Dining about the town

Continuing the eating in SF saga...

Last Thursday night, we finally made it to Magnolia (Haight & Masonic) for their Fried Chicken night. We've gone to Magnolia twice before and I've never been overly blown away by their food, but the fried chicken was quite good. They gave us each three pieces - thigh, drumstick, and boneless breast. It was kind of a dry fry - not overly greasy, a bit more of a dense breading - but very moist chicken, and yummy. Also came with a large heap of mashed potatoes and gravy which were very tasty, and braised greens of the bitter variety. Almost too bitter for me, but mixed in with the mashed potatoes, more bearable, and made me feel quite healthy. It was a *lot* of food - not cheap for fried chicken, but more than adequate portions, and probably my favorite thing I've eaten at Magnolia so far. My bf ordered the house-brewed orange cream soda and only confirmed my impression that Magnolia's self-made sodas are just kind of bland.

Over the weekend we were mostly down in the Peninsula (yay burrito) and Fremont (Korean food), and Monday and Tuesday I made mango chicken. Nothing overly exciting there.

Wednesday we went to our second Dine About Town restaurant, Sauce (131 Gough St, between Page and Oak). Their whole thing is to take homestyle food items, comfort food, and then gourmetify it (my word). The concept sounded interesting. The execution? I'm not sure it was worth the price, personally - my bf liked it more. I got the portabella mushroom fries (2) + a slider (little lamb burger) for the appetizer - that was pretty yummy. The mushroom fries reminded me of nothing so much as tempura mushroom (except the breaded part was a bit more like fried bar food consistency) and they came with a yummy ranch dipping sauce, while the lamb burger wasn't too strong on the lamb taste, so bearable to me. My bf got the creamy tomato bisque with white truffled grilled cheese toast on the side - the tomato soup was quite yummy, the toast wasn't as different as I thought it'd be, but decent. For the main entree, I got a bacon-wrapped meatloaf with mashed potatoes and green beans on the side, drowned in gravy. I usually like gravy a lot, but this was on the edge of too much flavor - a little too salty. I need to remember that meatloaf isn't something that thrills me overly much. The dish was overall quite good, but it didn't seem that much of step up from a similar meatloaf dish you'd get at a home-cooking restaurant for half the price. It was extremely filling, though. My bf got the salmon dish, which I didn't try. When I asked him how it was, he said "it's cooked" and shrugged. He must have liked it ok since later when I said I was disappointed with the restaurant he said he liked it fine. For dessert, I got the "PB&J", which was sponge cake layered with a thin layer of gourmet peanut butter, a thin layer of homemade strawberry jam, and a thick layer of vanilla ice cream. I actually quite liked it, except that I thought the ice cream added nothing - it was very solid and icy. I loved the PB - crunchy and delicious. My bf wasn't as impressed with his bite of my dessert, though. He got the cinnamon sugar donuts with a vanilla bourbon dipping sauce. The dipping sauce was the highlight - the cinnamon sugar donuts were really small blobs of fried dough that didn't resemble donuts at all. I like fried dough, and I like cinnamon sugar, so it was yummy enough, but it was the dipping sauce that was really delicious. My bf even drank the remaining part after he finished the donuts. That meal left us extremely stuffed.

Tonight, we hit our third Dine About Town restaurant - I had him choose this time since my previous two choices were sub-optimal. He picked Chiaroscuro Ristorante (550 Washington at Sansome). The restaurant had a nice, clean spare design, though a little odd because the bench seating around the perimeter of the room was stone, so they had a layer of pillows on top to sit on (but, at least for me, sitting in front of the window, no real back to lean against). Service was great. They do their DAT menus a little different - instead of picking one of a group of appetizers, one of a group of entrees, and one of a group of desserts, they had 3 set menus you could choose from (all with the same dessert). One was clearly the vegetarian option - potato leek soup and walnut gnocchi (which looked good, but not worth the DAT price). I got the Ahi menu - fried calamari & shrimp appetizer, seared ahi tuna steak in Barbari wine sauce with shoestring potatoes entree. The appetizer was good - the calamari was a good texture - a bit crunchy, not too chewy - but it was bigger than I expected, so I didn't finish it, deliberately, to have room for the rest of my meal. The entree... I didn't like the wine sauce, and it quite predominated. I'm sure the tuna was fine (texture wise it was great) but I just could taste the wine sauce. Keep in mind, I don't like wine. The potatoes were yummy though. My bf got the osso bucco - pear salad for appetizer (I didn't try it, he seemed to enjoy it), and osso bucco for entree (on a bed of mashed potatoes). We switched entrees halfway through - he put the remaining ahi piece on the broad lip of the plate to keep it out of the sauce, and enjoyed it more than I did. I liked his osso bucco better - it was nice and tender, if a bit bland (but that could have been just b/c I'd been eating the wine sauce beforehand - he really liked the osso bucco). My favorite part of the meal was definitely the dessert - we each got a trio - two little profiteroles with custard in them, a blob of chocolate mousse, and a strawberry topped lemon custard tartlet. They were all delicious, and the perfect amount after the large meal. The crust of the tartlet was crunchy and sugary, the lemon tasty, and the strawberry a nice touch. The mousse was chocolatey and rich, while the profiteroles were the perfect texture. Yummy. Chiaroscuro might be worth a return visit.