Latest news with #RobLam
San Francisco Chronicle
01-08-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
A top Bay Area chef closed his wine bar. Now he's reopening with a return to his Vietnamese roots
A popular wine bar and restaurant in Oakland's Montclair Village is returning with a new focus. French-Mediterranean restaurant and wine bar Perle is resurfacing after closing at the end of March. This time around, chef-owner Rob Lam wants the space to be more laid back, with Vietnamese comfort dishes and cocktails. He plans to reopen at 2058 Mountain Blvd. in mid-August, naming this iteration Perle Bar. 'We wanted to do something nice and elegant in the hills, and we succeeded,' said chef-owner Rob Lam, who opened the original Perle in 2017, and also operates Vietnamese restaurant Lily in San Francisco's Richmond District. This time around he is taking inspiration from his mother's first restaurant in Orange County's Little Saigon, where she served takeout dishes like noodle bowls with roast duck for a flourishing community in the 1980s. Perle Bar's menu will include banh mi with turmeric fried catfish, rice noodle plates with barbecue pork, and broken rice bowls with steamed pork and egg dressed with fried shallots. 'These dishes are very true to my heart,' Lam said. Longtime business partner Dino Vazquez, who has managed Lam's former restaurants, such as now-closed Eastside West and Butterfly on the Embarcadero, is developing the cocktail menu with drinks like a Vietnamese iced coffee martini. Seasonal cocktails in the works include a fig negroni and a paloma incorporating chai and rosemary. Lam, who doesn't drink anymore, wanted non-alcoholic options beyond the usual bottled sodas. Offerings inspired by Vietnamese-style fruit smoothies, or sinh to, will include a kiwi-cucumber 'mojito' and a strawberry yogurt drink sweetened with honey. Other drinks include teas flavored with fresh pressed fruits and Vietnamese-style iced coffees. The owner hopes neighbors in the Montclair area, where dining and takeout options are limited at night, will respond positively. To lure in sports fans, he's also installed two 100-inch flat screens. When Perle closed, Lam cited the impacts of COVID-19 on the neighborhood, as well as the departure of Oakland's three pro sports franchises. Lam chose to return after a long back-and-forth with the property owner, he said, who made the improvements that Lam had asked for the space. Operating in Oakland is challenging, he acknowledged, but he's determined to make things work in the city where he's invested so much. 'I raised my kids in Oakland,' he said. 'I owe Oakland a lot.'
San Francisco Chronicle
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
The best deals from Top 100 restaurants
When my colleague Cesar Hernandez and I were assembling our list of the Top 100 restaurants in the Bay Area, we paid attention to price. Yes, some of our favorite establishments are of the money-is-no-object variety, but at a full third of the spots, two people can leave well fed for under $50. I break for an affordable meal, but the thing I love even more than a reasonably priced dinner is a deal. Early bird prix fixes, happy hour BOGOs, lunch specials — all of them offer the allure of value. Here are some of the most undeniable deals deals DEALS offered by Top 100 restaurants. Even under normal circumstances, a slice ($5.50-$8) at either of Outta Sight's two locations won't break the bank. But the happy hour deals? Outrageous. Ten bucks will get you a slice of cheese, a slice of pepperoni and a can of Busch Lite with a dollar left over for the tip jar. The slice, sandwich and drink specials run from 4 to 6 p.m., Monday through Thursday at the Tenderloin location and from 3 to 6 p.m., Monday to Friday in Chinatown. The specific offerings vary by location; at the Chinatown shop, all bottles of wine are half off, while at Larkin Street, select bottles are $25. Weekends? For amateurs. Two of our favorite fine dining restaurants, Madcap in San Anselmo and Mägo in Oakland, offer discounted menus Tuesday through Thursday. At Mägo, weeknights showcase the same eight-course, Colombian-inspired menu that you would find on the weekend, but it's offered at $86 instead of $115. Madcap serves its 11-course tasting menu for $165 every night it's open, but the abbreviated, $140 8-course meal is only available Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. It's plenty special and terrific value from a Michelin-starred restaurant. Lunch and early dinner at Lily Many readers might associate Vietnamese restaurant Lily with the $72 luxury fried rice that started as a joke and became, much to chef Rob Lam's torment, wildly popular. But when I think of Lily, it's the early bird and lunch specials that come to mind. Between 5 and 6 p.m., Lily offers an appetizer and entree for $38. The even better deal is at lunch Friday through Sunday, where $32 nets you an appetizer and an entree, plus a non-alcoholic beverage. We're not talking Diet Coke; there are tropical smoothies, slushies and Vietnamese iced coffee with salty duck egg crema. Portions are generous and the food is, of course, top notch. When I ate at Damansara in November, select snacks — kaya buns, cereal and salted egg fried chicken, the exceptional curry puff — were 25% off with the purchase of three or more small plates. When I reached out to chef-owner Tracy Goh to inquire if that was ongoing, she informed me that the discounts were part of a restaurant week special. However! She's running a different promotion through the end of May. Take 15% off all food, including Goh's hauntingly good Malaysian crab, before 7 p.m. until the end of the month. Damansara. 1781 Church St., San Francisco.
