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February 19, 2008

Tour de Cafe - SF Espressos, food/restaurants, wine bars

I'm in San Francisco this week to assist with the RailsQuickStart seminar on Wed and Thurs. But, in the mean time, I'm enjoying the food and drink scene. Monday I spent with my good friend Matt, who recently moved from SF to Silverton, CO, but was back in town for a while selling some houses. Matt used to go out essentially every night, and really knows the scene. He picked me up at the airport at 9:30a, and we began our tour.

First stop, and top priority, was the new Blue Bottle cafe in the Mint district. Luckily the line was minimal, an we ordered our cappuccinos and poached eggs & toast breakfast. The cap was awesome of course, and the food was quite good too. Blue Bottle is just really good with capuccino - superb micro-foam and great afteraste. It was also cool to see their new siphon bar in action. It's a trippy, chem-lab looking setup. I don't know if I'll have a chance to try it on the trip, but will do so if I'm in the cafe again this trip. We almost ordered another drink, but decided the line was a bit long by now, and so headed over to Ritual Roasters.

Arriving at Ritual, we were greeted with a huge line out the door. But, it moved fairly quick, and we each ordered a doppio. However, we were extremely disappointed (which is saying it nicely)... the espresso was crap. Straight up, they should have been embarrassed to serve us those totally sour shots of under-extracted, under-temperature espresso! This was surprising to both of us, although it sounds like Matt has found them declining for a while (maybe they need to go back to using Stumptown - go Oregon! ;-) Yuck, we left them on the bar and skedaddled.

As the lunch hour arrived, we both didn't want to pass up the opportunity to hit the taco truck(s) over by Best Buy. Good authentic, simple tacos. I went with carnitas, Matt had carne asada and ate all his jalapenos. Back to his friend Jeff's house to meet Jeff, do a quick email session, and check the status of the day's Tour of California stage. Now it was time for me to check in to my hotel and then head out to dinner with some of Matt's friends.

We hit Chow in the Castro. I'd say this part of the day was just average. Food was decent, but nothing special, average atmosphere, etc. We were joining his friend's who have small kids (2 and 4), so I get that aspect completely (Chow was kid friendly), but since I'm traveling and in SF, I'm of course wanting to go to the really great places, or different or unusual or whatever. From there we split from his friends, picked Jeff up, and headed out to a wine bar.

Hotel Biron is a small wine bar, tucked away on an alley, sporting just a small "B" sign. Definitely the kind of place I was looking for - somewhere you wouldn't just stumble across, small, great wine, and oh-my-gosh, you could actually hear people talk in there! What a concept! We even sat on a comfy leather couch. The wine was also great. Had a nice bottle of malbec, and some glasses of Chilean (which I skipped, as I'm kind of a lightweight). Oddly enough, earlier in the day we'd seen the owner, Chris, walking across the street carrying a bicycle wheel. He looked like a bike messenger or something - no clue he'd have been a wine bar owner, but that's SF for you (Matt knows him, thus the reason we could spot this).

At this point we thought we were going to call it a night, but it was still fairly early, so as we were in the area, and a lot of other things were closed, we went to A 16. Matt claims A 16 is the second best Italian restaurant in SF. Continuing the small world aspect, as we saddled up to the bar, the bartender turns around and Jeff realizes he knows him. Of course this made for an even better night. Tim is a sommelier, travels the world, and was a fun guy to talk to. He poured us some great wines to go along with the pizza and prosciutto plate we snuck in as a last minute order before the kitchen closed.

After a while we decided an espresso might be in order, and knew it might be ok, as they used Blue Bottle beans :) Of course we needed to have some dessert to go along with that. We ordered the two most interesting looking desserts, which were the chocolate tart with olive oil and sea salt, and the pecorino gelato with buckwheat brownie. I was unsure how well the pecorino gelato would combine, but damn if that dessert wasn't awesome! The buckwheat brownie was superb, and combined with the gelato was just a fantastic dessert. The pecorino was strong, and I think Matt and Jeff were less enthusiastic about it, but if I went back to A 16, I doubt I'd leave without ordering that dessert again! Also, the desserts came paired with dessert wines which were outstanding. Everything there was great, including all the excellent info and wine Tim provided. I can't help but agree that A 16 was a great stop, and definitely an ideal ending to our evening.

Tuesday will be more relaxed as I'll be doing some work, but I'm sure will be heading for Blue Bottle and some other cafes again. Another report to follow...

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Filed under  //   coffee   Espresso   food   restaurants   travel   wine  

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September 1, 2007

Eugene Restaurant Review: Marché

I had been told that Eugene had a lot of great restaurants. We've been here for a few months now, and I hadn't really felt that Eugene had lived up to that, in fact, I'd been fairly disappointed so far. Tonight changed that in a big way. My wife, parents, and I had dinner at Marché.  

Dinner was superb!  All of us thoroughly enjoyed it.  The atmosphere was great - clean, crisp, yet warm, and relatively casual.  We had reservations and were seated promptly at a nice corner table.  Our waitress was great, and was helpful with the wine choices.  She knew the wines on their list quite well, as well as knew California vs. Oregon characteristic differences and other points that helped.  

We started off with some great cocktails, and placed our order:
  • My mom: Heirloom tomato and goat cheese salad, side of chard to split with my dad, and the fresh, Chinook salmon.
  • My dad: Heirloom tomato and goat cheese salad, and the pork chops.
  • My wife: Trio of bruschetta for appetizer, and then she went for the heirloom tomato salad, side of onion rings, and side of beans with bleu cheese, for her entrée.
  • Myself: Breaded/fried oysters, and the duck.
First off, the heirloom tomato salad was absolutely outstanding, all of us couldn't stop raving.  The tomatoes were perfect, the goat cheese was outstanding, and at the proper temperature, and the light dressing was killer (so good we asked how they made it, and plan to try to reproduce it at home :)  I ate a chunk of my wife's salad, and again, just stellar.

The fried oysters were ok, and are something sort of unusual for me anyway.  I think slightly lacking in flavor, but honestly, with all the other awesome food we had, it was fine, and we ate them all.

As for the entree's, all of them were excellent.  My mom loved her salmon, and I tried the pork which was very good - very juicy and tender, so often restaurants dry out pork, but not at all in this case.  Also, the grilled peaches that went with it were a really great match, and a nice change from the the more typical apples.  

The duck I had was hands down the best duck I've had in as long as I can recall.  I don't order duck all that often, but had it recently in the Bay area, and it was pretty average on that occasion.  The duck came sliced, rare, with a extremely tasty crust around the edges, and in the most wonderful sauce!  Everyone was going nuts for the sauce, and in fact, we had them bring a little extra bowl for dipping the onion rings, as we found that a great combo :)  The sauce was the perfect amount too - by no means swimming in it, but also, enough to coat some of the potatoes and chard.

Speaking of chard, yes, we had a lot, given two of our entrees came with it, and we had two sides.  It was so darn good though that we ate nearly all of it, and took the remainder home.  Perfectly cooked, great seasoning, oh, just so good.  I wish I had more room, as I'd have finished it off.

Finally, we managed to save enough room to have some dessert.  My dad and I split the cheese plate, and my wife had the creme brulee.  First, thank you Marché for not putting berries in the creme brulee!  Very good.  The cheese plate had a small serving of the same goat cheese used on the heirloom tomato salad, and a Camembert I particularly liked.  Given the intent for this to be a dessert for one person, it was a good portion, but since we split it, I'd probably have liked to have one more cheese (not that our stomachs needed it!).  We also had some espresso.

The food was so good, I almost forgot we had wine.  Aside from a glass of malbec we sent back (and indeed, the waitress had told us it wasn't the best), the cab was good.  We had wound up going with just wine by the glass, as honestly, their wine prices are quite high - even by California standards.  They had a fair number of good wines, but with cocktails, and the prices of the wine, we just decided to skip it.  I guess that would be about my only knock.  Aside from that, outstanding.  Definitely the best meal I've had in Eugene, and Marché gets my vote as the best restaurant in town (that I've been to so far anyway). I would highly recommend it.

Update: I also posted this review here on Yelp. I'm finding Yelp more useful for restaurant reviews than say Eugene Weekly's food thing.

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Filed under  //   Eugene   Marche   Oregon   restaurants  

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