We were down in the Mission for the first Mission Night Market. We had to figure out where to eat. Anything on Valencia Street where the market was happening was going to be a mess, so we were walking towards Delfina (which we’ve done take away many many times, but haven’t eaten in the restaurant for a very long time), but then Andrea called out Good Good Culture Club as we were approaching, so we decided to eat here instead since it had been awhile and there’s always a variety of interesting and flavorful dishes.

We were able to just do a walk-in fortunately and to get seating on the rooftop dining area at a hightop. It’s awfully load inside, so we preferred eating up here. Weather was nice, but with the sun setting, it was cooling off quickly (fortunately they have heaters for all of the booths and hightops except for the one lowtop, non-booth table…brrr!).

Menu and ordering was a bit different since the last time we were here in June 2022 (wow, has it really been that long?). Back then, you would just order everything a la carte using the toast app/website which we actually liked doing and they also had a tasting menu that consisted of 9 dishes for a very modest $55/pp. Some of the core dishes were the same, but there were quite a few different ones also. We can’t resist a chef’s tasting menu, so that’s what we went with.

We started with some cocktails of course. Andrea ordered Agua Verde, a tequila-based drink winte pineapple and I ordered the Almost Famous, a mezcal-based drink with kalamansi. Both were quite good, but we both preferred mine thanks to being lighter and more citrusy whereas Andrea’s was just a bit too sweet.

The first bites came out which included 3 different items from the small bites – the boiled peanuts, crispy pig ears, and the lao beef jerky. I have a bit of nostalgia of having had boiled peanuts in my youth, but we didn’t find them particularly tasty…novel and authentic, but not super tasty. The crispy pig ears were the best of the three since they were basically like chicharron. The lao beef jerky was surprisingly/disappointingly not particularly flavorful.

The first dish was the laab tuna tataki. This was striking thanks to the mango-piña ponzu and the charred alum oil and toasted rice powder and fortunately, the dish tasted as nice as it looked with a combination of flavors.

Next came the mom’s lao sausage which had some nice heat and flavor.

Then came the crying tiger shrimp salad which also had a nice commbo of flavors with some heat from the serrano peppers, a bit of texture from the cabbage and the crispy butter beans, some herbaceousness courtesy of the cilantro, and a bit of acid to round it out. This dish had the most layering of flavors in the meal.

Next came the sizzling beef. This also had a variety of flavors thanks to the pear, shallots, and vinaigrette, but the beef was a bit tough.

Then came the endive salad. We enjoy the slight bitterness of endive and this was also layered with thai basil pesto, cara cara orange (we’ve been enjoying cara cara oranges that I bought at the farmer’s market), a mustard vinaigrette, and pepitas.

Then came the grilled chicken thigh served on skewers. This came on a small bed of charred cabbage and yellow curry and topped with a serrabi vinaigrette and macademia nuts.

The last savory dish was the fried petrale sole. This had a great tempura batter on it and anice pearh-chili glaze. It seemed like a decent amount of fish, but it was probably because we had already eaten so much before and this was fried on top of that, so we were pretty full by this point.

For dessert, we received a slice of the pandan bibingka which came with a nice miso caramel anglaise.

All in all, it was great for an impromptu meal with the variety and layers of flavors and for a bargain price for a tasting menu here in SF.

https://goodgoodcultureclub.com/