I had come across this restaurant a couple times online and my curiosity was piqued with their seasonally themed tasting menu. We had really planned anything for dinner today and since Andrea was downtown, it’s always a good excuse to find a restaurant, so I booked a first seating reservation for us for their Humpty Dumpty tasting. There were options for wine pairing which I, of course, added and also an option for 6 of their browned cultured butter cookies (sure, why not?).
The location is on Mission street, just a block away from Birdsong where we dined last month. We must have passed by this stretch of mission hundreds of times and never really noticed the restaurant front. Part of the reason is that the restaurant moved here in August of last year. It was originally on Fillmore where it started as an artisanal market for salts, spices, charcuterie and also happened to have some seating for food. This eventually grew into a full blown restaurant and more recently moved to it’s current location.
As we arrived, we were ushered to the bar seating where we would start our progressive dining experience. There was a bag printed with colored eggs on it on the floor and we were told to go ahead and step on it with a resulting crunching underfoot.
The room has a bit of a whimsical, DIY feel to go along with the theme and for Humpty Dumpty, this meant eggs and broken things. Even though it was a Thursday first seating, every seat was taken for a total of 12 diners.
Our first dish was called Walk on Eggshells which was salted yolk chips, a couple pieces of fried curry leaves served in a broken ostrich egg shell with a thai basil dip. It was simple, but I did enjoy the saltiness of the chips, the bits of the curry leaf and the flavors of the dip.
Second dish was a squab musubi (not listed on menu) that was seasoned with some gochujang, atop a bit of buttered mochi, and topped with a bit of kimchee granita. This was really flavorful and one of our favorite bites of the evening.
Next came the Broken Trust, which resembled a fried egg, but the trust that was broken was that they lied to us since it wasn’t an egg at all, but rather a tofu crepe for the white topped with a globule of honey mustard as a yolk which served as the dressing for the frisée salad. Fun and decent salad.
Next came our Break a Law (I don’t recall how the name played into this exactly) which was their version of green eggs and ham served on namesake plates. This dish had a couple rounds of a cured ham (I don’t remember exactly what the green on it was), a poached egg, and some well seasoned chilaquiles.
Next came the Break a Few Eggs course which was an egg drop soup that was served with the broth in eggshells that were broken to pour into the bowl. Nice effect with the eggs, but I don’t really remember about this dish and the soup was lukewarm since it probably isn’t possible to keep the broth warm enough while in the eggshells.
Our last dish here at the bar was the Broken Rice. This was an egg garum (fish sauce) scramble with a bitt of chili crisp and pickle atop some rice grits. This dish was really flavorful and their chili crisp was very good (Andrea is a huge fan of chili crisp) and the acidity of the pickle also added a nice element. We loved this dish and was also one of our favorites of the evening.
For the next stage in our progressive dinner, we were taken over to the main dining room. A few walls had projects of egg related projections. There was a little posting on the table with some egg-related trivia questions as well as an order form for our egg preference for our breakfast. We both “ordered” our breakfast eggs poached. They brought buy a tray of egg holders although some of the more interesting ones appeared to be taken by the groups before us (boo hoo!).
This first part of our savory courses was called Break Your Fast. Our first dish was the Breaking Bread which was savory churros and an eggy dip served in the egg shell. Decent flavor although the texture of teh churros were a bit more on the chewy side and not crisp and light and also surprisingly uneven in diameter.
The next dish was Break A Record, with the record being broken was the smallest egg benedict. The benedict was actually contained with the eggshell with a quail egg and some smoked salmon atop a tiny piece of english muffin as the stopper. As you lift the egg shell, you can help the benedict out. This also came along with more smoked salmon on the side and some seasonings, primarily sesame based. I love eggs benedict and smoked salmon so I definitely enjoyed this dish.
Our next dish was Break His Fall which was a call back to Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall. So we were presented with a brick wall with a soy marinated egg yolk on top. We were ushered to push this egg yolk over the wall. As we turned the plate around, there was a bit of pasta carbonara. It was really more of a deconstructed carbonara since the egg yolk was not integrated into the pasta and the pancetta was also more of a topping and not mixed in. I did mix them a bit and the flavor of the egg yolk and the pancetta were very distinctive, although I can’t say it all integrated into a good carbonara dish, plus the pasta was pretty cold by this point. So, kudos the whimsical presentation, but the dish itself was pretty meh.
Then we moved into the next section of our savory courses called Break the Habit. First dish up was Broken Heart served on a broken plate which was explained to be in the style of the Japanese kintsugi although I thought this was a very kitschy take on the very beautiful Japanese art. The dish itself was some shaved beef heart “vitello” with a sauce gribiche which was kind of liked a refined egg salad. Andrea hates egg salad/deviled eggs (more for me!), but she ate a surprising amount of this sauce.
Next up came Point Break. We were each given these wooden platters with various pieces of cork hot glued onto it in specific locations. This was to house the various pieces of the broken dish pieces that made up this deconstructed cioppino (chef explained how cioppino meant to “chip in” items for a stew). The Farrollon Island uni cioppino broth was served out of a sea urchin shell. Other elements included a well seasoned jumbo shrimp, some branzino with pickled ? and pieces of soughrdough topped with uni. I did enjoy this rendition of cioppino.
Our last savory dish was called Break a Bone. This consisted of a small piece of filet mignon, a broken bernaise sauce, topped with a fried quail egg. On the side were some little cubes of sourdough that had been cooked with bone marrow and some tiny bits of anchovy. I thought the filet was ok (I’m not a big fan of filet generally, but Andrea is) although the bernaise sauce and egg helped bring it together. The marrow, bread and anchovy bits were a mega flavor bomb.
We were moved to our next location for the dessert phase, Lucky Break, for our progressive dinner. Given the seating, we were given very unfortunate very tight and uncomfortable seating in the corner. The first dish was called A Broken Record. With this dish, the server came by with a carton of “eggs” and threw one onto each of our plates breaking it in the process. The egg was made of a edible sugar shell, coconut for the white, mango and passion fruit for the yolk. It was actually nicely done, but just all too sweet to finish.
Next dessert was called “Break the Bank”. We were presented with a box with an “In Case of Emergency Break Glass” as well as a tiny little hammer/mallet. We broke the “glass” which was made of candied sugar which revelaed a slice of Basque cheesecake with some caviar and gold for more of the riches. Basque cheesecake is always good and I actually did like the saltiness that the caviar added to it. I was too full to finish it all.
Our last dessert was called “If It Ain’t Broke…” which was their take on a mini baked Alaska. I wasn’t really that impressed by this, the presentation or the dish and it was a bit anticlimactic. Too bad they didn’t end with the meal with the previous course.
They did provide us our butter cookies which we did consume bit by bit between morning coffee and dessert at dinner. They also provided us copies of our menu and the wines and did let us know that bottles of wine were available for purchase. We did appreciate some of the variety of wines (e.g. a dry Tokaj, wines from Slovenia and Armenia which we don’t encounter very much), but nothing was really very memorable. Around this time we could see see the second seating starting to arrive since the bar area was directly in front of us in the dessert area.
On our way out, we did stop at the bathroom which was huge and amusingly continued with the egg theme. There was also a random room called the Bubble Room which had a red button with a warning sign that “pressing this button may cause strawberry bubble madness”. Pushing the button started playing some music and producing edible strawberry bubbles (couldn’t really taste much).
All in all, I enjoyed the whimsy and creativity of the experience even if it was a bit kitschy, although overall food was just good not great with a few standout dishes (e.g. squab musubi, broken rice). Plus, I love eggs, so this menu was generally better suited to my tastes than Andrea who said she wouldn’t go back or at least not for a long time (not that I would go back anytime soon either with so many other dining options here in the city).
Leave a Reply