May 24, 2010 - Gary Danko

Gary Danko by Fisherman's Wharf/Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, CA
http://www.garydanko.com/

I'm going to try a new strategy for blogging about restaurants. We ate at Gary Danko last night, so I've decided to not wait two months this time. To be fair, it's mostly so that we actually write down the exact cheese that we ate. Otherwise the highlight of this blog will be something like "then we had awesome cheese". While we will still mention that, you're going to get a full paragraph on the extent of our cheese evening.

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Gary Danko did an excellent job of making us feel comfortable as soon as we approached the restaurant. We took the Muni there, so the valet person watched us hop off the bus with a big paper Safeway grocery bag in hand. Yet he somehow knew that we were going into Gary Danko before we actually took any steps toward the door. Once we got in, the woman reminded us about the corkage fee ($35!), and kindly took both the bottle of 2007 Pinot Noir, Golden Eye, 10 Degrees from us, as well as the grocery bag. They made it seem as though we weren't weird. Which was very nice of them. We were then promptly whisked into the main dining room to a table set with us sitting next to each other. We are always a fan of that. Incidentally, the restaurant had a narrow area to push the cheese cart around in, so it actually would have been impossible for us to sit across from each other. I have a feeling that they set the table for us ahead of time because I had mentioned that it was my wife's birthday (yeah, it's over two weeks away, but when we made this reservation it was supposed to be the last nice meal we had together before Ellie's birthday as we weren't going to see each other on her actual birthday).

We started off with an amuse bouche of a beef and foie gras meatball on top of some barley tasting things that looked like corn. It was a very good meatball, but I couldn't help but to wonder why they would waste foie gras by mixing it into a meatball. It was a very soft and flavorful meatball though, so maybe the foie gras helped with that. Then came time to decide on the menu options. Usually this is pretty easy, as we opt for the tasting menu. But in this case, the tasting was five courses, with no choices, all of which were available as eating options on the choose your own adventure section, and the pricing was the same. In the end, Ellie opted for a four course dinner consisting of two appetizers, a meat course, and a dessert. I ordered a five course dinner, which was an app, fish, meat, cheese, and dessert course. Three of our dishes ended up being the same as the suggested tasting menu, and we were actually pretty close to ordering the other two as well.

Course 1 was a crab salad with an avocado mousse that had subtle hints of lemon and mint mixed in. The crab was four generous claws cooked perfectly, and there was a large serving of avocado, a few hearts of palm, some crispy lotus roots that actually tasted a bit like chips, a couple greens, and a balsamic reduction. Everything went very well together. This was a great start to the evening.

The other dish was a crispy fried country egg on top of mushrooms and other assorted things. The egg was poached, soft boiled, and deep fried. I know, it doesn't make sense. But that's how it was cooked, and it was phenomenal. My only complaint was that the breading from being deep fried slightly overpowered the yolk, and with a perfectly cooked fresh farm egg, I don't want anything messing with my yolk experience. But the complaint was small, and I have a feeling Ellie might say that this was actually a valued addition to the dish.

Course 2 was a lobster risotto. This was pretty disappointing; however Ellie and I did basically confirm that we have the exact same preference for risotto. We both prefer a rich, creamy, risotto with soft rice. Since a "proper" risotto is actually slightly al dente, it turns out that ordering risotto from a restaurant is very risky. We have both been disappointed by extremely good-sounding risottos in the past, and we think that is why. So going forward, our risotto experiences are probably better off from low-end restaurants where everything is cooked ahead of time and therefore overcooked, or we should just make it at home.

The other dish was a branzini (some type of white fish) with all kinds of fun sides that only I can truly enjoy. Fried capers, artichokes, olives, and asparagus adorned the plate. And the fish had perfectly crisped skin. This was also a risky course, because neither of us had any idea what kind of fish we were being served, which gave it a high likelihood of being a mysterious white fish. Seeing as I hate almost all white fish, I was very pleased with a properly cooked, and not dry white fish.

Course 3 was our last savory. Ellie ordered a beef medallion, which was an excellent cut of filet with an awesome seasoning on top and cooked exactly the way she likes it. Not quite as pink as I would have preferred, but just as pink as Ellie's optimal steak would be.




I ordered game hen stuffed with another bird as well as foie gras. It came as a full hen body, but it didn't include a cut in half head like my squab at Quince. Note to self, I should probably stop ordering whole birds. A large breast is good, but these tiny birds are not my thing. Okay, now I'm thinking about Dick Towel and I'm wishing a new It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia would air. Thanks dinner. Anywhoozle (j/k?), it was a good dish, but it sort of tasted like a burger. It was just a bunch of ground up stuff inside this tiny bird. It did have pretty cute legs though (they were smaller than frogs legs, so it amuses me to think of a frog towering over this bird stuffed with another birds liver), which also tasted very good.

Course 4 was cheese. We opted to share this. This should have been the #1 course that we doubled up on. Oh well, it was still amazing and it might have been overkill with twice as much cheese. They rolled out a cart with 17 different cheeses. It was something like seven cows, four sheep, three goat, and three blue. Each cheese was explained to us and we picked the four that sounded best. There were six or seven that sounded awesome, hence thinking that a second cheese course would have been a good idea. Anyway, we got a mildly hard cow's milk cheese to start, which I think was a one year aged cheddar. It was pretty flavorful for a starter cheese, and it was also very good. We then moved onto a soft brie type cheese. It was also good. However, the third (Seal Bay brie) and fourth cheese (roaring 40's blue cheese from King Island Dairy in Melbourne, Australia) were phenomenal. As soon as we tasted them, we instantly knew that these were going to be the highlights of the dinner and the two things that we would actually remember about the meal. Okay, I just looked them both up, and they are both produced by King Island Dairy, which means I want to take a vacation there and taste it fresh (I know, it's been aged so what does fresh mean). Our only complaint is that the cheese was served with a small portion of raisin bread and a few grapes. So the accompaniments were kind of lame.


Then dessert came. We were very full and satisfied at this point. Ellie got the dessert of her dreams. It was called macaroon ice cream sandwiches. And yes, it was plural. There was a pistachio macaroon with vanilla or caramel ice cream, and two others. Ellie paid more attention. I ordered a bittersweet chocolate souffle. The waiter cut a hole in the top and poured in a vanilla sauce, followed by a chocolate sauce. It was decadent. I've failed at ordering souffles a couple times, and this was the first one that came close to my first souffle experience (ginger souffle at either ABC or Hong Kong Club in Hong Kong). In the middle of our desserts, they brought over a super rich and thick lemon mousse with a tall candle on top, which Ellie failed to blow out. And a tray of mignardises. All of which were sub par. As was the lemon mousse. But to be fair, our cheese and dessert courses were the highlight, so another bunch of desserts was not exactly high on our list of desired items by that point.

In all, it was a pleasurable experience. Neither of us would go back, and it's probably a bit over-hyped. In fact, most people in SF seem to recognize Gary Danko as the top dining experience in the city. It's absolutely a step below the Dining Room at the Ritz and Coi. But I would certainly love to drop by for a cheese course if I were in the neighborhood. The cheese monger at Gary Danko is absolutely amazing.