Amuse-Bouche

Sunday, August 28, 2005

Restaurant Roundup

In the last month, we've been to some of the hipper SF joints, the first two of which were completely new to us: Myth, Bacar, and Zuni.

Myth has been getting some rave reviews for its cool space and its great new American food. We loved the space, which boasts a great bar and an elegant yet trendy feel. My meal consisted of the warm sweetbread salad, seared scallops, and a sugar waffle with berries and a creme fraiche parfait. Many reviews have described the sweetbread salad as delicious even to non-sweetbread lovers. This is true, as the salad tastes like bacon, which was good but disappointing to me, since I actually do like sweetbread. The scallops were good, but I've had much better at places like Sumi. The sommelier upsold us on a bottle of Verget Meursault 2003, which fortunately we loved.

Many of my work friends have spoken highly of Bacar, a wine bar and restaurant in SOMA. We were pretty disappointed. Aren's seared ahi tuna appetizer was overpriced and extremely unspecial. The space was loud and the clientele old-yuppie, if there is such a thing. I would go back for their amazing wine list, even though we didn't pick that well on our visit. We tasted two white burgundies side-by-side: a Marc Colin Meursault Les Narvaux 2003 and Michael Colin-Deleger 2003.

Zuni continues to be amongst our favorite SF restaurants. We've dined there twice in the past two weeks, arriving late enough to not need reservations. I love their starter of anchovies, accompanied by nicoise olives, thin slices of celery, and parmesan cheese. It's so simple, fresh, and elegant. The desserts we've recently had there have also been divine: a plum sorbet, mixed berry ice cream, creme brulee, and a chocolate pot de creme.

Guess where we're going next weekend?