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| - Unassuming small strip mall spot with stellar food and service. If I owned a restaurant, I'd want it to be like this. Accesible fine dining food in a casual yet nice armosphere. 4.7 stars
Eve award: wagyu pastrami--best pastrami ever (sorry NYC delis)
Cost to worth it rating: 4 ($150 for 2 including multiple glasses of wine, shared app and dessert--quality of food is definitely worth that and have paid more for lesser meals)
Highlights:
- Wagyu pastrami: A-maz-ing! Melt in your mouth tasty. Gotta love the nice touch of the red onions on top and the pumpernickel crouton on bottom. Beware kids, this is only offered on Tuesdays and Thursdays--you need to make your reservation for one of those days.
- Staff: fell in love with them. Waitress (Elizabeth) was all that I ever look for when dining out: friendly, engaging, casually chatted with us and was actually interested vs obligatory, helpful, positive, and attentive. Other staff members were excellent as well, making us feel like good friends who were welcome instead of out of place visitors. They all were SF fans as well which was cool.
- Duck dish: duck was good, but the accompaniments were the show stoppers. Fried gnocchi and tiny cubes of pancetta, oh my!
- Steak frites: rib eye entree was pricier, but the hub settled on this dish. Worried about the inferior quality of a lesser priced item at first, his fears were unfounded, as the slices of steak were utterly fantastic.
- Wine: top rate in every glass we tried (and we can be awfully picky living so close to Napa).
- Donuts: sauces were the best in caramel, jelly, and chocolate.
- Extras: from amuse (surprised to get one here) to bowl of fluffy pink cotton candy (whose kid in them wouldn't love that?) to the party favors chocolate chip desserts to go, they were execpected treats that elevated this dinner from everyday to spectacularly special.
Lowlights:
- Location: hard to find hidden within one of many loaded strip malls. Not a mainstream spot, so our cab driver wasn't familiar with it at all. About 15-20 minutes ride from downtown.
Thoroughly enjoyed our dinner date here thanks to Yelp identifying an off the beaten path place. I'm a Niner fan, so contemplating coming back for a divisional game so I can eat here again.
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