Tag Archives: Oakland ramen

Tacolicious School Project Starts Up, Santana Row Welcomes “Top Chef Mexico” Winner, And More

Visit Tacolicious on a Monday to help local schools. (Photo by Eleanor Palmieri)

Visit Tacolicious on a Monday to help local schools. (Photo by Eleanor Palmieri)

Tacolicious School Project

You probably already know that the Bay Area’s Tacolicious turns out delectable tacos. But what you might not know is that the restaurant company is now in its fifth year of raising funds for local schools.

In fact, its Tacolicious School Project has now raised $852,000 for local public schools, and is closing in on its goal of raising $1 million.

Every Monday from now through May, all Tacolicious restaurants in San Francisco, as well as the Santana Row San Jose location, will donate 15 percent of a month’s proceeds to 36 neighboring public schools.

To see which schools will benefit each month, click here.

What’s more, this year Tacolicious will donate proceeds from its sixth annual Taco Open golf tournament to Parents for Public Schools and the San Francisco Education Fund. The tournament will be held Oct. 19 at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco.

Tacolicious owners Joe Hargrave and Sara Deseran started the school project in 2012. With kids of their own, they knew all too well how public schools struggle these days for enough funds to operate properly.

So if you’re hankering for tacos, be sure to visit Tacolicious on a Monday, when you’ll satisfy not only your hunger, but put your dollars to work for local schools.

Santana Row’s Chef Table Dinners with A “Top Chef” Winner

Las year’s “Top Chef Mexico” champ Chef Rodolfo Castellanos will headline two chef table dinners at Santana Row this month.

Sept. 13, he will cook a $99 four-course dinner at LB Steak, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Guests for this special Oaxacan-influenced dinner will be seated on the patio to enjoy dishes such as Chilhuacle pepper crusted seared Ahí tuna, and pan-roasted duck breast with flying ant mole manchamanteles.

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Itani Ramen — Where Noodling Around Is Fun And Delicious

 

A rice bowl with eggs three ways at Itani Ramen.

A rice bowl with eggs three ways at Itani Ramen.

You have to smile at place where the bathrooms are identified as: “raMEN” and “raWOMEN.”

Itani Ramen takes its food seriously, but everything else with a sense of humor.

The second restaurant by Chef Kyle Itani of Hopscotch in Oakland, Itani Ramen opened a month ago in Oakland’s Uptown neighborhood.

I had a chance to try it two weeks ago when I was invited in as a guest of the restaurant. It happened to be a night when Itani’s good buddy, Chef Daniel Holzman of New York’s The Meatball Shop empire, happened to be helping out, serving dishes and chatting up diners. Holzman also assisted in the kitchen when Hopscotch first opened. And it’s his photographs of colorful street scenes in Japan that grace the walls of Itani Ramen.

Chef Brian Ikenoyama, Chef-Owner Kyle Itani, and visiting-Chef Daniel Holzman.

Chef Brian Ikenoyama, Chef-Owner Kyle Itani, and visiting-Chef Daniel Holzman.

The long restaurant is industrial-zen looking with unfinished wood on the back wall that gives it an almost shoji-screen-like look. Packages of Japanese instant ramen and bottles of sake decorate shelves above the bar and open kitchen.

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