Ferry Building Far West Funghi had summer black truffle for, I believe, $52 an ounce. The truffles were in the 30s and 40s range. Almost no smell of truffle at all, but the guy says the taste is stronger than the scent. Did not buy.

Had the four course a couple of days ago with my wife. It included carrot soup with coconut milk, baby kale and arugla salad with a creamy dressing and fruits, a ravioli-like pasta stuffed with squash finished with brown butter, and house made fettucine bolognese. Everything was good.

We added the $10 dessert. When asked what the dessert was, the server's nondescript answer of "chef's special" amused or frustrated the diners next to our table. It consisted of ice cream, sorbet, a small cheese arepa, and some strawberries with a cream like sauce. I believe the ice cream was guanabana, and the sorbet was another fruit more common in Latin America, somewhat similar to a raspberry flavor. Happy to have shared one.

Portions are not big, but with the last pasta dish, I think the meal is a little more substantial than the one we had at Mr. Pollo in the past. Of course, we still walked over to have a couple of al pastor tacos at Tacqueria San Jose afterwards. A table nearby seeminly had the 10 course; for the dishes that we got, it looks like they had the same portion size, and they finished with everyone getting one of those dessert specials.

The head chef didn't seem to be in that day, but we recognized one of the cooks from the Mr. Pollo days. When one of the three cooks presented the dishes, they would give a more complete description; when the female hostess/server did, the description was usually shorter. The space is bigger and slightly more comfortable than Mr. Pollo. I'm not sure the kitchen has a vent system, so the smell of food cooking is prevalant in the restaurant. We will probably be back for the 10 course. BYOB, no corkage.

To be fair to SDK, the description of the crab and pork XLB says crab meat. If I recall correctly, Din Tai Fung has it as 蟹粉 XLB, meaning there should be both crab roe and crab meat. I agree that the taste difference at DTF is obvious, and the difference at SDK is minimal; less oily than the purely pork one was my main takeaway.

The biggest price uptick at DTF Taipei was the truffle XLB. Each XLB had a small slice of black truffle, and the aroma and taste was completely distinct from every other XLB. We've had the Perigord black truffle and have truffle oil at home; these XLBs tasted more like the real thing than the oil. No experience with the various other black truffles though, i.e. Himalayan, summer truffles, etc. It was something like 4 times more expensive than the pork XLB, but it was amazing.

"Not too sure about that statement. I'd never found Chinese food in the SF Bay Area, or any city in the US, to be "really good" in the first place."

Generally, this is something I agree with, but this heavily depends on one's cultural background. My wife went to Asia for the first time since becoming an adult last year, and every Chinese meal was a revealation. But, we're certainly not holding the same standard as Bauer is.

Compared to the Mid-West or Davis, the Bay Area's Chinese food is far superior. Whereas a lot of Chinese immigrants eat Chinese 99% of the time when they go out (my in-laws), some others actively avoid eating Chinese in the States altogether because they find the Chinese food to be substandard or worse compared to that found in Taiwan, HK, or the Mainland (my mother). The latter is no surprise, of course, but it illustrates the moving target that different people are trying to hit.

Thank you for this thread and recommendations. Won't get to many of these within the next month, but will come back to report later.

My Tofu House is always packed. Haven't been back in a while. We remember the soondubu being not as good as PyeongChang, but they used to offer yellow crocker in their banchan spread.

Not recommendations: This may be obvious, but don't trust the 4 stars, 500+ reviews for Mama's Tofu House in South San Francisco. Bland banchan and jap chae, tough galbi, okay tofu soup. Stone Korean Kitchen in 4 Embarcadero Center is not good.

No Korean recommendations yet? I might have overlooked them, but except for Champa Garden, all of the restaurants recommended seem to be western in nature (or something like Ramen Shop with a high profile western background). Don't get me wrong, I like many of the restaurants recommended, but I'd also like to know where I can get as good a soondubu or short rib soup as Pyeongchang, or the variety and quality of banchan of Oghane in SF.

On my only visit to the old Balboa location, I was not impressed with SDK. But perhaps I was in the minority, because the new location got a lot of old customers that the restaurant personnel recognized. They all generally seemed happy to have the restaurant.

Last time, I was automatically biased when sitting down, because the little plate of ginger was cut in chunks, rather than thin batons. Same thing this time, and completely inconsistent chunks at that. FWIW, the restauranteurs speak Cantonese. We got the following:

XLB
XLB with crab
Sauted eel chow mien
Bamboo shoot and pork soup 腌笃鲜

To me, these are some of the standards of the cuisine, along with rice cakes with preserved mustard greens, drunken chicken, cold smoked fish, lions head meatballs, and so on.

The XLB were both decent. The one with only pork was more full flavored, but the broth tasted significantly more oily. The one with crab had a little bit of "xian" flavor. These are still pretty big dumplings, but they were structurally sound this time; none of them broke when using chopsticks to pick them up. The meat filling in each is sizable too.

I liked the XLB a little more this time, but was seriously underwhelmed with the soup and eel. The noodles had very little eel, and the way they were cut and cooked, you might have thought they were wood ear mushrooms, rather than eel. The dish is a failure conceptually and in execution. It contained some barely stir fried green bell peppers, once again very sloopily cut. The fragrance of the peppers completely overwhelmed any taste of the eel. The noodles were cooked too limp, not giving much bite, and though seemingly covered in soy sauce, lacking in flavor. When I had the preserved mustard greens rice cakes at the old location, there was also a shockingly small amount of the greens. I don't think I'm ever getting a stir fried starch dish again.

A good rendition of this soup should be assertive in flavor. The pork plus ham that cooks in the broth should bring a full umami dimension to the broth, and chunks of bamboo should soak in that flavor. The soup at SDK is not that. Though you can see some thin slices of ham, the soup is completely devoid of any ham flavor. The thin bamboo shoots look like canned ones. I've tried this soup in Milpitas, at Shanghai Bund in Chinatown, and now this version at SDK; none have been satisfactory, but this is third place.

We saw someone get the red braised pork that looked huge and good, and perhaps we should have tried the lions head. I can see myself going there once in a while to fill a craving for XLB, so perhaps I will try them in the future. Perhaps.

Cash only.

My one experience with SDK was more than disappointing. But since I also live a block away, it will have to get a second chance.

I have not had a "wow" moment like others have in the other Lucky River thread, but the few times we've been, it seemed generally competent, and good value.

We also had the soup a couple nights ago. While I found it to be a most unique soup, I'm not sure it entirely worked. My partner, never as big a fan of acidity as me, chose to give me her portion half way through. I really liked the grapefruit bursts while eating the soup, but also feel the sour and bitter were a bit too assertive here. It wasn't my favorite dish of the night, but it was certainly the most memorable.

They did not have any nut sorbets when I visited last night. The lady at the counter wasn't sure if they would make more pistachio, but said hazlenut was unlikely. Best to call and ask in the coming days, she advised. She did not know when the store would be closing.

Very sad to hear about this. The pistachio at Scream is my favorite frozen treat, and we've introduced several of our friends to the store. Really hope things turn around, but stocking up is now on the agenda. Best of luck.

Far West Funghi has tuber melanosporum black truffles for $92/oz. Each displayed ones is in $40s and $50s range. They also have Oregon truffles, which are $25/oz. The Oregon white truffles had a very gasy smell.

Marina Market in San Mateo had a lot of them in the tanks yesterday. The larger crabs were $5.99/lb, smaller ones $4.99/lb.

I've generally had luck with the rice without liquid. After the bulk of the rice is scooped out, if you carefully scoop around the edges of the crisp rice, you should be able to lift off the entire rice crust in a few giant pieces. That is my favorite part of the rice bowl too; I generally dunk it in the tofu soup so that it's slightly softened, but still fairly crunchy.

The tofu soups are very good. I also like the short rib with napa cabbage soup. The restaurant will sometimes give you a free, smaller portion of the tofu stew if you order something else. My wife is less embarrassed to ask for it, and they always give it to her when requested. Of the BBQ, we like spicey pork the most; the beef dishes are not as good as those at Oghane or Jong Ga House. Except for the boiled potatoes, I am generally not a fan of their banchan. Their dishes often end up a little too salty for my tastes. Still, it's probably the restaurant we go to most often in Oakland. Next on my list to do is their bo ssam.

An ominous sign as we sat down: we are used to seeing the vinegar vessels with julienne ginger. Here, we got little uneven chunks of ginger floating in the vinegar.

XLB and crab and pork XLB: the XLB here are quite big. Stylistically, the size was not my favorite, but that's not the main issue. The crab XLB had substantially more soup than the ones with only pork, and it had more of a "xian" flavor. As the skin was quite thick, lacking a good amount of elasticity, and because the size of the dumplings were pretty big, several of the XLBs broke in the processing of us grabbing them.

Beijing dumplings: worst dish of our lunch. A boring filling, with a mushy skin.

Shanghai style wonton soup: the wontons here showed a finesse that the other dishes lacked. The soup was water with soy sauce; no one drank much of it.

Rice cakes with preserved vegetables: it's not often I think this Shanghainese standard to be subpar in restaurants, because it contains two of my favorite ingredients, but this was decidedly disappointing. As the dish landed on our table, we immediately wondered where the preserved vegetables were. The taste of the dish was the same as the look--lacking in any preserved vegetable flavor.

Even if the restaurant can do better and is only suffering from an inconsistency problem, I would not go back because the lows of our lunch are too low. A big disappointment. I will have to try the other XLB places by myself before taking any guests, because I felt embarrassed to have taken them here.

We had only been to Inkas once before, and we never got the chicken. So, we were never terribly familiar with the restaurant to begin with; that said, when we returned over the weekend, it looked like a new set of people running the place. Previously, there was a middle aged Chinese Peruvian taking orders, with an older Chinese Peruvian couple in the kitchen with other cooks. We saw none of them this time. The space itself looks a bit brighter and more pleasant.

We requested the aji amarillo sauce that we loved last time, and the server immediately noted that it has changed. The new sauce has a stronger kick at the end. Still pretty good, but we both liked the older one more. We had the ceviche mixto and a mixed grilled item. The ceviche had good pieces of seafood, with the octopus being especially good, but I felt it was a bit too heavy handed with the salt and lime juice.

The mixed grill platter for 2 was a huge portion of meat for $28. The best item was the beef hearts, tender and full of beefy flavor; lamb was the runner up. The pork chops and grilled beef were kind of tough. It also came with a full chicken breast with the wing attached. Since we've never tried the chicken under the old ownership, I cannot say whether this is the same recipe, but this chicken was decent; it did not strike me as particular noteworthy. I'd probably go across the street to GFC if I was in the mood for chicken next time.

Interestingly, some of the highest profile newspapers in the state have endorsed "no" on Prop 37, and none of them use the "it would cost consumers additional $$" argument. The main argument the Chronicle and the Bee puts forth is that the language of the prop is vague as to enforcement, and that the only way to enforce the law is through litigation. The Bee also mentions that it may effect non-GMO foods unintentionally. The LA Times argue that the proposition would only be a piecemeal legislation.

This shows part of why the ballot initiative process is a difficult process. An idea in theory that is supported by most people comes down to the nitty gritty when written into law, and the vast majority of voters will not have read the actual language of the proposed law. This is now on my agenda to read.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-end-prop37-20121004,0,5824651.story
http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Prop-37-is-not-answer-on-food-labeling-3882454.php
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/09/16/4822...

I'd also be interested in hearing more comparisons from those who've been to Kajitsu before and after the chef change. We visited in late September and had the same Hana menu as the one detailed in following link:
http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?...

Looking over that post, I agree that the main dish (described to us as such by the server) of pot baked mushrooms was the most successful, and the rice dish was the least. Though most of the meal was pleasant, we generally had issues with most dishes. For example, the vegetable plate had some elements quite tasty, but none provided revelations, and we felt several components were cooked at not particular high a level. In the udon dish, the noodles themselves are very well made, but the accompaniment of wasabi and shredded diakon made the dish exceedingly pungent.

After the meal, my wife looked at me with incredulous disbelief when I told her the restaurant held two michelin stars. We both agreed that a kaiseki style meal we had in Taiwan a couple months prior was far superior, at far less a cost. She opined that perhaps for those who hadn't had chrysanthemum or taro, that dish would be an exotic trip that surprised, and the meal would have such an accumulating effect. I don't know if that's true; there certainly were Japanese diners the evening we were there. Whatever the case may be, our meal was a disappointment.

I don't subscribe to any of their emails, but I like their recipes section, where the three main writers are Lam, Reichl and Whitney Chen, who I gather was once a contestant on Food Network, but more importantly ex-Per Se. I remembered reading about this corn pudding from the TFL cookbook, but didn't try it until Chen wrote about it: it's a must-do during corn season.
http://www.gilttaste.com/stories/5659...

kosmose7, great pictures. The strawberry dessert picture you have looks like the identical plating to the raspberry dessert we have. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but I think the crumbs at the bottom of the raspberry sorbet especially worked because the additional texture reminded me of eating fresh raspberries with the seeds inside.

Agree with you on the suckling pig too. The bacon marmalade on top of the suckling pig with seemingly slow cooked onions giving a sweet and savory mix was a great aspect too.

My wife and I had lunch at Jean Georges last Saturday. Since OP had the tasting menu, his experience probably covers more ground. But FWIW, our dishes or the foie gras brulee, sweetbreads, suckling pig and veal were not spicy, so it's entirely possible to avoid spiciness should future eaters choose to do so. Our dishes also seemed less fusion-y.

I agree with the OP's assessment of the apple gelee (the crème fraîche on top makes the whole thing work) and fig tart (eh), which I had on the lunch harvest dessert. The standout dessert at lunch, however, was the raspberry tasting. It had an intense raspberry sorbet, macerated raspberries, some kind of sponge cake, and a delicious balsamic meringue.

Jean Georges was our favorite fine dining lunch spot during our trip, over Bouley, Del Posto, and the City Harvest menu in the Le Bernardin lounge.

Had a calzone a couple weeks ago at Gialina and have to dissent. I like their pizzas, but thought the calzone was so so. We also tried their ricotta cavatelli, with sage and brown butter that night, and was unimpressed. I'll be sticking with the pizzas in the future.

Reviving this old thread since we just tried Chantal Guillon for the first time. The six we tried were rose, lavender, salted caramel, pistachio, coconut lime, and rasberry-verbena. I thought the standouts were the lavender and rose. The pistachio is the only one that did not wow me. We've tried the macaroons from Miette (Ferry Building) and Bouchon Bakery recently, and thought the ones from Chantal Guillon were significantly better.

Was at Aziza a couple of months ago, and thought the service was terrific. We asked quite a few questions to our waitress, and she answered them pleasantly and with great knowledge about the menu.

As for the basteeya, it's listed under the appetizers, but it seems pretty close to an entree size. We ordered two entrees in addition to the basteeya, and agreed that next time, we'd just order the basteeya as one of our entrees. Along with the dessert (chocolate brioche french toast), it was the best thing we had that evening.

How long does lunch at JG typically last? We will probably order dessert, and I'd consider having an add-on course or $19. I'm wondering if I could possibly make a matinee at Lincoln Center at 2:00pm with my early seating (11:45am). Google Maps estimates the walk to be less than 10 minutes.

We're planning lunches with the same idea as the OP, and currently have JG, Del Posto, and Bouley booked for three lunches. We'd like to try the City Harvest menu in the Le Bernardin lounge. Does anyone have any thoughts on the best time to go or whether there are often wait times for the lounge? If we go, it would probably be on a Wednesday. Thanks in advance.

Could anyone please detail the size differences for the ALC items a bit more? I know foodwhisperer opined that 5 half dishes or 3 full dishes would be more than enough, but I'm just trying to get a better sense of the differences so that we may mix and match the different sizes and dishes. Thanks.

For a similar type of cuisine, I like the noodles at the Shan Dong in Oakland's Chinatown much more than San Tung's. I don't really like the sauce and soup that I've tried with Shan Dong's noodles, but to me the noodles itself are superior to the ones I've had at SF San Tung.

Looks like Pepin was on a bit of a media blitz in the bay area the last few days.

His talk on KQED's Forum (audio):
http://blogs.kqed.org/bayareabites/2012/04/17/kqeds-forum-jacques-pepin/

His talk at Google (video):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odlFnE...