Sara, Giselle and I had a wonderful weekend away to San Francisco recently with a great room in Union Square, lots and lots of shopping, and a fantastic dinner at the Postrio restaurant.
We got up there on Saturday night, and in true form, had no set plans for dinner…I had some ideas but was doubtful of our ability to get a table. After about 5 or 6 calls to some of my top choices, we were looking at the 24 hour diner down the street or dinner at 9:30. Keep in mind that one of our group was pregnant and all of our group just loves to eat, 9:30 was not an option.
We could call the concierge.
How about we just sit there watching TV for another 30 minutes and hope we think of something else?
Why did we hesitate to call the concierge? Umm, no good reason, but no one wanted to do it. So finally I buckled and made the call…how embarrassing to admit to a cool city person that you are a tourist and have no plans for dinner and you have some standards for eating and you don’t want to eat at midnight…
He was very kind and withheld all verbal judgement and laughs at our country bumpkin ways. He punched away at his computer and saved us! There was a table at Postrio at 7:00. A table at a Wolfgang Puck restaurant. We had been saved from eating at the Westfield mall that night. He did kindly warn us, “You all are in for a treat. It isn’t a casual dining restaurant though, so is that OK? Dressing up a bit for the evening?”
“Oh, of course that’s fine.” as I quickly ran through the 3 clothing items I brought with me, but kept a cool, refined and citified tone to my voice… “Thanks so much for your help!”
Then I had the good news for the gals-a great dinner ladies! And the dress is elegant casual (concierge’s words.) No problem, right?
Well, as we headed to dinner that night, we had completely convinced ourselves that jeans were elegant enough…that we all possessed an inner elegance that more than equaled the finer duds that others might have. We were going to pull off sophisticated in our jeans.
We were admittedly a tad under-dressed, the hostess was a bit snobby, but the waiter was gracious and the food was amazing, absolutely, totally worth every bite, wish you had more, but you’re really are full, amazing.
We shared the pomegranate and pear salad and the roasted beet salad.
Then for dinner I had:GRILLED PAINE RANCH SQUAB
squab mince, wild rice, shaved fennel, Black Mission figs, Bing cherry-veal sauce
It was amazing.
Sara had: CRISPY WOLFE RANCH QUAIL
candied pistachio, heirloom melons, chili glaze
Amazing.
Giselle had: ALASKAN HALIBUT
sweet gulf shrimp, snow peas, baby carrots, tapioca, coconut curry
Amazing.
We highly recommend each of these dishes. And mid-way through the dinner, we had lost all pretense of citified behavior. I was pumping the waiter for any and all details on the food, we were laughing way, way too much, staring at other tables, talking about people…and laughing way, way too much. 🙂