Good Taste tells you where to stick your fork in the Bay. Today, I’m highlighting SF Restaurant Week (Oct. 16-25) deals for your culinary consideration.
Participating restaurants in this season’s edition of SF Restaurant Week are asked to offer brunch, lunch, or dinner at the following price points: two-plus-course brunch or lunch for $15, $25, $35, or $45, and/or three-plus-course dinner for $30, $45, $60, $75, and $90. I took a spin through the published offerings in order to make restaurant recommendations from the various price points.
Brunch/lunch
$15
Creative Ideas Café in Bayview usually holds it down for the $15 brunch category; the Colombian and Mexican restaurant also has $25 and $35 brunch menus as well as $30 and $45 dinner menus, respectively, but hasn’t posted what they are to the site as of this writing.
$25
Early to Rise loves making everything possible from scratch and is offering a warm sugar donut with coffee and the choice of strawberry pancakes or eggs Benedict for SF Restaurant Week, so that’s my $25 brunch suggestion.
Popular new spot Grand Lake Kitchen has a good looking $25 lunch menu with a lot of options: half of a classic Caesar, an Oregon Bay shrimp salad, or mushroom arancini for an appetizer and the choice of pork saltimbocca, king salmon with zucchini cakes, potato gnocchi, and eggplant parm for an entrée.
$35
Bombay Brasserie in the former Campton Place space is such a beautiful and delicious restaurant, and you’re probably not going to get out of there for this price point on any other occasion than for this brunch. There’s a long list of 10 dishes—choose two for $35. I’d personally go for the carrot-halwa French toast and the potato masala dosa.
I’d also probably be eyeing up a cute $35 outdoor lunch at Parasol at Cafe Flore in the Castro, where the people-watching is on point. The menu hasn’t been shared yet.
$45
The usual brunch at classy Filipino restaurant Abacà has been a personal favorite for years, and the SF Restaurant Week brunch menu looks even better—a sarap (snack sampler) and choice of five entrées (the Wagyu silog is especially appealing). Dessert is a strong suit here, and there are three to consider for a supplement of $8 each. Coffee crunch cake with mango marmalade, honeycomb, and coffee buttercream is a Filipino riff on the San Francisco classic.
In the $45 lunch category, consider Casa Sofia, the newest restaurant from Chef Carlos Altamirano that’s named after his daughter. He’s offering a three-course lunch with a number of choices and supplement possibilities. There probably aren’t any wrong answers here, but he makes a mean burger — just saying.
Dinner
$30
Both locations of Cinderella Bakery, including the brand new outpost in the Mission, are serving a two-course dinner. Entrée options are beef Stroganoff, chicken cutlet, and grilled salmon, followed by a slice of honey cake or sour cream cake. Warning: it’ll be tempting to buy some cookies and other sweets from the bakery case on the way out.
$45
The family-owned Le Soleil Stonestown is truly fantastic, and it would be easy to spend way more than this for dinner on another occasion. Their SF Restaurant Week dinner menu consists of three courses. The baby lotus root salad is amazing (just had it again a couple weeks ago), as is the shaken beef. That’s what I’d order, with five spice sugar dusted mochi donut holes for dessert.
$60
Palette Tea House, the Cantonese restaurant in Ghirardelli Square, impresses with two $60 multi-course menus for SF Restaurant Week consisting of salad/appetizers, dim sum, entrée, and dessert. One is omnivorous, the other vegetarian—hello, black truffle morel chow mein!
$75
We’re getting into the upper price categories, but Tony’s Pizza Napoletana, which was featured in last week’s column, is offering a $75 menu that feeds two people, with eight different pizza styles to ogle, plus a glass of Prosecco or wine, salad or antipasti, and dessert.
$90
The exact menu hasn’t been posted, but the beautiful Indian restaurant Copra never disappoints. Despite the cavernous size of the room, it feels serene and intimate to eat there.
Once again, take a peek at the full list of participating restaurants to scout more deals on your own.
