Dining @ Lord Stanley in San Francisco, CA

Recently I was able to check out Lord Stanley in San Francisco with my +1.  I first heard of Lord Stanley when the Michelin star restaurant list came out a few years ago.  Then the San Francisco Chronicle gave the restaurant a 3.5 out of 4 star review.  So it seems like a place worth checking out.

The restaurant offers both an a la carte menu and a tasting menu.  As I'm quite lazy about selecting food, we selected the tasting menu.  This is what we got.

1) sourdough

Really good sourdough.  We debated if it was better than Aster's, which is our favorite.  It's really good, but we thought it was a pretty close second.

2) poached oyster with dungeness crab, sorrel and daikon radish

A great first course, a great combination of flavors.

3) warm cabbage, house buttermilk and uni bottarga

I was a little surprised when I saw this, as I mostly saw a pile of boiled cabbage.  But I ended up really enjoying this dish.  With the buttermilk, it gives it a much different flavor than I had anticipated.  I especially appreciated the fact that it wasn't a typical "salad" course, it's just a bit different and mixes things up a bit.

4) foie gras confit in kombu with celery root and black olive, seaweed madeleines

This was a supplemental course on the menu.  The foie gras was really good, although I wonder about the combination of the madeleines with it instead of a more average bread.  The madeleines were just a bit too soft for spreading.  But the madeleines were good by themselves.

5) hen consomme with confit yolk, trumpet mushrooms, english peas and bloomsdale spinach

Also included in this soup was also some lima beans.  The egg yolk was cooked to a very creamy consistency.  There was a little something in the soup that I couldn't quite pick up on.  Something a little "sweet and sour", unsure what flavor was added, although you can see the red dots in the soup above. 

At this point in the meal, I do want to say that I felt the meal was really healthy.  It just felt like I was eating a lot more vegetables than most tasting menus.

6) mount lassen trout with barbecued leek, almonds, and curry

This trout was clearly sous vided and very soft and tender.  I wasn't sure what the sauce on the upper left was, but there it appeared be some cream/mayo-ish sauce.  Overall, quite good.

7) wagyu sirloin with braised salsify, horseradish and red wine jus

Not much to say about this dish, as its a more traditional dish.

8) apple and fennel sorbet with a cider float

The staff offered the cider for this float as an option, in case you don't want the alcohol from it.  The sorbet was delicious.

9) mandarin pavlova with citrus gastrique

This was delicious, amongst the best desserts I can recall.  Underneath this meringue shell was mandarin origin slices and citrus "gastrique".  I didn't know that gastrique was, but online its a jam of sorts.  We found a gelatin/gummy like products mixed in with the mandarin slices, which is what I assume was the gastrique.  Overall, with the crunchy outside, this dessert was wonderful.

10) treats

And finally mignardise, this was popcorn macaron and salted caramel chocolate.  The popcorn macaron was interesting as I've never had that as a macaron flavor before.

Overall the meal was just over 2 hours long and I really enjoyed it.  We decided it was certainly in the upper half of meals we've had.

One thing that amazes me is how cheap this tasting menu is.  At only $97 (+ $17 for the foie gras), it has to be one of the cheaper tasting menus in the bay area.

Dinner @ Robin in San Francisco, CA

I recently had the chance to dine at Robin in San Francisco.  It's a relatively new sushi restaurant that's gotten some very good reviews.  The chronicle gave a great review, as did SFweekly.

One thing that's interesting about Robin is there is no set price for their omakase tasting menus.  You give the staff your price range (currently the options are $79 to $179) and they curate a meal based on the price.  The more expensive you go, the more courses you get and/or you get higher quality ingredients.  I suspect some of the dishes below would get extra truffle, extra caviar, etc.

Without any idea of what to go for, we just went with a $100 price per person.  Later on, we upped this to $120 to get a few more courses because we didn't think we'd be quite full by the end.  So this is what we ended up getting.  Because there was no printed menu, I don't remember the ingredients in every dish, so I list what I can recall.

1) sea bream sashimi w/ pomegranate, pistachio, and chile

Overall, a good starting sashimi dish.  A combo of flavors that I hadn't really seen before.

2) skip jack, trout w/ persimmon, and sea bream

The skip jack and trout were my favorites.  I thought the slice of persimmon on the trout was interesting.

3) nori chip, wagyu, uni, asian pearl, shallots

This was one of my favorite dishes of the night.  Lots of great flavors and textures all mixed together.

4) red sea bream, salmon with tomato & basil, hamachi with grapefruit & pepper

The salmon with tomato and basil was an interesting combination.  Sort of an italian take on sushi.  Not bad but not a favorite.

5) albacore tuna with ponzu sauce

Pretty good, although albacore is not my particular favorite fish.

6) crab dashi with sunchoke and Japanese greens

Overall really good, although there wasn't a lot of soup.  But it's a good break from all the fish.

7) blue fin tuna, seared big eye tuna with salsa, big eye tuna

The blue fin on the left was good.  The other tuna was pretty good, but big eye tuna isn't a personal favorite of mine.

8) sesame ramen noodles with chimichurri and truffles

I did not expect to see something like this on the tasting menu.  Sesame isn't my favorite flavor, but overall this was quite tasty.

9) uni donburi with uni whip cream and salmon roe

This was probably my favorite dish of the night.  The ikura & uni by itself was delicious, but the uni whip cream gave it this extra creaminess.

10) potato chip with caviar

I had seen pictures of this nigiri online and was not expecting much, but it was actually quite tasty.  I wasn't particularly fond of the texture differences between the rice and potato, but I can see why a lot of people would like it.  My +1 really liked the texture difference.

11) mackerel, toro, uni with emulsified egg yolk

I love mackerel and the mackerel on the left was delicious.  The emulsified egg yolk sauce on top of the uni on the right was basically pure umami.  With the uni, rich and creamy and delicious.

This is the point in the meal where the waitress said we were at our last savory course and we told her to bump up our omakase from $100 to $120.  So I suspect the $20 was for the next three courses.

12) uni with caviar

Basically more creamy umami goodness.  Only knock is that after the uni above, I felt this was too much uni back to back.  Something could have been put in between.

13) mackerel with ginger/ponzu foam

I'm not a big fan of foam, but overall quite good hit of flavors.

14) toro tartare with morel mushroom reduction sauce

This dish came with some bread to put the toro tartare onto.  The morel mushroom sauce at the bottom of the dish was particularly good.

15) wagyu with shaved frozen foie gras

This was really interesting and also really good.  Definitely in my top three for the night.  Michael Bauer called it a great way to mix fat with fat.

16) white truffle softserve with olive oil and hazelnuts

Not a big fan of nuts in general, but the soft serve with olive oil was interesting.  Tasty, but not my favorite.

It's important to note that five of the dishes above were shared for two people (#1, #5, #8, #9, #14).  I was expecting to bit more full after seeing photos online, but had not realized that so many dishes were shared.  So one should account for that when considering the amount of the food in the above.

Overall, a great meal.  My immediate thought is how does this compare to other omakases I've had, such as at Kusakabe or Delage.  Overall, I'd say it's only a notch below Kusakabe.  But it's not that much below.

Dinner @ Michael Mina in San Francisco, CA

Michael Mina has long been considered one of the best restaurants in San Francisco.  It held 2 Michelin Stars at one point, eventually lost both stars, but has been holding steady at 1 Michelin Star.  The last San Francisco Chronicle review gave the restaurant a 3.5 star review.

I finally got to try the place out with some friends the other night.  The restaurant currently offers a 5 course price fixe menu or a tasting menu.  We went with the tasting menu.  The tasting menu dishes are a secret before its brought out, although I saw the menu online before we went so it was only a half-secret. 

1) Amuse

I thought it was pretty cool to bring out three amuses out on one dish, which I don't believe I've seen before.  On the left we have kampachi with (I think) plum and popcorn.  Up top we have octopus with some sauce.  On the right we have oyster with some sauce I don't recall.  I especially liked the kampachi.


2) Bread

I often don't post pictures of bread, but I'll post this mostly b/c of the butter.  It's a butter, ricotta, and honey mixture.  It was delicious.

3) SPANISH BLUEFIN TUNA, OSETRA CAVIAR, YUZU

This was delicious.  Could have come from a high end sushi restaurant.  Also came with some fresh grated wasabi, which they did tableside for a few of us.

4) LIVE SANTA BARBARA UNI, KYOTO MISO, CUCUMBER

I'm normally not a fan Santa Barbara uni, but I really enjoyed this.  The staff said this uni was alive just before it was served.  The uni was more creamy than I am used to it being, unsure if it's due to the freshness.  Also included in this dish was tomato and trout roe.


5) HAY-SMOKED BUFFALO MOZZARELLA, HEIRLOOM TOMATO, NOBLE TONIC #5

I honestly did not expect to like this dish, as it appeared to be a fancy form of caprese salad.  I had to look up what "noble tonic" is, and it appears to be some maple syrup, which is their fancy balsamic in this dish.

However, I was pleasantly surprised.  Somehow everything really came together much better than I had expected.  Included were 4 different heirloom tomato types, some lemon verbana foam, a tomato crisp you see on top.  I'm unsure if it was dried or fried to create the crisp, but it was especially good.


6) SUGAR TOAD "À LA GRENOBLOISE", SMOKED BUTTER, FENNEL POLLEN

I had never had "sugar toad" fish before, but really enjoyed it.  The skin was particularly amazing, as it was a thick crust unlike any other fish I can recall.  Included on this dish was some citrus on the left and shishito pepper on the right.

7) HANDMADE TAGLIOLINI, MANILA CLAM, BURGUNDY TRUFFLE

This pasta was delicious, much stronger flavors yet not overwhelming.

8) TOLENAS QUAIL, FOIE GRAS, MOLE, FIG

From left to right we had quail with figs, some foie gras with fig, and finally quail with mole sauce and some mushrooms.  The figs were really good, but I felt it may have drowned out the quail & foie a bit.  The quail with mole sauce was the best part of this dish.

9) SALT MEADOW LAMB, MATBUCHA, WHITE EGGPLANT, GREEN OLIVE

I had no idea what matbucha is, but apparently it's a tomato & pepper sauce, which is the orange-ish sauce you see in the photo.  The waiter said it's a sauce with South America origins, but online they say it's got African origins.  Oh well.  Pretty good, although the tomato based sauce wasn't a flavor that met my particular taste preferences.  I really enjoyed the eggplant and the lamb-belly on the left.

10) Palette Cleanser - Shaved ice with Hibiscus and compressed watermelon

This was the off menu palette cleanser.  I think this is the first time I've ever had shaved ice as a palette cleanser as its normally sorbet.  But given the dessert below is sherbet, I guess they wanted to go non-ice-cream like.  Overall pretty good.  The compressed watermelon was hidden underneath of course.  I'm not sure what the crunchy red things on top were, but they were tasty.  Some dried fruit of some type.

11) AMBROSIA MELON, SHISO, MATCHA

This was a great dessert, one of the best I can recall having (although TBD if it'll get into my top ten).  Melon sherbet on the right, shiso cake & chunks of melon on the bottom, covered up with crispy stuff.  Delicious.

12) Mignardise

Obviously this is for the group and not just me :-)  I believe it was yuzu macaron, lemon pate de fruit,  and kaffir lime chocolate.  The chocolate was my favorite of the three.

One of the interesting things about this meal is that it was about 4 hours long from sit down to bill being paid.  That's really long given the relatively small number of courses.  As a random contrast, French Laundry was about 3 hours and 15 minutes, and Atelier Crenn was less than 3 hours despite 19 courses of food being brought out.  We were a group of 6 instead of just the typical two of us, so perhaps that was part of the reason for it taking such a long time.

Overall a good meal.  I will say that at $195 the price for the tasting menu feels a bit high for the bay area.  As a contrast, 1 Michelin starred Californios clocks in at $157 right now.  2 Michelin starred Commis in Oakland is at $159 now.  It's possible this price is due to being located in San Francisco's Financial District, which I'm sure has some premium attached to it.

Lunch @ Bouchon Bistro in Yountville, CA

After a stay at Solage in Calistoga, we decided to grab lunch at one other place in Napa before heading home.  We decided to try the famed Bouchon Bistro in Yountville, CA.

Bouchon is the famed casual cousin of The French Laundry.  With this meal, I would have finally finished dining at the Thomas Keller triumvirate of restaurants in Yountville (also includes Ad Hoc).

The menu at Bouchon is classic French Bistro cuisine.  There are tons of appetizers and hors d'oeuvres that you can fill up on, or you can get normal main courses that are quite large.  The waiter said that for lunch, a lot of people would fill up on smaller dishes.  So that's mostly what we did.  We got three small dishes and one entree.  Here's an overview of what we got.

1) Escargots à la Bourguignonne - Burgundy snails, parsley-garlic butter & Bouchon Bakery puff pastry

I can't recall if I've ever had snails served like this, with the little puff pastry on top.  I had assumed the puff pastry was going to be on the side to dip into the snail garlic butter afterwards.  Overall pretty good, but perhaps not my most favorite snail dish I've ever had.

2) Huîtres

While I was writing this up, I was trying to think "why did we order oysters?"  While good, you can get oysters anywhere.  Shouldn't we have gotten something unique to Bouchon?  Then I remembered.

There are a number of "put on bread" types of dishes that you can get at Bouchon: caviar, charcuterie, pate, foie gras, etc.  You can also dip bread into a number of dishes (such as the escargot above or the mussels below).  So we decided to go with the oysters  to try and mix up our dishes.

They offered two types, California and Rhode Island (IIRC).  I preferred the California ones.

3) Assiette de Charcuterie - served with pickled vegetables

I was pretty surprised when they brought this out.  It was way bigger than I expected.  I'm used to a tiny pile of pickles on the side of a charcuterie plate, but the pickled vegetables on the side was huge.  The variety of the vegetables was also quite large.

As for the charcuturie, there was pate, salami, coppa, and some bread with cheese melted on it (can't remember what kind).  The coppa was particularly delicious.  Both it and the salami didn't have quite the high salt kick you're typically accustomed to compared to store bought.  The coppa was also much "softer".  It's hard to describe.  The pate was also delicious, perhaps the best pate I've ever had.

4) Moules au Safran - Maine bouchot mussels, steamed with white wine, Dijon mustard & saffron, served with French fries

So unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of the mussels when this bowl was full of mussels.  So just try and imagine it with more mussels in the bowl :-)

Overall, quite good.  The white wine sauce was delicious.  The fries were pretty good.  If you wanted to get just the mussels and fries as an entree, it would definitely fill you up, as there are a lot of fries.

5) Bouchon Bakery

We decided not to get any dessert and instead went next door to Bouchon Bakery and picked up some desserts to go.

We picked up two macarons (raspberrry and rose), a lemon tart, and a chocolate eclair.

The chocolate eclair was delicious, perhaps the best I've ever tasted.  The lemon tart as well.  Of the two macarons, I enjoyed the raspberry one the most.

Overall, a fun trip to Bouchon.  The one knock I have against Bouchon Bistro is that it is a very classic French Bistro food.  For me, I like to try and taste new and different things that I haven't had before.

While I'm sure dishes such as their steak & frites or their croque madam are delicious and better than many other restaurants, I'm not sure if that's what I necessarily would like to adventure out to get if in Napa.  But if you're more interested in something more casual and familiar, I think Bouchon Bistro is a great place to hit up.

Meals @ Solbar in Calistoga, CA

I recently stayed in Solage in Calistoga, CA. Solage is home to Solbar, a 1 Michelin star restaurant they have on site that serves high quality California cuisine.

I came here once before for lunch, but this time I had items from their breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus, I decided to cover everything I ate in one post.  So here's an overview of everything we ate.

Breakfast

Over two days, we ordered four different breakfast dishes from Solbar via room service.

1) smoked monterey salmon - “everything” golden bagel, pickled veggies bellweather farms, fromage blanc

The first thing I noticed was how much food there was.  I actually wasn't expecting too much, just at typical bagel with some cream cheese and salmon lox.  But as you can see on the right, it's *alot* of salmon lox.  They even threw in a hard boiled egg for good measure.  The pickled cucumber slices were delicious with some chili kick.  Overall, quite good and a good value.

2) morning in california fresh blue crab and avocado - open-face on a toasted english muffin, with ruby red grapefruit and mint

This was delicious.  The crab had a salty brininess to it.  Perfect combination with the avocado and English muffin.  Favorite breakfast item we tried.

3) three-seed sourdough french toast - with vanilla poached strawberries

When this came out, my first thought was "this is a lot of french toast".  I'd never had french toast with sourdough before.  Strawberries were delicious, overall quite good.

4) chia seed pudding - house made almond milk, tahitian vanilla crème fraiche, valrhona manjari 64% cacao, gipson’s honey, fresh berries, medjool dates

On the left you'll find a couscous asian salad with some pickled cucumber, which I believe was the same pickled cucumber that I had with the salmon lox above.  I loved the salad, the pickles with the couscous was a great combo.

On the right you'll find the chia seed pudding.  To my recollection, I have never tried chia before, so I can just assume that whatever flavor I tasted is simply chia flavor.  It reminded me a bit of oatmeal, having a "grain" type of taste to it.  A bit hard to judge because of the new flavor to me, but I will say it tasted very healthy to me.

Lunch

Four of us had lunch at Solbar, so we grabbed four plates to share.  It's worth noting that the tacos/wraps below normally come in threes, but they were able to portion add an additional taco/wrap for us.

1) prosciutto e melone - summer melon, parma ham, chargrilled onions, shaved santa rosa feta, honey lavender vinaigrette

This dish reminded me of a salad we had at Ad Hoc.  Just like that dish, the melon was sous vided or vacuumed in some way to give it a translucent look.

Overall a refreshing salad.  I did find it interesting that the prosciutto was placed into the onion "rings" instead of being wrapped around the melon or sprinkled around the salad.  It sort of made it hard to mix slices of prosciutto with the melon.

2) spicy shrimp lettuce wraps - rice noodles, tamarind dressing, avocado, nam pla dipping sauce

This was my favorite item for lunch.  A lot of good flavors mixed together.  Really good.

3) yellowfin tuna sliders - with black garlic sauce and kohlrabi slaw on a pain au lait bread

The restaurant kindly cut these in half so everyone would get a half of a slider.  The tuna was cooked rare-ish, so it was definitely raw in the middle of the patty.  I'm not a fan of sashimi for burgers, so overall I thought this was pretty good, but not my favorite.  Others will probably enjoy it more than me.

4) crispy petrale sole tacos - sweet and sour cabbage, cilantro and spicy aioli on warm tortillas

Not much to say about this dish other than these were pretty good fish tacos.  The fish the flaky and not overcooked like you'd find at a lot of places.

Dinner

We ate as a large group at Solbar, so we had a shortened menu compared to the normal one served at restaurant.  But all the items were from the main menu.

1) amuse bouche

First up, the table was given this amuse dish.  I remember cucumber, octopus, and togarashi as ingredients.  Overall quite tasty, with a bit of a spicy kick.

2A) charred spanish octopus - wildflower honey, yukon gold, niçoise olive

Overall a really good dish.  Octopus was cooked perfectly.  Underneath the large octopus chunk was a salad with olives, some nuts, and some greens, which I didn't get the ingredients of.  I'm not a fan of olives, so I didn't eat all of it.  But the fact I could even eat half of the salad was testament to the fact it was pretty good.

2B)  little gem rosaine, wild mustard, fennel - radish, gravenstein apple pistachio vinaigrette

My +1 got this little gem salad.  Of the few bites I tried, it seemed pretty good.

3A) black cod and venere rice - uni butter, squash, coconut-turmeric broth

This was delicious.  Fish was cooked perfectly, perfectly flaky, lots of flavors.  There were multiple types of squash in this dish.

3B) sautéed halibut and mussels - roasted corn nage, toybox tomato, shishitos

I'm not a big fan of "meaty" fish (halibut, salmon, tuna), but of the few bites of this dish I tasted, the fish was a bit flakier than what I'm used to with halibut.  The sauce was a cream and corn type of sauce from my recollection.   Overall quite good, although I enjoyed the cod a lot more.

Overall, I was really pleased with the food at Solbar.  It's clearly a notch above a number of other restaurants in the Napa area and highly recommend it.  The prices are also not that unreasonable compared to many places.