A rare Tuesday night dinner eating out for us. We decided to go to Foreign Cinema in the Mission which is a a bit of an institution. It gets it’s name since they play a movie projected onto a wall in the dining area. This was definitely not a foreign film and was in fact the 1996 movie Mathilda with Danny Devito.

We started with cocktails, of course. I had a martini made with Hangar One citron vodka infused with Buddha’s hand instead of lemon. Andrea had a tequila based drink, both of which were nice.

We started with some oysters – kumamoto (our favorite), kusshi (from B.C.) and Miyagi. The kumamoto’s were very good and the miyagi’s were decent. The kusshi was only ok.

For appetizers, we ordered the ahi tartare and the calamari plancha with mole as well as some iberico pork chicarrones. The tune was the best thanks to the sauce/marinade (rich in umami largely due to the soy). The calamari was ok, although our expectations for Oaxacan mole are higher, but it was fine. The chicharrones were nothing special at all and could have easily just come out of a bag and sprinkled with a little seasoning.

For our mains, Andrea had the curry fried chicken and I had the five spice duck breast. Both were pretty decent. Interestingly, Andrea liked the duck more and I liked the chicken (at least the dark meat).

For dessert, we tried the lavendar creme brulee and a flight of brandys from Germain Robin, a California producer in Ukiah. The 7 year was decent, but a bit rough in comparison to the other two. The XO Select was decent and the 19yr single barrel was nice and smooth (our favorite).

Service was merely perfunctory, but at least very prompt. It wasn’t fine dining, but a decent neighborhood-ish place to eat, esp. on a Tuesday night!