1. Name of restaurant: GINGER ISLAND
2. Location--4th St. Berkeley
3. Type of Food: California/Pacific Rim
4. Price Range for a meal: $20-$30
5. Rating based on 4 stars max. for
a. food-- ***
b. service--**
c. ambience--* 1/2
6. Comments
The Ginger Island (GI) fries are really good. Potato, taro, and sweet potatoes served with a hot chile dipping sauce. Ordered as an appetizer and possibly the best part of the meal.
Grilled salmon served on top of a bed of risotto with 3 asparagus (asparagi?) was quite good. Others in our party had a fettucini with mushrooms and gorgonzolla, which they liked, calamari, a smoked salmon appetizer that was stacked on mesclun layered with taro chips served on a very artfull grid of creamed wasabe and little specs of orange caviar. One of our party has baby back ribs served with the aforementioned fries. I guess they liked it.
2 of us had GI ginger ale, which was $2.75 and not very good. It did come with a nice green palm tree swizzle stick, though.
For dessert I had a Coffee Cantada, which was Haagen Daaz coffee ice cream, raspberries, hot fudge, and whipped cream. It would have been excellent it the hot fudge had been hot, creamier, and sweeter.
They have a $20 prix fixe dinner about 7 days of the month which looks like a good deal. After seeing the menu outside, we thought we would order that, but were told it was only good from the 20th of the month
until the 26th. They should have taken that menu down, as it was misleading to all in our party, who went in ready to go for the prix fixe.
All in all, a pretty good place. Might be a good place to go to have a drink at the bar and order their fries, if they'll let you do that. |
