February 2022 (see also 2017 on a separate post, and April 2024 below)

We’ve been to this lovely restaurant before, and typically I would just add a note to that visit, but this time it felt good enough that I wanted to post it separately. It’s adjacent to an uber ritzy part of the South San Francisco Bay area and to get to it you drive through Atherton California, the second most affluent residential neighbourhood in the US. Estates there make Vancouver’s Shaughnessy look like a trailer park. The restaurant is set in the fancy Rosewood Sand Hill hotel, expensive and an erstwhile watering hole for wheeling and dealing in the early days of the Silicon Valley .com era.

Walking in early for our reservation the welcome is cheerful and although we are at first told that the tables outside are reserved another staff person disagrees and we are taken to a table way at the end of the outdoor patio, quiet and isolated, partially sunny but cool and comfortable. At least three people approach quietly, offering water and taking drink orders, and a brisk German-accented gentleman lets us know that the short wine list on the lunch card is far from all that’s available. He brings a 20-page wine list topping out with a page of Romanee-Conti at over $5000 each. We settle for a recommended Flowers Winery rose, tart and slightly astringent: close to perfect at $75.

Our main server appeared pretty neutral, even a bit nerdy, but slowly morphed into a relaxed and eventually hilarious friendly character as lunch went on. The cadence of service was ideal, always polite and quiet, never intrusive.

The menu is abbreviated: eight starters, a couple of sandwiches including a burger and only four mains. We followed our usual strategy when we want to extend our time eating of ordering one item at a time. First came three roe-covered devilled eggs, salty and mustard-flavoured.

Next (and we thought best) was a grilled octopus with cauliflower crema and shiso (Japanese mint) and macadamia gremolata. It’s not easy to put octopus up nicely because it has to be carefully softened before grilling or it ends up chewy like rubber. This was two thick sections of tentacle with crisp grilled suction cups under the vegetable dressing. Soft and delectably fishy against the gremolata.

After a creamy acidic fresh ricotta on sourdough toast we dug into a shared lobster tartine, softly tasty with mashed avocado, maybe a bit shy on the lobster pieces that were tender and subtly flavoured.

About C$375 including a nice tip is a fair bit to pay for lunch for two, but having experienced through Covid and other vicissitudes the crumbling of a planned family holiday to celebrate a special birthday (mine), Robin kindly agreed to this special meal. Independent of that I’d still call it worth the money.

Food 8.9, service 9.5, ambience 9.1, value 8.0, peace and quiet 9.6.

April 2024

Back again to this perennial favourite of ours but to be confronted by a major change, not for the better.

Once again we sat outside, but were on the edge of bright hot sunlight on one side of our table. We switched around to kitty-corner sitting which solved that problem. Our server was a lovely quiet Asian lady who seemed to be of the same superb professional class we’d found here before. She was chatty when chatted with, otherwise efficient and attentive. The atmosphere and clientele remained relaxed and well-heeled.

The menu was still abbreviated, some of the items similar to our experience a couple of years ago. We started by sharing deviled eggs which didn’t have the fresh roe pictured previously, instead some dark-coloured material (“winter truffle”) that was flavourless mixed with a noticeably dry yolk. A shared roasted kabocha squash salad had soft pieces of grilled squash but otherwise pretty much an endive-like red leafy material and some chestnut all of which had a coarse “healthy” character without much in the way of any assistance of dressing. The mains were also disappointing. Mine was a New York strip steak ordered medium rare which was at least medium, about a centimetre thick, noticeably tough, and mounted with some chimichurri that had the requisite flavour, unlike the meat itself. Robin had a lobster club sandwich which looked wonderful but along with most of the rest of our lunch just lacked flavour, of lobster or much else. The lobster must’ve been frozen for a while…

They of course have a long and impressive wine list. We wanted pinot noir and I peeped into the Burgundy section and was dizzied but not surprised by four-figure prices, on some pages almost touching $10,000. New world pinot started at $90. We went for a recommended Flowers at $120. US dollars, mind. It had pinot noir character and opened up a bit on the nose but really by Canadian standards out of line with the price.

The price! With a deserved generous tip we paid just over C$600. I remember thinking around half that price was a bit steep for lunch, but that was for lovely delicious eats, not this 4-out-of-10 mediocrity we chewed through.

Damn! What a disappointment to go somewhere you have really liked that justifies extraordinary expense and be swindled and badly fed. Yes, these are inflationary times and their cost of supplies has probably gone up by half. But you’ve got to call it as you find it and barring some strange kind of super off-day there’s been a big bathetic lurch here. Way below expectation: have to recommend you stay away unless somebody else is paying and you don’t mind taking a chance.

Food 6.4, service 9.0, ambience 8.6, value 4.8, peace and quiet 9.1