One of the few downsides of regular travel is that it often forces you to miss or at least postpone taking advantage of things in your home city. And since so much is always happening in San Francisco, there is a lot to miss. Fortunately, our summer trips were outside of theater season, which meant that we did not miss any plays. Moreover, museum exhibits and restaurants have longer run time than do plays, giving us more time to catch up on openings that we missed while away. This week was official catch-up week, where we finally got to most of the museum exhibits and recently opened restaurants which we missed during our recent travels.
This post focuses on our visits to three museum exhibitions. Our previous post looks at our visits to three of the city’s museum exhibitions:
- DeYoung’s Modernism from the National Gallery of Art;
- Conservatory of Flowers’ Chomp: They Came from the Swamp; and
- Asian Museum’s Gorgeous
Over the last week, we had a chance to revisit some of our favorite restaurants and to explore some of the recently opened establishments that we have been anxious to try. While revisited favorites included Coquetta, Cotagna and City View, we were particularly focused on exploring two new places.
This is a modern, Cal-French rendition of a Parisian bistro from the owner/chef of the Michelin-starred Benu. While the menu consists of classic bistro dishes, ingredients are typically local and preparations all have their own, unique twists. The two of us split three dishes. The frog legs, with their unusual sweet/sour taste, were good, but there was nothing on the menu to indicate they were deep fried. The quail was very good, especially, with the house-made stuffing and jus. We were, however, disappointed by the Lobster Ragu. We felt the Bolognaise overpowered the very small bites of lobster.
Our meal began with a delicious amuse bouche (beef tartare topped wih a dollop of blue chese custard on a dehydrated pear slice), followed by “crab macarons”, an interesting and tasty take on crabcakes. It then progressed through the only disappointing dish of the evening, an appetizer called “Fazzoletti” which is a roasted corn pudding with squash blossom. We then had two dishes that served as entrees. The red abalone (which is actually an appetizer) included two nice small slices with wood ear mushrooms, pickled vegetables in a slightly peppery sea foam. The sea bass came with fava beans and walnuts in a bonito butter and tomato tea broth. Both were very good.
But while we happy to get to these two, it is all but impossible to stay up with all the openings in San Francisco. Still on our must-try list: Nico, Akiko, Pabu, Dirty Habit. But we had better hurry, since a large crop of new restaurants are on track to open over the next few months, a period through which we will also be mostly on the road.
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