food: Champa Garden

Champa Garden

Sunday we decided to skip church and go to the Oakland Museum, starting with a lunch stop some where. Looking at what was near or on the way to the OMCA, I remembered hearing good things about Champa Garden. I'd driven past it often enough (a friend lives a few blocks away), but I'd never tried it. K was excited because we don't eat out that often, and we eat Thai food even less frequently.

Champa Garden is in a nondescript building in a residential neighborhood east of Lake Merritt, at 8th Ave. and 21st St. I probably never would have tried it, but I heard good things about it from friends here in Montclair, and the Yelp reviews and on SF Gate were very favorable.

The food was very good. We started with the fried spring rolls (a number of reviews mentioned those; they were great), and we had a couple of different lunch specials. The one negative a few reviews mentioned was the service, but it was good when we were there. It wasn't as busy as it can be for dinner, but there was a steady stream of people coming and going, including a few getting takeout. We'd definitely go there again.

fall color, Oakland-style II

fall color

Some more fall color, with an unusual view of Lake Merritt and the Kaiser Convention Center -- from our carport. This obviously was taken a few days ago, before this series of storms moved in to the Bay Area.

fall color, Oakland-style

fall color

Ispotted this bit of fall color as I was leaving the Habitat for Humanity site in the Woodland neighborhood, near Tassafaronga Rec Center.

signs: Imperial Barber Shop

Imperial Barber Shop

I'm not likely to make a habit of posting painted signs (though there are some great ones about, like the MJB Coffee sign in Old Oakland that was posted on Oakland Daily Photo and Fritinancy), but this one caught my eye because of the "unnecessary" quotation marks.

There's a whole blog devoted to abuse of quotation marks, fittingly called The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. They produced a book to which I contributed a photo (taken across Lakeshore Ave. not far from this one, oddly enough.)

food: Amba

Amba

Tucked away in a small store front on Mountain Blvd. in Montclair is Amba. If you're looking for fancy food in a location oozing with ambiance, this is not the place. But if you're looking for good vegetarian and/or kosher food, check out Amba.

There are all the traditional items like falafel, pita, hummus, etc. But they also have interesting pita sandwiches, a daily "pitza", and an array of yummy salads. If there are two or more of you, try the Mezze Platter, which gives you a sample of most everything and was more than enough food for K and I.

Amba also does catering, and a lot of their business is take-out (we've had take-out from there more than we've eaten in). The restaurant itself is nothing fancy, but clean and nicely decorated, with photos from the Middle East adorning the walls. And if you're looking for a spot to watch sports, they even have a 50" TV. Sadly, the beer selection is currently only Corona (gah!), but hopefully they'll improve on that.