Sorrel - Review - Pacific Heights - San Francisco - The Infatuation
"Dinner at Sorrel is great on paper. The Californian-Italian fine dining restaurant serves a thoughtful eight-course tasting menu. The service is prompt. And excellent pull-apart milk bread comes with no fewer than four varieties of butter on a varnished plank of wood. But the personal touches that make going out to restaurants fun and memorable are tough to find. If you went to Sorrel during their pop-up years from 2015-2018, the above cooking successes should come as no surprise. More than half a decade later, most of Sorrel's dishes are as creative and delicious as they are beautiful. In a porcini mushroom course, three different preparations of the fungus balance each other with umami, tartness, and earthiness. And we'd like to engineer a chewing gum flavor out of the clarified coconut broth that comes in the same shell as locally caught, lightly cured halibut. Not everything in the $185 tasting menu is a hit, to be sure. Sorrel's supplemental wagyu course tastes chewy and too fatty. And the chicken wing—a lollipop on a mini-sword, served with egg yolk fudge for dipping and pickled onion petals—is as overwrought as an edible Rubik’s cube. photo credit: Krescent Carasso Sorrel has bigger problems than a few dish misses, though. The servers only exchange a few words with you over the two-hour meal, despite being a constant fixture at the table. Water glasses get filled the instant you take a sip, and plates are swiped away silently the second your fork hits the table. Even asking for wine recommendations comes with a seemingly rehearsed script. We've never felt totally at ease at Sorrel, fully able to sink into the meal. The restaurant's sparse, mirrored dining room doesn’t help. It's more like a furniture showroom than the house where the furniture actually lives. To enjoy Sorrel, you’ll have to focus almost exclusively on the exceptional dishes, and they mostly are exceptional. But considering the price of the meal and the fact that going out to eat should be about more than just the food, Sorrel is tough to recommend without a few hefty caveats. RESERVE A TABLE WITH RESERVE A TABLE Food Rundown Local Halibut The pool of clarified coconut broth dominates this dish, and that’s a good thing. Chunks of raw fish topped with avocado rounds and slivers of sea beans need the acidic, sweet liquid. Pick up the decorative shell plate and try to slurp up any leftover as quietly as you can. photo credit: Patrick Wong Summer Melon These melons are cut into perfect uniform chunks. Their sweetness is balanced out by a salty guanciale crisp, with some black rice for crunch. It won’t be the most exciting bite you’ll take during your two-and-half hour dinner, but it’s a refreshing way to get ready for what’s next. photo credit: Patrick Wong Tomato With Santa Barbara Uni The skinned and marinated tomatoes pop in your mouth like nature’s finest Gusher. And a small dollop of uni and ogo add brininess to the dish. While each component tastes great on its own, they don't go great all together. photo credit: Patrick Wong Porcini With Bing Cherry One of the highlights of the meal and the complete opposite of the tomato course. The trio of mushroom preparations eat beautifully together. The stuffed porcini is rich and heavy, a barely cooked piece adds earthiness, and the pickled version lightens up the dish with a zing that hits the back of your tongue. We’d ask for seconds if we could. photo credit: Patrick Wong Bread Service While waiting for the rest of your courses, you’ll be graced with a pull-apart loaf of bread and soft tubes of butter flavored with ingredients like honey, peppercorns, and ramps. Will yourself into waiting for the steamy bundle of rolls to cool before ripping into it. While there are four pieces for two diners, you may want to figure out a way to blackmail your dining companion into giving you an extra chunk. photo credit: Patrick Wong Potato With Smoked Cream We’re glad that even at a fine dining restaurant like Sorrel, you get to eat crispy potatoes. This semi-circle of tuber is audibly crispy, wearing tufts of dill and resting in a smoked cream foam sauce. Even if the potato was served solo, we’d still enjoy this dish. photo credit: Patrick Wong Chicken Wing While we can appreciate the thought, a less deconstructed wing would have been better. photo credit: Patrick Wong Black Cod Like with the local halibut, the kombu sauce makes this otherwise bland fish dish. And the crispy squash blossom adds some needed crunch. photo credit: Patrick Wong Wagyu Save the extra $38 and skip this supplemental course if you see it available. The wagyu is chewy, bland, and unlike the cod and halibut, the sauce does nothing to help. photo credit: Patrick Wong Yellow Peach Reminiscent of the orange and yellow gummy ring candies hanging near grocery store cash registers, this is a fantastic way to end the meal. The marshmallow-y peach ring encases a peach jelly and sits atop a mound of frozen yogurt and cookie crumbles. The textures work well together and it’s the closest we’ve been to having candy for dessert in a while. photo credit: Patrick Wong" - Patrick Wong
