if you don’t know, now you do know: the coolest girls ever are born on february 19th. maximum cool points if the birth year is 2003 too. since only around 30,600 born each year on feb 19… that makes the club seem a little bit.. ✮exclusive✮.

ANYYYWAAYYYYS!!!! the day afffftttteeeeerrrrrr my birthday (because i was too busy wine tasting with my lovers) jorge, amy, and i had an evening in berkeley.

to start out the night we met up at cugini’s in berkeley because jorgie’s man, dillon, lives in berkeley up the street so he goes all the time. and let me tell you something about my friends, they never fail to find good food. most of the time i make plans to go out with someone, the plans end up being to meet up and eat and i hardly ever leave a hangout disappointed. i’ve never gone out anywhere in berkeley other than like the basic durant/telegraph/shattuck shabang so solano was a whole new world for me. let me just say i would 100% go back out over there solely because parking was so damn easy and I CANNOT PARALLEL PARK!!!! maybe now that i have a backup camera it’ll be easier to figure out, but until then my world limited to anywhere where i DON’T have to parallel park. another great thing about solano is that there is no shortage of cute little restaurants and shops to pop into. although the street is riddled with TONS (and i mean tons) of indian food you can never go wrong with italian because it’s such a safe choice for everyone.

anyways back to cugini’s. you know how you’re not supposed to judge a book by it’s cover? you shouldn’t judge a restaurant by the front of house. off rip when we walked in the two hostesses were just kiki-ing and laughing which no big deal at all because that’s all that i do at work but….. homegirls had on SWEAT PANTS. my store is known for sweat fleece and it still takes a lot for me to wear sweatpants out of the house (i type as i wear a sweatsuit that i wore to work today; but in my defense i started at 7am). regardless of their attire… food was phenomenal. although they had a really good cocktail menu, the “effen good time” and “hibiski whiskey” sounded sososososo scrumptious, we had to hold back just so we could enjoy our post-cugini destination (also i was driving so i definitely couldn’t get too tootsie lou’d).

guuuuuuyyyss tell me that the food doesn’t look great. if you did, you’d be lying and i hate liars. luckily i was smart enough to not fill up on bread while we were waiting for our plates because boy oh boy am i glad i had maximum stomach capacity available. on the left, jorge got the ravioli with creamy pesto and although i only had one bite… i have thought about it every day since (5 days at the time i’m typing this.) it’s so crazy to think that i only started eating ravioli maybe around 2020ish??? why was i depriving myself for so long and what the hell did i have against pasta and cheese?!?!?!!?!? like i told you guys before, i am trying to recover from my pickiness. moving on… amy and i more often than not will decide between two dishes to split (typically a pasta and a pizza if we’re at italian) just so that we can experience as much of the menu as possible. after debating between the penne pesto with chicken and the lasagna al forno we settled on our classic combo: pesto penne and a margherita pizza. how could you ever go wrong with that combo?? you can’t! the noodles were perfectly cooked (important because i’m not an al dente fan), there was a good chicken to pasta ratio, and they did not skimp on the cheese; my man wanted to keep adding more cheese but i had to tell him to cool out.) i will say though, tutu’s (my favorite restaurant that i’ve posted about on instagram a couple of times) has made me a firm believer that pesto should be paired with a chili paste. the pizza is cooked in a real pizza oven towards the back of the dining room and i must say the crust was so crispy and not super doughy. i will say though, i wish the pizza body was crispier. i feel like i may be coming off as a hater but i was really really satisfied with my meal, especially the fact that my friends and i only paid $30 each INCLUDING TIP. not to mention the little bit that i wasn’t able to scarf down at the restaurant made for the perfect breakfast before a day of shipment processing at work. it was so good i folded a straw in half to use as chopsticks because i didn’t bring a fork.

long story short i’m a very big cugini’s fan and i can’t wait to go back. i am so very jealous of all you girlies who live in the area.

now if you make your way a few blocks down you end up at a little spot called best friends. i found out about this place because once again:jorge. he told me that it was in construction for so long but randomly a couple months ago an opening day released and somehow he figured out that it was gonna be a wine bar. as soon as i heard it was a wine bar, with a dog as the logo, called best friends, near where one of my besties stays… visiting became an absolute MUST. after so many failed plans, it was only right that on my birthday we were finally able to make our way in.

to make a good thing even better… THEY HAD ORANGE WINE. and to make a great thing even better… they had an option to try two half pours of two different orange wines for the price of one!! if you don’t know, orange wine is a natural wine using white wine grapes but red wine making techniques while leaving the skins on the grape (the skin is what makes it taste a bit more on the bitter side.) from the first time i heard about orange wine i’ve been absolutely obsessed. not only does it sound fun but it taste fun too because it’s definitely not your typical wine. the only other places i’ve ever been able to find orange wine have been bacchus & venus in sausalito (thank you amy for the rec), and la fabrique st-george winery in vancouver (thank you kaedon for bringing me.) i was a bad wine taster/reviewer and i took no notes and i forgot which glass was which but what i can tell you is that one of the wines was a lot better than the other. both were good.. but one was definitely better. i will say that they were both different than the orange wines that i’ve had before because they were no where near as bitter and honestly more on the sweet side but no overwhelming flavor profile. the last things i will say about best friends is 1. their decorations are so super cute, they have a SHARK DISCO BALL and a pink lava lamp, all things that speak to me. and 2. they have really cute, good quality merch and you KNOW i had to get the crew neck with their doggo logo on it.

thanks for reading about my birthday outing 😉