Canteen - San Francisco - 5 stars

Visited on:
Many times, latest on July 1, 2007.

Comments:
Five stars, best breakfast restaurant in SF, best egg Benedict anywhere. Best pancake ever tasted, though it is not exactly an American pancake.

Experience:
The restaurant itself is very small, adjacent to the now Academy of Arts student houses. It is kind of hard to tell from the outside, but if you see lots of people crammed inside a small space, that is Canteen. However, I've been there around 12, 12:30 a couple of times and I never had to wait. Brunch hours are the busiest for sure.

So today we started with their brioche. It is sometimes off the menu, so need to ask. Each small fluffy lump is about 3 inches high, about 1/3 of the size of a regular loaf of brioche. Golden top, soft powder sugar, melting bread warm from the oven. Hmm...who needs those extra 2/3 of a loaf?

Brioche




The next dish to come up is a tomato and prawn cold soup. Imagine our surprise when it was "white"! The first taste made us all gasp in surprise - it does taste like nothing but tomatoes, but such clarity in the texture! Refreshingly crisp with shredded basil, just like waking up on a sea cliff and draw in your first deep breathe of the morning with a hint of seafood on the sea breeze. If that air could be had for breakfast, it would taste something like this soup. Prawns are very juicy and sweet. There are 5 of them, quite generous!

Tomato and prawn soup




Next is fish hash, which is truffles compared to your regular button mushroom of a hash. Nice chunky pieces of soft fish with even creamier potatoes in a light but savory saffrony sauce. Then add in that poached egg...so incredibly yummy.



Then of course la piece de resistance - Egg Benedicte. There was an unfortunate accident today: one of the eggs was broken when served. Quel horreur! When I showed it to the chef, he immediately tossed that egg into the trash and offered me another plate on him. How could I turn him down? When the second plate arrived, I could tell that the first plate was done by sous-chef, because this time it was as my memory: the white splits open at the lightest pressure of the knife, warm yolk runneth down along the grilled ham and muffin...a mouthful is a moment of bliss in culinary paradise. And did I mention the sauce? Amazing, amazing hollandaise...so light in texture that it was like the foam of regular hollandaise but with the full flavor and body of a much thicker sauce. We had no trouble finishing plus moping up the second plate, no sir!
Egg Benedict - first plate: see egg on upper corner broken?



Egg Benedict - second plate: must be done by the chef himself



The night before, I was watching Iron Chef "pork chop", so I was seized with an unreasonable longing for pork chop, as many fans of the shows would have experienced frequently. And guess what? Pork chop showed up in Canteen's daily changing menu that day! What can I say...must be dharma. Of course I had to order it, and this beautiful piece of pork arrived. Where there was fat, there was the perfect melding of fat and lean meat, soft as a ripe peach. Where there was only lean meat, it was perfectly pinkish in the middle with a nice firm but yielding texture, dripping with juice. The white beans added the un-needed but much appreciated extra protein. Honey mustard sauce gave an extra kick that saves the dish from being to heavy for a breakfast item. Now, this is what I call a breakfast steak!

Pork chop



Finally, the dessert. Think of a thick slice of really great crepe with fresh strawberry compote hidden underneath, then you have an idea of what the pancake is like. It has a strong taste of egg, and high quality eggs too, no mistake about that. It is like the homemade crepes that my mom used to make me for breakfast, so I feel nostalgic about the dish. My friend who went there for the first time was totally stunned by her first bite that she couldn't speak for a long time. Later, she told us that she could feel tears welling to her eyes. Now she's been called one of the most stoic, expressionless people you could ever meet, so this is high compliments indeed from her. Warm, actually hot pancake, thin in the middle to accommodate the compote, thick on the edges to add extra chewiness to a slice so you can taste the dough as well as the compote. Sour cream sauce again light as a dream, brown sugar syrup is only a dark shadow of sweetness that highlighted the slight tang of fresh strawberries. I cannot think of a more perfect pancake dish than this.

Strawberry pancake with sour cream and brown sugar syrup




Four people, absolutely full, about $65 for all dishes (I added in the price of the egg benedict) and one orange juice, one latte, tip not included. Very satisfactory as usual, love Canteen, can't wait to come back, say...next week.:p

Basic information:
http://www.sfcanteen.com/

817 Sutter Street, SF

415 928 8870

They also serve lunch and dinner, brunch on weekends only. They recently changed their business hours, so call ahead to ask and reserve for dinner.

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My experience with Michael Bauer's Bay Area 100, 2007- well, 19 of them anyway.

My response to Michael Bauer's Bay Area 100. Many restaurants I haven't tried yet. Must make an effort. Here are the ones I have tried: 19 out of a hundred.

Canteen
Excellent, exceptional choice. Not only the food is good, but also really amazing creativity. Egg Benedicte is the most amazing poached egg to be had anywhere – how could egg white melt in your mouth like snow?!?! Sauce hollandaise is more foam than cream, so you get all the flavor without the stickiness. Fantastic strawberry pancake too. A more soft, dewy, eggy concoction than the usual version, slightly thicker at the edges so you can better appreciate the texture and butter/egg perfection, thinner toward the middle for a great marriage with strawberry compote. As for the meat dishes…did the chef make his vocation to ensure that everything melts in your morning-tired mouth? The halibut fades away like a dream with the slightest jaw pressure, leaving the lasting sweetness of fish flesh. Lamb is delicately flavorful, very appropriate for breakfast dish. And have I mentioned the fantastic French toast and out-of-the-world brioche? In all, a must of the musts.

Tartine Bakery
Tartine is a pilgrimage. Standing in the line is a part of the ritual. You worship the fruit tart that you managed to obtain before the person behind you, but you envy the banana cream tart the person in front of you snitched. You want to be a cow here – four stomachs, but you can’t, so you always leave with longing eyes. The croques are nothing short of a meal in itself, very satisfying and delicious. I have never managed to buy a loaf of bread here. Somehow, the universe always conspired against me so it was always sold out 10 minutes before I got there. Good. Then I get more reasons to keep trying.

Bay Wolf (Oakland)
Great winter restaurant. Pretty good summer restaurant too if you want something heavier and richer, or if you just want good food that feels very right to your palate, like an old friend. They make very good cold charcuterie and pates, always serve up huge portions, so beware of that. The décor is really traditional and most of the clientele are older people in 50s+, but who cares. Retro is the new edgy.

Koi Palace (Daly City)
I wouldn’t frequent this place if I were you. You’d be force-fed: ppl placing dim sum on your table then stamp the sheet without even asking for your approval. You might get involved in a gun fight: a shuttle driver told me how he had to stop his friend from pulling a gun out after grappling with another guy in the restaurant over “whose table is that.” A family member had an $800 dinner there – the restaurant just said: we have good fish and good crab today. Care to try? There are better choices out there for dim sum.

Yank Sing
Speaking of better choices for dim sum, this is not one of them. When you see glass tea pots in a Chinese restaurant, you know this is a place that satisfies the fantasy of non-Asians while serving mediocre food in beautiful dishes.

Bistro Jeanty (Yountville)
Oh…how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. You serve authentic bistro food that I miss so much about France. You have this fun communal table at which I grabbed the bread of my neighbors by mistake, but they offered it to me anyway. Your portions are satisfying, so when my friend and I finished 3 appetizers, 2 main dishes, 2 side dishes, and started to attack the half-foot tall rice pudding, my neighbor couldn’t restraint themselves from commenting: my, you surely could eat! Pig trotters, sweetbread, escargots, great lamb, all choices are good, the more exotic “organs” a dish has, the better. San Francisco location is not so good. 20% decrease in food-wow.

Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton
Top notch fine dining experience. Friendly but highly trained servers. Fantastic tasting menu. I have a posting in the blog somewhere. Check it out.

Vik's Chaat Corner (Berkeley)
They serve a lot of things here, they taste pretty good, but I guess I’m not the best judge.

Delfina
When I want to impress on visitors what California cuisine and San Francisco dining experience is like, I take them to Delfina. Oh, and Delfina Pizzeria is not to be missed too. You could even throw in a visit to next-door Tartine, then grab some late night snack from the other next-door Bi-Rite. A gourmet street, 18^th street is.

Oliveto (Oakland)
Best pasta place in town – hands down. The effort spent on each pasta dish is very laudatory, plain presentation, but the smell, the taste, the oomph of the sauce! Like the one time I had salt-packed mullet roe tagliatelle, or the nettle fettucine, and let’s not forget the Bolognaise paparadelle…I’m drooling. Previous part-owner went to open Fra Mani – my favorite salami brand now.

Pizzaiolo (Oakland)
I went there on a bad night – my pizza was burnt. Can’t comment rightly, but I’d be very surprised if it could be better than Delfina Pizzeria.

A Cote (Oakland)
Great drinks, great little dishes, a bit on the heavy and oily side, but very good nonetheless. My favorite tapas place. My only complaint is: why so many people know about this place?!?!?! The wait without reservation is a nightmare…

Chez Panisse (Berkeley)
Ever since my unfortunate experience at Chez Panisse on a Monday night, I stopped going. I prefer its café, but to me, it is still nothing too exceptional. Good, but not something that I get a craving for – unlike Oliveto, Delfina, Tartine, even Dining Room.

Zuni Cafe
Burger heaven…you have to get the burger…read my lips: you have to get the burger. Granted, the other dishes are good, because this is a very good restaurant, but the burger blows out your mind, it reveals a whole new chapter about burger that you never knew, it enlightens your comprehension of patty between bread, it is epiphany. Do you know how a good aioli and bread combination could draw out the finer undertones of minced meat so all the fragrance, fat, and flavor of the meat rushes at you, tastes so much better than just having the meat alone? Just like the right cheese with the right wine. That’s how good the burger is – perfect vintage of a perfect year.

Limon
Grilled foie gras and scallops at a Peruvian restaurant. How unexpected. How mouthwatering good. I tried 80% of their menu already and everything has been good. My only complaint is that I wish they’d change their menu more often. My previous review.

Hog Island Oyster Co.
This is not my favorite oyster company, and definitely not my favorite locale for getting oyster. Nothing beats Tamales Bay in winter months.

Swan Oyster Depot
Crab. Lots of crab. For those who want Dungeness but can’t be bothered to peel, this is the right place. But eating cold seafood at 10am in the morning in November with that howling wind at your back, sitting on a cold stainless steel chair at a stainless steel bar…Well, that’s the only way you can get in. My review from August 2006.

Cesar (Berkeley)
I like this place, but the portions are quite small. Room is small too. Good tapas, a bit different from A Cote: lighter in fare. Nice place to have a drink with friends.

Zarzuela
I haven’t been here after its change in ownership, but before, their paella was amazing and it was the top tapas Spanish tapas place for me in the city. Period. I should go back again.

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Away for a while....

For work and for trying out new food.

So, stay tuned until I come back with exotic food tales from Taiwan!

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