Supposedly it’s the shiznits in San Francisco right now, the nonplusultra of awesome places to go eat at. Never mind that, during two weeks in SF we ate our way through about a quarter of the top 100 restaurants in the City, according to one local newspaper. Works for me. So, when mom not-too-subtly hinted that she really really really wanted to go there for her birthday, hey, what the hell.
It was good enough to go back again with Karin the week after. I mean, seriously good, good enough to make me uneasy at the thought of Karin still being full from lunch and debating whether she actually wanted to ask the cab driver to turn around. 11 portions is a bit intimidating, thankfully I’d misremembered it as six dishes or I’m sure she would have turned green and gotten out of the car right there.
Service is superbly professional, if a bit uptight at first. I don’t think they’re used to people having a sense of humor, even though it was terribly funny when someone lit their table on fire the first time we were there. Apparently San Francisco has a restaurant ordinance prohibiting candles that you can’t place a napkin over for 60 seconds without it going up in flames, which is kind of awesome when you consider that Paris warms up its outdoors cafés with massive open gas burners.
There’s only a prix-fixe menu, which is kind of a nifty idea when you think about it, although it would be far more conducive to the atmosphere if they just left the food as a surprise. It did cause Karin and me to speculate about the economics of making money from a restaurant like this, though. Because that’s the best romantic dinnertime conversation imaginable — debating hospitality industry accounts balancing.
All the food is great, and the only dish that wasn’t great was very good. The wine list is nifty and thorough, although a cocktail before dinner would have been a neat idea. Come to think of it, it wouldn’t have been, considering how much booze we’d already put away that day. Everything is arranged beautifully, particularly the food, which looks like some anal retentively autistic savant arranged it with tweezers. At least, an autistic savant with a lot of aesthetic sense. And it was delicious and complicated and interesting and, yeah, it’s expensive, but sometimes you just have to say “what the hell” and light up a bundle of crisp new hundred-dollar bills on the non-fire-code-compliant candle.
373 Broadway
San Francisco, CA
+1 415 393 9000
www.coirestaurant.com
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