Dining Finds in Vallejo
Published: July, 2001
Editor’s note: we welcome a new ongoing feature, Waterfront Dining, by GraceAnn Walden, restaurant columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. She also leads culinary-history tours of North Beach, the traditional Italian neighborhood of San Francisco. She lives on Telegraph Hill with her dog Shibui and cat Kinky.
When the Bay Area restaurant-going public talks about dining destinations, the gourmet hot spots trip from their well-fed tongues: San Francisco, Berkeley, Vallejo.
Hey, just a minute. Vallejo? Well no, they’re not yet talking about Vallejo as a culinary Mecca, but a new upscale restaurant slated to open in late July, some solid, well-established eateries and a unique ethnic restaurant may change their minds.
One disclaimer before we cue you in to our discoveries. We did not look at the many restaurants spread across this up and coming town, but rather a selection close enough to the ferry terminal, so as to encourage day-trippers to explore a bit of Vallejo’s culinary delights.
Here’s what we found.
In the Ferry Terminal, Muggs Coffee Emporium, at 495 Mare Island Way, gives a hearty welcome to daytrippers and every day provides coffee drinks, breakfast and lunch foods and pastries to commuters, who are about to board the ferry for the delightful ride to San Francisco.
But although, Muggs looks like a thousand other simple walk-up coffee bars with snacks, after talking with manager, Michael Manlove, we heard the rest of the story.
The five-year-old Muggs specializes in small, estate grown, organic coffee from the Fair Trade Coffee Company. And for those commuters, who forgot to pick up coffee beans in the city, Muggs has the same choice beans priced from $8 to $25 a pound. There is a second Muggs is located in Six Flags Marine World.
On a recent weekday, local seniors enjoyed coffee drinks and the harbor view, while a neighbor noodled on the café’s piano. Muggs is open daily, from 5am-7:30pm Monday-Friday; Saturday from 7:30am-9pm and Sunday from 7:30am-5:30pm. If you are ferrying in to enjoy Vallejo’s Farmers Market on Georgia Street on a Saturday, stop by Muggs for live Dixieland jazz on Saturday mornings from 8:30am-1:30pm.
A healthy stroll down Mare Island Way, to Harbor Way, will lead the curious to the Sardine Can. With an address like 0 Harbor Way, just finding the 14-year-old Sardine Can is an adventure. Tucked beyond boat repair businesses, this down-home venue, decorated with nautical touches, is long on dockside atmosphere. Like its name, the Sardine Can is a rectangular building, with a few seats outside and a main room with picnic table-style seating.
The Sardine Can is an egalitarian type place, where one can expect burly sailors and ship repairmen digging into burgers or fish and chips, but also local ladies drawn to the crab sandwich or seafood sauté.
But lunch here is not the only draw. The breakfast menu draws diners in for the hearty steak and eggs for $8.95 or the housemade biscuits and gravy for $5.95. Other favorites are the Joe’s special, fish and chips and the linguine with clams.
The Sardine Can is open everyday, for breakfast, lunch and dinner and features live music Sunday nights from 5pm-8pm. Owner, Nanette DuValle’s place is popular with boaters who sail over to dig the food and the sounds.
Muggs Coffee Emporium 707-648-0421
Nujo’s Pizza Italian Restaurant 707-557-0247
Napoli Pizzeria 707-644-0981
Gumbah’s 707-648-1100
Banana Q 707-552-4327
WharfBarge Restaurant and Tavern (not yet available)
A short hop away, three Italian-American venues appeal to locals. Some days, we hear, you can smell the garlic sautéing on Tennessee Street.
Nujo’s, at 23 Tennesee St. near Harbor Way, is a modest pizzeria owned and run by Eric Galvao, who hails from Brazil. (Another Nujos, no connection, is on Spring Street.) Galvao’s menu features typical Italian-American fare: pizza, pasta, soups and American salads and sandwiches.
Particularly attractive, are Nujo’s party food offerings. Imagine you are on your way home from the ferry, and you remember a gang is coming over for dinner. If you order ten or more pizzas, with one topping, you can expect to pay only $8.50 per pie. Need meat or vegetarian lasagna for ten? Expect to pay $65 for a large tray. Or need salad for a horde of unexpected guests? Expect to pay $20 for salad for ten; or even more seductively, an antipasto tray for ten, that includes salami, pepperoni, peppers, olives, Feta cheese, cucumbers and greens is only $25.
Recently, Galvao has been been thinking about featuring some of his native Brazilian dishes on Sundays. Wouldn’t it be a kick to enjoy a restful ferry ride, a brisk walk and then tuck into feijoada, the Brazilian national dish of meats, beans, rice and greens. The two-year-old, Nujo’s is open daily for lunch and dinner until 10pm.
The Bay Area is ground central for trendoid restaurants - that come and go. But you know when a restaurant lasts 34 years and has been a perennial winner of the best pizza in Solano County for almost a decade; they have to be doing something right. Chris, son of the founder, Tony Guerrera says the secret to their longevity is that everything is made from scratch: the pizza dough, the ravioli and pastas, the soups, the sauces and meatballs.
Look for Napoli Pizzeria at 124 Tennessee St., a block or so from Harbor Way. Napoli is open Monday-Thursday from 11am-11pm; Friday and Saturday until midnight and Sunday from 4pm until 11pm.
Nearby, the whimsically named and decorated Gumbah’s, at 138 Tennessee St., serves up a mean a Chicago-style, Italian beef sandwich. Located in an old house, colorful signs, handcrafted wood sculptures and Chicago memorabilia make the 16-year-old Gumbah’s a fun place to kick-back with a cool soft drink and munch on Chicago specialties like the Italian beef sandwich or hot dog.
Other choices include burgers, cheese steaks, chicken- cheese steak and pizza. A second Gubah’s is located in Benicia. This location is only open for lunch 11am-2:30pm, Monday-Saturday. The Benicia location is open everyday and for dinner.
Leaving the Ferry Terminal and crossing over to Georgia Street and the Vallejo Civic Center, you can discover an authentic Philippino restaurant that draws its patrons from as far away as Sacramento and Daly City.
The downtown area, like many other towns, has obviously suffered from the effects that malls and have brought to business districts all over the Bay Area. Boarded up stores and buildings, many with good architectural bones, mean that it’s only a matter of time, before Vallejo rebounds.
One of the business pioneers, located in a newish building at 301 Georgia St., is the four-year-old Banana Q. For the uninitiated, banana q are a popular street food in the Philippines. Short, fat plantain bananas are deep fried and threaded in chunks on a stick. The deep-frying brings out the intense sweetness of the banana. They are priced at $1 each.
But the Qs are just one of the delights. A sign on the daily specials board, says that this sprawling restaurant is also, "home of the senorita bread." Senorita bread is so yummy, it will have dinners, yelling ole!
Small, soft rolls are and filled with honey and sugar, which as the rolls bake give the light morsels a caramelized bottom. Their cost is four for a dollar. Another draw at Banana Q are the exotic ice creams. Think outside the box with flavors like avocado, jackfruit, mango and ube (yam).
Besides the banana treat and other items from the bakery, Banana Q also has a steam table, with up to 20 home-style Philippino dishes. Select three dishes with rice for $5.50, two dishes for $4. Look for house specialties like chicken adobo, pancit noodles, palaba, a thick noodle dish with tofu and meat, fried fish and fried chicken. Banana Q serves breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday, and has karioke and dancing on the weekends. Banana Q hosts many weddings, birthdays and banquets.
And now for the coming attraction… and what a coming attraction!
Since the closure of Remark, at 23 Harbor Way, when Vallejo residents want a white tablecloth experience, more times than not, they cross the bridge to a restaurant in Crockett.
But by the end of July, they can stay right in town, have a bay view in the space that once housed Remark.
Partners (in business and life) Cheryl Stotler and John Coss will reopen the 110-seat restaurant, as the WharfBarge Restaurant and Tavern (cq) with full bar and banquet space. But before we tell you what they will cook and how it will look, a little history is in order.
In 1976, the city of Vallejo moved two vintage houses from Tennessee Street and placed them on Harbor Way, where they were joined as one building. In 1977, Mike Kramer opened his Remark restaurant there (it’s his name backward) and had a good run for over 20 years.
Back to the present, Coss, has solid bona fides as far as his culinary skills, having worked at Narsai’s, the long-closed Doro’s and most recently the All Seasons Café in Calistoga.
Meanwhile Stotler, a California Culinary Academy grad, will handle the front of the house duties and also prepare the house pastries.
The remodel is perking along. Saved, of course, are the half dozen beautiful art glass windows, from the San Francisco Glass House - first installed in 1976. The new interior will be awash in tones of pumpkin, deep sequoia-brown trim with blue accents.
The 60-seat banquet space, overlooking the water, where boaters can tie up, will no doubt be a popular attraction.
The menu will center on many in-house prepared foods, like smoked salmon, sausages, pasta and even his own mozzarella cheese. Sounds promising.
When they open, their hours will be lunch Monday-Friday, brunch Saturday and Sunday and dinner nightly.
From organic coffee to Italian specialties to down home seafood to unique Philippino dishes to a new white tablecloth restaurant, we can’t wait to get back to Vallejo and do some serious eating.
