Sh*t on a Shingle ... But in a Good Way
Written: Sep 29 '00 (Updated Sep 30 '00)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Food and Music under one roof
Cons: You'll be too full to walk afterward
|
|
|
| Mr.Eyore's Full Review: Rasselas |
I'm a sucker for places that make dating easy. That is, restaurants which, through their own ingenuity and/or geographic eptitude or dumb luck, are tasty but inexpensive and close to something other than a movie that I can do after dinner. Back before there was a Pookie, there were other womenfolk who were kindly enough to go out on dates with me, and since I was a relatively poor grad student with relatively no prospects, I was looking for value.
If I sensed off the bat that the date wasn't going to go well, I took them to Caffe Della Stella on Hayes, where I knew I could count on the food being pretty good and the waiters flirting with my date. Afterward I could walk a few doors down to Hayes & Vine and share a full flight of wine samples. Then, if things weren't, in fact, going all that well and I sensed that the date in question was one of them moralistic types, I could guide us across the street and down the block to my favorite little tranny bar, Marlenas.
It was real fun. I'll call ya.
If I sensed off the bat that I kinda liked the person, I took her to Rassalas, a carnival of date options under one roof. You got your good food, your great bar, your classy jazz club, your value, and your easy transportation.
Transport/Parking
Rasselas is right on the corner of Divisidero and California, two of the fastest thoroughfares in the city having two of the city's most frequently running bus-lines that don't run down Market. Busses going down either street stop right in front of the bar room, so if you're waiting to leave at the end of the night, at least you can wait inside. But you don't have to take a bus. Parking is not too bad, especially if you head north of California. Plus, Cal and Divis is one of the few places west of Van Ness that you can rely on plenty of cabs coming by.
The Room(s): Lawrence of Arabia Meets the Cotton Club
The main room at Rassalas looks like a classic New York Jazz joint: Close tables and a few sofas, dark wood, and a bar that's heavy on the bourbons and scotches. Frequently, there's a short wait before you can get onto a dinner table in the dining room, so the club room is a comfortable place to sit and have a cocktail. The bar doesn't get too noisy before 9:00, so you can talk at others with no problems.
The dining room is small, holding about eight tables, depending on the size of the parties. The walls are covered with a bright mural and the ceiling is hidden behind a tent-like drop of muslin. It's a strange room because the owners have clearly gone to some trouble to make it look like some sort of Eritrean nomad tent, but then they leave an unattractive back prep area open. Each of the small tables is decorated with a candle and modest flower arrangement. Plus, there's a window where you can watch yuppy-puppy's from the Marina walking sweatily past, after their grueling hike over Pacific Heights, toward Frankie's Bohemian and Godzilla Sushi.
The Wines
They have several nice wines here, but the thing to do as soon as you order your food is to get yourself a glass of the Ethiopian honey wine. I know it sounds gross, but you'll be pleasantly surprised. This stuff is not Manischewitz. It's a little sweet, but not overwhelmingly so, and the honey is a nice counterbalance to the spiciness of the dishes. Trust me, it'll change the tenor of your entire meal.
If you insist on having a traditional Western wine, Rassela's has a fine selection of house merlots, cabernets and zins. Even if you order the chicken dish or the vegetarian platter, get a red wine instead of white. This is not your momma's chicken; it'll beat the tar out of any white wine out there, steal it's lunch money and send it off crying.
The Food
The menu is modest, but covers all the bases. Every dish comes family style, served on a large platter upholstered with a spongy and tart Ethiopian flat bread. The platter is huge and looks like the light side of the moon, it's soft bready Edward James Olmos-like surface lined with mountains of lentils and salad on the sides. Even though I just grossed you out, ask for some extra bread, because the way you eat this food is by tearing off a piece of the bread and scooping up a bit of the meats and/or veggies and/or lentils (which I believe to be neither meats nor veggies) and shoving it into your gullet.
I recall six items on the menu, but there may be one or two more. They have two beefs, two lambs and chicken and a vegetarian. I have tried all of them.
The chicken dish (Doro Wat), like all the others, comes as a stew. Only this stew has bones and a whole egg in it. Not little bones, mind you, but big old leg bones with the meat just falling off of it. Throw some of that on a piece of the sponge bread and it's like pesach-on-a-shingle: You got your shank bone, your boiled egg, your bitter herbs and your unleavened bread (for those of you who don't know what pesach is, it's the time of year when the people of my tribe get together to celebrate the infanticide of an ancient and noble people; only we celebrate it by sitting around for hours on end reading a language we don't understand and not eating the food that's sitting in the middle of the table the whole time.). Plus, this pesach-on-a-shingle is good. The sauce is a little lighter than the sauce that comes with the red-meat dishes. Frankly, it's also a little more gelatinous. But it really is delicious; rich with onions, lemon, red pepper, garlic, ginger, cardamom and nutmeg. Yes, nutmeg.
With the red meat dishes, I mark myself as the provincial Afro-ignoramus that I am by saying that I think every dish is called something "Tibs" and something "Wat." But I'll say this: Of the two beef dishes and two lamb dishes, one of each is merely rich and the other is kick-yer-ass spicy. All are delicious. Like most Ethiopian food, they are cooked with onion that is sauteed to unrecognizable, garlic, clarified butter, peppers and frequently berbere, which is a sort of African Curry made from cumin, cloves, cadamom, black pepper, allspice, fenugreek, shallots, chiles and peppers, turmeric, ginger and salt.
The best part of these meat dishes (and I know this is where the normal people and me part ways) is that they release an incredible spicy oil that soaks into the bread upon which it rests and creates a concoction somehow spicier than anything else you're eating. And here's where even the mutants that were still with me get grossed out: If you take this now burgundy bread home, it makes a serious midnight snack. It's like a nasty capsicum bread-pudding that you could eat with a fork, but I eat with a spoon. Now I hang my head in shame.
Everything on the menu runs around $10.00, and it's a bargain at that. You may not think so when they first bring out each of the little dishes and they dump it on top of your Edward James Olmos lookin' plate, but if you can finish everything at your table, I'll come over to your house and eat a bucket o' lentils. Trust me, you'll be stuffed.
Service
The service is fine, if unremarkable. When the restaurant is empty, the wait staff is attentive and willing to talk to you about the food. When it's slammed, it's slammed, and service is merely professional. But I would like to take this moment to mention that all of the waitresses are super-model and David Bowie beard Iman.
Entertainment
After dinner, it's a short walk ... well, up two stairs ... back into the club room. By 9:30 the band is usually ready to go on. They feature everything from mild 3-piece jazz instrumentalists to uncannily talented blues and jazz vocalists. When the vocalists get going it's pretty tough to talk, but you shouldn't be talking while they're singing anyway, so sit down and have a drink.
The crowd tends toward the over-35 set, and is nice and mixed up, the way a proper San Francisco crowd ought to be. There are plenty of people who come just for the music and they tend to be a friendly lot. Lots of couples too. So noone will look at you funny when you start mackin' on that date you brought. Even if the both of you are funny lookin', as me and mine usually are.
A final note for locals: I've been to Blue Nile and Ethiopia in Berkeley, and to Massawa in the Haight., and I would never bad mouth any of these restaurants. The two Berkeley Ethiopian spots in particular are truly exceptional. But Rassela's is every bit as good as any of them; and as much as I miss the two Telegraph street staples, I have not been to either since I discovered this comparable place in the city.
Another final note for people who bear with me during my community activism diatribes: The ownership of Rassala's was among the first to sign on to the Fillmore Jazz Preservation District and the last I heard, they were getting screwed in the deal. They opened up a branch on Fillmore under the assumption that the city and local merchants would continue to invest in the revitalization of the neighborhood. By most accounts, that revitalization has stalled. So for whatever it's worth, I'd like to see you send some of your money Rassala's way.
A final final note to the epinionators: Props to my trusted WOT friend kyhiera, who also wrote on this subject, but with much more soul than I. I had to weigh in myself, though, because this is such a great place it deserved two high 4's.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
Mr.Eyore
|
 - Top 500 |
|
Reviews written: 129
Trusted by: 299 members
About Me:
I come for the pervasive sense of elitist self-importance and semi-witty expressions of faux camaraderie
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.