The Best Dishes Eater SF Editors Ate This Week: Spring 2023 - Eater SF
"Back in the fall, when Tenderheart debuted inside the new LINE SF hotel just off Market Street, chef Joe Hou made an early prediction that the sweet and sour quail would become a menu staple. So when I finally popped into the lobby restaurant for dinner, pulling up a stool to the bar on an early weeknight evening, I obviously ordered the dish. These days, the set includes crunchy little sheets of fermented pineapple, which offered a nice palate-cleansing pop between bites of bird. And what a bird it was. If the goal here is to offer a refined version of the familiar, saucy dish then I’d consider this a success. Each piece of fried poultry sported a delicately crispy shell gently enrobed in a sticky sweet and sour sauce. The sauce, applied with the correct amount of restraint, didn’t overpower the dark meat — slippery, succulent, and just a little bit gamey, in a good way — which I happily separated from all those tiny little bones. I didn’t expect to plow through the whole pile of meat, and yet, I did, happily licking the sauce off my fingers as I went. Tenderheart at the LINE SF, 970 Market Street, San Francisco" - Lauren Saria
