Feels like a real Irish pub

Review of: The Irish Bank Bar and Restaurant

By: Avery Glasser

Rating: 4

Read review on Judy’s Book.

As much as I love the other Irish bars in the city, there’s something special about the Irish Bank. Maybe because it’s in an alley… and my favorite Irish Bar in all of Germany was hidden in an alley near the tourist areas. I’m not exactly sure, but it just had the right craic – that feeling that you only get in an Irish Bar… warm, cozy, and like you can spend the rest of your life there in the corner, perched on a stool and drinking whiskey and stout.

The bar itself is simple and comfortable, with two televisions and a wall full of whiskeys (+1 point for having Redbreast 12 and +1 point for having Jameson 18). Guinness, Harp, Bass and Magners Cider are available on tap (+1 point for Magners) but unfortunately, there was no Murphy’s Stout (-1 point for ignoring the amazing stout from San Francisco’s sister city of Cork).

It’s a great place when you’re done dealing with the Union Square crowd, but not quite ready to head home.

Great food… when someone else is paying

Review of: Cortez

By: Avery Glasser

Rating: 4

Read review on Judy’s Book.

The minute you walk in, it screams “hipster attitude lives here!” With bartenders neatly dressed in black and hostesses running around to shuffle guests from the bar to the table, it’s pretty much a see-and-be-seen sort of joint. The unexpected thing is that the food was pretty darned good.

We arrived a few minutes before our 7:45 reservation, found a few places at the bar and enjoyed a well made cocktail. I had a Journalist – 209 gin, vermouth and cointreau… though mine was strangely made with Plymouth gin and triple sec (which worked better in my opinion). The other half of our quartet arrived a few minutes late and were sent to meet us at the bar. However, it took a good 5 minutes to get them service (not because the bar was busy, but because the staff was chatting and not watching the patrons) and a good 10 minutes more before we were seated. I’m not usually a stickler for punctuality, but it just didn’t feel well coordinated. When we were brought to a small side room where a large table with a stroller was seated, I figured that we were in for a bad night.

But surprisingly, we weren’t.

Our service was prompt, well choreographed (the waitress always stepped between us and the wall instead of between the table to our left in order not to disturb their dining) and we never went without water or bread. As Cortez is a “small plates” restaurant, we ordered 8 dishes for four people.

Some highlights:

Roasted shrimp with crab risotto – cooked perfectly with a sauce so tasty that it was a sin not to sop it up with some bread before the plate was taken.

Yellowtail crudo – perfectly flavored and simply presented.

Pork Cheeks – soft, flavorful and second only to those served at Coco 500.

Hanger Steak – a precise medium rare served with amazing wilted greens.

The food ranged from great to fantastic, but it came at a cost – prices ran from $12 -$18 per small plate, which bordered on the obscene. For that much, I expect 30% more food on each plate.

The dessert I had was just ok, certainly not the highlight of the night. I had selected a peanut butter truffle cake with banana ice cream. The ice cream was perfect, served with peanut brittle cracklings. However, the truffle cake really lacked something. I judge chocolate cakes on the amazing flourless rendition from The Slanted Door why back from when it was located in the Mission. Back then, there wasn’t much better than that cake served with a pot of well selected tea. This was a much more pedestrian version – tasting more like a Reese’s peanut butter cup than a sophisticated dessert worthy of this restaurant (or the $9 price tag).

I would have given Cortez 3.5 stars, but the excellence of the drinks made me round up. It’s a good place when someone else is picking up the tab. Otherwise, check out some of the other small plate restaurants where you’ll pay a little less for a little more (even if the quality might not be as good).

An Italian Deli in SOMA/FiDi

Review of: A G Ferrari Foods

By: Avery Glasser

Rating: 4

Read review on Judy’s Book.

One of the benefits, and curses, of living in Germany was having access to the great Italian shops. In every city there were at least a couple Italian specialty stores, offering fantastic foods at a fair price. Even the Karstadt and Galeria Kaufhof department stores in Cologne and Munich had separate counters stocked solely with fresh pastas, cheeses, sauces and cured meats. The problem is that the stores here – any of them – just don’t compare.

Take, for example, a simple ham. At my corner Italian store in Cologne, I could get garlic rubbed ham, spicy ham, rosemary ham, black truffle ham, tri-color ham (cured with sweet peppers, rosemary and garlic), a proscuitto cotto (steamed ham), two or three standard prosciuttos of various grades as well as fresh porchetta – roasted suckling pig slathered with herbs, rolled and sliced. Five types or turkey, over a dozen salamis and a half dozen types of mortadella alone graced the deli counter, and the list goes from there… and this was just a small neighborhood Italian store in a working class neighborhood. Every couple of days I would wander in, have an espresso and search the store for something new.

Unfortunately, because of the excessively restrictive laws on importing European meat, most Americans will never get a chance to have the experience of good Italian deli… and here, in San Francisco, every salami seems to come from Carando or Molinari, which are adequate, but nothing even close to what I became accustomed to.

With that said, I need to put my European experience behind me and look at what we have to work with here.

A.G. Ferrari is a small local chain of Italian delis, and because of their size, it can get meat producers to make specialized products for the stores. The prosciutto cotto al vapore, a natural steamed ham, had a fantastic flavor, rich with pork flavor – as did the porchetta, which wasn’t really a porchetta by any sense of the word, but was a nice roasted herb pork. The salamis were the standard San Francisco selection – the milano, supposedly spicy was decidedly not.

The cheese selection is pretty good, and the fresh bocce ball mozzarella were outstanding. The shop offered a fresh burrata, which looked nice, but isn’t appropriate for the sandwiches I had in mind.

Some thoughts – I would love to see the pesto available at the counter so I can just get a little or alot. The bread is good, but I would love to see some more selection – a garlic or rosemary ciabatta would be nice.

It’s a good place – one of the better ones in town, and when you’re jonesing for the fixings for a nice Italian meal, it’s worth stopping in.

A Perfect Tuscan Retreat

Review of: Pazzia Caffe Pizzeria Rosticceria

By: Avery Glasser

Rating: 5

Read review on Judy’s Book.

There’s certainly fancier places for Italian food in the city, but when it comes to the sort of everyday Italian that I had the pleasure to eat while living in Europe, you really can’t beat Pazzia.

From the moment you walk in, it feels like the sort of simple cafe you would find anywhere from Munich down to Firenze… and I’ve eaten at dozens of these places. Bruschetta, Pizza, Pasta and some simple secondi (roasted stuffed chicken breasts, mussels in broth, scallopine, etc…) is the name of the game.

When you walk in, it’s very simple – square tables in a mustard colored square room with only a Monet-esque mural of the Tuscan countryside. As you peek into the open kitchen, you see plates being assembled, pizzas coming out of the ovens and the telltale blue boxes of Barilla pasta.

What? Barilla pasta like in the supermarket?

It’s a myth that most Italian restaurants make their own pasta. Even in Italy, most cafes and smaller family restaurants don’t have the time, space or skill to be able to produce enough dry pasta to feed their customers, so they find a brand they like and use it and instead focus on the sauces, where the real skill is.

No offense, but let’s face it, dry pasta is water and wheat – it’s easy to make a good dry pasta, but almost impossible to make a great dry pasta. Unless you’re operating a restaurant known for making your own spaghetti and you’re investing an extraordinary amount of cash to get the best pasta maker, equipment, water and flour, it’s perfectly acceptable to use a higher grade commercial pasta (De Cecco and Barilla are most common).

I’ve had Pazzia’s simple cuisine twice. The first time, I brought home pizzas, and the fennel sausage was amazing. This time, I went with a Calzone Romana – a perfect dough brushed with olive oil and filled with fresh mozzarella, mushrooms, prosciutto, eggs and parmasan cheese.

As calzones go, this is one of the hardest ones to make, because the mushrooms and mozzarella will both give off copious amounts of liquid, making it a watery mess that spills out of the calzone shell once opened and makes the bottom of the crust turn into mush. Through a thorough understanding of the dough, the filling materials and the temperature of the ovens, the calzone ended up perfect – with a moist filling, crisp shell and fantastic flavor… and guess what? I cut it open and not a drop of liquid spilled out of the calzone.

For me, this is the sort of comfortable, every day Italian food that I crave when I think back to Tuscany.

A New Voice for Californian Cuisine

Review of: Coi

By: Avery Glasser

Rating: 4

Read review on Judy’s Book.

When I first saw mention of Coi in the Gayot SF News section, I was intrigued. Daniel Patterson (of Frisson and Elisabeth Daniel) had thrown down the gauntlet that California Cuisine hadn’t fully evolved past what Alice Waters was doing decades ago at Chez Panisse – and to a large part, I agree.

The Chez Panisse era of “California Cuisine” took its inspiration from Southern Europe – playing with French and Italian flavors and combining them with the abundant fresh food products available in the Bay Area to create something unique. Since then, this style of cooking has become rote… and boring.

In the Bay Area today, flavors are bold and heavily influenced more by Latin and Asian sensibilities than Italian, and you’re more likely to find North African infused Spanish than French. When you do find French, chances are it leans more towards Basque than classic Gallic Parisian.

As Bob said, “The times, they are a-changin'” and it’s time to challenge everybody who thinks that Chez Panisse sits in the center of the Northern Californian solar system. Enter Coi.

Tonight was the soft launch of Coi – and I think that my wife and I might have been the only non-industry folks in the restaurant.

So, as you read this review, take into consideration that it was their first night of real operation.

I spent many an afternoon in Coi back when it was Great Water, but honestly, as I was sitting in the tiny dining room (and I mean tiny – 30 people maximum could fit back there, and it would be really cramped), I couldn’t even imagine how that bar (which was unchanged from the older Bierhaus days) could be transformed into something like this. With soft ambient music, rich chocolate walls and an abundance of texture ranging from the horizontal weave of the wall coverings to the beautiful diamond embossed tablecloths, it woke the senses up.

Tonight, the choice was simple – the four course tasting menu, which was the only thing available. The meal started with an amuse bouche (whose contents escape me) followed by an exceptional pre-appetizer avocado panna cotta – delicate citrusy avocado served next to creme fraiche and topped with black caviar. The balance of flavor was perfect, and the caviar, which is typically not a favorite of mine, was fantastic.

The first of my ordered courses was the Crisp Pig’s Feet – which was a cross between southern trotters and a Japanese korokke, or croquette. The flavor was rich and gelatiny, and the accompanying frisee with bacon vinaigrette was just superb, but I am a big fan of bacon vinaigrettes. If you’re not into trotters, which can really be an acquired taste, there were two other options. One small detail point, trotters are very hard to make, as they require so much attention to convert all of the connective tissue into tasty gelatin, and occasionally, you’ll get a small piece of gristle. In this large appeitzer, I only got one small piece the size of a pin head, which shows the kitchen’s skill in preparing the trotters, but if you hate getting any gristle like this in your food, skip this and pick something else.

The trotters were followed by the monkfish, served in a beautiful black pepper and yuzu (a Japanese citrus) broth with a little chinese broccoli (like rapini or broccoli rabe). Monkfish can have a funky texture if prepared improperly, but in this case, it was quite exceptional.

The third ordered course was quail, deboned, flattened, covered with a “crepinette” and sliced into three long strips. It’s hard to imagine it, but you can see that this was certainly a nod of the head towards the great fried poultry dishes of the world ranging from southern fried chicken to Japanese chicken kara-age… and the accompanying roasted endive and olive tapenade were perfect accompanyments. One small point, during the deboning, a small piece of a socket joint was left in the meat, so there was a moment of casual dabbing of the lips and expelling the offending piece into my napkin. Not what I expected, but I’m willing to let slide this once.

This was followed by a palate cleanser of ginger sorbet with a rhubarb-mint sauce, topped with cilantro. The experience was just perfect, ranging from the texture of the sorbet, the flavor of the sauce all the way down to the fact that the bowls were chilled to ensure that the sorbet would remain solid while you finished the dish.

The dessert I chose was my biggest risk – a date terrine with Vietnamese iced coffee gelato. The risk paid off – a warm spicy cake with a gelato that could stand up to the best in Italy (don’t lose that pastry chef)! As we concluded the meal with a press-pot of Cafe Trieste, Daniel himself came out to thank us, as he did with every table.

I could go on and on, but suffice it to say, the meal was great and the 5th star is certainly within reach.

Great Indies

Review of: Comix Experience

By: Avery Glasser

Rating: 4

Read review on Judy’s Book.

For Indie comics and graphic novels, Comix Experience is legendary in San Francisco.

For years, I lived blocks away from the store and was able to stop in each week to pick up my books, and more importantly, get the newsletter.

The newsletter, actually a multi-page booklet, had reviews of upcoming comics and an order form which listed most of the popular comics on it. As a subscriber, I would fill out which comics I wanted, turn in the form and then the comics would be pulled every week.

However, when I moved back from Europe this time, I didn’t end up in the Lower Haight, instead moving near the ballpark. This in itself made going all the way out to Divisadero a pain in the backside, but adding in a new job that requires a good amount of travel made it almost impossible to ensure I would even make it into the store more than once a month, making it difficult to ensure I would get the newsletter each month to fill out the form in time.

Because of this, I cancelled my account.

If your schedule allows weekly visits, or you just need a quick indie fix, you could do much worse than Comix Experience.