Chinatown’s Deluxe Tasting Menu Restaurant Offers Less Expensive Option

Eight Tables, seven courses

It’s a new year — all hail the pig— and China Live’s decadent upstairs restaurant, Eight Tables by George Chen, is advertising a new menu to match. The seven-course option costs $175 (still a sizable red envelope) but that’s down from the usual $225 (or $325 for the all-out chef’s table tasting menu). It still features Eight Table’s hits like a “Four Seas” caviar dumpling (stuffed with Russian Osetra caviar, trout roe, bay scallop, and sea urchin) and upside down sizzling rice soup with poached lobster. The seven course menu is available now, but only offered Tuesday to Thursday.

In-N-Out, updated

In-N-Out, the eternal California fast-food favorite, is (ever so slightly) new again thanks to a design update to its stores. The decor changes — 20 restaurants so far have received them — are “subtle” according to the company, and include better lighting, new wallpaper, and black-and-white historic photos of In-N-Out over the years. How to immediately tell if your’e at an updated location? The once yellow neon “Quality you can taste” sign inside the restaurant will now be green.

Bite Me elsewhere

Bite Me sandwiches has moved after three years in the Castro at 230 18th Street to a new space, 701 Cole Street (at Waller Street). It’s already open for BBQ melts and veggie delite sandwiches at the new locoation. The move was prompted by a planned demolition for the original space, which is being razed to build a new hotel.

Little recourse for businesses flooded in Sebastopol

There’s more bad news out of Sebastopol’s Barlow complex, which was flooded earlier this month, affecting businesses like the Farmer’s Wife. Few in the industrial complex— operations like Friedeman Wines, Crooked Goat Brewing, Pax Wines, and El Barrio taqueria — are covered by flood insurance, the Chronicle reports. The Barlow property itself has its own insurance, but tenants are responsible for everything they’ve brought in — items that were severely damaged by the flooding.