Tenderheart
Restaurant · Tenderloin
Valet & Drop-off at 33 Turk St, 970 Market St, San Francisco, CA 94102
Highlights
Asian-influenced NorCal fare: sweet/sour quail, duck, granita
Asian-influenced NorCal fare: sweet/sour quail, duck, granita
"Less than a month after the rollout of its long-awaited lobby bar, the LINE SF hotel on Market Street has closed its ground-floor restaurant Tenderheart. The company confirmed the restaurant's closure on Monday to Eater SF, noting that the team plans to 'redevelop the concept' in the future. 'After two incredible years, it’s bittersweet to announce that we’ve temporarily closed Tenderheart,' an emailed statement from F&B Director Bryan Woolley reads in part. 'We’re hard at work on what’s next, and we can’t wait to share all the delicious details very soon.' Tenderheart opened in fall 2022 under the leadership of chef Joe Hou, who oversees the food across all the hotel’s outlets including rooftop bar and restaurant Rise Over Run and newly opened Dark Bar on the lobby level. For the Tenderheart menu, Hou 'drew inspiration from both Northern California’s bountiful local ingredients and his identity as a first-generation Chinese American,' Eater SF reported at the time. The menu offered dishes such as sweet and sour quail, salt and pepper cauliflower, and lion’s head meatballs crepinette. Cocktails came from San Francisco bartender Danny Louie." - Lauren Saria
"This Market Street restaurant is on the first floor of the relatively new LINE Hotel and is a smart choice for any fans of crispy duck, creamy potatoes, and sweet and sour quail. For anyone staying the night in the city, Tenderheart just rolled out a breakfast menu, too, featuring bodega-style breakfast sandwiches and scallion crepes." - Paolo Bicchieri
"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
"The trendy Line Hotel landed in mid-Market in late 2022, bringing with it a number of food and beverage options including Tenderheart, the hotel’s casual all-day restaurant. Chef Joe Hou previously cooked at Angler and Le Fantastique and draws inspiration from his Chinese American upbringing for the menu, which offers plates including salt and pepper cauliflower, sweet and sour quail, and roasted duck with duck fat fried rice." - Lauren Saria
"The trendy Line Hotel landed in mid-Market in late 2022, bringing with it a number of food and beverage options including Tenderheart, the hotel’s casual all-day restaurant. Chef Joe Hou previously cooked at Angler and Le Fantastique and draws inspiration from his Chinese American upbringing for the menu, which offers plates including salt and pepper cauliflower, sweet and sour quail, and roasted duck with duck fat fried rice." - Lauren Saria
