It’s Thursday, our usual dining out day so we ate at Anomaly, a restaurant that was started as a pop-up in previous years an finally settled into their permanent location in Lower Pac Heights. They were recently mentioned in the Michelin guide with a future announcement to come on whether they merit a Bib Gourmand or a star rating.

We arrived at about 5:50pm for a 6:00pm opening reservation. The outside of the restaurant is very non-descript with windows fully covered with no view into the inside. We waited until 6 and the doors still hadn’t unlocked/opened until just after. We were immediately ushered in with glasses of champagne. The seating area was broken out into two rooms, where we sat more towards the front and another in an adjacent area where the open kitchen was located. Yes, we were slightly bummed that we weren’t seated over there, but the chef certainly made a point of serving every table on at least a few of the dishes. Speaking of the chef, Michael Lanham has previous experience at nearby Spruce (1 star) and Commis (2 star) as well as other lofty bay area locations.

Our first bite was tapioca crisps with a romesco dip. Interesting, fun start. We opted for the supplemental caviar course which was Petrovich Kaluga caviar served with little slices of french toast – we can definitely say that isn’t a combo we’ve tried before, but i certainly enjoyed the sweet and savory french toast along with the salty kaluga caviar.

Next came a very creative “emoji egg” with a ?? yolk and a ??? type yolk. After that came a very showy carrot soup with and liquid nitrogen lime “snow” served by the chef tableside. The hot and cold was meant to be mixed and was served with pao de queijo smoked cheese puffs.

After that came the “salad” course with snap peas, celtuce (aka celery lettuca aka asparagus lettuce aka Chinese lettuce – an ingredient we’ve never had. Chef Zack who served the dish offered to show us what celtuce looked like when we asked about it and he generously did so. Both Trisha and Andrea loved this dish.

Next course was a playful “rube goldberg” dish as described by the chef because of the buckwheat crisp topped with caviar intended to be broken to fall into the sunchoke royal.

After that came the asparagus, truffle cheese whiz (again, playful), and fried egg yolk. I love eggs and was definitely impressed with seeing a friend egg yolk and trying figure out how they accomplished that.

We also opted for the additional fish course which was a cod with a black lime zest yuzu sabayon which was delicious.

Then came the main course, which was duck served two ways with scallion and black garlic. This was perhaps the least creative/innovative dish, but a tasty preparation of duck (which I also love).

Since we were talking them up so much about the food all meal (yeah, we are those people), they ended up giving us two unique desserts that they didn’t serve the other diners nearby (i.e. they were probably testing out some new desserts). The first was an egg that was a fruity yolk (mango or passion fruit?) and a finger lime coconut cream foam. The little bits of lime were especially interesting since they provided bright little pops of acidic flavor.

The second dessert was also unique with a light black sesame topped with a frambois gelee and tonka bean ice cream. We had not really had tonka bean used in a dish and the chef went ahead and brought one out to show us. It was very unassuming to see, but it was incredibly fragrant (and toxic in large quantities and currently illegal to import?).

All in all, it was a very enjoyably creative, innovate, playful meal with so many interesting ingredients, flavor combinations, and technique and a bargain at $128/person. I’d guess that they get their Michelin star when those are announced. Andrea and I did the wine pairing which we only found to so-so (certainly generous amounts of wine, but they also didn’t spend much time to describe them). All in all, we’d certainly dine here again.