A Tale of Two Restaurants

Ah, the joys of spending a weekend in San Francisco. Museums, check. Cable cars, check. Fisherman's Wharf, check. And restaurants - oh, so many choices, so little time.

On our recent visit to San Francisco we decided to try something a little different. During our last visit, in January, we had spent the evening at a restaurant that came highly recommended, Zuni. If our experience had just been based on the food, it would have been a resounding success. Unfortunately, the twenty or so extremely drunken firefighters celebrating a retirement or whatever at the two tables next to us caused our experience to be not that much fun.

In any case, since I got appointed official restaurant researcher for the Michael and Mary Waring Memorial Dining Association (MMWMDA, pronounced mmmwmdaaa, somewhat like clearing one's throat), I felt that it would behoove me to do something a little different this time around. After checking out my sources online and such, I thought we'd go for something a bit trendy and something a bit not-trendy.

For the trendy part of the festivities I selected Orson. The reviews were a very mixed bag but the menu sounded interesting and the décor was supposedly a fetching and intimate post-industrial. It's located in a part of town that's not quite a war zone - or, as San Franciscans like to call it, SOMA or South of Market. Orson was started by a pastry chef, Elizabeth Falkner, who is famous for her bakery called Citizen Cake. You might, if you are a movie buff, see a bit of a theme.

The décor was as advertised: minimalist, industrial, with loads of black and exposed concrete. It felt very reminiscent of the last foundry I worked in. They should supply hard hats as a mood setter. We were led to an upstairs loft that I'm pretty sure is referred to by the staff as the Old Geezer Room, far from the fabulous action and trendy pretty young people near the bar. On the other hand I'm not complaining. We were actually able to have a conversation without having to text each other because the music was too loud for human speech.

The menu was supposedly based on the small plate concept, which is usually associated with tapas. We love small plates. We like sharing food and we purposely brought along a friend so there'd be more food to share. (Well, we like her, too, but one has to be honest.) I say supposedly because there was some confusion on the size of the "small plates." Some of the appetizers were really small, just right in my opinion. On the other hand some were quite large, like a salad our friend ordered. It was almost entrée sized. And there were a number of pizzas on the menu, which while fine for sharing, were more entrée sized (or even bigger).

Moving beyond the variability of the portion sizes, the menu was certainly interesting. Charcuterie plates, smoked tempura egg nori, chocolate pizza, parmeggiano pudding - all fascinating sounding dishes. Unfortunately and pretty uniformly, what sounded intriguing on the menu ended up being a little disappointing on the plate. All of the flavors seemed a bit muddy. Nothing we ate really stood out.

With a menu like the one offered at Orson we kind of expect that there will be a few misses. If you don't take chances, you can't hit any out of the park. But in our case we couldn't find anything that we'd look back on later and say, "wow, that was really something exceptional." Or even "hmm, well, that was pretty tasty."

Chez Papa Bistro was our other trial restaurant on this trip. I decided to go with something a little more traditional and romantic on our second night. Yes, occasionally I do romantic. And what's more romantic and traditional then a French bistro?

Chez Papa is in the Mission district, which is still ever so faintly Bohemian and funky. Not much though - don't want to scare away the tourists. Set in a small corner storefront, the place probably seats a maximum of 40 and that's counting the tables set up outside on the sidewalk. Décor is red walls and big distressed mirrors. And zinc table tops, much as you might find in a Parisian café - though in Paris they'd probably put placemats on the tables.

What the décor lacked (and it didn't lack much, because who really goes to a bistro for the décor - it's all ambiance, baby) in post-industrial chic it made up in good solid un-fancy food. French food. And pretty unpretentious French food at that.

I had baby artichokes stuffed with goat cheese and grilled, followed by a lamb daube (braised lamb). Mary had an open-faced mushroom ravioli, and then Sole Meuniere. So traditional, well maybe not the ravioli but you get the point. All of it was honest food in generous but not overwhelming portions. Deceptively simple and oh, so tasty. The wine offerings, as befits a San Francisco venue, were excellent. I finished my meal with a cheese plate that included a triple cream brie that was totally exceptional. Mary had a slightly less exceptional tarte tatin that was nevertheless completely satisfying.

Overall, of the two restaurants we tried on this trip, I have to say that Chez Papa exceeded expectations. We would and probably will go back next time we find ourselves in Foggy Town with a spare night and a few shekels in our pockets.

On the other hand, Orson is not an experience that we regret whatsoever. I know that's not how the comments I made above sound, but really, we like to try new things as much as the next couple of old fogies. We actually do like seeing chefs try something new and exciting. The truth is that it doesn't always work out. But on the other hand lots of (very young) people seemed to be enjoying themselves the night we were at Orson's, so they must be doing something right.

Would we go back to Orson's? No, not really. We tried it and we're happy we did, but it really isn't our scene, man. And truthfully the food wasn't that good. That could always improve and we'll be happy to hear that it has, but there are lots more places to try and not enough time for all of them.

As a final note, on our last day we found ourselves wandering through the Civic Center district without a lunch destination, as the place we'd planned on checking out, a Salvadorian restaurant, was closed. So we decided to stop at a hole-in-the-wall taquería (Mexican fast food shop) called Taquería Castillo B that I'm pretty sure is not listed in any web site as a "hidden treasure" or "insiders' spot." It was just a little neighborhood place where the food was decent and the prices cheap.

One thing got us laughing, though. Everyone ahead of us ordered a torta (sort of a Mexican sub sandwich), so we figured that it was the specialty de la maison. The menu board said tortas consisted of "any meat", cheese, lettuce, tomato, avocado and other toppings. Mary ordered a beef torta (which is what everyone else had gotten), while I ordered one with a carne asada (grilled steak) filling. As it turned out, my torta had the same somewhat unidentifiable ground meat filling that Mary's did. We figured out at that point that "any meat" meant "any meat the cook decided to use." Still, it was reasonably tasty, so no complaints.