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Check, Please! Bay Area reviews: World Green Açaí Bowl & Juice, Dalida, Villa Corona

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Check, Please! Bay Area, season 19, episode 10, airs Thursday, November 14, at 7:30 pm, on KQED 9. See other television airtimes.

On this episode of Check, Please! Bay Area, we kick things off in Larkspur at World Green Açaí Bowl & Juice, a vibrant little spot serving authentic açaí bowls packed with superfoods and other Brazilian favorites. Next, guests head to San Francisco’s scenic Presidio to visit Dalida, where a former Top Chef contestant serves up contemporary Mediterranean flavors like their 12-hour lamb shoulder tandoor and California tahdig, all served in a chic, modern setting. Finally, the journey takes us to Napa’s Villa Corona, a family-owned gem dishing out delicious Mexican favorites like platos de carne and tacos de pescado in a warm, welcoming atmosphere.

Host Leslie Sbrocco joins guests Luciana Duarte, Roland Aguilar and Mavish Mahomed-Silva from KQED in San Francisco.

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Episode Transcript

Laura Rabelo: This is so healthy.

Leslie Sbrocco: Brazilian bites in Larkspur…

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Mavish Mahomed-Silva: You will never want to have another açaí bowl again.

Leslie Sbrocco: …contemporary Mediterranean cuisine in San Francisco…

Rolando Aguilar: Just a perfect bite with the texture.

Leslie Sbrocco: …and traditional Mexican fare in Napa…

Luciana Duarte: It just goes down way too easy.

Leslie Sbrocco: …just ahead on “Check, Please! Bay Area.” Everybody say that.

Rolando Aguilar and Mavish Mahomed-Silva: Olive pao de queijo.

Luciana Duarte: You guys are good. You’re ready.

Leslie Sbrocco: Hi. I’m Leslie Sbrocco. Welcome to “Check, Please! Bay Area,” the show where Bay Area residents review and talk about their favorite restaurants. We have three guests, and each one recommends one of their favorite spots, and the other two go check them out to see what they think. Joining me at the “Check, Please!” table today are culture transformation consultant Luciana Duarte, law enforcement detective Roland Aguilar, and partner program manager Mavish Mahomed-Silva. Welcome, everyone. How are you doing?

Luciana Duarte: Great.

Rolando Aguilar: So happy to be here.

Mavish gets us started with her go-to breakfast spot. It’s a tiny, little cafe that packs a big punch when it comes to Brazilian flavors, including her hands-down favorite, a made-to-order açaí bowl she says is the best in the Bay. Tucked away in downtown Larkspur, it’s World Green Açaí Bowl and Juice.

[music playing]

Roberto Saldanha: [Speaking Portuguese]

Laura Rabelo: We try to show for all to Americans to try the real açaí bowls. Here in United States, we use just the pulp. It’s frozen. We put a little sugar. They come with granola, banana, strawberry at the top. This is so healthy, superfood. We’re so happy when people try.

Man: So good.

Laura Rabelo: “Wow! I never tried that. This is so different. This is so good flavor.” Our menu, it’s a little big. We have cheese-bread sandwiches. Sandwich are normally the French bread.

Roberto Saldanha: Hot doggie.

Laura Rabelo: We have a hot dog, yeah.

Roberto Saldanha: Is big sandwich…

Laura Rabelo: Normally, we make the hot dog from Brazil. You can put mashed potato, the hot dog.

Roberto Saldanha: I love it. Every time for me, eating hot dogs, my wife is stopping only one. Okay. No problem.

Laura Rabelo: Yeah, all the time. You can share with your friends.

Roberto Saldanha: [Speaks Portuguese]

Laura Rabelo: We try to create a space for the people to feel happy, to feel comfortable.

[Laughter]

When people come in the store, “Wow! This is so different place. Has a lot of life.” The color, the plants. We have a lot of American, Brazilian, the spot that people get together here to hang out here, the good spot. We’re so excited to show all the people our Brazilian foods.

Man: Saúde.

Roberto Saldanha: Saúde.

Leslie Sbrocco: All right, Mavish, I love that you say this is your “best in the Bay açaí bowl.” Do you travel the Bay looking for açaí bowls?

Mavish Mahomed-Silva: Well, honestly, I have had a decent number of açaí bowls at other places. This one knocks it out of the park. You will never want to have another açaí bowl again.

Leslie Sbrocco: All right. Now, why is that?

Mavish Mahomed-Silva: You know, there’s something about the flavor of their açaí — it tastes pure, and you won’t know what I mean until you try it, even side by side with another one. There’s a little bit of sweetness to it, but it doesn’t taste like there’s other stuff in it. It just — it’s pure açaí, and it has toppings of fruit, their homemade granola, beautifully presented. It’s just — it’s magic in a bowl.

Leslie Sbrocco: And the owners are Brazilian, and you’re Brazilian.

Luciana Duarte: How lucky that we got to go to this restaurant. And I didn’t know it, so it was — thank you, Mavish.

Mavish Mahomed-Silva: It worked out.

Leslie Sbrocco: It worked out. And you went and spoke Portuguese to the owners, right?

Luciana Duarte: To the owner, who was just so friendly. And they actually have terminals for you to order. We were trying to figure out, like, what all the options are. It’s an extensive menu. And so he immediately just, you know, came over and helped make suggestions since it was the first time that we were there.

Leslie Sbrocco: All right. And what did you get?

Luciana Duarte: So we started with the olive pao de queijo, which was excellent.

Leslie Sbrocco: Everybody say that.

Rolando Aguilar and Mavish Mahomed-Silva: Olive pao de queijo.

Luciana Duarte: You guys are good. You’re ready. You’re ready to go to Brazil. Then we had two different kinds of empanadas, which are technically more of an Argentinean specialty. But, you know, we love all kinds of things that are Latin American. And so we had one that was filled with chicken, and the other one was mushroom. And they had an umami flavor to them, especially the mushroom one. They just felt both decadent and light at the same time.

Leslie Sbrocco: Right. And, Roland, what about you?

Rolando Aguilar: Similar to Luciana, I had a great experience going there. It was our first time, so we went in the morning. We also had the beef empanada, which was really good. The ratio from veggies, bell peppers, the caramelized onions, to the meat was perfect and a perfect flaky crust.

Leslie Sbrocco: What is it that you get besides the açaí bowl?

Mavish Mahomed-Silva: My favorite item is their combo breakfast. It’s almost like a little buffet on a board. So it starts off with some scrambled eggs, and then you get to have either a cheese-bread waffle or a other type of French roll, always choosing the cheese-bread waffle 10 out of 10 times. And so it’s just like this crispy, chewy, beautifully warm and hot waffle. And then it’s served with maple syrup or a Brazilian cream cheese. So it’s really smooth and silky, a little bit tangy. And, honestly, with that cheese-bread waffle, like, that’s a marriage made in heaven in terms of food. It truly is.

Leslie Sbrocco: Right.

Rolando Aguilar: So part of the combo breakfast there was a guava juice, freshly squeezed. I wish I could take, like, an extra-extra-large cup home, but it was delicious. It was perfect for the morning.

Luciana Duarte: We did get the açaí juice, and we also got a papaya juice, and they were both excellent. They were just juice. However, they tasted like a smoothie, you know, because they’re so — they’re so thick. And so it has kind of that mouthfeel of a smoothie, which goes down really easy.

Leslie Sbrocco: Anything else that you can recommend for people to try?

Mavish Mahomed-Silva: Yeah, I would absolutely recommend their tapioca. It’s kind of like a crepe, but minus the flour crepe part. They use tapioca instead. So you get that same kind of chewy texture as the cheese bread, and it’s flat. It gets crispy, and then all of the fillings can be sweet or savory. I always get their breakfast tapioca, so it has scrambled eggs, some tomatoes in there, and it’s just like a very hearty meal served with some fruit or salad on the side.

Luciana Duarte: We didn’t get the breakfast items. However, we did have room for a hot dog and…

Rolando Aguilar: Oh! That’s awesome. Love it. Love it.

Luciana Duarte: Well, so the Brazilians have elaborated on the hot dog, and this was actually a hot dog with potatoes two ways. So it was a base of mashed potato spread on the very flaky and crispy French bread that had been warmed, and then sprinkled over the top of that, we had matchstick potatoes, and they were delicious.

Leslie Sbrocco: Would you try that? Would you go back?

Rolando Aguilar: Absolutely. For sure. Hot dog, potatoes, mashed potatoes, French fries basically — yeah, I’m in.

Leslie Sbrocco: You’re in.

Rolando Aguilar: Yeah.

Leslie Sbrocco: And did you have anything else?

Luciana Duarte: We did. We actually got these delicious little desserts that I had not tried as a Brazilian, I’m embarrassed to say, but they were so worth it. They come in a little box, and they are a peanut-butter two-bite dessert. It’s just the perfect amount of savory and sweet.

Mavish Mahomed-Silva: Actually, with those, you can take them and kind of crumble them on top of your açaí or your juice, and it just adds, like, another flavor-texture element. So good.

Leslie Sbrocco: And pricing? I mean, it seems like you get a lot of food for the price.

Rolando Aguilar: Yeah, very bang-for-your-buck type of restaurant. And something else I noticed was that we were in the patio, which is great ambiance. You start hearing the owner talking with other Brazilians, and he’s speaking with them. I was like, oh, that’s a stamp of approval that local Brazilians are coming to the restaurant.

Luciana Duarte: Yes.

Rolando Aguilar: And, thankfully, it’s so close to where I live, so it’s just over the Golden Gate Bridge, and we’ll be there in 15 minutes, so it’s…

Leslie Sbrocco: Nice. We’re only missing Ipanema Beach.

All right, if you would like to try World Green Açaí, it’s located on Magnolia Avenue in Larkspur, and the average tab per person is around $25.

Boasting hilly streets, waterfront views, and plenty of fresh seafood, the cities of San Francisco and Istanbul have a lot in common. The menu at Roland’s favorite restaurant is a love letter to both cities, as Mediterranean mezes infused with locally foraged California herbs and aromatics forge the perfect blend of east-meets-west. Located in San Francisco’s historic Presidio Main Post, it’s Dalida.

[music playing]

Laura Ozyilmaz: When people walk into Dalida… We have some… we just want them to feel that they’re welcome. You guys doing the tasting?

Sayat Ozyilmaz: Bon appétit, guys.

Laura Ozyilmaz: All right. Coming from Mexico and Turkey… we’re trying to build something unique with the food and the culture and the hospitality. This is the baklava.

Sayat Ozyilmaz: We call our cuisine Eastern Mediterranean. So it’s really centered around this idea of a cosmopolitan Istanbul that celebrated all the cultures, Greek and Ladino and Armenian, along with Turkish.

Laura Ozyilmaz: People can relate to that in San Francisco because we are a melting pot of cultures. Having a restaurant inside the Presidio is just magical. We are in the community garden where we pick all our beautiful herbs for Dalida.

Sayat Ozyilmaz: There’s rose geranium, lemon verbena, pineapple sage growing wild here.

Laura Ozyilmaz: Well, now you put one on your shirt. One of my favorite things that I pick from the garden — the nasturtium flowers. We fill them almost like a dolma, we tempura fry, and then we also serve it with a yogurt made with the leaves.

Sayat Ozyilmaz: It’s been really, really cool to be able to capture the essence of the Presidio, the aromas of the Presidio, in the dishes. The chubby pitas are Laura’s recipe, and they’re named after me — chubby pitas.

Laura Ozyilmaz: After my chubby husband.

Sayat Ozyilmaz: So it’s my legacy.

[Chuckles] That’s right.

Laura Ozyilmaz: Oh, my God. The pita is delicious. I think just by having that freshness that comes from the oven to the table in about a minute, a minute and a half, it makes a huge difference.

Sayat Ozyilmaz: One of the things that makes me very happy is, you know, bringing people together. It is something that we’ve always been really passionate about, and really seeing it manifest itself in the dining room is one of the most rewarding feelings. And people actually get frustrated a little bit. They’re like, “Oh, my God. There’s so many good things on the menu, and I cannot experience everything in one visit.” Then come back.

Leslie Sbrocco: Now, Roland, is it Dalida that you love, or is it the location that you really love?

Rolando Aguilar: It’s definitely two-for-one because the location is beautiful on a sunny, even foggy day in San Francisco, which I love. This is a great restaurant. It’s Middle Eastern Mediterranean cuisine, and usually when I go to a new restaurant, I ask, “What do you recommend?” And the first thing that they said was the breaking bread. And it comes out immediately — the fresh, perfectly warm pita. It’s decked with three dips. You have classic hummus, then you have your smoked yogurt, and then my favorite, which is the roasted red pepper. And it comes with some almonds on top, which, when you put that with the pita, it’s just a perfect bite with the texture.

Leslie Sbrocco: Luciana, you’re saying…

Luciana Duarte: Oh, my gosh. Roland, you’re taking me back.

Mavish Mahomed-Silva: I’m getting hungry now.

Rolando Aguilar: It was so good.

Luciana Duarte: Yeah. So we did the same thing. So it’s exactly as you described. It’s warm, it’s pillowy, it’s soft. And it’s just the perfect vehicle for all of those dips and spreads.

Leslie Sbrocco: Okay, after bread, where did you go next?

Rolando Aguilar: So from there, we went to the arayes burger. And if you didn’t have enough pita, there’s more pita on the arayes burger. So it’s basically a kebab-stuffed pita with great spices. It’s also grilled with some chives. Once you take a bite, it’s so tender, it’s juicy, and you see the juices just ooze to the bottom of the pita. And you can just have that last tasteful bite.

Leslie Sbrocco: Now, were you pita-ed out at that point?

Luciana Duarte: Absolutely not, and I wish I had ordered the burger now that you’ve described it, Roland. But I’ll go back for that. We actually had a different dish that also had a different kind of pita. It was a much thinner pita. It was the Çöp Sis, which are skewers with short rib and sweetbreads, which are generally not something that a lot of people love, but I do. But the bread was served over the skewers, which was an interesting way to serve it, and it kept the skewers warm until we were ready to eat them. And that was really delicious.

Mavish Mahomed-Silva: Yeah, well, I was excited to find out that the lamb is halal at this restaurant. And so because I only eat halal meat, I was like, “I’m ordering the lamb.” So I actually went with one of their pasta-esque dishes. It was a lamb manti. And these manti were really tiny and so cute. I’ve never had a pasta like that. It was served in a red sauce with some sort of yogurt in the middle that balanced out the acidity, and it was a delicious bowl of food. It was very hearty and warm.

Rolando Aguilar: We also ordered the 12-hour lamb shoulder tandoor. It comes with some braised chickpeas. And also you got to have some greens on the dish, so it comes with mustard greens as well. Once you take a bite of it, it’s just very rich, melts in your mouth, 12 hours to cook that. They have so much precision and just mastered their creativity with the art that they’re presenting, which is the food.

Luciana Duarte: We had the kibbe, which is also something that we enjoy a lot in Brazil. And so I like the flavors of kibbe, and I was not disappointed. This was a really good one. Its meat that has been ground and mixed with grains, with bulgur wheat, and then shaped into a little fun shape. And it comes with a dip, which is sort of a yogurty, yummy, sweet-and-savory dip.

Mavish Mahomed-Silva: I also had the shoestring fries, and whenever I see fries on a menu, I have to have the French fries. They were thinly sliced, perfectly crisp, and they were seasoned, which I really love in a seasoned fry. And then it came with a dipping aioli which had a little bit of spice to it. They were delicious. It was a nice way to complement the rest of the meal and just, you know, have some French fries on the side.

Leslie Sbrocco: And what about dessert?

Rolando Aguilar: So… oh, man, the choices were endless. And you can kind of see the flavors from the Mediterranean and from Central America, Latin America on the dessert menu because you have your tres leches and your rice pudding, but you have to go with the traditional baklava. But the nice thing about this — it’s deconstructed. You have your pistachio cream, you have pistachios on top of the puff pastry for the baklava, and also adds raspberry cream sauce at the bottom, and it’s just drizzled all over the plate. And unfortunately, I had to share with my girlfriend, so that entire bite was just mesmerizing and hit my sweet tooth very well.

Luciana Duarte: We had a different dessert, which was the gata tart, and it’s an almond-based cross between a cake and a tart, and it comes with a side of honey ice cream, and it was just a perfect way to end the meal.

Leslie Sbrocco: Okay. Sweet tooth?

Mavish Mahomed-Silva: Of course. And I did not share, unlike you, Roland. So I ordered the chocolate muhallebi, and it was a chocolate pudding. It had a Turkish coffee whipped cream with some hazelnuts on top. Delicious. It wasn’t overly sweet, which I appreciate for a dessert. But the real star of the show was a drink. It was a wild pistachio coffee, but it’s not coffee.

Sayat Ozyilmaz: So this is the wild pistachio berries.

Mavish Mahomed-Silva: So they take pistachios, and they treat them like they would a coffee bean. They roast them, they grind them, and they turn it into almost like a warm nut milk. It was fantastic. I’ve never had something like that before. And just for that alone, I would go back.

Luciana Duarte: Yeah.

Leslie Sbrocco: Speaking of drinks, I mean, Dalida has a commitment to an extensive cocktail program and really one of the best wine lists I’ve seen. Did you have anything to drink with your meal?

Luciana Duarte: Absolutely, yes. So we had the pleasure of sitting at the bar because it was impossible to get a reservation. And so we showed up right at opening time, and they greeted us very warmly. And I said, “Well, we don’t have a reservation.” They said, “That’s okay. You can sit at the bar.” And that was a stroke of luck because the bartender was fantastic. He gave us great recommendations. And then we also had a few glasses of wine by the glass, and some of them were obscure that we wouldn’t have tried necessarily.

Rolando Aguilar: So I had the Efendi, which is “The Gentleman.” It had tequila, tamarind, lime. And then it comes in a very beautiful goblet that keeps the drink very cold. And on top is the pebbled ice. So you can drink like three or four of those and not even notice because it’s so well…

Leslie Sbrocco: As long as your girlfriend’s driving.

Rolando Aguilar: Exactly. Oh, we’re walking, we’re walking. We’re good. Yes. Yeah.

Leslie Sbrocco: What about service?

Rolando Aguilar: So we were lucky enough when the dessert came, Chef Laura Ozyilmaz presented the dessert for us. I was like, “That’s Chef Laura,” in my mind. And then I told everyone.

Leslie Sbrocco: She was also on “Top Chef.”

Rolando Aguilar: Exactly, which, it’s a great show.

Leslie Sbrocco: It’s better to be on “Check, Please!”

Rolando Aguilar: For sure. 100%, 100%. So it was great seeing Chef Laura, seeing the team just work together. And it was just a beautiful experience.

Mavish Mahomed-Silva: Absolutely. It felt like a well-oiled machine. There were no snags and no snafus. Everything was just like an orchestra conducted beautifully.

Leslie Sbrocco: All right, if you would like to try Dalida, it’s located in the Presidio in San Francisco. The average dinner tab per person without drinks is around $85.

Leslie Sbrocco: Luciana’s a big fan of under-the-radar, family-owned-and-operated places. Her favorite Mexican eatery is no exception. Serving the traditional dishes of Jalisco for more than 50 years, in Napa, it’s Villa Corona.

[music playing]

Carlos Villaseñor: Villa Corona is a piece of Napa.

Daniel Villaseñor: It’s comfort food, it’s comfort feeling, it’s comfort vibe. Villa Corona is my parents and my siblings. My sister Gabriela — she runs the kitchen.

Fernando Villaseñor: Butter and garlic.

Carlos Villaseñor: My younger brother Fernando runs operation of the restaurant here. They call us the Burrito Brothers.

Carlos Villaseñor: So my parents started in 1972. We grew up going to all the vineyards selling burritos. My dad would make the burritos at the restaurant, and then we’d go out to the vineyards and he’d sell them out of a van. The only reason we went to school was because my mom made us. My father would have had us working, I swear. Seriously.

Fernando Villaseñor: This is a butter-and-garlic shrimp with the rice and beans.

Daniel Villaseñor: Our parents wanted to bring some part of Jalisco in our food. These are all their recipes. It was just basic what you call antojitos, enchiladas, flautas, sopitos.

Carlos Villaseñor: Our shrimp dishes, fish tacos. Our burritos are massive. Like five people can eat off one burrito. The distinct burrito for us is the wet burrito. The sauce is — it’s smothered in our homemade gravy.

Daniel Villaseñor: My parents did not just make a green sauce. They made a chile verde sauce with a lot of ingredients that gave it a lot of taste.

Carlos Villaseñor: And the red sauce is made from the broth of the chicken that we cook. Everything’s fresh.

Daniel Villaseñor: Everything’s made daily.

Carlos Villaseñor: Good ingredients, and we don’t have a walk-in, so we don’t have stuff sitting around.

Daniel Villaseñor: Food doesn’t sit around because it doesn’t last long.

Carlos Villaseñor: It’s fresh.

Daniel Villaseñor: Yeah.

Carlos Villaseñor: We’re still old-school. This is old-school Napa.

Daniel Villaseñor: The nice thing about our restaurant is the range of people, from the farm worker coming in, and you would see one of the Mondavis here. I mean, we love the community. We have people that have been eating here for 40-plus years.

Together: Buen provecho.

Leslie Sbrocco: Luciana, what’s unique about this spot is it’s been going for 50 years. That is something.

Luciana Duarte: It really is, Leslie. And, you know, it really is unpretentious Mexican comfort food is the best way I can describe it. My husband and I really enjoy their generous, extensive menu, but we also have honed in on a couple of dishes that are our tried-and-true ones. And we always get the plato de carne with carne asada, and it comes with your choice of corn or flour tortillas. It comes with a side of black beans, pinto beans, or refried beans, Spanish rice with a little cheese on top. Most recently, I discovered the fish tacos, which are delicious and fresh and actually a fairly healthy dish because it’s a grilled piece of fish. I get mine on a flour tortilla, on a bed of lettuce that’s shredded and chopped tomatoes, and it comes with a side of the rice and the beans. And it’s just a really nice, fresh lunch.

Leslie Sbrocco: All right. What about you, Roland?

Rolando Aguilar: So I actually got the fish tacos, also. And you can just tell that the fish was grilled immediately right when you ordered it. It’s just a fresh bite with pico de gallo. And I got mine also with flour tortillas, so it was delicious. As well, I got the especial of the day. It was Maria’s enchiladas, and Maria’s enchiladas was a spicy green sauce with tangy crema, some Spanish rice, and frijoles. So I felt at home. Once you walked in, it felt like my tia’s house with all the decor, with all the art. So it was a great meal. And then, of course, I had to get the horchata. The horchata was so good. My grandma and I used to make horchata growing up.

Leslie Sbrocco: Really?

Rolando Aguilar: Very nostalgic for me. Rich, creamy, milky, cinnamony, rice. It’s the perfect drink for a hot day in Napa.

Luciana Duarte: So they also have these delicious chips and salsa and guac, and you can get them from the case. You can get them to go, or you can get them for the table. It’s a really generous portion, like all the other portions, and it just goes down way too easy.

Leslie Sbrocco: Did you have those?

Mavish Mahomed-Silva: No, I actually didn’t have the chips and salsa, but I did start with their chile relleno. It was good. It was a chile, and it was stuffed with a bunch of cheese, battered, and deep fried, and it had some sort of tomato sauce around it. I thought it could have had a little bit more oomph in the flavor, but it was a nice first-appetizer type of portion.

Luciana Duarte: Yeah, I agree. It’s a good option for vegetarians or people who really want to keep it light.

Mavish Mahomed-Silva: But the star of the show for me were their camarones a la diabla. Again with the spicy food. I have to order something with chilies on the menu. It was really, for me, a solid plate of food. It came with some rice. It came with, of course, the shrimp marinated in a spicy sauce. It had the beans on the side, flour tortillas, and a really fresh salad. It felt healthy. It felt well-balanced. There were just a lot of nice components on the plate to kind of break up the spiciness on your palate, and so it was really a good, hearty dish.

Leslie Sbrocco: And what about dessert? Because they do have dessert.

Luciana Duarte: So I had to order dessert. And so I actually got their paletas, which are essentially popsicles that you can get from a cooler in the back. And so they have a takeout counter which is accessed through a side door. There were multiple different flavors.

Rolando Aguilar: Yeah, I got dessert as well. I went with the traditional Mexican churro, and I had that to go because I wanted to eat it on the road because I was too full. But, you know, your traditional Mexican churro with cinnamon sugar and just a good crunch, a good bite. So while I was driving, I had one hand on my churro and one hand on the steering wheel, and thankfully I made it home safely, so it was all good. But hopefully next time I’ll get the paletas because a nice, warm day before maybe you go to, you know, Napa wine country to start your day, you can have a paleta just to refresh you. So next time for sure getting that.

Mavish Mahomed-Silva: And now I’m feeling some type of way about not having dessert. A popsicle would have been amazing. I’ll have to go back.

Leslie Sbrocco: And did you feel like you got value?

Mavish Mahomed-Silva: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I took leftovers home — it was such a massive plate of food — and I had it the next day. Good bang for your buck.

Leslie Sbrocco: All right, if you would like to try Villa Corona, it’s located in Bel Aire Plaza in Napa, and the average lunch tab per person without drinks is around $25.

Looking for more Bay Area bites you’ve just got to try? Check out “Cecilia Tries It” online at kqed.org/checkplease.

I have to thank my great guests on this week’s show — Luciana Duarte, who’s very fond of the fresh fish tacos at Villa Corona in Napa, Rolando Aguilar, who loves breaking bread at Dalida in San Francisco, and Mavish Mahomed-Silva, who tucks into hearty Brazilian breakfasts at World Green Açaí Bowl and Juice in Larkspur.

So join us next time when three more guests will recommend their favorite spots right here on “Check, Please! Bay Area.” I’m Leslie Sbrocco, and I’ll see you then.

Cheers, and cheers to you.

[music playing]

Sayat Ozyilmaz: We don’t ever feel like we’re working. It’s just, you know, what we do. Sometimes we just look in each other’s eyes and…

Laura Ozyilmaz: Just to work with you.

Sayat Ozyilmaz: Exactly. Sometimes I’m like, “Oh, my God. Can you pinch me?”

Daniel Villaseñor: I remember when we were washing dishes. I must have been 7 or 8. I think we broke more dishes than what we washed.

Roberto Saldanha: I love when people go, “Okay, give me one açaí, no sugar.” “Okay.”

Laura Rabelo: Yeah.

Sponsored

Roberto Saldanha: “Wow! This is different.” “Is it possible with sugar?” “Yes!” “Wow! I love it with sugar.”

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