Tonight’s dinner was at Frances, one of our old haunts. Frances was formerly a Michelin starred restaurant and sister restaurant to Octavia, which we also have enjoyed several times. Both of these restaurants have a format for the tasting menu that provides several small dishes (i.e like tapas) for each course. We really enjoy this format because we always love the variety of dishes. In the past, Frances had an a la carte menu as well, but the chef/owner switched the model post-pandemic and instead only offers prix-fixe tasting menu ostensibly to allow them to serve what ever is seasonal rather than trying to scramble to serve up a standard menu week in week out.
First course was an amberjack crudo, a kabocha squash wihth pumpkin mole, and a fancy potato salad. The potato salad, was decent for what it was, but neither of us were particularly a fan (the use of straus yogurt and dill was nice). Andrea really liked the crudo and this was her favorite dish of the evening. I thought it was just a bit fishy and was surprised that Andrea didn’t find that the case since she is usually very sensitive to that and I actually often like that in some fish (e.g. mackeral, sardine, anchovy).
Second course was a gem lettuce that was decent (I did really like the almonds and persimmon) and a garlic spaghetti with turkish chili chicken. Andrea like the spaghetti, but didn’t care so much for the chicken, but I liked the chicken (and did enjoy the spaghetti as well).
Third course was a coho salmon with farro and a broccoli rabe. Both were nice. That was largely my opinion for the entire meal. Every thing was generally solid, flavorful, but nothing was outstanding. It worked well as a casual neighborhood restaurant and not trying to be high end fine dining.
Dessert was a chocoloate torte with crisp rice and mint chip ice cream. The crisp rice was quite nice, but there was also rice inside of the cake which was a bit weird for me since it wasn’t really fully cooked so was this strange chewy bits inside of a chocolate torte (although it didn’t bother Andrea).
Wine pairing was ok, nothing specifal (and different than what was printed on the menu for the 2nd and 3rd courses), but we did really enjoy the Friuli Vermouth with dessert, so much so that we ordered additional glasses.
They did then give us a second dessert (don’t know if that was standard or something they gave to us) which was their specialty lumberjack cake which they used to have when they had a la carte menus (nothing else on the menu was on the previous menus).
Service was generally very attentive except at the very end when we were waiting for our bill (restaurant was almost full at that point). All in all, a decent neighborhood meal.
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