San Francisco: Al's Place

8minutestonoon
Jan 29, 2016
3 min read

From the good reviews from friends, I've been wanting to try Al's Place for quite some time now. By chance, I was able to score a 5:30pm reservation when I first checked online. Someone must've canceled since it's usually difficult to get one. I was excited because it was declared by Bon Appetit as the country's best new restaurant in 2015.

Their focus are seafood and vegetables.

I invited my foodie friend Paula O. to come with me. She, too, hasn't been to Al's Place.

When I first arrived, like most hot restaurants in San Francisco, there was a line out the door. People either had reservations or trying to get on the walk-in list.

The restaurant was beautiful. They were playing hip-hop music. I love restaurants that play hip-hop music. We sat and all of a sudden it was packed. Not an empty table in the house.

The menu looked interesting and we decided to get several dishes to get a sense of what Al's Place was all about.

We started with their take on chawanmushi which is an egg custard dish. Their chawanmushi was cooked in mushroom broth and apples topped with pistachios. We agreed that it was just ok. It had an earthy flavor profile. For me personally, it needed a tad of seasoning.

The black kale salad looked like all the ingredients were picked from the forest. It Iooked interesting. It was a salad so I wasn't expecting too much. The combination flavors of eggplant mayo and yuzu surprised me and was good. It made the salad for me.

The trouty brioche was one of my favorite dishes at Al's Place. Simple but packed wtih flavors. It was warm and nicely toasted. Spread some beefy butter and a little salt on it, you get a little bite of heaven.

The presenation of the sunchoke curry was absolutely beautiful. I was in awe that I forgot to take a picture of it. Pieces of black lime-cod, citrus jewels and bergamot laid out like art. It was too pretty to eat! Anyways, the pieces faded once the server poured the sunchoke curry over them. I thought the curry was good but nothing special. I was more interested in the other components of the dish which drowned in the curry. Maybe less curry and let the other ingredients shine.

Paula and I love eggs. We ordered one poached farm egg with olive oil. That was about it. No need to order this. You probably can easily make this at home.

Up next was probably the best thing we ate from what we ordered -foie gras with peach Al's pastor. Who doesn't love foie gras? It was tender, fatty and delicious. I was thinking this would have been good with the trouty brioche we had earlier, but it stands on its own. For a restaurant that focuses on seafood and vegetables, they hit a home run with the foie gras. It's a must try! No doubt!

We were pretty full but still had one more dish to go. Lastly, we had the hangar steak with smoked salmon butter and uni-balsamic. The meat was pretty tough and dry. The uni-balsamic was interesting but I felt it didn't work well together with the steak.

Overall, it was ok and wasn't as amazing as I thought it would be or as much as people have said. Al's Place is like any other restaurant in the city. Lots of hype and not a spot I'd come running back to in the near future. The service was great. Ambiance was awesome. The food we had was ok and had little wins, but that's just me.

1499 Valencia St | San Francisco | 415.416.6136 | alsplacesf.com