Neither of its had eaten here in many years so we thought it’d be fun to try this place after so many years. 25 years ago (dang I’m old), I used to work at One Market and had eaten here many many times. Restaurant appeared to be quite busy (we showed up at almost 6:00pm) and was in full swing. The food was sort of a Californian take (more seafood, seasonal veg) on old school. Other diners were a mix of casual and folks up celebrating (we were close to the latter minus a specific celebration). We decided to start with the caviar (they sourced from Tsar Nicolai. The potato puffs were great, very airy.

Our first courses were decent…the Monterey abalone and octopus (very light on the abalone and they s subbed some calamari) for me and the squash blossom (the truffle was for show only…. Minimal and very dry adding nothing flavor-wise )Andrea which was nice. For mains, I had the pork chop (seasoned nicely) with a decent Brunello and Andrea had the filet with one of the coravin preserved glasses of a Super Tuscan. For these reserve wines, the somm serves, but in a very perfunctory way…he just came by, delivered the glass, said what it was, and took off.

For dessert, Andrea went with the affogato and I went with the strawberry choux box. Andrea ordered a 1945(!) Rivesalte to go with her dessert which sounded really interesting. Sadly, the somm just dropped it off and left. Andrea later flagged him down to ask him to explain a little bit about the wine, which we felt was the least he could for a $55/glass of wine.

The food was all fine…not Michelin star quality, but solid enough that if you brought someone from out of town here, it’d be a solid option. The big disappointment for us was service which was quite slow for us at every stage. The meal ended up taking 3 hours which is a bit ridiculous for only 4 courses. It was frustrating to see other tables seated after us come and go well before we could even order dessert, or waiting for an hour to be served bread (and all mediocre anyway in a city with Acme and Tartine) (yeah, I know, first world problems).

After another extended wait for dessert, Andrea ended up complaining and we spoke to the server, and ultimately to the GM who came by. They apologized of course, but the damage was done. What could have been a reasonably decent dining experience was marred by very slow service for us (not sure why us) and perfunctory apologies. Oh well, guess we won’t try this place again for another 20 years.