State Bird Provisions
San Francisco
Avaliações
This place is a must try from the perspective of the atmosphere, style of service, and uniqueness of cuisine. It was an extremely fun experience to sit right at the bar, learn about the different dishes and watch them be made, and try them ourselves. Due to the dimsum style service, which was quite fun, don't expect to eat in any particular order. We shared around 11 or 12 dishes across their standard menu as well as their rotating menu. Though this is labelled as "American" cuisine, each dish seemed like a fusion of another culture, be it east Asian, south Asian, etc. For example the 7th picture was a beat based dish that tasted just like my mom's beat curry. Flavours aren't subtle in most of the dishes -- that's not necessarily a bad thing, it just depends on your taste. Overall a fun and playful food experience!
Ideal experience, I was brought by a chef friend of mine who insisted on SBP. Every dish danced with nuance and balance, complex flavors and delicate flavorful serendipities. See the pictures and know even the wedge salad was creative and delicious. Now the service was efficient, friendly and refreshingly stylish. It’s fun to have the pleasure of interacting with different people passing different things, learning about each dish. Music and setting were the perfect complement to the exciting dishes. And what a treat to be in the audience of Stewart and the rest of the artists in the kitchen. A must try
High energy place and fun just being in the middle of the hustle and bustle - the chefs were ever moving, churning out dish after dish, the waiters were carrying plates of tapas or wheeling them around eg. Scallop crudo, potato chips with trout dip, pork belly with fish sauce, etc I really wanted to like the food but the ones I tried such as pork belly, sourdough-sourrkraut with pecorino and ricotta, black cod toast, state bird were too either too heavy or salty or hard (deep fried). The only one I liked was the scallop crudo. Overall, fun for a try but I expected much higher standards from a one star Michelin.
What a treat! We tried making a reservation but we couldn't so we decided to get their about half an hour early to start waiting. They do allocate space for walk-in guests which was very nice and it was sure worth the wait! It was fun to watch the staff prep before service as well. The chips were all lined up on the window and very enticing. We got a few of the rotating items, some of which were hit or miss, but otherwise it was a fun experience. It's very easy to overspend there since they come around the table to you and ask if you'd like what they're serving and everything looks so delicious. A la carte, we ordered a state bird provisions which was amazing. They somehow deboned a quail which was very impressive and it was nicely seasoned and fried. You must try the chips and dip! It is on the oilier side which is not my preference, but it is still very very good. We also got the yuba all matriciana which turned out to be a pasta-like (with no pasta but tofu skin) dish which was very enjoyable. My favorite thing we had that night was the little almond muffins with pate.
I generally do not ever leave comments but this was definitely one of the worst meals i’ve paid for in SF. To start off with dim sum style appetizers, hog island oysters with kraut was not good together. The kraut was too crunchy and too much on soft oysters which was overpowering in general. The pate is not very good, i think french butter would have been better with almond fancier. The “best” one was the handrolls and even that i didn’t understand other toppings with scallops. Just overall did not have any harmony with the ingredients. Regarding the “main” dishes we ordered state bird and the steak. The state bird chicken seemed a little undercooked and not worth $24 for 2 pieces of average fried chicken. Also the steak was tender for sure but was so salty i couldn’t taste the numbing sensation from sichuan peppercorn. I actually didn’t have high hopes and i genuinely felt robbed. Their drinks and water were very good.
