So I go to Chez Panisse to meet a friend on Thursday. The dinner is at cafe upstairs, but it's all new to me since I never been there. The place looks dark, very woodsy, lots of Florida tourists types (I think I saw Serge),but that's ok, I guess. The place is popular after all and she's a star. Whatever.
First things first: the decor is downright abysmal - cheap, craftsman style decorations did nothing but aggravate me.
The menu is very small and limited, full of simple salads and basic uninspiring dishes. The wine list is ok, but not coordinated with the menu at all. I brought a bottle of Gevrey with me and ended up taking back home as I could not find anything on the menu to pair it with. And they have wood fired oven!! Somehow, they don't seem to use it for anything else but to make the downstairs unpleasantly hot.
The food literally took forever to arrive, but at least the staff was friendly.
I had some crostini with anchovies and bitter greens, better half - tangerine salad. For main course I had braised pork, better half - ricotta /rocket ravioli. The dishes were simple, basic, uninspiring, even bland on some level, with my greens being seriously overcooked to a mush, pork overcooked to stringy consistency and ravioli lacking any flavor whatsoever. Needless to say, we skipped desert which included such imaginative item as a small bowl of two unpeeled tangerines and three figs. GIVE ME A BREAK!!
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