SF Chefs 2011 Restaurant Week is here! Yay!!
Since I’m right there in the city, it’s hard to resist trying at least one place. And so I did. For lunch, Silks at the Mandarin Oriental — a smooth corn soup with truffled popcorn and a pan roasted Pacific cod with curried cauliflower, peas, and potatoes. It was a fairly decent meal, though the portions for the cod were a little less than I would have liked. The kicker, however, was that the Maitre d’ asked if I wouldn’t mind giving her a critique of my experience once I finished the meal. Now that was cool.
After everything on my plate found its way to my stomach, the Maitre d’ revisits my table, and I proceed to give her a comprehensive review on the service and the food, pointing out a few things that they might improve on (i.e. serving the butter in a chilled container is nice for presentation, but practically, makes it difficult to spread and the flavor doesn’t come out so well). Apparently, she had also tried the main course, and agreed with my evaluation that while the texture of the cod was perfect (a gentle firmness with a slight bounce), the flavor (though done right) could be brought out a little more, and that the potatoes were a bit bland and perhaps could use something like a light crisp so that they’d be bringing something to the party.
I was crossing my fingers and hoping that she’d be so grateful for my straightforward, candid reviews that I’d get some future discount or a free dessert for my services. But alas, that was not to be. Still, it’s not every day a restaurant asks you to play food critic.
On a tangential note, but also related to food: Tonight, I learned about a dish that had been served to someone’s co-worker while in China. Now, I’m normally not that shocked by the crazy things people put into their mouth, but this was pretty up there on the unbelievable/slightly insane scale. The dish? “Three Squeals.” The primary ingredient? Baby mice. And apparently the saying goes something like this — “The first squeal is when you pick it up. The second squeal is when you dip it in the sauce. And the third squeal is when it goes into your mouth.” Now that, that is crazy.