My first meal in San Francisco was a dud, a sushi/Japanese place called Hana Zen. The fish was fresh, but totally tasteless, and the prices were on the high side. Skip it.
Breakfast on Saturday was at an upscale but very tiny restaurant called Canteen that does a simple weekend breakfast. I went with my standard plate. The scrambled eggs were really perfectly cooked, not runny but still soft, and the eggs were obviously very fresh. The hit for me was the home fries, made from red potatoes that were parboiled and then finished on a flat-top with just enough oil (or butter) to keep them from sticking. They’re not home fries, but they’re good. The chicken-apple sausage was either homemade or locally made, but it was not cooked enough for me. They do get extra points for nice presentation and for having green tea available as an option.
Saturday’s lunch was a visit to a sushi joint I hadn’t hit in six years, and wasn’t even sure I knew how to find. I stumbled across it while wandered around on Friday afternoon. It’s called Akiko, and it’s on Mason Street, not far from the Powell Street BART station and near Union Square. The place is tiny – four chairs at the sushi bar and maybe eight tables – but the fish is really fresh. The salmon was awesome, deep pink with a great texture, soft but not too soft. The unagi was great, although I’ve rarely run into bad unagi. Even the miso soup was good, tasting fresher than any I’ve had in ages. Just when I thought I was too stuffed to eat anything more, the last item I’d ordered, a spicy tuna hand roll, arrived. The thing was enormous, a good four inches or so long, with a generous serving of spicy tuna that had just enough sauce to flavor the tuna without ever making me think, “ugh, mayo.” And their prices are reasonable for sushi.
Memphis Minnie’s – The smoked andouille sausage was to die for, easily the best Q’d sausage I’ve ever had. It was like butter, but it was still thoroughly cooked, and even though it was a little spicy for my tastes, I ate every last bit of it. The pulled pork was good, smoky, just lacking a little bit of that sweetness that I’ve had in good pulled pork in the South, although it was easily remedied with any of the three sauces (North Carolina vinegar, South Carolina mustard, and Texas red) on the table. The texas beef brisket was good, but definitely a little dry, and it was the only meat left on my plate when I was done. The sides were a little disappointing; the cornbread (comes with every meal) was very sweet and had coarse-grind corn meal, which has a great taste but really needs to be cooked thoroughly (like polenta) before it’s added to cornbread batter. The baked beans were solid, with a heavy smoke flavor, but light on the brown sugar. I went for the French fries because they were hand-cut, but they weren’t any better than, say, In-n-Out’s hand-cut fries. Oh, forgot one thing – the sweet iced tea, named the best in SF in the most recent issue of Where magazine (or whatever that thing in my hotel room was), was like candy. Granted, I like my iced tea unsweetened, but this was practically iced tea syrup.
Dottie’s – This place was worth the visit for one thing alone: The scone. They make their own baked goods and the varieties change every day. I went for an apricot oat scone and was treated to a piping-hot wedge the size of a slice of a deep-dish pie. It was unbelievable – just slightly moist (like a scone should be), with huge chunks of avocado and the nice, complex sweet/nutty flavor of an oatmeal cookie. The meal itself was so-so; the scrambled eggs were cooked properly but were light on salt, the bacon rashers were thick and a little undercooked (I like ‘em crispy), and the potatoes were really light on salt. All of their egg plates come with two slices of homemade buttermilk dill bread, which was a very high-quality bread with a dense crumb, although I’m not big on dill.
My last meal in San Fran was a bit upscale, at a place near my hotel called Fino. I ordered a special, a grilled salmon with artichoke hearts and mushrooms, served in a white wine sauce with whipped potatoes. The salmon was fresh, clearly Pacific, cooked perfectly, and the sauce was light and thin so the fish’s flavor could come through. The “chocolate Fino” dessert, however, was a complete waste of time. It’s a chocolate pudding on a little raspberry sauce, and it’s bruléed before it’s served. Aside from the fact that I burned my finger on the glass bowl, the chocolate pudding was milk chocolate. Why bother? If I wanted a glass of milk, I would have ordered one.