- Peet's: GOOD
Buy a cup at Peet's Redwood City (on Broadway near the railroad tracks) and you get a coupon with a passcode good for an hour's usage on their wifi. Their firewall allows me out to ssh and VPN to the office. An hour is all I need, since the next train arrives within an hour. - Denny's: SPOTTY
They want you to register, and it used to work fine. But lately in Redwood City (Broadway at Woodside) there's signal but no connection outside the building. I mean, I get an IP address on en1 (and it's not a 169.254 address either), but there's no address resolution. I asked our waitress about this (not about resolv.conf, just about "internet") but no joy.UPDATE 29-June-2010: Working now!
- McDonald's: BAD
At least in Menlo Park (El Camino at Santa Cruz) I can resolve addresses, but the only addresses that work seem to be *.mcdonalds.com. I can't read blogspot.com or facebook.com, and when I try to ssh to my ISP, another website, the office (etc) the connections show SYN_SENT but that's it. According to their wifi page these things are all supposed to work. But not here and not now. - City of Mountain View (Google wi-fi) GOOD if you can get it.
This isn't a fast-food joint or a restaurant, but here's my experience. Reception isn't so good on this 15" powerbook (aluminum), so I can't always connect. When I can, it lets me talk to my ISP and to the office (ssh tunnel). But most of the time I can't.
Showing posts with label restaurants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label restaurants. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
"Free wi-fi" or not
So here's a pot-hole on the information highway -- restaurants
and fast-food joints that advertise free wi-fi, but you can't
do what you need to do. Herewith a very short list of my
experiences locally.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Duke's in Waikiki
The lovely Carol and I are on vacation in Hawaii, and
last night went to Duke's in Waikiki.
Here are a few things we discovered, so you don't have to :).
My niece's husband, who used to work there, explained that it's in the Outrigger Hotel -- 2335 Kalakaua Ave, Honolulu (note). As you drive down Kalakaua Av, it's on the right after Seaside Ave. -- it looks to be about half way between Duke's Lane and Kaiulani Ave. Kalakaua Ave is one-way toward Diamond Head in this area (Ala Wai being one-way toward Ewa). I dropped the lovely Carol off on Kalakaua and went to look for parking.
There are probably better/closer parking spots, but I took a left on Kaiulani, left on Kuhio, and right on Seaside. Almost at Ala Wai, I found the Island Colony apartments/hotel and parked in their garage. It's $3 for 30 minutes. Plenty of parking available there. I walked straight down Seaside, crossed Kalakaua, and walked the 250 yards or so to the Outrigger. I was at the hostess stand at 5:00pm, about 15 minutes after leaving my sweetheart there. This was on a Monday night, and we got a table in the dining room (Duke's Canoe something) one row back from the railing.
Something we didn't know is that there's a dinner menu and a bar menu. The bar menu, which you get by sitting in the bar (which may be at beach-level), is lower priced than the regular dinner menu. If the main reason you're going is for the view of the sunset, you might prefer the bar menu.
As I said, we didn't know that, so we took the dinner menu... the entrees (which I think started around $22) include the salad bar. The recommended fresh fish was "opa", a very light fish. My sweetheart took that fish in the recommended macadamia-nut crust. She shared a bite with me, and I thought it was terrific. Like halibut -- as our server said. I had the seafood luau, which was fish, scallops, shrimp, with coconut sauce. Also very good.
We also didn't know what the salad bar would be like. You can make a meal out of the salad bar -- besides freshly tossed caesar salad, other usual salad bar stuff like spinach and green leaf lettuce and beets and carrots and tomatoes, there is steamed rice, rolls, potato salad, black beans, grilled vegetables, corn, macaroni salad... all for $15 I think. I don't know if you can get the same salad bar in the bar area.
When we arrived, a fellow was playing in the bar, quite close to the dining room. It was one voice and one guitar, but he was very good and had quite a variety of stuff: Johnny Cash, the Beatles, some Hawaiian tourist music, some CSNY I think, and some stuff that's too recent for me to know. His name is Ellsworth, and if you have a choice of evenings to go, you should ask when Ellsworth is playing. That is, if you like any music from the mid-'60s to now.
Beautiful view, very friendly service, great food.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Cheaper than a flight to Paris
The lovely Carol had a birthday recently, so I took CalTrain to San Francisco and walked a few blocks up 4th to meet her and our teen-ager at LuLu, on Folsom, just off 4th next to a Shell(?) station. I got there first, and decided to wait for them at the table. I saw them walking up to the door and dashed up to greet them. "Welcome to LuLu!" I said, and got a kiss from the birthday girl.
LuLu has an extensive wine list, and something I really liked was their "wine flight" -- "tastes", 2 oz. each -- of each of four wines from a region. I tried the Rhône valley set and liked three of them:
On to the food: we got the romaine salad for the table. Carol ordered the "Grilled Pacific Prawns with Chick Pea, White Bean and Green Bean Salad, Charmoula Sauce." The teen-ager got the asparagus risotto (big surprise there--not). I asked for the rotisserie lamb, which came with ratatouille. We also got a succotash of corn and... something. It was sweet and tasty.
Everything was good. The lamb was a little on the rare side. But what really excited me was the ratatouille. I'm not sure what they put in there, but every bite reminded me of a past visit to the Paris area. I can't describe it exactly, but there it is.
We didn't finish everything, and the wait-staff boxed the leftovers for us in paper-based boxes, placed in a paper sack. We did order dessert: a semifreddo with fruit, and the panna cotta. I asked for a cup of decaf coffee. It tasted great -- like coffee I've had in France -- but I think it was what one French barista called "vrai café" rather than "faux café" (I was wide awake quite early -- like two -- the next morning).
Dessert came with a candle for the birthday girl. The semifreddo -- well, I guess we aren't quite sophisticated enough to fully appreciate it. The panna cotta -- that was a different story. I took just a couple of small bites, but if I closed my eyes and forgot everybody was speaking English, I might think I was on the Continent.
Gosh, I feel really decadent writing all that stuff about Europe, and I hope I haven't oversold the place. But I'm glad we discovered LuLu. The service was terrific. It's not an economy kind of place, but it's a lot cheaper than a ticket to Europe, and you don't have to speak French.
LuLu has an extensive wine list, and something I really liked was their "wine flight" -- "tastes", 2 oz. each -- of each of four wines from a region. I tried the Rhône valley set and liked three of them:
- Syrah, costieres de Nimes, domaine de petite mas (France) 2006;
- Syrah and Grenache, domaine de l'Echevin, Côtes du Rhône Villages (France) 2006 (really nice);
- Syrah, Grenache and Carignan, Domaine de la Verrière, Côtes du Ventoux (France) 2007 (maybe my favorite)
On to the food: we got the romaine salad for the table. Carol ordered the "Grilled Pacific Prawns with Chick Pea, White Bean and Green Bean Salad, Charmoula Sauce." The teen-ager got the asparagus risotto (big surprise there--not). I asked for the rotisserie lamb, which came with ratatouille. We also got a succotash of corn and... something. It was sweet and tasty.
Everything was good. The lamb was a little on the rare side. But what really excited me was the ratatouille. I'm not sure what they put in there, but every bite reminded me of a past visit to the Paris area. I can't describe it exactly, but there it is.
We didn't finish everything, and the wait-staff boxed the leftovers for us in paper-based boxes, placed in a paper sack. We did order dessert: a semifreddo with fruit, and the panna cotta. I asked for a cup of decaf coffee. It tasted great -- like coffee I've had in France -- but I think it was what one French barista called "vrai café" rather than "faux café" (I was wide awake quite early -- like two -- the next morning).
Dessert came with a candle for the birthday girl. The semifreddo -- well, I guess we aren't quite sophisticated enough to fully appreciate it. The panna cotta -- that was a different story. I took just a couple of small bites, but if I closed my eyes and forgot everybody was speaking English, I might think I was on the Continent.
Gosh, I feel really decadent writing all that stuff about Europe, and I hope I haven't oversold the place. But I'm glad we discovered LuLu. The service was terrific. It's not an economy kind of place, but it's a lot cheaper than a ticket to Europe, and you don't have to speak French.
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Where you should have your next party
Recently I had a milestone birthday celebration, which was held at Suraj Restaurant in Redwood City, on El Camino near Woodside Road. They put on a terrific spread - everything was wonderful. Here's how it works.
First, you need to plan on at least 50 people to get his banquet room. It is a really nice room, too; it accommodated 80 with no problem. If we wanted to have dancing then, well, let's just say that not everyone could dance at the same time in there.
If you have more like 50 people, they can put the buffet inside the room, but if you have a lot more (which we did), it's just outside the double door.
Anyway, the boss suggests a menu - appetizers, salad, entrees, and mango ice cream. Soft drinks and coffee are included in the price. I wanted to tweak the menu; the result is below.
There were appetizers - some kind of chicken, and mixed vegetable pakoras. For the main part of the meal, there was salad (iceberg lettuce), naan bread, rice, navrattan korma, dahl curry, saag paneer, I think another chicken curry, lamb vindaloo, cucumber raita. Mango ice cream was brought to the tables afterward.
We brought a cake and they provided a cake server, paper plates, and plastic forks.
At one point, I started introducing the groups of people to each other (standing on a chair), and the manager brought a microphone to me with a long cord. That was a freebie. One of my friends noticed a complete entertainment system. Sure enough, when I asked to use the CD changer, he said that was fine. So the accompaniment CD for Jenny's song and the dance CDs for Sheri's dances were played through his stereo system. Very nice.
I noticed a DVD player, a projector, and a screen, too. He might charge extra for those, but anyway there they are.
Speaking of charge, how much was it? The bar bill was about $140 (guests had to walk from the banquet room to the bar). About 85 said they'd come, a few sent late regrets, and a few just didn't show. I told the restauranteur 80 so that's what they charged me for: $20 a head including the use of the room from for four hours. Total bill: Under $1750. Terrific food, great facilities, friendly service, and it didn't cost an arm and a leg.
First, you need to plan on at least 50 people to get his banquet room. It is a really nice room, too; it accommodated 80 with no problem. If we wanted to have dancing then, well, let's just say that not everyone could dance at the same time in there.
If you have more like 50 people, they can put the buffet inside the room, but if you have a lot more (which we did), it's just outside the double door.
Anyway, the boss suggests a menu - appetizers, salad, entrees, and mango ice cream. Soft drinks and coffee are included in the price. I wanted to tweak the menu; the result is below.
There were appetizers - some kind of chicken, and mixed vegetable pakoras. For the main part of the meal, there was salad (iceberg lettuce), naan bread, rice, navrattan korma, dahl curry, saag paneer, I think another chicken curry, lamb vindaloo, cucumber raita. Mango ice cream was brought to the tables afterward.
We brought a cake and they provided a cake server, paper plates, and plastic forks.
At one point, I started introducing the groups of people to each other (standing on a chair), and the manager brought a microphone to me with a long cord. That was a freebie. One of my friends noticed a complete entertainment system. Sure enough, when I asked to use the CD changer, he said that was fine. So the accompaniment CD for Jenny's song and the dance CDs for Sheri's dances were played through his stereo system. Very nice.
I noticed a DVD player, a projector, and a screen, too. He might charge extra for those, but anyway there they are.
Speaking of charge, how much was it? The bar bill was about $140 (guests had to walk from the banquet room to the bar). About 85 said they'd come, a few sent late regrets, and a few just didn't show. I told the restauranteur 80 so that's what they charged me for: $20 a head including the use of the room from for four hours. Total bill: Under $1750. Terrific food, great facilities, friendly service, and it didn't cost an arm and a leg.
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