Adrie Reinders

Foreign Cinema, an amazing experience

2534 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94110-2512
(415) 648-7600

The advantage of writing a blog about restaurants is that people start to tell you about unusual places and venues to go to, or invite you to sample a special meal in their city or region.

This week, two friends invited me for dinner in the Foreign Cinema, right in the heart of the colourful district Mission in San Francisco. Foreign Cinema is typically one of those spots you wouldn’t find if you didn’t know about it. The design is modern, with an outside area where you can eat and where at night films are projected on a big white wall whilst you eat. Very unusual.

Foreign Cinema is known for its californian/mediterranean food, starters are unique and are shared by the diners at the table. My main course was a Madras Chicken Curry, wonderfully flavours and taste.

Service was friendly, knowledgeable and professional and the decor very pleasing and comfortable.

If you are heading to, or staying in San Francisco, an absolute must.

Food: 9
Comfort: 8
Service: 8
Price/Quality: 8.5
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Pure and Simple

Anchor Oyster Bar

+1 415 431 3990
579 Castro St, San Francisco, CA 94114

Anchor is located in one of the most colourful neighbourhoods of San Francisco, Castro. A lively area with lots of boutiques and restaurants.
A contact recommended visiting Anchor, a small fish restaurant – no bigger then a few tables inside and out with lots of wood and zinc, marine style decor.
The whole place is put together well, has excellent service and simple, pure food.
My dinner consisted of fresh oysters, followed by the crab cakes – both very good. Service is professional and friendly – definitely a great recommendation!

Food: 8.6
Service: 8
Comfort: 7.5
Price/Quality: 8.5

Dutch design in San Fran
Credo

www.credosf.com
360 Pine Street
San Francisco, CA 94104
(415) 693-0360
I had dinner last night in Credo, a new restaurant in the heart of San Francisco which was designed by Piet Hein Eek. Piet Hein Eek became world famous with his furniture made from drift wood, which forms a main part of the decor in Credo. It looks nice and clean – lots of space, white walls decorated with famous sayings all starting with “I believe….” the english translation for the latin “Credo”. Tastefully done.
Unfortunately, like so many modern restaurants these days, the noise levels were too high and made it hard to have a comfortable conversation. This effect is emphasised by the bar in the middle of the restaurant. I never like that so much, drinking people always seem to make more noise then those around them.

Service was very good, professional and well instructed. Decor, as said, beautiful and reasonably comfortable. The food was excellent, I have to admit. Great dishes, mainly derived from Italian classics. I fancied the Pizza which was great, nice thin curst and fresh ingredients. For dessert a very non-Italian dish – Crema Catalan… superb!!

Food: 8,5
Service: 8
Comfort: 7.5
Price/quality: 8

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Joyful Recognition

Straits Cafe Singapore Restaurant
www.straitsrestaurants.com
845 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94103-1923, United States
(415) 668-1783

In Europe – especially in the Netherlands – you will find a lot of great “original” indonesian restaurants – however in the US they are few and far between. If you do find one, the dishes often have much more of a Chinese flavour to it – never reminding me of the real Indonesian food I use to get during the years I spent in Indonesia as a youth. From that time on, I have always been a great fan of the so called “rijsttafel” – a feast of small sampler dishes with exquisite and varied flavours.

Just recently, I walked into Straits, a restaurant located in the central shopping mall in the heart of San Francisco. It is an eastern style restaurant with dishes from Singapore, Malasya and Indonesia and I have to admit to being incredibly pleasantly surprised with the food served – authentic, well prepared and delicious! Straits has about 6 restaurants around the US and is definitely worth trying. The beef and chicken dishes as well as the papaya salad I had was nicely spicy, and very fresh. Personnel was well informed and they even had a menu especially for those people that follow a gluten free diet. Impressive!
Comfort was average.

Food: 8.5
Service: 8.5
Comfort: 7.5
Price/Quality: 8

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A shining star under the Golden Gate Bridge

Murray Circle
Cavallo Point – the Lodge at the Golden Gate
601 Murray Circle, Fort Baker, Sausalito, CA 94965
(415) 339-4750

This week I was invited to have dinner at the restaurant at Cavallo Point called Murray Circle, a one star Michelin restaurant.
The already famous Chef Joseph Humphry is doing an excellent job here – coming from other locations where he won up to two Michelin stars that may not come as a surprise but still takes dedication to achieve.

As my starter I had Sunchoke Bisque, a very refined starter setting me up for a great meal. The main course was a dish with wood-grilled prawns, fennel and cucumber – again superb flavours all coming into their own. To finish I could not resist the Black Tea Creme Brulee – soft, creamy, delicate – one bite only inviting another. This all in all was probably one of the best dinners I have had on the West Coast.

The decor was a little too dark for my taste, it almost gave me the sense that I was in a living room instead of a restaurant, which was not entirely comfortable. Service was as you should expect in a top quality restaurant, friendly, knowledgeable, professional without being overbearing. All in all an excellent experience.

Food: 9.5
Service: 8.5
Comfort: 8
Price/Quality: 8.5

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A Different Place

Out The Door, Westfield Shopping Mall, 845 Market, San Francisco CA

The founder of Slanted Door, Charles Phan, really understands the restaurant business and proves so once again with “Out the Door” the restaurant he opened in the basement food court at Westfield San Francisco Center. Out the Door is a “Vietnamese” restaurant, in a big open space, and extremely popular. The decoration is modern and a bit minimalistic, but comfortable, noise level on the high side. It seats
130 people and you can definitely tell from the chatter around you.

The food is very fresh and the service is good, with servers with a sound knowledge of the food. For lunch I had fresh spring rolls ($7.50) plumped with curls of shrimp, slices of pork, mint and rice noodles and as a main-course a green papaya salad ($7.50) with tofu, pickled carrots and roasted peanuts. As I mentioned, all of it was fresh and light. When shopping in the Westfield, this is defnite place to go for a snack or a full meal.

Food: 8.5
Comfort: 7.5
Service: 8
Price/Quality: 8

Great place to know for lunch

Mocha
175 Maiden Lane
San Francisco

In a little alley just off Union Square, the heart of San Francisco’s shopping area, you will find a great place for lunch – Mocca 175 – a little Italian style restaurant. They make excellent sandwiches and salads, which you can take out to a large outdoor seating area right in the alley to eat. The quality of the dishes is superb, and sitting there eating outside on the streets of San Francisco gives it a special atmosphere. Definitely recommended for a good, simple lunch.

Food: 8.5
Service: 7.5
Price/Quality: 8
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With a touch of difference every time

XYZ, 181 3rd street, San Francisco, 415 777 5300

This week, I had dinner in XYZ, an integral part of the W in San Francisco. It is interesting to see the variety of restaurant concepts the W hotels manage to bring to the market. All with the same sense of style and fun. XYZ kitchen is what I would like to call “French/American cuisine” if there is such a thing. Little puff pastries were served as a miniature starter courtesy of the chef, followed for me by 6 oysters as a starter – fresh and nicely tasting but with too many shell pieces to feel very comfortable eating them. Careless.

As a main course, I had the Duck, served medium – which was well prepared and moist enough. One of my co-diners however had the Black Cod wrapped in pancetta, which sounded tempting but was so undercooked that the fish was left on the plate. Again, not enough attention to detail in the kitchen it seems. Finally, as a dessert I opted for the Pannacota with caramel sauce, which was faultless and a real treat.

Overall the service was professional and friendly, comfort was good, decoration typical W, cool and funky.

Food: 7.5
Service: 7.6
Comfort: 7.5
Price/Quality: 7.5

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