Quince Restaurant

Oddly, the reviews on Yelp called the place a "neighborhood restaurant". Quince is not a neighborhood restuarant, Britt Marie (review to come) is a neighborhood restuarant. Quince is Haute Cuisine, no matter where it's located.

Quince was quite posh from first impression; muted, tasteful neoclassical styling, including indirect but ample lighting, expensive cloth tablecloths and enough carpeting to tone down the diner noise. No open kitchen either; here's hoping that Quince represents a trend that catches on.

Within one minute of entering the door at 8:40pm we were greeted and our coats collected. This was representative of the entire meal; the ample staff would silently, quickly and dextrously take care of everything, somehow without hovering. The one time I had to signal a waiter, it took about 20 seconds. Whatever else I have to say about Quince, if you really want to feel like a big shot ... or if you want your date to feel like a prince/princess ... bring them to Quince. Undoubtedly explains the number of birthdays we saw in the restaurant (three during our seating); this is a special-occasion-spluge place.

My companions really wanted to do the tasting menu, so despite my misgivings I went along. I forgot the rule: unless it's The French Laundry or a sushi bar, never order the tasting menu. Since one of the friends involved is a semi-pro wine taster, we also ordered some fairly high-end French wines, which were excellent: a Vouvray (don't remember the label) and a Châteauneuf-du-Pape from Vieux Télégraphe.

The tastings were, in order: fried oyster, fried frog's legs with some kind of buttermilk soup, roasted turbot, langoustine (scampi) ravioli, soft cheese tortellini with honey & walnuts, and roast squab. Of these, only half were good: the turbot, ravioli and squab. Like most tasting menus, several items failed through over-ambition: one shouldn't try for frog's legs outside the Southeast and the tortellini was a transformation of a traditional Tuscan breakfast dish, which didn't work. Dessert would also be classed as overly ambitious, with an olive oil gelato paired with a chocolate-hazelnut truffle. Ask any scientist: the thing about experiments is that most of them fail.

On the other hand, the turbot was perfectly done, and the squab was the first tender juicy squab I've had in San Francisco. I'm not a meat eater, but even I could appreciate how perfect it was. But the real star of the meal was the cheese course, because a good cheese course is a matter of service. Our waiter knew all of the cheese and their origins, helped each of us select a range of cheeses which built on each other, and had recommendations by preference.

After the cheese course, though, I realized something about Chef Michael Tusk: he doesn't really like San Francisco or California, culinarily speaking. The wine list had an extensive and expert selection of French wines but few from California or Oregon and none of them top-rank. The tasting menu included ingredients flown in from Europe and the Atlantic but no Northwest specialties. And in the 18 cheeses of the cheese course, there wasn't one from anyplace closer than Indiana (nice to see that Indiana is making artisan cheeses, though). While there's stuff on the regular menu which is California (most notably Dungeness crab) you could see that Tusk really wasn't interested in what Northern California had to offer. This probably isn't a bad thing -- gods know that we're drowning in "eat local" Watersesque restaurants in the Bay Area -- but it's worth remarking on. Quince's menu wouldn't seem out of place in New York.

The final damages were $251 each. If you ordered off the regular menu, and ordered a moderate bottle of wine between four people, it would be about half that. Pretty expensive judging by the food -- I could have a better meal at Phillipe's for considerably less -- so you're really paying for the service and the atmosphere.

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