As Public Enemy so eloquently put it — don’t believe the hype! It has been quite a while since I posted a food review. Mostly because I haven’t cared enough… until now.
My wife and I recently had dinner at Baker & Banker. This new-ish Pacific Heights restaurant occupies the former home of Quince. Quince vacated this tiny spot after proving their might with amazing food and classy service.
Baker and Banker, hoping to capture the same success, have fallen very short of the mark. We had a dinner reservation for 7:30pm on a Thursday night. We arrived on-time. Shockingly, our table wasn’t ready. Did I mention that this place is tiny? There’s no room to wait for a table without feeling like you’re hovering over the tables near the door. I felt bad for those seated but it was too damn cold to wait outside. Gotta love that SF winter, I mean summer. There were also six other guests waiting for tables.
Ten minutes later we were seated. We sat around for fifteen minutes before we were greeted with the menu. The waiter, I’ll call him waiter 1, explained the tasting menu in way too much detail and then proceeded to leave us sitting there for another twenty minutes. He hadn’t even taken a wine order from us. Luckily, we did get water and bread. The focaccia bread was delicious.
At the point I was about to lose it, a different waiter who I’ll call waiter 2, approached us and asked, “So how are you guys doing? Would you like to order some food?”. Seriously? It was the same style of delivery you’d get at your local Applebee’s from a miserable college student barely surviving on tips. How about some food and a bottle of wine? Anything! Waiter 2 literally came out of nowhere to help us. He was a bit scattered and seemed rattled when he took our order. It was as if he was from the other side of the restaurant and he just scooted over to help cover.
The decor of the restaurant was comfortable. It’s a very small space so it gets super loud. I had to ask my wife to repeat herself at least five times. At one point she just gave up. If you’re looking for a romantic dining experience, do not come here. It will get frustrating trying to keep a conversation going.
Now to the food. We ordered the appetizer special which was local grilled sardines with sea bean salad and radish. It sounded like it could be a real winner, but it was a total letdown. The fish were whole and cooked nicely, but there wasn’t a lot of flavor there. The sea bean salad was bland and tough. It was also very oily with little flavor. That dish was atrocious at $11.
We ordered two mains. The first was the Florida Gulf prawns a’la plancha, “paella” risotto, shellfish, chorizo bread crumbs ($27). The second Moroccan spiced Pozzi Farm lamb loin, couscous, charred eggplant and pine nut purée, tzatziki, natural jus ($30).
The main dishes came out in a reasonable timeframe, so we weren’t staring at our watches or anything. The one positive was that we did find a very nice bottle of Barbera; Cantine Valpane “Perlydia” Barbera, Piedmonte, Italy, 2003 ($40). It was very full-bodied with great spice notes and nice dark fruit. That and good conversation, when we could hear it, kept us occupied.
Once the main courses came out the experience just hit ludicrous speed.
The risotto was undercooked (too al dente) and had a weird citrus flavor to it. My wife took the first bite and I asked her how it was. She wanted so badly to like this place and she grinned and said, “good”. I knew she was lying through her teeth. This dish had whole shrimp in it with the heads and tentacles in-tact! Who does that anymore? I don’t want to see a dead shrimp on my plate! This isn’t 1980′s California cuisine. The body also had some leftover remnants of the exoskeleton or something. The only way I can explain it was as if the shrimp weren’t peeled properly. I had to pick this filmy crap out of my mouth and put it on my plate. The guests next to me must have loved seeing me dig my fingers into my mouth!
The lamb was disappointing at best. The meat was overcooked and underwhelming. There were some nice moroccan spices going on, but who cares? The outside of the couscous was garnished with cuts of baby carrots. It was as if a kid took their veggies and put the main dish in jail. It was just too fancy for its own good. There were three slices of lamb. I ate one and my wife ate one.
When we were finished, waiter 1 appeared again and asked if we’d like the lamb to-go. My wife said yes as she was going to eat it for lunch the next day. May as well salvage a $30 plate. So we sat around forever again. Probably twenty to twenty five minutes. Now who comes by to give us a dessert menu? You guessed it, waiter 2! He started to put down the dessert menu when I just asked for the check. At this point I wasn’t going to give them anymore money, even if their desserts are supposed to be to die for. They didn’t deserve it.
When waiter 2 came by to give us our check he asked, “was there a long time between clearing your plate and someone coming by for dessert?”. I said yes and also told him about the huge time gap between getting seated and taking our order. He apologized and said waiter 1 was new. When you’re paying $25-$30 an entree and getting sub-par food and awful service, it’s like a sucker punch in the stomach. The kicker is that waiter 1 didn’t even box up the lamb for us. He totally forgot! It was twenty minutes after he took our food before we realized he hadn’t boxed it up for us. I was going to go tell waiter 2 that waiter 1 failed again, but whatever. It wasn’t going to do a damn thing.
The best part of the night was getting 30% off the bill from an online coupon code that my wife had. The second best part was leaving.
There are so many amazing places to eat in San Francisco. This is not one of them. I would never recommend it and if you do go, I sure hope your experience is better than mine. I would have been a million times happier to have spent $10 at The Little Chihuaha.
