Dinner @ Sons & Daughters in San Francisco, CA

Over four years ago I was able to hit up Sons & Daughters in San Francisco.  Some friends wanted to hit up the restaurant (partially based on my recommendation :-) and wanted to see if I wanted to come along.  I couldn't say no.

When I first went, the restaurant was amongst the cheapeast tasting menus in San Francisco, I believe $105 per person.  It's a bit more expensive now, clocking in at $145 a person.  However, the menu is a few additional courses with the ability to pay for an extra supplemental course.

So here's what we had tonight.

1) Ratatouille with grilled focaccia and basil

First up was this amuse bouche of foccacia bread toasted with some basil cream kid of sauce.  It was pretty good.  My friend joked if the above had edible rocks.  They were not edible :-)

2) Multigrain sourdough with cultured butter

Not much to say here, good.

3) Caviar d'Aquitaine Perlita with chicken stewed in chase-peanut milk and crispy chicken skin

So this caviar course was the supplemental course.  It's probably the most interesting caviar course I've ever had.  So the caviar is on the left, on top of stewed chicken, surrounded by chicken skin "crackers".  To the right is some nuts/herbs.  I can't remember the sauce though.

Overall, the course was delicious, the flavors were really good, but I think it drowned out the caviar a bit.  I did find the chicken skin "crackers" really interesting.

4) Chilled melon soup with horseradish cracker and sea urchin

When the staff first mentioned this first, my thought was "melon and uni?".  It didn't seem to match, until I thought of melon and prosciutto, which somehow matches.  Overall, not a bad dish, but not my favorite. I think it was hard for me to process the combination.

5) Halibut crudo with August Glo yellow nectarines, poppy seed and almond

This was delicious, loved the poppy seed sauce on top of the crudo.

6) Deconstructed samosa with warm potates and nepitella

This wasn't considered an official course, but a random snack.  It tasted just like a samosa.  I enjoyed the texture of the fried dough ribbons on the bottom.

7) Summer squash with raspberry relish, Brokaw avocado and tamarind

I think this was sort of like a fancy plated squash salad, with squash on the bottom, then some raspberry sauce, then avocado on top, and some fried squash blossoms to boot.  Overall pretty good, but I felt the raspberry drowned the other flavors a little bit.  I would love to see these flavors together in a bigger entree-ish salad somewhere.

8) Octopus katsu with tomato-bean puree and borlotti lomi-lomi

I wasn't sure what lomi-lomi was, but it's apparently a Hawaiian salad made with salmon and tomatoes.  Overall pretty good, although I might be biased because I recently had some incredible octopus at Mourad and Roister.  Any octopus dish right now would have had a hard time matching those dishes.

9) Tamal of king salmon with smoked trout roe and corn succotash

This was possibly my favorite course of the night.  Perfectly cooked salmon in a sauce of corn, trout roe, and (IIRC) clams.  I loved the crisped salmon skin on top.

10) Egg salad toast

So instead of butter, they presented us this egg salad made with quail eggs to be used on top of our next bread course.  Surprisingly simple, yet delicious and a nice contrast to the typical bread & butter.

11) Hibachi-grilled quail with 'cang ying tou', five spice seeds and fermented soy bean

Another contender for best course of the night.  The quail was stuffed with rissoto and had an incredible rub on the outside.  I didn't pick up what the greens were, but I think it could have been lightly fried (or baked) kale.  It sat on a bed of "cang ying tou", which is a pork and (I think) chive Chinese dish.  Overall, delicious.

12) Huckleberry sorbet with spiced granola and buckwheat custard
 

I love sorbet, and as far as palette cleansers go, this was delicious.

13) Peaches and lavender cream with blackberry oolong tea

The last time I was at Sons & Daughters, their dessert was amongst my favorite of all time.  This one missed the mark for me, but it may be due to my personal tastes.  You see the compressed peaches on top and the white is the lavendar cream. The bottom layer (which I assume was the blackberry oolong tea) was an icy popsicle like layer.  I would have much preferred a cake-like layer, as the lavender cream and icy cold of the bottom layer just wasn't to my taste.

14) Financier with strawberries and white chocolate

Finally, our mignardise was this cake with white chocolate and strawberries on top (I assume macerated and cut up).  Tasty, although I thought it was interesting they offered only this one mignardise.  It ends up it was because ...

16) Duo of chocolate truffles

We were given this box of chocolates to go.  The one on the left was caramel, but can't remember what the one on the right was.

Overall a good second meal at Sons & Daughters.  I think it's interesting to compare and contrast this meal with the one I had in 2015.

In 2015, I think that Sons & Daughters presented a very good meal that was a bit more traditional American in its ingredients and flavors.

This meal, perhaps as a sign of the times, was clearly aiming to be more experimental and international.  The experimental was clear in the chicken skin crackers, egg salad on toast, and popsicle in the dessert.  The international flavors were clearly there: samosa -> Indian, katsu -> Japanese, cang ying tou -> Chinese, tamal -> Mexican.  I think it leads to a meal that had a few non-hits along the way (I wouldn't call them misses), but overall makes the meal more interesting along the way.  With those changes, I can see myself coming back to see what they come up with in a few years.

Dinner @ Roister in Chicago, IL

Me and my +1 were going out to a show in Chicago and needed to get dinner before hand.  Since we were on a bit of a schedule, this meant we couldn't go to a longer tasting menu and had to find something a bit more casual.  My first thought was to hit up the famed Girl & the Goat, but reservations were already taken (> 1 month ahead too).

I considered a few other options, including The Publican, but eventually settled on Roister.  It's the casual restaurant by the folks from Alinea.  So I figured why not.

The restaurant offers a very simple a la carte menu and concentrates on many items being grilled in their wood fire oven.  Here's what we ended up getting.

1) Hearth Grilled Shishito Peppers - yuzu, togarashi aioli

We got this starter almost exclusively because we regularly bake sweet peppers when they are in season.  When I bit into these peppers, all I could think is "I can't do this at home".  Throwing these onto their wood fired oven to get that really quick char makes these really good.  Add into the aioli and lime, really good.

2) Mediterranean Octopus - fennel, nicoise olive, aleppo chili

This may be the best octopus I've ever had, but with an exception.  I assume many other gourmet restaurants sous vide their octopus or braise it in some slow cooked way to make it so tender.  It's not clear to me if Roister does that beforehand and chars it at the end, or cooks it all the way on the oven, but the char from the oven gives the octopus that extra flavor.  It was still very tender and delicious along with the sauce.

The exception to everything I said above is that parts of the octopus were overly charred, especially the "skinny" parts of the tentacle.  Still an overall net win, but it is what it is.

3) Chicken & Chamomile - braised, poached, fried with sunchoke

I did a bad job photographing this dish.  This dish comes with chicken prepared two ways.  One is the fried chicken thighs you see in the front.  The other way is the grilled chicken breast underneath.  As you can see, it's accompanied by some hot sauce and gravy.

To be honest, I was a bit skeptical of ordering this dish because, well, it's fried chicken and grilled chicken.  However, the dish is highly recommended per reviews online.  I will say that the fried chicken did not disappoint.  I don't know that it was about it, the crust, the juiciness of the chicken, or the gravy, it was just delicious.

The grilled chicken breast was also very good, although a slight notch below the excellent roast chicken I recently had at Mourad.  The charred skin was delicious, but it just didn't quite have the same juiciness as the one at Mourad or the fried chicken.

Overall, I loved the gravy and was a little meh on the hot sauce, but I'm not a big fan of hot sauce overall.  My +1 enjoyed the hot sauce more.

4) Grilled Asparagus - jambon de bayonne, meyer lemon vinaigrette

Similar to the shishito peppers above, these are simply excellent asparagus.  The vinaigrette really stood out and my immediate thought is "how come my grilled asparagus doesn't come out like this".  Are they picked at their peak?  Is it simply shaving the fibrous parts on the ends?  The vinaigrette brings out some flavor?  I have no idea, but it was really good.

5) Hearth Roasted Banana Split - passionfruit, macadamia nut, caramelized white chocolate

Finally, we decided to share this banana split.  It comes with a brown butter ice cream, some dried banana chips, roasted honeycomb, macadamia nuts, and chocolate pearls.  I'm mildly allergic to tropical fruit, so the passion fruit was not included.  I really liked the roasted banana, giving it this creaminess to go along with the ice cream.  I felt there were too many crunchy textures going on (honeycumb, banana chips, nuts), but perhaps that's just my quirky tastes.  My +1 loved it.

Overall, I really enjoyed Roister.  Nothing here is going to wow you with originality, but you can really taste how many dishes are just elevated and better than your average restaurant.

Dinner @ The Progress in San Francisco, CA

About 4 years ago I was able to try The Progress, the newly minted sister restaurant to State Bird Provisions.  The restaurant hadn't yet found its way, initially serving a 6 course, price-fixe, family style meal.

Nowadays, the restaurant serves a general a la carte menu, with almost everything to be served family style.  The updates eventually earned the restaurant a Michelin Star in 2017.

So we decided we wanted to check out the restaurant again.   The menu features several large platters that can be shared between 2-6 people, but we opted for more of the smaller dishes to try more food.  Here's what we got.

1) sturgeon caviar potato cloud

First up we got this tiny appetizer.  It's sized at about the size of an oyster course, so you'd want to order one per person.  There's potato foam on top, some crunchy fried potato bits below, and ultimately caviar on the bottom, which you can tell in the second picture.  My first taste reminded me a lot of french fries.  This dish was ok, not my favorite caviar course I've ever had.  I think the recollection of french fries didn't mix well with the caviar.

2) pig's head charcuterie - mandarin, fish sauce & serranos

Second up, we had what might have been my favorite course of the night.  While you mostly see the charcuterie on top, beneath was (what I believed to be) shaved fennel, mint, cilantro, and slices of serrano peppers (and possibly other herbs that I missed).  On top was a sprinkling of puffed rice.  Overall, just a wonderful mix of flavors, textures, and that occasional hit of heat from the peppers.  A part of me wondered if this could be made bigger, like in to a entree salad, but I think this was about the right size.  You couldn't really do more than this.

3) radishes from our farm - smoked paprika, green garlic umami sauce

To be honest, for $8 I felt this was sort of a rip off given the amount of food.  It's around maybe 7-8 small radishes.  The garlic aioli-ish sauce was good, but it just seemed like so little and I'm not sure the texture of the radishes really went well with the sauce.  Something crunchy in addition, perhaps some potato crisps or even deep fried radish, I think would have been much better.

4) half dozen little wing farm quail egg roti, salad greens & wagon wheel fondue

This roti dish is a pretty popular dish in the restaurant.  We saw tons of tables order it.  This may have been the other challenger for best course of the night.  In some ways it's really simple.  It's roti, with greens, eggs, and cheese.  The combo of flavors and textures was just delicious.  Like a much better version of a breakfast burrito (crispy/buttery roti instead of plain burrito wrap, soft cooked quail eggs instead of scrambled eggs, and mixed greens for contrast).  I told my +1, they should try and turn this into some upscale breakfast burrito to be served out of a food truck.  They'd sell out everyday.

5) squid ink noodles - oyster mushroom, tomato-kale dashi, & toasted sesame

I don't remember too much about this dish, other than the fact it was delicious.  The sauce was really good.

6) grilled monterey bay abalone - crushed prince of orange potatoes, ramps, and yuzu-seaweed butter

It may be hard to see the bits of abalone nestled in between chunks of potato in the above photo, but they're there.  There were 3 "biggish" chunks of abalone nestled in there.  The abalone was perhaps the most tender abalone I've ever had in my life, just delicious along with the citrus sauce.  I actually would have loved some bread to soak up the sauce from this dish, sort of like with clam juice from a clam bake.

7) wild alaskan halibut - green garlic, clams, and guanciale

So I actually didn't order this dish.  Some friends at another table did.  They were stuffed and told me they couldn't finish, so I went off to their table to try this dish as well.  You can see the halibut buried a bit beneath the beans and clams.  It was topped with a green garlic salsa-like spread, which may be hard to see in the photo as well.  Overall, pretty good dish, but not my favorite, as I'm not particularly a fan of "meatier" fishes.  I think I may have missed out on some of the salsa as the dish was being divided up amongst us.  I will say that I loved the beans in this dish.  They were fried and had a good crisp on the outside of them.

8) ricotta cake - blueberry-rose petal compote, black tea cream, candied almonds

So we had enough room to spare to grab some desserts and I had went with this ricotta cake.  I had never had ricotta cake and didn't know what to assume, I had wondered if it was going to be very "cheese-cake" like.  It wasn't, but it definitely was a bit "denser" than normal cake, which I liked.  I couldn't really taste too much of the ricotta though.  The blueberry compote was delicious and the candied almonds give some good crunch in each bite.  I really liked this dish.

9) josey baker quinoa doughnuts - ginger sugar, honey-creme fraiche ice cream, rhubarb

Similar to the ricotta cake above, I didn't know what to assume of quinoa doughnuts.  Once we got them, there was definitely a flavor difference, which I would describe as not-as-plain.  Overall good, but not the kind of the dessert I would order again.  I loved the ice cream in this dish, I think it was a great flavor and matched well with the rhubarb beneath it.

10) state bird peanut milk, muscovado syrup

Finally, we got some of this peanut milk complimentary b/c there was a slowdown in the orders earlier in the evening.  It's something that's normally $3 per shot but they gave us two of them.  I'm not a huge fan of peanut flavor, so this wasn't my favorite, but it wasn't too bad either.  It is quite rich, so I wouldn't order one for myself in the future.  Perhaps one to share would be doable.

Overall I felt it was a good meal at The Progress.  Similar to other dining experiences at "gourmet casual" restaurants, there are some hits and misses.  I'm hoping sometime in the future I can go with a bigger group and get one of the family style platters to share.

Dinner @ Mourad in San Francisco, CA

A couple of years ago I was able to hit up Mourad for a friend's birthday.  I was able to dine there recently for another birthday, this time for 6 people.  So we ended up ordering a lot more food than last time.

One of the coolest things they have at Mourad is a family style meal called "la'acha".  Basically, it's a large family style protein served with sides.  For 6 people we ordered two of them with a bunch of appetizers to share.  It ended up being way more food than we could eat.  This is an overview of what we had.

1) Eggplant - cucumber, oregano, pepper, flatbread, za'atar, pine nuts

We ordered two of these appetizers for the group.  The flatbread was particularly delicious, which I used the soak up all of the pureed eggplant from the main dish at the top.

2) Duck liver - citrus, ginger, rye, pistachio

We got just one duck liver appetizer, which was perfect for 6 people, as each person could get about 1/2 of a scoop of duck liver on a piece of bread.  Overall, quite good, although I felt the liver overpowered some of the other ingredients.

3) Octopus - brussel sprouts, cauliflower, mustard, preserved lemon

We ordered two of this appetizer for the group as well.  I didn't catch what the server said about this dish, but I believe the sauce in the middle was a mushroom ju and the white sauce is a cauliflower puree of some sort.  The octopus was incredibly tender and flavorful.  Along with all of the sauces and the perfectly charred brussel sprouts, my favorite appetizer of the night.

4) Lamb Shoulder - tangia, moyer prune, cumin, almond, chicories

The first la'acha main dish we got was the lamb shoulder, which you can see in the middle nestled on some seasonal greens.  You can also see almonds and the moyer prunes (covered in sesames) nestled on top too.  It's hard to see how much food there is since a lot of it is covered it, but it was a sizable portion for 6 people and probably would have been perfect for 4 people.

The lamb was really tender and not to "lamby" compared to the lamb I normally cook up from Costco.  Overall really good.

5) Chicken - preserved lemon, gaeta olive, cipollini, marash pepper

The second la'ache main we ordered was the chicken.  Normally, I'm not a big fan of white meat on chicken.  It's typially dry and (IMO) just not that tasty. 

I took one for the team and grabbed some chicken breast so that everyone else get get more dark meat.  It's probably the best chicken breast I've ever eaten in my life.  It was juicy, not dry in any way, and just delicious with whatever glaze they put on top.  When I told everyone at the table how good the chicken was, they didn't believe me at first.  In fact, I might have preferred the white meat to the dark meat in this case.

It's worth noting at this point that there was no way the 6 of us were going to finish these two la'achas.  Each was probably the perfect size for 4 people, and with the appetizers, we had left overs.

6A) Kale - olive, harissa

6B) Potato - hollandaise, preserved lemon, tarragon

6C) COUSCOUS - brown butter

6D) Heirloom beans - shakshuka, feta, sumac

The la'acha comes with the 4 sides above.  I will repeat a comment my friend told me from the last time I ate here.  The sides are all relatively plain ingredients, but all the little additions (hollandaise on the potatoes, preserved lemon the kale, feta on the beans, etc.) everything is just a little tastier than you would expect.  Of all of the above, my favorite was the potatoes.

7) Honey & Almond - beeswax, orange blossom

We were completely stuffed after ordering too much food.  Since it was a birthday dinner, we got one dessert for everyone to share and take a bite of.  The waiter recommended this dish.  As far as I can tell, it's a honey flavored ice cream-ish thing (searching online it might be sabayon), with almond granita, and some crispy bits on top.  Overall, I loved the flavors in this dish, really good.

8) Sesame fudge

Finally we got some mignardise (I took the picture after many pieces were yoinked), which was some sesame fudge bites.  After biting into it, it immediately reminded me of several Chinese flavored desserts that have sesame flavor.  Overall, really really good.

Overall, a great meal at Mourad.  I can't recommend it enough.  The price is not too exorbitant given the quality of the food that you're getting, especially when getting the la'acha family meals.

Dining @ Rich Table in San Francisco, CA

I first heard of Rich Table around 6 years ago when the San Francisco Chronicle pondered why they weren't given a Michelin Star.  Well, they eventually captured a Michelin Star in 2017 after many years of praise locally.  Reservations are hard to come, as Rich Table has regularly been considered one of the best gourmet-casual spots in the city.  But I was finally able to snag a reservation for a Saturday at a time I could make.

Rich Table's menu is divided into four chunks: snacks, appetizers, pastas, and mains.  The pasta is said to be "primi" sized and not really entree sized.  There's also a chef's picks for $99 per person for about 6 courses.  The chef's pick apparently goes with both menu and off menu dishes.  If you go the a la carte route, the waitress recommended 2-3 snacks, and an appetizer, pasta, and main to share.  We followed her suggestions for the a la carte route, and here's what we got.

1) Sardine Chip - horseradish creme fraiche

This is apparently a signature snack from Rich Table and it's priced $2.50 per chip, which you can see is a chunk of sardine weaved into a potato chip.  We didn't know how many to order and just ordered 4 for the two of us.  I think that was the right amount, as 1 each would have been too little.

Overall quite tasty.  The horseradish creme fraiche was delicious, with a bit of kick, but not so strong as overtake the dish (e.g. like horseradish wasabi can).  I would love the horseradish creme fraiche as a general dip for chips.

2) burrata, bbq leek, romesco, everything crumble

This dish was the appetizer that we ordered, the restaurant brought all the snacks and appetizers out at the same time.  I had expected the dish to be more "balanced", like a salad, but the dish was mostly burrata.  But this ended up not being an issue, because the burrata was delicious.  I can't remember having a burrata that was quite light in this flavor and creamy as well.  I think I would have enjoyed it paired in a typical salad instead of with roasted leeks though.

3) Dried Porcini Doughnuts - raclette

This is apparently another semi-well known snack from this restaurant.  Doughnuts, lightly sprinkled with dried porcini powder, which you can dip into melted raclette cheese which you can you on the right.  Overall, lots of umami in this dish.  There are 5 small doughnuts served, which maybe is a tad high for 2 people.  It would be better for this to be ordered in a group.

4) aged beef wonton - chili oil, sesame

The wontons were listed at $5 each, so I didn't quite know what to expect.  I had expected them to be huge, but these were more medium sized.  Overall tasty, with a lot of umami from the chili paste on top.  The dumpling skins were particularly good, chewy but not too thick.  Good, but I'm not sure these were worth $5 a piece.

5) tonnarelli, sea urchin cacio e pepe, idiazabal

Other than the fact that this was a pasta dish with sea urchin, I had no idea what "cacio e pepe" or "idiazabal" was.  Well, the former is a type of pasta and the latter is a type of cheese.  Overall, really good dish, creamy, rich, with the pasta perfectly al dente.  I appreciated the fact that the dish was a "primi" size portion of pasta, and not some gigantic pasta dish.  Otherwise we wouldn't have been able to eat ...

6) 21 day aged ribeye, RT "Poutine"

So we picked this entree somewhat at random, just b/c we hadn't had a steak in awhile.  It was topped with the restaurant's version of poutine.  You can clearly see the gravy sauce, but there are pieces of fries on top with cheese and some vegetable (perhaps a swiss chard or kale).  I thought the topping of the poutine was an interesting choice.  I actually enjoyed eating the poutine a bit by itself, b/c it was really good with perfectly crisp fries.

But in combination with the steak, I'm not really sure I enjoyed it that much.  I should say the cheese as a sauce for the steak was good but was a bit perplexed by the combo.  The steak was cooked a perfect medium.

I should mention that this steak was gigantic.  I think we were expecting around a 8-10 oz steak to share, but this was more like a 14-16 oz.  If it were a steak by itself, that'd be one thing, but with all the fries on top, it was more food than we expected.

7) Coconut Cake - lime curd, brown butter ice cream

Due to the gigantic steak, we decided to just share one dessert.  Given it was cold and raining this day, we rejected several of the other "cold" desserts and went with this coconut cake b/c we figured it was the least cold dessert.  This cake was delicious, which sprinkles of coconut, frosting, and lime curd dotted all around.  I didn't think the brown butter ice cream had quite the flavor I was hoping for.

Overall, a great meal.  We put the meal on a similar level of Aster and Al's Place amongst the city's gourmet-casual dining spots.

.