The Burlingame Voice

Styrofoam Containers...Still Here

The Styrofoam container ban may have kicked-in at the start of the year, but the word is still not out there yet.  The City's Q&A document points towards the County for education and enforcement.  I won't say where dinner came from last night because I really like the place, but here's what it came in.

You have to wonder how the County will prioritize things like this given the financial pressure it is under.

A Tale of Two Burgers

The Five Guys burger shop has opened with a bang after a long wait.  I cruised by last night and it was bustling.  At the other end of the block, the Burger Joint continues to cause wonderment in town.  Here are two photos taken one minute apart last night (Friday).

Mingalaba had people waiting on the Avenew as usual, Narin was SRO, Coconut Bay was full and Roti was almost full.  B'game loves to eat!

The Avenue is Ever Anew

The rapid pace of change on B'game Ave continues.  There is movement among locations by some merchants, construction at some store locations and a couple more retail fatalities including Bonarda which has bitten the dust,

 
I keep meaning to count the yogurt places in the downtown area, but I need to bring a pencil and paper since I may not have enough fingers at this point.

Corner Wine Bar?

A story in the Daily Journal about the 750ml wine bar changing to "Grape and Grain" reminded me of something I heard might be coming to the Avenew.  Down in San Mateo

On Sundays, Simpson plans to host events like wine education classes or visits from winemakers, and at night he said the bar will be a place people can “go to escape their kids or whatever and relax for a bit.” He said he’s always willing to talk with people about wine, but “my main goal is just to create a place where people can just have fun, and if anything simplify the wine industry.”

“In the suburbs, wine bars embrace a little bit of the cheesy aspect of the industry. They create this kind of nicer upscale type feeling and people feel they have to adhere to a certain code,” Simpson said. “I’ve visited a lot of wine bars in the city and they sort of more embrace the organic nature of a wine bar. They keep with the trends. I wanted to bring a little slice of the city down into the suburbs.”

I hear the old Smoke Shop may be transformed into a wine bar as well.  With the departure of Nectar, there is room for one on the Avenew and I'm guessing it won't be cheesy.

 

 

203 Primrose Update

The Daily Journal is describing the latest applicants for the new building on the corner where Walgreens used to be.  The building is moving right along and

Five Guys Burgers & Fries is applying for a conditional use permit for 203 Primrose Road, making it the second business planning to open in the yet-to-be-completed retail/office building adjacent to the new Safeway. On Monday, the Planning Commission will study the proposal.

That should give the Burger Joint quite a bit of competition and one wonders how it will hold up.  In the middle of the block

The old Wells Fargo building also has a tenant lined up. Pizza My Heart plans to open at 235 Primrose Road. The commission will study its conditional use permit Monday also. In June, the Burlingame City Council changed the municipal code to allow five additional food establishments — which could be anything from a bar to a full-service restaurant — in portions of the Burlingame Avenue commercial area. If approved, Pizza My Heart would be the fourth application within the boundaries.

For everyone wondering what the corner building will eventually look like, here is a reminder from the original architects' rendering

 
You can see the stairwell already on the site and the rooftop space could make for a nice little bandstand to help with the "Boring game" problem!

Bar Gain

YaYa's empty space is being filled by the Vinyl Room owners with a new bar.  The Daily Journal profile notes

Although the bar doesn’t officially have its grand opening until Saturday, it has already seen a steady stream of patrons from the after-work crowd fill the space tucked between the Steelhead Brewery and Straits Restaurant and right across the street from the Burlingame Caltrain station.

Jose Natividad and Juan Loredo’s Vinyl Room is a lounge and nightclub that enforces a strict dress code on weekends before its customers can come in and dance the night away.

The Barrel House, on the other hand, will be a “neighborhood bar,” Loredo said.

The Vinyl Room caters to the 20s to 30s crowd, Loredo said, while the Barrel House is expected to draw the 30s to 50s crowd.

The mini-heat wave gave a boost to the numerous yoghurt places downtown, but that's easy when it's hot.  Getting the 30s to 50s to support a place might be a little more challenging.  Sir Paul, are you up to the task?

Bye, bye Styrofoam

There's formal notice of the styrofoam ban at the end of this piece in the Daily Journal.  It notes

The Burlingame City Council decided to bar use of Styrofoam and similar products.

In February, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors passed a ban on polystyrene which goes into effect July 1. Under the county ordinance, vendors in the unincorporated areas of the county are asked to use recyclable, biodegradable or compostable materials like paper, cardboard, corn starch, potato starch or sugarcane instead of polystyrene, commonly known as Styrofoam. Last night, the Burlingame City Council introduced a nearly identical ordinance which would go into effect Jan. 1, 2012. The proposal will go before the council again Monday, May 16.

Gas-powered leaf blowers are next, but not banned yet.

B'gains in B'game

I've been enjoying the rash of bargains that are coming our way lately courtesy of two social networking sites and the City.  If you are enrolled with Groupon, you have seen deals come through lately for Straits (50% off) and the nice lingerie store on the Avenew (Charmelle28).  Opentable has been fighting back so as to not be left out and La Boheme had a 50% off deal with them recently as well.

Now we have free music from the City library.  Through a trial deal where the library buys digital music in bulk from a Virginia-based company called Freegal, cardholders can download three songs a week--as long as everyone together stays under 300 songs per week.  That's sort of the reverse of Groupon where the deal tips if more people buy it.  I tried Freegal from the library site and it worked better with Firefox than IE.  This is a $3000 trial that they paid a buck a song for according to a piece in the Daily Post, so download away for the next ten weeks!

 

Bay Area ***Stars***

The Michelin Guide for Bay Area restaurants  just came out for this year and there are six restaurants from the Peninsula.  Los Gatos has two while Mountain View, Menlo Park, Saratoga and Woodside have one each.  None for B'game but I don't feel badly about that.  Having eaten at a couple of the 40 listed for the whole Bay Area, I don't think our dining scene supports that style of restaurant.  I'd love someone to prove me wrong, but the combination of longevity, food quality, service, etc is a pricey undertaking requiring a good landlord or owning the building.

On the local scene, I am impressed by how well Mingalaba is doing.  It's not a large restaurant so perhaps the crowd waiting outside is a little deceiving, but it pretty constant most evenings.

 

Heard on the Street - Pizzapotle?

The rumor on the street is that Pizza My Heart AND Chipotle have taken spaces in the old Wells Fargo - Atherton Appliance building.  Yianni's they aren't, but what do B'gamer's think of these two chains?