60 San Leandro Marina, San Leandro | website
This restaurant is a conundrum to me. It is on a prime spot at the San Leandro Marina with with an ocean view and is always empty. It has great bones so to speak, but the food and the service are really holding this place back.
It was a gorgeous day and we decided to come here to enjoy the view of the marina. We got there around 1:30 for a late lunch, the parking lot was deserted and we had our choice of tables.
We were served some toasted Focaccia with garlic butter that was delicious and served in an elegant wire tray in a white linen napkin.
This was the single best thing that we were served, such a promising start…
I ordered the Horatio’s Grilled Steak Salad that was served on romaine lettuce with caramelized onions, chopped tomato, blue cheese, chopped hazelnuts and the menu said red wine shallot vinaigrette. I asked the waitress to bring me another fork as I had just dropped mine on the ground.
I ordered the steak medium and it arrived dry and overdone. Initially, I thought that the toasted hazelnuts were giving the salad a weird flavor, but I could taste maple too. The salad had been liberally tossed with a sweet-tart maple vinaigrette with extra blobs of ranch dressing strewn about, creating chaos with my tastebuds. I am pretty open to new flavors and am no stranger to the warmed honey bacon dressing used in the 80’s on spinach salads, but I have to say that at no time was the word delicious running through my mind…
I ended up eating the salad with a spoon as I never got a new fork. I could tell it was useless to try to get the waitresses attention about the hideously wrong salad dressing too. I should have sent it back…
DR ordered Beer Battered Fish and Chips, which actually were breaded and reminded me of frozen fish sticks.
Mr K had Fish Tacos with Tomatilla Salsa, instead of the Mango salsa on the menu. When it arrived, the salsa had chunks of bright orange and red bell peppers resembling mango, with a little drizzle of tomatillo. It was very bland, but perked up with a few slashes of tabasco sauce.
The unappetizing fish were grilled on kebabs and served with a chipotle lime sour cream on the side.
Even the water that was poured from metal pitchers had a unspleasant plastic taste. On the way out, I saw that they do serve a different salad with a maple dressing – I can’t imagine any combination would taste good with that…
There were many little things that added up to an unsatisfying meal, which is very disappointing because I really want to like this restaurant. The location and views are fantastic, the building is quaint and the nautical decor is well executed and not tacky, but that in itself is not enough to pull in business… or to make me feel like returning for another overpriced unappetizing meal.
