meet at the Velo Rouge Café, 798 Arguello at 8am to ride downtown. If it rains, no ride.
• Shop at the new Fresh & Easy at 32nd & Clement? Save your receipts to help George Washington High School fundraise. Shop from Sept. 15 – Dec. 31 and send your receipts in to help them out. Details here
• Tired of street-cleaning tickets? Use this handy mobile website to calculate the next cleaning day and how many days are remaining. Custom made for the Richmond District by a resident!
• Get buzzed at your local library! Friends of the SF Public Library are hosting IMBIBE at the Richmond District Branch Library on Friday, Sept. 30 from 7-10pm. Live music by Little Creatures (a Talking Heads tribute band) plus snacks and drinks. FSPL membership required.
• Want to know more about the new Lands End Lookout visitor center being built? Join them for an information session on Saturday, October 1 from 10am to 11am. Meet in the Lands End Parking Lot on Pt. Lobos Avenue.
• Only 2 more weeks for the “Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris” show at the de Young Museum. Tickets are going fast, so be sure to purchase them in advance to secure your spot. Closes October 10.
• Hey calendar lovers! Green Apple Books just got in their 2012 calendars, 900 different ones to be exact.
• CBS5 picks Na Ya Dessert House (5338 Geary Blvd) as a staff favorite for cheap eats. “It’s a real Asian sweet treat (they serve Japanese, Taiwanese, and of course Thai dessert which is hard to find in the US), and it’s affordable just 10 dollars for two desserts and a drink.”
• 7×7 has the details on communing with the SFPD’s equine officers. “Farther west into the park, patrolling officers mount their horses at the red Golden Gate Park Police Stables. Visit any 9am-2pm to pet and feed the equine force.” Located next to the Polo Fields near 36th Avenue, 415-752-6255.
• This $3.9 million property features an indoor lap pool and an “original speakeasy with secret passageway” that is now the media room. Oh if walls could talk.
• Noodle on this name change: Chiang Mai (5020 Geary at Park Presidio), is under new ownership and will become Amphawa Thai Noodle House.

Sarah B.

Ahoy matey! Yes, you read that right. This Sunday from 10am until 6pm, pirates will take over Ocean Beach for mock battles and culinary celebrations.

Let’s allow the organizers, The Shire of Cloondara (“Recreating the Middle Ages as they should have been!”), to set the stage:

While the fighting still rages outside, the Shire is negotiating with the pirates. To impress them into thinking we can stand the siege for much longer, we need to prepare a feast using just the dwindling supplies in our larder.

Cooking, Rapier fighting Games and Pirates! Now bend your ear to this! Our beloved shire is under siege from traitorous swivel tongued pirates! We have successfully negotiated a parley, but our pantries are depleted. Come and defend our Shire’s honor or join the pirates and help decide if these scurvy knaves can be defeated! We need siege cooks to concoct a feast fit for kings! This siege has been long and both the ships and the town have found the pantries depleted. So we send out this call across the land for the best siege cooks to come and prepare a feast for our parley.

The event is open to the public ($5 per person), and participants are requested to try and wear medieval garb or a pirate outfit (some loaner clothing and combat equipment will be available on site). C’mon, you know you’ve got an old eye patch in your Halloween box…

Cooking will be done over fire pits and will include an Iron Chef type scenario – cooks will have to prepare the feast using five mystery ingredients (as well as some form of salt meat and staples such as flour).

In case you do plan to stop by, mind the schedule so you’ll know when they’ll be battling and when they’ll be imbibing:

Pirate Siege & Cook-Off Schedule
10am: Site opening & set up.
11am: Armor inspections & cooking competition fire set-up.
11:30am: Rapier Scenarios.
Noon: Cooking begins.
1pm: Potluck lunch & open bardic
4pm: Cooking judging.
6pm: Site close.

Don’t forget to bone up on your pirate speak – you want to fit in, don’t you?

Sarah B.

[via SF Funcheap]

Sketch of Tai Chi at the Golden Gate Park Music Concourse. By saxe_kim

• This Sunday from 9am to 3pm, George Washington High School’s Eagle Pride will offer free car washes to the community. Drive into the GWHS Faculty Parking Lot on 30th Avenue between Geary and Anza. Donations are of course appreciated!
• Park Life pop-up! Clement Street’s Park Life will be curating the Store and Gallery in the Paulson Bott Warehouse space in West Berkeley. September 9th – 16th.
• Local food blog A Little Yumminess reviews Volcano Curry on Geary. “This pint-sized restaurant serves some of the best Japanese curry I have ever had.”
• A well-dressed but extremely drunk (and persistent) man crashed a wedding at the Conservatory of Flowers. A shoe was thrown, pepper spray was unleashed and an arrest was made. When’s the honeymoon??
• Take a free, expert guided tour of the Sutro District (Lands End, Sutro Heights Park, Sutro Baths) on Saturday, September 17 fro 2-4pm, courtesy of The Cultural Landscape Foundation. Details and how to RSVP
• Ah, Ocean Beach. Where ancient ammunition comes to die.

RichmondSFBlog reader tipped me to the arrival of newcomer Green Island Restaurant, located at 4012 Geary between 4th and 5th Avenues. They’ve been open for about a month now, replacing Vietnamese restaurant New Hoa Ky.

I stopped in for dinner this week to check it out. Let me state for the record that I am about as far from a foodie as you can get, so don’t expect great critique or insights about my meal there. Here goes nothing…

The interior of Green Island is clean, nice and brightly lit. We did giggle at the LCD television playing old episodes of Laverne & Shirley, followed by Batman starring Adam West (TV Land maybe?). The overall feel of the restaurant is casual.

The menu is pretty large, and offers a mix of Chinese and Vietnamese dishes. The waitress recommended one of their clay pot dishes which is you’re feeling saucy, you might order the “Frog with Rice in Clay Pot” ($6.75).

It had been a long day and I was not feeling like a culinary adventure, so we copped out and ordered vegetable chow mein ($5.25), crispy egg rolls (6 for $4.85), broccoli beef ($6.50) and sweet and sour pork ($6.25). And before you comment, yes, it was too much food for 2 people but going to Chinese is also about coming home with leftovers, right?

I also tried their fresh lemonade ($2.75) from their varied drinks menu which also includes Red Bean Ice, Jelly-grass Ice, Papaya Milk, Melon Colada, and Ovaltine.

We enjoyed our chow mein dish the best which featured a thinner noodle that was light on the oil. The egg rolls were fine but both of us thought the meat in the broccoli beef could have been better; we encountered some tougher, more sinewy pieces of beef. The sweet and sour pork was average. Two thumbs up on the lemonade.

The service was attentive and very friendly, and I thought the prices were very reasonable (we also got free watermelon slices for dessert).

As I mentioned above, we were very unadventurous with our ordering, so I’ll leave it to the foodies to discover the “wow” dishes on Green Island’s menu. The restaurant also offers a $20.99 chef special where you can order 3 items from a menu of roughly 60 items.

Reader Michelle enjoyed her meal there, saying “I like them because you can request no MSG and light on the oil. It tastes like home cooked and seems like they are very health conscious.”

On Yelp, Green Island is at 3 out of 5 stars after 7 reviews with one commenter saying “This is a no-pretenses, well priced restaurant with good food and quick polite service.”

Green Island is open Monday – Thursday from 10am until 10pm and Friday, Saturday and Sunday til midnight.

Sarah B.

Sweet and sour pork dish at Green Island Restaurant