Kevin "Rhymes With" N.'s Profile
DateSan Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 826-7004
Central Kitchen
Category:
American (New)
Neighborhood: Mission
Me to myself: "That sounds good, I'll go next time I am in town during the week while working from home"
Monday rolls around, "hey, let's head to SB40!"
Arrive 5:05pm on a Monday: chairs on tables, no one around.
Fail.
I stopped in because I was craving steak frites, which happens to be their specialty. So much so that they have about eight variations of the dish. Four with a thin steak and four with a filet. Au poive was the style I went for, which they make with a brandy peppercorn sauce. Evidently my waiter's favorite, and he was not joking. This sauce made my thin, medium-rare steak shine. Even better, however, is when you let the crispy frites soak in the sauce. I ate far more frites than I intended.
Prior to the main, I ordered the bosc pear and endive salad and a gin martini. A light affair, great for the warmer weather and served with a nice warm French baguette.
Sunday nights are now half-price wine night. Any bottle of wine on their menu is half-price on Sundays. More restaurants need to do this. It is such a good idea, and if I lived in the area, I would make Mon Ami Gabi at least a twice-a-month stop, especially while the weather is nice. There are not many better things in this world than the sweet, sweet combination of good weather, rare steak, and half-price wine.
At lunchtime, Cafe Yulong has about 10 lunch specials that look like 40 specials because of the varying meat options. Everything is $8, and that comes w/ soup to boot. It is good, simple lunchtime Chinese fare, and they are open a good bit pas the lunch hour in case you want to really avoid the crowds.
The waiter was a bit arrogant, making the bold statement that Evvia served the best food in town. Well, he may also have been right! I don't eat everywhere in Palo Alto, but of those I have visited, this is the best.
When I order wine, especially when I do not know many specific bottles on the menu, I like to create a short list of things that sound interesting. I was all over the map this time, with French, a couple Italian, and even a Greek wine making the cut. Waiter recommended and I went with a 1er Cru to go with the lamb. Damn was that a good choice. Not only was the wine affordable and excellent, it made a great pairing with the food. What did you expect, tho, really? I'm sure you weren't reading this and thinking "oh, that will NEVER work". So, it wasn't groundbreaking. It was still a whole lot of awesome in my mouth.
The dessert was good, and almond ice cream is something special. A good, light dessert after that crazy meal. It makes a good way to finish off the meal. You probably want to have it with coffee, although they have a nice selection of dessertifs on the menu. I did not partake, for once. Cocktail hour before dinner plus the excellent wine was plenty.
The corkage is reasonable at Hangar steak, and I really need to thin out my cellar, so I brought along a 2000 Deerfield Meritage from the cellar. I am a new fan of Deerfield wines and this went amazingly well with the fig and marsala wine sauce covered lamb. I had come here for steak, but the lamb proved to be the better choice this evening: exactly what I wanted, well portioned, and a perfect pairing. I want to go back for steak, but would be hard-pressed not to order the lamb -or at least convince someone at the table to order it so I sneak in a couple bites. Their wine list is adequate but not extensive, so I was very happy with the decision to bring along some wine.
The filet was also excellent, with a salty bearnaise sauce but unfortunaltely not as good a match with the meritage wine. As side items, we had grilled asparagus (good, but nothing special), and some marscapone mashed potatoes. I definitely need to try making mashers with marscapone sometime, I could have had these as my meal!
The service was prompt, fun, and efficient. Not much else to say about that.
Thank you so much to JCP for the recommendation on this place. Without her rec, I probably would have never checked out this airport hotel restaurant, however, this made for a great low-key place to have some good wine and steak. The place is fairly dark, as well, making it more romantic than one would assume. There is nothing particularly stand out about Hangar Steak, but if you want to get out of the city to a quieter location and good, quality meat dishes, I highly recommend considering this place.
San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 284-9958
House of Shields
Category:
Bars
Neighborhood: SOMA
Good selection of beers, my coworker from Portland was happy with the choices. I had old fashioneds. The first was amazing. The second and third, made by a different bartender, were just okay. Nothing wrong, but there was some special mojo in that first one. It could be first drink of the afternoon syndrome, but I don't believe so. I do like the sour cherries they used for these.
They even made a decent margarita. I am always suspicious of bar-made margaritas. I don't know why, I guess if I do not see a specialization in tequila, with a frozen marg machine in the background (even though I never order those) then I just do not truest the place to make them. I did not order this, but my friend did, it was good and she was happy, so all good there.
San Francisco, CA 94107
(415) 252-2000
Serpentine
Category:
American (New)
Neighborhood: Potrero Hill
I had the dungeness crab Benedict with crispy potatoes and about died with how good it was. The table also had the baked eggs, the country steak breakfast, and one buckwheat waffle for dessert. Add in a Pimm's cup and Bellini and the rainy day went to blue skies. Literally. we can debate about whether it was the food or this crazy Spring weather in San Francisco, but it was rainy when we came in, and blue peeking from behind clouds when we left.
Listed in: SF Classics, Hangin in the Patch
1 Previous Review:
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10/24/2011
Serpentine is an interesting restaurant nestled in the row of warehouses along 3rd St. in my hood: the Dogpatch. I want to call this a neighborhood gem -and it is, in a sense- but it's really more of a destination restaurant. A restaurant with easy parking in San Francisco, if you can believe that. We headed to Serpentine on a Saturday evening, and though OpenTable would said there wasn't anything available from 7:30 to 9:00, the place was mostly empty by the time we got there. There were a few couples that appeared to be more at least halfway into their meals. There were also a couple people at the narrow bar. Maybe it wasn't quite as empty as I make it sound. Serpentine has really tall ceilings with uncommon brick walls.
We sat down and were handed the menus, which come on narrow clipboards, with the pages so well lined up that at first, I didn't see the specialty drink list under the dinner menu. In fact, I only realized there were two pages because the wine list had all whites on the first page, and lifting it up, I noticed the second page with the red wines. A few minutes passed, enough time for some comments on the decor and looking over the menu a couple times, and then our waitress appeared. She was sorry about the time that we had been neglected, even though I didn't realize we *had* been neglected, and ordered a couple of interesting drinks from the menu, mine with a touch of absinthe in it that was devilishly tasty. When she returned with our drinks, she apologized again and said the first round were on her. This was an appreciated, though unnecessary gesture as I really didn't feel we'd been ignored. In any case, we were happy to drink the cocktails and then order wine afterwards.
For some reason, neither of us were overly hungry, and we chose the soft cow's milk cheese to order for a small appetizer. This also appeared on the dessert menu, and rightfully so, as it would make a good dessert, just as it made a good appetizer while we sipped drinks and made the final choices. Even though I had all that time to peruse the menu, I missed the fact that the lamb cheeks were an appetizer and not a main course. I guess this makes sense, as they would be both rich and relatively small, but I had tentatively decided on them until I realized they were an appetizer. The menu is listed in, well, a list of all the items but not divided into the common "Appetizer, Salad, Main, Dessert" format. It's not overly difficult to determine the purpose of an item; I just wasn't paying a whole lot of attention.
On another visit to Serpentine, I took a friend of mine that was visiting from out of town. I do not consider Serpentine to be an overly edgy or avant garde type of restaurant, however, my friend wasn't particularly adventurous and shied away from the drink menu (which is one of my favourite things here) and the better-looking (to me anyway) items on the menu. Again, the food was solid and we had a great meal before she headed to the airport.
Nearly time to catch my train, I quickly gathered up my things and took off. It had stopped raining, so I didn't immediately notice that I left my umbrella at the table. Somehow, one of the bouncers noticed the black, sword-handled umbrella (did I mention my umbrella has this crazy medieval sword handle? it is awesome and I love it) in the dark bar, grabbed it, and then got my attention as I was already pretty far down the block. I couldn't believe they had seen the umbrella or reacted quickly enough to catch me before I went to the train. Pretty great and unexpected service!
They serve food, as well, if you are catching something other than the last train heading north.
Honestly, I did not notice much of a difference during the happy hour time. There used to be some large booths for loungind along the side of the place, but these have been replaced with some high long tables. The break in the room that comes down a couple feet from the ceiling has also been covered with a few flat-screen televisions, giving the place much more of a sports bar feel. Those long high tables make for good viewing of multiple sporting events.
I never had food at B412 and had only been there for special events (Yelp and some wine tasting on the patio events) so I cannot compare that. I can say, however, that the garlic steak fries are pretty great. I mean, garlic fries are good anytime, but biting into one of these big, steaming potato-y sticks of garlic dipped in sauce will really hit the spot.
My Moscow Mule was a bit disappointing. It tasted more like a lemonade with some vanilla in it. I've decided I do not like vanilla vodka, so if that is your thing, then maybe this will be for you. The other drinks I had to follow up were all right by me!
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842 Useful, 695 Funny, and 715 Cool
San Francisco, CA
Yelping SinceJanuary 2006
Things I LoveSazerac, between the sheets, barolo, gimlet, rusty nail, cabernet sauvignon, gin martini, manhattan, negroni, sidecar, old fashioned, remember the Maine
Find Me InThe bottom of a bottle of Chateuneuf-du-Pape
My HometownTexas
My Blog Or Website When I'm Not Yelping...Work, work, and traveling to and from work
Why You Should Read My ReviewsThey are rare as emeralds
My Second Favorite Website The Last Great Book I ReadKingpin
My First ConcertThe Boss
My Favorite MovieBig Night
My Last Meal On EarthRare Chicken Fried Steak
Don't Tell Anyone Else But...I read the Twilight books in the space of a week
Most Recent DiscoveryCalifornians are babies when it comes to the cold
Current CrushMy Sword-brella
A new, patio-driven spot on Florida and 20th by the folks that brought us Flour + Water, replete with retractable roof.
The place is small but all the openness gives the impression of a much larger spot.
No liquor, but a nice yet short and extremely interesting list of wines, plus a signature cocktail provides some great. Libations to loosen you up and whet your palate prior to the small yet delicious plates of food.