It’s a hot day in California, as hot as fresh jalapenos. The air feels like a pizza oven. The corn-yellow sun shines its rays like yet another stupid food-based metaphor that you can’t be bothered to think of. Suddenly, you remember that you are a food blogger. A feeling of mild panic mixed with hunger starts in your gut and works its way into your eyelid, making it twitch.
“I really should go eat at a restaurant somewhere,” you say to yourself, thoughtfully placing a hand over your gurgling stomach. The three people that have been sitting on the couch in your living room look at you suddenly, concerned to see you speaking to yourself yet again. “Oh,” you say, attempting to salvage the situation. “Do you guys…”
Choose: “…want to go to an Italian restaurant?”
Choose: “…have any ideas where we should go?”
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You suggest going to an Italian restaurant.
Everyone seems to like the idea of Italian, and without much fuss you all climb into the car and start driving towards a half-decent chain restaurant. As you cruise down the street, you notice a biplane towing a banner overhead… and then you remember. There’s a 49er game today, and you are heading straight into the belly of the beast. Quick, you need to avoid traffic! You decide to…
Choose: Take the freeway.
Choose: Take side streets.
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You ask for advice on where you should go eat.
Seizing the opportunity to dictate the menu, the pickiest eater of the group leaps to his feet and begins listing restaurant criteria. “It should be not too expensive and not too cheap, but also not greasy and probably there should be no cheese. Except if we go to my favorite burrito place, then grease and cheese are ok,” he says, hardly taking a breath. “It can’t be Chinese because I demanded to have that yesterday and now I am tired of it, and it can’t be American or Greek or Burmese or Lithuanian or African or basically anything that I say it can’t be. In fact, it must only be a very specific type of curry, my aforementioned favorite burrito shop, or a pizza place an hour away. Also…”
But those are the last words he ever says. The other two people in the room throttle the picky eater to death with their bare hands, and you help them bury the body. Eventually you are all caught by the FBI and are sent to prison for the rest of your natural lives.
Go back
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You take the freeway.
In a stroke of sheer luck, traffic on the freeway is very light… but in the wrong direction. You have no choice but to try and get away from the football crowd, so you start driving with no destination in mind. Before long you realize you are headed straight towards Murphy Street in Sunnyvale, and you know for sure that there are some decent places to eat there. Maybe things will turn out alright after all. Quickly, you park the car and shoo everyone in the general direction of food. You walk along Murphy Street and then…
Choose: You go to the kebab joint.
Choose: You go to the Italian bistro.
Choose: You go to the Mexican place.
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You take side streets.
Using local shortcuts is always a good choice… right? After only a couple of blocks you realize you have made a terrible, terrible mistake. You are stuck right in the middle of the worst gridlock you have ever seen, surrounded by raised pickup trucks draped in 49er flags. You are trapped and there is no way out.
You’re screwed now.
The starvation slowly drives your passengers to insanity over the course of the next twelve days. Eventually, it is decided that cannibalism is the only path to survival… and you are the main course.
Go back
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You walk towards the kebab joint.
As you draw near to the kebab joint, you hear your stomach grumbling… but then you realize it’s someone in your party voicing their disapproval of kebabs. Well, it’s not the worst thing ever. The sun-faded posters in the window of this place look kind of scary anyway, and there are way too many dead flies on the inside window sills. Yucky. You turn back to pick another place to eat.
Go back
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You arrive at the Italian bistro.
The place is packed to the gills, even the outside patio. “Ugh,” you mutter to yourself. “What in the world are all these people doing here at 1pm on a Sunday??”
“It looks like they’re watching the football game on that giant portable TV screen they’ve parked in the middle of the road over there,” says one of your starving companions.
Sigh. It seems Italian just isn’t meant to be today. Disappointed and somewhat depressed, you turn around and walk back up the street to choose from one of the other two restaurants.
Go back
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You decide on the Mexican place.
You find yourself at Roberto’s Cantina, a small-ish place tucked in a corner along Murphy Street. The scent of delicious, scratch-made Mexican food meets your nose, and to your surprise there are still a couple of tables open. You are quickly seated and given some chips and salsa to graze on.
You discover that both types of salsa are excellent.
You spend some time looking through the menu, and a few different entrees catch your eye. The waiter arrives and asks you what you’d like to order.
Choose: A combination plate.
Choose: Al Rebozo (bacon-wrapped shrimp).
Choose: Steak fajitas.
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You order a combination plate.
You figure that the best way to try out a new Mexican restaurant is to go for a mix of favorites. You opt for a carne asada enchilada and a quesadilla, and of course refried beans instead of pinto or black beans.
C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!
You find the refried beans to be flavorful but mostly average, a sure indicator of the rest of the meal. The quesadilla is about the same, but the enchilada turns out to be rather good. It is unfortunately impossible to eat, being nestled in a shallow bowl and inaccessible to knife and fork, but you still enjoy it. Without warning, your spouse asks you for half of your quesadilla in exchange for a couple of bacon-wrapped shrimp.
Accept the trade and give the shrimp a try.
Refuse the trade and keep your quesadilla.
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You try the Al Rebozo.
You’re not sure who Al is, but apparently he makes pretty decent bacon-wrapped shrimp. The scent of crispy bacon and fresh seafood wafts tantalizingly through the air.
When in doubt, wrap everything in bacon.
You’ve had questionable bacon-and-shrimp plates before, so you’re not really sure what to think of this one. You tentatively take a bite… and wow! That is one tasty dish. The bacon is nice and crispy, but surprisingly the shrimp inside are not overcooked. Whoever is preparing this dish has apparently done this before, and they are very good at it. You decide that these shrimp are so tasty, in fact, that you would even eat them if they were served on top of a dried cow pie. You aren’t too sure about the weird chipotle sauce that came with them though.
Conclude your meal.
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You order steak fajitas.
Hey, who doesn’t like fajitas? Unfortunately, the answer will soon be you. The steak fajitas arrive piled high, sizzling on a cast iron thingy and smelling delicious. As you begin eating, however, you realize that they don’t have a lot of flavor, and the tortillas are a little odd as well. You probably should have ordered something else.
Go back
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You foolishly refuse the trade.
Like an idiot, you decide that it’ll be a good idea to decline your spouse’s trade. You greedily hoard the remainder of your combo plate for yourself, all the while being given the hairy eyeball. Later, when you arrive at home, you are assigned to pull weeds in the hot sun for the rest of your life. That evening, your PlayStation mysteriously appears in the toilet.
Rethink your decision
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You finish your meal and wrap up the restaurant review.
In the end, you consider your experience at Roberto’s Cantina to be a success. All four people in your lunch party – including the picky one – ended up mostly happy with their meals. There were a couple of things about Roberto’s that you didn’t love, such as the flavorless carne asada and fajitas, but there were also some things that you thought were pretty good. You’d be happy to come back some day, but you can’t give it the highest score ever. You decide to rate this restaurant 7 out 10 pork-wrapped seafood items.
And then everyone lived happily ever after.
Roberto’s Cantina
168 South Murphy Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
(408) 739-2021
www.robertos-cantina.com
Standard Restaurant Review Disclaimer
The ambiguous and illogical rating system used in this review is not intended to be pinpoint accurate. It’s only there to give you a general idea of how much I like or dislike an establishment, and it also gives me an excuse to write silly things. If my rating system angers and distracts you, there’s a good chance you have control issues. I would also like to point out that I am not a highly qualified restaurant reviewer person, nor do I particularly care what that job is called. If you were under the impression that perhaps I was one of those people, consider your hopes dashed. Lastly, wow! You read the entire disclaimer. You get a gold star on your chart today.
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Wait, wait, wait. How could I possibly “revisit” a place I’ve never been to before? Well, if you’ll recall, some time back I reviewed Portola Valley Lobster Shack. The parent (or sister, brother, uncle, etc.) company of that restaurant is actually Old Port, and so really what I’m doing here is visiting a second Old Port location.
Randomly Edible 