Tonight we are at Estiatorio Ornos the Greek Mina restaurant that replaced Michael Mina. Andrea, Trisha and I had tried to dine here a couple months ago but our plans were foiled due to the heavy rains that caused some flooding in the restaurant so our reservation was canceled. I have many fond memories of dining in this location…I had dined many times at Aqua when I had first moved to SF and Andrea and I had one of our anniversary dinners at Michael Mina and Trisha Anderson gifted us our first Zalto wine glasses. When we checked in, I asked the host if we could get the same table we sat at for our anniversary, it’s the one straight back in the restaurant if you are standing in the doorway. He was very kind and obliged us. The dining room is still very spacious and open. Most if the people there seemed to be dressed like they came from their corporate job.

Since there was a tasting menu, the Ornos Experience, of course we were going to do that. They also had a caviar experience on the a la carte menu so we added that with Golden Osetra caviar sourced from Russia. We started with some cocktails…Greek God themed (again entertaining since I’ve been heavily playing Hades on the Nintendo Switch OLED I bought for Christmas.). Andrea had the Apollo and I had the Zeus. The caviar presentation was nice with quite a spread. With the more refined caviar like golden Osetra, IMO you still get the best taste of them off the back of your hand because with all of the accoutrements, you lose the flavor of the caviar itself, but it was a fun spread.

First course included a sextet of spreads (Andrea’s favorite was the bell pepper/feta and mine was the eggplant one that was similar to babaganoush.), a sort of Greek salad (the tomatoes were great), and some marinated tuna (ok, but not as nice as many tuna we’ve had at sushi restaurants). Second course was prawns in a spicy tomato sauce and some grilled octopus. The octopus was amazing, some of the most tender and tastiest we’ve ever had. Third course was a quartet of sea bass and greens, crusted sole with a rich sauce, lamb chops (somewhat disappointing, esp. since you would expect to be a signature dish at a greek restaurant), and rusted beets. Everything was decent and we were quite full. Dessert was baklava and a sort of chocolate mousse. The baklava was fine and I’m a huge sucker for it in general. The chocolate sakolata was meh.

We had 4 small carafes of various Greek wines which was fun but us since we don’t drink much Greek wine, but alcohol seems to be very pricey here. Tasting menu is a bargain for how much you get. It’s not the finest of fine dining but it’s solid. Service was very attentive (slightly rushed at moments), even when the restaurant was at full tilt (it was pretty full for almost all of the time we were there). I have a lot of ex workmates who work at the Mina group, so I was mildly worried that I might not be impressed with restaurant, but we were quite happy with the experience and it was definitely a solid outing.