I normally don’t do food reviews (on the blog that is, on the wiki I’ve done some). But I figured I’d share this time…. I went out to Skates on the Bay (100 Seawall Dr, Berkeley, CA 94710) last night. Its a fairly fancy place and it does live up to its name. It sits on stilts above the water. Half of the place is the “bar” which is walk in (plenty of tables), the rest is a proper sit down dining room. In either place you can order the food. When we went last night the wait for the dining room was an hour (at 8pm-ish). So I’d recommend reservations, if you go. The bar area is fairly loud, people talking, music playing and all that. I don’t know if the dining room is much quieter — but it’s basically one big room — so I doubt it. Most of the food we had was very good, which is good because the place is damned expensive. Not surprising or anything. I had a burger, and I was not impressed at all. I ordered it medium rare (and I do realize some places don’t go that rare these days with mad cow and all), but it was at least well done. On top of that, the burger was about half as tall as it was wide. Normally a thick burger isn’t a problem — but the patty looked more like it was formed with an ice cream scoop. It was too tall to even eat properly. Plus the cheese sucked. I realize it’s a fancy place — but whatever they served was more like a mix of cottage cheese and something else — and it didn’t even taste cheesy.
It was a bit over 50$ a person for dinner. That includes entree, dessert, sides and drinks. But also to be fair we all ate relatively cheap dinners (burgers and sandos). Expect to pay 20-50$ per entree.
Jon’s rating: Meh.