Last night’s dinner was at Aphotic a newly opened fine dining seafood restaurant with a focus on local produce a traceable seafood. This space was formerly the restaurant Palette (Andrea also remembered this prior to that being Lulu’s) owned by the same chef, Peter Hemsley (a Quince alum). It underwent a renovation with a darker scheme befitting the new restaurant’s name Aphotic. It still a very large open space and not cramped at all.

We were seated at the counter in front of the grill (we love counter seating). There was also a brick oven to the side of the grill for baking the rolls and such.

For cocktails, I started off with their aphotic martini which was made with various botanical spirits, vermouth, and a bit of sherry all prepared table(well, counter)-side. As delicious as it was, I didn’t finish it since we would be having a lot of wine with dinner.

The tasting menu had seafood in every dish including dessert (at least the first dessert) and we had the wine pairing as well. The first bite was some Mt. Lassen trout with some roe and the second bite was rockfish from Bodega Bay with garum an incredibly tasty fermented fish sauce.

Third course was some prawns from Monterey served with Tsar Nicolau caviar beautifully presented. These were served along with some mini fish chips which reminded me of the shrimp chips my mom used to fry up.

After that came a couple extra dishes (i.e. not on the menu). The first was tuna spiced with harissa, a pepper, and a bit of gold leaf on a toast. At a sushi restaurant, Andrea loves the spicy tuna and I think it’s meh, but this riff on spicy tuna was fantastic. I don’t remember exactly what was in the second additional dish.

The next dish on the menu was the Monterey abalone, swordfish bacon(?!) and dashi. I’m a sucker for dashi although this dashi was bit milder tasting than I prefer. The wine pairing for this dish a wine from the Canary Islands (so shout out to my sister who lives there. Second week in a row I had a wine from the Canary Islands…last week was the Listan Blanco at Copra).

The next dish was definitely one of our favorites…milk bread (baked in the brick oven) and a dungeness crab curry hollandaise. OMG, what’s not to love about that. It was paired with a wine from Jura (next to Burgundy), but it didn’t taste like any previous Jura’s we’ve had and tasted almost like a sherry, which made for an interesting pairing. But all in all, delicious.

Next came a prawn risotto with uni. After that came the skate (you can also see skate drying above the grill) with a smoked nage which was deliciously flavorful.

For dessert, we had an oyster ice cream…yes, oyster flavored served of course in an oyster shell. There was just a hint of the oyster flavor which definitely made for a unique and unusual dessert.

The last dessert was a little mochi chiffon cake with small slices of buddha’s hand and an amazake sauce.

For additional treats, there were stroopwafel adorned with a little bit of gold leaf (side note: I love stroopwafels. I remember during Ironman Mont Tremblant they were giving them out as snack food during the race and it’s still my snack of choice when I do a long run. On United flights, I always get the stroopwafel during beverage service, but Andrea always gets the Biscoff cookie).

All in all, it was an enjoyable meal with interesting dishes and a generous (i.e. too much) amount of wine for the pairing. Service was very personal and attentive which may have also been because the restaurant was mostly empty (bar seemed pretty busy and you can dine a la carte or even have a cocktail tasting). Maybe it is because it just opened two weeks ago (hadn’t even updated the signage outside) and it was a Thursday, but I do hope they do well. A 25% gratuity was automatically included in the bill which was the first we’ve seen at that percentage. It’s not necessarily out of line with the quality of the service (and a lot of SF restaurants are including up to 6% SF “mandate” fees. Aphotic did not have any additional fees), but was just a bit surprised to see it.