Wanderings - Food Finds on College Ave - Oakland, CA

Friday evening, post dinner, the caveman and I were both doing our own thing... typical quality time spent together - aka me flipping through my newest copy of Bon Appetit and him poking at random things on his smart phone (can't get any more 21st century stereotypical than that right??) 


In the mists of my imaginary food journey session, I ran a page talking about ramens where I quickly spotted a local mention (The Ramen Shop, Oakland, CA) and like a crazy person, popped open my computer and looked it up to see if its a worthy trip. 

Considering I just ate and was already drooling over its Yelp pictures, I knew it had made the "places to try" list. Still running on crazy person mode and me half joking about "let's go tomorrow!" by the end of the conversation, I had gotten my wish, we were going tomorrow! As excited as can be, I pulled up Google Maps to look up how far we'd have to drive, before I even got a chance to figure that part out I noticed another small gem in the corner of my map: Fentons Creamery. This is bad...but I know the caveman has a sweet tooth so I manged to weasel that part of the trip in too. 


Does the story end there? If only I wasn't such a food addict... so the next day after we arrived and parked, me humming along happily as we made our way down the street towards our destination, I was suddenly hit with an aroma so powerful it stopped me dead in my tracks but I wasn't the only one, a few steps ahead, the caveman stopped too. The smell was out of this world! I've never smelled something so aromatic! We quickly glanced around trying to figure out what we just walked past. A pizzeria! It was such a plain and boring building anyone would've quickly overlooked it if it wasn't for that wonderful smell....so what did we do? EAT ramen and then went back to ORDER pizza to go for dinner... AND ice cream AND we might have stopped at an indoor marketplace on the walk back to the car where we collected some more goodies. Its really amazing we're not rolling around on the streets like balloons with all this food...


HIGHLIGHTS! 
The Ramen Shop: Menu always changes but from what I can tell, it all looks delicious! The bar is fantastic! Very artisan, not to mention I've never seen a ramen place with a bar before. Slightly pricer than the average bowl.
  • In our bellies: Liberty Farms Duck Shoyu Ramen, Green Garlic Miso Ramen, Local Dungeness Crab and Pork Chashu Donburi, a Hemingway Daiquiri for me (finally a daiquiri made right! mini rant: that blended stuff is NOT daiquiri...all lies!), a stout beer for the caveman. 
Fentons Creamery: Came here for the ice cream only but apparently it's also a restaurant. HUGE, and I mean HUGE portions. Between the 2 of us, we couldn't finish a sundae to share...
  • In our bellies: Black and Tan Sundae with a scoop of dulce de leche and coffee cookie dream.  
Zachary's Chicago Pizza: Amazing. Deep dish pizza to die for. They also sell them half baked so if you can bake it at home which is what we did.
  • In our bellies: 10" half baked Spinach and Mushroom deep dish pizza 
Rockridge Market Hall: Filled with various mini artisan shops which included florist, bakery, butcher, fresh pasta, wines, and cheese. I could live there. 
  • In our bellies: fresh made ravioli pastas.

   
 

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