Andrea wanted a lowkey dinner. It’s been awhile since we’ve eaten at Frances (wow, Nov 2022!). The nice thing about it is we can walk there and it gets us out of the house and a little bit of physical activity. It wasn’t that busy at all. We sat at the window counter seat that we enjoy (the tables are pretty close together so it can be crowded and loud when the restaurant is full) and since it wasn’t crowded, we had the whole area to ourselves. We went ahead with the Chef’s Tasting Menu and the wine pairing. We like the tasting menu since we get a large variety of dishes to try.
The tasting menu was served in 4 courses with the first course consisting of 5 dishes. First up was the sweetwater oyster with pink pearl apple. I thought it was ok, but Andrea seemed to like it. Soon after we were served the Tartlet which made out of black masa, diced smoked salmon, and a green garlic remoulade. I love masa and smoked salmon, but having a big hunk of remoulade was a bit much even for me. Next was the Scallop dish. It was an aguachile with Hokkaido scallop and an ume aguachile topped with some sesame seeds and cilantro. The scallops were very tender and sweet. the fourth dish in this course was the roast Bintje potatos topped with some broccoli rabe salsa verde and bottarga. I loved the small crispy bits the best and do like bottarga (although we don’t often see it outside of Italian restaurants). This was going to be too filling though for us to finish. Lastly came the daikon cake to which Andrea was looking forward. At Firefly near us, we always seem to get the daikon cakes when we dine there. This was a very different presentation. This was deep fried and had a very nice crispy crust on it topped with a green tomato XO sauce (definitely not as flavorful as real XO, but I assume they were going for a vegetarian dish here), and some very nicely puffed riso nero. Textural and flavor wise, this was a nice dish. The weakest part of the dish, ironically, was the daikon itself. The preparation rendered the daikon into a goo, not offensively so, but you would not recognize it as daikon if someone hadn’t told you.
The second course consisted of a salad and a pasta dish. The salad was a chicory salad and other bitter greens which we love. It was topped with some pear, bread crumble croutons, pomegranate, and Pt. Reyes blue cheese with a light mandarin and melon dressing. It was a good amount of salad and we really enjoyed, but didn’t want to consume it all right now, so we saved it so we could eat a bit more later. Before we were served our main pasta, we were given an extra dish of a rotolo that was a new one the chef was trying out. It was sort of like a rolled lasagna with a bit of broil or torch to the top to char it a bit. Nice, although I would have liked more of the stuffing to give it a better ratio with the pasta. The pasta was a fettucine with a wagyu bolognese which we also enjoyed.
The meat course was a Sakura pork chop. This was served sliced with a some cooked Devoto Garden apples atop roast cabbage and apple buttter. This was also another nice dish. Apple is such a classic pairing with pork (shades of Peter Brady and his “pork chops and applesauce”). We were pretty full so we each had a couple slices and took the rest home.
Dessert was the Lumberjack cake which we’ve probably had every time we’ve eaten here. It’s fruity from the dates and apple and not too dense. This was served with burnt honey ice cream. Even though we were pretty full, we did finish this. We were also given a couple small cookies in addition.
Overall, it was what we were looking for although it ended up being pricier than I remember when we’ve eaten here, but no doubt inflation.
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