It's been a while since I've done a restaurant review post. Since +Steve Nguyen brought up the fact that my blog has been lacking reviews, I thought this would be appropriate, as he treated us to a holiday luncheon at Hakkasan.
Hakkasan recently opened this San Francisco outpost on the 2nd floor of what looked like an all but abandoned building on the corner of Kearny and Market. I've seen a lot of posts and reviews lately about it even before it opened, so I was glad to get an opportunity to check it out.
You walk into a very chic and sophisticated dining room separated by interesting wood frames. The centerpiece of the restaurant is gorgeous bar.
We started off with a few dimsum items:
Clockwise, starting from top-left: King crab noodle roll; har gau; crab and taro croquette; daikon cake
The dimsum was all cooked nicely. My favorite was the crab/taro croquette. It was perfectly crispy on the outside and the taro was smooth and creamy inside. This is usually one of my favorite dimsum items to get, but the crab version made it more luxurious. My least favorite was the daikon cake, not sure if the ratio of rice flour and daikon was off, but it turned out alittle too mushy for my liking.
For our main course, we ordered the spicy prawns, black pepper rib-eye with merlot, and chicken fried rice with salted fish.
The dishes were all executed well. The prawns were cooked perfectly, not overcooked at all.
For dessert, we had a steamer full of macarons. I don't remember all the different flavors, but there was a blood orange, burnt caramel, jasmine tea, and yuzu. I thought the macarons were good and a good deal (7 for $12...many places around here charge close to $2 for a macaron)
Overall, I thought this was a great meal, with the prices, definitely not an everyday place. But they had great service and a wonderful ambiance.
Paws: 4
