After we finished dinner yesterday, Andrea half-jokingly challenged me to find dinner for tonight. I’m not one to back down in finding a favorable dinner reservation, so challenge accepted! I booked us for Gary Danko, a place we haven’t eaten in 15-20 years and we were curious to see wat they were like. Back on the 90s and 00s, Gary Danko would have been one of the top restaurants in SF as rated by the Zagat guide.

They had a 5 course tasting menu or option for 3, 4, or 5-course a la carte. The main disadvantage of a tasting menu is that we both eat the same dishes so we opted for the 5-course a la carte which gave us the maximum variety since we choose so as to maximize the variety. The amuse was fine. Cocktails were fine. Bread and butter were very meh.

For my first course, I had the bisque which was pretty well done (they avoided making it overly creamy). Andrea had the risotto with I also thought was reasonably well done. Second course, I had the roasted lobster and potato purée and Andrea had the scallops. Both were fine, but nothing special. I had a white burgundy to pair and Andrea had an Albariño…both fine. For our meat course, Andrea had the filet with a Freemark Abbey cab (meh) and I had the duck breast with the Burgundy du jour (ok, but not worth the $45/glass). Cheese course was decent since between the two of us we had 8 different cheeses. For dessert, I had the warm Louisiana butter cake with huckleberry compote and vanilla ice cream (very tasty) ai paired with a so so Tokai and Andrea had the raspberry soufflé (disappointing…not much flavor to it and it looked like they made it only with the egg whites and no yolks).

Yes, it is fair to say we’ve been on the hedonic treadmill for awhile. so overall, it was fine for a third night eating out in a row and it satisfied our curiosity, but I don’t feel the need to revisit again for another decade or two.