Random Wednesday dinner. I was downtown because I was at the Oktane conference at Moscone and Andrea happened to go into the office so we decided to eat downtown. We had been meaning to eat at the restaurant at the Taj Campton Hotel, but they were closed today. But we had wanted to revisit dining here. We first ate here sometime pre-pandemic and when we dined at Kiln earlier this year, since many of the staff had come from Sons & Daughters, they had recommended we go back to eat here since things had changed so much. The restaurant now had a Nordic focus and we were very interested to eat here.
It’s hard to go into every dish, but I will say that the preparation was meticulous (the pictures don’t really don’t do it justice). The sauces and layers of flavors were fantastic. The wine pairings were imaginative, not necessarily wines that we would have chosen to drink on their own, but as paired with the food were excellent, in many ways some of the best “pairing” to the food we’ve had. In general, the seafood courses were more enjoyable than the meat (quail, lamb) dishes. The supplemental caviar course had such an interesting presentation (i don’t even remembere what the “ice cream” was) paired with a Marasla was so different yet, so perfectly paired. Andrea’s favorite course was the scallop paired with an interesting condireu, perhaps the most interesting expression of Viogner we’ve tasted. Even palate cleanser/first dessrt with the lemon verbena and sorrel granita had such a perfect herbaceous pairing with the vermouth.
All in all, we were very impressed with a high end Nordic-California dining experience. There aren’t many high-end Nordic restaurants and the only other one we’ve tried was Aquavit in NYC last year; hands down we’d take this restasurant over Aquavit (2-Michelin star).
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