Give Me Some Food

Instead of following my own advice in the last post on Dine About Town, Felix and I gave into that little nasty bugger: convenience. We wanted to see a movie at the Westfield and Lark Creek Steak, which was also participating in Dine About Town, happened to be near by- this actually turned out to be a happy accident because I would have never dined here had the marketing not lured me.

So far, Felix and I sound pretty lazy and mindless in this story. We eat out of convenience and follow advertising. In our defense- it was a Friday night. And while Friday nights are a happy time, I'm pretty dead tired from the work week and don't really have any neurons left to fire- so original thoughts are rare. Ask me for ideas on Mondays after I'm rested.

So we are seated immediately and Felix looked around:

"This is great, I don't know, maybe I just like things that are new."

The decor was very nice and hip. We had a booth to ourselves that could have fit four, and the tables and booths were spaced so that each party was given a lot of privacy. This was a nice change from the smaller-than-a-phone-booth restaurants where you have to ask the other eight tables around you to move so that you can maneuver into your chair.

We received two amuse bouches. The first was a slightly bitter, nonalcoholic, pomegranate spritzer from the bar:

The second was something that looked and tasted like spam:

I think I did hear our waiter murmur something about corned beef- but it was seriously so bad that I thought the kitchen was playing a joke on us. Thankfully that was the exception to the rest of our wonderful dinner. To start, we both ordered the endive and radiccio salad with blue cheese, walnuts and grapes.

This was a great salad- but I thought it tried a little too hard to be original. The two red cubes on the top of the salad that look like beets were little jellies of grape consomme, or something like that. I don't really like my salads with jello- my family roots may be in Minnesota, but seriously guys- this was a little too much.

My next course was the really winner of the night- the Sauteed Skate Wing with Brussels sprouts and grapefruit:

It was over some mashed root vegetable- I'm thinking parsnips or salsify? Whatever was mashed was mixed with a ton of cream and butter and tasted pretty good. Also, I'm very pro the way restaurants are serving Brussels sprouts these days- they are shelling the leaves, like lettuce- so that you don't get one big bucket o' bitter in your mouth. It's in small doses, which adds more to the fish, rather than the Brussels sprout hogging all of the attention.

Since this place did have the word "steak" in it's name, Felix ordered the steak:

This was a mistake. It was good, but nothing special. The fish was the dish of the night.  Then my camera ran out of batteries because I never put it on the charger. Bad food blogger!

Ok. We forgive you because you are so cute. Just Kidding! You are damned to food blog hell!

But before I go to food blog hell, I'd like to mention a word about our service. I think Daniel at Lark Creek Steak, was one of the most pleasant waiters I've had in a long long time. He wasn't overly attentive or snobby. When he asked questions, he sounded candid, like he hoped we were having a good meal. And the service really made me forgive the small food errors. The more I read about and evaluate the service at restaurants, the more I think we actually go out to dinner to be treated well, and the food is secondary. That's kind of sad and liberating at the same time. Anyways- Kudos to Daniel- you could teach a thing or two to half the waiters in San Francisco.

Lark Creek Steak
845 Market #402 (on the 4th floor pf the Westfield)
San Francisco
415-593-4100